PTS Update 16 - Feedback Thread for Nightblades

kaithuzar

exeeter702 wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

RavenSworn wrote: »

SanTii.92 wrote: »

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.

I have to agree with you. a double / triple cast of Offering with you using Soul Tether ( instead of the weak sauce Soul Siphon)with also Degeneration up on the boss while using Lightning heavy attack with Siphoning Strikes up? you don't even need to have springs. Rapid + Offering + Degeneration + Dark Cloak...

I honestly don't know why people are going up in arms for this change. Agony aside from PvP was almost exclusively never used. There is no reason to run this skill when damage will just break it on the target.

HOWEVER I personally think they should have included a small burst of aoe heal at the last tick of Healthy Offering. Just the mending is the not enough 'buff' for the skill. could do it like Rally, where you can activate the skill again once casted to burst through the healing, with the damage dealt equally as well.

I'm personally trying it out with Imperium on a stamblade tank. this should really make it interesting.

I'm personally getting really tired of people saying "oh agony, it's never been flavor of the month, I haven't seen any streamers use it, that's a skill??? QQQ..."

It's been stated multiple times that many players have utilized the skill while leveling their character.
If there are 3 enemies but you can't handle 3 enemies, but you can handle 2. Using agony effectively takes one add/mob/enemy out of the fight for 30 seconds!
Ever done vdsa? Ever done vma/vmsa?
Ever tried to solo content such as dungeons, dolmans, etc..?
Ever thought of using agony temporarily on the stranglers that pop up???
USE YOUR BRAINS! Stop just copying every streamer or youtuber you watch, I know it's hard but ACTUALLY READ, then think about what you read. I know it hurts but you'll get use to it.
Ever run into archers? Maybe they're too far to gap close? AGONY them until you get around to fighting in their direction!
I know this comes as a shock, but you can develop tactics & strategies outside of what might be displayed on the internet.

People are going "up in arms", because they have read and have developed tactics and strategies outside of the norm and have made the current skill an effective part of their play style; yet that playstyle is in jeopardy of being taken away.
Taking away an interesting skill because it "wasn't popular" among a majority that neglected to think for themselves, in my opinion, is like intentionally shunning creativity & the ability to be different. Being effective in your own way was the reason that brought many to ESO in the first place.
If this skill gets changed to lose the ability to cc at ranged, it will just be interpreted as Zenimax does not want, allow, or value creativity amongst its players/community and only strives to preserve the status quo.
There is no future for those who not only do not inspire creativity, but even less for those who would react negatively to it or shun it.

With all due respect, labeling those that deemed the skill obsolete or ineffective as unwilling to "think for themselves" is incredibly disingenuous. I would even posit that its the inexperienced players that place too much useless stock into said skills. There are plenty of knowledgeable people in this game who are in a position to pick apart the varioud abilities in this game and come to reasonable conclusions as to which are simply outclassed and or obsolete vs others.

Your example of eliminating a single target so you can handle a pull, while reasonable in paper, is laughable. Ostensibly, at some point that was the intention of agony and other skills of its kind for pve at least, having a tool that removes a target from a pull. Over time this concept is completely pointless, group dungeons do not require that burning crusade heroics level of mob cc to clear hard pve group content. And for solo, you would be incredibly naive to think a single skill should be exclusivley tuned around solo content. Even in the days of VR, these hard pve mob CC abilities hardly earned a slot on your bar. Never once in my time playing this game since beta and early launch was i ever in need of such a tool.

For agony specifically, the damage it had baked into it was terrible, and since it broke on damage, its application in pvp was severely limited. Yes the garunteed stun in combination with its speed allowed for certain combos to work but even those are highly specific and circumstantial.

You are essentially advocating that zos allow a particlular skill take up a spot in a skill line exclusivley to cater to players of a lower level.

To say the thought oriented players are being punished because the majority of players cant think for themselves and deem the skill worthless and then go on to give an example about how the skill assists in doing content solo is what speaks volumes here....

You balance skills for the highest level of play, where it would be used to its fullest, then let it trickle down the totem pole for everyone. If you put training wheels on a skill, it will see no play for the large majority of the player base. The simple truth is that the skill was simply not used for a reason. At some point players improve and begin to realize said skills do not have a use to jusitfy slotting them. No one here is failing to understand agony's nuance.

This latest post was specifically in reference to PVE however, that's not the only reason I'm advocating for it. I just felt the PVP viability had already been discussed & so felt there wasn't much point in duplicating posts.

Your first statement says that im being disingenuous by labeling people as "unable to think for themselves" those that deem the skill obsolete or ineffective. (Sorry can't copy paste well on phone so had to attempt to write the sentence out so I can address it)

Let me see if I can clarify my viewpoint a little...
I understand there are a lot of smart players out there. I understand that there is almost always a more efficient or more correct way to accomplish a task. What upsets me is when those people, or anyone, takes the stance of this is the ONLY way to do X . Or look down upon ingenuity as though it was far less superior & totally beneath them.

Which is what I feel like I've been seeing with the progression of nightblade builds & classes in general; as I quoted earlier the popular "stand in your house" mentality.
Maybe people don't come right out& say it, but supporting improvement of the meta to me is the same as not supporting diversity.
I am by no means a wordsmith so if you feel my label is inappropriate please correct me with the proper terminology.

I really feel as though agony was not over performing, I have never seen mobs of people crying for it to be buffed or nerfed.
I feel as though change for no other reason than the sake of change is pointless.
People have been complaining about the way siphoning strikes works why don't they "fix"/play with that ability instead?

ccfeeling

1. Can we have 10 LA version of grim focus ?
2. Free class change to sorc token .
3. What I wanna say a good nb can play better a lot a lot if we play sorc in pve
4. Nerf us more until we have nothing

Mystrius_Archaion

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Make one agony morph stay as is and the other morph be one of the new ones. Problem solved.

Remove fear nerf. Go back to 3 targets.

If you are going to keep going with manifestation of terror change make the terror mines activate either instantly or after 1 second. 3 seconds is rediculous for a class that is "mobile".

They can't. That would make the ranged rune one better since it also places a second rune at your feet, same as the other morph does without placing anything on the ground. That would mean both would be an instant point blank AoE fear with one being 2-3 targets and the other being 6.
People seem to forget that it has a ranged rune and one at you.

I, personally, would be temped to use the rune placement morph to leave a "land-mine" behind as I run away so that enemies who follow directly behind or through a choke-point get feared.
Otherwise, I would use the other morph for every other situation.

Mystrius_Archaion

olsborg wrote: »

A big step in the right direction would be to make the new healing skill scale off the highest stat, and to make siph passive also increase stam by 8%, not only magicka. Seriously, the entire siphoning tree is 90% magblade only.

That's all class skills.
Most of the time, stamina has to choose a morph to get a skill to work for that resource and that morph costs a skill point that doesn't really give them increased benefit from the skill above the base level like the magicka morph does.

Welcome to "playing as designed" and not "play as you want".

ccfeeling

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

A big step in the right direction would be to make the new healing skill scale off the highest stat, and to make siph passive also increase stam by 8%, not only magicka. Seriously, the entire siphoning tree is 90% magblade only.

That's all class skills.
Most of the time, stamina has to choose a morph to get a skill to work for that resource and that morph costs a skill point that doesn't really give them increased benefit from the skill above the base level like the magicka morph does.

Welcome to "playing as designed" and not "play as you want".

Exactly .

aeowulf

Thing is it's really different levelling a toon now. since 1Tamriel mobs scale and because of that I don't know if Agony is the life saver it previously was. There is absoluty no doubt in my eyes it was 100% required by low level NB's when the game frst came out. Now? Probably less so.

Re soloing dolmens, did one on my lvl 48 warden a few days back. It was really easy, shockingly so. I've absiolutely no doubt my NB could solo one too, but he's got great gear, 660cp etc.

exeeter702

aeowulf wrote: »

Thing is it's really different levelling a toon now. since 1Tamriel mobs scale and because of that I don't know if Agony is the life saver it previously was. There is absoluty no doubt in my eyes it was 100% required by low level NB's when the game frst came out. Now? Probably less so.

Re soloing dolmens, did one on my lvl 48 warden a few days back. It was really easy, shockingly so. I've absiolutely no doubt my NB could solo one too, but he's got great gear, 660cp etc.

It was 100 percent never required at any stage of this games lifespan for NBs in any content.

PS4_ZeColmeia

I've exclusively played nb since launch on PS4. I have every skill point available except those after sergeant in PVP (coming soon). I play hybrid optimized either around stamina or magicka, but 90% of the time around magicka. I do this and play either full time tank, DPS or healer in vet trials, dungeons and PvP. I only say this to point out I've spec'ed and respec'ed a million times the same character and grinded with tons of different gear to figure out just about every possible way to play this class. I am not the end all, be all, but I do have an extensive experience on the class.

I am very very happy with NB in terms of its overall performance since HOTR and from what I am reading thus far in CWC.1 notes. That said, there are some tweaks to the class that will overall help us.

New Agony
I believe minor mending needs to be 5 seconds with our rotation you will only pull off 1 skill for a class self heal with strife or sap. As agony damages you for more with major/minor bezerk (available to our class), major/minor brutatlity/sorcery (major with our class, minor via gear or pots), we will have a hailmary heal potentially with 2 strifes or a sap with a lot of targets. Getting 2 heals with minor mending, or a big heal with major and minor mending on with a Heavy attack from a resto staff would make agony>HA healing an effective healing damage strategy. I heal using spinner's as one of my sets in PvP for the exact reason that the heal from HA is based off of damage done.

If no change to the new Agony, then...

Strife
I believe with the increased cost strife 2 patches ago that: swallow soul should have a dot component and funnel health should revert back to HOT healing 2 teamates.


Summon Shade (and morphs)
I like this skill, but its damage is ridiculously low. I am not really suggesting a larger increase in base damage (although it might be slightly warranted especially with shadow image), but it should get the helm treatment from HOTR where they inherit our buffs. NB get a lot of self buffs, including the passives for being in cloak, and the fact that our pets don't take advantage of them is ridiculous.

This also should not pull us out of cloak, its a shadow skill for Akatosh's sake.

Grim Focus (all morphs)
The amount of hits required to proc the bow needs to be reverted. The overall change was great, however you need 2 resto or lighting channeled attacks to pull this off, or if weaving you basically only get 2 procs of it before you need to recast. You might get more if you're going against a practice dummy, but when you are moving, roll dodging, getting CC'd; you are lucky to get 2 casts of this. As of right now, this set really only favors torgue users (or other sets that proc off of LA). This would really really really make this skill worth taking.

Another option is to make casting the bow, simultaneously recast the skill (similar to the effect on elemental drain morph). This let's us effectively keep it up without interrupting our rotation which instantly makes it more worthwhile. In this scenario I would not lower the LA/HA requirement.

Hemorrhage
Needs to affect all types of crits and affect self (I believe based on the description it only affects the team). By affecting self, this makes shadowy disguise more valuable.

Dark Cloak
Needs a reduced cost. This would effectively make it the stamblade version.

Dark Vigor
Needs to be 25% at rank 2. This puts path at 12 seconds which would let you get a grim focus proc off and then rotate back in path without losing the effect.

Pressure Points
Increase the value per rank by 1.5 (ie at rank to it increases from 438 to 657). It might seem slightly OP, but think of this you need at least 1 of each skill type to get 8% increase to magicka (siphon) and 3% increase per skill slotted to HP (shadow). If you optimized to have only 1 siphon, 1 shadow, 1 weapon on both bars, that leaves 3 slots open (including ultimate). You then say front bar in many cases is soul harvest, you then have 2 slots on main bar and 3 on the back bar but really just 2 since your assassination ultimate is on your front bar.

This means on your main/execute bar you have grim, impale/killer blade, and soul harvest and on back bar you have reaper's mark, maybe a list of different skills or possibly something like mirage, and then some other ultimate. On your heaviest assassination bar you would move from 12% increase to crits to 15%. This is not an OP change, but does help DPS especially mageblades which doesn't get an increase to crit via daggers that stamblades get.

________

Not major changes but a bit more modifications around our rotation optimization and reinforcing our capabilities. NBs biggest issue is that we have the largest diversity of DOTs and DD of any class. It makes us very versatile, but spreads our CP thin. I believe when the cap reaches 720-750 we will see a big boost to our performance based on the Morrowind changes. That said, the aforementioned issues will not OP us now or then, but instead make our DPS more consistent and easier to maintain (Sorcs should have an easier time achieving DPS, but our rotation as of now is not competitive in comparison) and continue to help in us win in burst capability (whereas Sorcs have great baseline damage and ability to keep putting consistent damage pressure).

NyassaV

Just make grim refresh please? Or if your too lazy to figure that out extend it by 2 seconds maybe? 2 bloody seconds would help SOOOO much

ArgoCye

Just fix Concealed Weapon as there is no real use for it atm. The current buff to speed in stealth is counter intuitive given this is a damage ability. Have it apply Major Breach, or something interesting like Minor Force, or when used from crouch or stealth it costs half the magicka.

Jamdarius

Posted this on first Patch notes few days ago and saw this thread now so:

Saw on youtube how the healer NB skill gonna work ... Not liking it at all, pls change it to either make it single target debuff against monster that siphon heal every second to closest ally from that monster giving tanks that powerful heal over time in boss fight for example, that would be way better, as far as I can see it's pretty much useless in it's current form ... way better HoT from other classes and from resto staff... Pls listen to me because I actually have healer NB for over a year and I know how awfull it is to use them in some Vet dungs... we are pretty much outclassed by templars and wardens.

My ideas to improve healer NB builds

Funnel Health: Increase the HoT duration, matching or better outclassing resto staff rapid regen, for now its better to use rapid regen/mutagen because with just 2 taps I have 4 ppl with more powerfull/longer lasting HoT buff... (depends if I crit with it or not on the cast, funnel health scales of damage after all but again it is just 2 short).

Sap Essence Read you gonna increase range thats awesome, I would also love to see 1 additional thing it does: Removing 1 negative effect for healed person once every X second (EDIT: or 2 negative effects with synergy), we are pretty lacking with this as heal NB ye i know we can rely on the alliance skill BUT this skill is very important as it keeps us within the fluff and also gives bonus healing thx to passives

Soul Siphon ultimate our "oh sh.. ulti" Increase the range to at least 20-25m, current 15m is not enough, missing lots of time that 1 guy being 16m away when he/she roll dodged 0,5second 2 late from attack but still getting out of my ultimate range with it. EDIT: Reduce ultimate cost for this heal only skill from 150 to 100

Refreshing Path this skill is perfect in every sense except with just 1 thing, it is not wide enough, sure in delves, and corridor dungs it's good as it is however in dung/trials boss fights it's completely useless 75% of time (except well trained stacking group which happens rarely when doing something with random ppl)... Make it ~12m radius aoe skill similar to Healing Springs so that players could actually kite within that awesome skill effects not just sitting on 1 straight line.

Agony/Malevolent Offering Aftert hinking it through noticed that with the exception of the ulti we are pretty much suffering with no good heal giving that stable medium burst heal... To stay within the bounds of the idea to offer something how about sacrificing 1k Health to instant conal group heal for ~7k (with crit chance ofc)

Those were my rough ideas I would like to see, many may hate this, many will say "it's cause he got heal NB" and I say to that:
Yup ofc that's because of this, like everyone else got wishes about their chars, I thought about it mostly because Healer NB got the potential to be one of the most awesome themed healers in game, just not having proper skills to do it yet.


@ other guys who posted earlier about the changes to agony being good, it is not at all, ye you get nice utility for keeping yourself alive in pvp but it was supposed to be awesome NB healer skll like no other to match other heal classes but who would slot another HoT that doesnt heal many players at same time but instead heals 1 guy and makes healer suffer for it ... It's still better to use resto rapid regen/ mutagen than this thing...in dungs u will get with 2 taps HoT to whole group.

umagon

crobarXIII wrote: »

Has anyone tried Malevolent Offering on a NB tank yet with about 16k magicka? Is the healing enough to drop a set like leeching or bahraha curse to be able to use a group buffing set?

I tested a hybrid build with 20k magicka 28.3k health and 26.9k stam. If you chain degeneration->swallow soul->shrewd offering you get pretty good over all healing return with a low cost on resources. And you can pair that with the hot essence of health potion to get another 1k healing per second. Shrewd offering was ~817 healing per sec, and swallow soul ~561 healing per sec.

Degeneration is not as strait forward to factor for healing because of the light/heavy attack portion of it. The main use of it is to get the major sorcery and might of the guild buffs.

The build I was testing was mainly for pvp but if one of the sets was changed out for plague doctor it would add 5.2k more health. So, you would be looking at 20k magicka, ~33.5k health, 26.9k stam with room for any other set you might want to use.

I have never tanked trials so I don’t know what would be needed for those but I have tanked vet before and I could easily see tanking vets with those numbers.

Gilliamtherogue

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

Summon Shade (and morphs)
I like this skill, but its damage is ridiculously low. I am not really suggesting a larger increase in base damage (although it might be slightly warranted especially with shadow image), but it should get the helm treatment from HOTR where they inherit our buffs. NB get a lot of self buffs, including the passives for being in cloak, and the fact that our pets don't take advantage of them is ridiculous.

This also should not pull us out of cloak, its a shadow skill for Akatosh's sake.

Grim Focus (all morphs)
The amount of hits required to proc the bow needs to be reverted. The overall change was great, however you need 2 resto or lighting channeled attacks to pull this off, or if weaving you basically only get 2 procs of it before you need to recast. You might get more if you're going against a practice dummy, but when you are moving, roll dodging, getting CC'd; you are lucky to get 2 casts of this. As of right now, this set really only favors torgue users (or other sets that proc off of LA). This would really really really make this skill worth taking.

Another option is to make casting the bow, simultaneously recast the skill (similar to the effect on elemental drain morph). This let's us effectively keep it up without interrupting our rotation which instantly makes it more worthwhile. In this scenario I would not lower the LA/HA requirement.

Hemorrhage
Needs to affect all types of crits and affect self (I believe based on the description it only affects the team). By affecting self, this makes shadowy disguise more valuable.

Dark Cloak
Needs a reduced cost. This would effectively make it the stamblade version.

Dark Vigor
Needs to be 25% at rank 2. This puts path at 12 seconds which would let you get a grim focus proc off and then rotate back in path without losing the effect.

Pressure Points
Increase the value per rank by 1.5 (ie at rank to it increases from 438 to 657). It might seem slightly OP, but think of this you need at least 1 of each skill type to get 8% increase to magicka (siphon) and 3% increase per skill slotted to HP (shadow). If you optimized to have only 1 siphon, 1 shadow, 1 weapon on both bars, that leaves 3 slots open (including ultimate). You then say front bar in many cases is soul harvest, you then have 2 slots on main bar and 3 on the back bar but really just 2 since your assassination ultimate is on your front bar.

- Shades definitely needs a damage boost. It currently only scales with Max Magicka, leaving Spell Damage, Critical Hit damage, and Spell Penetration bonuses useless with it. It also doesn't scale with CP. Fixing this skill to do all of those things is an easy way to help Nightblade DPS. It'd be cool if it scaled with highest stats instead of just Max Magicka as well.

- I don't think lowering the weave requirement is the best way to make this skill better. I think either increasing the base duration or adding a small refund effect for shooting the bow would work best. 4 Light/Heavy attacks is too little for how much damage this skill can do from a PvP view point. Recasting the skill also removes the skill interaction with this ability, and it effectively becomes a better version of Crystal Frags. Kindly keep that no skill interaction away from the Nightblade.

- Hemo applies to all crits, healing or damage. It affects self + allied healing, and damage. Always test instead of blindly believing tooltips.

- Disagree, Cloak is very strong as it and doesn't need buffing. You can already stay in Cloak for very prolonged periods of time, but as a Stamblade you need to make some slight operational losses to do so. This is also known as balance, giving up some power to gain power elsewhere. The only thing the skill needs is to work 100% of the time instead of bugging out and being broken by things that should not break it (Channels, etc).

- Believe you mean Dark Veil. This also has been unnotedly changed on the Clockwork City week 2 PTS. Path lasts 12 seconds and deals 12 damage ticks, instead of 11.5 seconds and 11 ticks. Dark Veil has not been touched on the tooltip, but Shades, Veil, and Path are all now rounded up in duration to ensure they get full value.

- I wouldn't deny a Pressure Points buff, but I would rather see buffs elsewhere in the kit instead of here. Why not fix useless passives like Executioner instead?

IxSTALKERxI

More feedback/ideas regarding agony:

Ok so like I've said previously the concept of hurting your own health to heal yourself / others is an awesome concept.

However, the fact that it does a damage over time to yourself as well as it being a heal over time makes the skill rather bland and unexciting as they tend to cancel each other out so to speak.

The skill would be a lot more fun and interesting if it did one of the following things:

Damage over time to caster & Damage shields given to ally / caster
Burst damage to caster (like spell sym) & Heal over time to ally / caster
(I don't like the idea of a burst heal - I would prefer a damage shield or hot to avoid the burst heal being wasted on someone who is already max health. A damage shield over-time would be another crazy concept but would probably be too OP haha.)

This approach would look way cooler on group frame health bars and health management. You would see damage shields apply and then damage getting taken away underneath etc. Rather than health bars looking stationary and boring due to it being heal over time over the top of a damage over time.

I've already done this in ESO with a previous build which is why I know how cool of a concept it is. I would use spell symmetry on a DK and hurt myself - giving myself enough magicka sustain to spam igneous shields on 6 ally's. An ally templar would then breath of life me to full. The 6 damage shields equated to more value than that breath of life and work as preventative damage rather than reactionary burst healing so the mechanic is much stronger. So it was converting different heal mechanics and resources which was really cool group synergy and a similar concept could be applied to agony to make a really interesting healing mechanic.

mysticmistress

I think the new agony spell has the potential to add some interesting synergy to the nightblade class. If the damage component of the spell really does not hurt the casting NB while they are cloaked, it can give NB healers more of a reason to have cloak on their bars in PvE content. However, as many have stated before, NB healers do not need another long-ish duration HoT. Also cloaking to avoid the damage component of this HoT would be 10 seconds of NB caster not doing anything else but cloaking.

Instead, I propose that the HoT duration is cut in half. Keep the same healing done and damage taken as the 10 second duration but make it last 5 seconds, that is about 2 cloaks. This will make the spell more of a bursty heal which I believe NB healers could use, but it will also make it more dangerous if an enemy manages to keep the NB out of stealth since the NB would have to deal with the DoT component of the HoT as well as the enemies damage.

IlCanis_LupuslI

exeeter702 wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

RavenSworn wrote: »

SanTii.92 wrote: »

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.

I have to agree with you. a double / triple cast of Offering with you using Soul Tether ( instead of the weak sauce Soul Siphon)with also Degeneration up on the boss while using Lightning heavy attack with Siphoning Strikes up? you don't even need to have springs. Rapid + Offering + Degeneration + Dark Cloak...

I honestly don't know why people are going up in arms for this change. Agony aside from PvP was almost exclusively never used. There is no reason to run this skill when damage will just break it on the target.

HOWEVER I personally think they should have included a small burst of aoe heal at the last tick of Healthy Offering. Just the mending is the not enough 'buff' for the skill. could do it like Rally, where you can activate the skill again once casted to burst through the healing, with the damage dealt equally as well.

I'm personally trying it out with Imperium on a stamblade tank. this should really make it interesting.

I'm personally getting really tired of people saying "oh agony, it's never been flavor of the month, I haven't seen any streamers use it, that's a skill??? QQQ..."

It's been stated multiple times that many players have utilized the skill while leveling their character.
If there are 3 enemies but you can't handle 3 enemies, but you can handle 2. Using agony effectively takes one add/mob/enemy out of the fight for 30 seconds!
Ever done vdsa? Ever done vma/vmsa?
Ever tried to solo content such as dungeons, dolmans, etc..?
Ever thought of using agony temporarily on the stranglers that pop up???
USE YOUR BRAINS! Stop just copying every streamer or youtuber you watch, I know it's hard but ACTUALLY READ, then think about what you read. I know it hurts but you'll get use to it.
Ever run into archers? Maybe they're too far to gap close? AGONY them until you get around to fighting in their direction!
I know this comes as a shock, but you can develop tactics & strategies outside of what might be displayed on the internet.

People are going "up in arms", because they have read and have developed tactics and strategies outside of the norm and have made the current skill an effective part of their play style; yet that playstyle is in jeopardy of being taken away.
Taking away an interesting skill because it "wasn't popular" among a majority that neglected to think for themselves, in my opinion, is like intentionally shunning creativity & the ability to be different. Being effective in your own way was the reason that brought many to ESO in the first place.
If this skill gets changed to lose the ability to cc at ranged, it will just be interpreted as Zenimax does not want, allow, or value creativity amongst its players/community and only strives to preserve the status quo.
There is no future for those who not only do not inspire creativity, but even less for those who would react negatively to it or shun it.

With all due respect, labeling those that deemed the skill obsolete or ineffective as unwilling to "think for themselves" is incredibly disingenuous. I would even posit that its the inexperienced players that place too much useless stock into said skills. There are plenty of knowledgeable people in this game who are in a position to pick apart the varioud abilities in this game and come to reasonable conclusions as to which are simply outclassed and or obsolete vs others.

Your example of eliminating a single target so you can handle a pull, while reasonable in paper, is laughable. Ostensibly, at some point that was the intention of agony and other skills of its kind for pve at least, having a tool that removes a target from a pull. Over time this concept is completely pointless, group dungeons do not require that burning crusade heroics level of mob cc to clear hard pve group content. And for solo, you would be incredibly naive to think a single skill should be exclusivley tuned around solo content. Even in the days of VR, these hard pve mob CC abilities hardly earned a slot on your bar. Never once in my time playing this game since beta and early launch was i ever in need of such a tool.

For agony specifically, the damage it had baked into it was terrible, and since it broke on damage, its application in pvp was severely limited. Yes the garunteed stun in combination with its speed allowed for certain combos to work but even those are highly specific and circumstantial.

You are essentially advocating that zos allow a particlular skill take up a spot in a skill line exclusivley to cater to players of a lower level.

To say the thought oriented players are being punished because the majority of players cant think for themselves and deem the skill worthless and then go on to give an example about how the skill assists in doing content solo is what speaks volumes here....

You balance skills for the highest level of play, where it would be used to its fullest, then let it trickle down the totem pole for everyone. If you put training wheels on a skill, it will see no play for the large majority of the player base. The simple truth is that the skill was simply not used for a reason. At some point players improve and begin to realize said skills do not have a use to jusitfy slotting them. No one here is failing to understand agony's nuance.

In Pvp=> Meteor->Maelific Wrath->spectral bow..... Very effective , so was they are taking that ability out, hopefully theyll rethink that, makes playing a ranged magblade a lot more harder to play in PvP against permablockers and dodge roll spammers

mb10

Strongly agree with @Gilliamtherogue on the point made about Shades.

Their damage should definitely scale to spell damage and crit

The gentlemen who @Gilliamtherogue was responding to suggested the shades gain the player's buffs too which is another interesting way to go about it

KingJ

mb10 wrote: »

Strongly agree with @Gilliamtherogue on the point made about Shades.

Their damage should definitely scale to spell damage and crit

The gentlemen who @Gilliamtherogue was responding to suggested the shades gain the player's buffs too which is another interesting way to go about it

It should scale off of max stats and weapon damage and weapon crit.Make it a intresting ability in pve and pvp for both version of Nightblade.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel make the heal from the new Agony scale with stam as Well.

RavenSworn

Was wondering if the new agony should be scaled to health instead? It might seem paradoxical but think of it this way: it's a good heal for tanks, it's a good way for nb healers to Base their heals on since the amount of self heals for a nb is beyond the other classes.

How about malefic offering healing a percentage of the targets health with 50% of it as damage be dealt to the healer? Make it scaled to the target health which will then create a really unique mechanic for the nb. Maybe a 10-20%health per second for 6s? That's 6 ticks of 2-3k healing on average per tick.

arkansas_ESO

Suggestion: make the Dark Shades morph of the Shadow skill Summon Shade more competitive. At the moment, it's unappealing: the Shades move slowly, do little damage (due to only scaling on max magicka as @Gilliamtherogue mentioned), and offer no more utility than the base skill. The other morph, Shadow Image, offers the same debuff (Minor Maim) while making the Shade a ranged mob (no more slowly running up to the target) and allowing the caster to teleport back to it. Solution: make the Dark Shades morph apply the Minor Main debuff to all targets that hit the caster (possibly changing the Shade's visuals to use a sword and shield instead of daggers so that it's the caster's "bodyguard"?), while keeping it to where the Shadow Image morph only applies Minor Maim to one target. This makes the choice between the morphs apparent: Dark Shades is the slow-moving, tank morph, while Shadow Image is the mobile DPS morph, and gives needed buffs to Nightblade tanks by giving them more utility.

Jamdarius

Regarding NB healers, would be nice if devs would show us that they did experienced NB healers play at all... this idea about agony is just very bad for healers, it's more PvP skill as somebody mentioned, but than again you heal for more with rapid regen/mutagen if u cast it on yourself

shinikaze

how about making skill cost a % of your current health and leave the hot as it is right now... this way we can't actually kill ourselves but keeping the siphoning flavor and the risk. this would make the heal more valuable/ less expensive the closer you are to die.

Also make it scale out of max stats. stamblades have no way of self healing other than rally... since vigor is too expensive and break stealth.

kaithuzar

Why do people keep thinking cloak suppresses dots??? It HAS NOT for over a year now!

We/I would definitely love if it did & many nb's wish they would bring it back, but that's not a feature the current cloak has.

zyk

All morphs of cloak are supposed to suppress dots as of ESO 2.3:

2.3.5 Patch Notes wrote:

Shadow Cloak: This ability and its morphs will now suppress damage over time effects that are already applied to the caster while the invisibility is active.

The damage over time will remain, but will tick for 0 damage if you are invisible, and will tick for the normal damage if you come out of invisibility.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/251063/pc-mac-patch-notes-v2-3-5

I haven't tested myself, but in the months following, I read reports of some dots being suppressed while others were not. I am unsure of its current status.

While there are pros and cons to the Agony change, I can't believe how we're rolling over and letting ZOS nerf Mass Hysteria. When any other class gets nerfed like this, there's a riot. This is truly the alt class with the least amount of advocacy. I believe this results in Nightblade getting the short end of the stick.

lynog85

kaithuzar wrote: »

Sorry ZOS, but Major Mending > Minor Mending; why in tamriel would we be jumping for joy over a skill that give minor mending & can kill us, when every other class has major mending????

Only DK has major mending now and even thats only for a very short time after igneous.

zammo

2.3.5 Patch Notes wrote:

...I can't believe how we're rolling over and letting ZOS nerf Mass Hysteria.

Agree with this. Feels like they cant give something without taking away something else. Balance doesn't have to work like that.

aeowulf

exeeter702 wrote: »

aeowulf wrote: »

Thing is it's really different levelling a toon now. since 1Tamriel mobs scale and because of that I don't know if Agony is the life saver it previously was. There is absoluty no doubt in my eyes it was 100% required by low level NB's when the game frst came out. Now? Probably less so.

Re soloing dolmens, did one on my lvl 48 warden a few days back. It was really easy, shockingly so. I've absiolutely no doubt my NB could solo one too, but he's got great gear, 660cp etc.

It was 100 percent never required at any stage of this games lifespan for NBs in any content.

For you maybe

For me it was. This is back when this was my first toon, the game had been out a matter of weeks, armour/equipment was many levels lower than your toon and not a matched set, you were lucky to have the correct weight let alone two items of the same set. Taking one mob down was doable, but delves were not possible (for me) solo without this skill. Maybe I was fighting mobs that were too tough for my level, but these were ones in areas around quests that were my level.

I don't know what it's like levelling a zero cp toon with nothing these days. By lvl 4 they have had 600+ cp spent and been given set suits of purple training armour & matching weapons.

But this thread is feedback about going forward. I will be sad to see the skill go, it's our only ranged CC. I am suprised it's not used but ZOS know the stats better than I. If it isn't used then replacing it with a skill that might be used is going to be better for everyone. I do hope NB tanking is looked at & tested out in tough content.

Tommy_The_Gun

zammo wrote: »

2.3.5 Patch Notes wrote:

...I can't believe how we're rolling over and letting ZOS nerf Mass Hysteria.

Agree with this. Feels like they cant give something without taking away something else. Balance doesn't have to work like that.

True on that. It feels like they are nerfing Mass Hysteria only to force people to use the second morph - Manifestation of Terror. But the truth is that even if they change it to fear up to 12 enemies - still nobody will use this morph as the traps have 3 seconds "arming" time.... And to add even more it will be visible to the enemy where you place it....

ZOS_Wrobel

We’d like to address a few common concerns we’ve been seeing in this thread. First: Agony. We appreciate all the feedback we’ve received so far on the changes to this ability, but understand some of you feel casting Agony on multiple players currently feels too risky. To counter this, we’re planning to change this to an upfront cost instead of damage each tick, and reduce its duration. We also want to make Executioner more useful, and will be implementing some changes in an upcoming PTS patch. This will include having it give resources back instantly, and making it proc when an enemy dies within a couple seconds of using an Assassination ability.

As an aside, we’re also looking at making Assassin’s Will an instant cast instead of having it be a super short cast.

We’ve also seen requests to modify Power Extraction, and to add an ability that scales off your maximum health. While we won’t be addressing these in this update, it’s something we’re exploring for the future.

We appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to test the class changes on the PTS and provide feedback. Keep it coming!

OdinForge

ZOS_Wrobel wrote: »

We’d like to address a few common concerns we’ve been seeing in this thread. First: Agony. We appreciate all the feedback we’ve received so far on the changes to this ability, but understand some of you feel casting Agony on multiple players currently feels too risky. To counter this, we’re planning to change this to an upfront cost instead of damage each tick, and reduce its duration. We also want to make Executioner more useful, and will be implementing some changes in an upcoming PTS patch. This will include having it give resources back instantly, and making it proc when an enemy dies within a couple seconds of using an Assassination ability.

As an aside, we’re also looking at making Assassin’s Will an instant cast instead of having it be a super short cast.

We’ve also seen requests to modify Power Extraction, and to add an ability that scales off your maximum health. While we won’t be addressing these in this update, it’s something we’re exploring for the future.

We appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to test the class changes on the PTS and provide feedback. Keep it coming!

I'd appreciate a change like that to assassins will, I think it would go a long way to making it feel less clunky.