Some suggestions for Magicka Nightblade skills overhaul

ealdwin

Sahidom wrote: »

[*]Shadow

• Teleport Strike < moved from Assassination Tree (e.g. Shadow Step/Strike)
• Blur > moved from Assassination Tree

/quote]

These would be two interesting changes, that would be very welcome. One, the flashing through the shadows fits nicely with well... shadows. Two, this would afford two nice ways to increase defense with M. Resolve and M. Ward. Casting Teleport Strike would mean that you begin your offense with a boost to defense, almost as if you were embracing the full power of the shadow when opening your attack. This would also nicely boost Blur. One morph (Mirage) would become an incredibly powerful defensive ability, that could be of great use for tanks. The other morph (Escape) would be a potent get away tool, removing snares and providing defensive buffs. These two changes would make those skills potentially quite powerful.

Iskiab

I don’t think you can look at passives to judge a class. I think the devs fudge the numbers on abilities to try and negate them.

An example is NBs which I know best because it’s my main. Everything on a magblade seems to cost a little bit extra to negate Siphoning Strikes and the regen passive.

Another example is DKs with stone fist, it is supposed to be a spammable now but still costs a lot. I think to negate the earthen heart passive.

As a templar in pvp you can get away with 1600-2k mag regen, as a magblade you need 2k-2.4k.

If you think of passives as the devs trying to negate passives their choices make sense. It’s probably also why the best magblade builds use the least class abilities possible because they’re too expensive, so you can actually get the benefit of the passives.

Sylas_Orin

Iskiab wrote: »

I don’t think you can look at passives to judge a class. I think the devs fudge the numbers on abilities to try and negate them.

An example is NBs which I know best because it’s my main. Everything on a magblade seems to cost a little bit extra to negate Siphoning Strikes and the regen passive.

Another example is DKs with stone fist, it is supposed to be a spammable now but still costs a lot. I think to negate the earthen heart passive.

As a templar in pvp you can get away with 1600-2k mag regen, as a magblade you need 2k-2.4k.

If you think of passives as the devs trying to negate passives their choices make sense. It’s probably also why the best magblade builds use the least class abilities possible because they’re too expensive, so you can actually get the benefit of the passives.

I agree with you on that, but when you look at the bigger picture of Magblades, they have some really wonky skills and DoTs with headache-causing durations.

Grim Focus is the best example of what makes the Nightblade struggle. It requires pre-activation (which costs magicka), then five light attacks weaved between your skills (which the average Magblade main can easily duck up), then it requires another reactivation to fire the bow (which costs half the skill's magicka cost). Meanwhile Sorcerer's get Crystal Fragments, which they have a 33% chance of proccing higher damage and a cost reduction, Necromancers and Wardens get Blastbones and Shalks respectively, and while DKs and Templars lack heavy-hitting abilities like these, their more powerful and streamlined toolsets makes up for it.