What killed the Magicka Nightblade?

Abstraqt

Was there one nerf in particular which you feel was the final nail in the nightblade's coffin?

Personally I think the healing ward nerf was the thing that did it.

witchdoctor

ESO Forums never fail.

Abstraqt

witchdoctor wrote: »

ESO Forums never fail.

What do you mean?

Seebs

Uh what?

Magblade is one of the strongest magical dps right now

TheRealSniker

The removal of the initial heal of healing ward, removal of minor vitality and the delaying of Assassin's will damage
All these 3 things made Magicka Nightblade unreliable and just straight up weak

The problem with Magicka Nightblade is that it has every single defense in the game, it has heals, shields and cloak yet none of these mechanics are strong enough to keep it alive.

Heals, HoTs arent strong enough and the Magblade cannot recover from low HP especially when he has Major Defile applied on himself. Its lacking a burst heal.
Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage/Bleeds in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them to a success like on a Magsorc.
Cloak is a nice escape tool but it isnt half as good as on a Stamblade because the Magicka Blade doesnt have enough mobility to abuse it anywhere near as good as a Stamblade can, no snare removal, no major expedition, no dodge roll. Its too easily countered.

Talking about the offense of a Magblade, theyre too reliant on Assassin's Will which was made delayed and is now way too easy to avoid, their Burst is way too backloaded due to Assassin's Will being their only hard hitting skill and thats exactly the opposite of how a Nightblade should play, they cant even utilize their stealth passives. Burst damage isnt even strong in the game anymore and usually just serves as a potatosmashing tool, things like Wings or Shimmering shield counter it too easily aswell.
The meta is too tanky for burst damage to make much difference

Ohhgrizyyy

TheRealSniker wrote: »

The removal of the initial heal of healing ward, removal of minor vitality and the delaying of Assassin's will damage
All these 3 things made Magicka Nightblade unreliable and just straight up weak

The problem with Magicka Nightblade is that it has every single defense in the game, it has heals, shields and cloak yet none of these mechanics are strong enough to keep it alive.

Heals, HoTs arent strong enough and the Magblade cannot recover from low HP especially when he has Major Defile applied on himself. Its lacking a burst heal.
Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage and dots in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them like on a Magsorc.
Cloak is a nice escape tool but it isnt half as good as on a Stamblade because the Magicka Blade doesnt have enough mobility to abuse anywhere near as good as a Stamblade can, no snare removal, no major expedition, no dodge roll. Its too easily countered.

Talking about the offense of a Magblade, theyre too reliant on Assassin's Will which was made delayed and is now way too easy to avoid, their Burst is way too backloaded due to Assassin's Will being their only hard hitting skill.

And I still dont know what you're talking about cause magblades are still strong as ***.

teladoy

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

For any idiots here he's talking from a PvP standpoint not a PvE standpoint. Some people have literally 0 clue....

In battleground every time I face one they do insane damage and have insane sustain, they are very good.

TheRealSniker

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

The removal of the initial heal of healing ward, removal of minor vitality and the delaying of Assassin's will damage
All these 3 things made Magicka Nightblade unreliable and just straight up weak

The problem with Magicka Nightblade is that it has every single defense in the game, it has heals, shields and cloak yet none of these mechanics are strong enough to keep it alive.

Heals, HoTs arent strong enough and the Magblade cannot recover from low HP especially when he has Major Defile applied on himself. Its lacking a burst heal.
Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage and dots in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them like on a Magsorc.
Cloak is a nice escape tool but it isnt half as good as on a Stamblade because the Magicka Blade doesnt have enough mobility to abuse anywhere near as good as a Stamblade can, no snare removal, no major expedition, no dodge roll. Its too easily countered.

Talking about the offense of a Magblade, theyre too reliant on Assassin's Will which was made delayed and is now way too easy to avoid, their Burst is way too backloaded due to Assassin's Will being their only hard hitting skill.

And I still dont know what you're talking about cause magblades are still strong as ***.

If you think that then you just dont understand the game and have never played a Magblade

FrancisCrawford

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage/Bleeds in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them like on a Magsorc.

You see the cost difference between Dampen/Harness Magicka and Hardened/Empowered Ward as being that consequential?

steven22

teladoy wrote: »

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

For any idiots here he's talking from a PvP standpoint not a PvE standpoint. Some people have literally 0 clue....

In battleground every time I face one they do insane damage and have insane sustain, they are very good.

Ok. How about open world pvp , I am not talking being in a zerg . Its a different situation then.

TheRealSniker

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage/Bleeds in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them like on a Magsorc.

You see the cost difference between Dampen/Harness Magicka and Hardened/Empowered Ward as being that consequential?

Nah, rather the size of the shield itself, its not big enough to handle all the pressure thrown at you, but I wouldnt want my Magblade to play around shields either

TheKingofSass

L m a o

I main a magblade, which I both pve & pvp with. She never disappoints. Magblade has tools for many different scenarios, you just need to know how to optimize it and play it. Everytime I see someone claiming magblades are *** in pvp I roll my eyes so hard I can basically see the insides of my head.

Sure, magblades don't shine when it comes to shielding like those annoying sorcs with their zoo's and shieldspamming(so much skills, so much wow), but they sure shine in other ways. Like each class shines in their own ways. Although, granted, some could use more shining.

biggda76

Ye open world mNB with bad atm and as sniker said all these things make it kinda ***. Right now I try to be tanky and always stay at 40k+ max mag to deal acceptable damage and even with that the problem comes down to mobility and healing from what I feel atm, you get be tanky and get 10k 30k resistances shields but it doesn't matter much cause sooner or later when outnumbered someone will get the shields down + Oblivion damage meanwhile, you can't really heal up cause hots are ***, dark cloak is good but then you can't move so essentially you just become a training dummy for enemies. Shade away? Sure, you're still not gonna go anywhere really so then you're just back to the point where you were. Mist form is nice although it is tremendous sustain hit and it still sucks cause whenever you're out of mist form you're just often gonna die anyway cause there is no burst heal, compared to magplar for instance. Invis cloak is amazing until it becomes unreliable, so like, I don't even bother with it anymore. You're often gonna get revealed and when you are you want do much cause once more - you can't move.

As for damage it's rip the minimal travel time - bow proc really easy to avoid.

Also nerfed sustain, healing ward, funnel health and couple else, but to some it up it's delayed (easily countered by some classes) damage, lack of mobility and efficient healing

Xerikten

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

For any idiots here he's talking from a PvP standpoint not a PvE standpoint. Some people have literally 0 clue....

nothing in his post said pvp.

Rake

magicka dragonknight

OrdoHermetica

Speaking in terms of PVP:

The Healing Ward nerf definitely hurt my magblade play style quite a bit (I played in Cyrodiil as more of a magicka brawler than a ganker) and forced me to become even more of a glass cannon, which is a bit ironic given that ZOS was apparently trying to avoid that scenario. Still, now that I've gone from "versatile mid-line combatant" to "murder bot coming out of nowhere to burst you down into Oblivion," I'm doing just fine. I'm grumpy about having to make that change, but magblade is still super viable.

Though I'll be honest, I've definitely been playing more heavy armor magicka builds post-Murkmire. I don't enjoy being forced to be a glass cannon. A good brawl is a lot of fun in my opinion, and if I REALLY want to murder quickly from range, I have my stamblade bow ganker for that.

witchdoctor

Xerikten wrote: »

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

For any idiots here he's talking from a PvP standpoint not a PvE standpoint. Some people have literally 0 clue....

nothing in his post said pvp.

You just have to roll with it.

I don't know who killed magblades, but video killed the radio star.

Berenhir

I main magblade but play basically also every other class. I am still very effective on my mNBs but not because I play magblade but although I play magblade. The class has a whole bunch of shortcomings.

All its ranged abilities can be reflected, which is especially bad on a class that needs to constantly throw out reflectable light attacks to survive.

While other magicka melee classes have a method of snare removal and a burst heal (wings + dragon blood; ritual + HtD) on top of their offensive heals (whip + embers + draw essence; sweeps + purifying light + beam), melee magblade has only light attacks.
Path is too expensive for a stationary and very small HoT without damage. Dark cloak is powerful on a 30k high health spec (reeee Argonian magblades lose 2k health next patch) but comes at the cost of stealth, amplifying the survivability costs of builds to tank level.
Soul Siphon/tether is an ult and other healing is not available in PvP.

Shade does not work in terrain where it would be useful.

With the upcoming race changes, Argonian magblade will have lost 13% healing received. We have lost out smallscale group utility because we lost our offensive hot for our partner.

Currently, magblades are either forced into stacking HoT sets like malubeth, hist sap etc. with a tank set like armor master,
go 3 swift + steed for enough mobility to put everything else in max mag and rec - or live with the fact that they will die if shade fails or someone drinks a detect pot/uses detect poison.

That you can still roflstomp bad players is obvious, but you can do that much more efficiently on other classes tbh.

I want to highlight that magblades have a specific open world / snall group play problem.

Raids still use them because of their stat efficiency and high damage to bomb.
Duels are also another issue as the maximum amount of incoming damage is capped and can be controlled very well by shade maim and shields

RedFireDisco

Increased skill costs has forced many into opting for more sustain at the expense of damage, thereby limiting burst and reducing the effectiveness of its main drawcard.

Healing ward hurt Magblades because it's the ONLY class with no burst heal. Many people have struggled to replace this heal in their build.

Nerfs to Swallow with the removal of (I think it was) minor vitality, which is 8% healing just gone - Vanished. Just like that, two sets bonuses or 5o-ish champion points worth of healing gone.

Heavy armor meta that means even the most glass cannon NB struggles to take 40% health off some ravager/fury tank who in return 2 shots you. Seems balanced. Seems legit.

Don't get me wrong - I have a good KDR but I'm a 5 year player. I think most noobs are gonna seriously struggle to be remotely competitive in PVP rocking a magblade.

Maybe just "roll a stamwarden" lol

Idinuse

Sorc nerfs?

OrdoHermetica

RedFireDisco wrote: »

Heavy armor meta that means even the most glass cannon NB struggles to take 40% health off some ravager/fury tank who in return 2 shots you. Seems balanced. Seems legit.

Don't get me wrong - I have a good KDR but I'm a 5 year player. I think most noobs are gonna seriously struggle to be remotely competitive in PVP rocking a magblade.

Maybe just "roll a stamwarden" lol

I dunno, I manage to take down even tanky targets... provided it's just them, they don't see it coming, I'm off potion cooldown, and I have an ulti in the bag.

...okay, yeah, basically what you said is completely right. The skill requirement is ridiculously high to just get to "pretty good" territory.

Knootewoot

There are just a few magicka NB's around and ever less wearing light armor, and even lesser melee magblades.

There is a reason for that.

It's not impossible to play as one. But it's hard and unforgiving if you make one mistake.

If your initial burst fails and in light armor, even in full impenetrable, people can still kill you in 2 - 3 hits with 24k health

If your lucky, they don't use detect potions and you can get out. Else, well you just spawn in the nearest keep.

Riverlynn

"What killed the Magicka Nightblade?"


Video - just after it killed the radio star.

Abstraqt

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

For any idiots here he's talking from a PvP standpoint not a PvE standpoint. Some people have literally 0 clue....

Thank you 😂

Bam_Bam

Heavy non-cloaking magblade is a lot of fun and i have a lot of success with it. Fairly difficult class to play (esp. w/o cloaking) but still very strong.

Bam_Bam

Riverlynn wrote: »

"What killed the Magicka Nightblade?"


Video - just after it killed the radio star.

LOL. Fun fact of the day: Hans Zimmer played keyboards for Buggles.

NocturnalSonata

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

The removal of the initial heal of healing ward, removal of minor vitality and the delaying of Assassin's will damage
All these 3 things made Magicka Nightblade unreliable and just straight up weak

The problem with Magicka Nightblade is that it has every single defense in the game, it has heals, shields and cloak yet none of these mechanics are strong enough to keep it alive.

Heals, HoTs arent strong enough and the Magblade cannot recover from low HP especially when he has Major Defile applied on himself. Its lacking a burst heal.
Shields are strong to prevent burst but theres too much oblivion damage and dots in the game and the shield itself is tiny anyway(Im talking about Harness Magicka and Healing Ward), nothing compared to the shields of a Magsorc for example. You just cant spam them like on a Magsorc.
Cloak is a nice escape tool but it isnt half as good as on a Stamblade because the Magicka Blade doesnt have enough mobility to abuse anywhere near as good as a Stamblade can, no snare removal, no major expedition, no dodge roll. Its too easily countered.

Talking about the offense of a Magblade, theyre too reliant on Assassin's Will which was made delayed and is now way too easy to avoid, their Burst is way too backloaded due to Assassin's Will being their only hard hitting skill.

And I still dont know what you're talking about cause magblades are still strong as ***.

If you think that then you just dont understand the game and have never played a Magblade

I have every mag dps class. fully tested. And magblade is far and above the clear winner. The idea that magsorc get a shield... is almost laughable, as unless you are stacking copious amounts of hp, thus, losing copious amounts of potential dps, the shield is paper. All magclasses suffer from paper mache shields, sorc included.

In pve and pvp, only someone terrified that their beloved NB will get a damage nerf would deny their supremacy over other classes. That said, NB do not need another nerf, if anything they could do with some adjustments that result in a buff, but at the same time every other mag class needs to be re balanced to find at least some marginal equilibrium without having magden lagging so far behind, magdk about to take a heavy nerf, and magsorc in a weird place.

ScruffyWhiskers

I've noticed almost no difference in shields for sorcs. The good ones quickly dropped things like all divines and buffed up their impen and resistances. A new sorc will crumple but that goes for any other class. A mid grade sorc still has a big advantage with shields if they keep their situational awareness and position correctly and line up their burst. Then there are the really good ones who still triple stack with godlike dexterity. SSDD.

Kadoin

All I see are complaints about what every other mag class has to deal with in PvP, except magblade at least has cloak.

Get used to it, ZOS keeps pretending mag and stam are balanced in PvP so don't expect that to change. I haven't played any mag spec that doesn't struggle against heavy armor stam builds, esp. ones with reflect/absorb/absorb magic. Bonus points if the heavy armor stam build uses more than one of these and stack most of their blue points into direct damage/phys damage/penetration/healing and ignore crit damage ROFL. Welcome to being a mag build on ESO in 2019.

Linaleah

so basically what I'm seeing here is - magblade is not the best at everything everywhere = RUINED FOREVER. sigh.

zyk

I would guess the thread is about the Open World PVP Magblade.

Opinions about classes are all over the place. We have natural biases, especially if we use a particular build. We often see popular OP builds being defended the most as balanced because they are so widely used.

IMO, you can tell a lot about what's OP when builds become both popular and homogenized. Think of all the bleednado stam builds.

Magblade is unquestionably less common than other specs in Cyrodiil outside of bombing.

I recently started playing magblade again after playing StamDK over the summer. I feel significantly more constrained.

- Light armor without shields is SUPER squishy; supreme mobility is required, especially in and around large fights
- The shield adjustments hurt. Harness is strong versus magicka builds, but annulment in general is not very efficient; healing ward feels much less useful
- limited damage layering options; I've gone high sustain to support strong mobility, which means I hit like a wet noodle. A low damage mag sorc or stam warden still have strong burst because of extremely strong damage layering.
- The battlefield is extremely spammy. Ground AEs are everywhere. Especially with Steel Tornado and Blockade so popular atm
- so many players run tanky stalemate builds; who has time for that?
- wings wings wings wings wings

I could play a more conventional build with vampirism, lower sustain, less mobility and higher damage, but that would severely limit where I can fight. This is why they can be strong in duels when built for it. But those builds aren't really useful in most AvA objective fights.

The mageblade 'kit' is inconsistent and synergizes within poorly. Instacast Fear, Soul Harvest, Concealed Weaon are all melee range abilities, but Impale and Assassin's will are slow and easily evaded ranged abilities. It's not difficult for a heavy armor user to get outside of impale's 25% execute range by the time it hits; other executes scale differenty.

Did I mention wings wings wings wings wings everywhere?