Why all the Nightblade focus?

Doctor_Zeuss

So much time and effort seems to be put into this class by the dev team. They are constantly getting buffs, changes, flavor updates, you name it. It’s kinda cool, if you like to play them. If you don’t, you’re left wondering what the ... is going on with balance and development in this game. So many other specs are left in the dust because of the focus on Nightblades.

I don’t want anyone that plays a Nightblade to have to go through what some of the other specs have been dealing with. Things like having their class and play-style neglected, underperforming, flavorless, etc. for an absurd amount of time. That said, some effort, time, and focus by the devs should be put into those other classes before people simply have enough of the unfairness and find another form of entertainment to spend money on.

I still don’t understand, why are all these resources and focus spent on one class that doesn’t need it when there are many more specs that desperately need attention?

ilcavallo

Makes 10th thread on the board about NBs. Proceeds to complain about all the focus on NBs.

Doctor_Zeuss

ilcavallo wrote: »

Makes 10th thread on the board about NBs. Proceeds to complain about all the focus on NBs.

I was referring to dev focus.

Durham

Hard to balance this concept of the assassin class to be honest.

If you make the class true to its concept then its going to be glass cannon with the ability to get away. Well just think this becomes imbalanced in many ways. In DAOC the grandfather of PVP in this game the Asassin classes were much like these classes except much stronger in the initial take down. However they really had no way to heal. This class was always flamed on the boards.

Im not sure how ZOS can really effectively balance this concept with the other concepts. They will always struggle with this class in the future it will always garner attention because of its nature.

ChunkyCat

Because Gilliam plays a NB.

grannas211

ChunkyCat wrote: »

Because Gilliam plays a NB.

This isn’t even trolling. This is it.

Tessitura

What Durham said is right. The whole concept of the class demands more attention because the nature of the class, an assassin, is inherently unfair. You basically impossible to balance it for gameplay in a mmo and keep the flavor. I have said for many years now, assassin type classes have no place in mmos yet they keep putting them into mmos because it's a classic fantasy trope.

Deathlord92

Because nightblade a fun class to play and mag sorc gets the same amount of focus

Doctor_Zeuss

Regarding the posts about it being an assassin class, nightblade has been over-tuned or performing very well in all aspects of the game while having a great class identity. They’ve been in a great spot for a long time. So, why is this incredible amount of focus still being put towards them? Focus that could be spent on classes and specs that need the focus much more?

nsmurfer

Did you really expect that ZoS just nerfs NBs and gives nothing in compensation and the NB community, which make around half of the game's population will accept it?
Here is the thing. Patch 0 was just NB nerfs. They removed Major Defile, Fracture and Berserk from the class and wrecked primary skills like Grim Focus and Incap.

Compare to every other class which got more changes on Patch 0, most of which were buffs. This didn't down well with the NBs, who complained enmass. Result was buffing the class back in different ways, for the rest of the patch duration.

Not much different from the sorc situation in Murkmire

Chiefwilliams

Durham wrote: »

Hard to balance this concept of the assassin class to be honest.

If you make the class true to its concept then its going to be glass cannon with the ability to get away. Well just think this becomes imbalanced in many ways. In DAOC the grandfather of PVP in this game the Asassin classes were much like these classes except much stronger in the initial take down. However they really had no way to heal. This class was always flamed on the boards.

Im not sure how ZOS can really effectively balance this concept with the other concepts. They will always struggle with this class in the future it will always garner attention because of its nature.

I wish I had appreciated the time I spent in that game when it was still popular. Was my first MMO and the first class I made was shadowblade following the popular Left axe spec. Spent many nights trying to see how long I could survive in darkness falls while another faction held it. Then I made a staff friar on mordred and that was the greatest mmo experience I will ever have

LadySinflower

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Anyron

LadySinflower wrote: »

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Thats the reason
NB is strong in pvp nobody saying NB is strong in pve
Most of skill changes are made because of pvp because monsters cannot say "He is too strong He needs nerf"

The_Lex

As mentioned above by others, it's because @Gilliamtherogue is a NB main.

On a side note, the utter neglect that ZOS has shown to sSorc and sDK is shameful.

grannas211

Anyron wrote: »

LadySinflower wrote: »

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Thats the reason
NB is strong in pvp nobody saying NB is strong in pve
Most of skill changes are made because of pvp because monsters cannot say "He is too strong He needs nerf"

But it actually is there too lol

Victor_Blade

LadySinflower wrote: »

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Magblade doesn't have many heals but stamblades do have some good heals, Rally and vigor.

Magblade have a kind of life steal type healing from siphoning attacks, swallow soul and magicka characters depend more on shields over healing. So, if you want a really good heal then you'll have to use resto staff skills.

And talking about damage, nightblades have some good sources of consistent damage but they truly shine in doing burst damage(pvp and pve). The soul harvest>merciless>impale combo on execute gives the highest burst damage in the game and that's when they hit harder than any class in the game atm.

Also, the thing about nightblades are that they seem cool you know. The only reason why I haven't switched to any other class from a magblade is cos of how cool it is to play one. The dark skills and edgy red magic just makes me live the fantasy anti hero life.

darkblue5

LadySinflower wrote: »

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Sadly the skill you need is Vigor from the PvP Assault skill tree. Luckily you can get it by repairing keeps pretty easily now as the keep walls are usually degraded. Queuing into BGs will also get you there even if you die immediately every time and your team loses every time. Swapping Shuffle and Vigor (and somehow keeping the armor requirement on Shuffle and not on Vigor...) would help early stamina characters so much.

Girl_Number8

Zos just really has the weirdest ways of balancing or something unusually fun like a drinking game. Zos over nerfed nightblades then added a cherry in that is just insane, lol.

I wish Zos would just learn to tweak things and not go over the top as they always seem to do with nerfs, then try to fix it with something worse. Stamblades just needed some adjustments, not the town square torture treatment but then Zos takes incap and smh.

Magblades needed a buff and somethings are looking okie but I still feel the dark cloak nerf was too much. It was the only decent burst heal on the class.

I think for a lot of new players coming to PvP nbs may have been frustrating due to a lack of experience but I never saw them as an issue.

Maybe the constant stam characters verses magic based characters on the forums adds to the issue as well, idk. Which would be sad, since playing all the classes is what is the most fun.

Classes really just need some tweaking, which would work better by retaining the uniqueness of the class. Though these overhauls are seemingly making things bland and creating more unforseen balance issues. But with the new incap the balance issue is a 100% visible as a mistake with as it stands rn.

Live should be interesting

killingspreeb16_ESO

Because the class is good at one thing single target(dmg/debuff).
If you nerf the class in that area when is the only thing that they are good for then what's the point of playing the said class?

NB needed a rebalance and ZoS is trying to do it.

Less dmg/debuff but more defense and utility and if you want to have the same dmg as before you have to make some sacrifices,more or less like other classes.

The_Lex

ZOS balances things like a pendulum swing. Nerf...buff...nerf...buff. And their nerfs and buffs tend to be extreme. Never little changes at a time. This is why the average player doesn't believe that ZOS has a "unified vision for combat balance." To top it off, ZOS completely neglects certain classes, i.e., sSorc, sDK, and mWarden.

LjAnimalchin

Nightblade attracts the most amount of hate on the forums, usually. More even than magsorcs. Zos tries to appease the playerbase but doesn't understand the PvP meta, and makes heavy handed changes that often have undesirable consequences for said meta. That's it, really.

Kidgangster101

nsmurfer wrote: »

Did you really expect that ZoS just nerfs NBs and gives nothing in compensation and the NB community, which make around half of the game's population will accept it?
Here is the thing. Patch 0 was just NB nerfs. They removed Major Defile, Fracture and Berserk from the class and wrecked primary skills like Grim Focus and Incap.

Compare to every other class which got more changes on Patch 0, most of which were buffs. This didn't down well with the NBs, who complained enmass. Result was buffing the class back in different ways, for the rest of the patch duration.

Not much different from the sorc situation in Murkmire

You say they got nerfed so bad in patch 0, but did you take in how much more you were doing than other classes? To get what nbs do in just a few skills classes had to slot 3-5 moves to just equal nbs.

If you guys were nerfed so bad, then why on pts after patch 0 did you guys still have arguably the best DPS (other than the pets being glitched)

So you went from being the top DPS (on score runs it was shown that 6-8 NB DPS was best set up) to on pts still being top DPS with a rotation with your "nerfed" moves was still the exact same loadout as on live?

Last time I checked when any other class was nerfed so bad they actually stop running the move. So yeah nbs cried they got nerfed but in actuality they got toned down because the class was too much of a DPS.

Argue what you will but the reason it is so popular is because of the damage it can do. If a Stam sorc got attention and buffed to be better than NB then a lot of people would flock to that because they have a need to be "the best" just like we saw an increase in dark elfs and orcs after racials went through just saying.

Kidgangster101

LadySinflower wrote: »

Everyone says nightblades receive too much attention. I started last October as a stamblade. I couldn't keep my character alive because she had no good healing skill. She also didn't hit that hard. I struggled, changing the skills around as much as I could for a person with limited skill points due to being new. The character was in no way capable of running any higher level content to try to score some better gear. Mobs of 3 or more were impossible to beat. I even had a guild mate craft me a decent set of armor and weapons but I still couldn't make it work. I couldn't understand why people said stamblades were so powerful. I hated mine but struggled with it to about CP50 (yes I am/was aware of the leveling advantage that was lost at level 50 before CP160). Respecced it to a Magblade and it was all uphill from there. I am no longer afraid of veteran content and no longer get smashed by delve and quest bosses. But through all these so-called changes to the game by the devs, I didn't notice her hitting any different or dying any more/less. Maybe I'm extremely unobservant. Maybe as a player who goes down the middle of the road I don't feel the changes because there are no extremes in my build. I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't PvP. But I haven't noticed these radical changes everyone is so up in arms about. If nightblade receives so much attention why doesn't it have a solid way to heal like every other character of different class that I have? Why is it necessary to slot multiple mediocre HOTs just to stay alive? This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend. But I don't really think the nightblade overall is that slick compared to other classes.

Stamblades have rally and vigor to heal with and add in cloak you can come out of stealth at full hp so that unfortunately you just need to practice more. Now if your a magblade they need help.

Feanor

This removes the chance to slot enough powerful offensive skills to really excel. I've gone through a few recommended builds from online "experts" and didn't see any extreme advantage in any of them. That may be because I don't have a monster set or the top level gear and still haven't allocated enough skill points to get every passive they recommend.

Not to be mean, but without a fully developed character balance discussions shouldn’t be your goal.

Bazeric

Because all they needed was to throw a bone to PVP magblade, but that was too hard. Instead they just decided to scramble everything up.

nsmurfer

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

nsmurfer wrote: »

Did you really expect that ZoS just nerfs NBs and gives nothing in compensation and the NB community, which make around half of the game's population will accept it?
Here is the thing. Patch 0 was just NB nerfs. They removed Major Defile, Fracture and Berserk from the class and wrecked primary skills like Grim Focus and Incap.

Compare to every other class which got more changes on Patch 0, most of which were buffs. This didn't down well with the NBs, who complained enmass. Result was buffing the class back in different ways, for the rest of the patch duration.

Not much different from the sorc situation in Murkmire

You say they got nerfed so bad in patch 0, but did you take in how much more you were doing than other classes? To get what nbs do in just a few skills classes had to slot 3-5 moves to just equal nbs.

If you guys were nerfed so bad, then why on pts after patch 0 did you guys still have arguably the best DPS (other than the pets being glitched)

So you went from being the top DPS (on score runs it was shown that 6-8 NB DPS was best set up) to on pts still being top DPS with a rotation with your "nerfed" moves was still the exact same loadout as on live?

Last time I checked when any other class was nerfed so bad they actually stop running the move. So yeah nbs cried they got nerfed but in actuality they got toned down because the class was too much of a DPS.

Argue what you will but the reason it is so popular is because of the damage it can do. If a Stam sorc got attention and buffed to be better than NB then a lot of people would flock to that because they have a need to be "the best" just like we saw an increase in dark elfs and orcs after racials went through just saying.

MagSorc main here lol.

Nbs top DPS? Magblades outDPSed by Magplar, Magsorc and Magcro is in this patch. StamNB is surpassed by Stamden, Stamcro and believe it or not StamDK. Stamsorc is just 500 DPS below Stamblade. Not my stats, check up Liko's recent 90k parses for each class.

Also, NBs are subpar tank or heals. They need to be top tier dps to stay relevant.

Nb's popularity has much more to do with the theme than being meta. Even in the IC, Orsinium, TG days when MagSorc and StamDK was top DPS and Nb was near bottom tier, they were the most populous class.