PTS Update 16 - Feedback Thread for Nightblades

SanTii.92

Heresyall wrote: »

OdinForge wrote: »

Heresyall wrote: »

Hello ,

I'll talk mostly here about the new agony (Malevolent Offerings).
Actually the idea was good but it has alot of weaknesses that will make it totally useless in pvp :

1) Magblade is already one of the squishiest class in cyrodiil right now ,making it sacrifying hp to heal another one is kinda meh.

2)You have to target someone to heal : ????? it's actually impossible in cyrodiil even with the help of the ui , every ally that will be nearer than the target you want to heal will take it instead of him and you'll basicaly lost hp for nothing by healing a random guy.

3)Rapid regen is way better this patch because of the vma resto staff up : don't need to target , heal yourself , gives magicka back and for mutagen ,can purge .Magblade in pvp basically don't have slots for random skill even if it's totally free.

4)Make the minor mending morph a selfhealing one if not targetting anyone : -> put the cost at like 2 k magicka and if you don't target an ally make it heal the caster for 50% of the base healing , it might be worth it to slot if like that ( should give around the same hots as rapid regen or even a bit more) / 1 target maximum possible.

Did you test the change?

1.) Magnb when properly built is definitely not one of the squishiest classes, not saying it doesn't have flaws but it's definitely not one of the squishiest.

2.) It's very easy to target allies with this heal, you aren't lining up headshots here.

3.) Rapid regen is far inferior to this heal, the tooltip on this heal can easily exceed 23K. The VMA staff doesn't change that fact.

4.) This IS a self heal if you don't target anyone, and one without a cost at that.

Actually i tried it and the selfheal is less than rapid regen by calculation of the dmg taken + healing taken. (no cp into healing)

Edit:Battle Spirit doesn't reduce the dmg taken from this skill ,wich makes the skill worse than rapid regen when you're trying to heal yourself in pvp.

Ofc it's worse than rapid regen as a self heal, and what do you mean with battle spirit doesn't reduce dmge taken? reduces healing done, which reduces dmge taken.

MisterBigglesworth

Another suggestion for the Agony change:

Make one of the morphs transfer your stamina to an ally instead of health, or maybe in addition to sacrificing health, just give NBs this type of functionality in some form.

or...

Leave Agony as the CC it is right now, but make one of the morphs apply a debuf to the enemy that causes your ally to restore Stamina when they attack it.

OdinForge

Heresyall wrote: »

OdinForge wrote: »

Heresyall wrote: »

Hello ,

I'll talk mostly here about the new agony (Malevolent Offerings).
Actually the idea was good but it has alot of weaknesses that will make it totally useless in pvp :

1) Magblade is already one of the squishiest class in cyrodiil right now ,making it sacrifying hp to heal another one is kinda meh.

2)You have to target someone to heal : ????? it's actually impossible in cyrodiil even with the help of the ui , every ally that will be nearer than the target you want to heal will take it instead of him and you'll basicaly lost hp for nothing by healing a random guy.

3)Rapid regen is way better this patch because of the vma resto staff up : don't need to target , heal yourself , gives magicka back and for mutagen ,can purge .Magblade in pvp basically don't have slots for random skill even if it's totally free.

4)Make the minor mending morph a selfhealing one if not targetting anyone : -> put the cost at like 2 k magicka and if you don't target an ally make it heal the caster for 50% of the base healing , it might be worth it to slot if like that ( should give around the same hots as rapid regen or even a bit more) / 1 target maximum possible.

Did you test the change?

1.) Magnb when properly built is definitely not one of the squishiest classes, not saying it doesn't have flaws but it's definitely not one of the squishiest.

2.) It's very easy to target allies with this heal, you aren't lining up headshots here.

3.) Rapid regen is far inferior to this heal, the tooltip on this heal can easily exceed 23K. The VMA staff doesn't change that fact.

4.) This IS a self heal if you don't target anyone, and one without a cost at that.

Actually i tried it and the selfheal is less than rapid regen by calculation of the dmg taken + healing taken. (no cp into healing)

Edit:Battle Spirit doesn't reduce the dmg taken from this skill ,wich makes the skill worse than rapid regen when you're trying to heal yourself in pvp.

What are you talking about?

We're talking about a 23K heal over 10 seconds compared to a 19K heal over 16.5 seconds, which one do you think is the better heal?

And healthy offering gives you minor mending, the damage from healthy offering can be mitigated by cloak while the healing continues.

We're talking about a 1K+ difference in tick size, you're kidding yourself if you think regen is better in PvP. I'm not convinced you actually tested the change.

zyk

Instead of replacing Agony completely, ZOS should instead consider replacing some Siphoning morphs with HOT variants.

For example, change Debilitate (Cripple morph) and Prolonged Suffering (Agony morph) to HOTs.

Though players who prefer those morphs might disagree, I feel this is a better compromise as it preserves the functions provided by the current Agony line.

HairyFairy

I understand changing Agony, I do, they are getting rid of all spells like it on other classes. But adding a big Debuff to it is making it useless. no one will ever use this skill again this is not well thought through.

In PvP, no one wants a skill that is going to hurt themselves, its just silly to do so when there are plenty of heals in the game that don't.

What happens when you put that on someone in PvP, and they take a lot of damage? you will get slaughtered.

Take the dubuff off, and give us something not useless.

thanks,

Hairy

capricorn152245ub17_ESO

DDuke wrote: »

Ok, having done a little testing on PTS:

Malevolent Offering - Healthy Offering/Shrewd Offering
Overall impression: (unsurprisingly) very disappointed.

The Good:

• You can remove the damage portion by cloaking.
• Heal is very close to Vigor in terms of strength, and lasts twice as long.
• Costs nothing.

The Bad:

• Can't be used to proc "when you take damage" sets (e.g. Legion, Storm Knight etc).
• Similar to above, can't be used to stack Wrath heavy armor passive.

The Ugly:

• Doesn't scale with highest resources (despite costing nothing), only with magicka/spell damage - another useless Siphoning skill for stamina builds.

Suggestions on how to make it atleast usable:

• Make it proc "when you take damage" sets & passives.
• Make it scale with stamina & weapon damage as well if they're your higher resource.

P.S. Can we expect any changes to Power Extraction this PTS, @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

I'll go you one better on the ugly: putting CP points into Magic Damage and Direct Damage Attacks INCREASES the damage you take from the heal (at least the tooltip), although it's hard to test without a buddy and some different testing situations.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

Can't speak much for the agony morph. I gave it a tiny try but honestly, as a stam blade DPS it's something I would never use anyways. I can see someone maybe finding a trick with the morph that gives minor mending, but I didn't have the skill maxed out so my question is at rank IV does the minor mending last longer than 2 seconds? I can see this actually being a good thing for NB healers.

As far as manifestation of fear and mass hysteria. I am not to bothered by mass hysteria going from three to two enemies. Though I think the change is unnecessary.

The traps taking 3 seconds to arm is really just bad. I can see maybe 1-1.5 seconds but three? It can find use in large scale PvP considering how many it fears, ball groups are going to love it and honestly people might end up complaining A LOT about it. Especially If I cast it near where I am, fear 6 people in front of me, another 6 next to me, as my group spams Ults and proxys.

Considering my play style, I still highly doubt I will use anything other than mass hysteria, especially if the arming time of the traps of the other morph are not lowered by a lot.

On a side note, grim focus/relentless focus needs to go back to 4 hits to proc the bow....PLEASE.

Siphoning and leeching strikes heals are fine, but at least give a LITTLE bit more stamina/magicka back with each hit, or even make heavy attacks give a different and greater value return.

Greasytengu

I have dabbled with Nightblade healing and here are my thoughts:

Agony/Malevolent Offering changes are interesting, but I do not think the ability will ever be used to be honest. Perhaps instead of damaging you, the ability could apply major or minor vulnerability to its user, siphoning your strength away to give to your allies. (Dont think major vulnerability exists in the game yet, but major protection is 30% so I guess it would parallel that) The "Healthy Offering" morph could still give minor mending while under its effects. As for "Shrewd Offering", it could change the major vulnerability to minor vulnerability. Other effects for morphs could include: Buffing damage dealt by its receiver, Critical damage/healing dealt by caster giving major mending, Applying lifesteal/magickasteal/staminasteal (is staminasteal even a thing yet?) to enemies damaged by receiver/caster, damage/crits dealt by its receiver heals the caster, damage/crits dealt by its receiver reduced the duration of the debuff.

On another note: I think soul shred needs to have its cost reduced a little (100-125ish) to really make people consider running and using it it over barrier and the healing staff ult. Considering that its effect can be broken early if the targets move too far away from the healer, I think it needs a just little more love. (I know feedback on this ability wasn't asked for, but I figured Id throw this out there)

fred4

exeeter702 wrote: »

If you have successfully drained a targets stam as a ranged magnb, you should have the win

Many is the time where I have spammed Impale, from range, and the sorc player just won't die, because they are spamming shields. In that case Agony helps execute the target.

IxSTALKERxI

Feedback on Agony:

I like the concept of sacrificing health to heal others. It's an interesting mechanic that has been in other mmo's. I also am a huge fan of hots. Minor mending is nice to.

I think this ability will be strong if you increase the target cap to 2 targets. So it applies the heal on up to 2 targets within 28m in front of you. This would be a strong hot that could be more easily applied to your allies in say a 4 man battlegrounds group. As it is currently, I feel a single target 10 second hot takes too much time to apply to each person to be effective as a healer.

_____________
Replying to previous posts:

Some of the most powerful healing builds I've ever run in this game in pvp actually involved spamming spell sym for sustain. There is a reason why they nerfed spell sym a few patches ago.
Also don't under estimate the power of stacking some good hots. Hots > burst heals imo.

fred4

BohnT wrote: »

Why is there still no buff to concealed weapons?
It has no combat Utility, costs much more than Swallow Souls and only has a slightly higher dmg

Please give it something to make it useable if you'd be very Kind bring back meele blade with this:

Your light attacks now always scale with your highest resource like ultimates and deal Magic damage please make it happen

I run a resto / 2H magblade with a Nirnhoned sword. The spell damage on the 2H bar, in conjunction with the 2H passive, makes Concealed hit significantly harder than Funnel, which is on the resto bar. With current CP favoring stacking of Master At Arms more so than Elemental Expert, non-crit light attacks from 2H actually hit harder than ones from the resto staff, in my build. That said, crit chance and crit damage falls short for the physical attacks.

It is not true to say Concealed has no utility. If you play as it was intended, together with Cloak on the same bar, you get a speed buff to approach a target in cloak, who you then stun, and follow up with Soul Harvest. (Good luck against stamsorcs though). Since it's a shadow ability, you also get increased resistances from spamming it. I am playing a hybrid melee / ranged build, without a gap closer, where I switch to the staff bar for funneling and execute, if people move out of melee range.

My personal points of comparison are limited to mag warden and stam DK. I concur with the general feeling that magblade lacks raw damage, but it's playstyle is actually rather nice. You can stack significant damage by going 2H or DW, and using the various buffs from Soul Harvest, Merciless, Sap, guaranteed crit from Shadowy Disguise, Mark, and so on. The problem is, perhaps, that other classes, such as warden, can match or outperform magblade for damage, and have much simpler ways to activate their buffs before the fight even starts. They don't have cloak, though.

As I don't play all classes, it is very hard for me to say whether I concur with you. I have not played stamblade, who appear to have greater melee damage in general. I would be against a rework of Concealed, as the buffs it does have facilitate a rather nice playstyle, which I'm using.

kaithuzar

I absolutely loathe the changes to agony.
It affects my playstyle in a negative way, which I've been using for years.
If you, the devs, are dead set on changing it, how about you keep it the way it is as a ranged cc, but instead of doing damage on the prolonged suffering morph, it heals the caster based on the duration of time that the opponent was CC'd or instead does a minor magicka steal.
Many magblades use this as a reliable ranged cc & taking that away from us further kills both the class & the playstyle.

kaithuzar

Oh & one more thing, imo the only way this new agony morph "might" be effective, is if you're an argonian; I support the playstyle of other races.
Stop copying Kena's argonian magblade & come up with your own builds!

fred4

Dojohoda wrote: »

If you do decide to follow through with this nerf to Mass Hysteria, you should rename it to something else like 'Maybe Scare Two People'.

Love this comment. So true, and the reason I don't use Mass Hysteria.

fred4

HairyFairy wrote: »

I understand changing Agony, I do, they are getting rid of all spells like it on other classes.

No they're not. Other classes are keeping their ranged CCs. NBs are losing theirs.

BohnT

fred4 wrote: »

BohnT wrote: »

Why is there still no buff to concealed weapons?
It has no combat Utility, costs much more than Swallow Souls and only has a slightly higher dmg

Please give it something to make it useable if you'd be very Kind bring back meele blade with this:

Your light attacks now always scale with your highest resource like ultimates and deal Magic damage please make it happen

I run a resto / 2H magblade with a Nirnhoned sword. The spell damage on the 2H bar, in conjunction with the 2H passive, makes Concealed hit significantly harder than Funnel, which is on the resto bar. With current CP favoring stacking of Master At Arms more so than Elemental Expert, non-crit light attacks from 2H actually hit harder than ones from the resto staff, in my build. That said, crit chance and crit damage falls short for the physical attacks.

It is not true to say Concealed has no utility. If you play as it was intended, together with Cloak on the same bar, you get a speed buff to approach a target in cloak, who you then stun, and follow up with Soul Harvest. (Good luck against stamsorcs though). Since it's a shadow ability, you also get increased resistances from spamming it. I am playing a hybrid melee / ranged build, without a gap closer, where I switch to the staff bar for funneling and execute, if people move out of melee range.

My personal points of comparison are limited to mag warden and stam DK. I concur with the general feeling that magblade lacks raw damage, but it's playstyle is actually rather nice. You can stack significant damage by going 2H or DW, and using the various buffs from Soul Harvest, Merciless, Sap, guaranteed crit from Shadowy Disguise, Mark, and so on. The problem is, perhaps, that other classes, such as warden, can match or outperform magblade for damage, and have much simpler ways to activate their buffs before the fight even starts. They don't have cloak, though.

As I don't play all classes, it is very hard for me to say whether I concur with you. I have not played stamblade, who appear to have greater melee damage in general. I would be against a rework of Concealed, as the buffs it does have facilitate a rather nice playstyle, which I'm using.

I play a meele magnb aswell, and i can't agree that magblade damage is lower, even with sustain setup i can wreck people easily with incap + assassin's will.
The damage of concealed weapon is good but not for it's cost and the sneak speed may be nice and i definitely want to keep it but Magblade is based on Light and heavy attacky more than any other class as their main burst ability needs 5 LA / HA to activate it. When you are running concealed weapon you play with either DW or 2h and both these weapons deal no damage with light attacks and heavy attacks.
Adding a buff to it that changes how LA / HA scale with your stats would make Meele magnb so much better than it is now.

mb10

Sorry but Agony isnt the best of ideas.

It would be nice if it damaged an opposition target and healed you or an ally over time.

I also think due to the lack of survivability of nightblades, nerfing mass hysteria isnt the best of ideas due to it being a good escape tactic when outnumbered too.


My opinion on the other skills if this is even relevant:
Crippling grasp speed is way too slow
Sap Essence is way too expensive
Grim Focus 5 hits to proc is one too high imo

Tyrobag

How about instead of making a new suicide ability try to make NB healers actually viable, make agony an ability you cast on the boss that lasts 25 seconds and has a cast time.

While targeting an enemy with Agony active, the skill morphs to become a spammable instant cast that instant heals 2 or 3 allies (the animation can be shadowy red tendrils between the boss and your allies).

The ability would be similar in power and use to BoL. This way, NB would actually be a viable healer vs Templar.

Izaki

Some people used to use Agony. Now no one will ever use it because Nightblade healers are a total joke in serious content.

kaithuzar

Why even mess with agony? If you're a nb then you're either damage/dps or heals or tank; for this discussion I'll forego mentioning tanks.

If CRIPPLE IS the DPS MORPH, then make the OTHER MORPH OF CRIPPLE a Healer morph.
#LeaveAgonyAlone

Malacthulhu

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

I don't agree with this change to Agony, but if you're going to go ahead with this health sacrifice functionality, then here's my suggestion:

Make the heal a large instant heal with a cast time (not a heal over time). Make it the strongest non-Ultimate heal in the game. Give it a cast time so it can be interrupted in PvP to balance out the fact it's such a powerful heal.

The other benefit of combining an instant heal with the health sacrifice component being a DOT, is that you could cast it twice in quick succession and only incur 1-2 additional seconds of the self-DOT.

That is actually really smart.

umagon

I want to point out for those who are concerned with the damage health aspect of malevolent offering that it can be countered with health regeneration. With any mix of the invigorating trait, the steed mundus stone, champion points into health regeneration, jewelry enchantments, and gear selection; it is possible to cancel out the damage ticks.

If you balance the healing output with how much health regeneration your character has you can reach a point where with malevolent offering morphs running you are getting more healing than you would if it was not running.

KingJ

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel is it possible to make the heal scale off of max stat or is it intended for it to only scale with magic?

If it's only intended to be used by magic NB that something that should be clarified for testing purposes or is this a bug?

Pls reply when you get a chance.

exeeter702

Izaki wrote: »

Some people used to use Agony. Now no one will ever use it because Nightblade healers are a total joke in serious content.

Cute.

shinikaze

DDuke wrote: »

Ok, having done a little testing on PTS:

Malevolent Offering - Healthy Offering/Shrewd Offering
Overall impression: (unsurprisingly) very disappointed.

The Good:

• You can remove the damage portion by cloaking.
• Heal is very close to Vigor in terms of strength, and lasts twice as long.
• Costs nothing.

The Bad:

• Can't be used to proc "when you take damage" sets (e.g. Legion, Storm Knight etc).
• Similar to above, can't be used to stack Wrath heavy armor passive.

The Ugly:

• Doesn't scale with highest resources (despite costing nothing), only with magicka/spell damage - another useless Siphoning skill for stamina builds.

Suggestions on how to make it atleast usable:

• Make it proc "when you take damage" sets & passives.
• Make it scale with stamina & weapon damage as well if they're your higher resource.

P.S. Can we expect any changes to Power Extraction this PTS, @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

Can you try wearing the set that raise 400 spell/weap damage to class skills? how much is the hot in pvp for a full stamina nb with this set up? thank you (really exited about class hot, even if its a weak one)

Now all i need is power extraction to proc major brutality outside battle *PLEASE*

kaithuzar

Can someone lock these class feedback threads to the top?

Zer0oo

The heal for Malevolent Offering is actually quite high but still i don't see any real use for it. Why would i use in pve as healer a skill that could kill you? A dead healer in pve is really one of the worst thing in pve and for risking something like that i don't see enough benefits.

Same goes for pvp why should i risk my hp if i just could use another heal like rapid reg with less danger to me?
You could put it on yourself to get an okish heal but still a normal heal would be in most situation better. Also since that it only scales of mag stats it is useless for stam and more tank nbs.

It would be better if it also would offer some additional effect like minor force to both the caster and the affected person or another strong offensive buff to make it worth risking your hp.

SanTii.92

Zer0oo wrote: »

The heal for Malevolent Offering is actually quite high but still i don't see any real use for it. Why would i use as healer a skill that could kill you?

It's called playing smart. Yes it could kill you, but also the value of such a strong hot is inmense. Being able to support a group without sacrificing many skills into it allows you to pick more offensive skills. You could pretty much support a group of four with agony, funnel health and healing ward, and maybe some healing ults just by yourself under many circumstance. Honestly, as a mag warden main i'm quite jealous.

MisterBigglesworth

Malacthulhu wrote: »

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

I don't agree with this change to Agony, but if you're going to go ahead with this health sacrifice functionality, then here's my suggestion:

Make the heal a large instant heal with a cast time (not a heal over time). Make it the strongest non-Ultimate heal in the game. Give it a cast time so it can be interrupted in PvP to balance out the fact it's such a powerful heal.

The other benefit of combining an instant heal with the health sacrifice component being a DOT, is that you could cast it twice in quick succession and only incur 1-2 additional seconds of the self-DOT.

That is actually really smart.

I can't take all the credit. It's almost exactly Shadow Mend from WoW

Shadow Priests FTW!

Tornaad

While I have not ran a test with the Nightblade on the PTS I can tell you this the changes to Agony will almost guarantee I will never use that skill. I want to be able to play a Nightblade or more specifically a stamina Nightblade but I already find them too squishy in the health area the idea that you have added the ability to make them even more squishy means that I might just have to permanently retire my dream class until I can somehow bypass the biggest problem they seem to have which is only getting amplified with this proposed change.


Please make them less squishy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!