Is Magblade Even a Class anymore?

Datthaw

The problem I have found with light is the shield is so weak you cant turtle, it is the buffer until you can shadow. Shadow image has been nerfed? Like idk, there has been no communication as to the invalid location is a bug or not. So if you don't play a perfect image game then youre dead.

Iskiab

Armor master is meh, why not fortified brass? Light fortified brass gives you more mitigation then wearing normal heavy armor. Normal heavy is 5 heavy - 1 med - 1 light, light is 5 light - 1 med - 1 heavy, and you wear the heavy and medium where it gives you the most mitigation, like your belt in any spec should be light.

You brought up another thing that irks me about magblade and sorcs, turtling. Whenever I play in a BG and there are lots of NBs it seems they're too quick to turtle because they don't have enough mitigation. This allows the other team to go full offense and double their damage because they don't have to worry about their own defense. Sorcs are worse. Most have seen too many 1vx cyrodiil videos and as soon as they're scratched they run for a tree hoping the other team follows and stop participating in the battleground.

Other classes seem to be able to be aggressive and get their healing/survivability off too. I think it's the soul siphon and refreshing path nerf, all the abilities that do damage and heal at the same time are gone or ineffective, meaning you're doing damage or trying to stay alive. A team of 4 that can stay alive and do damage will win against a team that can only do one or the other every time.

Datthaw

Iskiab wrote: »

Armor master is meh, why not fortified brass? Light fortified brass gives you more mitigation then wearing normal heavy armor. Normal heavy is 5 heavy - 1 med - 1 light, light is 5 light - 1 med - 1 heavy, and you wear the heavy and medium where it gives you the most mitigation, like your belt in any spec should be light.

You brought up another thing that irks me about magblade and sorcs, turtling. Whenever I play in a BG and there are lots of NBs it seems they're too quick to turtle because they don't have enough mitigation. This allows the other team to go full offense and double their damage because they don't have to worry about their own defense. Sorcs are worse. Most have seen too many 1vx cyrodiil videos and as soon as they're scratched they run for a tree hoping the other team follows and stop participating in the battleground.

Other classes seem to be able to be aggressive and get their healing/survivability off too. I think it's the soul siphon and refreshing path nerf, all the abilities that do damage and heal at the same time are gone or ineffective, meaning you're doing damage or trying to stay alive. A team of 4 that can stay alive and do damage will win against a team that can only do one or the other every time.

I agree with what you're saying there most magnb's don't contribute to group play because they are too squishy to play in the group. It's why I keep trying to find heavy that works (and I'm pretty close) in group play where, yeah I'm not gonna win the 1v1 vs the min max but I cam survive a burst and contribute to an aoe dump.

Calboy

Has anyone found an effective heavy armor dark cloak build with damage? I've really been liking the synergy between heavy hp bonus and dark cloak is actually a super awesome skill that encourage me to get aggressive but it's super hard to build damage into a heavy build while trying to keep reasonable sustain

Iskiab

I saw one NB tank in a hilarious build, he buffed his health up to over 60k and used dark cloak because it heals for a health %. You could try the same thing with mark target, one of the morphs heals you for 50 percent of your health when someone dies and you get a large damage boost.

Either way I think the best magblade builds dip into a lot of tanking or non-nb abilities. Heavy fortified brass is amazing but won’t help your damage, but combine it with lots of tri-stat glyphs to buff your health and magicka plus use the % health healing abilities and you’ll prob do okay.

I’m struggling when I try to dps, things I want to try are light fortified and bright throat, or combine it with something that gives lots of penetration. I’ll probably just wait for the patch since some of the new sets coming out look like they’ll be good in pvp.

I learned a trick about DKs though, while they can reflect soul siphon really easily they’re weak against blocking. Fears bypass block but stuns don’t. Blocking against them is really effective.

Iskiab

*meant swallow soul. Reading it again what I’m getting at is *I think* light fortified (or at least light armour for the pen) is required, and a tanking light armour set will allow your self healing to kick in, otherwise you’ll die so fast any self healing doesn’t have time help your survivability.

Jeezye

Calboy wrote: »

Has anyone found an effective heavy armor dark cloak build with damage? I've really been liking the synergy between heavy hp bonus and dark cloak is actually a super awesome skill that encourage me to get aggressive but it's super hard to build damage into a heavy build while trying to keep reasonable sustain

From my experience it is more effective to run a light setup and benefit from the increased crit rating than running heavy, especially for dark cloak builds. I havent run normal cloak for years and was super excited to try new dark cloak, and I think you get the most value by hitting the 30k hp mark while having high crit so it supplements your healing.

Other question to you guys, I've come across the idea of switching my nirn weapon to precise for two reasons:

1. you're better off stacking magicka than spelldamage anyways so natuarlly nirn is less effective on mag than on stam builds
2. many healing skills of NB (syphoning strikes, dark cloak, reapers mark) don't scale off of your spell damage but can crit.

So given that most defense doesnt benefit from spell damage, I think its viable to test precise weapons since NBs also benefit high crit damage with passives

Jeezye

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Datthaw

Calboy wrote: »

Has anyone found an effective heavy armor dark cloak build with damage? I've really been liking the synergy between heavy hp bonus and dark cloak is actually a super awesome skill that encourage me to get aggressive but it's super hard to build damage into a heavy build while trying to keep reasonable sustain

I have made a couple builds with dark cloak. The latest one I'm using in heavy I have put further up in this post. It's decent damage decent sustain decent survivability. You're not gonna go out and solo good players but for group play it's very nice...but yeah that's the problem I find in heavy, it's very hard to be well rounded.

Datthaw

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

I think it's an amazing duel set, and a good pve set. Other than that I think it's too single target. Most of the way groups roll in cyro it's aoe ult dumps. You won't contribute all to much trying to single target people down. Just how I feel about the set, Im sure some people use it very effectively.

Jeezye

Datthaw wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

I think it's an amazing duel set, and a good pve set. Other than that I think it's too single target. Most of the way groups roll in cyro it's aoe ult dumps. You won't contribute all to much trying to single target people down. Just how I feel about the set, Im sure some people use it very effectively.

well especially in small scale its all about single target, and the magblade toolkit is also geared towards single target burst so I feel it naturally fits pretty nice. plus I need a one bar set to supplement my BRP resto

Datthaw

Jeezye wrote: »

Datthaw wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

I think it's an amazing duel set, and a good pve set. Other than that I think it's too single target. Most of the way groups roll in cyro it's aoe ult dumps. You won't contribute all to much trying to single target people down. Just how I feel about the set, Im sure some people use it very effectively.

well especially in small scale its all about single target, and the magblade toolkit is also geared towards single target burst so I feel it naturally fits pretty nice. plus I need a one bar set to supplement my BRP resto

Yeah it definitely fits nice with magnb tool kit.

Iskiab

As a dps magblade if you’re ranged I’d try to use light if you can, purely for the penetration. Penetration is the best pvp dps stat there is from my experience. Cyrodiil’s a different animal though, I’m just talking BGs.

Precise could be good on a weapon but only if you use channeled acceleration. Otherwise sharpened should be more dps, 4.16% more dps for sharpened vs 7% crit for precise.

I’ve never noticed sp doesn’t scale well with some abilities, are you sure? Most abilities are consistent for scaling at 10.5 magicka = 1 sp

Iskiab

Spell strat btw, meh. I have a set and tried it, problem I had was no one stood still, people weren’t as accommodating as pve bosses.

Mileage probably varies depending on your spec, as a ranged I found it difficult to pick targets in a crowd and didn’t like it. If you’re melee it might be a lot better.

ChefZero

Jeezye wrote: »

Calboy wrote: »

Has anyone found an effective heavy armor dark cloak build with damage? I've really been liking the synergy between heavy hp bonus and dark cloak is actually a super awesome skill that encourage me to get aggressive but it's super hard to build damage into a heavy build while trying to keep reasonable sustain

From my experience it is more effective to run a light setup and benefit from the increased crit rating than running heavy, especially for dark cloak builds. I havent run normal cloak for years and was super excited to try new dark cloak, and I think you get the most value by hitting the 30k hp mark while having high crit so it supplements your healing.

Other question to you guys, I've come across the idea of switching my nirn weapon to precise for two reasons:

1. you're better off stacking magicka than spelldamage anyways so natuarlly nirn is less effective on mag than on stam builds
2. many healing skills of NB (syphoning strikes, dark cloak, reapers mark) don't scale off of your spell damage but can crit.

So given that most defense doesnt benefit from spell damage, I think its viable to test precise weapons since NBs also benefit high crit damage with passives

Have you ever tried plague doctor, amber plasm and bloodspawn (5 light armor)?

Jeezye

Iskiab wrote: »

As a dps magblade if you’re ranged I’d try to use light if you can, purely for the penetration. Penetration is the best pvp dps stat there is from my experience. Cyrodiil’s a different animal though, I’m just talking BGs.

Precise could be good on a weapon but only if you use channeled acceleration. Otherwise sharpened should be more dps, 4.16% more dps for sharpened vs 7% crit for precise.

I’ve never noticed sp doesn’t scale well with some abilities, are you sure? Most abilities are consistent for scaling at 10.5 magicka = 1 sp

as I said my thesis is that precise would contribute more for the healing than sharpened and nirn do so it might be an all around better trait

Datthaw

Ok so update on my reactive / lich / skoria / master light / dd poison build.

I took the build out of battlegrounds last night and hit cyro with a few buddy's in a 4 man. It worked well in the team play and could contribute some mobility with path. Meteor was nice at times but I have always felt it can be slow, block able, almost want to swap it for dbos just for the aoe stun. The build overall performed.....ok

The MAJOR problem. *** snares.

In bgs on a closed map with reactive I can make due with no snare removal. In cyro getting chased by 30 people spamming snares I get left behind. My buddies would mist or streak, cast fm or shuffle, and be out at full sprint. I'm snared up in the back eating damage like a target dummy. I guess the only positive from this is I allow thier escape being a sacrafice.

Either way I'm going to try and run is as another destro/2h build just for cyro.

Torbschka

Well, DARK cloak is actually very good, all I say is go for light armor master backbar (5% more HP backbar), entropy backbar (8% HP) + Shadow abilities (3% each).

Im A Breton and kick 27k HP backbar No CP, No undaunted. I combine IT with Troll King and TK + DC + Harness = good defense.

Ofc, snares suck balls, try to Play around with forward momentan in the Future.

Jeezye

Torbschka wrote: »

Well, DARK cloak is actually very good, all I say is go for light armor master backbar (5% more HP backbar), entropy backbar (8% HP) + Shadow abilities (3% each).

Im A Breton and kick 27k HP backbar No CP, No undaunted. I combine IT with Troll King and TK + DC + Harness = good defense.

Ofc, snares suck balls, try to Play around with forward momentan in the Future.

Yes you can build really tanky with dark cloak, but the major concern is that you're forced to turteling up and spamming it combined with other defensive skills and will never have the opportunity to turn offensive or make room to breath.

I actually reverted to classical cloak yesterday for the first time in years and I was shocked on how effective regular cloak actually is. the amount of clenches and snipes you're ignoring is insane, its sooo much more survivability as long as you don't get pulled out immediatly

Torbschka

Jeezye wrote: »

Torbschka wrote: »

Well, DARK cloak is actually very good, all I say is go for light armor master backbar (5% more HP backbar), entropy backbar (8% HP) + Shadow abilities (3% each).

Im A Breton and kick 27k HP backbar No CP, No undaunted. I combine IT with Troll King and TK + DC + Harness = good defense.

Ofc, snares suck balls, try to Play around with forward momentan in the Future.

Yes you can build really tanky with dark cloak, but the major concern is that you're forced to turteling up and spamming it combined with other defensive skills and will never have the opportunity to turn offensive or make room to breath.

I actually reverted to classical cloak yesterday for the first time in years and I was shocked on how effective regular cloak actually is. the amount of clenches and snipes you're ignoring is insane, its sooo much more survivability as long as you don't get pulled out immediatly

I agree, dont being damaged at all (cloak) is still the best ofc - personally I just wanted to make an "bloodmage".

VikingBerserker

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

Knootewoot

VikingBerserker wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

I still melee magblade in Cyro. Yeah, my burst is not as good as a stamblade so i can't one-shot but thats not necessary.

So far i tried different armor pieces.

What i currently use is 5 war maiden (jewels and dual wield swords) Skoria (i could use zaan, but i like skoria) and 5 pieces either: 5* light bright throat or julianos.

But yesterday i tried 5% warmaiden and 5* stygian. I use 5 pieces medium armor stygian because the passives of medium armor are good on stealth/cloak

reduces the size of your detection area by 3% per piece of Medium Armor equipped.

Might try it a while.

I also tried stigian+elegance and then heavy attack from stealth with destro staff. Was fun but not enough.

Stibbons

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Spell strategist, war maiden and some dps monster set. Stings like bee and burns like a butterfly.

SpiderCultist

stygian was nerfed, previously it had a 20% spell damage bonus from stealth, now it is like 20% damage iirc

do the math

ChefZero

I just threw some things together. What do you think?

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=113589

• Melee setting: frost/s&b, CW for dmg, frontbar ult EoS or Soul Harvest, backbar ult SW or Soul Siphon
• Ranged setting: frost/restro, Force Pulse for dmg, Mutagen for more utility, frontbar ult Soul Assault or Ice Comet, backbar ult Live Giver or Soul Siphon
• AoE setting also viable
• very potent Dark Cloak, 39k HP + 1/3 critheal
• Elusive Mist and/or Shadow Image for repositining
• large bandwidth of mitigation via Blood Spawn, Shadow Barrier, DK Minor Protection, Minor Maim and Undeath
• Mundus is variable

It's intended for a brawler playstyle, low damage but it should be a potato stomper.

Datthaw

Stibbons wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Spell strategist, war maiden and some dps monster set. Stings like bee and burns like a butterfly.

Knootewoot wrote: »

VikingBerserker wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

I still melee magblade in Cyro. Yeah, my burst is not as good as a stamblade so i can't one-shot but thats not necessary.

So far i tried different armor pieces.

What i currently use is 5 war maiden (jewels and dual wield swords) Skoria (i could use zaan, but i like skoria) and 5 pieces either: 5* light bright throat or julianos.

But yesterday i tried 5% warmaiden and 5* stygian. I use 5 pieces medium armor stygian because the passives of medium armor are good on stealth/cloak

reduces the size of your detection area by 3% per piece of Medium Armor equipped.

Might try it a while.

I also tried stigian+elegance and then heavy attack from stealth with destro staff. Was fun but not enough.

How in the world do yall run with these setups? The stam you have must be very low and I can't imagine how you sustain In a fight. Alot of heavies I guess and tri runes but still I'm curious to what your base stats are with these setups

waitwhat

I believe magblade stealth bombers with Heem Jas / reaper's mark are still fairly powerful, even if their pre-bomb rotation is a bit complex.

Knootewoot

Datthaw wrote: »

Stibbons wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Spell strategist, war maiden and some dps monster set. Stings like bee and burns like a butterfly.

Knootewoot wrote: »

VikingBerserker wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

I still melee magblade in Cyro. Yeah, my burst is not as good as a stamblade so i can't one-shot but thats not necessary.

So far i tried different armor pieces.

What i currently use is 5 war maiden (jewels and dual wield swords) Skoria (i could use zaan, but i like skoria) and 5 pieces either: 5* light bright throat or julianos.

But yesterday i tried 5% warmaiden and 5* stygian. I use 5 pieces medium armor stygian because the passives of medium armor are good on stealth/cloak

reduces the size of your detection area by 3% per piece of Medium Armor equipped.

Might try it a while.

I also tried stigian+elegance and then heavy attack from stealth with destro staff. Was fun but not enough.

How in the world do yall run with these setups? The stam you have must be very low and I can't imagine how you sustain In a fight. Alot of heavies I guess and tri runes but still I'm curious to what your base stats are with these setups

I run normally full light. Currently I have with warmaiden and spinner 2900 SD and 1700 mag recovery.

My stamina is 10k with little regent yes
22k health and 40kish magicka.

Look, I tried being more tanky wearing light fortified brass, chudan and spinner. Even with full impenetrable I get one shot by sneaky stamblades if i have 24k health.
I tried HA setup but I just don't like that. I want cloth.

I just try different setups now. See what fits me best trying to be melee magblade . There are more armor sets I need to test though. But my storage is getting full. I currently have around 700-800 setpieces collected.

Datthaw

Knootewoot wrote: »

Datthaw wrote: »

Stibbons wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Spell strategist, war maiden and some dps monster set. Stings like bee and burns like a butterfly.

Knootewoot wrote: »

VikingBerserker wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

I still melee magblade in Cyro. Yeah, my burst is not as good as a stamblade so i can't one-shot but thats not necessary.

So far i tried different armor pieces.

What i currently use is 5 war maiden (jewels and dual wield swords) Skoria (i could use zaan, but i like skoria) and 5 pieces either: 5* light bright throat or julianos.

But yesterday i tried 5% warmaiden and 5* stygian. I use 5 pieces medium armor stygian because the passives of medium armor are good on stealth/cloak

reduces the size of your detection area by 3% per piece of Medium Armor equipped.

Might try it a while.

I also tried stigian+elegance and then heavy attack from stealth with destro staff. Was fun but not enough.

How in the world do yall run with these setups? The stam you have must be very low and I can't imagine how you sustain In a fight. Alot of heavies I guess and tri runes but still I'm curious to what your base stats are with these setups

I run normally full light. Currently I have with warmaiden and spinner 2900 SD and 1700 mag recovery.

My stamina is 10k with little regent yes
22k health and 40kish magicka.

Look, I tried being more tanky wearing light fortified brass, chudan and spinner. Even with full impenetrable I get one shot by sneaky stamblades if i have 24k health.
I tried HA setup but I just don't like that. I want cloth.

I just try different setups now. See what fits me best trying to be melee magblade . There are more armor sets I need to test though. But my storage is getting full. I currently have around 700-800 setpieces collected.

Don't get me wrong I'm not bashing on you, I think everyone on magnb is a little lost and just testing set after set.

But yeah I get what you're saying, in light you get 1shot anyway so why worry about stam. Just glass cannon and cloak out.

On another note I tried out bloodspawn light armor master and lich back bar. It was pretty funny and kinda trolly but to be expected the damage was ***. I was talking with my guildies about it though and want to run it as group healer. Might be fun.

Knootewoot

Datthaw wrote: »

Knootewoot wrote: »

Datthaw wrote: »

Stibbons wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

btw I haven't seen anyone suggesting spell strategist yet, have you tried it and how do you like it??

Spell strategist, war maiden and some dps monster set. Stings like bee and burns like a butterfly.

Knootewoot wrote: »

VikingBerserker wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I just want sap tanks and melee magblades back. Melee magblade used to be my favorite class to solo on and im not talking bomber. Just lurking around the edges of an enemy zerg waiting for someone to stray too far from the herd and trying to pick them off and escape before you got over ran, good times.

My melee magblade does well in bgs, not sure if its viable in cyro, ill have to give it a go.

I still melee magblade in Cyro. Yeah, my burst is not as good as a stamblade so i can't one-shot but thats not necessary.

So far i tried different armor pieces.

What i currently use is 5 war maiden (jewels and dual wield swords) Skoria (i could use zaan, but i like skoria) and 5 pieces either: 5* light bright throat or julianos.

But yesterday i tried 5% warmaiden and 5* stygian. I use 5 pieces medium armor stygian because the passives of medium armor are good on stealth/cloak

reduces the size of your detection area by 3% per piece of Medium Armor equipped.

Might try it a while.

I also tried stigian+elegance and then heavy attack from stealth with destro staff. Was fun but not enough.

How in the world do yall run with these setups? The stam you have must be very low and I can't imagine how you sustain In a fight. Alot of heavies I guess and tri runes but still I'm curious to what your base stats are with these setups

I run normally full light. Currently I have with warmaiden and spinner 2900 SD and 1700 mag recovery.

My stamina is 10k with little regent yes
22k health and 40kish magicka.

Look, I tried being more tanky wearing light fortified brass, chudan and spinner. Even with full impenetrable I get one shot by sneaky stamblades if i have 24k health.
I tried HA setup but I just don't like that. I want cloth.

I just try different setups now. See what fits me best trying to be melee magblade . There are more armor sets I need to test though. But my storage is getting full. I currently have around 700-800 setpieces collected.

Don't get me wrong I'm not bashing on you, I think everyone on magnb is a little lost and just testing set after set.

I do get kills with my setup, if they have 24k or less health and wear no HA. But yeah I test all armors too see what actually works.

Can't get (as melee magblade) toe to toe with Templars because of jabs. Forget attacking Dk's. Only attack sorcs with shields down. Kill stamNB before they can react because else they one shot you.

It's a hard life. But when you do get that kill, it's great. People whisper me @$$%#cloakspammer. But in light armor I have no defence or even heals like they do. Cloak is my defence just like sorcs stack triple shield which still is strong.
Even being a vamp is mostly working against me.