The proper treatment to nightblades

Jeezye

So anyone that is half decently active on the forums knows waaay to many people complain about nightblades being to strong, calling for nerfs, hating on other players and so on. I myself mained mainly magicka nightblade, but also stamina nightblade since beta and know the development of their performance over the years, be it instakilling in PvP, viper proccing people to death, doing vMA or doing saptanks in PvE or PvP. Saldy it feels like the majority of the community plays NBs because of its assassins theme and get attracted by it, however most don't understand the mechanics that currently render the nightblade class overperforming in most content. I myself am a passionated PvP player, but have cleared most PvE content on my Blade too. This is why I want to propose the changes that I (!!!) think are nessecary to move the class in a more balanced position.

To start off: Nightblades' dps is too strong in its current state, both in PvE and PvP. Secondly, even though most people won't agree, their survivability (PvP) is too strong due to certain mechanics I wan't to address. Lastly, the pure tankability besides kiting of a nightblade is by far the worst of any class, meaning formerly-called saptanks don't exist both in PvE and PvP anymore. Why is that?

Damage:

• Merciless Provides both mag and stamblade with minor beserk, a direct 8% damage increase which has a 100% uptime and is one of the core abilities of any seriously playing nightblade. While the skill is finally in a balanced position at the moment (yes it hits super hard, but is easily avoidable), the minor berserk uptime is a huge damage buff to the overall class. To address that, I would like to move the minor beserk buff to a very underused ability: Blur. Make one morph of blue give movement speed and minor brutality, the other one giving minor resistanced and minor vitaliy. This is a major nerf for PvE nightbalde that now rely on their healer for minor beserk uptime, and also an indirect nerf to overperforming stamblades in PvP - Blur and commonly used shuffle provide the same major evasion which makes blur more unattractive for the rolly polly playstyle.
• as for stamblades, surprise attack grants a 100% uptime of major fracture on the target added on the most resource effective and hard hitting single target spammable ability in the game. While not so pregnant in PvE, this is a major source of damage for stamblades, where as magblades need to use another ability to achieve the same. Since both morphs of veiled strike are already providing enough offensive pressure, the stamina morph should be granted another secondary effect (for example minor evasion, which would fit quite nicely).
• Incap is probably the most hated ultimate in the PvP community for a good reason. Even magblades (including myself) use this morph over soul harvest because of the burst potential it opens for such cheap cost (still!). While I think this skills identifies the assassins playstyle of the class, it is still overperforming and needs careful adjustments so nightblades don't loose their identity. Removing major defile might provide more counterplay, adding some range on soul harvest might complement the magicka nightblade playstyle. Not sure about the right directions of this ult though.

Defenses:

• The only situation where nightblades become too "tanky", rather call it "hard to kill", is where they dodge roll permanently with major expedition (which by itself is the proper way of playing a medium armor build, nothing wrong with that) but COUPLE that with the usage of cloak. Now where this combination gets so incredibly strong is the fact that the crit morph shadowy disguise is bugged since years (It must be a bug?!) to where it provides every heal while in shadow to ALWAYS crit. This is a huge source of healing that makes every half decent stamblade to return full health after every cloak. If this exploit would get a final fix, the healing output of stamblades shrinks enormously.
• While the crit cloak is the major problem, another issue is the permanent uptime of major resistanced that nightblades get for free with their kit due to the passive shadow barrier. Combine that with the spamm of surprise attack/ conceiled weapons, you have a 100% uptime of major resitances on your nightblade. Now ideally I'd like to see the resitance buffs moved to an active skill. Remember, nightblades should hit hard but also be squishy if build that way. Proper skills for that would be screwed offering, or drain power. Instead, the class should receive similar uptime on major sorcery/ brutality through this passive.
• No that I've addressed what makes certain playstyles too tanky, I'd like to point out in which horribe state the class is tanking-wise. I actually created a thread on screwed offering back in PTS that I'm going to link here. To cut it short, nightblades lack an on demand instant burst heal instead of more healing over times. However, just a burstheal would result in the class being too powerful again, so it needs some clever implementation. My suggestion would be to make it based off of max HP for the nightblade tanks out there, storing damage (before mitigation) over the last seconds that can be released by activating the skill. This encourages building tanky specs, while lower HP glass cannon builds don't benefit as much. The other morph should assist the playstyle of squishy magblades, since these are currently forced, literally forced, to use a resto staff in order to survive. Damage shields based on incoming damage might be an option.
• the former identity of saptanks, as the name says, is sap essence, which was used as a spammable heal. It is nowadays a rarely used but strong aoe damage ability, whose healing output is very bad. I don't see why this ability should heal allies as well, so I'd like to see a strong healing buff to this skills, faster scaling with enemies, and healing on the stam morph as well, but making it only self-healing. As additional effect for the stam morph, it would be cool if the amount of enemies hit would also reduce its cost by a bit.

I think this covers the classes main issues at the moment and I hope to prevent stupid nerfs that unexperienced people force because they don't understand the class as is. I also know the tendancy of of ZOS for blanked nerfs without addressing the core issues, so I hope this thread will help in putting nightblades in a better spot. Of course I am open for all input and surely am not a master at balancing or nightblades, so Im looking forward to your opinions!

Note this thread's content leans to be more PvP orientated, but I think the adjustments might tune down the (mag)blades dps just enough to be on par with other classes.

VaranisArano

Because we don't have enough threads weighing in on Nightblades. Clearly, we needed another own just for your thoughts.

Here's a constructive thread with a pre-existing conversation: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/401555/the-nightblade-nerfs-are-coming-better-let-the-good-ones-negotiate-the-changes/p1

There are other, non-constructive threads, but since we're half decently active on the forums, I assume you know that.

Cpt_Teemo

It's clear we need to equip Nb's with blowdarts and poison shrooms

Tholian1

I”m happy for you that you have cleared all PvE content with your over performing NB. Mine hasn’t and I would really appreciate not advocating for my PvE progression to be made even more difficult. thanks.

Jeezye

VaranisArano wrote: »

Because we don't have enough threads weighing in on Nightblades. Clearly, we needed another own just for your thoughts.

Here's a constructive thread with a pre-existing conversation: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/401555/the-nightblade-nerfs-are-coming-better-let-the-good-ones-negotiate-the-changes/p1

There are other, non-constructive threads, but since we're half decently active on the forums, I assume you know that.

This thread actually gave me the incentive to post my thoughts, since I read lots of good and inspiring stuff. However, as you might tell, my thoughts are quite a lot to just comment under a thread so I felt its more constructive to create a new one. Isn't that the idea behind a forum, create threads to share thoughts?! The more threads the more input and the better chance for good changes!?

UnseenCat

Nerf Nightblades again?



PvP isn't the only measure of class effectiveness. The last time Nightblades got nerfed because of PvP complaints, it wrecked the class for PvE.

The other classes are getting too easily ganked in PvP by Nightblades because of over-nerfing those classes.

Constant nerfing doesn't fix things for any class, really.

Avran_Sylt

Lemme know what you think about the content in the first post of this thread

Gilvoth

this is spam, you could have put this entire thread into one of the other threads as a comment.