[Class Rep] Nightblade Feedback Thread

burglar

master_vanargand wrote: »

Why is range of Spectral Bow's healing 7 meters?
I think we need Skooma to solve this mystery.

Seriously! The heal is already halved, why put a distance condition on it? The only thing I can think of is that the devs want NBs to play the way other players want NBs to play. Don't use your movement, stay near them so they can kill you, and don't hide because it's dishonorable.

Also regarding merciless resolve... while in Cyrodiil the heal is essentially quartered; first all damage in cyro is halved naturally; second, the skill heals for half, but then that heal is halved.

As an example, in a PvE environment, if I do 10000 damage with merciless the heal is for 5000. Whereas in cyrodiil if merciless does that same 10000 damage, it is halved by cyrodiil making it 5000 damage, then the skill heals for half, but that heal is halved too. So, for 10k damage, halved in cyrodiil brings it to 5k, but the skill halves the heal so 2.5k, but then cyrodiil halves the heal too, so you heal for 1250. With a distance condition. We're told this was to be a burst heal.

Maybe im being dramatic here, but it's like the devs just don't want to support the rogue/thief/assassin playstyle, simply because other players complain about it 'being unfair'. But, maybe I'm just bitter because I play a melee magicka nightblade; the devs hate us the most.

Deathlord92

Buff magblade please. Give us heals from concealed weapon like the magplar jabs and a strong self heal from one of the malevolent offering morphs. Magblade could be such an amazing class it sucks that it’s behind the other classes pvp wise anyway.

Xirks

You can just remove the class entirely, seeing how you've nerfed everything that made them SEMI-viable.

Jeyy

bardx86 wrote: »

1. Cloak in pvp is to strong, not really much risk in playing the class.
2. Incap has to low of a cost and to many effects. It would be nice if we had a bit longer rotation as spamming2 skills in pvp gets old.

I don't believe that cloak is too strong. There are notable reveals such as mage light and the detection potion. Nerfing cloak would literally take away a core class mechanic from a class which is meant to be stealthy.

Iskiab

I’m sad to see Lotus Fan nerfed, I was just starting to have fun with it.

Mostly nerfs this patch....

My main concerns are weapon skill abilities are changing so much and some things look OP.

Czekoludek

Can we buff magblade for a change? Class was nerfed into ground, on live their damage is awful and on PTS it doesn't look better. Give us back this swift, high-skilled class that rewards good knowledge of our toolkit with high damage. Let templars be the best PvE mag dd's with easiest rotation if you like them so much but give us some love. Difference between stamcro and magblade is so huge right now, the player is crippling himself at this point if wants to play magblade

kaithuzar

If magblade is supposed to brawl in accordance to the merciless/assassin’s will change, can we get an AOE magicka execute? Please?
Even if you just made it so weapon skill lines scales with max damage (spell or weapon).

Deathlord92

Czekoludek wrote: »

Can we buff magblade for a change? Class was nerfed into ground, on live their damage is awful and on PTS it doesn't look better. Give us back this swift, high-skilled class that rewards good knowledge of our toolkit with high damage. Let templars be the best PvE mag dd's with easiest rotation if you like them so much but give us some love. Difference between stamcro and magblade is so huge right now, the player is crippling himself at this point if wants to play magblade

Agreed I hope magblade gets some love.

Savos_Saren

With the protective trait nerf and the Grim Focus nerf- Magblades are going to be hurting. At least stamblades can run SnB to receive a weapon damage bonus and protection...

Vermintide

So, I recently made a thread in the PVP subforum detailing my grief at returning to the class after a 3-4 month hiatus. I will now give some feedback, based on what I have learned over the last week or so of experimentation and adapting. This is from the perspective of a long time Magicka Nightblade veteran.

Disclaimer: I mainly enjoy and care about PVP. I love the way magblade plays in PVE, but I have never chased the meta there, and frankly, thanks to the CP system, I feel like all classes are capable of becoming disgustingly OP for the existing content. What I care about is class identity and fairness in PVP. I mainly play no-CP and think the CP system in general is a little too strong.

My first impression was that they've completely hamstrung the class by taking our sources of expedition and several of the buffs we relied on away. Naturally I hated it at first, but in fairness, I think the buffs they've provided to other skills instead are actually rather useful and interesting. Magicka Nightblade has never had exceptional burst, and has always been a difficult class to play- the play style basically involves avoiding damage until the stars align and you have a 0.5 second window of opportunity where a) all your buffs are up b) your bow is ready c) you have full ulti and d) your opponent doesn't counter any of the previous steps.

Against a competent opponent, you are simply not getting the kill outside of those conditions. I feel like Magicka Nightblade is still pretty strong; but we are much squishier than before, because we have to focus our build much more towards damage in order to compensate for some of these changes. There have also been nerfs made to several of the racials and sets that used to complement the Magblade style very well, and indirectly hurt a lot of builds. Overall, ZOS seems to be forcing us into the "glass cannon" archetype.

So let's get to some of the specific changes.

Merciless Resolve- Changed from an offensive buff to a defensive buff and heal. Honestly, I like the idea behind this. I just don't think it's been done quite right. It feels awkward to use, and please, the range on the heal is just too short to be useful, even if you're playing up close with Lotus and Harvest. I would be happy if we could at least retain stacks by keeping the skill active; instead of losing them automatically when dropping out of combat. (This used to be great for PVE too and I really miss it.)

Lotus Fan- I don't have much to complain about here. I really liked this skill from the start, and I'm glad I get to actually put it on my bars now. The debuff it gives somewhat makes up for the loss of the buff on Merciless, and feels very satisfying to combo with. Please don't nerf this. (I know you're going to.)

Incap/Harvest- I never used Incap, I've always stuck with Harvest, but I can't really get behind the logic of having it apply silence. I mean, the clue is in the name. Just reduce the damage if it was too powerful- The stun was the whole reason to use it.

Mass Hysteria- The loss of the maim on this kind of hurts, considering the other defensive nerfs I mentioned. But overall I think having an AOE fear that actually applies fear in an AOE is far more useful.

Crippling Grasp- This is a big one, honestly. I see no reason the speed buff had to be taken away from this. This one was just a straight up nerf with no redeeming factor, as far as I can see, and combined with the fact they took it away our other source of it too, I have to say I think it was too far. This was one of the only ways we could stay competitive with stam builds that can stack speed for days and you'll never catch them. I think taking expedition away from one of the skills would have been fair, but not both.

Blur and morphs- This one, again, I dislike. I can get behind the idea of giving the class access to a snare immunity in their native toolkit. Fine. However, when you look at it in combination with other changes, I don't think it synergises very well. This class relies on avoiding damage or outright mitigating/healing through it (heavy sap-blade); we can't spend a GCD on a skill like this because we have to activate a precise combination of 6-7 skills in a row to stand any chance of killing an opponent, especially in a tankier build. The only result of this change is that I've dropped it and slotted Race Against Time instead.

Overall, I don't think the class has been hit quite as hard as some people here are saying. We're not dead, far from it. However, I do think some of the changes have been negative in terms of class identity and build versatility. We used to have the option of building tankier and still dealing damage though skilled stacking of buffs rather than raw stats; that's not really viable any more and I feel like it has somewhat dumbed down the class. Heavy builds are still fun if you have a good proc set and some patience, but I think that is more to do with the overall meta of the game right now than the mechanical balance.

In general, I think the main problem with the Nightblade is that players either don't know how to counter it, and as a result, they think we are insanely overpowered; or they know how to counter it, in which case we can't even touch them. And it really isn't that difficult once you do know. I'm worried that the class is starting to lack the versatility to overcome that.

(If you made it this far, here, have a banana sticker)

Nefas

Will be collecting the pain points and such from both this thread and elsewhere in regards to Nightblade (for both PvE/PvP)

Vermintide wrote: »

Mass Hysteria- The loss of the maim on this kind of hurts, considering the other defensive nerfs I mentioned. But overall I think having an AOE fear that actually applies fear in an AOE is far more useful.

This skill in particular has a lot of people skeptical especially with the new AOE fear coming out from Fighter's Guild (free weapon damage slotting it and the bigger size).

However, I do think some of the changes have been negative in terms of class identity and build versatility.

In general, I think the main problem with the Nightblade is that players either don't know how to counter it, and as a result, they think we are insanely overpowered; or they know how to counter it, in which case we can't even touch them. And it really isn't that difficult once you do know. I'm worried that the class is starting to lack the versatility to overcome that.

I definitely agree with these points here for sure. And the Incap change (silence) is still debatable imo as well.

Jagdkommando

At the moment NB class is completely destroyed, both stam and mag! Merciless have been changed completely from offensive to defensive skill, and after nerfed, Surprise nerfed, cloak also....

Buff other classes instead of nerfing the server! Its not fun, also pve and pvp must be separated with skills tooltips, also i prefer fast paced action combat rather than pvping for 4 minutes without dying.

Note: Tanking features on damage skills is not the future...

Aztlan

I would like to see the stun returned to Incapacitating Strike. The stun really made the skill fun to play, and the fact that it was sometimes dodged made it fair. I also appreciated not needing to slot Mass Hysteria for a CC when I knew I was going to focus on single-target tactics.

blkjag

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

blkjag wrote: »

It’s a shame pve magblade took such a dps hit. Why learn a harder rotation for less dps? Just roll a sorc or magplar. Personally I think you should be rewarded for learning a tougher rotation with high dps, but hey who cares stamblade was too op for pvp.

IDK what you're talking about, I've been hitting 38k on my magblade using the following setup/rotation:

Race: Breton. Will likely experience poor results otherwise
3 mil dummy, this ain't going to happen on anything with more health
CP: 810
CP allocation: same as Alcast's
Food: Ghastly eye bowl. Will likely experience poor results otherwise
Gear: all legendary
Potion: spell power
Body: Siroria, divines, mag glyphs
Monster: Zaan, divines, mag glyphs
Inferno staff front bar: Mother's Sorrow, infused, absorb mag glyph
Inferno staff back bar: Mother's Sorrow, infused, flame glyph

jewels: 1x infused, 1x bloodthirsty, 1x arcane, all have spell dmg enchants

Front bar skills: Crippling Grasp, Elemental Weapon, Impale, Lotus Fan, Merciless Resolve, soul harvest ulti
Back bar skills: Blockade of Fire, Twisting Path, Elemental Drain, Dark Shade, Leeching Strikes, soul tether ulti

Rotation: you don't need to worry much about LA weaving; you won't have time because you've got a solid 8 timers to monitor to keep your skills up.

I recommend this to no one.

Drink potion, wait til 30 second or so remain. Buff leeching and focus, apply elemental drain on back bar activate the shade then LA -> bar swap -> crippling grasp -> LA -> lotus fan -> LA -> my ultimate's usually ready, so soul harvest -> swap -> LA -> blockade -> LA -> twisting path -> LA -> bar swap -> that went pretty well, right? Hope you enjoyed that because everything falls apart

You'll get a few LA/ele weap weaves in before you realize that your Crippling is about to run out... so is blockade, and shade, and leeching... reapply crippling, forego the LAs, back to back bar for blockade and leeching and oh god focus has dropped off so back to front bar and you realize that your ulti is up so you hit that and toss in a lotus fan and go back to back bar for shade and ele drain and blockade has dropped off so you reapply that and crippling dropped off a long time ago so back to front bar for that with a few ele weapon weaves and a lotus fan before stuff starts dropping off again and you exist in an utter state of chaos for the rest of the parse. Keep your spell power potions up because you're gonna run out of magicka. At 25% start using impale when you can, but you probably won't be able to.

Finish parse with no magicka. 38k DPS.

No, this rotation won't work in practice but it's insane that THIS is what gets me the highest DPS on my magblade. Using the more standard rotation I've hit 36.6k DPS once. I'm not the greatest magblade player (I prefer the stamblade + I can hit 45k with her) but this is an insane amount of work for lower DPS, even with the "normal" rotation

I wouldn’t call 38k great dps for a harder roatation when you can just roll a sorc or Templar. If you don’t see the difference I’m sorry. Nb needs to be buffed

blnchk

blkjag wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

blkjag wrote: »

It’s a shame pve magblade took such a dps hit. Why learn a harder rotation for less dps? Just roll a sorc or magplar. Personally I think you should be rewarded for learning a tougher rotation with high dps, but hey who cares stamblade was too op for pvp.

IDK what you're talking about, I've been hitting 38k on my magblade using the following setup/rotation:

Race: Breton. Will likely experience poor results otherwise
3 mil dummy, this ain't going to happen on anything with more health
CP: 810
CP allocation: same as Alcast's
Food: Ghastly eye bowl. Will likely experience poor results otherwise
Gear: all legendary
Potion: spell power
Body: Siroria, divines, mag glyphs
Monster: Zaan, divines, mag glyphs
Inferno staff front bar: Mother's Sorrow, infused, absorb mag glyph
Inferno staff back bar: Mother's Sorrow, infused, flame glyph

jewels: 1x infused, 1x bloodthirsty, 1x arcane, all have spell dmg enchants

Front bar skills: Crippling Grasp, Elemental Weapon, Impale, Lotus Fan, Merciless Resolve, soul harvest ulti
Back bar skills: Blockade of Fire, Twisting Path, Elemental Drain, Dark Shade, Leeching Strikes, soul tether ulti

Rotation: you don't need to worry much about LA weaving; you won't have time because you've got a solid 8 timers to monitor to keep your skills up.

I recommend this to no one.

Drink potion, wait til 30 second or so remain. Buff leeching and focus, apply elemental drain on back bar activate the shade then LA -> bar swap -> crippling grasp -> LA -> lotus fan -> LA -> my ultimate's usually ready, so soul harvest -> swap -> LA -> blockade -> LA -> twisting path -> LA -> bar swap -> that went pretty well, right? Hope you enjoyed that because everything falls apart

You'll get a few LA/ele weap weaves in before you realize that your Crippling is about to run out... so is blockade, and shade, and leeching... reapply crippling, forego the LAs, back to back bar for blockade and leeching and oh god focus has dropped off so back to front bar and you realize that your ulti is up so you hit that and toss in a lotus fan and go back to back bar for shade and ele drain and blockade has dropped off so you reapply that and crippling dropped off a long time ago so back to front bar for that with a few ele weapon weaves and a lotus fan before stuff starts dropping off again and you exist in an utter state of chaos for the rest of the parse. Keep your spell power potions up because you're gonna run out of magicka. At 25% start using impale when you can, but you probably won't be able to.

Finish parse with no magicka. 38k DPS.

No, this rotation won't work in practice but it's insane that THIS is what gets me the highest DPS on my magblade. Using the more standard rotation I've hit 36.6k DPS once. I'm not the greatest magblade player (I prefer the stamblade + I can hit 45k with her) but this is an insane amount of work for lower DPS, even with the "normal" rotation

I wouldn’t call 38k great dps for a harder roatation when you can just roll a sorc or Templar. If you don’t see the difference I’m sorry. Nb needs to be buffed

Did you even read past their first sentence?

Ozazz

lol am i really reading comments about nerfing cloak, these kids don't stop at anything when it comes to class persecution. traditional nb as it stands already has little to offer this patch!

Vlad9425

Remove the silence from Incap and add Defile back in because in it’s current form Incap is not good considering it’s meant to be an ULTIMATE ability. Also the Armor reduction from Surprise attack is too weak give us Major Fracture back or even Minor Fracture.

Deathlord92

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Remove the silence from Incap and add Defile back in because in it’s current form Incap is not good considering it’s meant to be an ULTIMATE ability. Also the Armor reduction from Surprise attack is too weak give us Major Fracture back or even Minor Fracture.

Completely agree bro but for the time being run mark I know u have to sacrifice something but trust me it makes a difference.

Lazy_Voyager

1. Stop bludgeoning magblade healing with the nerf mallet while that horse still has some meat on its bones. Healers have it bad enough already this update, but I don't want to just outright delete my main if that's ok.

2. DW magblade has been gimped since the 2-slot staff update. Kind of ruined the whole spell-blade aesthetic people had going.

MartiniDaniels

PVE nightblade is completely ruined so far. Well, we can be great tanks now I guess, but that's a drastic change tbh and dps race is suboptimal for tanking.

kaithuzar

They buff the damage of all other classes which would’ve brought them in line with magblade but by nerfing magblade it’s completely bottom tier!

As much as I’ve enjoyed the new assassins will, give us the old 8% damage back.

We do need defense, but in my opinion, Mirage or something else should be reworked to give us that defensiveness.

Maybe change Mark target again so that as long as we have it on someone we get an increase in resistances while the target gets a decrease?

FoulSnowpaw

Nightblade requires way too many debuffs and buffing before it hits its full potential

Mark Target(for armor breaking)
Relentless Focus(for burst damage after 5 LAs)
Path of Darkness(aoe, dot, moving from reds)
Summon Shade(for damage over time)
Leeching Strike(for sustain)
Strife(for self heals)
Drain Power(for Major Brutaility or Major Prophecy)
Malevolent Offering(needs more functionality...)
Ambush(for Minor Vulnerability and Empower)
Assassin's Blade(for execute)

There's clearly not enough damaging abilities for Nightblades. There's nearly 2 skill trees worth of abilities that are support abilities. Furthermore, NB skill line is so slot intensive it does not allow freedom to choose abilities outside of it without large opportunity costs of which makes the class even less viable compared to other more flexible classes.

Nightblade Passives

Assassination
Master Assassin: Confusing tooltip. It implies that the very second you leave stealth you do not gain anything from the passive. Basically you get a damage buff when sneaking and doing nothing, and lose it when you attack.

Executioner: Doesn't reward that much resources after making a kill; doesn't help much with getting a kill either with only 2 assassination abilities that can ever proc this passive. This needs some assistance in getting that kill.

Increase damage done by 8% to targets below 20% health or basically take what the Sorcerer left behind to fit a class that matches an executioner playstyle.

Pressure Points: Passive would be good if abilities were actually damage abilities rather than harmless dancing moves.
Increase Critical Chance by 8% with an Assassination Ability Slotted to allow for more diverse customization of builds.

Hemorrhage: Increase Critical Damage dealt from 10% to 20% to incentivize the value of landing critical hits. NBs have no other perk for damage increase unlike some other classes.

DK: 10% damage buff to Ardent Flame abilities. 50% damage buff to Burning and Poisoned status effects.
SC: Up to 10% damage done to targets with high health. Flat 5% increase to Physical and Shock Damage. 2% Weapon and Spell Damage increase per Sorcerer ability slotted, up to 12%
TP: 6% Weapon Damage, 10% Critical Damage with Aedric Spear ability slotted
WD: Up to 12% damage done with Advanced Species passive to full + Bird of Prey 8% damage done in total 20% damage done
NC: Up to 60% Critical Chance buff to targets below 25% health. 10% flat damage buff with dot abilities + 1500 Physical and Spell Penetration with Gravelord ability slotted.

Siphoning
Magicka Flood: Increases Max Magicka by 8% but what about stamina?

Increase both Max Magicka and Max Stamina by 8% while a Siphoning Ability is Slotted

kalunte

hi there, what about making stamblade somehow usefull to their group with a bit of healing?

with vigor's recent tweak, stamblades only have siphoning ult to heal their foes. very efficient ult, but costing a lot (150) and well, it's an ult.

also, i think siphoning strikes' heal should scale with something, anything, even health recovery, but something. right now it's just a flat low heal (1452, which leads in 726 in pvp...) while others classes have their self heals to scale with either magic stats/stamina stats or even both..

i dont know what could be done yet, but something has to be done somewhere.

Jabbs_Giggity

Mark Target should allow for marking multiple targets (up to 3). The utility is useless to slot this skill if you are constantly changing targets - whether it be a 1vX situation or PVE trash mob situation.

Very rarely in ESO are you only focusing one target, unless it's a Boss - which even then most spawn adds.

Ozazz

way to ruin my class two patches straight zos thank you!

1)major fracture and concealed
2)relentless cast time
3)incap defile/befoul now to cast time
mean while every other class doesn't have a cast time!
biased?
shuffle dodge chance way back

Deathlord92

Can stamblade receive a slight buff to damage please so we on par with templar. Give us major fracture back on surprise attack or buff tooltip slightly and give us a strong dot on ambush.

Aztlan

Stamblade needs a bit more to make it the feared single-target assassin it has always been. The changes were too much, especially given our lack of group utility and the relatively weak state of medium armor in the current meta.

Deathlord92

Aztlan wrote: »

Stamblade needs a bit more to make it the feared single-target assassin it has always been. The changes were too much, especially given our lack of group utility and the relatively weak state of medium armor in the current meta.

Yup I agree with you mate hopefully we will get something for now we can only give ideas 👍

master_vanargand

I noticed that Power Extraction's damage of tooltip is lower than Whirling Blades' damage of tooltip.
These are both AOE stamina skills.
The homogenization of skills should cause the same damage, but why is Power Extraction weak?
I think this is a bug.

Vermintide

RIP Magblade. Dead in open world, limping along like a leper in BGs. I try my best not to make QQ posts, but [snip] it.

You can make it work, sure, but here's the thing- In order to make it viable, I have to take my build so far away from a fast, illusionist trickster assassin play-style that it's not even worth playing. I may as well re-roll to another class that would do the same thing better.

We can't gank, our burst takes a solid 7 seconds minimum to build up- yet we have no survivability to make it through those seven seconds. If we build for damage any class can eat us for dinner in under 3 GCDs. If we build for defence we can't land the kill. Our skill bars require such a restrictive set of conditions to get passives and buffs that the only difference between most magblade builds is 2-3 skills like path instead of shade- So we lack the flexibility to make up for these weaknesses by altering playstyle.

We still have stealth, fortunately, so of course I have the OP ability to hit a button every 3 seconds and watch fights happen from a distance, because if I join in I will melt instantly.

Just doesn't feel like the magblade I fell in love with any more honestly, it feels like any other [snip] MMORPG rotation class.

[edited for profanity bypass]