Stamina Nightblade issues in PvP

FrankonPC

TheFM wrote: »

I stopped when you called sorcs burst unavoidable when it is the most avoidable burst in the game xD.

Nightblade is fine atm, just because you cant murder everything in one hit anymore does not make you underpowered.

Unblockable curse, undodgeable/unblockable streak. You can guarantee your ult + curse + mages wrath every time, and on pc you can turn around fast enough to slap them with a frag.

FrankonPC

ayu_fever wrote: »

NB doesnt need any buffs.
cloak needs a few nerfs.
incap needs a few nerfs.

NB were on top for YEARS, and now it is time to let the rest of the classes have a few turns up top for a while.
NB were a thing for so long that millions of players made one (i did too), and they are FUN but they were broken. every patch nerfs NB more and more, which is healthy for the game because there needs to be variety in MMO.
so.... about those millions of shelved NBs? dont delete it. in a few years they will get a minor buff.

This shouldn't be a justified reason for adjusting a class. You should look at the top tier classes with top tier abilities and go "what can we do to X class to make them strong, but in their own way".

Currently there are quite a few strong classes, and giving nightblade a few buffs to bring them in line with the templars, wardens and necros of the world would be nice.

ZonasArch

SnikerPKK wrote: »

Hello everybody,
this thread aims to list and explain all of Stamina Nightblade issues in PvP many which also affect Magicka Nightblade more or equally as much.
Due to the newly introduced "ability standardization" I will also compare skills/passives and explain the disadvantages of being a Nightblade compared to almost every other class in the game.
To hopefully make the combat devs see it and understand the issue with the class/meta more.
If you know of any more issues that have not been listed here then go on and comment them down below, we can discuss anything here.

Feel free to cry your souls out about how badly Nightblades have been massacred as this post serves as a safespace for all hurt cloakblades.
We dont judge here, just insult understand eachother.

A NOTE FOR ALL YOU FORUM WARRIORS: I AND MANY OTHERS WILL DISCREDIT/IGNORE EVERY COMMENT OF USERS WHO CLEARLY DID NOT READ THE ENTIRE POST.




Lack of damaging buffs/debuffs on skills
Compared to other stamina specs, stamina nightblades are in a huge disadvantage when it comes to having their damage amplified.
Stamina Wardens have Major Fracture built on top of their offGCD burst ability that is also AoE, Stamina Necromancers have Major Defile built on top of their burst ability that is also offGCD, given Major Defile is a pressure debuff but debuffing healing results in doing more damage in the longer run and preventing your enemy from recovering is very important especially this patch where healing is extremely overtuned.
Mark surely exists but for how empty the skill is it's not worth wasting your barspace for it if you could put a much more impactful skill there such as: Shadow Image, Shuffle, Leeching, Executioner or Camohunter basically provides about the same amount of damage but also gives you Major Savagery, 3% more weapon damage and doesn't have to be reapplied constantly. Also applying the skill leaves a huge mark on your opponent making you even more predictible with your next move.
The Major Berserk part from Reapers mark also does not work with how Nightblade plays as you will never be able to take advantage of the buff. Cause as soon as a Stamblade kills a player it needs to escape and reset which takes much longer than 5seconds.

When you compare Nightblade and Warden further you're going to notice an even bigger gap between how much damage the classes can put out.
For example Warden receives Minor Berserk on Bird of Prey and Minor Vulnerability on a Dot which is arguably one of the strongest damage debuffs in CP PvP because of how damage formulas work in this game.
Now before you say that Nightblades also have Minor Vulnerability on a skill, I have to stop you there because ambush in comparison to Growing Swarm is a super buggy, telegraphed, clunky and impactless skill that no build usually has barspace for. It slows down your gameplay and opens a huge burst window for your enemy to punish.
Here is an example of that:

Keep in mind that ranged classes can punish you even harder for using this skill, which can turn this skill into a deathtrap.
The worst thing about this skill is the charge up animation before you jump on your opponent.

About Death Strokes 20% damage buff, I will mention it later and explain how terrible it currently is.




Class being very turn based with no good stun available
In comparison to any other class who also tries to kill with Burst, Nightblades burst ability is very lackluster.

The biggest advantage of Wardens/Necromancers/Sorcerers burst is that their burst abilities are offGCD which means a player can put out much more damage within 1 GCD bringing him much closer to executing their target after a combo. These skills are also undodgeable.
Other classes who do not posses an offGCD ability have been previously brought in line with a stun on their Ultimates such as Leap or Incapacitating Strike which allowed for a further follow up before executing.
While Dragonknights still posses such an ability, it was ripped off from Nightblades kit making their burst easily avoidable and in majority of situations just not enough.

With the class' nature being bursty and having no pressure outside of it's burst abilities, it's important that the Nightblade lands some or all of it's burst skills, otherwise he/she wont be able to kill their target. Yet that is simply impossible when after each GCD your enemy has another GCD to react to the burst thrown at him.
To land your Death Stroke, Grim Focus and to execute you need at least 3 to 4 GCDs. After your ultimate has been thrown out to take advantage of the damaging buff your enemy has whole 3 to 4 seconds reaction window in which he can simply just start holding block negating all of your damage, rolling once or twice or activating any of his recovering skills.
This whole issue only gets much bigger considering Death Stroke is delayed by 400ms and Grim Focus by 270ms(due to it being a slower projectile).
3 seconds in a fight feels like minutes, months sometimes years.
No other burst class has to deal with it as they can simply line up their burst ability with their Ultimate resulting in sometimes gigantic damage output.

The delay on both your burst skills is also the reason why Mass Hysteria/Turn Evil(Both AoE Fear abilities) are so bad on Nightblades currently. Breaking Free takes 40-75ms which after you can instantly start holding block or start rolling making the follow up after a Fear impossible on a player who knows what he is doing.
Offbalance gained from Tactician is the only stun that Stamblades crutch on currently and with next patch changes to offbalance, the future looks even worse for Stamblades as their success currently relies on how strong Offbalance is. A mechanic that isn't even included in their kit.

Nightblade currently feels much like playing Pokemon with your enemy, you do one skill, he does one skill, you do one skill, he does one skill, you do one skill, he does one skill, etc.
All the issues mentioned above is also the reason why the 20% damage buff from Death Stroke is currently so impactless, as you either use it to execute your enemy after an offbalance heavy attack into Incap or don't use it at all. All of this is extremely unhealthy and is not how the class is supposed to be played.




Skill/Passives Comparisons and how impactless Nightblades kit is
Let's take a look at the Assassination Tree and compare it with the Two-Hander Weapon Tree, Zenimax said Class skills should always be better than Weapon skills right?

Incapacitating Strike vs Onslaught
Onslaught's tooltip is bigger by roughly 8%, the debuff effect applies on the initial hit and the skill allows you to not invest anything into penetration gaining absurd amounts of more damage over Incapacitating Strike.

Incapacitating Strikes damage debuff does not apply on the initial hit, the skill animation becomes seemingly slower at 120 Ultimate and the skill Silences which prevents you from fearing your enemy making the skills which provides no stun simply better. SILENCE IS A TERRIBLE STUN PLEASE REMOVE IT.
The Reave passive also only equals to roughly 10 to 30 regen in a 5 minute or longer fight.


Killer's Blade vs Executioner
Executioner has a higher base tooltip, higher damage build up, has a smoother animation and is much easier to execute with considering how strong healing which makes it so easy to escape the 25% HP mark.
Killer's Blade's healing is extremely pathetic and underwhelrming too, making this skill pointless to equip over Executioner.
And before you write that it can be equipped on a Dual-Wield frontbar build I want to ask you one thing: Who in their right mind plays Dual-Wield frontbar this patch? Off-Meta builds are completely irrelevant to me as they do not represent the strength of a class.


Executioner vs Battle Rush
Considering that Killer's Blade is a much worse execute ability than Executioner(The 2h Execute) putting this passive already in a disadvantage over Battle Rush.
Battle Rush procs off of any kill and 30% more recovery for 10 seconds is much more sustain Fthan some pathetic 2k stamina.


Now this trend continues on the Magicka side too for example when we compare Elemental Drain to Mark you can see how empty Mark is, while Elemental Drain also provides a huge sustain buff, Mark is simply empty. And, how will you even manage to take advantage of the Mark healing if your class doesn't have enough damage to kill anything over 30k HP which seems to be the vast majority of the playerbase nowadays.

Overall the Assasination Tree's passives are underwhelming, take for example Master Assassin which it's only redeeming value is having a atmospheric sounding name, the 10% weapon damage out of stealth is completely irrelevant with how little damage it provides to your combos.
And while other classes receive passives such as Advanced Species, Rapid Rot or Amplitude, Nightblade gets Pressuring Points... Which it's purpose is to...? Be completely meaningless to Nightblades?
Even Major Savagery on skills such as FOO from DK which gives more crit chance than this passive with the entirety of Assassination tree slotted.
This leaves us with only one decent passive in this Tree for both the Magicka and Stamina spec, which is hemorrhage which the Templars and now Wardens also own now
With the damage buff of this passive not even being any good due to the existance of Transmutation or Impreg which is widely considered the best defensive set currently with whole 30% critical damage mitgation. Nowadays you have builds running around who completely mitgate the entirety of your critical damage and this passive does not help.
At least change it to be critical healing too like the Wardens will have next patch....

Now when you look at the Damage buff/debuff issue above you can also safely say that Nightblade is the only class without a single impactful damage amplification method that wouldn't starve the user of barspace and potentially ruin the functionality of the build.




Offensive windows and delayed damage
Stamblade works much differently with it's offensive windows than any other class, while other classes have their offensive windows judged by how much damage they can take on face to face, Stamblades offensive window depends on how much pressure it has on the enemy.
No defile on Incapacitating Strike and the current tank meta where people can simply go above 27k HP and not care about a Stamblades burst makes it is close to none which makes the delays put on Incapacitating Strike and Grim Focus much worse. Stamblades need to hit their burst and establish dominance over their enemy quicker than ever before and need much more damage to do so as well. And that is in the current patch close to impossible. Holding up the pressure without Defile or a decent stun makes holding that pressure impossible as well. 1 roll, 1 good block or 1 vigor completely negates the entirety of a Nightblades kit.

It can go 2 ways: after a landed Incapacitating Strike or Onslaught that's when your offensive window ends as you fail to put out enough damage to put your enemy on defense OR your Offbalance Heavy Attack into Ult near oneshots your enemy. Is this any healthy ?


For now I will leave it at that and probably update it with more issues in the future. DISCUSS!

Whether people agree with you or not, at least you're here debating and arguing for a buff instead if needing everyone else. I'd like to see more of these posts.

As for your points, maybe I'm not PvP hardcore enough, but the character I have the most success these days in PvP is one of my stamblade in cyrodiil and the other one in bgs. I'm having a blast with them and I'm feeling at least competent. Maybe it suits my playstyle better than other classes, but I'm not too bothered by it right now. Then again, I play off meta builds and I try to win with the unexpected, rather than by pure skills since I'm not that good and my latency is actually pretty bad...

And Stam gap closer sucks but they are fixing the animations and stuff for u25, so there's hope, and lotus fan is awesome even after the nerf for magblades, because of the aoe dot effect. So helpful.

oXI_Viper_IXo

ayu_fever wrote: »

incap needs a few nerfs.

-Removed Major Defile
-Increased cost
-Removed stun
-Added cast time
-Added moronic silence at 120

and you STILL think it needs more nerfing? Crazy...

Stebarnz

Vyvrhel wrote: »

Stebarnz wrote: »

Someone said you cant gank someone from stealth unless a potato since 2017, that's how it should be!

Just wrote rather long reply on that but it dissapeared, so I will make it shorter next time: in all due respect, if NB is not the invisible master of high burst damage (I can understand that for sure since this is something people hate in PvP) what is your idea about the class role, PvP and overall. What shall a NB excell at. What shall be the class speciality in combat.

Top question!

Pve doesn't matter as this game has devolved into a dps race in every bit of pve content.

PVP id love to be more of rock paper scissors to bring some tactical play, when you get a zerg/group running you have tanky type up front to absorb the main hits, then the healers type around for heals buffs/debuffs then range type archer and mage tend to make the back line so...

Dependent on how you prefer to play of course 1 way could be a high damage long range archer type who can relocate quickly to provide range support or a melee type who would specialise in harassing back lines of the opposing group, interrupting cohesion burning siege etc.

In small scale my idea of rogue / assassin type would be supporting the other 2-3 players with a burst of damage when an enemy is low or trying to reposition or target the healer before they can give the clutch heal to save someone.

Please note, not to appear unseen from stealth and totally one shot someone then disappear then repeat and be an unstoppable killing machine, or guess what, there will be no other variants and everyone will be a rogue/assassin type and that's always fun!

I understand this is not how eso is at this point so this is a wish list. To be honest in the current state of the game im pretty much past caring and ready to throw in the towel, so my passion to try and help people see the big picture effect when they say, 'I want the highest burst damage with invis so no one can stop me and an unstoppable teleport out of danger mechanic then I wanna be able to re-engage when I want and do it all over again'. Is pretty much gone.

Id love a balanced game where there is class identity and promoted teamplay where fights can sway either way with an act of tactical genius or skill, however.... RIP. Ill build a tanky damage dealer that's manoeuvrable and can self heal which this game currently allows. Play defensive and LOS around stuff until my ult or burst combo is up then turn and burst then go back to defensive LOS'ing. Yawn.

Joy_Division

Curious_Death wrote: »

A nice written NB's buff thread. Where are now class repsresentatives ?

Before NBs had all their multi-functionality skills nerfed and kit basically taken away and redesigned (in short when they were fun and effective to play), we all stressed that NB was the model that ZOS should use to update/reform the other classes. Just because the reps hear you loud and clear, doesn't mean that's going to make a change in the patch notes.

I would also add the whole idea of standardizing everything has hurt the NB class the most because that class plays very differently and thus needs unique skills to complement the strengths/weaknesses.

Vyvrhel

SnikerPKK wrote: »

For now I will leave it at that and probably update it with more issues in the future. DISCUSS!

Let me help you a bit with the issues:

Shuffle
Shroud yourself in mist to gain Major Evasion, decreasing damage from area attacks by 25% for 20 seconds. Each piece of Medium Armor worn removes and grants immunity to snares and immobilizations for 1 second.

Phantasmal Escape
Surround yourself in a phantasmic aura to gain Major Evasion, reducing damage from area attacks by 25% for 26 seconds. Activating this ability removes all snares and immobilizations from you and grants immunity to them for 4 seconds.

Oh, sure, and you get the Pressure Points passive bonus if you slot the class skill.

The_Lex

The worst thing for this class was the standardization garbage they've been doing. And everyone thought that @ZOS_Gilliam would be good for the combat team. lol. I can't believe that I reminisce about the Wrobel years as being better.

Shaloknir

Nice post from @SnikerPKK. Well written and good analysis.

mb10

The_Lex wrote: »

The worst thing for this class was the standardization garbage they've been doing. And everyone thought that @ZOS_Gilliam would be good for the combat team. lol. I can't believe that I reminisce about the Wrobel years as being better.

@The_Lex im in complete agreement lmao we all really thought the Wrobel period was bad.

This is the absolute worst combat has ever been and seems to get worse and worse. I really wonder how some of these people are still in a job

Cerotonin

I haven’t played my StamBlade actively in awhile. Many StamBlades I’ve seen are focused into the snipe-spam form of gameplay. It’s sort of an annoying form of gameplay, but I can understand why people resort to it. I sometimes play MagBlade, but it’s also clunky and underwhelming.

The Death Stroke cast time is ridiculous and is probably most reliable if it’s the first hit with your cloak active. The silence is useless against Stamina DPS and compensates the enemy with the CC immunity. Overall burst is bad since it can easily be broken. You can pull off a faster kill on a Stamina Warden than the class based-off assassination.

I think I might just use my Nightblade for crafting surveys since it has the Dark Brotherhood shadow rider (?) passive and cloak to avoid overland aggro. At least that’s the most useful I can make my StamBlade for now.

Parasaurolophus

mb10 wrote: »

The_Lex wrote: »

The worst thing for this class was the standardization garbage they've been doing. And everyone thought that @ZOS_Gilliam would be good for the combat team. lol. I can't believe that I reminisce about the Wrobel years as being better.

@The_Lex im in complete agreement lmao we all really thought the Wrobel period was bad.

This is the absolute worst combat has ever been and seems to get worse and worse. I really wonder how some of these people are still in a job

I would not be so categorical. Standardization of skills is the right thing, but for some reason it has not become a panacea and there is still no balance in this game. If we talk about NB, oh, I would first nerf heavy meta and heal. I would have looked. And then the nerf combo shulks + dawn and over survivability dk. And only then would he slowly buff nb.

exeeter702

Hey alright..

Fata1moose

Nice post, although it's not just a problem in PvP but across the board NBs are in a really bad place right now. Really not viable at all, I don't care if they're the top performing class but they at least need to be brought up to par with the mid tier damage dealers.

Thanatos_inside

just change class as me/ zos dont care about nb and cast time. Its dead class. RIP 50 rank

Nivell

I was going to change class to stamblade ... They always seem so powerful.
My stamplar looks like nothing compared to stamblade even though i can kill them.

However reading this i am thinking if i should stop switching to NB !

Decisions ....

Vyvrhel

mb10 wrote: »

This is the absolute worst combat has ever been and seems to get worse and worse. I really wonder how some of these people are still in a job

It is almost impossible to balance a class based system so they have a pretty hard task. I understand they are scared to boost NB damage but maybe they shoud start boosting the defences. Take that Phantasmal escape as an example.
What if they changed duration down to 15 seconds but gave it the imunity to CC for the whole duration plus, say 5 seconds of speed? And so on.

Helgi_Skotina

I tried to kill a PvE tank for 2 hours. 60+k HP and huge heals. The only thing i suceeded - he left without finishing his quest. there really should be no builds inkillable 1vs1.

ZonasArch

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

I tried to kill a PvE tank for 2 hours. 60+k HP and huge heals. The only thing i suceeded - he left without finishing his quest. there really should be no builds inkillable 1vs1.

If they don't die, and you don't die, that's true balance for PvP.

Ilithyania

Agree with OP. nerf hammer was a bit to hard

Narvuntien

Okay i see your point... in that i have adapted and just run executioner and onslaught as my burst damage skills. I don't even run supprise attack any more infact i don't have any spamable at all once i exhaust my burst i have to run and hide. I use posions to prevent my opponent healing.

I use reapers mark but for sniping, its easy to pick up a kill sniping then flip bars to take advantage of the short window of extra damage.

Would be nice if ambush wasn't so buggy. Just jump me to person regardless of how far they also jump in the time i use the skill. I need it to close distance but when it can't even do that it sucks.

Considering i have 300ms of ping that 50-75ms stuff is completely meaningless to me.

Overall i spend my time doing other things in Cryo like commanding, manning seige and sneaking behind the zerg to find the camp

Tattooo

Joy_Division wrote: »

Curious_Death wrote: »

A nice written NB's buff thread. Where are now class repsresentatives ?

Before NBs had all their multi-functionality skills nerfed and kit basically taken away and redesigned (in short when they were fun and effective to play), we all stressed that NB was the model that ZOS should use to update/reform the other classes. Just because the reps hear you loud and clear, doesn't mean that's going to make a change in the patch notes.

I would also add the whole idea of standardizing everything has hurt the NB class the most because that class plays very differently and thus needs unique skills to complement the strengths/weaknesses.

I am honestly devastated that Zenimax never listened to people like you.

Rake

why is the creator of this tread silenced

Shadowasrial

Iv lost all faith in our class rep and zenimax to fix this class

TX12001rwb17_ESO

They need to restore the ORIGINAL Assassination Ultimate, where it's damage scaled the higher your ultimate was, at least NBs would have a chance to kill their opponents but they would have to work for it by building up 500 ultimate.