ZOS: Please consider also buffing the Swallow Soul morph of Strife along with Funnel Health

Langeston

I think a simple increase to the base damage and percent healing done by Swallow Soul would be a very welcome improvement to PVP Magblades.



[edit]
Also, the description of the ability says:

Steal an enemy's life force, dealing 763 Magic Damage and healing you for 35% of the damage inflicted every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

as such, it is definitely not a projectile — in fact it's pretty much as close to being the polar opposite of a projectile as you can get.

DUTCH_REAPER

MNB defintely needs some much overdue love. Unfortunately now that you posted on the forums to buff mnb they are going to nerf them again. lol

xI_The_Owl_Ix

MagNBs are probably the worst class/spec to play in PvP right now. 100% agree tht they need a buff.

Mayrael

Haha you really think ZOS would actually buff magblades? They are blind to it's issues. They have made their major class balancing patch, postponing NBs and sorcs, and now it will never happen, all we can expect are nerfs covered with bug fixes and cosmetical changes.

DUTCH_REAPER

The amount of MNBs in Cyrodil has drastically decreased. mine is a mule atm ....still....waiting...biding his time. its been a long time since i thought "Oh crap a MNB is hitting me!!"

Faulgor

There's no reason to stick with the original healing nerf to Strife as long as skills like Puncturing Sweeps exist.

exeeter702

Give minor vit back to swallow soul or disallow it to override itself with weaker instances of the hot when you hit someone for less one second after you crit them for a bigger amount.

ExistingRug61

exeeter702 wrote: »

Give minor vit back to swallow soul or disallow it to override itself with weaker instances of the hot when you hit someone for less one second after you crit them for a bigger amount.

Or just decouple the heal from the damage done (and let the HoT independently crit) so that you don't have the potential for this variance.

JayKwellen

Both damage and healing is an issue for PvP magblades. A modest buff to the damage on swallow soul would work towards improving both of those simultaneously.

However, I think eliminating the travel time and making it no longer a projectile would also do just as much if not more good. I mean seriously, why is it a slow projectile anyway? I'm literally ripping a piece of their soul out and pulling it back to me to heal myself. Come on now.

More actually seriously, this would give magblades a bit more defense against dodge rolling, which as of right now mitigates 100% of a magblades damage and healing toolkit.

In a perfect world, a modest buff to damage and being made instant/non-projectile I believe would put this skill in the perfect place. If I had to just choose one I'd choose it no longer being a projectile, although I'd honestly be fine with either or anything at this point.

Langeston

JayKwellen wrote: »

Both damage and healing is an issue for PvP magblades. A modest buff to the damage on swallow soul would work towards improving both of those simultaneously.

However, I think eliminating the travel time and making it no longer a projectile would also do just as much if not more good. I mean seriously, why is it a slow projectile anyway? I'm literally ripping a piece of their soul out and pulling it back to me to heal myself. Come on now.

More actually seriously, this would give magblades a bit more defense against dodge rolling, which as of right now mitigates 100% of a magblades damage and healing toolkit.

In a perfect world, a modest buff to damage and being made instant/non-projectile I believe would put this skill in the perfect place. If I had to just choose one I'd choose it no longer being a projectile, although I'd honestly be fine with either or anything at this point.

Good point re: it not being a projectile. That is something that has always irked me too.

colossalvoids

Also minor vitality should be back on it for sure.

Somewhere

It's funny that so many of the NB skills are classified as projectiles when really... only the spectral bow proc should count as a projectile. Yet somehow both strife and cripple (pretty sure) get hit as projectiles. There's nothing in the animation for strife that indicates its a projectile. Cripple I guess in some roundabout sense, but I'm not convinced.

the1andonlyskwex

Swallow Soul currently does exactly the same amount of damage as all of the other ranged spammables in the game. What makes you think it deserves to be stronger than what everyone else has?

Mayrael

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Swallow Soul currently does exactly the same amount of damage as all of the other ranged spammables in the game. What makes you think it deserves to be stronger than what everyone else has?

Because everyone else have easier acces to heals, they don't have to build their burst just to have it dodged because of projectile speed, they have undodgeable skills that can be used against roll monkeys to keep the pressure- in general because of overall class performance. Skill standarisation is ok when everyone have access to similiar skills but magblade is not the case. On paper it looks good but in reality its terrible class, it requires so much effort to be even remotely competetive almost nobody plays it. Why do you think there is so few magblades? Because its so amazing and fun class?

TBH as it goes for today, I will join the dark side when patch goes live, I have theory crafted stamina build based on procs. I can't take it anymore. Not only magblades but all magicka characters are insulted patch after patch, it's stamina who gets all the fun toys - it will take some time for me to adjust but it already is very very fun to play on PTS.

JayKwellen

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Swallow Soul currently does exactly the same amount of damage as all of the other ranged spammables in the game. What makes you think it deserves to be stronger than what everyone else has?

@the1andonlyskwex This isn't a zero sum game here. The reason we're not talking about other classes is because this is a thread dedicated to nightblades.

But since you want to have that conversation the answer is a simple one -- swallow, birds, and skulls are all trash. The only two mag spammables which are worthwhile are whip and sweeps and guess what? They can both do far more damage than the other three.

Either way, it's not even that swallow soul should specifically be better than ricochet skull or cliff racer (they should all be buffed honestly). No, the biggest issue is that in PvP magcros and magdens can both run force pulse and actually be better for it. Magblades can't, because unlike both necros and wardens we lack any real healing power and literally have to rely on the heal we get from swallow soul.

This puts magblades in a bind where they are forced to rely on a subpar spammable while other mag classes either A: Have a good class spammable they can use or B: Have a destro staff ability they can use.

This connects to another class issue by the way -- projectiles. All a magblade has is slow projectile attacks. It's projectiles all the way down, except for soul harvest, which is so slow it might as well be a projectile too. We have no AoE or direct non-projectile attacks (don't you dare say sap essence either), hell even our DOT is a projectile. Soul swallow being another slow projectile means that our entire class kit is negated by a single roll-dodge. We don't have shalks, jabs, or blastbones to mitigate this. We don't have strong DOT's to tick through the roll-dodges. And, since we don't have force pulse, we don't have a spammable that can quickly connect either.

You see how these issues all compound?

So honestly, the issue isn't even the weak nature of the spammable anyway. It actually goes much deeper than that in that it relates to numerous inborn chronic issues which are plaguing the class.

Now, ZOS could of course fix these issues at the core, but that would require a major rework of the class. The alternative is they buff or alter swallow soul, which while not the best solution would still address and help alleviate some of these issues which are wholly unique to magblades.

the1andonlyskwex

The existence of Lotus Fan, Concealed Weapon, Twisting Path, and Summon Shade all undermine your argument.

Langeston

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Swallow Soul currently does exactly the same amount of damage as all of the other ranged spammables in the game. What makes you think it deserves to be stronger than what everyone else has?

The short answer: because right now the class is complete garbage compared to every other magicka class in the game. (It's not even close to stam classes.)

Longer answer: Other classes don't rely on their spammable like magblades do. For the most part this is due to the fact that NBs have no delayed burst ability (Curse, Backlash, Shalks, etc.) and the hard hitting ability they do have requires you to play a convoluted mini game for at least 6 global cooldowns just to make it usable (that's the best case scenario, but good luck landing 5 LAs in 5 GCDs in a sweaty BG).

On my magsorc, for instance, Haunting Curse does roughly 14k, (twice) Crystal Frags does 20k, and Mages Wrath 19k total, and they can all land simultaneously. Throw Overload into the mix and that's 4 class abilities that add up to roughly 64k that can land within 1 GCD — something like that is not even close to possible on a magblade. Basically, on a magsorc the spammable is really only used to proc Crystal Frags.

The only other mag class I've played is my new warden (which is obviously a completely different playstyle) but having Shalks up every 3 GCDs feels amazing and with all the buffs it has (many of which NBs used to have) paired with insane ult regen and an overtuned ultimate like Permafrost, my magblade feels like a toy by comparison.

Take a look at the magblade toolkit and try to figure out a way to do as much damage with it as Purifying Light>Toppling Charge>Crescent Sweep>Puncturing Sweep. (Don't even bother adding in an execute, I'm already dead lol.)

This doesn't take into consideration the fact that our entire toolkit is single target and easily dodged or that we need to use Swallow Soul because our healing is so bad compared to other classes. Magblade is just in a really bad place right now, and honestly should get a complete rework — it just can't compete with the other classes at this point. But since a rework is not forthcoming, I don't think a buff to Swallow Soul is too much to ask for.

the1andonlyskwex

Lotus Fan>Soul Harvest>Concealed Weapon>Impale should be pretty darned close to your Templar example, based on tooltips. And if that's not enough, you should have Shade and Merciless Resolve running before you attack.

Mayrael

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Lotus Fan>Soul Harvest>Concealed Weapon>Impale should be pretty darned close to your Templar example, based on tooltips. And if that's not enough, you should have Shade and Merciless Resolve running before you attack.

Lotus fan supposdley ok. But did you ever tried to use it? It has hidden cast time (it's confirmed, it can be canceled during trying to use it), its very clumsy gap closer that most of the time is LoSed or out of range - templars toppling charge is 200% better gap closer. But ok, lets say we managed to use it. Soul harvest... - it costs almost the same amount of ults as Cersent Sweep but its single target skill WITH A CAST TIME (at least Cersent will get that cast time to ), meaning single roll dodge, cloak or even stepping out of tiny range will break the cast. Concealed. Again single target skill that can be evaded pretty easly when compared to Puncturing Sweeps. Concealed deal less damage and doesnt heal you. Impale. Again can be dodged and requires target to be under 25% to even work, one HoT tick and its wasted GCD. You really want to compare impale to Radiant Oppresion? :>

Edit2:
Oh and if thats not enough. Templar has burst heal on top of sweeps, extended ritual, purifying light and unstable core/living dark. Still want to play this game?

As I said magblade looks good on paper for someone like you who never played one, but in real its a lot worse than you think. I played Magplar for like 1,5 year in PvP mate, I have great comparision between those 2.

Edit for typos.

JayKwellen

@the1andonlyskwex, twice now you've been provided with comments that go rather deeply into addressing your questions with regard to various issues with class mechanics, and twice you've simply ignored everything and responded with glib single sentence answers while ignoring every other point brought up, seemingly missing the forest for the trees.

So now I gotta be the rude one and ask the question, how much experience do you have playing a magblade in PvP recently?

the1andonlyskwex

[Snip]

I haven't played a NB in PvP in a while, but I have played one since the (well-deserved) nerfs you are all constantly complaining about. As far as I can tell, they're a little below average, but not nearly as bad as you people seem to think (I think years of being overpowered gave some of you inflated opinions of your own skills).

I'm actually open to the idea of buffing nightblades, generally, but all of the suggestions you people seem to come up with involve buffing abilities that are already powerful instead of fixing abilities that are real problems.

If I were you, I would focus on the following:

Mark Target - Who are you supposed to cast this on? Half of it's effect is most useful on targets that are hard to kill, while the other half requires the target to die. Once you account for the fact that it only works on one target at a time, it doesn't have much use for anybody.

Path of Darkness - A speed buff that requires you and your target to stay within a small area of effect.

Cripple - A very generic single-target DoT on a class that primarily relies on burst damage and is lacking strong AoE. Also, a DoT in what is otherwise a healing/support/buff tree.

Malevolent Offering - At least one of the morphs should be capable of self-healing. It's barely even useful for PvE healing because you either have to ensure that you will never need to burst heal yourself (very difficult), or slot a second burst heal that you wouldn't need on any other class.

[Edited for baiting/bashing]

Choucroute

I strongly disagree with buffing the damage and heal of Swallow Soul. It's already pretty good where it's at in my opinion and I don't think those are the issue.
The issue is that magicka NB skills are very slow projectiles, allowing everybody to roll dodge or block them easily, and that's what makes them underperform, not the damage or the heal they can do.
I'd rather they fix the base issues than keep on buffing/nerfing every skills and heals.

Mayrael

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

[Snip]

I haven't played a NB in PvP in a while, but I have played one since the (well-deserved) nerfs you are all constantly complaining about. As far as I can tell, they're a little below average, but not nearly as bad as you people seem to think (I think years of being overpowered gave some of you inflated opinions of your own skills).

I'm actually open to the idea of buffing nightblades, generally, but all of the suggestions you people seem to come up with involve buffing abilities that are already powerful instead of fixing abilities that are real problems.

If I were you, I would focus on the following:

Mark Target - Who are you supposed to cast this on? Half of it's effect is most useful on targets that are hard to kill, while the other half requires the target to die. Once you account for the fact that it only works on one target at a time, it doesn't have much use for anybody.

Path of Darkness - A speed buff that requires you and your target to stay within a small area of effect.

Cripple - A very generic single-target DoT on a class that primarily relies on burst damage and is lacking strong AoE. Also, a DoT in what is otherwise a healing/support/buff tree.

Malevolent Offering - At least one of the morphs should be capable of self-healing. It's barely even useful for PvE healing because you either have to ensure that you will never need to burst heal yourself (very difficult), or slot a second burst heal that you wouldn't need on any other class.
[Edited for baiting/bashing]

And we can say the same. [snip] All skill you mentioned would require complete rework, not a buff because in current state they are useless no mater what except of some very narrow scenarios. Buffing skills nobody use because their basic functionality is total crap won't change anything.

Rework those unused completly or buff the ones that are used. That's the only right solution.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Langeston

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Lotus Fan>Soul Harvest>Concealed Weapon>Impale should be pretty darned close to your Templar example, based on tooltips. And if that's not enough, you should have Shade and Merciless Resolve running before you attack.

Well, the skills you listed are might have comparable damage numbers on whatever website you looked them up on, but every one of them is weaker than the Templar equivalent — and taken as a whole, they aren't even close to as powerful or effective. The reason the templar combo is so strong is that:
1. Purifying light is a delayed burst skill that you cast before you even attack that's just sitting there in the background copying all of the damage you do and unloading it on your target, off of the global cooldown.
2. The Templar gap closer stuns, giving you at least one free GCD.
3. The Templar ult is AOE, so even if your target breaks free they're going to get hit by it.
4. The templar spammable holds your target in place for you and does twice the damage of Concealed Weapon. It's also AOE, so undodgable.
5. The Templar execute begins increasing in damage when the target is under 50% health, rather than 25%, and the multiplier is higher. (Also undodgable, I believe.)

Not only would you never land that NB combo against a decent player, (unless they're AFK) but you'd probably wind up getting killed shortly after you Lotus Fan in lol. Not only are the skills just weak & clunky, but you're not healing like the Templar is. The difference between the two classes really is staggering.

the1andonlyskwex

I'm going to tell you a "secret" about how game developers decide what to buff and nerf. They use data about how often things get used as a proxy for how powerful those things are. Things that get used a lot get nerfed while things nobody uses get buffed. This applies to classes, abilities, gear, everything.

Asking for buffs to things everyone uses is stupid because it totally goes against how devs define "balance" (which is the whole point of buffs and nerfs).

If Nightblades are as terrible as you people seem to think, you should really just roll another class. That's easily the most effective way to get them buffed.

JayKwellen

@the1andonlyskwex Well, I personally didn't play a magblade back when they were OP, so for me at least I have neither lingering nostalgia nor an overinflated sense of self-worth related to playing them when they were OP.

Most of my own complaining about magblades actually comes from playing other classes. Thus far my PvP experience covers a magsorc, magplar, stam DK, stamden, and magblade.

The reason I typically come off as so bitter is simply because, while I enjoy the magblade the most, each and every one of those classes are easy mode by both comparison and experience. And I mean that with full seriousness. It's quite eye opening playing one class with a well rounded kit, then coming back to playing a magblade. You can feel the deficiencies in literally every department immediately, and it's unfortunate.

As for why I say "all" abilities while also ignoring half their kit, it isn't an accident. It's because those abilities are all either niche, pointless, overly clunky, broken, or underwhelming and otherwise won't ever find their way into a serious build unless for a very specific purpose. Hyperbolic sure, but anyone who currently PvP's on a magblade would know this and understand why without further explanation being necessary.

I also find it interesting that you fall back on ZOS's 'standards' to defend why swallow soul is okay. Because if that's the standard, how come the other two classes who's abilities meet those standards don't use them at all? How come only the classes who's abilities don't follow those standards do use them? Maybe it's because the standard itself is terrible. Perhaps also a lesson in why balancing solely based on spreadsheets is a rather myopic approach, but maybe that's just me.

Of course this just ends up looping back to my real original point - that magblades are reliant on their weak ("standard") class spammable while other classes aren't, which puts them at a disadvantage, a huge part of which is closely tied to the fact that it's a slow projectile ability which they must rely on for both damage and survivability, unlike any other class.

But then we end up at the same point we did before, and you didn't address it last time beyond deferring to "the standards", so I suppose I won't be expecting you to this time either.

Langeston

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

@JayKwellen
Asking for a buff to the one NB ability that meets ZOS standards more precisely than any other ability in their entire kit is stupid.

If this is the way you look at things, I suppose you also think Sweeps should get nerfed then, right? Because "standards"? Same goes for Dizzy, but it'd need a complete rework because of all the rules it breaks. While we're at it, Blastbones/Shalks should lose Defile/Fracture, and hell — Crystal Frags probably shouldn't even exist at all because it doesn't really fit anywhere. (Obviously Wrath is definitely out.) Leap should probably get a cost increase and do less damage... sounds great, doesn't it? This way all the numbers will look nice and pretty for you.

the1andonlyskwex

Magblades don't use swallow soul because they don't have other options. They use it because it's better than other options. Otherwise, they would use crushing shock (which also adheres to the standards), like everyone else (other than Templars).

the1andonlyskwex

Langeston wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

@JayKwellen
Asking for a buff to the one NB ability that meets ZOS standards more precisely than any other ability in their entire kit is stupid.

If this is the way you look at things, I suppose you also think Sweeps should get nerfed then, right? Because "standards"? Same goes for Dizzy, but it'd need a complete rework because of all the rules it breaks. While we're at it, Blastbones/Shalks should lose Defile/Fracture, and hell — Crystal Frags probably shouldn't even exist at all because it doesn't really fit anywhere. (Obviously Wrath is definitely out.) Leap should probably get a cost increase and do less damage... sounds great, doesn't it? This way all the numbers will look nice and pretty for you.

All of those abilities have major downsides that you're completely ignoring.

Sweeps is a melee-range channel.
Dizzy is a melee-range attack with a cast time.
Blastbones and Shalks aren't spammable.
Frags requires a proc.
Wrath is an execute.
Leap is an ultimate.

Asking for your instant-cast, ranged, spammable to be comparable to any of them is silly.

killingspreeb16_ESO

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Magblades don't use swallow soul because they don't have other options. They use it because it's better than other options. Otherwise, they would use crushing shock (which also adheres to the standards), like everyone else (other than Templars).

After reading all you wrote you are just a nice paper warrior.

But in game things are way different.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Lotus Fan>Soul Harvest>Concealed Weapon>Impale should be pretty darned close to your Templar example, based on tooltips. And if that's not enough, you should have Shade and Merciless Resolve running before you attack.

This is the best example,this combo take time is predictable(cast time for lotus and soul harvest say hi)is clunky and pure trash,reason why if someone ever play with this skill setup(and i never see the NB execute because it's bad) is most likely with caluurion and zaan because it lacks damage otherwise and even then is not that great.


[Snip]

[Edited for bait]

Langeston

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Langeston wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

@JayKwellen
Asking for a buff to the one NB ability that meets ZOS standards more precisely than any other ability in their entire kit is stupid.

If this is the way you look at things, I suppose you also think Sweeps should get nerfed then, right? Because "standards"? Same goes for Dizzy, but it'd need a complete rework because of all the rules it breaks. While we're at it, Blastbones/Shalks should lose Defile/Fracture, and hell — Crystal Frags probably shouldn't even exist at all because it doesn't really fit anywhere. (Obviously Wrath is definitely out.) Leap should probably get a cost increase and do less damage... sounds great, doesn't it? This way all the numbers will look nice and pretty for you.

All of those abilities have major downsides that you're completely ignoring.

Sweeps is a melee-range channel.
Dizzy is a melee-range attack with a cast time.
Blastbones and Shalks aren't spammable.
Frags requires a proc.
Wrath is an execute.
Leap is an ultimate.

You missed the point I was making. Most of those abilities fall outside of ZOS's supposed "standards" — the very same standards that apparently make a buff to Swallow Soul unthinkable to you. If you were intellectually honest you'd want those abilities to be brought into line as well — but you're not, so you don't.

Asking for your instant-cast, ranged, spammable to be comparable to any of them is silly.

Huh? 🤨 No. Thinking that a slight damage/healing buff to Swallow Soul would somehow make it comparable to the aforementioned delayed burst abilities/executes/ultimates is what is silly.