Dark Cloak even worse?

Rikakiah

Why are they continuing to mess with Dark Cloak? First, they make it a strong heal based on max health, making it ideal for tanks to use continually as a solid source of minor prot, major resolve, and relief from dot pressure to stay in a higher band of health. Then, they make it 20% of missing health so the heal is only useful as you get to unsafe levels. Now, they cut that another 6% so it doesn't even do that as well.

Is this morph being abused in pvp? I don't pvp much, but any dps NB builds I've seen either don't use Cloak at all or run the invis morph. I get their push to reduce top end damage and close the skill gap (don't necessarily agree with all their steps), but this has nothing to do with that and is just making a decent skill worse (and worse again).

xylena_lazarow

Rikakiah wrote: »

Is this morph being abused in pvp?

Nope, far less common than Invis Cloak gankers on live. For a moment, brawler NB was looking like one of the less nerfed specs for u35 PvP, but this will hurt. Another skill ruined by "standardization."

FlamingBeard

Nothing to do with PvP or PvE alone; just ZOS using Excel to "balance" the game. I use that word with utmost irony.

ccfeeling

Gilliam, you let me down.

Dragonredux

It heals even worse than Vampiric Drain. Granted it doesn't has a cast time but still. Shame really I actually like Nightblade tanking.

jecks33

Rikakiah wrote: »

Why are they continuing to mess with Dark Cloak? First, they make it a strong heal based on max health, making it ideal for tanks to use continually as a solid source of minor prot, major resolve, and relief from dot pressure to stay in a higher band of health. Then, they make it 20% of missing health so the heal is only useful as you get to unsafe levels. Now, they cut that another 6% so it doesn't even do that as well.

don't forget the change from 7 seconds to 5 some patch ago...

Rikakiah

jecks33 wrote: »

don't forget the change from 7 seconds to 5 some patch ago...

That change was OK, since it made it a stronger burst heal (if I recall, they kept the same overall healing, but crammed it into 5 seconds), while keeping the duration of minor prot.

Personally, instead of trying to shoehorn it into a DK emergency heal, change it (back to its original state?...been a while, can't remember) to heal over the full 10-12 second duration. Or, just not futz with it and leave it exactly as is on live now, because it works fine already. But either of those fits more in line with its actual use (due to minor prot and major resolve passive) rather than putting a weak "Oh crap" heal on a continuous up-time ability.

Rikakiah

Dragonredux wrote: »

It heals even worse than Vampiric Drain. Granted it doesn't has a cast time but still. Shame really I actually like Nightblade tanking.

My NBs are my favorite tanks.

Semi-unrelated, didn't the vampire drain used to be off max health? I remember that being super OP as I could basically just drain tank just about any world boss to death, but it wasn't the same when I tried again a few months ago. But 33% max health per second is a lot different than 9%.

Ratzkifal

My NB tank is very sad about this change. Dark Cloak is the bread and butter skill for NB tanks because as a NB all you got for yourself is strong healing and you need to be constantly casting a Dark Cloak for the resistance buff and minor protection.

It'll probably be "fine" but this really is bullying. Who are they even changing this skill for? PvE tanks don't like it and PvP characters would also prefer the max health heal because when you are below 50% hp in PvP, you are dead. I'm sure this is because players were complaining about how tanky NBs are in PvP or something. Buff defile if you have to, healing has been too strong in PvP across the board anyway - no need to single-out NBs to the detriment of PvE tanks, ZOS.

Stx

I have no idea why they made any changes to dark cloak this patch... I liked it the way it was. Now it's just useless, another job well done.

p4l4mu7

I was okay with the first change since nb has multiple healing over time skills we could use a burst heal even though making a burst heal out of healing over time skill is odd but then they just decided to nerf it again.

emilyhyoyeon

''Dark Cloak (morph): This morph now heals for 11-14% of your missing health, down from 17-20%.
Developer Comment:

Keep in mind that while this number may seem high, as the ability and other sources heal you it naturally diminishes in power, making it much better to use when you are below 50% Health.''


Can anyone explain what the developer comment means? Are they saying the 11-14% seems high or the amount they nerfed it seems high? Overall I just don't get it

xDeusEJRx

They didn't anger enough nightblade players and are now trying to rectify that. They needed to anger all mains on every class so that no one's happy and nightblade is just now getting it's round of nerfs

Csleia

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

''Dark Cloak (morph): This morph now heals for 11-14% of your missing health, down from 17-20%.
Developer Comment:

Keep in mind that while this number may seem high, as the ability and other sources heal you it naturally diminishes in power, making it much better to use when you are below 50% Health.''


Can anyone explain what the developer comment means? Are they saying the 11-14% seems high or the amount they nerfed it seems high? Overall I just don't get it

they were high

Brrrofski

There was no reason to even change it.

It was a decent heal, but not broken, not even in PvP.

umagon

I think the devs time would be better spent recoding bolstering darkness; instead of continually recoding skills that already have useful function. And the change to dark cloak isn’t going have impact the devs think it will in pvp. It impacts pve situations much more.

The change seems to be a poor attempt to cut down on healing stalemating pvp situations, but the ultimate way of correcting that would be to make a separate stat for healing output. Which will make players have to give up some of their damage mitigation and/or damage output to have increased healing values.

All they did is now removed the need to maintain a high health value to benefit from dark cloak, which means that stat budget can be placed somewhere else. And where do they think it will go when healing still scales off stat stam/mag pools, and weapon/spell damage? I wonder where.

TimX

I just checked on live, im getting a 4,2k tooltip with a 44k Health tank. With the new changes I just have to loose 30k(68%) of my health to get the same on pts... and while live heal stays the same on pts it even gets worse with every heal tick.

Csleia

TimX wrote: »

I just checked on live, im getting a 4,2k tooltip with a 44k Health tank. With the new changes I just have to loose 30k(68%) of my health to get the same on pts... and while live heal stays the same on pts it even gets worse with every heal tick.

its so outrageous that it has to be a mistake, zos balancing team cant be that bad at basic math can they?

Csleia

like they made the spirit mender have 3k health instead of 30k, they dont even know how to multiply by 10

Lykeion

Cloak may be powerful for pvp NB tanks, but didn't PTS1 nerf it enough? Do you have to turn cloak into such a trash skill both in pvp and pve?
One thing I liked about ESO is that, while there is an optimal choice, each class can play as a dps, healer, and tank. I enjoy playing NB healers and NB tanks, it makes me feel special, and I'm good at them. And now ZOS is telling me, Oh, forget weak refreshing path and useless cloak, NB's options don't include healer and tank. Look, I gave you the surprise attack guaranteed to crit, you will be a super good dps.

But why?

ccfeeling

This is the main reason I play all class tanks in game , with the latest cloak change, I dont think NB tank is puggable in VET DLC ,sometimes you wont have a good healer or you see some healers below 400 cp in vet dlc dungeons, I manage to do the rev job and recover the group at worst time.
Mini /boss heavy attack no kidding,thats why I run 7 heavy sturdy, Tbh no tanks would like to keep hp at or blow 50 percent, b/c you guys create so many fatal mechanics, dev you know what tank die meaning? The game is almost over unless you have impressive healer and the rest know what to do like kiting and spam heal and shield.
Bleeding and healing debuff will be NB tank nightmare.
Please dont mess up with class identity, DK is DK, we are NB, we cant use igneous shield and GDB combo provide huge burst healing at low health.
I remember the day NB tank has no great effective healing , we are back.

Class skill changing is not easy, so we may have no chance to get back the original Dark Cloak or we have to wait U36 1 year later.

J18696

Yeah unjustified nerf pvp wise didn't play with it in pve so not entirely sure on its performance in that content

Iron_Blurr

Let's do some math.. You're in pvp as a NB. You have 25k health.
You take damage and now you are at half health which is 12.5k
Your dark cloak heals for 14% of what you're missing. So your first tick heals for 1,750 right? WRONG! You have battle spirit active so it's half that.
Here's your biggest tick of 875 health. And as soon as it ticks once your health moves up so it heals for less and less. How much lower can it even get?? It's already under 1k healing per second.
Let's say you are at 75% of your health.
That's 18,750 health. You are missing 6,250.
So what's 14% of 6,250? Well that's 875 health. But wait cut that in half for battle spirit. Yay that's a fat 437.5 health per second and it gets weaker every second!

Let's say you are a tank with 45k health. You take a big hit from a trial boss and you are now at half health. You are missing 22.5k health. What is 14% of that? 3,150 health. But the heal gets weaker and weaker the higher your health gets.
At that rate of 3k healing per second (which is more than it would be since the heal gets weaker and weaker every second) it would take you approximately 8 seconds to heal back up to full health. 22.5/3=7.5 and it's actually longer than that since the heal gets weaker over time and you continue to take damage from the boss you are trying to tank.
It will take forever to heal up enough to survive another big hit. If you get back to back heavy attacks you will die before to you can even heal yourself back up to full.

Duhne

I guess nerf was to avoid HoT stacking in PvP as you can now use vigor and rapid regen at the same time.

And this is more the identity of necro to be able to do that with no self targeting guaranteed

Brrrofski

Duhne wrote: »

I guess nerf was to avoid HoT stacking in PvP as you can now use vigor and rapid regen at the same time.

And this is more the identity of necro to be able to do that with no self targeting guaranteed

But you can do that now.

Nobody does. It's not an issue.

Dagobertfuk

Im talking from pvp perspective, with halfed heal

Dark Cloak how it is on actual PTS will be a Skill nobody will use ever again. A nerf for no *** reason. Like it was stronger than other Heals. Vigor was way stronger. And since vigor gets major resolve its even less worth it, to even think about using it as a Nightblade.

My Nightblade in Cyrodiil on live servers with 40k HP gets 2,6k hps with dark cloak. After the first Dark Cloak Nerf in pts week one or two, i had to be 50% Player HP to get the heal value from live servers. Right now on pts after the second nerf, i have to be at 10% player HP to get almost old value of 2520 hps. I did the math with the pts maximum of 14%. Even Vampire Drain, a skill nobody with more than 2 braincells is using in PvP to heal up, heals more than actual PTS Dark Cloak.

Any reason why anyone should use PTS Dark Cloak instead of another healing ability other than for style? I can't think of any. Mainly because every other healing ability heals me more by a frightening margin, no matter how much HP I have, except at 10% where Dark Cloak get it old healing value.
Image when i dont have 40k HP. Hard to imagine but it gets even worse rofl.

But a skill that only really works, when i am already with both legs in the grave, in execute range and eating 400% extra dmg from enemy execute's, is a total abilityslot waste.

When zos worked on dark cloak their minds were elsewhere.

edward_frigidhands

jecks33 wrote: »

Rikakiah wrote: »

Why are they continuing to mess with Dark Cloak? First, they make it a strong heal based on max health, making it ideal for tanks to use continually as a solid source of minor prot, major resolve, and relief from dot pressure to stay in a higher band of health. Then, they make it 20% of missing health so the heal is only useful as you get to unsafe levels. Now, they cut that another 6% so it doesn't even do that as well.

don't forget the change from 7 seconds to 5 some patch ago...

The change to 5 seconds was supposed to make up for the heal per second being increased to make it more usable since it was so very weak for tanking.

Kind of odd reasoning back then given what is being done now.

Dagobertfuk

Dark Cloak nerf makes it totally useless in PvP. With all that crosshealing going on and hybridscaling everyone is anyway running around with high weapon/spellpower. Those stats even make U35 Vigor stronger than U34 Dark Cloak.

Altrough Vigor will heal for a lot more and grant more uptime on Major Resolve than Dark Cloak with the NB passive Shadowbarrier does with full heavy armor setup.

Full heavy armor NB Major Resolve 16s vs vigor's 20s per cast and more healing than pre PTS Dark Cloak.

Tonturri

Why are they trying to just copy past dragonknight's class heal over? I don't want it. The cloak morph isn't even thematic anymore - it's just a generuc HoT with a different graphic. For nightblade, I would expect something thematic like...I dunno, 'You become hazy, and opponents have a harder time hitting you (unique damage reduction effect). Whenever you're struck by an enemy, apply 1 stack of some debuff (max 5). When you press the skill, deal damage to the target based on stacks and gain a heal + absorb based on stacks, plus a lesser absorb to allies.' Or, heck, a heal for the NB plus temporarily granting NB's allies the damage reduction. Get some unique group support going.

Something that's even slightly in line with nightblade's theme. I would love a skill that had a passive effect, then actively pressing the button interacted with the passive somehow

Dagobertfuk

Tonturri wrote: »

Why are they trying to just copy past dragonknight's class heal over? I don't want it. The cloak morph isn't even thematic anymore - it's just a generuc HoT with a different graphic. For nightblade, I would expect something thematic like...I dunno, 'You become hazy, and opponents have a harder time hitting you (unique damage reduction effect). Whenever you're struck by an enemy, apply 1 stack of some debuff (max 5). When you press the skill, deal damage to the target based on stacks and gain a heal + absorb based on stacks, plus a lesser absorb to allies.' Or, heck, a heal for the NB plus temporarily granting NB's allies the damage reduction. Get some unique group support going.

Something that's even slightly in line with nightblade's theme. I would love a skill that had a passive effect, then actively pressing the button interacted with the passive somehow

Their attempt to copy dragonknights classheal over was pretty bad. Dragonknight with all his heal modifiers gets easy 40%hp burst heal. While dark cloak is a useless heal over time, nobody would use while beeing at low hp instead of a burst heal like malevolent offering for example.

Dark Cloak will have its pre pts heal value at 10% hp. And while i am on 10% hp, that heal value is by far not worth to waste a global cd for, when u get already +400% dmg executes in the face. Its a burstheal you want to use. Another fact what shows how useless Dark Cloak will be. Its just a joke what ZOS us doing.

edward_frigidhands

Dagobertfuk wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

Why are they trying to just copy past dragonknight's class heal over? I don't want it. The cloak morph isn't even thematic anymore - it's just a generuc HoT with a different graphic. For nightblade, I would expect something thematic like...I dunno, 'You become hazy, and opponents have a harder time hitting you (unique damage reduction effect). Whenever you're struck by an enemy, apply 1 stack of some debuff (max 5). When you press the skill, deal damage to the target based on stacks and gain a heal + absorb based on stacks, plus a lesser absorb to allies.' Or, heck, a heal for the NB plus temporarily granting NB's allies the damage reduction. Get some unique group support going.

Something that's even slightly in line with nightblade's theme. I would love a skill that had a passive effect, then actively pressing the button interacted with the passive somehow

Their attempt to copy dragonknights classheal over was pretty bad. Dragonknight with all his heal modifiers gets easy 40%hp burst heal. While dark cloak is a useless heal over time, nobody would use while beeing at low hp instead of a burst heal like malevolent offering for example.

Dark Cloak will have its pre pts heal value at 10% hp. And while i am on 10% hp, that heal value is by far not worth to waste a global cd for, when u get already +400% dmg executes in the face. Its a burstheal you want to use. Another fact what shows how useless Dark Cloak will be. Its just a joke what ZOS us doing.

Dragon Knights heal for almost 45% of missing health per cast of Green Dragon Blood.