Nightblade Consuming Darkness Ult

HalensShade

I think we can all agree, PvP and PvE alike, that this ultimate has been completely gutted since the nerfs to major buffs.

Consuming Darkness used to be incredible for PvP survival, the Bolstering Darkness morph offering a whopping 60% mitigation while standing inside the circle.

Veil of Blades still does what it has always done, and it is simply eclipsed by other ultimates in terms of damage, mitigation, and most importantly cost to benefit ratio in its current state. It's not worth it.

The only gleam to the ultimate at all is the synergy. I wouldn't even be opposed to just gutting the ultimate altogether to work as the current synergy does. It'd be more useful than standing in a circle that does absolutely nothing for you in the current meta, PvP or PvE.

Some ideas:

Make the current synergy the actual function of the ult.

Summon a barrage of shadows to rush your target for aoe damage (similar to blast bones ult)

Engulf yourself in shadows, granting you a % dodge chance for x amount of time.

Reinstate the additional 30% mitigation while standing in consuming darkness' aoe, major protection persists throughout the duration.

Reduce the cost of the veil of blades morph, and add a damage multiplier to the caster/allies while inside the aoe.

Acivate this ultimate to enter the shadow realm, granting you immunity to crowd control effects and snares. Recasting the ult during its duration allows you to blink through the shadows to your cursor (up to 10m).

Drench your weapons in darkness. Each light/heavy attack deals x oblivion damage, healing you for the damage done, and each kill increases the ultimate's enchantment by x seconds.

There's so many ways to not let this ultimate just collect dust. Let's hear some ideas.

Sparxlost

I find it funny that an ult gives you a limited time buff that you could get passively from a regular bar skill.. (revealing flare)
even a unique 15% damage mitigation source would be more than enough for you and your allies assuming your allies are a vampires who run dark cloak or and revealing flare....

olsborg

Yes its too weak and too costly. Id totally revamp this ult.

Ezorus

I've played NB the whole time since starting 5 years ago, yet I ALWAYS forget the name of it cause it has always been USELESS

Dalsinthus

Ezorus wrote: »

I've played NB the whole time since starting 5 years ago, yet I ALWAYS forget the name of it cause it has always been USELESS

It was worth using in the early days of the game, but yes, it has been useless for the vast majority of the game's life. The thing is that it would be so easy to fix - OP offers great suggestions.

HalensShade

Thanks for the replies.

Like Sparx said, you can slot better abilities on your skill bar that outperform the ultimate altogether. Doesn't sound very "ultimate".

It's just simply outdated. Broken record opinion incoming: magblade was neglected for years and this is the result of the game moving forward with loose ends. It's a launch class. And it's an ultimate. I'm surprised more people aren't worked up about how absolutely useless this ult really is.

Iron_Blurr

DK gets magma 97% damage mitigation for 200 ulti.
Necro gets ghost 10% unique mitigation from regular skill.
Necro gets 15% damage over time mitigation built into their passives!
Everyone has access to flare which gives 10% damage mitigation major protection while slotted..

Meanwhile night blade gets bolstering.. 10% damage mitigation from major protection for a short duration of time. Oh and it costs 200 ultimate.

How is this fair?

Vaoh

ZOS could take the opportunity to turn this Ult into something fun and shadow-themed for NB Support roles. Something like:

Base Ability: Envious Aura

Target: Area
Cost: 150 Ultimate
Radius: 28 meters
Duration: Toggle
Unleash the terrifying depths of your shadow magic, imbuing you and your allies with envious auras which lash out for 540 Magic Damage anytime the host deals direct damage. Also grants 5% Critical Chance.

After 8 seconds, this ability becomes a toggle. While toggled allies remain buffed, but their envious auras flay your own mind away anytime they deal damage. Inflicts 10% of the shadow’s damage onto you and increases by 5% every 1 second until the ability is toggled off.

Morph 1: Unshackled Darkness

Target: Area
Cost: 120 Ultimate
Radius: 28 meters
Duration: Toggle
Unleash the terrifying depths of your shadow magic, imbuing you and your allies with envious auras which lash out for 540 Magic Damage anytime the host deals direct damage. Also grants 5% Critical Chance.

After 8 seconds, this ability becomes a toggle. While toggled allies remain buffed, but their envious auras flay your own mind away anytime they deal damage. Inflicts 10% of the shadow’s damage onto you and increases by 5% every 1 second until the ability is toggled off.

After 20 seconds you overcome the shadows, ending the toggle and causing an outburst of destructive shadow magic dealing 21,600 Magic Damage within 8 meters. This portion scales off your Max Health and deals 200% more damage to non-player enemies.

NEW EFFECT: Reduces the cost. If you survive the toggle, unleash a massive burst of damage to nearby enemies.

Morph 2: Enriching Shadows

Target: Area
Cost: 150 Ultimate
Radius: 6 meters
Duration: 12 seconds
Conjure a ring of possessive shadows, granting you and your allies within Major Vitality and Minor Vitality, increasing healing taken by 24%. Reduces the effectiveness of healing debuffs applied to you and your allies within by 10%.

Allies in the area can activate the Hidden Refresh synergy, granting them invisibility, increasing their Movement Speed by 70%, and healing them for 9110 Health over 4 seconds.

NEW EFFECT: Instead forms a ring of shadows to caress you and your allies.

However it happens, the NB Shadow Ult can become a big part of what brings NB Healers and NB Tanks into trial groups in the future.

Stx

A long time ago I used consuming darkness in solo pve. The damage morph was decent aoe damage and great mitigation.

Sadly these days, this ultimate is not only useless, but most likely the worst ultimate in the game.

Foxtrot39

Thing is, its never gonna get made borderline usefulll that ult has not been touched since what feels like game launch, only its protection buff has been gutted but sicne its not a unique buff it doesn't count as a skill change

Pretty sure nobody at ZoS even know it exists with how far it has been send into the shadow realm

DrNukenstein

I use it to balance shadow passives on my back bar. It's great for that, since if I didn't use that ult for incap I didn't use that ult for fun

MindOfTheSwarm

Make it mobile and at least Veil of Blades would have use. Or just buff it’s damage so at the very least it can be used an an alternative for PVE. Another option is that it debuffs enemies inside causing them to take 1% more damage. This would result it being excellent in a trial. There are a lot of ways it could be buffed. Personally I think making it mobile or increasing its AOE are the best approaches.

YandereGirlfriend

Justice for Consuming Darkness!

This ultimate is the biggest meme in the game.

I have literally no clue how the devs look at this ability and think, "Naw, this is fine."

TybaltKaine

It's a PVE Tank ultimate. Of course it's useless in a PVP setting.

YandereGirlfriend

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's a PVE Tank ultimate. Of course it's useless in a PVP setting.

Yes, but it is horribad even in PvE. That's the point. It is useless and outclassed in 100% of the game's content.

Weckless

I think it should drop a 12m aoe and reactivating it lets you teleport anywhere in the aoe and gives guaranteed critical strikes from the flank for one morph. The other morph gives mitigation and lets you reactivate to move it and pull all enemies in the area to you

TybaltKaine

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Foxtrot39

Think if you need to completely build around an ultimate to make it just relevent goes against it being an ult if it needs so much life support to be usable

Weckless

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Name a class ultimate that doesn't get used at all ever besides consuming darkness. You can't and your little rp build you just made up doesn't count. The ult is bad and needs a re work if you disagree then you are just wrong and dont deserve to have your opinion considered because it's that bad.

SandandStars

Permafrost.

Some wardens use the bear for a random big hit, but generally it’s as ludicrous and un-fun an ultimate as you could imagine.

Weckless

SandandStars wrote: »

Permafrost.

Some wardens use the bear for a random big hit, but generally it’s as ludicrous and un-fun an ultimate as you could imagine.

But northern storm is used a ton. Just because one morph is not as good doesn't compare it to an ult that's bad through and through

Weckless

Plus permafrost still has tons of utility even though it's counterpart is recommended. Being less useful than the other morph doesn't make it bad

Weckless

The bear is also used on pve dps builds and magdens utilize eternal guardian as a damage sponge. I main nb and idek remember the morph names of consuming darkness because they arent even worth the skill points to level them

YandereGirlfriend

SandandStars wrote: »

Permafrost.

Some wardens use the bear for a random big hit, but generally it’s as ludicrous and un-fun an ultimate as you could imagine.

Permafrost is good in PvP. The same cannot be said for Consuming Darkness.

Anti_Virus

Weckless wrote: »

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Name a class ultimate that doesn't get used at all ever besides consuming darkness. You can't and your little rp build you just made up doesn't count. The ult is bad and needs a re work if you disagree then you are just wrong and dont deserve to have your opinion considered because it's that bad.

Nova and its morphs on templar

SandandStars

Personally, I always choose northern storm over perma in pvp.

Isn’t it generally considered the stronger option these days?

YandereGirlfriend

Anti_Virus wrote: »

Weckless wrote: »

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Name a class ultimate that doesn't get used at all ever besides consuming darkness. You can't and your little rp build you just made up doesn't count. The ult is bad and needs a re work if you disagree then you are just wrong and dont deserve to have your opinion considered because it's that bad.

Nova and its morphs on templar

Dude what, Nova is essential in organized PvP. Seriously, it's a top-tier damage ultimate.

Weckless

SandandStars wrote: »

Personally, I always choose northern storm over perma in pvp.

Isn’t it generally considered the stronger option these days?

You know just because you main magsorc doesnt mean you have to rally against any nb improvements. Im a nb main backing up sorc improvements on that thread you're on its okay for us all choose balance over grudges

Weckless

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Anti_Virus wrote: »

Weckless wrote: »

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Name a class ultimate that doesn't get used at all ever besides consuming darkness. You can't and your little rp build you just made up doesn't count. The ult is bad and needs a re work if you disagree then you are just wrong and dont deserve to have your opinion considered because it's that bad.

Nova and its morphs on templar

Dude what, Nova is essential in organized PvP. Seriously, it's a top-tier damage ultimate.

Must have never taken a 26k nova before

Anti_Virus

Weckless wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Anti_Virus wrote: »

Weckless wrote: »

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine in basic PVE. Running a Nordblade with fully specced passives and a single FG skill (silver leash) you can use it reliably and efficiently to deal with trash.

Rush of Agony, Fear, Twisting Path combined with Dark Convergence will pull stun and control mobs effectively. Taking Thaumaturge, and Occult Overload give you a nice boost to AOE damage. Equipping anything with minor heroism makes Ultimate generation a joke.

Malevolent Offering as a self heal generates stacking ultimate on a Nord due to the racial passive that gives ultimate for taking damage and the class passive that generates ultimate when casting a siphoning ability.

Wanna get really ridiculous? Replace DC with Dead Waters Guile (15 ultimate when you kill an enemy). Rush of Agony, Caltrops, Fear, Twisting Path, Veil of Blades boom dead trash mob, ult basically refills itself.

It can be used if you get creative, which ya know, that's every skill. Every class has that one ultimate that's kinda "meh" you just have to get creative to find the application.

For example, here is a one bar setup for an Oakentank that's crazy fun:
Sets: Rush Of Agony (weapon, two jewelry, one armor piece), Dead Waters Guile (5 armor), any filler piece, Oakensoul
Skills: Shielded Assault, Mass Hysteria, Razor Caltrops, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Veil of Blades

You can replace Dead Waters with Dark Convergence for a secondary pull (trigger it with Razor Caltrops).

Is it META? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

Sometimes fun is all you need.

Name a class ultimate that doesn't get used at all ever besides consuming darkness. You can't and your little rp build you just made up doesn't count. The ult is bad and needs a re work if you disagree then you are just wrong and dont deserve to have your opinion considered because it's that bad.

Nova and its morphs on templar

Dude what, Nova is essential in organized PvP. Seriously, it's a top-tier damage ultimate.

Must have never taken a 26k nova before

I’ve never seen the ultimate used in pvp tbh

chessalavakia_ESO

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

SandandStars wrote: »

Permafrost.

Some wardens use the bear for a random big hit, but generally it’s as ludicrous and un-fun an ultimate as you could imagine.

Permafrost is good in PvP. The same cannot be said for Consuming Darkness.

Isn't Permafrost basically Veil of Blades cousin?

If one works and the other doesn't it doesn't seem like you'd need to change much to make the other work.