Magicka Nightblade - we want our rights

DT-ARR

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

Don't know how you can be coming to this conclusion for pvp. Nothing has been addressed regarding the magNB skill set and their burst damage / healing potential. Crit was nerfed further across the board which is an indirect nerf to NB's in general. Light armor is still in the toilet. Performance and desync issues (which i'd argue disproportionately impact magNB's more than other classes) havn't been addressed.

Yeah...to put it generously i think your comment is a combination of ignorant wishful thinking at best.

SshadowSscale

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

What have you been smoking and where can I get some

exeeter702

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

Seraphayel

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

How so? What changes?

JayKwellen

Seraphayel wrote: »

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

How so? What changes?

[snip] There are no changes in the upcoming patch that specifically help magblades. Likewise there were no class changes either.

In fact they're probably going to be even worse in Cyrodiil now thanks to the proc changes. 99% of stealth blades didn't crutch on Caluurion just because they felt like it, they did it because the class is in a rather pathetic state and it was one of the few sets that served as a decent size bandaid to cover their otherwise gaping wounds. Maybe some people think that the lack of procs and associated tankiness will mean they're in a better place, but I disagree. Even if everyone is less tanky it's not going to fix the classes various underlying problems with slow/dodgeable burst, lack of group utility, poor self-healing, and being able to be out bursted by stamdens and stamcros in heavy armor.

That said I think mag stacking dark cloak magblades might be in an okay enough spot next patch. Unlike stealthblades they might have enough tankiness to actually stand up and fight a bit better without the onslaught of proc damage coming at them. They won't be in a good spot, but they should at least be serviceable. Maybe.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Vermintide

For Cyro I've basically resorted to a total mouthbreather of a build that uses Shackle, Spinners, 1 Domi and 1 Kena. Nirnhoned crusher inferno front bar, infused weapon damage resto back bar. Doing stuff like double barring inner light, slotting every targetable DOT I can, mark target...

Damage is pretty high in fairness, but it would be on any class. Really all I can do is surf with the zerg and pick off the stragglers. As soon as I get caught alone or in the open by some streaky sorcs, there's absolutely nothing I can do. There is nothing in the class arsenal that would enable me to catch up with them, stay on them, or survive for more than five seconds if I did reach them, so I might as well not bother.

Anyone know if those crazy 2H magblade builds with forward momentum still doable?

Thraben

2hander builds on MagBlades should work better than ever.

That being said, MagBlades need a significant buff, or 2.

Brrrofski

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Designed to be played at range

Where exactly are you getting this impression?

A huge number of Nightblade skills are designed around operating at melee range:
Death Stroke
Assassin's Blade, unless morphed
Teleport Strike
Grim Focus, heals if used in melee range
Veiled Strike, melee spammable
Twisting Path, you only get the buff if you stand in the AoE
Aspect of Terror
Drain Power

You could even argue that Blur, Shadow Image, and Cripple are also more useful for characters that primarily focus on melee.

The only class that's more melee oriented than Nightblade is Dragonknight.

I mean for pvp.

I think a lot of those skills exist from a time before there was a mag/stam type of gameplay, and that hybrids, soft caps etc were a thing. I think they just made mag and at versions of a lot of those skill, but people haven't been playing a melee magblade outside of bombing for God knows how many years. Because the melee skills, outside of ult, suck.

Like until this patch, DW, S&B, 2H light attacks did not scale for magica builds. So it automatically pushed you to use a staff for maximum light attack damage.

A lot of the skills can be cast at maximum range too. Impale is the magica morph, and is a ranged execute. Why would the magica morph be ranged if there wasn't some thought of playing the class at range.

exeeter702

JayKwellen wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Maggusemm wrote: »

Magicka Nightblade is in very good shape for both PVP and PVE in the next patch.

How so? What changes?

That said I think mag stacking dark cloak magblades might be in an okay enough spot next patch. Unlike stealthblades they might have enough tankiness to actually stand up and fight a bit better without the onslaught of proc damage coming at them. They won't be in a good spot, but they should at least be serviceable. Maybe.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Have I allowed this to go under my radar? I was reasonably sure dark cloak does not scale additionally off of max mag.

Seraphayel

Dark Cloak scales off of health afaik.

exeeter702

Seraphayel wrote: »

Dark Cloak scales off of health afaik.

That is correct, it does. Which is why I was confused when the other post mentioned stacking magicka and running dark cloak suggesting there is some kind of benefit one has for the other which I do not believe is the case.

Gorilla

MirandaSharp wrote: »

Funny to hear someone complaining about Magblades not buffed enough when they're pretty much THE OP dmg class for solo and PvE content....

For some...most can't get the rotation down. And in PVP they are completely gimped outside duels.

xI_The_Owl_Ix

exeeter702 wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Dark Cloak scales off of health afaik.

That is correct, it does. Which is why I was confused when the other post mentioned stacking magicka and running dark cloak suggesting there is some kind of benefit one has for the other which I do not believe is the case.

I think they might be talking about the rather decent magicka shield size on a max mag build (around 7k in pvp) added with the self heal and defense of dark cloak.

Vermintide

I was looking at the new armour passives and wondering if it might hold some interest for old school magblades who remember when you could play a nasty brawling magblade.

Trouble has always been bar space for those builds, because you're slotting skills to make up for things you would have gained innately from LA passives. The way the new passives work might give us more options, because you wouldn't be entirely surrendering your penetration and crit; crit has been nerfed anyway so it's probably even less valuable in PVP now. Stack all your jewelry enchants into damage, go for regen drink and atronach mundus...

TL;DR Wear heavy amber/shackle/domi, grind out malacath, and you might be able to stay alive and keep casting long enough to kill something?

JayKwellen

Vermintide wrote: »

I was looking at the new armour passives and wondering if it might hold some interest for old school magblades who remember when you could play a nasty brawling magblade.

Trouble has always been bar space for those builds, because you're slotting skills to make up for things you would have gained innately from LA passives. The way the new passives work might give us more options, because you wouldn't be entirely surrendering your penetration and crit; crit has been nerfed anyway so it's probably even less valuable in PVP now. Stack all your jewelry enchants into damage, go for regen drink and atronach mundus...

TL;DR Wear heavy amber/shackle/domi, grind out malacath, and you might be able to stay alive and keep casting long enough to kill something?

I don't know what this will be like with the new CP, but generally speaking brawlers are still in a rough spot.

Losing the 10% mitigation from grim focus and another 10% from maim is definitely noticeable. Dark cloak, while serviceable with >30k health, can still be underwhelming. It's fine against a couple people, but once you've got a good number beating on you (or even a couple who lay down good damage) it can't keep up. Stacking rapid regen/cloak/swallow soul can keep you going for a long time, but if you accidently catch a dawnbreaker or something while under pressure you have no choice but to shade out and reset the fight since you have no burst heal to get you out of execute. Lets also not forget that cloak is expensive, and having keep cloak + shade + rapid regen at 100% uptime is a big magicka pull before anything else has even happened. A regen food can help with this but a lot of magblades, particularly ones who brawl, use sugar skulls for a reason. The health regen is necessary, but also the extra stamina. Can't afford to skimp of stam when you have to be in melee range 90% of the time.

Still, if you're good at keeping your HoT's up and know how to LOS/Shade you can be pretty unkillable. The real problems, of course, rear their head when it's time to actually kill other people. None of those problems are really unique to dark cloak/brawling though, just nightblade things in general. Light attacks with swallow soul spam isn't enough to pressure anyone sufficiently tanky, soul harvest is still easy as hell to dodge, and the spectral bow is even easier. Every weapon you have either doesn't hurt much, or can be easily avoided. Even just grinding people down into paste keeping them feared on cooldown doesn't work that well when everyone has so much sustain and NB's lack any real sustain pressure. Gone are the days of trying to wear someone down and stamlock them into a CC + Incap/Bow Proc.

I could continue to expound on this for hours, but it's not anything new that hasn't been said in this thread or others hundreds of times before.

Seraphayel

Honestly, if +3 people are focusing on you, you shouldn’t be able to survive, you should die (if we assume the skill level of your opponents isn’t pancakes). I think a 1v2 should always be possible, but 1v3 while being solo and able to kill the others shouldn’t happen balance-wise. One reason why proc sets are disabled.

I agree though, MagBlade lacks... ooomph? Don’t know how to describe it better. Their skills just seem rather weak in comparison.

JayKwellen

exeeter702 wrote: »

Have I allowed this to go under my radar? I was reasonably sure dark cloak does not scale additionally off of max mag.

@exeeter702 You were correct, it doesn't. I should have been more clear - I was talking just in general about dark cloak builds that used max mag, such as crafty alfiq + necropotence. The mag stacking wasn't related to dark cloak specifically, just that max mag builds were always a thing for nightblades due to how well they scale with it. Once upon a time with dark cloak you could be tanky enough in light armor to survive with just the spectral bow mitigation, 15% minor maim, and a light armor shield and/or defensive monster set without needing to stack 30k+ health.

Doczy

Seraphayel wrote: »

Honestly, if +3 people are focusing on you, you shouldn’t be able to survive, you should die (if we assume the skill level of your opponents isn’t pancakes). I think a 1v2 should always be possible, but 1v3 while being solo and able to kill the others shouldn’t happen balance-wise. One reason why proc sets are disabled.

hello stamcro and stamden can do 1 vs 5 easily

Doczy

JayKwellen wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Have I allowed this to go under my radar? I was reasonably sure dark cloak does not scale additionally off of max mag.

@exeeter702 You were correct, it doesn't. I should have been more clear - I was talking just in general about dark cloak builds that used max mag, such as crafty alfiq + necropotence. The mag stacking wasn't related to dark cloak specifically, just that max mag builds were always a thing for nightblades due to how well they scale with it. Once upon a time with dark cloak you could be tanky enough in light armor to survive with just the spectral bow mitigation, 15% minor maim, and a light armor shield and/or defensive monster set without needing to stack 30k+ health.

500 health per seconds is useless. people using that for %5 damage redce and major resist passive

dark cloak is useless

ccfeeling

NB is free class ...

Crash427

Is it me or is cloak even more unreliable since the new patch? Played for a bit last night and it was incredibly difficult to stay cloaked.

AhSeLYaG

As i wrote on the other forum post about mgblades pvp problems. İt has been long time many patches and so much patience , but nothing changed. Now as i lost caluurion and my only resto heal targets someone else in pvp i gave up with class and gave up with pvp. İt is very clear that nobody listens and nobody cares. This is just waste of time.i ll be focusing on crafting 😁 next months so idınt need no more dlcs or eso+

UrbWzrd

Nightblades have a very difficult rotation, which highly contradicts with the stealth stickers they have. A stealthy character should be fast, very fast. But while I am trying to buff myself with a stupid combo of skills, a templar spams his holy *** spear or a sorc fries me from a distance and I am done. Especially true in BG, which is what PvP means for me (I don't like the horse racing in Cyro).

I am fine with being a glass canon, a hit and run class, I will hit, then run, if I get caught, they will squeeze me, I am ok with that. But if I cannot dance while others easily spam their skills on me, Nightblades are unplayable.

UrbWzrd

UrbWzrd wrote: »

Nightblades have a very difficult rotation, which highly contradicts with the stealth stickers they have. A stealthy character should be fast, very fast. But while I am trying to buff myself with a stupid combo of skills, a templar spams his holy *** spear or a sorc fries me from a distance and I am done. Especially true in BG, which is what PvP means for me (I don't like the horse racing in Cyro).

I am fine with being a glass canon, a hit and run class, I will hit, then run, if I get caught, they will squeeze me, I am ok with that. But if I cannot dance while others easily spam their skills on me, Nightblades are unplayable.

In PvE it is easier to do the stupid rotation and class can shine, but that is also not the spirit of the class. Buff buff buff while the big clumsy boss taunted stable by the tank and then hit. Of course that doesn't work in PvP. [snip]

[edited for inappropriate content]

gariondavey

Doczy wrote: »

Hello my magblade friends. we are in agony in long time. But we need to unite. we need to show our strength to developers.

*First of all we want to get our major sorcery and major brutality from siphoning strikes and morphs . Not from useless sap essence and morphs.

This would be such a good start

RedFireDisco

My swallow soul hits for 9k

On my warden with same race, gear and set up, bugs does Aoe damage and breaches for 16k. And heals (passive)

Sums up magblade

Low burst compared to most classes if you build for any survivability but you still for in 3 hits after cloak fails and you have no heal


Was my main but after years of gutting them I rolled a sorc and facerolled content and PvP

That's a serious issue and everyone knows it

ThePianist

Crash427 wrote: »

Is it me or is cloak even more unreliable since the new patch? Played for a bit last night and it was incredibly difficult to stay cloaked.

Totally unreliable. I’m shelving my stamblade for a while and going back on magsorc.

Shadowy disguise seems like a faster animation of crouch to stealth. Having 1 line of heavy armor also screws with shadowy disguise. 3m increased detect radius as penalty for having 1 line of heavy? Come on.

Un-natural movement from vamp passive has better stealth mechanics. Those cheap alliance pots that give you invisi and cc immunity is more reliable.

master_vanargand

At least I don't think it's weak.
magNB is the most dangerous class if played properl in PvP.

fred4

Crash427 wrote: »

Is it me or is cloak even more unreliable since the new patch? Played for a bit last night and it was incredibly difficult to stay cloaked.

There are some opponents that will really screw you over with detection (mainly potions). Other than that, your problems are likely about not having enough speed and possibly not using the shade to full advantage. I can't emphasize building for full speed enough, e.g. all Swift, gold or at least purple jewelry, Wild Hunt, Concealed and Race Against Time.

Sustain is another thing. If you have the sustain to spam cloak every second in emergency, that seems to lead to you dodging (some) attacks. I know it's not a dodge roll, but it works, for example when someone (with a detect potion) is spamming a gap closer on you. I don't know if this is intentional or a function of my high speed and the gap closer failing a range check, but it does show up as "you dodged" in FTC combat log. I've been in execute range and this can be the safer option than trying to heal, such as when your opponent is spear-heading a zerg and you really need to get away.

UrbWzrd wrote: »

Nightblades have a very difficult rotation, which highly contradicts with the stealth stickers they have. A stealthy character should be fast, very fast. But while I am trying to buff myself with a stupid combo of skills, a templar spams his holy *** spear or a sorc fries me from a distance and I am done. Especially true in BG, which is what PvP means for me (I don't like the horse racing in Cyro).

I am fine with being a glass canon, a hit and run class, I will hit, then run, if I get caught, they will squeeze me, I am ok with that. But if I cannot dance while others easily spam their skills on me, Nightblades are unplayable.

Hmm. You're talking about Grim Focus. I do not like that skill for exactly that reason, but I want to say some things. I don't use the skill. I actually like Impale, believe it or not. However some of the best players I come across, both stamblades and magblades, use Grim Focus very effectively, even in complicated AvA scenarios, and I have a lot of respect for them. It is, however, not a ganking skill. Obviously.

In general, I think stamblade is better at the hit and run. The up-front burst is just stronger. I continually fail to wrap my head around, trying to figure out all the reasons that lead to this. I don't think many will disagree, though, so I'll just leave it at that. At least single-target.

ThePianist wrote: »

Totally unreliable. I’m shelving my stamblade for a while and going back on magsorc.

Here's the problem as I see it. I am a magblade main, btw. If you want a build that plays nicely, magblade sucks. By playing nicely I mean something where you can roam around, get involved in a fight as soon as you see it, stay in the fight, and have a roughly equal chance to die or triumph or even get away, like a sorc or another class. Yeah, you actually have the better getaway tool when it works, but you need speed, sustain and be super careful. That's the general problem. For magblade to play nicely (in my book), you need a lot of speed and a lot of both mag and stam sustain. When you build that way, your damage tanks. When you want the upfront burst to gank like a stamblade, you use Caluurion and Zaan, like me, and, well, magblade kind of plays like a stamblade. It was only bordering on "decent" this patch, in Imperial City. Next patch this kind of build looks to be nerfed into the ground again.

However I am but one magblade. Specifically Proxy Det seems incredibly strong again and Mechanical Acuity has been a controllable proc for a while. I have been hit and killed by some incredibly high burst in IC with combinations of Soul Tether, Proxy Det, even Sap Essence. I'm not talking in a group, I'm talking single target. I've also been opened on with flame heavies, Elemental Weapon and Force Pulse into some ultimate / Proxy Det combo. All crit, of course.

The reason I have, so far, resisted building like that is that you have to go all damage. You IMO become something of a one trick pony, situational, where you're waiting for your opportunity to burst someone or a group who is, preferably, standing still or not moving very fast. You aim to do your thing, then disappear again. It sounds ... boring. You're possibly using Simmering Frenzy to really ramp the damage up. My stamsorc, a medium build, has been hit for 13K Soul Tether, 13K Proxy Det (alone, still trying to figure out how, could be due to IC NPCs and my Engine Guardian), and 8K Sap Essence.

The problem with nightblades are and have always been these outlier builds. You can make a build like that and still be somewhat viable. Spectacularly viable when it works, whereas on another class that just would not work at all. One of the reasons nightblade tends to get nerfed so every other nightblade build is crap and does not perform. I mean ... they're OK in a duel. A Merciless Resolve-based magblade can be good in a duel. It's just, open world (or BG) that is such a pain of a skill.

ThePianist wrote: »

Shadowy disguise seems like a faster animation of crouch to stealth. Having 1 line of heavy armor also screws with shadowy disguise. 3m increased detect radius as penalty for having 1 line of heavy? Come on.

Un-natural movement from vamp passive has better stealth mechanics. Those cheap alliance pots that give you invisi and cc immunity is more reliable.

Well, I got to disagree here. Hmm. I do run one piece heavy. Actually something to think about. However as a perma-cloaking magblade I feel a marked difference when I switch to stamblade. The latter uses vamp and Darloc Brae and really tries to make the best of all worlds. What is very noticeable on the stamblade, though, is that you can't shake NPCs. On a perma-cloaking magblade that is never an issue, because my default mode of movement is to cloak (and using the Concealed speed bonus). On the stamblade, as soon as I just crouch, the aggroed NPCs, confused and stopped in their tracks by cloak, resume their course straight towards you or start hitting you from range. This exposes you to players in IC and in keeps. This is a pain when you're used to magblade.

exeeter702

RedFireDisco wrote: »

My swallow soul hits for 9k

On my warden with same race, gear and set up, bugs does Aoe damage and breaches for 16k. And heals (passive)

Sums up magblade

Low burst compared to most classes if you build for any survivability but you still for in 3 hits after cloak fails and you have no heal


Was my main but after years of gutting them I rolled a sorc and facerolled content and PvP

That's a serious issue and everyone knows it

This is a disingenuous comparison. I think warden is stronger for sure, but this is not the right lense for such scrutiny.

Shalks produces damage every other GDC, so in the same time frame your swallow soul does 18k. Shalks is aoe but telegraphed, swallow soul is single target, instant cast. Swallow heals for more than the animal companion passive and further increases total healing done for slotting it.

They are not analogous to one another, one is a primary spammable skill and the other is made for delayed setup. There are plenty of ways to make the case for magblade flaws, but this isnt really it.