Answer to Week 1 PTS Patch Notes - Nightblades

TheRealSniker

Ever since I made my Forum post answering to the "Combat Direction" thread, some people messaged me either directly or in other ways to state my opinion about the first weeks notes publicly again, I decided to do it this one last time.


THINGS THAT I LIKE:
Im a fan of the Surprise Attack change, the damage loss isnt big (about 3% damage due to Mauls also being more effective without Major Fracture) and the idea of flanking being built into Nightblades kit was my idea ever since the class rep system came out. Im pretty sure one of the class reps got inspired by the idea as well
Overall the change gives Stamblade alot more damage potential in terms of pve and pvp damage and the removal of major fracture doesnt really gut them.
I just wish it could be pumped up to 10% to be more meaningful as now it really doesn't reward a player who plays the spec to its fullest.

The Mass hysteria change where they change the amount of enemies feared back from 2 to 6 like it was before. It will be an amazing 1vX skill again that serves defensive use!
The removal of snare after your enemy broke free is also amazing cause now the annoying snare will be just gone instead.

I love the fix they gave for Dark Cloak, the ability wont carry Heavy Armor builds in 1v1s anymore and instead acts like your normal HoT, although the skills potential has been ruined and id like it more if they just gave us another morph of invis cloak back, its not as bad as I would expect. Wonder if this nerf has been influenced by this post.

The Shadow image scalings change is amazing aswell, Zenimax realized the skill is being used by both the Magicka and Stamina spec and such a step is most definetly the right step. It gives Stamblade a bit pressure in duels outside of burst damage.


THINGS THAT I DISLIKE:
Relentless focus removal of buffs.
Lets start off with what kinda tough ride Relentless focus was through, the skill was only used for the buffs since forever until Dragonbones Patch where the bow proc stacks werent resetted upon rebuffing anymore. Then the skill was finally actively used in PvP and rewarded above average players for comboing the ability skillfully.
The skill unlocked alot of stamnb potential and required alot of thought to make it work.
In the last few patches a delay has been added to the skill making it very very very unreliable, now Zenimax also removed all kinds of buffs from the skills, minor berserk and minor endurance, and giving us a heal for compensation.
The heal was never needed for stamblades and wont be anywhere reliable anyway as the Bow Proc almost never hits with the current delay.
The removal of minor endurance pushes Stamblades even more towards the Heavy armor playstyle as stacking Recovery isnt as rewarding anymore.
The removal of minor berserk has been compensated by adding minor vulnerability on Ambush, a skill I personally hate.
Using ambush makes you too vulnerable, the fact that we have to spam the skill now every 8 seconds in order to keep up a good uptime of a much needed damage buff is depressing. I hate what Zenimax has done to Nightblades kit with this patch. Putting such a buff on a gapcloser ruins the frontloaded burst potential anf promotes brainless zerging.

Oh and ofcourse dont forget about our Magblade buddies who lost their 8% damage completely!
The use of the skill now still has a cost, so you basically waste your magicka/stamina for... nothing...?
The skill has been a key skill in the Nightblades gameplay and will be unused if those changes go through.


The removal of Major Defile on Incapacitating strike is cruel towards Medium Nightblade.
Major Defile is much needed in todays Meta as healing is so strong in this game. There is no other way of reliably getting Major Defile on your target outside of Reverb(Its an Sword an Board skill) which also pushes you towards the Heavy Armor playstyle.
I wasnt able to test the skill yet but Stamblades whom I respect and who dueled on PTS say that they do no damage without the debuff as everything gets outhealed.

The Minor mangle we received instead doesnt make much sense either, im not sure what it is supposed to do.
Minor mangle would theoretically push your target insantly to 90% of its health when u use incap at 100% of its health, because the debuff applies first. But using Incap at 100% HP is bad for you anyway because you wont have enough pressure to put them down anyway.
But thats only one use I can think of, anywhere else the debuff is just bad for your gameplay.
Why? Because when u use Minor mangle on your target at 50% health, then their current % health after damage done with incap will be actually higher that it would have been without minor mangle, making our execute range smaller.
The skill is counteractive and I will personally try out playing with the Magicka Morph of the skill once im back home and able to duel.
I wish we could receive a different debuff on Incap for 6 seconds instead. Or atleast the Minor Mangle for a full duration of the ultimate.

ConstanKar

Very well written! I agree with everything you said. Updoot.

Tasear

I believe you misunderstood minor mangle. It will take off 10% total health so say they are at 7 percent it will kill them.

Ectheliontnacil

Good op.

Dark cloak change is awful though. Heavy armour stamblades were carried by the skill - true. But it was also the last thing keeping magblade alive, since healing ward was destroyed. Nightblades needed access to some form of (burst like) self healing. This hot is beyond useless and magblades will seriously lack healing. Best bet is to revert back to invis and play a trolling flame reach>cloak spec or something.

Very disappointed by this change.
Also the minor beserk was taken from magblade and minor vulnerability was only given to stamblades. The wrong playstyle was nerfed! No magblade will ever use that gapcloser.

TheRealSniker

Ectheliontnacil wrote: »

Good op.

Dark cloak change is awful though. Heavy armour stamblades were carried by the skill - true. But it was also the last thing keeping magblade alive, since healing ward was destroyed. Nightblades needed access to some form of (burst like) self healing. This hot is beyond useless and magblades will seriously lack healing. Best bet is to revert back to invis and play a trolling flame reach>cloak spec or something.

Very disappointed by this change.
Also the minor beserk was taken from magblade and minor vulnerability was only given to stamblades. The wrong playstyle was nerfed! No magblade will ever use that gapcloser.

Yeah theres a very bad side of this change too, afaik. The magblades that i know who play open world still used invis cloak though.

JAwtunes

Are you referring to the change below when you talk about shadowy disguise? If you are then I don't think you have understood the final sentence. It looks like the duration will be broadly comparable after the passive is applied. I haven't checked on pts, but the below suggests the duration without points in the passive has been reduced.

Dark Veil: Adjusted this passive to grant a flat 1 and 2 second duration increase to Shadow abilities, rather than 8 and 15% duration extensions. The duration of these abilities before allocating this passive have been adjusted to ensure the total duration remains relatively the same to their current Live values.

ConstanKar

Tasear wrote: »

I believe you misunderstood minor mangle. It will take off 10% total health so say they are at 7 percent it will kill them.

That's actually not how it works. It reduces your max health by 10%. A former class rep should know this. Smh my head

Ectheliontnacil

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Ectheliontnacil wrote: »

Good op.

Dark cloak change is awful though. Heavy armour stamblades were carried by the skill - true. But it was also the last thing keeping magblade alive, since healing ward was destroyed. Nightblades needed access to some form of (burst like) self healing. This hot is beyond useless and magblades will seriously lack healing. Best bet is to revert back to invis and play a trolling flame reach>cloak spec or something.

Very disappointed by this change.
Also the minor beserk was taken from magblade and minor vulnerability was only given to stamblades. The wrong playstyle was nerfed! No magblade will ever use that gapcloser.

Yeah theres a very bad side of this change too, afaik. The magblades that i know who play open world still used invis cloak though.

Tbh I don't really play the game atm so I wouldn't know. But a couple friends who are in the duelling scene suggested dark cloak when I played magblade a bit over the semester holidays.
It was pretty neat actually and probably the best way to work around the healing ward nerf.
Even openworld the dark cloak spec was semi viable. No invis hurts, but it's better than no healing.

But after this patch it won't matter anyways... everyone will be forced to use invis again. Kind of ironic because invis is what the anti-nb community has been crying about and now a lot more nbs will crutch on invis again.

MartiniDaniels

JAwtunes wrote: »

Are you referring to the change below when you talk about shadowy disguise? If you are then I don't think you have understood the final sentence. It looks like the duration will be broadly comparable after the passive is applied. I haven't checked on pts, but the below suggests the duration without points in the passive has been reduced.

Dark Veil: Adjusted this passive to grant a flat 1 and 2 second duration increase to Shadow abilities, rather than 8 and 15% duration extensions. The duration of these abilities before allocating this passive have been adjusted to ensure the total duration remains relatively the same to their current Live values.

Shadowy disguise extended from 2.9 seconds to 3 seconds, which is still illogical and unnecessary buff to cloak nobody asked for ><

Insco851

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Ectheliontnacil wrote: »

Good op.

Dark cloak change is awful though. Heavy armour stamblades were carried by the skill - true. But it was also the last thing keeping magblade alive, since healing ward was destroyed. Nightblades needed access to some form of (burst like) self healing. This hot is beyond useless and magblades will seriously lack healing. Best bet is to revert back to invis and play a trolling flame reach>cloak spec or something.

Very disappointed by this change.
Also the minor beserk was taken from magblade and minor vulnerability was only given to stamblades. The wrong playstyle was nerfed! No magblade will ever use that gapcloser.

Yeah theres a very bad side of this change too, afaik. The magblades that i know who play open world still used invis cloak though.

BRR + Dark Cloak actually made this a viable open word no cloak.

Dead af now tho.

Edit: Cloak is very easily broken against good players that it rarely made a difference.... the “burst” heal from Dark cloak was absolutely more effective in rough Xv1’s. You weren’t gonna run away but you had survival tools to hang out and fight though.

efster

I love the fix they gave for Dark Cloak, the ability wont carry Heavy Armor builds in 1v1s anymore and instead acts like your normal HoT, although the skills potential has been ruined and id like it more if they just gave us another morph of invis cloak back, its not as bad as I would expect. Wonder if this nerf has been influenced by this post.

No, this is a terrible change for PVE tanking. There's no reason PVE trial NB tanks should become 80% useless again because PVP players are too lazy to maintain defile on heavyblades in 1v1.

(Don't give me "NB PVE tanking is niche". 1v1 in Cyrodiil is niche too. )

Feanor

To me, the changes in PTS 1 are strangely uninspired. Update 22 was heralded as the patch which would see class abilities finally overhauled, there was even hinted at offensive reworks for some classes (e.g. Sorcs).

While I’m appreciative that some of the overloaded NB abilities got adjusted, I too think that this further narrows down play styles, and continues to funnel everything into one or two ways to go.

I’d wish for ZOS having a clear idea of class identity and to flesh these out more properly, but I think the idea of every class having to be at least decent in every role is a big obstacle in this. I never understood why every class needs to be able to perform in every role, there nothing wrong in classes being great at something but awful at others. At least balance would be much easier this way.

As it is, ZOS is zig zagging its way through changes and reverts, fumbling in the fog. I’m disappointed.

Rex-Umbra

MNB tanks been hurting for awhile. Dark cloak is a joke compared to DKs coagulating blood. Loss of dmg on refreshing path was super rough.

Vapirko

So basically you like the buff that’s more powerful than than the original effect and don’t like the nerfs lol.

ccfeeling

efster wrote: »

I love the fix they gave for Dark Cloak, the ability wont carry Heavy Armor builds in 1v1s anymore and instead acts like your normal HoT, although the skills potential has been ruined and id like it more if they just gave us another morph of invis cloak back, its not as bad as I would expect. Wonder if this nerf has been influenced by this post.

No, this is a terrible change for PVE tanking. There's no reason PVE trial NB tanks should become 80% useless again because PVP players are too lazy to maintain defile on heavyblades in 1v1.

(Don't give me "NB PVE tanking is niche". 1v1 in Cyrodiil is niche too. )

Actually all tanks can be carried by skillful healers in trial

But In 4 man dungeons , burst healing and strong HOT are very important especially in DLC HM .

NB tank has no enough space to slot so many HOT , I really doubt the DEV , are we playing the same game ?

Gilliam , what do you think ?

Weps

I agree that the removal of Minor Berserk is not understandable.

Everything else is just a matter of opinions.

Great post, tho

Feanor

Weps wrote: »

I agree that the removal of Minor Berserk is not understandable.

Everything else is just a matter of opinions.

Great post, tho

Well, the minor offensive buffs were never really distributed in a balanced way between the classes. I’d trade minor intellect for minor berserk any day for example.

JAwtunes

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

JAwtunes wrote: »

Are you referring to the change below when you talk about shadowy disguise? If you are then I don't think you have understood the final sentence. It looks like the duration will be broadly comparable after the passive is applied. I haven't checked on pts, but the below suggests the duration without points in the passive has been reduced.

Dark Veil: Adjusted this passive to grant a flat 1 and 2 second duration increase to Shadow abilities, rather than 8 and 15% duration extensions. The duration of these abilities before allocating this passive have been adjusted to ensure the total duration remains relatively the same to their current Live values.

Shadowy disguise extended from 2.9 seconds to 3 seconds, which is still illogical and unnecessary buff to cloak nobody asked for ><

He said it would get ~1.5s buff in his post. It was right at the end but was edited last night to remove the mistake.

Nerftheforums

ConstanKar wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

I believe you misunderstood minor mangle. It will take off 10% total health so say they are at 7 percent it will kill them.

That's actually not how it works. It reduces your max health by 10%. A former class rep should know this. Smh my head

I believe that's why she is a "former". The misinformation spread has been a lot over the months, but it's good. I like misinformed people, they feed me ap better.

Nerftheforums

I personally thing medium armor stamblade will do fine, but not as good as heavy armor (just as it has been for the last 3 years, but now it will be more accentuated).

The loss of fracture is ok, bad, but not too bad. Our damage was through the roof anyhow.
The loss of secondary effects on merciless and scourge is a meme, replaced by an even greater meme. You already pointed it out, but activating a skill to have the possibility to stack 5 lights attacks and fire a bow that will cost more magicka and will be dodged/blocked in the majority of cases is just a a joke. Without considering that the new heal will be mostly enjoyed by stamnbs, who will remove the skill from their bars since it's so unrealiable atm. Maybe zos is not aware this, but magnb is beyond being bad:it's almost unplayable. Nerfing merciless and giving it a heal that the spec will never be able to benefit from is a joke.

The removal of defile from incap, the addition of mangle and the stun at 120 basically killed the skill. There is no point to use it over dbos, which will apply a dot that will give you just as much pressure as the 20% damage boost from incap, but it's also undodgiable, aoe, and gives u a modest 3% extra wd. This, together with the fact that the class is being pushed more and more towards heavy, puts stamnb in a situation very similar to other stam classes: go heavy snb with dbos or go home.

I honestly hope they'll make some adjustments to merciless and scourge. For example, keep berserker on merciless and minor endurance on scourge. For what concerns incap, idk. I'd rather see the 20% damage boost go instead of the major defile, or have the mangle become minor defile. Atm there is no reason to use it over dbos, killing class identity (yaaaaaaaaay).

Looking forward to those cripple nerfs tho, can't wait to see magnb become even more ***.

NightAngel690

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Ever since I made my Forum post answering to the "Combat Direction" thread, some people messaged me either directly or in other ways to state my opinion about the first weeks notes publicly again, I decided to do it this one last time.


THINGS THAT I LIKE:
Im a fan of the Surprise Attack change, the damage loss isnt big (about 3% damage due to Mauls also being more effective without Major Fracture) and the idea of flanking being built into Nightblades kit was my idea ever since the class rep system came out. Im pretty sure one of the class reps got inspired by the idea as well
Overall the change gives Stamblade alot more damage potential in terms of pve and pvp damage and the removal of major fracture doesnt really gut them.
I just wish it could be pumped up to 10% to be more meaningful as now it really doesn't reward a player who plays the spec to its fullest.

The Mass hysteria change where they change the amount of enemies feared back from 2 to 6 like it was before. It will be an amazing 1vX skill again that serves defensive use!
The removal of snare after your enemy broke free is also amazing cause now the annoying snare will be just gone instead.

I love the fix they gave for Dark Cloak, the ability wont carry Heavy Armor builds in 1v1s anymore and instead acts like your normal HoT, although the skills potential has been ruined and id like it more if they just gave us another morph of invis cloak back, its not as bad as I would expect. Wonder if this nerf has been influenced by this post.

The Shadow image scalings change is amazing aswell, Zenimax realized the skill is being used by both the Magicka and Stamina spec and such a step is most definetly the right step. It gives Stamblade a bit pressure in duels outside of burst damage.


THINGS THAT I DISLIKE:
Relentless focus removal of buffs.
Lets start off with what kinda tough ride Relentless focus was through, the skill was only used for the buffs since forever until Dragonbones Patch where the bow proc stacks werent resetted upon rebuffing anymore. Then the skill was finally actively used in PvP and rewarded above average players for comboing the ability skillfully.
The skill unlocked alot of stamnb potential and required alot of thought to make it work.
In the last few patches a delay has been added to the skill making it very very very unreliable, now Zenimax also removed all kinds of buffs from the skills, minor berserk and minor endurance, and giving us a heal for compensation.
The heal was never needed for stamblades and wont be anywhere reliable anyway as the Bow Proc almost never hits with the current delay.
The removal of minor endurance pushes Stamblades even more towards the Heavy armor playstyle as stacking Recovery isnt as rewarding anymore.
The removal of minor berserk has been compensated by adding minor vulnerability on Ambush, a skill I personally hate.
Using ambush makes you too vulnerable, the fact that we have to spam the skill now every 8 seconds in order to keep up a good uptime of a much needed damage buff is depressing. I hate what Zenimax has done to Nightblades kit with this patch. Putting such a buff on a gapcloser ruins the frontloaded burst potential anf promotes brainless zerging.

Oh and ofcourse dont forget about our Magblade buddies who lost their 8% damage completely!
The use of the skill now still has a cost, so you basically waste your magicka/stamina for... nothing...?
The skill has been a key skill in the Nightblades gameplay and will be unused if those changes go through.


The removal of Major Defile on Incapacitating strike is cruel towards Medium Nightblade.
Major Defile is much needed in todays Meta as healing is so strong in this game. There is no other way of reliably getting Major Defile on your target outside of Reverb(Its an Sword an Board skill) which also pushes you towards the Heavy Armor playstyle.
I wasnt able to test the skill yet but Stamblades whom I respect and who dueled on PTS say that they do no damage without the debuff as everything gets outhealed.

The Minor mangle we received instead doesnt make much sense either, im not sure what it is supposed to do.
Minor mangle would theoretically push your target insantly to 90% of its health when u use incap at 100% of its health, because the debuff applies first. But using Incap at 100% HP is bad for you anyway because you wont have enough pressure to put them down anyway.
But thats only one use I can think of, anywhere else the debuff is just bad for your gameplay.
Why? Because when u use Minor mangle on your target at 50% health, then their current % health after damage done with incap will be actually higher that it would have been without minor mangle, making our execute range smaller.
The skill is counteractive and I will personally try out playing with the Magicka Morph of the skill once im back home and able to duel.
I wish we could receive a different debuff on Incap for 6 seconds instead. Or atleast the Minor Mangle for a full duration of the ultimate.

I agree with everything besides dark cloak. Darkcloak wasn’t even that great of a heal tbh and it was the only thing I felt that differentiated a nb tank in pve from everything else.
I mean in theory you’re getting more heals but over a longer period of time. On a 30k health build it equates out to roughly 4K/p second or 12k over 3seconds - whatever debuffs you have on you.(major/minor defile). It sounds like a lot but you have to take into considering that it takes a bit for the tics to start and also the amount of damage you are receiving.
Not only that but 90% of the time, if you are using it without a resto or any other heals, you’re screwed.

Mayrael

Pretty much agree except of dark cloak which is now worse and won't be used at all.

And I wish that magblades wouldn't be nerfed because of stamblades anymore. Merciless used to be most important skill for magblades, bud with each patch it gets nerfed. Now it's totally waste of a slot.

Weps

Feanor wrote: »

Weps wrote: »

I agree that the removal of Minor Berserk is not understandable.

Everything else is just a matter of opinions.

Great post, tho

Well, the minor offensive buffs were never really distributed in a balanced way between the classes. I’d trade minor intellect for minor berserk any day for example.

All the classes are not supposed to be the same tho.
As much as I can hate nightblades, what are they with the easy burst damage?
As the assassin class, they should have Minor Berserk as a buff on a very difficult to use skill.

Kolzki

I don’t know of many builds that run pulsar and so have access the minor mangle. The few I know are melee magblades

templesus

Mayrael wrote: »

Pretty much agree except of dark cloak which is now worse and won't be used at all.

And I wish that magblades wouldn't be nerfed because of stamblades anymore. Merciless used to be most important skill for magblades, bud with each patch it gets nerfed. Now it's totally waste of a slot.

Funny, this is how Stamplars feel about Magplar.

Iskiab

Kolzki wrote: »

I don’t know of many builds that run pulsar and so have access the minor mangle. The few I know are melee magblades

Agreed. Pulsar’s awesome, especially with the BRP staff. Combine with sap for full effect though. The BRP dot refreshes with every pulsar making it not the best spammable.

killingspreeb16_ESO

Vapirko wrote: »

So basically you like the buff that’s more powerful than than the original effect and don’t like the nerfs lol.

So basically you can't even read the post

Im sure that 5% armor debuff(that he actually like) that have a positional requirement and is not only weaker than major fracture but also harder to apply is a buff kappa.

Ragnaroek93

Grim Focus and Ambush/Lotus Fan changes are bad. Awfully bad. Also Shade scaling with highest ressource but not changing dmg type is disappointing.

Renne999

but shade is still *** .... wtb FIX
im tower etc ...

Mayrael

Renne999 wrote: »

but shade is still *** .... wtb FIX
im tower etc ...

This. And ZOS pretends there is no such issue. They don't read threads, they don't answer, they don't fix. But hey they now how to nerf.

Jaxaxo

Mayrael wrote: »

Renne999 wrote: »

but shade is still *** .... wtb FIX
im tower etc ...

This. And ZOS pretends there is no such issue. They don't read threads, they don't answer, they don't fix. But hey they now how to nerf.

Actually there was reply about it, but i think it was from class reps some time ago, not ZOS. They are aware of the bug, but they dont know how to fix it.

Edit:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/456997/class-reps-update-meeting-notes-jan-30-2019/p1
check for "shade"