Is it just me or NBs have completely been butchered?

nsmurfer

For last two months or so from my experience in pc/na both PvE and PvP, the number of NBs have substantially dropped.

In cyrodiil, few patches ago, there used to be a swarm of NBs everywhere. Right now, magblades are virtually non-existant except the last few Caluurion gankers. Stamblades for the most part are just as rare. I remember being quite a few variants of stamblades in Cyro, from rollerblades, bleedblades, brawlerblades, onslaught gankers, melee gankblades, SnB sNB, speedblades, snipers. Of all these types. The only type that has remained is snipers and the occasional DK wannabe dizzying swing spammers. Even then, they are one of the least seen specs right now and the remaining ones are hardly any threat.

In Bgs, it is even worse as even during the NB's best patches, they were easily the worst class to have in your team. Right now, having Nbs in a team substantially increases the chance of the losing. Only spec that is remotely useful are the healer magblades.

Havent done much Pve lately but from what I hear from guildies, Nbs have become the tank class and no longer a competitive DD class. Going forward, that seems to be the case even more, as magdks, stamdks, stamplar and magsorcs all got unique utility buffs that can only be given by DDs and thereby 4 slots of 8 dps slots in trials is already booked, leaving the remaining for stamcros, magplars and stamsorcs. Nbs lack both utility and raw dps to be a DD contender.

I am getting a feeling that NBs are largely becoming irrelevant as a class with pretty much the only thing that is keeping them on the scene being Cloak.

Thanatos_inside

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

Yuffie91

My magden wants a word

Huyen

Yuffie91 wrote: »

My magden wants a word

I second this. When you are done, my magden has a few things to say too.

GhostofDatthaw

Magdens strong atm

EmEm_Oh

The good nbs are around from all factions. The bad ones left.

I see many nbs in my faction on a regular basis when there are 2 bars or so.

In PvE, I see few though, but really depends on content being played.

Pauls

If you feel that your NB is weak in combat, convert it into diversant spec, burn sieges and camps, scout around to gather info, res dead when others cant reach them without cloak.

Zacuel

Agreed.

Fix the dks.

Cerotonin

I play StamBlade in PvP. I love the class itself, but I can benefit my teams better on other classes. MagBlade can support a team better, but it just feels slow to me.

People think Nightblades are OP because of cloak, but it’s easy to get pulled out of cloak. Sometimes I can land my full combo and actually assassinate lol.

SipofMaim

It's not just you. Nightblades got rekt.

susmitds

EmEm_Oh wrote: »

The good nbs are around from all factions. The bad ones left.

I see many nbs in my faction on a regular basis when there are 2 bars or so.

In PvE, I see few though, but really depends on content being played.

It is actually not that simple. The meta hopper baddies switched to magplar. Majority of the good NBs switched to other classes, mainly stamplar/stamcro or went on hiatus. The majority remaining ones are mostly bad PvPers in general that cant play without Snipe and Cloak. A very small minority are the top tier NBs that somewhat adapted.

As for the current state of NBs in PvP is that NB's offensive potential became mediocre after losing most of the buffs that made strong in the first place. Cast time and travel time on their primary burst combo made it way too slow and avoidable compared to other classes' option that is mostly off-GCD. They lost their unique CC as well.

As for PvE, the reason NBs were strong was because they had unique tools to play with, like stamina class execute. Now most other class has those as well on top of their own class unique tools.

Edaphon

NBs got slightly nerfed. Cry me a river.

hakan

Edaphon wrote: »

NBs got slightly nerfed. Cry me a river.

slight? right. loss of a lot of major/minor buffs and damage. and every patch it gets nerfes further more.

buttaface

In this clown car ride of a game, now is a great time to main a magblade. What else could they possibly do to it? Nowhere to go but up.

OTOH, they do make really strong tanks now and they do have a great burst "heal other" due to using health instead of mag. Eh.

SidraWillowsky

Yuffie91 wrote: »

My magden wants a word

(PvE here)

I actually switched from a stamblade main to a magden maybe five months ago. Back then, my stamblade had better DPS on the target dummy, but it lacked any sort of survivability. Plus, magden's just a lot more fun to play in general.

After Scalebreaker -and in the upcoming 5.2 patch- my magden is much, much stronger than my stamblade. Her DPS is a solid 5k higher than the stamblade on a 6 mil dummy, and it's not even funny how much better she is on the 21 mil and in general dungeons/trials. Outside of VERY specific situations (stationary fights like the mage in AA or the serpent in SO), my magden decimates my stamblade in terms of group performance.

And I'm not even saying that magden is all that great in group play! Stamblades are just THAT bad right now, at least in PvE. There's nothing left that makes the class fun, so it's not even worth playing for me.

Dojohoda

Yes, nightblade is now a shadow of its former self.

Iskiab

Most NBs I know quit or rerolled yea. There are still some kicking around.

Maybe because I’m a NB myself I usually get about 5 gank attempts a night in Cyro. A couple of weeks ago one was actually successful, I was shocked. Snipe desyncs are dumb.

IndianaJames7

Nightblades used to be one of if not the top class, after rebalance they are not. They definitely got a comparative nerf to other classes as of recent. And so all of the flavour of the week players left nightblades and switched to Templar’s for pvp and necros for pve. I don’t really mind personally, many of the good nightblades are still around in PvP, you just have less potatoes spamming snipe from stealth while you are trying to fight other players.

Cast time on incap really does suck though and makes it pretty much useless against a decent player in PvP. If nothing else they should change that.

chrightt

IndianaJames7 wrote: »

Nightblades used to be one of if not the top class, after rebalance they are not. They definitely got a comparative nerf to other classes as of recent. And so all of the flavour of the week players left nightblades and switched to Templar’s for pvp and necros for pve. I don’t really mind personally, many of the good nightblades are still around in PvP, you just have less potatoes spamming snipe from stealth while you are trying to fight other players.

Cast time on incap really does suck though and makes it pretty much useless against a decent player in PvP. If nothing else they should change that.

Pretty much this. It is not as if NBs are weak, they were OP so comparatively now when Templars got buffed so much and NB got nerfed you feel like it’s in a bad spot. The ones who still know how to play NBs well are definitely rolling in kills.

TheUrbanWizard

It feels bad when I see the class I loved in Cyrodiil now, I got a stamblade to 5 stars. On my stamplar, I see them go stealth, pop a stealth detect pot and legit feel bad when they die. Such a sorry class now.

azjuwelz

Assassins got pretty much assassinated.

I still main a stamblade but I've had to become very creative to make it work. There are 3 skills that had cool features stripped from them to be replaced by something stupid. (Incap, I'm looking mostly at you.) I'd like some cool features back. I agree they were OP before, but ZOS overdid the nerfing.

And yes, my alt is a magwarden, so it's interesting to note the differences.

Stebarnz

All depends on the player, I seen bad ones and good ones.

Also depends what build they come up against, some they are suited for others not so much.

NB are situational now, but hey if they don't want to fight then they don't have to, if you find a NB even with detect pots then they are bad.

Raideen

It's not just NB's, its the entirety of pvp. For some reason, folks are SEEMINGLY not happy with how the current system plays out.

Ysbriel

The Ganking days are over

spartaxoxo

Dojohoda wrote: »

Yes, nightblade is now a shadow of its former self.

Pun intended?

Uryel

Can't say much about PvP as I don't do that, but yeah, Nightblade has been butchered. And it's even worse if you're a Bosmer Nightblade.

Top assassination skill, Grim Focus, is a joke. It is now entirely unrelated to assassination, and it's not getting better in the next update. "I'm ready to attack my target and quietly take it out, so of course I'll buff myself with a skill that will gradually enhance my defense". Seems logical... Not.

Blur and its morph went from a passive +dodge chance, which made sense for a thief-styled character (ask every single game ever since pen and paper dungeon and dragon 1.0) to "yeah but passive dodge doesn't make sense so let's get some AoE damage reduction". Still makes some sense, but not as much in the "power fantasy" (to quote ZOS) of a stealthy character.

Veiled strike lost its debuff part. "But you can bring another skill to do that, and in a group there is always someone who brings an equivalent debuff so it's inconsequential". Except you only have 10 skills on your kit at a given time, and Nightblade's toolkit is more spread than any other class, and also you're not always in a group. Not a large groupe, at least. What other class has to bear with "we'll spread your kit because you need to rely on others in a group" ? That's right, none.

Shadow Cloak ? Had to be reworked recently because unless you had fully leveled the Shadow line and invested in passives, it lasted ONE SECOND, effectively making it entirely useless for new characters. Now it lasts 3 seconds but doesn't benefit from the passive. Huzzah. So, this skill is only useful to spam before attacking to guarantee a critical strike, or as a half decent heal if you pick its other morph. There are much better skills to take in your limited 10 spots kit, and its mechanics pretty much contradict the "power fantasy" of a stealthy character. Invisibility potions are MUCH more useful than this for hiding.

Path of darkness used to be AWESOME. An AoE that could both damage and heal over time with a morph, or have a large AoE damage with its other. Started as a normal sied AoE damage over time. Now ? Starts as a speed buff. Because apparently everyone and their mother want some speed buff. Then, morphs add EITHER damage or heal. Justification : "everyone has to bring something unique to the table". So I guess it's fine if the templar has a similarly functioning skill that does both damage and heal, on a larger area on top of that, so long as it's the Nightblade that gets nerfed.

Shades were always useless, damage-wise, and remain so, but their utility range for teleportation has been reduced.

Soul Siphon, the healing morph to Soul Shred, is worth mentionning as a skill that will get a buff in the next patch, if things haven't / do not change until then. It will get an increase in initial healing, to improve its "emergency survival tool" aspect. That's a good change, for once. Not especially needed, but good nonetheless.

Soul Strife has reduced utility as a self heal. It will either deal low damage and heal two targets, but the heal is based on damage dealt, so... Whelp... or it will deal decent damage, but have reduced healing effect and only affect self. So, would you rather do self-only lame heal, but decent damage, or lame heal on yourself and a friend, but lame damage ?

So far, Drain Power, the top siphoning skill, remains untouched by the nerf bat. It's still a pretty damn good skill. Its only recent modification was to remove the Major Sorcery buff from the stamina morph, which makes sense. I'm pretty worried about that one in the future.


And of course, if you're a Bosmer, you also lost every racial stealth bonus you might have had. My 5 years old Bosmer Nightblade had been created especially for that, now she's been butchered so much I can barely get around playing her at all.

[Edited to remove Sheogorath's influence on my spelling. At least some of it]

leepalmer95

Nb's as a class are just pointless now.

evoniee

when merciless has the travel time, nb already dead.

leepalmer95

Dizzy > surprise attack
FIghters guild fear > nb fear
Onslaught > incap

New bound arnaments is > relentless

The only thing they really have is cloak which is so easily countered and is shutdown completely by many builds.

Tommy_The_Gun

.
.
Yup...


And you know what is the saddest part ? Despite all that what OP pointed out, there are still people spamming NB nerf threads... I mean wow lol....

Deathlord92

I hope nb gets buff we really need it.