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• PC/Mac: EU megaserver for maintenance – September 9, 22:00 UTC (6:00PM EDT) - September 10, 16:00 UTC (12:00PM EDT) https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/682784
The reason why PTS Dark Cloak is wrong and the logic of healing skills
Lykeion
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I am a NB main player, and I use NB for all roles, so I am glad to discuss the problems with PTS Dark Cloak from both the healer and tank perspectives. The changes to Dark Cloak in PTS have had a significant impact on NB tanks, and I'm trying to use this thread to help dev better understand and adjust this skill if they still end up deciding to make changes to it.
As we all know, there are two main types of healing skills: HOT and burst healing. These two healing skills provide healing for yourself or your teammates in different situations. In the trial, even with the presence of a tank, DPS is difficult to completely avoid the damage of environmental damage, splash damage, etc. These damages is usually not high, but suffer multiple times is enough to cause a threat to the life of the DPS. The purpose of HOT is to provide continuous and reliable healing for team members (mainly DPS) so that they do not die from successive minor damage. The following chart is a more typical healer analysis that I found randomly in esologs. As you can see, in general HOT makes up the bulk of the healing. In short, the purpose of HOT is to keep your health in good condition while taking a small amount of damage consistently.
Burst healing makes up a smaller portion of the total healing, but it is just as important. When your teammate has suffered serious damage and his/her health is on the line, you need to quickly pull up the health, otherwise a random environmental damage may lead to death. In VSS's Ice Tomb, your teammate will lose 80% of health immediately. The healer will usually cast HOT in advance in the tomb, followed by spamming burst healing. In VDSR's Maelstrom, we also see healers spamming burst healing. In short, the purpose of burst healing is to quickly restore health to a safe condition when the target is already severely damaged.
Now let's talk about the problems with PTS Cloak of Darkness. Live Cloak of Darkness is a HOT and the only NB healing skill that scales off maximum health. It performs well and almost all NB tanks use it as one of their core skills. In PTS3, its effect was changed to restore 11%-14% of lost life per second. I believe that this change comes from dev's confidence in the Dragon's Blood mechanic. Although there is some controversy about the mechanics of Dragon's Blood, it is a good burst healing skill because it does give you a huge amount of healing in an instant, although it requires you to use it while at the loss of most of your health.
But that all changed when dev tried to transfer this mechanic to Dark Cloak. As mentioned earlier, the purpose of HOT is to keep your health at a good level while taking less damage consistently, but the mechanics of PTS Dark Cloak make it almost useless when you take minor damage. Let's say you're a NB tank and the first light attack from the boss does 10k damage to you, and your Dark Cloak only restores 1k health per second for you. This is still far from your full health, but the boss's next light strike will follow. And, when you've already taken serious damage, PTS Dark Cloak also can't play the role of a burst healer: the percentage it restores per second is too low compared to Dragon's Blood. It can't instantly bring your life back to a safe level when you're already on the brink of death. It takes 5 seconds to fully play its healing effect, and when your health is at stake, a single light strike from the boss within a second is enough to kill you.
PTS Cloak of Darkness becomes the game's worst self-healing skill, because it fails to meet the goals of a healing skill: it can neither keep your health in good condition while you're constantly taking small amounts of damage, nor can it instantly restore your health to a safe level when you're already taking serious damage. It cannot be a reliable healing skill under any circumstances. Dark Cloak on PTS cannot be used as a self-healing skill by NB tanks at all, and it is the only core healing skill that NB tanks can rely on. This change will undoubtedly kill the NB tanks.
I hope this post will provide some reference for dev and perhaps help you design a better healing skill for NB. Personally I think keeping Live Dark Cloak is the best approach, it's balanced enough. I've seen almost no posts complaining about this skill being overpowered before, but I've seen a dozen posts in the post-PTS3 forums complaining about the nerf to Dark Cloak being too severe. Maybe a rollback, like you guys have done with other changes, would be the smartest thing to do. If you still want to make changes to it, I hope you refer to other enthusiastic contributors in the community, such as code65536 and qcell, who already gave many constructive suggestions and have the most experience with the game, which is your most valuable treasure as game developers. You shouldn't let us down. I've always been glad that I'm a NB tank, it's not a mainstream option, but I'm doing well, and it makes me special. I've been all over the trials and gained many friends, and I don't want my journey to end at Update 35.
Edited by Lykeion on August 3, 2022 10:03AM As we all know, there are two main types of healing skills: HOT and burst healing. These two healing skills provide healing for yourself or your teammates in different situations. In the trial, even with the presence of a tank, DPS is difficult to completely avoid the damage of environmental damage, splash damage, etc. These damages is usually not high, but suffer multiple times is enough to cause a threat to the life of the DPS. The purpose of HOT is to provide continuous and reliable healing for team members (mainly DPS) so that they do not die from successive minor damage. The following chart is a more typical healer analysis that I found randomly in esologs. As you can see, in general HOT makes up the bulk of the healing. In short, the purpose of HOT is to keep your health in good condition while taking a small amount of damage consistently.
Burst healing makes up a smaller portion of the total healing, but it is just as important. When your teammate has suffered serious damage and his/her health is on the line, you need to quickly pull up the health, otherwise a random environmental damage may lead to death. In VSS's Ice Tomb, your teammate will lose 80% of health immediately. The healer will usually cast HOT in advance in the tomb, followed by spamming burst healing. In VDSR's Maelstrom, we also see healers spamming burst healing. In short, the purpose of burst healing is to quickly restore health to a safe condition when the target is already severely damaged.
Now let's talk about the problems with PTS Cloak of Darkness. Live Cloak of Darkness is a HOT and the only NB healing skill that scales off maximum health. It performs well and almost all NB tanks use it as one of their core skills. In PTS3, its effect was changed to restore 11%-14% of lost life per second. I believe that this change comes from dev's confidence in the Dragon's Blood mechanic. Although there is some controversy about the mechanics of Dragon's Blood, it is a good burst healing skill because it does give you a huge amount of healing in an instant, although it requires you to use it while at the loss of most of your health.
But that all changed when dev tried to transfer this mechanic to Dark Cloak. As mentioned earlier, the purpose of HOT is to keep your health at a good level while taking less damage consistently, but the mechanics of PTS Dark Cloak make it almost useless when you take minor damage. Let's say you're a NB tank and the first light attack from the boss does 10k damage to you, and your Dark Cloak only restores 1k health per second for you. This is still far from your full health, but the boss's next light strike will follow. And, when you've already taken serious damage, PTS Dark Cloak also can't play the role of a burst healer: the percentage it restores per second is too low compared to Dragon's Blood. It can't instantly bring your life back to a safe level when you're already on the brink of death. It takes 5 seconds to fully play its healing effect, and when your health is at stake, a single light strike from the boss within a second is enough to kill you.
PTS Cloak of Darkness becomes the game's worst self-healing skill, because it fails to meet the goals of a healing skill: it can neither keep your health in good condition while you're constantly taking small amounts of damage, nor can it instantly restore your health to a safe level when you're already taking serious damage. It cannot be a reliable healing skill under any circumstances. Dark Cloak on PTS cannot be used as a self-healing skill by NB tanks at all, and it is the only core healing skill that NB tanks can rely on. This change will undoubtedly kill the NB tanks.
I hope this post will provide some reference for dev and perhaps help you design a better healing skill for NB. Personally I think keeping Live Dark Cloak is the best approach, it's balanced enough. I've seen almost no posts complaining about this skill being overpowered before, but I've seen a dozen posts in the post-PTS3 forums complaining about the nerf to Dark Cloak being too severe. Maybe a rollback, like you guys have done with other changes, would be the smartest thing to do. If you still want to make changes to it, I hope you refer to other enthusiastic contributors in the community, such as code65536 and qcell, who already gave many constructive suggestions and have the most experience with the game, which is your most valuable treasure as game developers. You shouldn't let us down. I've always been glad that I'm a NB tank, it's not a mainstream option, but I'm doing well, and it makes me special. I've been all over the trials and gained many friends, and I don't want my journey to end at Update 35.
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I agree 100%.
I also main a NB tank and people are always surprised to see a nb tank, it is a fun way to tank content and on live no content is too much with some practice.
The pts dark cloak will kill nb tanks stone dead. I am hoping for a rollback on this skill so I can continue playing my character as it is my only one.
I don't want to be forced to make a new character with a different class to tank.4 -
p4l4mu7✭✭✭✭✭The idea of making a burst-healing overtime skill is the worst idea they come up with yet, instead they could just turn one of the morphs of Malevolent Offering into a selfheal that scales on either max health or missing health. I doubt anyone would miss Shrewd Offering while Healthy Offering outperforms it by ton.2 -
exeeter702✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭The idea of making a burst-healing overtime skill is the worst idea they come up with yet, instead they could just turn one of the morphs of Malevolent Offering into a selfheal that scales on either max health or missing health. I doubt anyone would miss Shrewd Offering while Healthy Offering outperforms it by ton.
No. What they need to do is change one of offerings morphs back to the previous version of offering and unscrew NB healers in pvp. Look elsewhere for your solution to this issue. People that where completely oblivious to the use cases of particular skills is why we are in this mess in the first place.1 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Nobody’s going to run a healing skill that only works the closer you get to death.
As soon as this update drops I’ll respec to Shadowy Disguise and slot Vigor instead. Like the vast majority of nightblades will be doing.5 -
p4l4mu7✭✭✭✭✭exeeter702 wrote: »The idea of making a burst-healing overtime skill is the worst idea they come up with yet, instead they could just turn one of the morphs of Malevolent Offering into a selfheal that scales on either max health or missing health. I doubt anyone would miss Shrewd Offering while Healthy Offering outperforms it by ton.
No. What they need to do is change one of offerings morphs back to the previous version of offering and unscrew NB healers in pvp. Look elsewhere for your solution to this issue. People that where completely oblivious to the use cases of particular skills is why we are in this mess in the first place.
Chill...2 -
Freelancer_ESO✭✭✭✭✭
✭It's the Vampiric Drain problem.
Theoretically, it's got loads of power but in practice most of the time it doesn't and it's competition is far more reliable.
I've went through a period on all of my vampires trying to be a real vampire and use the drain for my healing and it always ends with me using something else.
With the 14% selection it looks like it's inferior to the live version whenever your hp is above around 1/3rd which is probably going to be most of the time. As the healing adjusts with the missing % even if you use the ability when you are below 1/3rd health if the ability quickly brings you above a 1/3rd it may still be a downgrade over the duration compared to the live version.1 -
ccfeeling✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭ZOS , I can drop my DC from my skill bar as you wish , can you rework vigor , we need mag version , thanks .1 -
Brrrofski✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭There's a reason dragonblood, which has the same missing health mechanic works.
It's a burst heal. At 20% health, you know it'll give you a huge heal that will keep you alive from the next hit.
Having a hot do that won't work. Hots are used to keep you topped up near full health. Nobody casts them when they're almost dead, they cast a burst heal.
I don't even know why they changed it. It wasn't too strong in pve and making NB tanks gods, and I've not seen anyone complain about it being too strong in PvP either, because it only last 5 seconds and ticks for about 2k when you invest something in healing, a CP or heavy armor etc.
I don't get it. The skill was in a very good place as it was. It was well-balanced imo. And I've not seen anything from anyone arguing that.Edited by Brrrofski on August 4, 2022 9:45AM10 -
edward_frigidhands✭✭✭✭✭There's a reason dragonblood, which has the same missing health mechanic works.
It's a burst heal. At 20% health, you know it'll give you a huge heal that will keep you alive from the next hit.
Having a hot do that won't work. Hots are used to keep you topped up near full health. Nobody casts them when they're almost dead, they cast a burst heal.
I don't even know why they changed it. It wasn't too strong in pve and letting NB tanks gods, and I've not seen anyone complain abou it being too stront in PvP either, because it only last 5 seconds and ticks for about 2k when you invest something in healing, a CP or heavy armor etc.
I don't get it. The skill was in a very good place as it was. It was well-balanced imo. And I've not seen anything from anyone arguing that.
Very well put.
I am not sure why they attempted to have a HoT work the way a strong single target heal would. It just will not happen if the mechanic is missing health.
The healing from Green Dragon Blood is also enhanced drastically by the many passive healing buffs Dragon Knights have as part of their toolkit.
- Burning Heart passive 12% healing enhanced
- Major Mending from Fragmented Shield for 6.7 seconds which enhances healing done by 16%.
- Minor Vitality granted by Green Dragon Blood itself which grants an 8% boost to healing for 20 seconds, causing a second Green Dragon Blood cast to be affected by it.
This provides the Dragon Knight with a 36% boost to their heal, making it heal for almost 45% of missing health per cast compared to the current iteration of Dark Cloak which will heal for 11% - 15% of missing health per second. This puts the Dragon Knight heal and their tanking ability in a class of it's own, unreachable by what other classes could possibly provide.
I tank with both the Dragon Knight and my Night Blade, so I understand why both heals work differently and why they should continue to do so.
If they absolutely must make this change then my recommendation would be to have a minimum heal amount that scales with resistances to ensure tanks are unaffected for PvP and PvE.Edited by edward_frigidhands on August 3, 2022 11:47AM3 -
ccfeeling✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭There will also be a handful of tweaks to some class abilities in next week’s PTS patch, based on the feedback we’ve received, but the majority of these will come in the final PTS patch. Note that the focus of these adjustments will be on Magicka-based Nightblades, Wardens, and Sorcerers.
Lets bet everything on 8.14 balance adjustments.
I think dev is going to fix it.1 -
jecks33✭✭✭✭✭
✭who asked for Dark Cloak to have the same mechanic as Green Dragon Blood? If I want the same healing mechanic as a dk tank I play a dk tank.
This is called "class identity", leave this skill as it is online!PC-EU9 -
edward_frigidhands✭✭✭✭✭OmegaFragment wrote: »I agree 100%.
I also main a NB tank and people are always surprised to see a nb tank, it is a fun way to tank content and on live no content is too much with some practice.
The pts dark cloak will kill nb tanks stone dead. I am hoping for a rollback on this skill so I can continue playing my character as it is my only one.
I don't want to be forced to make a new character with a different class to tank.
The scary part is I am wondering if this is their attempt to 'help" NB tanking, which doesn't bode well for other changes they are trying to push for with U35.2 -
edward_frigidhands✭✭✭✭✭There will also be a handful of tweaks to some class abilities in next week’s PTS patch, based on the feedback we’ve received, but the majority of these will come in the final PTS patch. Note that the focus of these adjustments will be on Magicka-based Nightblades, Wardens, and Sorcerers.
Lets bet everything on 8.14 balance adjustments.
I think dev is going to fix it.
I am not sure that will be the case if we have made it up to this point with little explanation or update.0 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭edward_frigidhands wrote: »OmegaFragment wrote: »I agree 100%.
I also main a NB tank and people are always surprised to see a nb tank, it is a fun way to tank content and on live no content is too much with some practice.
The pts dark cloak will kill nb tanks stone dead. I am hoping for a rollback on this skill so I can continue playing my character as it is my only one.
I don't want to be forced to make a new character with a different class to tank.
The scary part is I am wondering if this is their attempt to 'help" NB tanking, which doesn't bode well for other changes they are trying to push for with U35.
A near death only heal over time doesn't make sense. It would be ill advised if it were a burst heal, but nobody in their right mind will cast a HoT when a burst is needed most.2 -
prof_doom✭✭✭✭✭
A near death only heal over time doesn't make sense. It would be ill advised if it were a burst heal, but nobody in their right mind will cast a HoT when a burst is needed most.
If they had added an upfront burst, that'd make it usable, but I'd rather they fix it so that it worked the way it did.
Like someone else said, we don't want green dragon blood with a different color scheme.
NB tanking has always been about Dark Cloak's HoT combined with the other mitigation skills to keep the incoming damage at a manageable level.4 -
Lykeion✭✭✭✭✭
A near death only heal over time doesn't make sense. It would be ill advised if it were a burst heal, but nobody in their right mind will cast a HoT when a burst is needed most.
Yes. The problem with the PTS Dark Cloak is that when you are on the verge of death and need a burst heal, it can only give you HOT healing; and when you need a HOT, it can do nothing.2 -
Brrrofski✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭who asked for Dark Cloak to have the same mechanic as Green Dragon Blood? If I want the same healing mechanic as a dk tank I play a dk tank.
This is called "class identity", leave this skill as it is online!
Which is ironic, as in the notes for the change to whip using split resources, they highlighted that it'd be a unique mechanic.
Then give dark cloak dragonblood's mechanic. But a bad version.2