Magicka Nightblades / Dark Cloak

xI_The_Owl_Ix

Its sad to see that magBlades again didnt get any good buffs in a patch. With the recent changes to healing in PvP magBlades took a big hit to their survivabilty. While their offensive burst options are lacking as well. The burst combo is just too unreliable especially with the current Cyro lag.

Dark Cloak generally speaking isnt a good heal skill on damage dealers who only run with 25-27k HP. In PvP my 27k HP magBlade with 2 heavy pieces would only get a 850 HoT. Thats really low for a class heal ability. Its not even considered by most of stamBlades. That should say a lot about the "selfheal".

With changes like:

Coagulating Dragon Blood (morph): Increased the base healing of this ability by approximately 12% to ensure it’s closer in line with other heals, such as Breath of Life. With this new value, the heal for Coagulating should be slightly weaker than these heals (Breath of Life, Blood Sacrifice, etc.) while above 50% Health, but slightly stronger than them while below 50% Health. The deviation in healing effectiveness will be between 0 and 16.5%.

It saddens me to see that the NB again is being left out.

I really hope we will see positive changes/buff to magBlades in the next weeks/PTS cycles.

Heres also my other thread where I went "in depth" into the issues which make the magicka Nightblade a really week/unreliable class in PvP.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/519870/playing-a-magblade-is-nothing-but-frustrating/p1

Thanks for reading.

tsaescishoeshiner

There were a few buffs and improvements, but nothing too huge.

Grim Focus:

• This ability and its morphs now grant 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack, rather than reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack, in order to help this ability feel more aggressive and assassination oriented.

Master Assassin:

• This passive’s Weapon and Spell Damage is now granted to your damaging attacks against enemies you are flanking, rather than granting a universal amount while sneaking or invisible.
• The Weapon and Spell Damage is now a flat 129/258, rather than granting 5/10% of your current amount.

Summon Shade:

• This ability and the Dark Shade morph can now be cast without a target, as Shadow Image can.

Strife:

• Increased the damage done for this ability and the Funnel Health morph by approximately 39% to ensure they properly adhere to Heal over Time standards.

The Grim Focus buff is a pretty good damage buff for magblade, and a nice QoL improvement for Summon Shade. The loss of reduced damage taken from Grim Focus is gonna for PvP & tanks tho I'd imagine. Let's hope those Grim Focus buff stacks INCLUDE the proc so that you actually get +10% Critical Damage for Assassin's Will ... >_>

The flanking damage will only be helpful in certain content, but it's still 258 Weapon/Spell Damage for a lot of PvE content that magblades weren't getting at all before.

xI_The_Owl_Ix

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

There were a few buffs and improvements, but nothing too huge.

Grim Focus:

• This ability and its morphs now grant 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack, rather than reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack, in order to help this ability feel more aggressive and assassination oriented.

Master Assassin:

• This passive’s Weapon and Spell Damage is now granted to your damaging attacks against enemies you are flanking, rather than granting a universal amount while sneaking or invisible.
• The Weapon and Spell Damage is now a flat 129/258, rather than granting 5/10% of your current amount.

Summon Shade:

• This ability and the Dark Shade morph can now be cast without a target, as Shadow Image can.

Strife:

• Increased the damage done for this ability and the Funnel Health morph by approximately 39% to ensure they properly adhere to Heal over Time standards.

The Grim Focus buff is a pretty good damage buff for magblade, and a nice QoL improvement for Summon Shade. The loss of reduced damage taken from Grim Focus is gonna for PvP & tanks tho I'd imagine. Let's hope those Grim Focus buff stacks INCLUDE the proc so that you actually get +10% Critical Damage for Assassin's Will ... >_>

The flanking damage will only be helpful in certain content, but it's still 258 Weapon/Spell Damage for a lot of PvE content that magblades weren't getting at all before.

Sorry, my bad. I shouldve maybe made it clearer that I was talking mostly about PvP. MagBlades in PvE are still decent, however in PvP they are one of the worst classes/specs to play, maybe even the worst class/spec.

Crash427

The strife/funnel health change is a waste of time. It'll still be a skill no one slots. The master assassin passive change is a nerf for some and a buff for others, so I'd call it a wash. More crit damage is nice but the mitigation helped a lot on a class with no good healing.

All in all nothing to be excited about, but at least no big nerfs so that's something I guess.

Mayrael

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

There were a few buffs and improvements, but nothing too huge.

Grim Focus:

• This ability and its morphs now grant 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack, rather than reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack, in order to help this ability feel more aggressive and assassination oriented.

Master Assassin:

• This passive’s Weapon and Spell Damage is now granted to your damaging attacks against enemies you are flanking, rather than granting a universal amount while sneaking or invisible.
• The Weapon and Spell Damage is now a flat 129/258, rather than granting 5/10% of your current amount.

Summon Shade:

• This ability and the Dark Shade morph can now be cast without a target, as Shadow Image can.

Strife:

• Increased the damage done for this ability and the Funnel Health morph by approximately 39% to ensure they properly adhere to Heal over Time standards.

The Grim Focus buff is a pretty good damage buff for magblade, and a nice QoL improvement for Summon Shade. The loss of reduced damage taken from Grim Focus is gonna for PvP & tanks tho I'd imagine. Let's hope those Grim Focus buff stacks INCLUDE the proc so that you actually get +10% Critical Damage for Assassin's Will ... >_>

The flanking damage will only be helpful in certain content, but it's still 258 Weapon/Spell Damage for a lot of PvE content that magblades weren't getting at all before.

All things mentioned are meaningless for 90% of PvP magblades, except of Grim Focus change which is a nerf.

Why? Let me explain.
Funnel Health is used by only healers.
Summon shade in PvP is inferior to Shadow image, that's just a PvE change.
Master assasin can be considered as the only real buff but it would be better if flanking would be added no replacing attack from stealth.
Grim focus. First they remove passive damage increase when skill is active, then they give us 15% damage reduction, then they nerf it to 10%, then they change it for a chance to deal more damage which even doesn't work with Assassin's Will. Complete trash IMHO. If this should be considered as a buff, critical damage and healing should be tied to skill duration not stacks.

JayKwellen

Literally nothing was adjusted in the 6.1.1 update either, didn't even get a single line. In particular, the new 10% crit bonus to grim focus not applying to the spectral bow itself wasn't addressed. Not even a "that is intended" or a "that isn't intended".

Playing my magblade in greymoor has been as you said, nothing but frustrating. I mean it always was, but it is now too.

The healing changes hurt, and they hurt far worse than they did to most others as we are the only class without a burst heal/"oh ****" button. As a mag class we also don't really have a reliable HoT, having to depend on Rapid Regen, a skill which likes to prioritize 100% health NPC's (lol smart healing), or swallow soul, which can be completely negated by a dodge roll and who's heal I believe is actually reduced twice by battle spirit. Even stamblades at least have a burst heal in rally (although rally is bugged right now), and a HoT they're 100% guaranteed to receive via vigor. Now, dark cloak could be that HoT, but it's generally a pretty trash heal in PvP. Mine ticked for about 800ish, which was still helpful, but nothing to get excited about. If you check out zDan's latest magblade build you'll see he doesn't even use it anymore. Sure he's just one guy, but he's one of the best magblades out there. Not encouraging when someone like that feels a skill is no longer worthwhile.

While the changes in greymoor didn't single out magblades, we were already in a poor spot. When you combine our current situation with the nerf to healing and the proliferation of damage, it just makes a tough class even more difficult. Personally I feel this has hurt brawly magblades quite a bit, as the style of play has been under an almost constant assault, and will be hurt even further once the grim focus changes go live.

In a moment of great hopelessness and self-defeat I actually changed my entire magblade from dark cloak back to shadowy disguise the other night. I was growing jaded from how tremendously difficult it was becoming just to keep up with everyone else, how it required 100% perfection to win against almost anyone, and how even with three HoT's rolling and a 9k dampen shield a skilled stamina player could still cut through me easily enough while out healing any damage I could put into them. That feeling of "there's literally nothing in my class kit to beat this" is truly soul crushing. Then I fought a good stamblade, the fight raged literally for 45 minutes, and I couldn't kill him either. He dodged every single soul harvest. I'd CC into SH -- break free and dodged. I'd use it in the middle of a rotation before the CC -- dodged. I'd literally see the attack land on him and still, dodged. The bow would land, sometimes, but it was never enough as there was no way to get him into execute with just LA/swallow soul spam. Whenever he got close he'd just vigor into a dodge roll and cloak, and by the time I'd find him again he'd be back at full health. The whole thing was really a rather spectacular display of many of the things wrong with the NB class. Anyway, I was so triggered by everything that I changed my entire build into a speedy, high-burst (no proc sets though), elusive magblade again. And while I do die with remarkable quickness if someone is able to trap me (or someone(s) camps my shade), at least I can feel what it's like to kill things again. Even those tanky stamina bois! Now if only I had access to even a single reliable self-heal, you know one that doesn't depend on a slow projectile landing, or one that won't randomly go to a guard or random sniper afk behind a rock 20m away, or one that doesn't demand I stand within a narrow corridor, then we'd really be cookin. Hell not even a burst heal, even a good 100% reliable HoT, such as the one every stamina character has, would be a godsend. But now I'm just talking crazy I guess.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. I don't even know where I was going with it. But whatever, it was nicely therapeutic to just put that all out there, so Ima leave it.

ArgoCye

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Mayrael

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

"Buff My Class" threads should be in Combat & Character Mechanics forums, @xI_The_Owl_I ... not PTS forums.

[snip]

First of all there is plenty of such threads and somehow REAL mods doesn't move them.
Secondly on PTS we have official feedback threads for classes, why shouldn't we have user threads?
[snip]

Back to the topic. I don't think giving magblade burst heal would be a good idea unless it would be dark cloak - we should choose strong heal or invisibility, I don't want to get OP one patch to get nerfed even more than we are currently next patch.

What NB realy lacks is pressure. All our big burst skills are slow and easy to dodge, we are the only class without delayed burst, we have no roots, not to mention that with this lag cloak is useless - it is being broken all the time because of delayed damage breaking it.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Aznarb

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

My healbalde disagree, Malevolent offering is a very strong burst heal who doesn't cost magicka.

For Refreshing path however, I would say, go further, double the heal for everyone in the path, this skill is to weak RN.

JayKwellen

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Malevolent can actually be an incredible heal when used properly. The two or so NB healers left out there can definitely make the best use of it and should be allowed to keep it, but I personally think at least one of the morphs (shrewd probably) should be made into a self heal of some sort for the three magblades left in Cyrodiil/BG's. Call it "selfish offering" or whatever and have it apply to the caster only, or primarily to the caster with only a small secondary effect to allies. I mean, we are mostly assassins after all, selfish intent isn't exactly a foreign concept to our 'power fantasy'.

Probably shouldn't be an on demand burst heal though, but at least something to give magblades a reliable source of on demand self healing. Even if it was just a boring old HoT, having a guaranteed source of healing would be amazing. It could even function kinda like how mutagen used to, make it a HoT that once you fall below a certain % it triggers either the remainder of the heal, or heals for X%, or whatever. Or they could give us back minor vitality and attach it to the HoT, which would also fit with the "selfish" theme since it would only effect us. Hell, there's so many things they could do to give us some decent healing, without making it a burst heal or crazy OP.

It would also allow us to be free of being the only class that is required to use a resto staff backbar if we want to survive in PvP.

Buffing path would be nice too, because as it stands right now the ability is straight trash. Problem with path is that I just don't see how it could be useful in PvP outside of very specific circumstances even if it was buffed. As a nightblade mobility is survivability, and a ground based AOE heal restricting you to a small patch of land is literally the antithesis of the entire class. Unless you're a dark cloak blade or something specifically designed to facetank opponents you're not going to be restricting yourself to 17x7 strip on an open field. Idk, maybe it's only supposed to be for group play like offering. Just seems unfortunate that a class which already struggles for healing has almost 50% of its healing abilities dedicated to helping others but not themselves.

Strider__Roshin

Dark Cloak will get outshined by Shadowy Disguise until they give it some much needed love.

Mayrael

JayKwellen wrote: »

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Malevolent can actually be an incredible heal when used properly. The two or so NB healers left out there can definitely make the best use of it and should be allowed to keep it, but I personally think at least one of the morphs (shrewd probably) should be made into a self heal of some sort for the three magblades left in Cyrodiil/BG's. Call it "selfish offering" or whatever and have it apply to the caster only, or primarily to the caster with only a small secondary effect to allies. I mean, we are mostly assassins after all, selfish intent isn't exactly a foreign concept to our 'power fantasy'.

Probably shouldn't be an on demand burst heal though, but at least something to give magblades a reliable source of on demand self healing. Even if it was just a boring old HoT, having a guaranteed source of healing would be amazing. It could even function kinda like how mutagen used to, make it a HoT that once you fall below a certain % it triggers either the remainder of the heal, or heals for X%, or whatever. Or they could give us back minor vitality and attach it to the HoT, which would also fit with the "selfish" theme since it would only effect us. Hell, there's so many things they could do to give us some decent healing, without making it a burst heal or crazy OP.

It would also allow us to be free of being the only class that is required to use a resto staff backbar if we want to survive in PvP.

Buffing path would be nice too, because as it stands right now the ability is straight trash. Problem with path is that I just don't see how it could be useful in PvP outside of very specific circumstances even if it was buffed. As a nightblade mobility is survivability, and a ground based AOE heal restricting you to a small patch of land is literally the antithesis of the entire class. Unless you're a dark cloak blade or something specifically designed to facetank opponents you're not going to be restricting yourself to 17x7 strip on an open field. Idk, maybe it's only supposed to be for group play like offering. Just seems unfortunate that a class which already struggles for healing has almost 50% of its healing abilities dedicated to helping others but not themselves.

Very well written. I was thining about merging Shrewd and Healthy offering into one skill (decreasing a bit healthy offering cost) and changing Shrewd into self only heal costing magicka with some secondary effect or execution scaling (higher ticks based on missing health) - and yes - it would allow finally magblades to drop resto staff for other weapons.

JayKwellen

Mayrael wrote: »

Very well written. I was thining about merging Shrewd and Healthy offering into one skill (decreasing a bit healthy offering cost) and changing Shrewd into self only heal costing magicka with some secondary effect or execution scaling (higher ticks based on missing health) - and yes - it would allow finally magblades to drop resto staff for other weapons.

Just being able to actually have the option to drop the resto would be amazing. While I would probably still use it because I use my backbar to proc my damage enchant and the resto is the only non projectile light attack, it would be nice to at least be able to theorycraft and try out alternative builds.

I also think it's quite telling that, outside of 100% one-shot glass-cannon gankers and such, magblades are the only class required to slot a resto backbar. Every other mag class can make due and create successful builds without it. Seeing mag DK's and wardens and templars with s/b backbar is the norm. There's even plenty of successful dual wield/destro and destro/destro mag builds out there.

The only class you commonly see with one is sorcs, but even they don't technically require one as they have in-class access to dark deal and bird heal, can shield stack, and have excellent mobility. So even in their case resto staves may be common and useful, but they're not required to be successful in PvP like they are for magblades.

Which brings me to my real point -- if a class is totally 100% reliant on slotting and using one specific weapon to be viable in PvP, with no alternatives being available at all, then that itself should make it absurdly obvious that something necessary is absent from that classes kit. To put it plainly, if a class requires a specific weapon to be functional, then something is seriously wrong with the class.

exeeter702

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Offering is far from useless. In fact that is one of magblades strongest skills. Its simply for healers. Magblades need help but for the love of god do not *** touch healthy offering.

the1andonlyskwex

exeeter702 wrote: »

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Offering is far from useless. In fact that is one of magblades strongest skills. Its simply for healers. Magblades need help but for the love of god do not *** touch healthy offering.

I get why you like Healthy Offering, but I don't understand why anyone would choose to use Shrewd Offering.

exeeter702

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Offering is far from useless. In fact that is one of magblades strongest skills. Its simply for healers. Magblades need help but for the love of god do not *** touch healthy offering.

I get why you like Healthy Offering, but I don't understand why anyone would choose to use Shrewd Offering.

I get that, but to take the point further, NBs absolutely do not need a self targeted burst heal, at least they dont if they are returned to how they used to be. If you give magblade a burst heal for themsleves, then I has to be tied to dark cloak and it basically becomes another dragon blood.

Magblades need to have the ability to float their health with hots while fighting, not the ability to cloak / image away and just hammer on their burst heal a few times then start over.

Perhaps, turn shrewd into a self targeted hot with magicka cost instead of health, but at that point it's just another rapid regen that will allow magblades to divorce themselves from resto staff, which isnt really even an accomplishment beyond zos underming their own skill systems. Is a well balanced, well designed class, the ones that can fufill all their needs exclusively with their class abilities? Cool... I guess.

exeeter702

I just dont understand for the life of me why zos did not give minor vit back to swallow soul in the same patch that they nerfed pvp healing by 10 percent.

Were overtuned pve NB tanks really that much of a concern?

Xvorg

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

MO is quite good with a set that works on dmg taken (like alma mercy, BS or Pariah)

CaperGuy

ArgoCye wrote: »

Returning the purge to Cloak would help a lot in pvp. With the arrival of new classes and their multi-use skills, there’s good reason to undo the nerf from goodness knows how long ago.

Rework Malevolent Offering skill and morphs. These are useless and have been since forever. Maybe one offers a damage shield or lifesteal or thorns.

Double the heal for the user in Refreshing Path.

That will help a bit at least.

Malevolent Offering, on a NB healer is a very strong burst heal. Way underrated.

Vermintide

I feel if we're losing the damage mitigation from Merciless our life will be even more miserable. It would be beneficial to maybe buff up some of the shadow passives to compensate. Clearly the poor self healing is an intended design aspect of the class at this stage, but what I really loathe is having to slot shields like some kind of cut-price Sorc...

Biggest issue IMO is bar crowding. Our bars have always been crowded- Even when we were at our strongest (100% carried by the old Wizard's Riposte and Zaan, I mean), it was a balancing act trying to put 1 siphoning, 1 shadow, 1 assassination, 1 destro skill etc on your bars, and there was very little flexibility. In the current state, I bet 90% of magblades have the exact bars featuring some combination of cloak, swallow, merciless, fear, ele drain/mark, siphoning, RAT, image, ward/harness/dampen, rapid regen, and then soul harvest/incap. Back bar ultimate is just about the only flex spot we have.

It sounds like fair design on paper, but in practice the class pays too heavily for the choices it has to make, because too many of those skills are simply mandatory to make the class work. Whereas other classes have options that leave them stronger or weaker in certain areas, magblade has to straight up sacrifice one thing in order to make room for another- You want sorcery without chugging potions? Better decide if you want to give up your mobility, or lose your only CC... Pick your poison. Want to slot a gap closer? Better decide if you can live without one of those heals, etc.

Mayrael

[snip]

About magblade, I stand my ground claiming that magblade needs more reliable damage, curently roll dodge can mitigate almost 100% of magblade burst. Delayed damage would be also nice addition / eventually strong DoT that works similar to hurricane increasing its damage the longer it lasts or explodes with the last tick. Last but not least, magblade needs reliable self heal, most optimal would be hot similar to rapid regen/vigor to free the backbar from resto staff finally.

Edit for typos.

[edited to remove quoted content]

JayKwellen

Mayrael wrote: »

About magblade, I stand my ground claiming that magblade needs more reliable damage, curently roll dodge can mitigate almost 100% of magblade burst. Delayed damage would be also nice addition / eventually strong DoT that works similar to hurricane increasing its damage the longer it lasts or explodes with the last tick. Last but not least, magblade needs reliable self heal, most optimal would be hot similar to rapid regen/vigor to free the backbar from resto staff finally.

Edit for typos.

Personally I think the PTS forum is a totally appropriate place for these items to be brought up.

After all, the devs themselves said in their patch announcement that while they weren't doing any complete class overhauls, they were still going address "emergent" issues the classes are facing.

In discussing the changes on the PTS, I think it's totally fair game to talk about the changes that happened, but also the changes that didn't and should.

Even if it's just emergent issues, well, magblades currently have plenty of those which need addressing too. Which, by the way, pretty much none of them were. So yeah, I think the PTS forum is actually the perfect place to discuss the numerous issues which weren't even mentioned in the patch notes but should have been.

JinxxND

Nightblade got buffed unless you where a 1 shot ganker in which is got nerfed but will still be able to pull off ganks as annoying and cheesy as they may be, dark cloak should get it's heal increased or at least minor vitality while active to make up for the healing nerf in PvP and for the longest time they still need to adjust shadow barrier for it and increase it's base time by 2 seconds ensuring that for a magblade on a 5-1-1 setup gets the major resolve for the entire duration of the skill at least, currently if you are in anything but a setup that includes at least 2 heavy the armor buff drops while the cloak is still active which is noticeable in why nightblade can still appear squishy on live despite having damage mitigation at the moment

JinxxND

The class overall is in a better spot though getting the crit heal and crit damage buff and the new master assassin which applies to dark cloak nightblades

Saubon

JinxxND wrote: »

The class overall is in a better spot though getting the crit heal and crit damage buff and the new master assassin which applies to dark cloak nightblades

10% crit dmg and 10% crit heal is nothing in comparison to 10% damage reduction in PVP.

Mayrael

JinxxND wrote: »

The class overall is in a better spot though getting the crit heal and crit damage buff and the new master assassin which applies to dark cloak nightblades

Except it is not. 10% was working all the time when we had stacks, now it will work only with crits, but also it doesn't work with Assasins Will - it is double nerf - if the buff would be bound to skill duration not the stacks we could say it is even in terms of power.
Master assassin is quite good change (though it should work from stealth to) but it's the only meaningfull buff we have recieved. Everything else are pure trash changes and bring nothing to magblades toolkit. Sorry but a bit of spell damage won't make magblades ok again.

xI_The_Owl_Ix

Mayrael wrote: »

JinxxND wrote: »

The class overall is in a better spot though getting the crit heal and crit damage buff and the new master assassin which applies to dark cloak nightblades

Except it is not. 10% was working all the time when we had stacks, now it will work only with crits, but also it doesn't work with Assasins Will - it is double nerf - if the buff would be bound to skill duration not the stacks we could say it is even in terms of power.
Master assassin is quite good change (though it should work from stealth to) but it's the only meaningfull buff we have recieved. Everything else are pure trash changes and bring nothing to magblades toolkit. Sorry but a bit of spell damage won't make magblades ok again.

Not even that is a good change on a magBlade tbh, magBlades lack the mobility to put themselves behind the enemy unlike stamBlades. The new Master Assassin gives only the buff when you hit them from flank, its not even like camo hunter where you get the buff for a few seconds after hitting someone from flank, MA only increases your dmg when youre in the enemies flank, once you stop being in flank the buff is gone.

MagBlade brawlers are usually in your face and not "in your flank". They really need to change MA to "increase DMG for [x] seconds after hitting someone from flank" for it to be viable in PvP.

Neloth

Mayrael wrote: »

I stand my ground claiming that magblade needs more reliable damage, curently roll dodge can mitigate almost 100% of magblade burst

Edit for typos.

this ^^^

dodge against magblade mitigates toooo much:

- assassin will and soul harvest
- light attacks, preventing magblade from getting ass will stacks. In addition, dodging light attacks mitigates healing from siphoning attacks (lol)
- swallow soul spammable and it's healing
- dots (cripple, entropy, trap/what-else-magblade-can-use are all dodgeble)

idk what can be done about it, maybe cripple + soul harvest should be undodgeable, it will be a good start.

xI_The_Owl_Ix

Neloth wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

I stand my ground claiming that magblade needs more reliable damage, curently roll dodge can mitigate almost 100% of magblade burst

Edit for typos.

this ^^^

dodge against magblade mitigates toooo much:

- assassin will and soul harvest
- light attacks, preventing magblade from getting ass will stacks. In addition, dodging light attacks mitigates healing from siphoning attacks (lol)
- swallow soul spammable and it's healing
- dots (cripple, entropy, trap/what-else-magblade-can-use are all dodgeble)

idk what can be done about it, maybe cripple + soul harvest should be undodgeable, it will be a good start.

You still get the stacks even if the enemy dodges your LA.

SHOW

xI_The_Owl_Ix wrote: »

[.
You still get the stacks even if the enemy dodges your LA.

I don't think this is correct...

Are u saying that u still get assassins will stacks even when they dodge your light attacks??

This has not been my experience at all (on Xbox), though I will test this as soon as I get on tomorrow.

Please confirm.

xI_The_Owl_Ix

SHOW wrote: »

xI_The_Owl_Ix wrote: »

[.
You still get the stacks even if the enemy dodges your LA.

I don't think this is correct...

Are u saying that u still get assassins will stacks even when they dodge your light attacks??

This has not been my experience at all (on Xbox), though I will test this as soon as I get on tomorrow.

Please confirm.

Yes, your stacks go up even when people dodge your LA, Im on Xbox as well.