Revert back Soulcleaver

RemoryAzure

Zenimax, please heed to ranged magblades and revert soulcleaver changes for the sake of build diversity.

lemme explain...
first of all, nightblade is not my main, but it could be, if it was strong enough to be atleast B-tier, but right now magsorc, which is infamous trash class and my main, is much stronger than nightblade (ranged, i repeat, i know and agree that melee magblade is actually S+ tier class, but i dont play melees at all). about 95% of nightblades are melees, its an opportunity to change it a bit.

Problem #1.
Ranged magblade has no viable ranged ultimate.
yes, i tried meteor from mages' guild, it can shine sometimes, but overall, incap and tether are far superior choices.
with this set, considering it now works on ultimate, u are stuck with tether, therefore u have to get close to the enemy, but here is the main problem:
- u cant call urself a ranged class when u have to get close to the enemy
- set is focused on using swallow soul as the main spammable, but what's the point when u are close to the enemy anyway, and concealed weapon has built in berserk, minor exp, cc capabilities and simply does more damage?

possible solutions:
1. make one of the tether morphs a proper ranged ultimate with the range of 28m (fever dream, but still, why not?)
2. simply revert back changes and make ranged build to be fully playable on range with strong swallow soul at the cost of ultimate - thats what i would prefer the most

Problem #2.
18% bonus after the changes is simply too bad.
just look at the damage:
Swallow soul base damage + soulcleaver: 2160x1.18 = 2549
Concealed base damage + war maiden: 2400x1.1 = 2640
(we cant compare swallow soul with the set bonus against raw concealed so i added a set with simple power boost, 600wd gives approximately 10% damage on fully geared character)
dont forget concealed has much more utility in it.

and when i play my nightblade, since i dont play melees, i have to play it... like sorc, but worse. i use crushing shock + draugrkin.
crushing shock base + draugrkin = approximately 3000 damage
(its a long math topic to explain how i got this number using proc damage, proc chance and other stuff to get an average, but this number is quite relevant to compare with other skill base damages. u can check it urself, crushing shock with sharpened and no 5x set bonus will get about 30% dps after adding 5x draugrkin bonus and charged trait, with is quite close to equivalent of 3000 damage, since base crushing shock damage is ~2300 which is 696x3 and ~10% on top from basic procs without sets and charged trait)

so, as u can see, swallow soul is just not worth using with this set ot without, it has just no solid power neither utility.
possible solution: again, revert back changes. 2160x1.34 = 2894.
yes, it is still lower than what u deal with crushing shock + draugrkin, but now atleast u will heal for more from both swallow soul and healthy offering, making ranged build totally viable, well, it will be atleast B+ tier, just be playable is totally enough for me.
and to those who say that its impossible to play without burst, lemme introduce u to: CRITS. high damage spammable, unlike fractured ones (hi crushing shock), have a very solid burst capability based on luck, with full 34% bonus of the set, its possible to crit for like 10k with swallow soul, and if it happens 2-3 times in a row, or atleast at the same time with bow proc, since it has travel time, it is quite noticeable burst. and the most nice thing, that it is unpredictable unlike default combos, it can happen any time and ur enemy wont be ready for this (u too btw xd)

OtarTheMad

All I saw was a bunch of math in the post and immediately thought: “this is why it was changed” lol.

merpins

OtarTheMad wrote: »

All I saw was a bunch of math in the post and immediately thought: “this is why it was changed” lol.

Yeah it was probably changed cause the math and scaling was wonky. But the skill line its supposed to buff is so weak that even the previous version's calculation, assuming you had 100% uptime of it, which gave a full 32% buff to damage and reduced cost, wasn't enough to be relevant. Which is too bad. That skill line is in dire need of a really big buff to give more playstyles to NB, which currently only has 1.

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18. That's the only way the set will be any good, and even then, it'll just be an off-meta option and probably not meta.

RemoryAzure

merpins wrote: »

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18.

i would like it to be reverted coz this is the only way to make purely ranged build playable, right now ranged NB doesnt have proper ult anyway, as i said in #1.
and, ur suggestion is extremely overtuned, like, +40% to swallow soul will make it deal 3024 base damage which is already on par with the highest possible ranged damage which is crushing shock with draugkinset, but u suggest it to deal the same damage with no bonuses at all, and u suggest make this set buff it by another 30%, which is 3931 base damage. may i remind u that merciless resolve deals 4800? basically u suggest to make swallow soul to deal almost the same damage as bow proc, but with healing and no requirements. even ur lower numbers of 30% and 25% will make it deal 3510 dmg which is insane, its like fully stacked molten whip every hit and from range

merpins

RemoryAzure wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18.

i would like it to be reverted coz this is the only way to make purely ranged build playable, right now ranged NB doesnt have proper ult anyway, as i said in #1.
and, ur suggestion is extremely overtuned, like, +40% to swallow soul will make it deal 3024 base damage which is already on par with the highest possible ranged damage which is crushing shock with draugkinset, but u suggest it to deal the same damage with no bonuses at all, and u suggest make this set buff it by another 30%, which is 3931 base damage. may i remind u that merciless resolve deals 4800? basically u suggest to make swallow soul to deal almost the same damage as bow proc, but with healing and no requirements. even ur lower numbers of 30% and 25% will make it deal 3510 dmg which is insane, its like fully stacked molten whip every hit and from range

Ranged attacks, including crushing shock, do less damage than melee attacks. Having ranged attacks scale up to that as a standard wouldn't hurt anything, but increase build diversity.
The skill doing as much damage as a stacked molten whip every hit from range sounds insane. Then you need to remember that the set will only really benefit two skills and an ultimate, and only if you want to use a close ranged ulti on a ranged build. This is a non issue. It should hit like a truck, because well... You're giving up a 5 piece set to buff 2 skills and nothing else. Even if they did my suggestion, even if they used the maximum values I suggested, it still won't crack the top end DPS builds that you can use in PVE, and due to the nature of the skills it would buff, well, those skills are very slow and easy to avoid in PVP, so you'd have to use them at close range anyway. But it would give another playstyle option, even without this set. Right now, it's just not used. With that big of a buff, it actually becomes a viable option for off-meta

Turtle_Bot

RemoryAzure wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18.

i would like it to be reverted coz this is the only way to make purely ranged build playable, right now ranged NB doesnt have proper ult anyway, as i said in #1.
and, ur suggestion is extremely overtuned, like, +40% to swallow soul will make it deal 3024 base damage which is already on par with the highest possible ranged damage which is crushing shock with draugkinset, but u suggest it to deal the same damage with no bonuses at all, and u suggest make this set buff it by another 30%, which is 3931 base damage. may i remind u that merciless resolve deals 4800? basically u suggest to make swallow soul to deal almost the same damage as bow proc, but with healing and no requirements. even ur lower numbers of 30% and 25% will make it deal 3510 dmg which is insane, its like fully stacked molten whip every hit and from range

I was gonna say the same thing. Even at a 30% increase to the skill itself (their minimum buff to swallow soul) that is a 2808 base tooltip, without any sets buffing it on a range skill that also heals.
In other words, it deals 20% more damage (at base, before all of NBs modifiers) than concealed does.

Before any modifiers are applied (and NB has an insane amount of them), a swallow soul even without the set equipped would have 13% more damage at base than a hard cast frags that has a cast time and no heal attached to it.

With just the smallest percent on the set that they want (25%), their buffed swallow soul would then deal damage equal to 94% of frags proc while still having a significant heal.

That is disgustingly overpowered and would instantly invalidate every single other class from being playable in 1 move due to how many damage modifiers NB has access to inherently in its class kit.

Some simple calcs on build editor using a basic NMA (because its craftable), rallying, SSC build has the buffed tooltip for swallow soul (with the 30% increase they're asking for) at over 20k and it heals for 47% of the damage done, that is a full burst heal of 9k every single cast of a 20k+ ranged spammable. Replacing NMA with their 25% increase they want from the class set would be even more absurd, it would literally hit as hard as a critting AW currently does, on an instant cast, with no build up, and it guarantees a burst heal every single cast...

It would be nice to see a return of range blade playstyle (something I actually enjoyed alongside my sorc main way back then), but a 30% buff (to the skill) ontop of a further 25% buff (from the class set) ontop of NB already absurd damage modifier access is not the way to go about it.

Sorry, bit of a rant, but the kind of buff they were asking for is just absurd, no other class would be playable at all.

merpins

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

RemoryAzure wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18.

i would like it to be reverted coz this is the only way to make purely ranged build playable, right now ranged NB doesnt have proper ult anyway, as i said in #1.
and, ur suggestion is extremely overtuned, like, +40% to swallow soul will make it deal 3024 base damage which is already on par with the highest possible ranged damage which is crushing shock with draugkinset, but u suggest it to deal the same damage with no bonuses at all, and u suggest make this set buff it by another 30%, which is 3931 base damage. may i remind u that merciless resolve deals 4800? basically u suggest to make swallow soul to deal almost the same damage as bow proc, but with healing and no requirements. even ur lower numbers of 30% and 25% will make it deal 3510 dmg which is insane, its like fully stacked molten whip every hit and from range

I was gonna say the same thing. Even at a 30% increase to the skill itself (their minimum buff to swallow soul) that is a 2808 base tooltip, without any sets buffing it on a range skill that also heals.
In other words, it deals 20% more damage (at base, before all of NBs modifiers) than concealed does.

Before any modifiers are applied (and NB has an insane amount of them), a swallow soul even without the set equipped would have 13% more damage at base than a hard cast frags that has a cast time and no heal attached to it.

With just the smallest percent on the set that they want (25%), their buffed swallow soul would then deal damage equal to 94% of frags proc while still having a significant heal.

That is disgustingly overpowered and would instantly invalidate every single other class from being playable in 1 move due to how many damage modifiers NB has access to inherently in its class kit.

Some simple calcs on build editor using a basic NMA (because its craftable), rallying, SSC build has the buffed tooltip for swallow soul (with the 30% increase they're asking for) at over 20k and it heals for 47% of the damage done, that is a full burst heal of 9k every single cast of a 20k+ ranged spammable. Replacing NMA with their 25% increase they want from the class set would be even more absurd, it would literally hit as hard as a critting AW currently does, on an instant cast, with no build up, and it guarantees a burst heal every single cast...

It would be nice to see a return of range blade playstyle (something I actually enjoyed alongside my sorc main way back then), but a 30% buff (to the skill) ontop of a further 25% buff (from the class set) ontop of NB already absurd damage modifier access is not the way to go about it.

Sorry, bit of a rant, but the kind of buff they were asking for is just absurd, no other class would be playable at all.

You're giving up a 5 piece set and the use of an ult for one skill. You need to think of a whole build, not just the skill in a vacuum. Even before, the set was so undertuned due to how undertuned the skill line is that just slotting the set with the relevant skills from the skill line (there's 1), you get a giant DPS decrease. 30 or 40k at top end. You can't make Swallow Soul do enough damage with this set, the skill is too weak on its own and would need to carry half your build since you're giving up on a 5 piece set for it. It would need to be on the level of Fatecarver to see any real play.

RemoryAzure

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

a hard cast frags that has a cast time and no heal attached to it.

well, it actually has a heal x) 4.5% (after pvp reductions) max hp from blood magic passive which is ~1350 and another 1500 from surge if u crit. sorc who freely spams frags actually heals more than nb with swallow soul + siphoning strikes (dunno who still use it, i have no bar space tbh), but yeah, key word is 'freely'.

anyway, yes, i think that reverting set to its initial state and allowing swallow soul to deal solid ~2900 base damage, still less than crushing shock + draugrkin (but with a heal!), less than frags + war maiden (but instant!), with a downside of not having an ult (who cares when purely ranged nb still doesnt have any proper ranged ult except for nice but very situational meteor), is a good idea of creating a build diversity.

and current soulcleaver is not nice, i dont want to use it, i'd prefer to stick to crushing shock for a much more damage

merpins wrote: »

<You're giving up a 5 piece set and the use of an ult for one skill. You need to think of a whole build, not just the skill in a vacuum>

<You can't make Swallow Soul do enough damage with this set>

<> noone needs a build or any other skills when ur spammable hits like a frag proc. a year ago i reported a cheater sorc for using some kind of hack which allowed him to cast only proc frags every single gcd without requirements. this damage was impossible to survive. he was banned quite fast. but u suggest to make it legal

<> without buffing swallow soul base damage, this set with its initial state could make swallow soul to have 2900 base damage. it is in line with the top tier damaging spammables like wrecking blow or lethal arrow, but doesnt require cast or stacking, its like draugrkin which makes crushing shock alone to carry all ur damage, still less actually, but with a heal, which is important to remember, coz even when not dealing the best damage, exchanging hits with anyone for prolonged times will lead to a situation where enemy will have to retreat and heal, while u will still have hp due to passive healing and u will be able to pressure targets freely.

madmidwestmark

The real answer is to modify swallow soul damage and potentially scale back the heal. Maybe buff the base 20% and cut the heal to 30%. I think if you want to buff a skill line, it should include the ult. The other option is to make it a damage bonus (like 350 wep/spl damge) after casting a siphoning ability and making all siphoning abilities cheaper too. I'd rather it stick with the siphoning abilities. It also affects debilitate, fyi

RemoryAzure

madmidwestmark wrote: »

The real answer is to modify swallow soul damage and potentially scale back the heal. Maybe buff the base 20% and cut the heal to 30%. I think if you want to buff a skill line, it should include the ult. The other option is to make it a damage bonus (like 350 wep/spl damge) after casting a siphoning ability and making all siphoning abilities cheaper too. I'd rather it stick with the siphoning abilities. It also affects debilitate, fyi

core identity of this set is to make swallow soul a build's spammable. to enable solid ranged playstyle for nb. this means, it should NOT affect melee skills, and siphoning ult is one of them. both options u suggest will only further promote NB's bomber playstyle and this is what we DONT want.

good thing that u mentioned debilitate. it will be a good idea not to boost swallow soul's raw damage, and instead give it a damage boost against targets with debilitate. this way set will work nicely, improving damage of both core skills and playstyle overall will be something similar to sorc's curse-spam-fragproc, but debilitate-swallow-bowproc.

Turtle_Bot

RemoryAzure wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

a hard cast frags that has a cast time and no heal attached to it.

well, it actually has a heal x) 4.5% (after pvp reductions) max hp from blood magic passive which is ~1350 and another 1500 from surge if u crit. sorc who freely spams frags actually heals more than nb with swallow soul + siphoning strikes (dunno who still use it, i have no bar space tbh), but yeah, key word is 'freely'.

anyway, yes, i think that reverting set to its initial state and allowing swallow soul to deal solid ~2900 base damage, still less than crushing shock + draugrkin (but with a heal!), less than frags + war maiden (but instant!), with a downside of not having an ult (who cares when purely ranged nb still doesnt have any proper ranged ult except for nice but very situational meteor), is a good idea of creating a build diversity.

and current soulcleaver is not nice, i dont want to use it, i'd prefer to stick to crushing shock for a much more damage

yeah, I ignored the sorc passive blood magic and heal from crit surge because I was also ignoring the NB passives as well.

If we are going to include passives and other abilities:
- NB essentially has slightly smaller minor heroism for free (that stacks with minor heroism named buff) thanks to the Transfer passive.
- NB has a free 300-400 weapon/spell damage thanks to MR/AW and with the damage swallow soul would do with that kind of buff, they wouldn't even need to cast MR/AW.
- NB has minor mending from their burst heal increasing the heal by swallow soul.

I agree that the previous iteration of the set at least required dedicating the build to it to gain that much damage which kept it at least interesting.

merpins wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

RemoryAzure wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

OP. I don't think the set needs to be reverted, and would argue getting rid of the remnants of the previous version would be better: get rid of the ult consuming effect. Then, buff Swallow Soul and Cripple (along with its morphs) by 30 to 40%, and make this set give 25 or 30% instead of 18.

i would like it to be reverted coz this is the only way to make purely ranged build playable, right now ranged NB doesnt have proper ult anyway, as i said in #1.
and, ur suggestion is extremely overtuned, like, +40% to swallow soul will make it deal 3024 base damage which is already on par with the highest possible ranged damage which is crushing shock with draugkinset, but u suggest it to deal the same damage with no bonuses at all, and u suggest make this set buff it by another 30%, which is 3931 base damage. may i remind u that merciless resolve deals 4800? basically u suggest to make swallow soul to deal almost the same damage as bow proc, but with healing and no requirements. even ur lower numbers of 30% and 25% will make it deal 3510 dmg which is insane, its like fully stacked molten whip every hit and from range

I was gonna say the same thing. Even at a 30% increase to the skill itself (their minimum buff to swallow soul) that is a 2808 base tooltip, without any sets buffing it on a range skill that also heals.
In other words, it deals 20% more damage (at base, before all of NBs modifiers) than concealed does.

Before any modifiers are applied (and NB has an insane amount of them), a swallow soul even without the set equipped would have 13% more damage at base than a hard cast frags that has a cast time and no heal attached to it.

With just the smallest percent on the set that they want (25%), their buffed swallow soul would then deal damage equal to 94% of frags proc while still having a significant heal.

That is disgustingly overpowered and would instantly invalidate every single other class from being playable in 1 move due to how many damage modifiers NB has access to inherently in its class kit.

Some simple calcs on build editor using a basic NMA (because its craftable), rallying, SSC build has the buffed tooltip for swallow soul (with the 30% increase they're asking for) at over 20k and it heals for 47% of the damage done, that is a full burst heal of 9k every single cast of a 20k+ ranged spammable. Replacing NMA with their 25% increase they want from the class set would be even more absurd, it would literally hit as hard as a critting AW currently does, on an instant cast, with no build up, and it guarantees a burst heal every single cast...

It would be nice to see a return of range blade playstyle (something I actually enjoyed alongside my sorc main way back then), but a 30% buff (to the skill) ontop of a further 25% buff (from the class set) ontop of NB already absurd damage modifier access is not the way to go about it.

Sorry, bit of a rant, but the kind of buff they were asking for is just absurd, no other class would be playable at all.

You're giving up a 5 piece set and the use of an ult for one skill. You need to think of a whole build, not just the skill in a vacuum. Even before, the set was so undertuned due to how undertuned the skill line is that just slotting the set with the relevant skills from the skill line (there's 1), you get a giant DPS decrease. 30 or 40k at top end. You can't make Swallow Soul do enough damage with this set, the skill is too weak on its own and would need to carry half your build since you're giving up on a 5 piece set for it. It would need to be on the level of Fatecarver to see any real play.

Not quite sure how you're not getting enough damage on Swallow Soul.

Here is a simple PvP War maiden + RC + SSC + Zoals build (made for both survivability and dps).

Active buffs include:
- SSC
- RC (solo play)
- sorcery/brutality (from degen)
- savagery (cloak/camo hunter)
- minor berserk (camo hunter)
- strike from shadows passive active (vamp stage 3)
- MR stacks built up

Buffs not included:
- Incap +20%
- Bloodthirsty jewelry but the target is full health (so basically no jewelry trait)
- No minor breach/vulnerability applied to the target from weapon enchants.
- Mundus is Mag recovery
- No minor courage because I'm using degen instead of power extraction
- No Zoals proc

Here is the tooltip for swallow soul if I include all of the missing buffs/debuffs.

It's not like the build is super squishy either:
- SSC is 40% mitigation
- 25-27k resistances on the back bar, even with 4 light armor pieces.
- 3500 crit resistances
- Vigor + refreshing path + swallow soul stacking up a lot of healing over time as well as healthy offering for the burst heal.
- Cloak to get out of sticky situations
- Blur for major evasion, snare immunity and cheaper/free dodge rolls
- 2 defensive CP, single target healing done and iron clad (direct damage mitigation).
- 30k health, 30k mag (64 points into mag)
- 2400 mag recovery

If you want, you can remove camo hunter and move degen to the front bar and slot blood mist on the back bar for a teleport as well as an AoE DoT + HoT (you don't need elusive mist since refreshing gives major expedition and blur gives evasion already) and at most you lose about 150 to 200 damage off that swallow soul tooltip.

Here is Swallow Soul with the 5th piece of warmaiden removed (replaced with 1 medium armor piece of random set with same impen trait) and added 2 8% buffs (or 2% lower than the new NB set, post change) to roughly simulate the new NB set.

Standard generic buffs, no incap etc:

Fully buffed including incap etc:

Here is a PvE build, PoN body, maelstrom inferno back, warmaiden front, kit + 1 pc slimecraw) in a parse situation (the highest damage potential where the smallest percentage differences are the most noticeable:

The tooltip for swallow soul is 1600 roughly damage behind concealed.

You trade 1600 damage per cast for 36% of damage done as healing over time + 28m range. Not much of a trade off, especially when considering in game content, healing on damage done and range is very strong.

The same build on sorcerer has swallow soul only 1200 damage behind hard cast frags

You're trading 1200 damage and a 2508 heal (from blood magic passive) + potential 3366 heal (from crit surge) for no cast time and a guaranteed baseline 7600 heal every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
Frags proc is 37k, MR is 46.5k.

Now imagine that same build, but with a 30-40% higher base tooltip. That would be:

• For PvE, a 30k damage spammable (21k x 1.4) that heals you for 36% of its damage done (10.6k heal) every 2 seconds for 10 seconds and is ranged.
• For PvP, a 17.8k or 21.6k damage spammable that heals you for 47% of its damage done (8.3k or 10.2k heal) every 2 seconds for 10 seconds and is ranged.

I'm not trying to say that Swallow Soul doesn't need a buff at all, I'm saying that it is not as bad as people seem to think it is and if anything, it only needs a small 5-10% increase to its damage and a slight rework to its cast animation to make it easier to weave which would make it better.

Turtle_Bot

RemoryAzure wrote: »

madmidwestmark wrote: »

The real answer is to modify swallow soul damage and potentially scale back the heal. Maybe buff the base 20% and cut the heal to 30%. I think if you want to buff a skill line, it should include the ult. The other option is to make it a damage bonus (like 350 wep/spl damge) after casting a siphoning ability and making all siphoning abilities cheaper too. I'd rather it stick with the siphoning abilities. It also affects debilitate, fyi

good thing that u mentioned debilitate. it will be a good idea not to boost swallow soul's raw damage, and instead give it a damage boost against targets with debilitate. this way set will work nicely, improving damage of both core skills and playstyle overall will be something similar to sorc's curse-spam-fragproc, but debilitate-swallow-bowproc.

I like this idea, debilitate into swallow soul into bow proc with impale to finish them off (if they survive).

Would definitely bring back the ranged blade playstyle if done right.

MashmalloMan

Kinda odd for OP to ignore the intentional design behind the set by focussing on only the damage side of it.

Are we forgetting it's also buffing the skill line by 18% healing and -18% cost reduction? A skill line with your burst heal, already the best in the game. It's not meant to be only a ranged NB damage dealer set, it's trying to buff everything in the line.

The ult cost to use the set is also better than it seems because of how NB operates. If you're using the set, you're probably going to use Cripple and Swallow Soul often where a typical melee NB build wouldn't. The Transfer passive for 2 ult every 4s, should be up off cooldown where as a typical NB may only get it on the defensive via Healthy Offering or on rebuff via Siphoning Strikes.

Because of Transfer, you're mitigating that con of the set by at least 50-100% since you still have other skills you're going to weave within each 4 second window like Mercilous, Impale, Shadow Image, etc, etc.

With transfers 2 ult every 4s, 3 ult per second for light attacking and potentially 23 ultimate for a kill in pvp (assault passive + fighters guild + soul harvest) you will literally never feel the -1 ult per Siphoning cast, especially since you may spend less time defensively due to the cost/healing bonus.

If OP wants a buff to the set, make a better argument. I may not agree with the sentiment because the comparison to the best melee spammable in the game from a ranged spammable that also provides a massive hot doesn't make sense to me, but you can't just ignore the entire sets bonuses, flaws and purpose.

Throwing it out there.. What if it lost the cost reduction bonus to bump up the healing and damage bonuses to 26%ish. Something like that makes more sense then specifically saying "I want my spammable to be as good as my other spammable". There is 5 other skills in the line.

RemoryAzure

MashmalloMan wrote: »

If OP wants a buff to the set, make a better argument. I may not agree with the sentiment because the comparison to the best melee spammable in the game from a ranged spammable that also provides a massive hot doesn't make sense to me, but you can't just ignore the entire sets bonuses, flaws and purpose.

i got u, BUT my main reason that in current state it doesnt provide enough potential to play purely ranged build. and not the comparison to the concealed. the logic was: set works on ult -> u have to get close to use it -> oh wait i have concealed -> drop swallow, drop set, go generic build.

if u want, u can compare swallow + soulcleaver vs crushing + draugrkin. with the first iteration and a bonus of 34% swallow still cant do the same damage as crushing shock, and the cost reduction brings swallow soul down to the crushing shock level, so basically u deal about ~3% less damage but it heals u, which clearly fits the initial game balance design - classes are made around the idea that u can swap class skill to a weapon skill for a specific build, but overall class skills are always better. in a current state, however, i wont be swapping crushing shock to a swallow coz its simply way worse, with a 18% bonus it will deal around 20% less damage than crushing shock. i wont be trading 20% damage to make heal stronger and cheaper, its already strong enough

and, yes, actually, even 18% bonus to the heal and 15% cost reduction of it makes me worry, coz it will make some troll builds possible, where u cant kill a single nb with the whole team on bg, similar to what DK's and Necro's did last year before nerfs. this is not what i want to see

merpins

What players seem to want is a ranged NB that uses Swallow Soul. I do too, it's my favorite skill in the game. But I haven't been able to use it since its initial nerf in 2017. The playstyle has been dead for 6+ years. This set could solve it, but I don't think it should. They (zos) should actually solve the issues with this playstyle. This set should be nothing more than something that gives more to that playstyle, not the crutch we have to lean on to make it viable.

Whether if it's the previous effect or the new one, it's a dead set if they can't solve the issue with the skills the set effects.

merpins

A day later, I thought of a possible change that could buff Swallow Soul enough without actually buffing swallow soul... What if it was made into a .3 second channel ability? Currently, it feels similar to a channel ability of that amount, and it would allow a synergy with the Deadly set. It might even make it so this new set + Deadly + Velothi Ur would be a feasible playstyle.

RemoryAzure

merpins wrote: »

A day later, I thought of a possible change that could buff Swallow Soul enough without actually buffing swallow soul... What if it was made into a .8 second channel ability? Currently, it feels similar to a channel ability of that amount, and it would allow a synergy with the Deadly set. It might even make it so this new set + Deadly + Velothi Ur would be a feasible playstyle.

to make it cancel every time enemy breaks los by any pebble on the road? to make u an easy target for stun? to make u lose ability to attack after every interrupt or cc? no thanks, thats the main reason why there is no sorc who use cast frags even with the fact it can possibly deal more damage than crushing shock, fits into crit damage build and also heals u for a decent amount. cast swallow soul will instantly place this build into F-tier even if they actually buff its damage by 50% to the level of fully stacked lethal arrow.

Finedaible

merpins wrote: »

A day later, I thought of a possible change that could buff Swallow Soul enough without actually buffing swallow soul... What if it was made into a .8 second channel ability? Currently, it feels similar to a channel ability of that amount, and it would allow a synergy with the Deadly set. It might even make it so this new set + Deadly + Velothi Ur would be a feasible playstyle.

Channel/Cast time is a bad idea. It is why people hate to use Vampiric Drain. Similarly, Teleport Strike is heavily hampered in pvp with that inane cast time on it and fails so often that I've had to resort to using Critical Charge as a gap closer on NB instead. Pretty ironic too that a teleport takes time to travel to a target, but a melee charge is instant cast.

merpins

Finedaible wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

A day later, I thought of a possible change that could buff Swallow Soul enough without actually buffing swallow soul... What if it was made into a .8 second channel ability? Currently, it feels similar to a channel ability of that amount, and it would allow a synergy with the Deadly set. It might even make it so this new set + Deadly + Velothi Ur would be a feasible playstyle.

Channel/Cast time is a bad idea. It is why people hate to use Vampiric Drain. Similarly, Teleport Strike is heavily hampered in pvp with that inane cast time on it and fails so often that I've had to resort to using Critical Charge as a gap closer on NB instead. Pretty ironic too that a teleport takes time to travel to a target, but a melee charge is instant cast.

Well the skill already feels like a channeled ability. They could literally just tack on the .8 second cast time to the skill description and jiggle the LA weave timing a bit, and it would feel almost exactly the same. Heck, it might even feel better, since it kinda blows to use this ability with certain weapons. Bow for example is really hard to LA weave with the skill for whatever reason.

Sure, the PVP side might not see as much use with this change, but I don't think it'll make less people use it. With this, the timing of weaving with bow might be improved, which could make a pretty decent playstyle, especially if they made the skill hit instantly rather than slowly like it currently does. And the PVE side has basically one playstyle with NB, and this change could easily make another pretty competitive playstyle. Maybe not. But it looks to me like it might.

RemoryAzure

merpins wrote: »

Well the skill already feels like a channeled ability. They could literally just tack on the .8 second cast time to the skill description and jiggle the LA weave timing a bit, and it would feel almost exactly the same. Heck, it might even feel better, since it kinda blows to use this ability with certain weapons. Bow for example is really hard to LA weave with the skill for whatever reason.

this is a joke, right?
if not, go and try to play sorc with cast frags. u can see the same damage on a dummy with crushing shock + draugrkin and frags + war maiden, but u will be VERY lucky to do atleast half of that damage with cast frags in a real fight, go just check ur damage on BG scoreboard with crushing vs frags. in open field it might be okay (but again, only if are in a group, in solo play u will never win anyone with cast spell), but in a place with many obstacles u will manage to cast like only 1 of 5 frags/lethals/whatever.
p.s. and no, bow is one of the easiest things to weave, the only thing that is hard to weave is actually morphed cast frags, well, everything else except from frags is easily used by a macro without any delays, just slap 2 buttons and u do a perfect weave with everything but not frags

Vaqual

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Kinda odd for OP to ignore the intentional design behind the set by focussing on only the damage side of it.

Are we forgetting it's also buffing the skill line by 18% healing and -18% cost reduction? A skill line with your burst heal, already the best in the game. It's not meant to be only a ranged NB damage dealer set, it's trying to buff everything in the line.

The ult cost to use the set is also better than it seems because of how NB operates. If you're using the set, you're probably going to use Cripple and Swallow Soul often where a typical melee NB build wouldn't. The Transfer passive for 2 ult every 4s, should be up off cooldown where as a typical NB may only get it on the defensive via Healthy Offering or on rebuff via Siphoning Strikes.

Because of Transfer, you're mitigating that con of the set by at least 50-100% since you still have other skills you're going to weave within each 4 second window like Mercilous, Impale, Shadow Image, etc, etc.

With transfers 2 ult every 4s, 3 ult per second for light attacking and potentially 23 ultimate for a kill in pvp (assault passive + fighters guild + soul harvest) you will literally never feel the -1 ult per Siphoning cast, especially since you may spend less time defensively due to the cost/healing bonus.

If OP wants a buff to the set, make a better argument. I may not agree with the sentiment because the comparison to the best melee spammable in the game from a ranged spammable that also provides a massive hot doesn't make sense to me, but you can't just ignore the entire sets bonuses, flaws and purpose.

Throwing it out there.. What if it lost the cost reduction bonus to bump up the healing and damage bonuses to 26%ish. Something like that makes more sense then specifically saying "I want my spammable to be as good as my other spammable". There is 5 other skills in the line.

I was surprised to see that they followed your suggested changes from that other thread almost to the letter, especially since you ended on "But hey, I don't play NB so what do I know ". It seems that you are only superficially invested in this topic and I find it a bit regrettable that the devs decided to go with this direction.

The sentence that stood out for me here was "There are 5 other skills in the line". And I think this is where most people overestimate this sets value, and why casually slashing the modifiers by nearly 50% drastically devalued the set. I will elaborate:

OP already provided a mathematical example of how little offensive value the set offers in its current state. The healing component was concerning in the original version, but that was exclusively due to the offering base tooltip and scaling, everything else has disproportionally weaker tooltips. While that surely had to be adressed, this was seemingly approached with isolated numbers in mind and not a realistic playstyle.

The minimal expectation for a 5-piece set (in my eyes) is that it can keep up with similar sets. A proc damage set should do damage close to the standard value that other sets with the same target number, cooldown and proc condition have. Same goes for sustain and heal sets. Now this is of course the part where it gets tricky with this set, as it dips into all aspects. Before the adjustment the set was decently behind other proc damage sets (assuming e.g. Swallow Soul on every GCD and Debilitate running for comparability and then weighing it against free GCDs in a 10s window/performance with or without better spammable/maximum burst spike/secondary proc effects like debuffs/net ult generation), but that was compensated by healing and ability cost, further balanced by the ult management (!). In sum it could keep up (you could now do the same from a heal set PoV) if you add up all benefits and played with the ult condition in mind. As you may have noticed, a major factor in this is the percentage of siphoning skill usage in the the rotation/combo. Sure, other sets with specific requirements exist (e.g. weapon or damage type buffing sets), but many of them are not as popular as more versatile sets. Can a player who slots only siphoning skills get reasonable value out of this set? Barely. If his game plan is to build around spamming offering, then maybe, otherwise other options are better, even defensively. Spamming Swallow Soul is not going to win a fight on it's own and the even if you do nothing else, you are better off slotting a stronger damage set (a lot of them are many times stronger, this isn't even remotely close) and getting extra healing from another source.

The point is: A 500 % increase from 0, is still zero. If the base tooltip is too low and you can not afford casting the skills to cover enough GCDs you lose value on this set. 1 Debilitate cast, 1 Leeching cast in 20s. 3 spammables (aoe damage, single target damage, single target heal) and the ult. There is not enough synergistic potential between the skills to create value that exceeds the benefit of e.g. an off-GCD proc set, or even worse, if this has to compete with monster+trainee+mythic+druid or an arena setup.
And all of these considerations do not have to be made, when you can just wear other, less restrictive setups and achieve similar results.

Lastly, a personal note: I was thrilled that this set buffed Siphoning skills, which is my favourite skill line. I play with Leeching Strikes, Debilitate and Swallow soul on almost all my builds just for the roleplay factor (lol in an online rpg, what a noob), even though 2/3 are not BiS, while I will under no circumstances be able to give up Incap, as I need it for my Assasination passives on the relevant bar. In that sense this set was ideal for me, as it elevated the skills to a degree, where there was enough benefit between those 3 skills for it to be worth slotting. Taking half of that off (see Crimson Twilight, from overused straight to garbage tier) is just a big deal. If the per-slot value of this set made it a possible pick before, it is just a joke now. And all of that because people found no way to account for offering in a sensible manner and everyone lost their cool because they saw big %. And honestly: Probably because they couldn't get the ult to work. Such a shame about the ult-minigame (already discussed in the other thread), too, which made it very engaging. People here were literally ready to sacrifice this set, which could have been a great way of including weaker siphoning skills into semi-viable setups, just to go harder on soul shred (which is already used/good regardless).

I am still convinced that the original concept was much better and would have had found a way into many builds, even with adjustments to the healing bonus for offering. I would be surprised if this even ends up being a novelty pick now. I can't help but feel that the devs were trying to appease the loudest voices on the forums, but ended up ruining the set for everyone at the same time (except maybe pure group healers that for some reason don't like support sets). It is now too restrictive for the amount of value/fun it offers.

Vaqual

I just realized the first part come across as if I am blaming a player for the changes. That was of course not intended that way. I just made that observation which led me to chime in again on the topic, after re-reading a part of the other thread.

emilyhyoyeon

PLEASE for the love of all that is good do not put a cast time on swallow soul. Light attack weaving is important to nightblade.

merpins

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

PLEASE for the love of all that is good do not put a cast time on swallow soul. Light attack weaving is important to nightblade.

I wasn't suggesting a cast time. I was suggesting a channel time. And with the advent of Arcanist, and its skill that has a .3 second cast time, it wouldn't be too insane to see a .3 second channel time. This would be nothing but a change on paper, as the skill already has a hidden channel time, and would allow the skill to synergize with sets like Deadly. It would be nothing but a (very situational, minor) buff.

emilyhyoyeon

merpins wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

PLEASE for the love of all that is good do not put a cast time on swallow soul. Light attack weaving is important to nightblade.

I wasn't suggesting a cast time. I was suggesting a channel time. And with the advent of Arcanist, and its skill that has a .3 second cast time, it wouldn't be too insane to see a .3 second channel time. This would be nothing but a change on paper, as the skill already has a hidden channel time, and would allow the skill to synergize with sets like Deadly. It would be nothing but a (very situational, minor) buff.

If that 0.3sec thing is the arcanist tentacle attack, then that's effectively the same, equally as bad. It makes weaving feel terrible and just generally AWFUL to use, and it along with runeblades being terrible compared to beam are the only two reasons why I've barely played arcanist at all yet.

I should mention that swallow soul has never felt clunky to me. It was always one of the smoothest feeling skills to weave for me, but I've heard other people say the opposite, so IDK.


I'd be interested to see a buff for swallow soul as something like making it not a projectile (better against wardens, DKs, people using shield ult), or making it unblockable, or making it undodgerollable, or something along those lines.

Vaqual

Is the magicka on the second bonus going to stay? The first patch notes said it would have HP on the second bonus and I thought it may just be an oversight on the PTS version. I didn't see any statement regarding this. Does anybody know?

MindOfTheSwarm

This entire post would be solved if ZoS added a new non-class skill line to the game that had a ranged Magicka ultimate.

Tyrant_Tim

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This entire post would be solved if ZoS added a new non-class skill line to the game that had a ranged Magicka ultimate.

Dark Brotherhood could use an active skill line.

Galeriano

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This entire post would be solved if ZoS added a new non-class skill line to the game that had a ranged Magicka ultimate.

You mean a meteor from mage's guild?

Turtle_Bot

Galeriano wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This entire post would be solved if ZoS added a new non-class skill line to the game that had a ranged Magicka ultimate.

You mean a meteor from mage's guild?

Probably something more equivalent to Dawnbreaker (cheap to cast, decent damage, good secondary effects and good passives that come with it that buff other things too).

Galeriano

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This entire post would be solved if ZoS added a new non-class skill line to the game that had a ranged Magicka ultimate.

You mean a meteor from mage's guild?

Probably something more equivalent to Dawnbreaker (cheap to cast, decent damage, good secondary effects and good passives that come with it that buff other things too).

So what would be the drawback to it? For dawnbreaker it's being meele.