Nightblades nerfed too far. NBs losing identity in favor of other classes/skill-lines

Finedaible

Why are you continually nerfing the most underused Nightblade abilities with each patch? Summon Shade, Path of Darkness, Cripple, and especially Incapacitating Strike...

Grim focus has also been nerfed unfairly over the last several patches. Grim Focus is one of the few unique abilities NBs have now (barring cloak), and you are giving a similar, overloaded version of Grim Focus to Sorcerers this patch with Bound Armaments rework when previously it was decided that Grim Focus was "too overloaded." If you really go through with this, then at least give Grim focus its minor Berserk back (take away the dumb heal if you need to, it's not a tank ability and the 7m range was too short to help anyway). Sorcs can get major berserk for their Storm Atronach just by having someone use their synergy so I don't know why minor berserk on solo nbs is such a problem.

Another NB pain point is Aspect of Terror. Who in their right mind would run this skill instead of the Fighter's Guild Turn Evil? Turn Evil: Minor Protection? check. Minor Endurance? check. Unlimited targets for the same radius as AoT? check. Increased weapon power via Fighter's guild passive? check. Aspect of Terror meanwhile gets... Major Resolve/Ward for 6s on cast and passive 3% hp... big flippin' deal.

Incap Strike is also useless in PvP now, only noobs who don't know how to play yet will get hit by it. I haven't seen Incap in my death recap screen, and I haven't killed anyone with it since the removal of stun and the removal of animation canceling, in fact it rarely even lands now even if you fear or stun the enemy beforehand, they just break free and avoid it. Silence on Incap has 0 value when your opponent is stam-based.

Did NBs need some nerfs in the past? Sure, I'm not saying they weren't over-performing in previous patches, but now it feels like they are going too far in some places, and Nightblades' identity feels a lot less unique than it once was. Most importantly, it was fun to play a Nightblade, but now it's not, its just become a generic class with very little to establish their identity as shadow mages. The slight change (buff?) to Lotus Fan and Drain Power in patch 5.2.0 is welcome i guess, but its more of a fix than improvement.

Royalthought

Finedaible wrote: »

Why are you continually nerfing the most underused Nightblade abilities with each patch? Summon Shade, Path of Darkness, Cripple, and especially Incapacitating Strike...

Grim focus has also been nerfed unfairly over the last several patches. Grim Focus is one of the few unique abilities NBs have now (barring cloak), and you are giving a similar, overloaded version of Grim Focus to Sorcerers this patch with Bound Armaments rework when previously it was decided that Grim Focus was "too overloaded." If you really go through with this, then at least give Grim focus its minor Berserk back (take away the dumb heal if you need to, it's not a tank ability and the 7m range was too short to help anyway). Sorcs can get major berserk for their Storm Atronach just by having someone use their synergy so I don't know why minor berserk on solo nbs is such a problem.

Another NB pain point is Aspect of Terror. Who in their right mind would run this skill instead of the Fighter's Guild Turn Evil? Turn Evil: Minor Protection? check. Minor Endurance? check. Unlimited targets for the same radius as AoT? check. Increased weapon power via Fighter's guild passive? check. Aspect of Terror meanwhile gets... Major Resolve/Ward for 6s on cast and passive 3% hp... big flippin' deal.

Incap Strike is also useless in PvP now, only noobs who don't know how to play yet will get hit by it. I haven't seen Incap in my death recap screen, and I haven't killed anyone with it since the removal of stun and the removal of animation canceling, in fact it rarely even lands now even if you fear or stun the enemy beforehand, they just break free and avoid it. Silence on Incap has 0 value when your opponent is stam-based.

Did NBs need some nerfs in the past? Sure, I'm not saying they weren't over-performing in previous patches, but now it feels like they are going too far in some places, and Nightblades' identity feels a lot less unique than it once was. Most importantly, it was fun to play a Nightblade, but now it's not, its just become a generic class with very little to establish their identity as shadow mages. The slight change (buff?) to Lotus Fan and Drain Power in patch 5.2.0 is welcome i guess, but its more of a fix than improvement.

I keep saying this, but nightblades werent overperforming tanks, healers, brawlers, AoE or support.

They had 1 thing going which was single target. I agree with you overall tho.

I'm just a bit off put when other classes have been the best tank, healer, etc. Since beta and that's fine. But nightblade being great at something is considered too much.

The end result is those other classes are now still better in all those other areas but now equal to or better than nightblades in single target. To your point with all of its functions being available to other classes it brings little to the fight.

Finedaible

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Katahdin

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

They are preparing to delete nightblades from the game by first nerfing them to uselessness.

Gilliam must be sick of playing nightblade and doesn't want anyone else to play them any more either.

Mayrael

I hate that they take away with each patch something from nightblades not giving anything in turn. Siphoning attacks, Twisting path, Grim Focus, Mass histerya<Turn evil, Summon shade. Why even play magblade now? It's highest skill class with lowest ceiling... This is not balance, it's class slaughter.

czar

Nightblades have gotten progressively worse with each major patch this year. I've stopped caring. ZOS aren't listening.

VaranisArano

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

Zalathorm

It seems twisting path and summon shade were just victims of the dot standardization.


Considering that bound armaments has 5% stam, 10% light attack damage, and the active proc going for it, the least they could do would be to put minor berserk back on grim focus.

Finedaible

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

Did they specifically say somewhere that Nightblades will be revised next update? I'm not looking forward to spending another 6 or more months of ESO+ just hoping for the possibility of my main's class becoming fun again.

I really do want to believe this game is going somewhere good because I've always loved ES lore, but right now it's just not as fun as it used to be.

Sylas_Orin

I think the continous Nightblade nerfs are honestly ***.

PvP and PvE should be balanced separately. NB is by its very nature a bursty class. That's what the whole assassination gimmick was about. That is, until people squealed.

Now it hits like a wet noodle. And it's has the most if not one of the most difficult rotations to master, with such a low reward that it's completely nightmarish.

I've never said it before, but I'm thinking of just giving up the game completely.

Sylas_Orin

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

You can boil that statement down to "Your class might be improved about six months from now, so keep spending your money on this piece of absolute garbage."

Sylas_Orin

Finedaible wrote: »

Why are you continually nerfing the most underused Nightblade abilities with each patch? Summon Shade, Path of Darkness, Cripple, and especially Incapacitating Strike...

Grim focus has also been nerfed unfairly over the last several patches. Grim Focus is one of the few unique abilities NBs have now (barring cloak), and you are giving a similar, overloaded version of Grim Focus to Sorcerers this patch with Bound Armaments rework when previously it was decided that Grim Focus was "too overloaded." If you really go through with this, then at least give Grim focus its minor Berserk back (take away the dumb heal if you need to, it's not a tank ability and the 7m range was too short to help anyway). Sorcs can get major berserk for their Storm Atronach just by having someone use their synergy so I don't know why minor berserk on solo nbs is such a problem.

Another NB pain point is Aspect of Terror. Who in their right mind would run this skill instead of the Fighter's Guild Turn Evil? Turn Evil: Minor Protection? check. Minor Endurance? check. Unlimited targets for the same radius as AoT? check. Increased weapon power via Fighter's guild passive? check. Aspect of Terror meanwhile gets... Major Resolve/Ward for 6s on cast and passive 3% hp... big flippin' deal.

Incap Strike is also useless in PvP now, only noobs who don't know how to play yet will get hit by it. I haven't seen Incap in my death recap screen, and I haven't killed anyone with it since the removal of stun and the removal of animation canceling, in fact it rarely even lands now even if you fear or stun the enemy beforehand, they just break free and avoid it. Silence on Incap has 0 value when your opponent is stam-based.

Did NBs need some nerfs in the past? Sure, I'm not saying they weren't over-performing in previous patches, but now it feels like they are going too far in some places, and Nightblades' identity feels a lot less unique than it once was. Most importantly, it was fun to play a Nightblade, but now it's not, its just become a generic class with very little to establish their identity as shadow mages. The slight change (buff?) to Lotus Fan and Drain Power in patch 5.2.0 is welcome i guess, but its more of a fix than improvement.

I agree with most of what you said. I don't think Minor Berserk should be the buff they get. Instead they should get a unique buff that stacks with Minor Berserk, because with the finicky nature of Grim Focus, you know what NBs identity is?

Struggle through this to maybe do as much damage as the average Sorcerer.

MartiniDaniels

Give minor berserk back or at least increase duration to 30 seconds. Or at least 25 seconds lol. With 20 seconds duration and no damage buff that is some strange gimmicky ability in PVE, which you need to activate first just to gather stacks and still mandatory to do any notable damage.

Rex-Umbra

See y'all 5.3 my nb has been getting nerfed for years so finally another class with a darker pet focus came out and was fun necro but its just nerfed every patch too :'(

xylena_lazarow

The only thing about NB that's ever needed adjustment is the spammable invisibility, which is also the only thing they've never touched. The feast-or-famine nature of Cloak has always been incredibly frustrating and polarizing for NB players and opponents alike.

Wheresthetea11

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

At this point I’m more worried than looking forward to more nightblade adjustments.

Royalthought

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The only thing about NB that's ever needed adjustment is the spammable invisibility, which is also the only thing they've never touched. The feast-or-famine nature of Cloak has always been incredibly frustrating and polarizing for NB players and opponents alike.

Cloak isn't frustrating nor polarizing to play against. It absolutely does not need adjustment in the way of more nerfs.

It's probably the only signature class defense that has hard counters. That's on top of having the most counters.

Besides, cloak has actually been nerfed multiple times. Everyone talks about losing major fracture, beserk, etc. But cloak use to have purge. Lost that too.

Mayrael

Chickf1lGay wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

At this point I’m more worried than looking forward to more nightblade adjustments.

Last patches are like: adjustments + NB = serious nerfs + meaningless buffs. If shade range nerf goes live there won't be anything awesome in NB anymore. No burst, no unique cc, no good escape, no self healing, no tankyness, just cloak.

Can I have potion that will disable Living dark for 15s in same range as det potion?

Nordic__Knights

It really seems like they're taken Focus from Nightblade skills to give them to other classes to delete the Nightblade class from the playing field all together and as I say it's disappointing being that I main Stam Nightblade for my time playing ESO from release day tell a week ago because its KILLING THE PLAYER BASE OF THE GAME yep keep killing off nightblades your pop will go down too go way to fix performance for a dead game once everyone's GONE gl dealing with this patch and everyone after as all zenimax knows how to do is nurff or break the game but not how to fix and balance it as they try to say they are but from leftfield way out somewhere pass the ballpark always never in field where it fell like they was playing the same game everyone else is

juhislihis19

PVP wise:

There was a time stamBlade was performing little better than other classes, I think we can agree on that?

So instead of doing little adjustments (mainly concerns were about Cloak IMO), the development team completely nerfed the whole class, altered pretty much every skill EXCEPT Cloak. I had zero problems with Incap, SA or Relentless. I have no idea why they tweaked them.

I'm not a fan of Nightblades, but they've been nerfed way too much. I haven't seen a StamBlade in Cyro for ages, there used to be plenty. They altered the class to a point where nobody's playing them and this is never good for the game. I do see few magblades every now and then but stamblades are extinct on PS4 EU.

This is the problem with ZOS and the forums. When somebody asks a) a little buff b) little nerf c) fix something that's broken, ZOS just goes on and nerfs the skill/class to ground or buffs it way over the top.

I'm all for restoring the NB class abilities back to which they were few months ago.

Cocobenji

Why did you nerf the nb ?
Nb it's :
No resist
No class shield
No health regen
... 😞 Dont understand

Nordic__Knights

juhislihis19 wrote: »

PVP wise:

There was a time stamBlade was performing little better than other classes, I think we can agree on that?

So instead of doing little adjustments (mainly concerns were about Cloak IMO), the development team completely nerfed the whole class, altered pretty much every skill EXCEPT Cloak. I had zero problems with Incap, SA or Relentless. I have no idea why they tweaked them.

I'm not a fan of Nightblades, but they've been nerfed way too much. I haven't seen a StamBlade in Cyro for ages, there used to be plenty. They altered the class to a point where nobody's playing them and this is never good for the game. I do see few magblades every now and then but stamblades are extinct on PS4 EU.

This is the problem with ZOS and the forums. When somebody asks a) a little buff b) little nerf c) fix something that's broken, ZOS just goes on and nerfs the skill/class to ground or buffs it way over the top.

I'm all for restoring the NB class abilities back to which they were few months ago.

You'd have to go back to when tam1 came out to get a good nightblade class back

Tommy_The_Gun

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

Last time NB were suposed to get an overhaul was in Elswayer and ZOS came up with a term "redundancy removal". Instead of replacing some buffs with others, they flat out removed almost all of it, leaving only useless / semi-useless crap.

So no, I dont expect ZOS to do anything good for NB. If something they will carefully look for nb skill & passives that still have some paint on them, so they could scrub as much of it to a point in which it will be barely holding together.

Heimpai

Chickf1lGay wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

Nightblades are getting their class overhaul next update. So cross your fingers its to your benefit.

At this point I’m more worried than looking forward to more nightblade adjustments.

Don’t worry, they’ll change shadowy disguise to a 2k max shield for 1.5 seconds and 10k mag cost

kind_hero

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

I was so surprised to see how quickly Wheeler passed through the nightblade changes (during the stream). Does he understand how many people are playing a nightblade and were expecting to hear developer comments about where they are going with this class? Sorry, but he looks like he lost his passion for this!

Nordic__Knights

kind_hero wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

I was so surprised to see how quickly Wheeler passed through the nightblade changes (during the stream). Does he understand how many people are playing a nightblade and were expecting to hear developer comments about where they are going with this class? Sorry, but he looks like he lost his passion for this!

They passed over so much it was a joke it wasn't a stream least not by professionals it was an lets do something to act like we live up to our word or more money will LEAVE

Mayrael

kind_hero wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can you please explain why these Nightblade nerfs are happening? They weren't covered in the Monday stream.

I was so surprised to see how quickly Wheeler passed through the nightblade changes (during the stream). Does he understand how many people are playing a nightblade and were expecting to hear developer comments about where they are going with this class? Sorry, but he looks like he lost his passion for this!

Yeah, their reasoning behind shade range nerf:
"It's a QoL improvement, because players now won't be confused by tooltip." - so we get it all wrong guys! It's a buff if you just read the tooltip, it's a nerf when you actually use the skill.

Kalante

The only changes nightblades needed was fixing cloak spam and either removing the stun or major defile from incap. Now the class is so butchered specially with this ult delay crap.

Ragnaroek93

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The only thing about NB that's ever needed adjustment is the spammable invisibility, which is also the only thing they've never touched. The feast-or-famine nature of Cloak has always been incredibly frustrating and polarizing for NB players and opponents alike.

Pretty much this. They should have adjusted Cloak a bit (and nerfing permacrouch in Cyro too for a bit) instead of nerfing everything which made the class fun to play.

Royalthought

^^
They already adjusted/Fixed cloak by adding a ton of counters.