Ramping Cost for Nightblade Cloak

DrNukenstein

You know what, give everyone a cloak skill that costs 4k mag.

The precedent for giving every class access to a b-grade version of every trick available already exists with vamp mist and arcanist portal to a degree. Then consider that most skills do resemble a skill that is available as a class skill.

Giving every class an expensive invisibility skill is really not out of line with how the game is lately. Then it would compete with mist/streak as opposed to being locked as the last "only one class gets to do this" skill.

Side note, corrosive dk ganks are big fun and it would be great to not need a potion for them.

FoJul

Galeriano wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

GooGa592 wrote: »

The ability to be invisible while doing damage is unsportsmanlike and attractive to those not looking for a fair fight.

To be fair this game isn't really geared towards fair fights unless you go into a dueling tournament with strict rules.

Simply look at a health stacked Arcanist with master and vate weapons. Or a sorc with the same setup.

Cloaking in a fight isn't any less fair in a 1v1 though adding crazy damage and heals in that situation is an issue.


Still, the person that would jump you from stealth while you're in a fight would do the same on a dk warden or Arcanist, etc. NB is overly attractive due to having stealth, high damage, and a burst heal.

So NB's need either cloak, dps burst, or burst heal nerfed into the ground to be fair. Agreed.

Cloak is the most unfair and abused of these "skill" catagories. If the player wasn't invisible we'd be able to see them coming and react in most situations. Maybe making everyone have to use an invis pot to be invisible is the right solution and take NB cloak away all together so every class has the same ability to play while invisible.

That's not a reason to be unfair to cloak. When you are in cyrodil, you should always be ready for anything. It is PvP after all. You can't run around and say you didn't see it coming. When you load into IC/Cyrodil you are basically signing up to be a gank target from the very start. As a lot of people will play gank blade no matter how many times you nerf it.

That being said, you can put restrictions on cloak, or ramping cost, or just make it cost 6k+ magicka, but overall it still will exist. You can't take away burst heal from the rest of the class because of 1 thing you disagree with. Every other class has a burst heal.

If you nerf nb's burst heal, i want to see every other classes heals nerfed too. Shattering rocks and coag on DK, Honor the dead on plar/Polar wind on warden/ etc etc.

See it just sounds absurd. Just stay on topic and nerf cloak.

The same rule should apply to nightblades. When in Cyrodill they should be always ready for everything not just when they are not hiding. So either stealth playstyle should be tuned down or sources of detection should be buffed to the point even cloaked nightblade can't feel safe at any given time same as everyone else right now can't feel safe. IC is a gank fest because of how overwhelmingly more beneficial it is to be a nb there compared to everything else. Nightblade is the only class able to effectively play low risk high reward playstyle there.

Yes after nerfs to stealth playstyle, cloak would still exist. That's the whole point. Nobody wants to remove stealth playstyle completly but many people voice the opinion that it should be tuned down because right now it's too strong. So strong that playing nb differently is sub optimal and so strong that healthy buffs to non cloak playstyles on a nb are almost impossible and will always backfire. One of the simpliest ways to not take burst heal from rest of the class while nerfng stealth playstyle is making the only burst heal on the class from the other morph of cloak and turning malevolent offering into something else than a burst heal. That way You would always have to decide wheter You want to play as a ganker but without burst heal or as a brawler with a burst heal but both at the same time wouldn't be possible. As for the argument that every other class have a burst heal yeah it's true but it's also a truth that nightblade's burst heal is one of the strongest out there which is an issue in itself.

Going by Your logic if nightblade needs a burst heal just because others have it than everyone needs a cloak just because nb have it. What if I want to be a stealth playstyle based templar? Why can't I have that while nightblade can have burst heals same as templar? See it just sounds absurd. Nightblade had no class acces to a burst heal for majority of game existence and was still recongised as one of the strongest and sometimes the strongest PvP setups just because of accces to a cloak. ZoS broke that compromise completly by buffing cloak and giving nightblade burst heal alongside many dmg and defense buffs while leaving soursess of detection as half baked by giving them only cosmetic changes or even nerfs (radiant magelight and detection potions these days are a shadow of former selfs).

Detect pots were already buffed, then nerfed. Ask Zos why they did that?.

Now your saying take burst heal away from nightblade, sound like a new forum post needs to be made. Then if you take nighblades class heal away, the only way to make it viable is running dark cloak. Which Zos decided to change for whatever reason.

No one is fixing to result to standing still on a nightblade to get a bad version of vigor. Which means you will start seeing 40k+ Health
Nightblades. Which is already happening.

Edit: And since we are giving other classes abilities from different classes. My nightblade wants Javelin and J Beam. He will also take Crit surge from sorc. Maybe even Haunting curse. Cant forget about Flames of oblivion. Last but not least my NB will take warden shalks to. Please and thank you.

Bushido2513

DrNukenstein wrote: »

You know what, give everyone a cloak skill that costs 4k mag.

The precedent for giving every class access to a b-grade version of every trick available already exists with vamp mist and arcanist portal to a degree. Then consider that most skills do resemble a skill that is available as a class skill.

Giving every class an expensive invisibility skill is really not out of line with how the game is lately. Then it would compete with mist/streak as opposed to being locked as the last "only one class gets to do this" skill.

Side note, corrosive dk ganks are big fun and it would be great to not need a potion for them.

Honestly must form isn't even b grade, it's just barely worth using unless you just feel like it for whatever reason.

So in a way we already have this for all players even though yes technically it's not a skill but a passive.

The implementation is still about the same as mist where I do see people using it every now and then but you won't find it being suggested on many builds.



The mist form change was just a way to deal with the previous version being too powerful while trying to make the new version seem uniquely interesting. I say that to say that I'm not really counting it as if ZOS has a plan to give everyone good access to everything. They just changed one thing to another and just made it easy on themselves by reusing existing handles in the game.

FoJul

Galeriano wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

GooGa592 wrote: »

The ability to be invisible while doing damage is unsportsmanlike and attractive to those not looking for a fair fight.

To be fair this game isn't really geared towards fair fights unless you go into a dueling tournament with strict rules.

Simply look at a health stacked Arcanist with master and vate weapons. Or a sorc with the same setup.

Cloaking in a fight isn't any less fair in a 1v1 though adding crazy damage and heals in that situation is an issue.


Still, the person that would jump you from stealth while you're in a fight would do the same on a dk warden or Arcanist, etc. NB is overly attractive due to having stealth, high damage, and a burst heal.

So NB's need either cloak, dps burst, or burst heal nerfed into the ground to be fair. Agreed.

Cloak is the most unfair and abused of these "skill" catagories. If the player wasn't invisible we'd be able to see them coming and react in most situations. Maybe making everyone have to use an invis pot to be invisible is the right solution and take NB cloak away all together so every class has the same ability to play while invisible.

Going by Your logic if nightblade needs a burst heal just because others have it than everyone needs a cloak just because nb have it. What if I want to be a stealth playstyle based templar? Why can't I have that while nightblade can have burst heals same as templar? See it just sounds absurd. Nightblade had no class acces to a burst heal for majority of game existence and was still recongised as one of the strongest and sometimes the strongest PvP setups just because of accces to a cloak. ZoS broke that compromise completly by buffing cloak and giving nightblade burst heal alongside many dmg and defense buffs while leaving soursess of detection as half baked by giving them only cosmetic changes or even nerfs (radiant magelight and detection potions these days are a shadow of former selfs).

This is just not relevant. Nightblade is the ONLY class to have cloak. Every single class in the game has a burst heal. Two completely different things.

And going by that logic, Remove sorc shield, templar purge, warden lotus, DK Heal/Stun, Arcanist Beam and shield, etc etc

Just put a ramping cost on cloak, lower some damage. That's much more simpler than trying to cope and come up with a 10000 different ideas to nerf nightblade. Most of the people in here are biased to nightblade getting gutted so opinions are objectified.

Quit making something simple, complicated. End of story.

Galeriano

FoJul wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

GooGa592 wrote: »

The ability to be invisible while doing damage is unsportsmanlike and attractive to those not looking for a fair fight.

To be fair this game isn't really geared towards fair fights unless you go into a dueling tournament with strict rules.

Simply look at a health stacked Arcanist with master and vate weapons. Or a sorc with the same setup.

Cloaking in a fight isn't any less fair in a 1v1 though adding crazy damage and heals in that situation is an issue.


Still, the person that would jump you from stealth while you're in a fight would do the same on a dk warden or Arcanist, etc. NB is overly attractive due to having stealth, high damage, and a burst heal.

So NB's need either cloak, dps burst, or burst heal nerfed into the ground to be fair. Agreed.

Cloak is the most unfair and abused of these "skill" catagories. If the player wasn't invisible we'd be able to see them coming and react in most situations. Maybe making everyone have to use an invis pot to be invisible is the right solution and take NB cloak away all together so every class has the same ability to play while invisible.

That's not a reason to be unfair to cloak. When you are in cyrodil, you should always be ready for anything. It is PvP after all. You can't run around and say you didn't see it coming. When you load into IC/Cyrodil you are basically signing up to be a gank target from the very start. As a lot of people will play gank blade no matter how many times you nerf it.

That being said, you can put restrictions on cloak, or ramping cost, or just make it cost 6k+ magicka, but overall it still will exist. You can't take away burst heal from the rest of the class because of 1 thing you disagree with. Every other class has a burst heal.

If you nerf nb's burst heal, i want to see every other classes heals nerfed too. Shattering rocks and coag on DK, Honor the dead on plar/Polar wind on warden/ etc etc.

See it just sounds absurd. Just stay on topic and nerf cloak.

The same rule should apply to nightblades. When in Cyrodill they should be always ready for everything not just when they are not hiding. So either stealth playstyle should be tuned down or sources of detection should be buffed to the point even cloaked nightblade can't feel safe at any given time same as everyone else right now can't feel safe. IC is a gank fest because of how overwhelmingly more beneficial it is to be a nb there compared to everything else. Nightblade is the only class able to effectively play low risk high reward playstyle there.

Yes after nerfs to stealth playstyle, cloak would still exist. That's the whole point. Nobody wants to remove stealth playstyle completly but many people voice the opinion that it should be tuned down because right now it's too strong. So strong that playing nb differently is sub optimal and so strong that healthy buffs to non cloak playstyles on a nb are almost impossible and will always backfire. One of the simpliest ways to not take burst heal from rest of the class while nerfng stealth playstyle is making the only burst heal on the class from the other morph of cloak and turning malevolent offering into something else than a burst heal. That way You would always have to decide wheter You want to play as a ganker but without burst heal or as a brawler with a burst heal but both at the same time wouldn't be possible. As for the argument that every other class have a burst heal yeah it's true but it's also a truth that nightblade's burst heal is one of the strongest out there which is an issue in itself.

Going by Your logic if nightblade needs a burst heal just because others have it than everyone needs a cloak just because nb have it. What if I want to be a stealth playstyle based templar? Why can't I have that while nightblade can have burst heals same as templar? See it just sounds absurd. Nightblade had no class acces to a burst heal for majority of game existence and was still recongised as one of the strongest and sometimes the strongest PvP setups just because of accces to a cloak. ZoS broke that compromise completly by buffing cloak and giving nightblade burst heal alongside many dmg and defense buffs while leaving soursess of detection as half baked by giving them only cosmetic changes or even nerfs (radiant magelight and detection potions these days are a shadow of former selfs).

Detect pots were already buffed, then nerfed. Ask Zos why they did that?.

Now your saying take burst heal away from nightblade, sound like a new forum post needs to be made. Then if you take nighblades class heal away, the only way to make it viable is running dark cloak. Which Zos decided to change for whatever reason.

No one is fixing to result to standing still on a nightblade to get a bad version of vigor. Which means you will start seeing 40k+ Health
Nightblades. Which is already happening.

Edit: And since we are giving other classes abilities from different classes. My nightblade wants Javelin and J Beam. He will also take Crit surge from sorc. Maybe even Haunting curse. Cant forget about Flames of oblivion. Last but not least my NB will take warden shalks to. Please and thank you.

Detect pots were severly nerfed and none of the buffs can bring them even close to what they were initially when game released.

No I am not saying to take burst heal away from nightblades. I am saying to take burst heal away from nightblades who choose stealth playstyle. There is a big difference between those two. In the method I suggested, dark deal would become a class burst heal scaling from offensive stats same as malevolent offering does right now and malevolent offering could become health scaling heal. Nightblade would still have acces to a burst heal like every other class but it wouldn't have acces to a burst heal and stealth playstyle at the same time.

Yeah with said changes there would be more non cloak brawler nightblades wityh high HP. Nothing wrong in that. Thing with going into high health is that in majority of cases You need to give up something else.

[Snip]

[Edited for bait]

DrNukenstein

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Honestly must form isn't even b grade, it's just barely worth using unless you just feel like it for whatever reason.

If you aim upwards and have the one click ground targeting turned on, it's very smooth. It's like maybe a fifth of a second slower than streak, and it gives good buffs.

Bushido2513

DrNukenstein wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Honestly must form isn't even b grade, it's just barely worth using unless you just feel like it for whatever reason.

If you aim upwards and have the one click ground targeting turned on, it's very smooth. It's like maybe a fifth of a second slower than streak, and it gives good buffs.

The buffs are great, what ball if lightning should have been lol.

I mean I really wanted it it work as someone that streaks on the daily but in testing on other characters the delay seemed to add to me almost getting killed and someone oddly the distance seemed short, maybe that's the aim up thing.


But to add to this I'll say that in bgs and IC where I play mostly I rarely see anyone using it. All this could totally be just be but yeah I am not at all worried about it hurting sorc identity and I'm a sorc main lol

StaticWave

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

SandandStars

Hmmm, not seeing many NB mains commenting on this very well-informed thread…. *cloak*

Vaqual

Because this guy keeps posting the same thing over and over.

Vaqual

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

This entire thing is just held together by the fact that AW and incap can still secure kills, otherwise this would just be considered a troll tank loadout. And still every other skill is evaluated and scrutinized.

And maybe this for clarification: I despise this build probably as much as you.

Galeriano

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

This entire thing is just held together by the fact that AW and incap can still secure kills, otherwise this would just be considered a troll tank loadout. And still every other skill is evaluated and scrutinized.

Who would've guess that offensive abilities especially burst ones and ultimates are what's securing kills.

Bushido2513

Galeriano wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

This entire thing is just held together by the fact that AW and incap can still secure kills, otherwise this would just be considered a troll tank loadout. And still every other skill is evaluated and scrutinized.

Who would've guess that offensive abilities especially burst ones and ultimates are what's securing kills.

Well look at it this way when you summarize the different posts.

Best or near best bar space efficiency when using majority class skills

Most effective defense options in the game using class skills.

Most effective, cheap, and easily achieved burst in the game using class skills


It's being said in pieces and in multiple ways but the class clearly over performs and is overly attractive.

The only primary reasons to not play the class are if you don't like it or are just tired of how easy it is to play with even a medium degree of skill.

I say don't like it to include people like me who understand how strong it is but just can't get into the overall playstyle.

Personally I can say I'm glad sorc isn't this strong and that NB isn't my main or I'd probably lose interest in the game.

FoJul

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

FoJul

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

This entire thing is just held together by the fact that AW and incap can still secure kills, otherwise this would just be considered a troll tank loadout. And still every other skill is evaluated and scrutinized.

Who would've guess that offensive abilities especially burst ones and ultimates are what's securing kills.

Well look at it this way when you summarize the different posts.

Best or near best bar space efficiency when using majority class skills

Most effective defense options in the game using class skills.

Most effective, cheap, and easily achieved burst in the game using class skills


It's being said in pieces and in multiple ways but the class clearly over performs and is overly attractive.

The only primary reasons to not play the class are if you don't like it or are just tired of how easy it is to play with even a medium degree of skill.

I say don't like it to include people like me who understand how strong it is but just can't get into the overall playstyle.

Personally I can say I'm glad sorc isn't this strong and that NB isn't my main or I'd probably lose interest in the game.

If you want a challenge on nightblade, try playing a ranged one with swallow soul.

GooGa592

FoJul wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

Telling us you main NB without telling us you main NB.

Fine.

Bushido2513

FoJul wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think any class in the game right now can have access to so many good defensive abilities but NB

Teleportation? You got Shadow Image
AoE dmg mitigation , snare cleanse + immunity, and free dodge roll? You got Phantasmal Escape
Burst heal? You have Healthy Offering
Invisibility? You got Shadowy Disguise.

What's absurd is NB can slot ALL of these on their bar. Put on Night Mother's Gaze with Rallying Cry and they can get a bar set up like this:



All 4 defensive abilities on 1 build. And some NB mains wonder why people hate your class so much.

This entire thing is just held together by the fact that AW and incap can still secure kills, otherwise this would just be considered a troll tank loadout. And still every other skill is evaluated and scrutinized.

Who would've guess that offensive abilities especially burst ones and ultimates are what's securing kills.

Well look at it this way when you summarize the different posts.

Best or near best bar space efficiency when using majority class skills

Most effective defense options in the game using class skills.

Most effective, cheap, and easily achieved burst in the game using class skills


It's being said in pieces and in multiple ways but the class clearly over performs and is overly attractive.

The only primary reasons to not play the class are if you don't like it or are just tired of how easy it is to play with even a medium degree of skill.

I say don't like it to include people like me who understand how strong it is but just can't get into the overall playstyle.

Personally I can say I'm glad sorc isn't this strong and that NB isn't my main or I'd probably lose interest in the game.

If you want a challenge on nightblade, try playing a ranged one with swallow soul.

But this has already been established that we are talking melee which seems to be the intended use other than bow blade.

But if you like we can quantify it and say NB when used as intended by ZOS is overwhelmingly strong in the ways I indicated.

StaticWave

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

Vaqual

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Bushido2513

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Vaqual

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Ok, thanks for asking, I can give you some ideas. The problem is that personally I feel I know where my pain points are, but that will not necessarily reflect everyones opinion. I will try to focus on the "to tanky with too much disengage" - perspective that @StaticWave has brought forth.

Initially we would have to break down where we have too much synergistic power (by merit of buffs, interactions, bar space economy or stacking of passive bonuses) and where abilities were justifiably improved.

First example: Blur. Blur is definitively in a decent spot since its last buff, it still has a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. If you slot it and encounter someone with low hit rate high burst attack patterns, like another NB, you still get very limited use out of the ability for the resource cost, GCD and bar slot. It was buffed because it was rightfully underused, since it wasn't the best snare removal available and the defence it provided was still not worth the slot. So did the added dodge roll cost reduction elevate the ability far above its prior iteration? I think it just brought it up to the point where it became an actual option. And of course, when you decide to drop RAT for Phanstasmal you should expect an increase in staying power, otherwise the skill design is broken. So I would say something like this falls in the category of justified buff. I also don't know if anyone is disagreeing with this, I just want to establish a baseline. But now there is the catch: If you know you are facing someone who relies on AoE for their burst and you deliberately pick Blur as a counter, that can not be held against an ability that is balanced by something like selective mitigation. You could spin the counter-pick wheel endlessly and always create a case against something. So we can only really look at average scenarios. I will not go over every ability, if the point here is unclear let me know.

Next example: The elusiveness from cloak and shade (we will talk about cloaks offensive below) in combination with other defensive abilitites. I first wrote a long paragraph with all pros and cons, but I don't want to derail the post too much here. Lets just simplify everything and say all classes are placed somewhere on a scale ranging from max reliance on staying power (cleanse, mitigation, healing, shielding, CC) to max reliance on disengage (Teleport, dash, movement speed, snare removal) for survival. They placed NBs strong self HoT on the same ability as their invisibility, so that you can not easily access both. Now with hybridization* and the new resource economy that came with it, it has become easier to sustain cloak and still bring an impactful vigour and offering. So in terms of availability, you can bypass some balancing brakes put in place by the devs, but at the same time nothing stops classes who already have strong HoTs from capitalizing on this and from just layering hots.
Ultimately, each bit of defence is payed for with resources, bar slots and GCDs. Every full disengage means a breather for the NB but also a breather for the target. Which brings us to the main point:

Fully disengaging and resetting combat only brings you closer to victory if you are getting a net benefit from each engagement, like a resource advantage. Even the partial disengage from cloaking offensively still costs the NB a GCD and resources and allows for the setup of a predictable attack at best. Of course there is a benefit in doing so, and we also discussed that in 2 other threads, because if it would only serve as a counterable loss-prevention ability it would be conceptually unattractive for a win-oriented bar setup. This is of course looking only at very isolated 1v1 instances, but every other scenario is endlessly more complex.

So am I saying it is all fair then? No. There is one detail I was lying about. Fully disengaging/drawing out the battle is not only worth it if you gain a resource advantage. It is also worth it if it gives you a re-roll for another one-shot attempt. You don't need to play proper PvP if you can just get re-rolls on one-shot attempts without repercussions. This is why burst NB is overpowered. But the NB in our scenario just slotted 6 defensive abilities, surely he must be unable to do this. I mean we know that isn't true. And this is where we have to go into the detail. Is vamp 2/Concealed Major Berserk/guaranteed crit/drain power minor courage/Incap enough to turn any ability besides AW into something the deletes a good player on the spot or blasts them deep into execute range? No it is just this singular ability, with high scaling, that makes the available WD and %-modifiers overly effective. It is this ability that makes the class essentially pressure-independent. Is it a problem for a NB to have high heals and disengage if he can not capitalize on disengages and resets? No. It only hurts when you know, that the guy can blow you up without warning, every second you let him stay alive. Without that he is just another troll tank, but not through blocking, just by jumping around the map and hiding.

Now we don't want the burst man to give up this playstyle. But we also want him to have a bit more of the "risk" in "risk and reward". So the goal we have to achieve is to somehow separate the maximum burst potential from the survivability. This is where I would suggest something that I have suggested before (finally, that was a lot of wind-up):

1)
Even after the adjustment, the morphs for Grim Focus are filling almost the same niche. Therfore I propose:

Grim Focus Morph A:
You focus all your efforts into destroying your target. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Fervor", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 80 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Consume all stacks to fire a projectile dealing "A" magical damage. Activating the ability grants you "Tunnelvision" for 15s, reducing your healing done by 25 % and increases your damage taken by 5 %. Stacks up to 3 times.
Grim Focus Morph B:
You focus on finding the right moment to strike where your foe is weakest. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Focus", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 40 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Your next critical strike while at 5 stacks, within 7 m, deals an additional "B" physical damage.
(with "A" being roughly the current scaling and "B" being maybe something like 0.3x single target melee spammable value).

The numbers can obviously be fine-tuned and standardized. Morph A is an adjusted version of the current AW, where you either finish the job, you fully disengage as intended and get away, or you get overwhelmed when you overextend your stay and get caught. Can be mostly mitigated in PvE by only affecting healing done, not healing received, and by good encounter awareness.
Morph B would rather fulfill the purpose of the "set and forget" pressure slot, but also enable a bit of delayed burst for players with high micro awareness. That pressure is also not bound to a dot, so the NB can not benefit from it during disengage phases. Both still reward good weaving. With a change like this, true gankers would still be able to secure kills, while players, that want to rely on tankiness and disengage abilities at the same time, expose a weakness for every attempt at utilizing the one-shot combo. Complete disengage would still be a valid playstyle, just more difficult due to the added debuffs, balancing out the availability of good defensive options. The defensive options will not be harmed this way and will continue to be good options for players that do not plan on using/abusing the one-shot potential.

**Alternatively this part of the ability can be altered and shifted onto another offensive ability, that is not part of the minimal effective setup, to force using more offensive slots, e.g. by putting it on twisting path ("the dark winds empower you...")

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

Personally, I think that something like this could already be enough to take the edge off the optimal NB loadout. I also think there is value in those changes from a buildcraft and gameplay perspective and they don't feel dull. We could see how that goes and where numbers have to be tweaked. This way no ability would have to ruined for builds without problematic potential. Of course that doesn't preclude any other changes. What is important to me, is that all abilities are somehow ending up in a usable, thematically fitting and impactful state, and that optional choices are not limiting alternative playstyles. With that mindset I am sure there is also enough room to work in PvE buffs, but I think this would go a bit too far here.

To kind of end on thread topic: At least this way, the guy sneaking through a delve doesn't have to pay ramping cloak costs.

Will likely be edited for typos later.





*I am a big fan of the hybridization, as it allows for combining thematically fitting abilities with higher effectiveness. I am not arguing against it here. While many player bemoan that there is now only one BiS for any job, previously there was also realistically only one BiS per resource class, while restricting the amount of possible combinations much more.

DrNukenstein

Vaqual wrote: »

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

This. It's the offering spam. 100% this skill should have a cast time, and/or a real spam penalty. At least it does break invisibility.

Bushido2513

Vaqual wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Ok, thanks for asking, I can give you some ideas. The problem is that personally I feel I know where my pain points are, but that will not necessarily reflect everyones opinion. I will try to focus on the "to tanky with too much disengage" - perspective that @StaticWave has brought forth.

Initially we would have to break down where we have too much synergistic power (by merit of buffs, interactions, bar space economy or stacking of passive bonuses) and where abilities were justifiably improved.

First example: Blur. Blur is definitively in a decent spot since its last buff, it still has a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. If you slot it and encounter someone with low hit rate high burst attack patterns, like another NB, you still get very limited use out of the ability for the resource cost, GCD and bar slot. It was buffed because it was rightfully underused, since it wasn't the best snare removal available and the defence it provided was still not worth the slot. So did the added dodge roll cost reduction elevate the ability far above its prior iteration? I think it just brought it up to the point where it became an actual option. And of course, when you decide to drop RAT for Phanstasmal you should expect an increase in staying power, otherwise the skill design is broken. So I would say something like this falls in the category of justified buff. I also don't know if anyone is disagreeing with this, I just want to establish a baseline. But now there is the catch: If you know you are facing someone who relies on AoE for their burst and you deliberately pick Blur as a counter, that can not be held against an ability that is balanced by something like selective mitigation. You could spin the counter-pick wheel endlessly and always create a case against something. So we can only really look at average scenarios. I will not go over every ability, if the point here is unclear let me know.

Next example: The elusiveness from cloak and shade (we will talk about cloaks offensive below) in combination with other defensive abilitites. I first wrote a long paragraph with all pros and cons, but I don't want to derail the post too much here. Lets just simplify everything and say all classes are placed somewhere on a scale ranging from max reliance on staying power (cleanse, mitigation, healing, shielding, CC) to max reliance on disengage (Teleport, dash, movement speed, snare removal) for survival. They placed NBs strong self HoT on the same ability as their invisibility, so that you can not easily access both. Now with hybridization* and the new resource economy that came with it, it has become easier to sustain cloak and still bring an impactful vigour and offering. So in terms of availability, you can bypass some balancing brakes put in place by the devs, but at the same time nothing stops classes who already have strong HoTs from capitalizing on this and from just layering hots.
Ultimately, each bit of defence is payed for with resources, bar slots and GCDs. Every full disengage means a breather for the NB but also a breather for the target. Which brings us to the main point:

Fully disengaging and resetting combat only brings you closer to victory if you are getting a net benefit from each engagement, like a resource advantage. Even the partial disengage from cloaking offensively still costs the NB a GCD and resources and allows for the setup of a predictable attack at best. Of course there is a benefit in doing so, and we also discussed that in 2 other threads, because if it would only serve as a counterable loss-prevention ability it would be conceptually unattractive for a win-oriented bar setup. This is of course looking only at very isolated 1v1 instances, but every other scenario is endlessly more complex.

So am I saying it is all fair then? No. There is one detail I was lying about. Fully disengaging/drawing out the battle is not only worth it if you gain a resource advantage. It is also worth it if it gives you a re-roll for another one-shot attempt. You don't need to play proper PvP if you can just get re-rolls on one-shot attempts without repercussions. This is why burst NB is overpowered. But the NB in our scenario just slotted 6 defensive abilities, surely he must be unable to do this. I mean we know that isn't true. And this is where we have to go into the detail. Is vamp 2/Concealed Major Berserk/guaranteed crit/drain power minor courage/Incap enough to turn any ability besides AW into something the deletes a good player on the spot or blasts them deep into execute range? No it is just this singular ability, with high scaling, that makes the available WD and %-modifiers overly effective. It is this ability that makes the class essentially pressure-independent. Is it a problem for a NB to have high heals and disengage if he can not capitalize on disengages and resets? No. It only hurts when you know, that the guy can blow you up without warning, every second you let him stay alive. Without that he is just another troll tank, but not through blocking, just by jumping around the map and hiding.

Now we don't want the burst man to give up this playstyle. But we also want him to have a bit more of the "risk" in "risk and reward". So the goal we have to achieve is to somehow separate the maximum burst potential from the survivability. This is where I would suggest something that I have suggested before (finally, that was a lot of wind-up):

1)
Even after the adjustment, the morphs for Grim Focus are filling almost the same niche. Therfore I propose:

Grim Focus Morph A:
You focus all your efforts into destroying your target. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Fervor", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 80 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Consume all stacks to fire a projectile dealing "A" magical damage. Activating the ability grants you "Tunnelvision" for 15s, reducing your healing done by 25 % and increases your damage taken by 5 %. Stacks up to 3 times.
Grim Focus Morph B:
You focus on finding the right moment to strike where your foe is weakest. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Focus", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 40 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Your next critical strike while at 5 stacks, within 7 m, deals an additional "B" physical damage.
(with "A" being roughly the current scaling and "B" being maybe something like 0.3x single target melee spammable value).

The numbers can obviously be fine-tuned and standardized. Morph A is an adjusted version of the current AW, where you either finish the job, you fully disengage as intended and get away, or you get overwhelmed when you overextend your stay and get caught. Can be mostly mitigated in PvE by only affecting healing done, not healing received, and by good encounter awareness.
Morph B would rather fulfill the purpose of the "set and forget" pressure slot, but also enable a bit of delayed burst for players with high micro awareness. That pressure is also not bound to a dot, so the NB can not benefit from it during disengage phases. Both still reward good weaving. With a change like this, true gankers would still be able to secure kills, while players, that want to rely on tankiness and disengage abilities at the same time, expose a weakness for every attempt at utilizing the one-shot combo. Complete disengage would still be a valid playstyle, just more difficult due to the added debuffs, balancing out the availability of good defensive options. The defensive options will not be harmed this way and will continue to be good options for players that do not plan on using/abusing the one-shot potential.

**Alternatively this part of the ability can be altered and shifted onto another offensive ability, that is not part of the minimal effective setup, to force using more offensive slots, e.g. by putting it on twisting path ("the dark winds empower you...")

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

Personally, I think that something like this could already be enough to take the edge off the optimal NB loadout. I also think there is value in those changes from a buildcraft and gameplay perspective and they don't feel dull. We could see how that goes and where numbers have to be tweaked. This way no ability would have to ruined for builds without problematic potential. Of course that doesn't preclude any other changes. What is important to me, is that all abilities are somehow ending up in a usable, thematically fitting and impactful state, and that optional choices are not limiting alternative playstyles. With that mindset I am sure there is also enough room to work in PvE buffs, but I think this would go a bit too far here.

To kind of end on thread topic: At least this way, the guy sneaking through a delve doesn't have to pay ramping cloak costs.

Will likely be edited for typos later.





*I am a big fan of the hybridization, as it allows for combining thematically fitting abilities with higher effectiveness. I am not arguing against it here. While many player bemoan that there is now only one BiS for any job, previously there was also realistically only one BiS per resource class, while restricting the amount of possible combinations much more.

Ok so I take it that you're trying to present a more well thought out approach to balancing the overall situation.

So approaches like the one Static or possibly even I presented probably seem like they don't really cover the issue from multiple aspects and I can agree with that.

My option of just having to choose heal or cloak doesn't really account for overall variations that people might want to build into. Likewise I think your ideas would of course still require tuning and testing to see the far reaching consequences.

I appreciate the explanation and see the merit of your ideas.

NuarBlack

Vaqual wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Ok, thanks for asking, I can give you some ideas. The problem is that personally I feel I know where my pain points are, but that will not necessarily reflect everyones opinion. I will try to focus on the "to tanky with too much disengage" - perspective that @StaticWave has brought forth.

Initially we would have to break down where we have too much synergistic power (by merit of buffs, interactions, bar space economy or stacking of passive bonuses) and where abilities were justifiably improved.

First example: Blur. Blur is definitively in a decent spot since its last buff, it still has a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. If you slot it and encounter someone with low hit rate high burst attack patterns, like another NB, you still get very limited use out of the ability for the resource cost, GCD and bar slot. It was buffed because it was rightfully underused, since it wasn't the best snare removal available and the defence it provided was still not worth the slot. So did the added dodge roll cost reduction elevate the ability far above its prior iteration? I think it just brought it up to the point where it became an actual option. And of course, when you decide to drop RAT for Phanstasmal you should expect an increase in staying power, otherwise the skill design is broken. So I would say something like this falls in the category of justified buff. I also don't know if anyone is disagreeing with this, I just want to establish a baseline. But now there is the catch: If you know you are facing someone who relies on AoE for their burst and you deliberately pick Blur as a counter, that can not be held against an ability that is balanced by something like selective mitigation. You could spin the counter-pick wheel endlessly and always create a case against something. So we can only really look at average scenarios. I will not go over every ability, if the point here is unclear let me know.

Next example: The elusiveness from cloak and shade (we will talk about cloaks offensive below) in combination with other defensive abilitites. I first wrote a long paragraph with all pros and cons, but I don't want to derail the post too much here. Lets just simplify everything and say all classes are placed somewhere on a scale ranging from max reliance on staying power (cleanse, mitigation, healing, shielding, CC) to max reliance on disengage (Teleport, dash, movement speed, snare removal) for survival. They placed NBs strong self HoT on the same ability as their invisibility, so that you can not easily access both. Now with hybridization* and the new resource economy that came with it, it has become easier to sustain cloak and still bring an impactful vigour and offering. So in terms of availability, you can bypass some balancing brakes put in place by the devs, but at the same time nothing stops classes who already have strong HoTs from capitalizing on this and from just layering hots.
Ultimately, each bit of defence is payed for with resources, bar slots and GCDs. Every full disengage means a breather for the NB but also a breather for the target. Which brings us to the main point:

Fully disengaging and resetting combat only brings you closer to victory if you are getting a net benefit from each engagement, like a resource advantage. Even the partial disengage from cloaking offensively still costs the NB a GCD and resources and allows for the setup of a predictable attack at best. Of course there is a benefit in doing so, and we also discussed that in 2 other threads, because if it would only serve as a counterable loss-prevention ability it would be conceptually unattractive for a win-oriented bar setup. This is of course looking only at very isolated 1v1 instances, but every other scenario is endlessly more complex.

So am I saying it is all fair then? No. There is one detail I was lying about. Fully disengaging/drawing out the battle is not only worth it if you gain a resource advantage. It is also worth it if it gives you a re-roll for another one-shot attempt. You don't need to play proper PvP if you can just get re-rolls on one-shot attempts without repercussions. This is why burst NB is overpowered. But the NB in our scenario just slotted 6 defensive abilities, surely he must be unable to do this. I mean we know that isn't true. And this is where we have to go into the detail. Is vamp 2/Concealed Major Berserk/guaranteed crit/drain power minor courage/Incap enough to turn any ability besides AW into something the deletes a good player on the spot or blasts them deep into execute range? No it is just this singular ability, with high scaling, that makes the available WD and %-modifiers overly effective. It is this ability that makes the class essentially pressure-independent. Is it a problem for a NB to have high heals and disengage if he can not capitalize on disengages and resets? No. It only hurts when you know, that the guy can blow you up without warning, every second you let him stay alive. Without that he is just another troll tank, but not through blocking, just by jumping around the map and hiding.

Now we don't want the burst man to give up this playstyle. But we also want him to have a bit more of the "risk" in "risk and reward". So the goal we have to achieve is to somehow separate the maximum burst potential from the survivability. This is where I would suggest something that I have suggested before (finally, that was a lot of wind-up):

1)
Even after the adjustment, the morphs for Grim Focus are filling almost the same niche. Therfore I propose:

Grim Focus Morph A:
You focus all your efforts into destroying your target. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Fervor", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 80 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Consume all stacks to fire a projectile dealing "A" magical damage. Activating the ability grants you "Tunnelvision" for 15s, reducing your healing done by 25 % and increases your damage taken by 5 %. Stacks up to 3 times.
Grim Focus Morph B:
You focus on finding the right moment to strike where your foe is weakest. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Focus", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 40 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Your next critical strike while at 5 stacks, within 7 m, deals an additional "B" physical damage.
(with "A" being roughly the current scaling and "B" being maybe something like 0.3x single target melee spammable value).

The numbers can obviously be fine-tuned and standardized. Morph A is an adjusted version of the current AW, where you either finish the job, you fully disengage as intended and get away, or you get overwhelmed when you overextend your stay and get caught. Can be mostly mitigated in PvE by only affecting healing done, not healing received, and by good encounter awareness.
Morph B would rather fulfill the purpose of the "set and forget" pressure slot, but also enable a bit of delayed burst for players with high micro awareness. That pressure is also not bound to a dot, so the NB can not benefit from it during disengage phases. Both still reward good weaving. With a change like this, true gankers would still be able to secure kills, while players, that want to rely on tankiness and disengage abilities at the same time, expose a weakness for every attempt at utilizing the one-shot combo. Complete disengage would still be a valid playstyle, just more difficult due to the added debuffs, balancing out the availability of good defensive options. The defensive options will not be harmed this way and will continue to be good options for players that do not plan on using/abusing the one-shot potential.

**Alternatively this part of the ability can be altered and shifted onto another offensive ability, that is not part of the minimal effective setup, to force using more offensive slots, e.g. by putting it on twisting path ("the dark winds empower you...")

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

Personally, I think that something like this could already be enough to take the edge off the optimal NB loadout. I also think there is value in those changes from a buildcraft and gameplay perspective and they don't feel dull. We could see how that goes and where numbers have to be tweaked. This way no ability would have to ruined for builds without problematic potential. Of course that doesn't preclude any other changes. What is important to me, is that all abilities are somehow ending up in a usable, thematically fitting and impactful state, and that optional choices are not limiting alternative playstyles. With that mindset I am sure there is also enough room to work in PvE buffs, but I think this would go a bit too far here.

To kind of end on thread topic: At least this way, the guy sneaking through a delve doesn't have to pay ramping cloak costs.

Will likely be edited for typos later.





*I am a big fan of the hybridization, as it allows for combining thematically fitting abilities with higher effectiveness. I am not arguing against it here. While many player bemoan that there is now only one BiS for any job, previously there was also realistically only one BiS per resource class, while restricting the amount of possible combinations much more.

I feel like you are trying to salvage these supposed other NB playstyles futily here. Ranged NB can never make a come back with cloak and heals anywhere near where they are now. Range blades just need to accept staying at range 100% and cloaking are a combination that just can't exist in a balanced state. The times in the past that it could it was completely busted, perhaps even worse than current NB iterations. Cloak is just too strong, it has intangible X factors that you are not factoring. Being invisible and untargetable are better than literally any named buff in the game. It begins and ends with cloak. You know it, it's why you are so desperately trying to perform the mental gymnastics to salvage having your cake(cloak) and eat it(heals) too.

As someone who wants range blade to make a comeback I acknowledge it will have to be a skirmisher playstyle very much like sorc that doesn't use cloak or at least rely on it in order for it to be balanced. Only other option is limiting the auto crit to marshal skills and changing one AW morph to melee only that is burst while the other morph is a ranged pressure morph that maybe even keeps you revealed for part or all of its duration, depending on the duration of the morph. That way NB could see some meaningful buffs to range and pve skills that couldn't just be abused. Counters to cloak just don't work at range effectively. So any defense of "alternative" NB playstyles that don't address making range blade viable but balanced feel disingenuous.

FoJul

NuarBlack wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Ok, thanks for asking, I can give you some ideas. The problem is that personally I feel I know where my pain points are, but that will not necessarily reflect everyones opinion. I will try to focus on the "to tanky with too much disengage" - perspective that @StaticWave has brought forth.

Initially we would have to break down where we have too much synergistic power (by merit of buffs, interactions, bar space economy or stacking of passive bonuses) and where abilities were justifiably improved.

First example: Blur. Blur is definitively in a decent spot since its last buff, it still has a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. If you slot it and encounter someone with low hit rate high burst attack patterns, like another NB, you still get very limited use out of the ability for the resource cost, GCD and bar slot. It was buffed because it was rightfully underused, since it wasn't the best snare removal available and the defence it provided was still not worth the slot. So did the added dodge roll cost reduction elevate the ability far above its prior iteration? I think it just brought it up to the point where it became an actual option. And of course, when you decide to drop RAT for Phanstasmal you should expect an increase in staying power, otherwise the skill design is broken. So I would say something like this falls in the category of justified buff. I also don't know if anyone is disagreeing with this, I just want to establish a baseline. But now there is the catch: If you know you are facing someone who relies on AoE for their burst and you deliberately pick Blur as a counter, that can not be held against an ability that is balanced by something like selective mitigation. You could spin the counter-pick wheel endlessly and always create a case against something. So we can only really look at average scenarios. I will not go over every ability, if the point here is unclear let me know.

Next example: The elusiveness from cloak and shade (we will talk about cloaks offensive below) in combination with other defensive abilitites. I first wrote a long paragraph with all pros and cons, but I don't want to derail the post too much here. Lets just simplify everything and say all classes are placed somewhere on a scale ranging from max reliance on staying power (cleanse, mitigation, healing, shielding, CC) to max reliance on disengage (Teleport, dash, movement speed, snare removal) for survival. They placed NBs strong self HoT on the same ability as their invisibility, so that you can not easily access both. Now with hybridization* and the new resource economy that came with it, it has become easier to sustain cloak and still bring an impactful vigour and offering. So in terms of availability, you can bypass some balancing brakes put in place by the devs, but at the same time nothing stops classes who already have strong HoTs from capitalizing on this and from just layering hots.
Ultimately, each bit of defence is payed for with resources, bar slots and GCDs. Every full disengage means a breather for the NB but also a breather for the target. Which brings us to the main point:

Fully disengaging and resetting combat only brings you closer to victory if you are getting a net benefit from each engagement, like a resource advantage. Even the partial disengage from cloaking offensively still costs the NB a GCD and resources and allows for the setup of a predictable attack at best. Of course there is a benefit in doing so, and we also discussed that in 2 other threads, because if it would only serve as a counterable loss-prevention ability it would be conceptually unattractive for a win-oriented bar setup. This is of course looking only at very isolated 1v1 instances, but every other scenario is endlessly more complex.

So am I saying it is all fair then? No. There is one detail I was lying about. Fully disengaging/drawing out the battle is not only worth it if you gain a resource advantage. It is also worth it if it gives you a re-roll for another one-shot attempt. You don't need to play proper PvP if you can just get re-rolls on one-shot attempts without repercussions. This is why burst NB is overpowered. But the NB in our scenario just slotted 6 defensive abilities, surely he must be unable to do this. I mean we know that isn't true. And this is where we have to go into the detail. Is vamp 2/Concealed Major Berserk/guaranteed crit/drain power minor courage/Incap enough to turn any ability besides AW into something the deletes a good player on the spot or blasts them deep into execute range? No it is just this singular ability, with high scaling, that makes the available WD and %-modifiers overly effective. It is this ability that makes the class essentially pressure-independent. Is it a problem for a NB to have high heals and disengage if he can not capitalize on disengages and resets? No. It only hurts when you know, that the guy can blow you up without warning, every second you let him stay alive. Without that he is just another troll tank, but not through blocking, just by jumping around the map and hiding.

Now we don't want the burst man to give up this playstyle. But we also want him to have a bit more of the "risk" in "risk and reward". So the goal we have to achieve is to somehow separate the maximum burst potential from the survivability. This is where I would suggest something that I have suggested before (finally, that was a lot of wind-up):

1)
Even after the adjustment, the morphs for Grim Focus are filling almost the same niche. Therfore I propose:

Grim Focus Morph A:
You focus all your efforts into destroying your target. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Fervor", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 80 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Consume all stacks to fire a projectile dealing "A" magical damage. Activating the ability grants you "Tunnelvision" for 15s, reducing your healing done by 25 % and increases your damage taken by 5 %. Stacks up to 3 times.
Grim Focus Morph B:
You focus on finding the right moment to strike where your foe is weakest. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Focus", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 40 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Your next critical strike while at 5 stacks, within 7 m, deals an additional "B" physical damage.
(with "A" being roughly the current scaling and "B" being maybe something like 0.3x single target melee spammable value).

The numbers can obviously be fine-tuned and standardized. Morph A is an adjusted version of the current AW, where you either finish the job, you fully disengage as intended and get away, or you get overwhelmed when you overextend your stay and get caught. Can be mostly mitigated in PvE by only affecting healing done, not healing received, and by good encounter awareness.
Morph B would rather fulfill the purpose of the "set and forget" pressure slot, but also enable a bit of delayed burst for players with high micro awareness. That pressure is also not bound to a dot, so the NB can not benefit from it during disengage phases. Both still reward good weaving. With a change like this, true gankers would still be able to secure kills, while players, that want to rely on tankiness and disengage abilities at the same time, expose a weakness for every attempt at utilizing the one-shot combo. Complete disengage would still be a valid playstyle, just more difficult due to the added debuffs, balancing out the availability of good defensive options. The defensive options will not be harmed this way and will continue to be good options for players that do not plan on using/abusing the one-shot potential.

**Alternatively this part of the ability can be altered and shifted onto another offensive ability, that is not part of the minimal effective setup, to force using more offensive slots, e.g. by putting it on twisting path ("the dark winds empower you...")

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

Personally, I think that something like this could already be enough to take the edge off the optimal NB loadout. I also think there is value in those changes from a buildcraft and gameplay perspective and they don't feel dull. We could see how that goes and where numbers have to be tweaked. This way no ability would have to ruined for builds without problematic potential. Of course that doesn't preclude any other changes. What is important to me, is that all abilities are somehow ending up in a usable, thematically fitting and impactful state, and that optional choices are not limiting alternative playstyles. With that mindset I am sure there is also enough room to work in PvE buffs, but I think this would go a bit too far here.

To kind of end on thread topic: At least this way, the guy sneaking through a delve doesn't have to pay ramping cloak costs.

Will likely be edited for typos later.





*I am a big fan of the hybridization, as it allows for combining thematically fitting abilities with higher effectiveness. I am not arguing against it here. While many player bemoan that there is now only one BiS for any job, previously there was also realistically only one BiS per resource class, while restricting the amount of possible combinations much more.

I feel like you are trying to salvage these supposed other NB playstyles futily here. Ranged NB can never make a come back with cloak and heals anywhere near where they are now. Range blades just need to accept staying at range 100% and cloaking are a combination that just can't exist in a balanced state. The times in the past that it could it was completely busted, perhaps even worse than current NB iterations. Cloak is just too strong, it has intangible X factors that you are not factoring. Being invisible and untargetable are better than literally any named buff in the game. It begins and ends with cloak. You know it, it's why you are so desperately trying to perform the mental gymnastics to salvage having your cake(cloak) and eat it(heals) too.

As someone who wants range blade to make a comeback I acknowledge it will have to be a skirmisher playstyle very much like sorc that doesn't use cloak or at least rely on it in order for it to be balanced. Only other option is limiting the auto crit to marshal skills and changing one AW morph to melee only that is burst while the other morph is a ranged pressure morph that maybe even keeps you revealed for part or all of its duration, depending on the duration of the morph. That way NB could see some meaningful buffs to range and pve skills that couldn't just be abused. Counters to cloak just don't work at range effectively. So any defense of "alternative" NB playstyles that don't address making range blade viable but balanced feel disingenuous.

Heres the thing, I'm basically a 10 year Nightblade. I don't even want cloak. So, that being said you have over half the community that wants cloak gone. Including nightblade mains.

Really, I would sleep better at night, if cloak was removed and ranged was buffed. I would make a full comeback and leave all the positive reviews on every website.

If they removed cloak and buffed ranged, it would adjust the nightblade meta a little bit sure, but atleast your not fighting THE SAME EXACT BUILD everytime you see a nightblade.

It's actually gotten easier to fight Nightblades in the melee build with cloak. Concealed+concealed+Power Extract+Incap+bow

The 100000% most predictable combo in the entire game. They cloak when you hit them hard. So burst stun them...Hit them with their own medicine. Nightblade is all burst NO PRESSURE. Unless your fighting a proc blade, then oh well. Melee nightblade is a 1 way fight style.

Vaqual

NuarBlack wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Ik this is you coming at nb with no hesitation or consideration of other classes. Let me help you a little bit though.

Absolutely not. I have openly argued against my own class (Sorc) and even defended NB when people asked for AW to be nerfed. This is just me being very objective with my opinion.

FoJul wrote: »

Templar survivability would be Bubble/rune/purge which is also a hot/ Honor the dead, and Topple which gives major and minor protection. If you set aside the damage difference, Jabs/ PL also heal. So technically, you can have 4 hots a burst heal and major and minor protection. Bubble alone can count as vigor and refreshing path, the ammount of healing it can put out.

Yes, I agree Templar has very good heals. But here is the difference between Templar and NB: Templar is inherently not mobile or elusive. NB with its class skills can be mobile/elusive AND tanky. A Templar needs to run several Swift traits and use Mist Form if it wants to achieve the same level of elusiveness.

Templar has good heals but lacks mobility/elusiveness, and that's a fair tradeoff. NB has good heals AND also has mobility/elusiveness, and that's NOT fair. Heck, you don't even need to run Shadow Image. Literally just slot Refreshing Path and you get Major + Minor Expedition with a small HoT attached, while also able to Cloak away with amplified movement speed.

FoJul wrote: »

Warden, I've recently just picked this class up. Polar/ (burst heal and Hot) Lotus blossom/ leeching vines/ Minor toughness/ minor protection/ sustain passives/ and bird thingy (snare removal and minor bezerk)

Warden also has very good heals and decent movement speed with Bird of Prey, but again, the argument comes down to trading between healing and evasiveness. You are still going to get hit even with maximum movement speed on a Warden simply because you don't have invisibility or teleportation. NB has access to both, while also having good heals. Zero trade offs for the NB.

FoJul wrote: »

Sorc...Shield/streak/dark deal/ Crit surge (built in pale order) / side not they have 3 burst abilities not counting ult.

This is my main, and I will agree that its offensive healing is incredibly strong. In fact, that's the only thing holding this class together in this meta. The trade off is this class has no burst heal and if you get low, it's most likely game over for you. There's no way to recover from the execute phase. NB used to be like Sorc, until it got a burst heal. This is why I specifically asked for a burst heal that can't scale, because I know how powerful a class with high evasiveness can be if it gets a true burst heal.

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist...Just bubbles and heals i dont play the class.

Arcanist is too tanky, but it's expected being a p2p class.

FoJul wrote: »

DK...Ash cloud/Coag/shattering rocks (stun that also burst heals)/Wings/ Giga chad Shield leap.

DK is tanky, but it has no mobility unless you invest in it

FoJul wrote: »

With all this being said, Cloak does need to be adjusted as they have buffed it to much for (PvE usefulness).

A nightblade that plays with all of those specific skills literally cant do anything outside of 1 combo. That combo is very easily avoidable. You can almost see it coming from a mile away.

I have never stated that I have a problem with the NB combo. What I have a problem with is NB being TOO TANKY. I personally promote a high risk/high reward playstyle, and that's what NB used to be. The current NB is no where close to that. Not only does it have high damage (again, I'm fine with that), but it also has high survivability. All I'm asking for is adjusting the tankiness of NB, and we will have a balanced NB.

While you are factually not wrong, the consequence of this balancing approach, where the power budget is basically distributed with heavy emphasis on evasion and burst skills, is that you are basically condemning all NBs to rely on the same core build layout. This simply restricts build options in an unnecessary way. While dark cloak is in a debatable state (I think its ok), the diametrical split between cloak morphs is well executed. What they need to do is continue with this pattern of excluding abilities with too much synergistic potential in the same way. This will preserve the possibility of building effectively outside of the one BiS meta playstyle. Sadly we have many morphs with marginal differences.
Locking the class into one playstyle by eliminating good ability options simply through nerfs is a very backward approach and not adding to the games complexity.

As long as NB can rely on a 2 slot burst combo to solve nearly all of its problems it is going to have S-tier bar space management and they will be able to bring as many defensive skills as they want. You can start culling the defensive options one by one, but you are not addressing the main issue. They could move the WD from Grim Focus onto one other ability or split it between multiple. Or changing one the morphs into a more passive ability with an empowered attack, while the active burst ability loses some passive value, as I have suggested in the past. Forcing NB to invest in 1 or 2 more offensive slots will take care of the defense automatically. As long as they are not flat enablers of the current AW.

Can you give an actual example of what your counter suggestion would be?

I see you're suggesting a direction but what actual changes would you propose?

Also I don't see the split of having to choose cloak or burst heal as making it to where you couldn't still have every build that's available today. Sure you just will have to play better to get the same consistent performance but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a class that currently over performs.

Ok, thanks for asking, I can give you some ideas. The problem is that personally I feel I know where my pain points are, but that will not necessarily reflect everyones opinion. I will try to focus on the "to tanky with too much disengage" - perspective that @StaticWave has brought forth.

Initially we would have to break down where we have too much synergistic power (by merit of buffs, interactions, bar space economy or stacking of passive bonuses) and where abilities were justifiably improved.

First example: Blur. Blur is definitively in a decent spot since its last buff, it still has a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. If you slot it and encounter someone with low hit rate high burst attack patterns, like another NB, you still get very limited use out of the ability for the resource cost, GCD and bar slot. It was buffed because it was rightfully underused, since it wasn't the best snare removal available and the defence it provided was still not worth the slot. So did the added dodge roll cost reduction elevate the ability far above its prior iteration? I think it just brought it up to the point where it became an actual option. And of course, when you decide to drop RAT for Phanstasmal you should expect an increase in staying power, otherwise the skill design is broken. So I would say something like this falls in the category of justified buff. I also don't know if anyone is disagreeing with this, I just want to establish a baseline. But now there is the catch: If you know you are facing someone who relies on AoE for their burst and you deliberately pick Blur as a counter, that can not be held against an ability that is balanced by something like selective mitigation. You could spin the counter-pick wheel endlessly and always create a case against something. So we can only really look at average scenarios. I will not go over every ability, if the point here is unclear let me know.

Next example: The elusiveness from cloak and shade (we will talk about cloaks offensive below) in combination with other defensive abilitites. I first wrote a long paragraph with all pros and cons, but I don't want to derail the post too much here. Lets just simplify everything and say all classes are placed somewhere on a scale ranging from max reliance on staying power (cleanse, mitigation, healing, shielding, CC) to max reliance on disengage (Teleport, dash, movement speed, snare removal) for survival. They placed NBs strong self HoT on the same ability as their invisibility, so that you can not easily access both. Now with hybridization* and the new resource economy that came with it, it has become easier to sustain cloak and still bring an impactful vigour and offering. So in terms of availability, you can bypass some balancing brakes put in place by the devs, but at the same time nothing stops classes who already have strong HoTs from capitalizing on this and from just layering hots.
Ultimately, each bit of defence is payed for with resources, bar slots and GCDs. Every full disengage means a breather for the NB but also a breather for the target. Which brings us to the main point:

Fully disengaging and resetting combat only brings you closer to victory if you are getting a net benefit from each engagement, like a resource advantage. Even the partial disengage from cloaking offensively still costs the NB a GCD and resources and allows for the setup of a predictable attack at best. Of course there is a benefit in doing so, and we also discussed that in 2 other threads, because if it would only serve as a counterable loss-prevention ability it would be conceptually unattractive for a win-oriented bar setup. This is of course looking only at very isolated 1v1 instances, but every other scenario is endlessly more complex.

So am I saying it is all fair then? No. There is one detail I was lying about. Fully disengaging/drawing out the battle is not only worth it if you gain a resource advantage. It is also worth it if it gives you a re-roll for another one-shot attempt. You don't need to play proper PvP if you can just get re-rolls on one-shot attempts without repercussions. This is why burst NB is overpowered. But the NB in our scenario just slotted 6 defensive abilities, surely he must be unable to do this. I mean we know that isn't true. And this is where we have to go into the detail. Is vamp 2/Concealed Major Berserk/guaranteed crit/drain power minor courage/Incap enough to turn any ability besides AW into something the deletes a good player on the spot or blasts them deep into execute range? No it is just this singular ability, with high scaling, that makes the available WD and %-modifiers overly effective. It is this ability that makes the class essentially pressure-independent. Is it a problem for a NB to have high heals and disengage if he can not capitalize on disengages and resets? No. It only hurts when you know, that the guy can blow you up without warning, every second you let him stay alive. Without that he is just another troll tank, but not through blocking, just by jumping around the map and hiding.

Now we don't want the burst man to give up this playstyle. But we also want him to have a bit more of the "risk" in "risk and reward". So the goal we have to achieve is to somehow separate the maximum burst potential from the survivability. This is where I would suggest something that I have suggested before (finally, that was a lot of wind-up):

1)
Even after the adjustment, the morphs for Grim Focus are filling almost the same niche. Therfore I propose:

Grim Focus Morph A:
You focus all your efforts into destroying your target. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Fervor", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 80 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Consume all stacks to fire a projectile dealing "A" magical damage. Activating the ability grants you "Tunnelvision" for 15s, reducing your healing done by 25 % and increases your damage taken by 5 %. Stacks up to 3 times.
Grim Focus Morph B:
You focus on finding the right moment to strike where your foe is weakest. Light Attacks grant you one stack of "Focus", fully charged Heavy Attacks grant you 2. Each stack grants you 40 WD/SD, up to 5 stacks**. Your next critical strike while at 5 stacks, within 7 m, deals an additional "B" physical damage.
(with "A" being roughly the current scaling and "B" being maybe something like 0.3x single target melee spammable value).

The numbers can obviously be fine-tuned and standardized. Morph A is an adjusted version of the current AW, where you either finish the job, you fully disengage as intended and get away, or you get overwhelmed when you overextend your stay and get caught. Can be mostly mitigated in PvE by only affecting healing done, not healing received, and by good encounter awareness.
Morph B would rather fulfill the purpose of the "set and forget" pressure slot, but also enable a bit of delayed burst for players with high micro awareness. That pressure is also not bound to a dot, so the NB can not benefit from it during disengage phases. Both still reward good weaving. With a change like this, true gankers would still be able to secure kills, while players, that want to rely on tankiness and disengage abilities at the same time, expose a weakness for every attempt at utilizing the one-shot combo. Complete disengage would still be a valid playstyle, just more difficult due to the added debuffs, balancing out the availability of good defensive options. The defensive options will not be harmed this way and will continue to be good options for players that do not plan on using/abusing the one-shot potential.

**Alternatively this part of the ability can be altered and shifted onto another offensive ability, that is not part of the minimal effective setup, to force using more offensive slots, e.g. by putting it on twisting path ("the dark winds empower you...")

2)
The offering morphs are also not very diversified. While the cost reduction is quite good, it is mostly outclassed by the minor mending. The self-dot portion simply isn't felt anymore. I would suggest reducing the heal on shrewd offering maybe a couple %, while keeping the self dot short and weak. For healthy offering stacking behaviour of the self-dot can be changed. Instead of adding another instance, it could stack in intensity and reset the timer for all existing instances up to a certain cap, with a longer base debuff duration and/or higher damage than on the other morph. That way dedicated PvE healers, which are not regularly experiencing high single target pressure on themselves, can keep benefitting from the higher heals, while a pressured player can use healthy offering less effectively for spamming self heals without causing high dot ticks on themselves, setting themselves up for being bursted. This can reduce the high self-healing power that is available on top of the disengage power, while still having access to a reasonaby strong burst heal. This way both morphs also have a more clearly defined purpose.

Personally, I think that something like this could already be enough to take the edge off the optimal NB loadout. I also think there is value in those changes from a buildcraft and gameplay perspective and they don't feel dull. We could see how that goes and where numbers have to be tweaked. This way no ability would have to ruined for builds without problematic potential. Of course that doesn't preclude any other changes. What is important to me, is that all abilities are somehow ending up in a usable, thematically fitting and impactful state, and that optional choices are not limiting alternative playstyles. With that mindset I am sure there is also enough room to work in PvE buffs, but I think this would go a bit too far here.

To kind of end on thread topic: At least this way, the guy sneaking through a delve doesn't have to pay ramping cloak costs.

Will likely be edited for typos later.





*I am a big fan of the hybridization, as it allows for combining thematically fitting abilities with higher effectiveness. I am not arguing against it here. While many player bemoan that there is now only one BiS for any job, previously there was also realistically only one BiS per resource class, while restricting the amount of possible combinations much more.

I feel like you are trying to salvage these supposed other NB playstyles futily here. Ranged NB can never make a come back with cloak and heals anywhere near where they are now. Range blades just need to accept staying at range 100% and cloaking are a combination that just can't exist in a balanced state. The times in the past that it could it was completely busted, perhaps even worse than current NB iterations. Cloak is just too strong, it has intangible X factors that you are not factoring. Being invisible and untargetable are better than literally any named buff in the game. It begins and ends with cloak. You know it, it's why you are so desperately trying to perform the mental gymnastics to salvage having your cake(cloak) and eat it(heals) too.

As someone who wants range blade to make a comeback I acknowledge it will have to be a skirmisher playstyle very much like sorc that doesn't use cloak or at least rely on it in order for it to be balanced. Only other option is limiting the auto crit to marshal skills and changing one AW morph to melee only that is burst while the other morph is a ranged pressure morph that maybe even keeps you revealed for part or all of its duration, depending on the duration of the morph. That way NB could see some meaningful buffs to range and pve skills that couldn't just be abused. Counters to cloak just don't work at range effectively. So any defense of "alternative" NB playstyles that don't address making range blade viable but balanced feel disingenuous.

Labeling me as disingenuous based on nothing but assumptions is a bit upsetting. Neither do I play a "rangeblade", nor do I use Shadowy Disguise. This seems a bit pointless to me. What I am interested in is that NB is kept in a good position to fill all roles (tank, heal/support, dps) in PvE and to have a kit that provides a good basis for different and interesting PvP options. All this while staying thematically and aesthetically satisfying for all types of players. And to me the bottom line is so far, that the most sensible abilities to be tweaked, to reign in overperforming PvP builds and opening up space for PvE adjustments are AW and offering. What I do not want is to see decent support skills being slashed to preserve AW and offering as focal points in NB builds. I will not reiterate my reasoning here.

And to be direct on the range topic: Long range on abilities is a massive advantage by itself and can produce so many GCD advantages if played right, where defensive GCDs and gap closers are basically required to just break even on GCDs, while often being suboptimal. I am strongly convinced that pure range builds do not need help and they should lose to dedicated melee builds in focused 1v1 scenarios, otherwise melee becomes obsolete. Not to mention that there are many smart options to mix range and melee sensibly, so there is a lot of grey area inbetween.

NuarBlack

Vaqual wrote: »

Labeling me as disingenuous based on nothing but assumptions is a bit upsetting. Neither do I play a "rangeblade", nor do I use Shadowy Disguise. This seems a bit pointless to me. What I am interested in is that NB is kept in a good position to fill all roles (tank, heal/support, dps) in PvE and to have a kit that provides a good basis for different and interesting PvP options. All this while staying thematically and aesthetically satisfying for all types of players. And to me the bottom line is so far, that the most sensible abilities to be tweaked, to reign in overperforming PvP builds and opening up space for PvE adjustments are AW and offering. What I do not want is to see decent support skills being slashed to preserve AW and offering as focal points in NB builds. I will not reiterate my reasoning here.

And to be direct on the range topic: Long range on abilities is a massive advantage by itself and can produce so many GCD advantages if played right, where defensive GCDs and gap closers are basically required to just break even on GCDs, while often being suboptimal. I am strongly convinced that pure range builds do not need help and they should lose to dedicated melee builds in focused 1v1 scenarios, otherwise melee becomes obsolete. Not to mention that there are many smart options to mix range and melee sensibly, so there is a lot of grey area inbetween.

It's not based on assumptions, you literally just admitted you didn't care about a variety of playstyles and build options, just the ones specifically you want. You just moved the goal post.

I'm not sure how making the pivot around cloak morphs doesn't accomplish this? You are at least partially agreeing with me. Making one cloak morph NB's burst heal preserves all playstyles but the easy reset and heal. You can make it heal the NB or an Ally for pve healers.

Your point about range actually proves my point. Range already has an advantage. No tweaking of offering or AW can fix that cloak makes pure range even more busted. The only reason it isn't now is pure range is anemic without the incap/AW combo. NB can't receive the pve buffs it needs because of this. (Range is highly needed in many pve scenarios)

The reason to keep AW intact is the current tank meta. Sure we could cross our fingers and hope ZoS fixes that but we have been in some kind of tank meta basically since One Tamriel. It's likely intrinsic to ESO's combat as winning and losing is the difference of a global and the timing of damage ticks. They'd have to revamp the game to a much higher TTK which is especially unlikely. Plus most NB do play for the assassin burst power fantasy and I don't think taking that away is fair.

NB can't receive buffs in the areas it needs because of cloak plain and simple. Cloak enables everything. Sure you could completely revamp the entire class to make that not so but the simplest solution is to differentiate NB's survival options into evasion and burst heal.

Vaqual

NuarBlack wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Labeling me as disingenuous based on nothing but assumptions is a bit upsetting. Neither do I play a "rangeblade", nor do I use Shadowy Disguise. This seems a bit pointless to me. What I am interested in is that NB is kept in a good position to fill all roles (tank, heal/support, dps) in PvE and to have a kit that provides a good basis for different and interesting PvP options. All this while staying thematically and aesthetically satisfying for all types of players. And to me the bottom line is so far, that the most sensible abilities to be tweaked, to reign in overperforming PvP builds and opening up space for PvE adjustments are AW and offering. What I do not want is to see decent support skills being slashed to preserve AW and offering as focal points in NB builds. I will not reiterate my reasoning here.

And to be direct on the range topic: Long range on abilities is a massive advantage by itself and can produce so many GCD advantages if played right, where defensive GCDs and gap closers are basically required to just break even on GCDs, while often being suboptimal. I am strongly convinced that pure range builds do not need help and they should lose to dedicated melee builds in focused 1v1 scenarios, otherwise melee becomes obsolete. Not to mention that there are many smart options to mix range and melee sensibly, so there is a lot of grey area inbetween.

It's not based on assumptions, you literally just admitted you didn't care about a variety of playstyles and build options, just the ones specifically you want. You just moved the goal post.

I'm not sure how making the pivot around cloak morphs doesn't accomplish this? You are at least partially agreeing with me. Making one cloak morph NB's burst heal preserves all playstyles but the easy reset and heal. You can make it heal the NB or an Ally for pve healers.

Your point about range actually proves my point. Range already has an advantage. No tweaking of offering or AW can fix that cloak makes pure range even more busted. The only reason it isn't now is pure range is anemic without the incap/AW combo. NB can't receive the pve buffs it needs because of this. (Range is highly needed in many pve scenarios)

The reason to keep AW intact is the current tank meta. Sure we could cross our fingers and hope ZoS fixes that but we have been in some kind of tank meta basically since One Tamriel. It's likely intrinsic to ESO's combat as winning and losing is the difference of a global and the timing of damage ticks. They'd have to revamp the game to a much higher TTK which is especially unlikely. Plus most NB do play for the assassin burst power fantasy and I don't think taking that away is fair.

NB can't receive buffs in the areas it needs because of cloak plain and simple. Cloak enables everything. Sure you could completely revamp the entire class to make that not so but the simplest solution is to differentiate NB's survival options into evasion and burst heal.

1. The power of AW can not be justified with the tank meta, when the main reason for people building tanky are obnoxious one-shots. These are co-dependent. You are right, large shifts in the TTK are unlikely, but one can hope.

2. Did you read my suggestion? One morph of AW kept its offensive power, only survivability was penalized. This way cloak remains viable for weaker builds, but the survivability of burst optimized builds is toned down to allow for the disengage options to stay strong. Also: If the whole assassin playstyle hinges on one magic ability, that design is crap to begin with. And there are anyway many good ways to build effective burst/gank/assassin builds, but AW stands out because it is just better than other options.

3. I can make objective suggestions regardless of my personal preferences. I just made these statements because you assumed I am biased towards cloak usage. That doesn't imply that I don't care about other playstyles. I do not want to see only one playstyle being viable.

Ask yourself this: What feature is more valuable to a new player/ what is more marketable? "This is the class the can become invisible" vs "This is the class that has the hardest hitting single target skill and a good burst heal". How much fun do you think players get from cloaking? What do you think is more likely to actually be adjusted? Realistically, cloak is not going away. It sucks in serious PvE, casuals enjoy it greatly and it is good in PvP. That kind of skill, where you can not attach a numeric value, is just not going be balanced easily to an extent where everyone will be satisfied.
Your suggestion might achieve something similar, but if it wasn't for the weird state dark cloak is in the swap would be arbitrary, since there is already a heal/stealth divide. That is why I added suggestions regarding offering. Is that not clear?

I also didn't comment on your suggestion, did you realize that? They are just suggestions. My point in this thread was, that changing cloak is likely neither going to be the most effective nor the most satisfying way to approach NB balancing.

I don't know what to add that I have not written before and I am not sure I understand what you want from me.

olsborg

Cloak doesnt work.

GooGa592

olsborg wrote: »

Cloak doesnt work.

Cloak works far, far too well, and that's the problem. Cloak needs a ramping cost and/or some of the buffs for cloaking removed for it to be even remotely less OP in PvP situations.