What quality of life changes would you like to see to make Nightblades Viable again?

Thevampirenight

By the way people talk about them, its very clear Nightblade isn't in a good place and people don't want them for content or pvp battle grounds. That they need a rework to make them viable for things that way they are desirable for content.
Given Werewolves are getting their mojo back what changes can they do to give Nightblades their mojo back and make things better for them? Because right now its clear they do need these quality of life changes.
I'm not sure about mechanics or how bad it is though one of my character is a bow wielding, nightblade werewolf.
So what do they need to do to make Nightblades better?
What changes do they need to do to buff them up and make them something people actually want to be grouped up with?
How do you think they should go about it? How do they fix the Nightblade?

OlumoGarbag

Before the nerfs and before all skills got put on the same powerlevel, NBs had the most potent single target damage, while having really low AoE damage outside of bombing. Similar to Sorcs they were meant to burst down a single person one after another. Now they got put "on par" with other classes lowering their single target damage to the point of other classes without giving them their survivalbilty and aoe/dot pressure.

Nb need to be Top of all classes when it comes to single target burst again. Its their class design and what they are meant to be. Atm magsorcs, templars, dks, stamcros and stamdens have better single target damage then nightblade while also having more sustain/survivalbilty and aoe damage.

NBs need a big buff in single target damage again. Its not fair that the class that can only do single target damage, is one of the weakest at doing so.

Shadowasrial

They have been needing us more and more with every patch and now this change to surprise attack is the final nail in the coffin. Now we can’t even properly line up a stun anymore. If we accidentally flank a target at the wrong time now they get cc immunity when we try to line up the ulti. I don’t know how zos is so bad at creating a rogue style class.

Shadowasrial

Literally every other mmo Iv played has a better roque class than eso. And it’s sad. It used to be the best rogue Iv ever player to now the absolute worst. And quite honestly it’s depressing and really makes me not play the game. I have 8000 hours invested in my nb. I used to play for hours at a time and now I basicly just do my writs and sell stolen goods stockpiling rare mats until the day nbs are great again. All while playing other games because this one is no longer fun

shimm

Give ambush a stun or immobilize (like it used to have), give surprise attack a non-conditional de-buff and stun back to incap (regardless of ultimate amount).

Tommy_The_Gun

I think at this post, I would like to have Nightblade 2.0 class in new Chapter (call it whatever you want) and a class change token. It is obvious that base game classes will always be inferior to Paid-ones, thus I am willing to have a class change token, and use it to change to a DLC version of a NB class.

That way at least I won't lose my 7 years of progress & achievements.

colossalvoids

Not that much QoL but changes overall.

Nightblade was great, we just need lost things moved back into the kit like breach on SA, strife animation fix and vitality added back, no cast times on ultimates period, made grim/merciless not an empty cast and probably some kind of purge on cloak as medium nb pvp was killed off by evasion change which was saving glassy ones greatly same as light armour users, just lock it from heavy armour and voilà.
Not even talking about new stuff that could and should be done.

But it's all will come at the same time as frag stun or wings reflect - never, as team proven completely incompetent over class balancing and reinforcing their uniqueness. Just craft your wrists and move along.

Thevampirenight

Nightblade is the one class that could be a pure stamina set up or magicka set up I feel.
What I would like to see is each of their skills in each skill line being given a Magicka and Stamina morph.
They should have options for both for each skill.
Some of the abilities in the nightblade skill line could be made criminal acts just because of how dark and wicked some of the abilities are especially those in the Siphoning skill line.
Soul Shred and Malevolent offering should be criminal acts along with Aspect of Terror from the shadow skill line as it could be mistaken for a form of Necromancy.
I do think they need to buff their single target single abilties and I do think they need to give them some buffs for group play as well. I think they need to have both. They need something good to offer for group play.

IronWooshu

For 4 years Nightblades have been the kings of PVE and PVP, 4 years ZOS largely ignored them and now they are receiving justice. In time when other classes surpass them they will receive buffs here and there to bring them back up to speed where needed until then this is what every other class dealt with being backseat to the almighty Nightblade reign forever.

red_emu

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

Aleinzzs

Plain and simple. Dmg increase. Atm nb is outclassed by everything. They're assassins, they should have high single target damage and huge burst. The timer needs taken off incap.


And while I'd like shadow to have a purge of some sort due to all the dots, that could be very broken.


With the low survivability outside of porting back to your phantom and being able to stealth, it takes perfectly lined up combos to do any real damage. But to be honest those combos don't come close to a lot of other classes.

Half my kills are due to kjalnars nightmare(or however its spelled) if I dotn line up 4 light attacks, fear them, get the 5th light attack causing the dmg instead of the stun, while dropping arrow and ult. The dps generally isn't enough to take out any real set up pvp player.

Basically to play the class like its meant to be played you gotta give up survivability or dmg. Sadly if you build for damage you die in a few hits.

It shows that Zos has it half right. We die quick. We don't kill quickly unless it's a perfectly played out combo on an unsuspecting player. So the overall damage isn't there.


Inb4 some noob complains about how some nbs top the leaderboard in bgs... First it's a bg full of ppl trying to get the daily quest done. 2nd half those nbs are stmablades shooting you off a ledge or into lava.

Czekoludek

IronWooshu wrote: »

For 4 years Nightblades have been the kings of PVE and PVP, 4 years ZOS largely ignored them and now they are receiving justice. In time when other classes surpass them they will receive buffs here and there to bring them back up to speed where needed until then this is what every other class dealt with being backseat to the almighty Nightblade reign forever.

For year, not 4 years. And before and after that we had immortal vamp dks, fast and deadly sorcs with big shields, raid with only templars dds, year of "go necro or gtfo", etc. So what is your point, because Nb was good in past (like every other class) it should be [Snip] now?

[Edited for profanity bypass]

Raudgrani

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

They might have, but which classes use their burst heal? Magplar and Sorc, maybe Magcro? It's not like you see many stamina builds not running Vigor, maybe a few wardens complement Vigor with their shrooms, but that's about it.

Doing damage is and will be the problem for nightblades, healing nerf will affect everyone I suppose.

SidraWillowsky

Just revert the removal of Minor Berserk and Major Fracture. Make our spammable worth using again.

SidraWillowsky

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

I think that the lack of burst heal is actually an OK part of the class. We have access to an insane amount of HoTs. Every class has its risk factor, and that happens to be NB's.

Vortiene

I'd say make minor savagery/prophecy/brutality/sorcery normalized on classes into both phys and spell crit for nb/spec and spell/weapon power for dk and templar.

From there, defile on death stroke and silence on 120 ulti soul harvest. Major Sorcery/brutality moved to siphoning/leeching strikes.

And finally, make grim focus either undodgable or remove the delay on it when fired point blank.

Deathlord92

OlumoGarbag wrote: »

Before the nerfs and before all skills got put on the same powerlevel, NBs had the most potent single target damage, while having really low AoE damage outside of bombing. Similar to Sorcs they were meant to burst down a single person one after another. Now they got put "on par" with other classes lowering their single target damage to the point of other classes without giving them their survivalbilty and aoe/dot pressure.

Nb need to be Top of all classes when it comes to single target burst again. Its their class design and what they are meant to be. Atm magsorcs, templars, dks, stamcros and stamdens have better single target damage then nightblade while also having more sustain/survivalbilty and aoe damage.

NBs need a big buff in single target damage again. Its not fair that the class that can only do single target damage, is one of the weakest at doing so.

Couldn’t put it better myself.

olsborg

Give minor berserk back to focus. Major fracture back to surprise attack. Increase their selfhealing somehow, maybe give them minor mending as a buff too. Im fine with stamblades not being great at group synergies etc, but they really do need to be buffed for singletarget dmg and evasiveness/survivability (outside of cloak, wich isnt working most of the time anyway) Their entire burst combo is so easy to dodge too. Remove cast time from incap and soul siphon (the defencive morph)

BXR_Lonestar

A ranged morph for sneak attack that works with stamina specs.

Czekoludek

Better single target damage (not even highier but more reliable, with lags everyone have DPS loss but when you compare how it affects necro and how blade, difference is huge. Maybe bow gaining stack every second when you damage someone rather then from only LA weaving that is heavily affected by ping?) , maybe one damage synergy (not connected to the ultimate) that will add group utility to the class, no cast times, healing morph of cloak being magicka vigor rather then weak heal that is okayish only for 40k+ HP blades. Minor force on grim focus would be nice addition and a way to free some space on bar.

Starlock

My nightblade character never stopped being viable?

Maybe in this thread I should have put the words "such and such isn't viable." That word is misused so regularly it has become meaningless. Use the correct word - optimal - because that's what is really being asked about here. In which case, then it is critical to specify "optimal for what objective?" and "do you as a player care about min-maxing and optimizing?"

Overall, I'm pretty happy with where my nightblade is and I never care about min-maxing (defeats the point of playing an RPG in my mind). There aren't any glaring issues that jump out at me that relate directly to her class and the changes I would like to see relate to more fundamental game mechanics as a whole. For example, when I originally designed this character ice staves weren't tanking weapons and dual daggers worked much better than it does now for magicka characters. I would love to see a return to that in some way, but I make it work regardless for the content I play with her. She even tends to be my go-to PvP character when I can be bothered with that game mode because I can just hide and play support/heal for my team. I really miss the old "heal by hurting" flavor they used to have, though, and would like to see that return as it made nightblade healing more unique.

Cathexis

@Starlock I agree with you and I also believe that specific class hyperspecialization (such and such is best at aoe, such and such is best at single target, such and such is best at healing, etc etc) is a form of imbalance, not a form of balance.

Ratzkifal

Veiled Strike should move into Assassination so it benefits from Pressure Points (especially now that it does not require stealth anymore) and Blur moves into Shadow.

The Mirage morph of Blur should then be increased to Major Resolve instead of Minor and the Shadow Barrier passive gets changed to grant minor resolve at a longer duration, untangling it from using heavy armor.

Dark Veil (passive) gets scrapped completely. All affected Shadow skills get the extra 2 seconds added to their base duration. I don't really have an idea what kind of passive should take its place, but the passive design is lazy and could make room for something more intersting.

Catalyst gets changed to grant 20 Ultimate over a very short duration after drinking a potion rather than instantly, so in an instance where you are, say, 10 ultimate short of your ult, you do not waste any ultimate if you cast it immediately after drinking your potion.

madman65

What would help with my Nightblade is a way to use Major Brutality without having to interact with an enemy. I mean, the only way to use Major Brutality now is Drain power and it`s morphs, Hidden Blade and it`s morphs, Poitions(I use potions for other uses)that exposes you. I mean, most other builds can use the skill without interacting, Thanks for the thread.

Isarii

Since self-healing remains a concern for Nightblades, it would be interesting to see the class design lean a bit more into leechy / drainy / blood magicky themes - particularly since I think the original "high single target burst assassin" idea somewhat fell by the wayside as they decided to make classes more homogeneous in that area (which I personally agree with).

It'd be interesting to see a change like making Swallow Soul's damage increase baseline for Strife, then replacing it with a Stamina morph to give Stamblades a source of constant sustain while not making Magblades choose between increased damage and healing another member of their group.

Solariken

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

Not this.

I like the sweaty playstyle of glass cannon nightblade, where if I play well I get rewarded, but if I make a mistake I'm almost sure to die.

Nightblade needs some offensive potency restored so they are actually dangerous vs good players. Some easy ideas:

Killer's Blade/Impale should scale dynamically like other excecutes. It's very hard to land in PvP with such volatile health bars. It should also be the strongest execute in the game IMO.

Remove the cast time at least from Teleport Strike and Soul Siphon, if not all nightblade cast times.

Add at least 10% damage to Incap/SA. Seriously why is this weaker than Crescent Sweep.

max_only

Opposite resource siphoning attacks. Spend Magicka to gain stamina. Or spend stamina to gain Magicka.

Isarii

Solariken wrote: »

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

Not this.

I like the sweaty playstyle of glass cannon nightblade, where if I play well I get rewarded, but if I make a mistake I'm almost sure to die.

I do think this is part of the challenge with the Nightblade's design - it has two pretty distinct class fantasies rolled into one class (the stealthy assassin and the leeching blood mage) that are often at odds with one another. I don't think ZOS really knows which to lean into and sometimes you just end up with the class not fulfilling either - which is where we find ourselves now.

Thevampirenight

Isarii wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

Not this.

I like the sweaty playstyle of glass cannon nightblade, where if I play well I get rewarded, but if I make a mistake I'm almost sure to die.

I do think this is part of the challenge with the Nightblade's design - it has two pretty distinct class fantasies rolled into one class (the stealthy assassin and the leeching blood mage) that are often at odds with one another. I don't think ZOS really knows which to lean into and sometimes you just end up with the class not fulfilling either - which is where we find ourselves now.

Well I think they should lean into both. I mean why not do it? Make both very viable options for the class. Also want to keep this thread alive until they can at least do something with Nightblades to make them in a better spot. No class should be underperforming to all the other classes and game based abilties. Nightblades do need to be tuned up in some way or another to be on par with everything else.
It should be as good of an option as templars,and dragonknights.

VanLo83

They ought to have a look at the damage on skills first and foremost. Used to have some insane execute damage on my NB but I get the feeling that I'm being outpaced by even the Warden's Bear execute. I feel like a little peanut most of the time now. I found a way to make my NB work in PvE but I can assure you, I'm not using many native NB abilities anymore, just a leech on my front and backbar and the shadow + AoE ability and that's it. Rest of my damage comes from Undaunted/Destro staff.

[snip]

[edited for bashing]

ayu_fever

when wardens and necros stop selling really well i think NB will get a few buffs but i dont think NB will ever be on top like it was.