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The true solution to magblade survivability
Jeezye
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Since there's already numerous threads spread around different forum sections about the drawbacks of the current form of magblades, I'd like to provide the most prominent solutions I have collected from those threads, my experience on various magblade builds on live and pts from the PvP (as well as most PvE) content side of view.
The issues of magblade have been pointed out by numerous threads, and I'd like to focus on what I think really constitutes the foundation of the current drawbacks of the playstyle: insufficient selfhealing. Being pressured on the magblade is increadibly unforgiving as we have no tool to actively recover besides shieldstacking and cloaking away, which itself are not carrying you out of the pressure zone and are really expensive to sustain. By having access to sufficient self healing (as we had pre-nerfmire *rip refreshing path*), the player is able to recover from pressure more easily when forced into said active defensive tools.
Surely there are questionable changes in the magblade's toolkit in this pts iteration, but I truely think with the current implementation of the class there's only two adjustments which would raise the class in PvP while not overbuffing PvE.
The both abilities that I'd like to draw attention to are Strife + morphs as well as Merciless Resolve. I'll provide my suggestion and follow up with the reasoning behind them.
Strife and morphs:
Change the healing of this ability and morphs to apply a separate healing over time instance (like regeneration) to the caster/ally that continues to scale with the percentage of the damage tooltip value of the ability.
Merciless Resolve:
Change the burst heal of this ability to fire upon skill activation while still scaling with the same percentage of the damage tooltip value it has on PTS.
I know there's many other issues with the class atm, especially the double GCD on grim focus as well as dark cloak changes, but I honestly thing that increasing the reliability of the passive healing through strife and grim focus itself will already push the class back into a acceptable spot in PvP while trimming down healing in PvE.
Edited by Jeezye on April 23, 2019 6:42AM The issues of magblade have been pointed out by numerous threads, and I'd like to focus on what I think really constitutes the foundation of the current drawbacks of the playstyle: insufficient selfhealing. Being pressured on the magblade is increadibly unforgiving as we have no tool to actively recover besides shieldstacking and cloaking away, which itself are not carrying you out of the pressure zone and are really expensive to sustain. By having access to sufficient self healing (as we had pre-nerfmire *rip refreshing path*), the player is able to recover from pressure more easily when forced into said active defensive tools.
Surely there are questionable changes in the magblade's toolkit in this pts iteration, but I truely think with the current implementation of the class there's only two adjustments which would raise the class in PvP while not overbuffing PvE.
The both abilities that I'd like to draw attention to are Strife + morphs as well as Merciless Resolve. I'll provide my suggestion and follow up with the reasoning behind them.
Strife and morphs:
Change the healing of this ability and morphs to apply a separate healing over time instance (like regeneration) to the caster/ally that continues to scale with the percentage of the damage tooltip value of the ability.
This simple change solves several issues with the class at the same time:
Most importantly, I creates reliability to the heal as it is no longer dependant to the actual damage the skill does post mitigation, and is no longer subseptible to dodges or absorbs. Instead, the hot will apply to the caster upon skill activation and simply scale with the raw magicka and spelldmg value of the caster as well as their healing multipliers. This also prevents excessive overhealing of PvE magblades whose damage (and therefore healing) scales with their critical multiplier and all offensive buffs granted by their group, thus lowering the ceiling for high damage builds but raising the floor for healers and tanky specs. On a simple example, a common 10k damage tooltip of swallow soul in PvP leads to 4k healing tooltip every 2 seconds, that will result in 2k tooltip after battle spirit prior to healing passives and crit modifiers. At the same time, a PvE magblade can no longer push the healing through its crits and offensive raid buffs. Healing magblades now don't suffer from having insufficient offensive buffs to push for high damage (and therefore healing) and now have a reliable groupheal that gets amplified by their healing modifiers.
Most importantly, I creates reliability to the heal as it is no longer dependant to the actual damage the skill does post mitigation, and is no longer subseptible to dodges or absorbs. Instead, the hot will apply to the caster upon skill activation and simply scale with the raw magicka and spelldmg value of the caster as well as their healing multipliers. This also prevents excessive overhealing of PvE magblades whose damage (and therefore healing) scales with their critical multiplier and all offensive buffs granted by their group, thus lowering the ceiling for high damage builds but raising the floor for healers and tanky specs. On a simple example, a common 10k damage tooltip of swallow soul in PvP leads to 4k healing tooltip every 2 seconds, that will result in 2k tooltip after battle spirit prior to healing passives and crit modifiers. At the same time, a PvE magblade can no longer push the healing through its crits and offensive raid buffs. Healing magblades now don't suffer from having insufficient offensive buffs to push for high damage (and therefore healing) and now have a reliable groupheal that gets amplified by their healing modifiers.
Merciless Resolve:
Change the burst heal of this ability to fire upon skill activation while still scaling with the same percentage of the damage tooltip value it has on PTS.
The merciless resolve is designed to be an all or nothing ability with high risk and high reward, their is already a high risk involved in timing the longly built up ability on enemies without the guarante of actualy resulting in a burst heal (or healing at all) because of the targets mitigation, dodge rolls and absorbs. This change increases the reliability of the heal similar to strife, allowing you to drop defenses and go for the all or nothing move while reducing the risk of getting killed while being exposed in close range. More importantly however, magblade's now have a reliable burst heal that is not spammable or universally accessible (since you need to build it up and keep it), which also enables for defensive application only. Good nightblades will try to always fire the ability to do damage while bad nightblade will use the ability just for the heal and miss on kill pressure. Similar to the strife changes, this lowers the ceiling for PvE blades but raises the floor for PvP magblades. I also think that this playstyle would fit into the stamblade toolkit as they usually have a harder time building stacks in melee range.
I know there's many other issues with the class atm, especially the double GCD on grim focus as well as dark cloak changes, but I honestly thing that increasing the reliability of the passive healing through strife and grim focus itself will already push the class back into a acceptable spot in PvP while trimming down healing in PvE.
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NyassaV✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭With your suggestion to change merciless they would need to reduce the amount of healing done by it. Frankly I’d rather the remove the range restrictions rather than make it on castFlawless Conqueror ~ Grand OverlordShe/Her ~ PC/NA | I record things for fun and for info0 -
Jeezye✭✭✭✭✭With your suggestion to change merciless they would need to reduce the amount of healing done by it. Frankly I’d rather the remove the range restrictions rather than make it on cast
Idk man, building up stacks for a minimum for 5 seconds and holing the skill for the right moment for me justifies a significant burst heal equal to a BoL value. This would also provide the unique functionality to use it defensively and really up the skill cap to use the skill effectively (hence timing it for damage rather than healing).
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