Cheap NB rework

Suligost

Since I still think that going with Bloodzerker/blood mage and skill lines basing with health as reasource pool would be most unique and fresh for the game itself and class I had yet another cheaper idea for NB. Im not rly write it for myself, just hope some ZoS write down those ideas on some papper with "maybe" in title.

Basically I notice that struggling with overnerfing in NB case is simply caused by his dumb clunky cloak. When he was in original state he could do one shoot-no risk, now cloak was nerfed and yet that was still not enough, so they took most of his bufffs. I myself play on dark cloak and hate that class must suffer because of this cloak. My suggestion is to completely REMOVE it.

Yes, remove it and make invisible work for NB a bit different. Access to invsi will widely available via vampire + potions, so dont scream about identity or your dream of being assasin and ending as free AP.

New idea of NB would rely on his class "under condition" - invisibility, so:

• Shadow cloak - base healing working as old dark cloak (no scalling), so around 1500 + your light/heavy attacks have 15% chance to turn you into shadow (invisible) for 8 seconds,
• Dark cloak - a bit higher scaling then current one.

• Piercing mark: 60% base healing/major fracture and breach, no longer you can see the target but you receive minor berserk against the marked target and after his death keeping it for 8 seconds,
• Reaping mark: 60% healing/major fracture and breach, no major berserk but upon death of marked target you go invisible for next 8 seconds.

• Master Assassin: keep increased wp/spl dmg and remove boost of sneak stun. Instead of it you will receive quaranteed critical strike after leaving invisibility.

As you can see these changes will no longer give you class guaranteed invis but overall if you combine it with proper potion and vampire, you will be stronger overall in a fight and still be sort of assasin but no risk for old NB that kill efortlessly.

Sosderosii

Could be as simple as Shadowy Disguise makes the nightblade invisible while dodge rolling.
Using the ability will make the nightblade invisible while charging his next heavy attack(won't work for 5 seconds if the heavy attack misses).

OWLTHEMAD

This feels like a false flag nerf nightblade thread imo.

Just joking,

But seriously shadowy disguise is probably the one skill and morph in the nightblade tool kit that doesnt need to change. Especially with easy access invis becoming an option for vampires.

My reasoning:
Point 1
The skill has tons of counters including 3 world/guild skills, at least 1 class ability, any aoe damage abilities, potions, certain passives and more.
Point 2
Inspite of this, its function is extremely versatile, having uses for pve, (overland and endgame) farming/grinding, and pvp in and out of combat.
Point3
Ganking is a valid playstyle. Cheesy, but it does require more than a fair bit of skill. Cloak doesnt allow you to instant delete people. Skill, positioning, setup and overpowered damage based sets and abilities do. Ganking isnt effortless. And if you can 'kill effortlessly' on a nightblade, you can do it just as effortlessly on any other class. You just lose the appeal and fun of the sneaky sneak playstyle.
Point 4
Any nightblade that can kill 'effortlessly' can be killed just as effortlessly by anyone who can be bothered to slot the myriad of hard counters to shadowy disguise available.
Point 5
Here is a direct disagreement to your proposed change in particular. Having invisibility implemented in the manner that you propose defeats the point of having it available at all. You become subject to rng, or alternatively have it as a 'reward' for a successful kill. Dont really need it after the fact, and if you are subject to rng the entire class playstyle loses its strategic nature in favor of a reactionary one, only you are not reacting to your opponent, but your own rng. This would not be rewarding in the least. Additionally your proposed rework would be beneficial (if you can call it that) only to pvpers and would not benefit pve players in the slightest.

Iskiab

I’ve noticed that PTS .3 is what goes live. The .4 is mainly bug fixes and small tweaks, then the next week it’s released. I think what you see is what you get when it comes to NB.

kypranb14_ESO

[snip]

A 15% chance to go invisible on light attacks would be awful. Going invisible on on a targets death would be just as awful.

Having Minor Berserk back would be great, but it's just a dream. Albeit a wet one.

[edited for baiting]

OWLTHEMAD

kypranb14_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

A 15% chance to go invisible on light attacks would be awful. Going invisible on on a targets death would be just as awful.

Having Minor Berserk back would be great, but it's just a dream. Albeit a wet one.

For better or worse, it seems they do listen to their players, but they seem too far more often than is healthy listen to the minority opinion. Democracy at its finest, so if you have a dissenting oppinion about anything i recomend speaking up and speaking loud.

OWLTHEMAD

I have no problem with Op's perspective on the issue, hes right in that our availability of cloak is a big reason we suffer so many nerfs. I even commend thinking outside the box for a solution, however i think the one proposed here could have stood some more time in the oven. The veiw point behind it is far too narrow. And unfairly punishes a skill that is honestly balanced. His solution is basically the same as the solution for dk wings and nobody was happy about how that turned out (except maybe magblades ironically)

Id hate for cloak to get the dk wings treatment. DK Wings actually was unbalanced, but really only needed minor changes to fix. Instead it was deleted and replaced with something thoroghly less iconic and interesting.

Kadoin

kypranb14_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

A 15% chance to go invisible on light attacks would be awful. Going invisible on on a targets death would be just as awful.

Having Minor Berserk back would be great, but it's just a dream. Albeit a wet one.

There is already the shadowstrike CP passive, I use it on all my chars. It's great for 1vX

fred4

Suligost wrote: »

Since I still think that going with Bloodzerker/blood mage and skill lines basing with health as reasource pool would be most unique and fresh for the game itself and class I had yet another cheaper idea for NB. Im not rly write it for myself, just hope some ZoS write down those ideas on some papper with "maybe" in title.

Basically I notice that struggling with overnerfing in NB case is simply caused by his dumb clunky cloak. When he was in original state he could do one shoot-no risk, now cloak was nerfed and yet that was still not enough, so they took most of his bufffs. I myself play on dark cloak and hate that class must suffer because of this cloak. My suggestion is to completely REMOVE it.

Yes, remove it and make invisible work for NB a bit different. Access to invsi will widely available via vampire + potions, so dont scream about identity or your dream of being assasin and ending as free AP.

New idea of NB would rely on his class "under condition" - invisibility, so:

• Shadow cloak - base healing working as old dark cloak (no scalling), so around 1500 + your light/heavy attacks have 15% chance to turn you into shadow (invisible) for 8 seconds,
• Dark cloak - a bit higher scaling then current one.

• Piercing mark: 60% base healing/major fracture and breach, no longer you can see the target but you receive minor berserk against the marked target and after his death keeping it for 8 seconds,
• Reaping mark: 60% healing/major fracture and breach, no major berserk but upon death of marked target you go invisible for next 8 seconds.

• Master Assassin: keep increased wp/spl dmg and remove boost of sneak stun. Instead of it you will receive quaranteed critical strike after leaving invisibility.

As you can see these changes will no longer give you class guaranteed invis but overall if you combine it with proper potion and vampire, you will be stronger overall in a fight and still be sort of assasin but no risk for old NB that kill efortlessly.

Remove on demand cloak? Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Terrible idea. When it comes right down to it, I have no problem with NB being relatively weak. I main a magblade. Cloak is the single reason why I play that class. Your perspective on open world and IC is so different from every other class, due to that skill. If it wasn't for that, I'd jump ship. What would be the point of being a nightblade? No, I'm not talking about ganking. I'm talking about the movement speed, how unobstructed your game is and the control you have over fights as long as you judge it right. I'm talking about the freedom to ignore players and NPCs alike, in keeps and in IC. One of the reasons I always return to my magblade is that she can simply bypass a lot of extraneous crap I don't care for.

Also: Vampires having access to invisibility isn't the same thing as cloak when you look at the implementation details. It's merely what everyone thought, before they saw those details.

fred4

Furthermore everything that happens randomly (outside of maybe crit) is arguably bad design. Things that you can control lead to good, skilled and intricate gameplay. Things that happen randomly broadly speaking lead to dumbed down gameplay where you'll randomly win or lose. This is one of the reasons people argue against procs. A 15% chance for invisibility that you can't control is terrible.

You clearly don't play NB when you equate invisibility potions or the vamp invisibility with cloak. Potions and vamp work as mechanisms to completely disengage. The only class I routinely see using invis potions is sorc. They streak first, then they use them, because the potions are terribly unreliable while you're still close enough to be knocked out of invisibility.

There are degrees of how nightblades use cloak. Stamblades already have to use a mix and match playstyle that includes cloak, roll dodges (on the bow bar), sprint and Shadow Image. They cannot sustain either cloak or infinite roll dodges. While magblades can sustain cloak for longer, most cannot perma-cloak. Whenever I see a YouTube build that promises that, it's usually quite far off the mark. There is a very good reason for that. You sacrifice a lot of damage to get the requisite sustain. However, if you do so, you become someone like me and you gain some truly unique advantages, such as the ability to loiter around flags, without NPC guards detecting you, while remaining ready to pounce at +25% speed on players arriving at or leaving the flag. It's this unobstructed movement advantage, which I already mentioned, that transforms the game for me. No, this is not OP. It's simply a unique playstyle for which you pay quite a high price, due to the sustain investment.

The point I wanted to make is that invisibility already runs a spectrum, resulting in a number of distinct and fun builds that play differently. Your changes would cause a lot of collateral damage. Please stop.

fred4

Lastly, your proposed changes are not at all cheap. The title is misleading. With all the things that can currently knock you out of cloak, it's important that you can recast cloak at will. Your 8 seconds of cloak will be about as useful as invisibility potions in the middle of combat. That is to say: Not at all useful. Every current cloak counter would need to be reviewed. Knowing how things go, this would take several patches to get right. More than likely it would never be fully rebalanced, leaving us with just another broken iteration of the game.

Gilvoth

remove cloak?
Horrible idea, i hope it never happens.
im here for stealth gameplay, and cloak is fine as it is. it's been fine now for the past 7 years, does not need changed.

Suligost

Are cloak fans aware that after new healing nerf you will be even more useless, as you will struggle even more with heal and on top of that everybody gonna have more critical resistance?

Xvorg

Suligost wrote: »

Are cloak fans aware that after new healing nerf you will be even more useless, as you will struggle even more with heal and on top of that everybody gonna have more critical resistance?

Shadowy disguise is the least changed skill in all NB set. If there's a reason for that it is because it works as intended.

Trying to fix what is not broken is always a stupid move. SD does what it's supposed to do. Period.

OWLTHEMAD

Suligost wrote: »

Are cloak fans aware that after new healing nerf you will be even more useless, as you will struggle even more with heal and on top of that everybody gonna have more critical resistance?

Um, no, quite the opposite actually. With healing being nerfed being able to slip away and sip on some regen or vigor unmolested will be invaluable.

Likewise cloak users are used to not over relying on heals.

Chelo

Suligost wrote: »

Since I still think that going with Bloodzerker/blood mage and skill lines basing with health as reasource pool would be most unique and fresh for the game itself and class I had yet another cheaper idea for NB. Im not rly write it for myself, just hope some ZoS write down those ideas on some papper with "maybe" in title.

Basically I notice that struggling with overnerfing in NB case is simply caused by his dumb clunky cloak. When he was in original state he could do one shoot-no risk, now cloak was nerfed and yet that was still not enough, so they took most of his bufffs. I myself play on dark cloak and hate that class must suffer because of this cloak. My suggestion is to completely REMOVE it.

Gotta stop you there buddy... The only reason I pick a NB 6 years ago was to be invisible on command. I been playing MMOs since 2004 and always been the invisible Assassin/Rogue.

Just because you Skyrim players (and also ZO$) are new to this genre, doesn't mean the genre is new... Every MMO out there have an invisible class, it's been like this for years...

nesakinter

NB didn't nerfed because of invisiblity. It got nerfed because of Dark Cloak using Bleedblades. Between late 2017 to early 2019, the duel and small-scale scene was dominated by stamblades who had crazy resetting potential with Dark Cloak, insane presure with master axes and the original Incap was broken af.

Brawlerblades should not have been a thing in the first place. NB is a stealth class first, everything else next.

ZOS_Volpe

Greetings,

As this thread has begun to derail, we've decided to close it down. For further posts be sure to stay constructive and respectful with the Forum Rules in mind.

Thank you for understanding.