[Summerset] Shadowy Disguise... "Fixed" on PTS? (Edited)

TheYKcid

UPDATE:

It seems the skill has been "fixed" as of PTS iteration 4.0.0... accompanied by a substantial nerf.

Shadowy Disguise (Shadow Cloak morph):

• Fixed an issue where this morph’s effect was causing all your healing over time effects to critically strike, and not consume the effect.
• Fixed an issue where this morph would cause your next damage over time tick to critically strike and consume the effect. This morph’s effect now only works on your next direct damage attack.

It's going to be more reliable at setting up a burst combo for sure... but NBs just took a VERY big nerf to their healing capabilities. And since Dark Cloak has effectively been turned into a PvE tanking morph, we don't have an alternative choice to build for more defence.

Are these changes justified? Or has the NB defence been hit a little too hard?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
.
.
.
.
.

(Original post, pre-PTS)

As the planned changes currently stand, "Dark Cloak" (one of the morphs of Nightblades' cloak skill) is losing its invisibility—leaving the "Shadowy Disguise" morph as the only option for cloaking.

From the website of Alcast (who was one of the Summerset playtesters at ZOS HQ):

Dark Cloak

• This morph was completely changed, this now heals for 33% of your max health.

I can understand this change from a PvE perspective—to give NB tanks a health-based self heal to make them more competitive, which is great. But I'd like to examine the PvP ramifications in this thread.

I've seen several posts downplaying the severity of this change in PvP—"you can still cloak using the other morph" being the most common response in this vein. However, many builds are unable to optimally utilise Shadowy Disguise due to the wonky mechanics of the skill. While the tooltip states:

Your next attack within 3 seconds will always be a Critical Strike.

...in reality, any DoT that you place on a target will consume this effect on the first tick of damage it delivers. Furthermore, the guaranteed crit healing during Shadowy Disguise is also tied to this effect; getting consumed by a DoT means that the healing functionality of this morph ALSO gets nullified.

So... here are some DoTs that you're likely to see on a Stamblade build, for instance:

• Poison Injection
• Twin Slashes bleed
• Axe bleeds
• Double-DoT poisons (two DoTs in one!)

With the sheer number of things that could potentially ruin the functionality of Shadowy Disguise, it's no big surprise that many NBs run Dark Cloak instead. In addition to not getting ruined by your own DoTs, it's also the more reliable option in high-pressure scenarios where cloak is likely to get broken soon after casting.

Turning Dark Cloak into a PvE tanking morph takes away a huge and crucial option from many NB players. What we're left with—Shadowy Disguise—is going to be about as useful as the base, unmorphed version of the skill in many cases. Please fix Shadowy Disguise such that the effect will only be consumed by the next direct damage attack.

brandonv516

This suggestion would make me less sour about the dark cloak change.

Yes sour...not salty yet.

TheYKcid

I mean I'm still pretty salty because dark cloak is by far the better morph for my build and playstyle... but a functioning alternative might ease the pain a little

xaraan

It should be next direct damage attack.

Even though I don't agree saying it's a "fix", nor that losing Dark Cloak makes this change any more important than it already should be.

But either way, that would be a good change.

TheYKcid

Giving this a bump because there still seems to be very little awareness of this problem on the existing NB discussions, and no acknowledgement from the devs either.

I don't want NBs being sent into the new chapter with a dysfunctional cloak and no alternatives.

waitwhat

Having the next DoT consume the effect of Shadowy Disguise makes it balanced. It reduces the likelihood that we can get a big burst HoT from rally/vigor/funnel health, but not overmuch.

If you change Shadowy Disguise so that it is only for direct damage attacks, you could very well nuke nightblade self healing (certainly for stamblades) because it won't apply the crit to a HoTs like rally/vigor/funnel health.

glavius

Even with dots working the way they do, shadowy disguise is still the better morph due to the times where you get a bunch of crit heals, plus it costs several hundred magicka less.

TheYKcid

@waitwhat I get what you mean about the unreliability keeping the skill balanced. Nonetheless, I still feel like the crit healing is an unintended function of the skill, and will likely get patched-out in a future update.

ZOS already seems to be stamping-out unintended crit interactions in the NB toolkit—a good example would be the Hemorrhage passive no longer applying to heals as of the DBones update. The many complaint posts about NBs "cloaking out of execute phase and reappearing with full health 2s later" add fuel to the fire.

If/when it does get changed, I'd hope the remaining functions of the skill get fixed to work as intended.
_______________________

@glavius In addition to the DoTs stated in the OP, I also use the vMA 2H battleaxe lol (because a certain component of my build synergises with DoT stacking). As a result, getting crit heals during a brawl is effectively impossible for me, so dark cloak was the more sensible morph to pick.

That aside, I strongly believe dark cloak has saved my ass numerous times in situations where shadowy wouldn't have sufficed—like when you're being constantly popped out of stealth by a detect pot, or a Stamsorc's hurricane. I wouldn't have gotten anything out of Shadowy since it'd get broken instantly... whereas I still get full benefit from the damage reduction of Dark Cloak.

I'm really going to miss that morph once Summerset hits...

Dyride

So they should also make the force crit last only for the first tick of Vigor right? Instead of a full stack of Vigor crits? Only fair.

waitwhat

TheYKcid wrote: »

@waitwhat I get what you mean about the unreliability keeping the skill balanced. Nonetheless, I still feel like the crit healing is an unintended function of the skill, and will likely get patched-out in a future update.

ZOS already seems to be stamping-out unintended crit interactions in the NB toolkit—a good example would be the Hemorrhage passive no longer applying to heals as of the DBones update. The many complaint posts about NBs "cloaking out of execute phase and reappearing with full health 2s later" add fuel to the fire.

If/when it does get changed, I'd hope the remaining functions of the skill get fixed to work as intended.
_______________________

@glavius In addition to the DoTs stated in the OP, I also use the vMA 2H battleaxe lol (a particular component of my build synergises with DoT stacking). As a result, getting crit heals during a brawl is effectively impossible for me, so dark cloak was the more sensible morph to pick.

That aside, I strongly believe dark cloak has saved my ass numerous times in situations where shadowy wouldn't have sufficed—like when you're being constantly popped out of stealth by a detect pot, or a Stamsorc's hurricane. I wouldn't have gotten anything out of Shadowy since it'd get broken instantly... whereas I still get full benefit from the damage reduction of Dark Cloak.

I'm really going to miss that morph once Summerset hits...

The skill isn't unreliable though. It's just working as intended, namely by causing the next ability that hits to crit, in which case the nighblade has to carefully peel off and choose between having a DoT on target vs getting their burst heal. In other words, the way to reliably get a crit heal is to ensure there aren't any DoTs active on the target.

Sadly they are removing the crit interactions, and apparently moving away from crit generally (nerfs to not only Thief but Shadow as well, with buffs to max resources increasing light/heavy attack damage), so we may see this come to pass.

TheYKcid

Well it seems like we got what we asked for, plus a little extra...

Opening post updated with the latest details

AngelFires333

This is great news.
Sucks about ambush but.