nightblades out of control in pvp

Amottica · November 2023

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I have the solution. I have thought it and it is brilliant.

When a nightblade breaks cloak in combat (or their cloak gets broken), they get the revealed debuff for 5 seconds. That's 5 seconds that cloak cannot be crutched on in combat every time they use cloak offensively or defensively.

Then, make cloak a toggle. Make it work like sneak, but cost magicka per second and provide invisibility.

There we go, a significant in combat limitation and out of combat quality of life buff. Everyone wins.

It is already there. When we pull a NB out of cloak or any player out of sneak with a hard counter they do get a debuff that prevents them from cloaking or going invis by any means for a short duration. Granted, the duration could be extended for another couple of seconds but it is there and works.

I can attest that the design already in the game does work and works well. So yes, a brilliant solution and it is already in the game.

Galeriano · November 2023

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I have the solution. I have thought it and it is brilliant.

When a nightblade breaks cloak in combat (or their cloak gets broken), they get the revealed debuff for 5 seconds. That's 5 seconds that cloak cannot be crutched on in combat every time they use cloak offensively or defensively.

Then, make cloak a toggle. Make it work like sneak, but cost magicka per second and provide invisibility.

There we go, a significant in combat limitation and out of combat quality of life buff. Everyone wins.

That solution could work 2-3 years ago before ZoS started overbuffing whole nightblade toolkit to the point nightblade now is just a semi brawler class with cloak on top of it and with one of the highest burst dmg pressures in the game. Now what we need is complete separation of nightblade playing like other setups and nightblade playing like an assains and there needs to be distinct line between those two setups to the point when one is possible other isn't. Being everything at the same time is just silly. One of the things ZoS could do is either making that when nightblade enters cloak all negative effects he applied to enemy are removed or that cloak either costs more or lasts less time for each negative effect applied to enemy or that when nb enters cloak every time some negative effect or DoT is procced during that time period cloak will be broken. Alternatively they could switch effects on dark cloak and malevolent offering so that when nightblade would want to have a burst heal he would have to give up stealth.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

Amottica wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I have the solution. I have thought it and it is brilliant.

When a nightblade breaks cloak in combat (or their cloak gets broken), they get the revealed debuff for 5 seconds. That's 5 seconds that cloak cannot be crutched on in combat every time they use cloak offensively or defensively.

Then, make cloak a toggle. Make it work like sneak, but cost magicka per second and provide invisibility.

There we go, a significant in combat limitation and out of combat quality of life buff. Everyone wins.

It is already there. When we pull a NB out of cloak or any player out of sneak with a hard counter they do get a debuff that prevents them from cloaking or going invis by any means for a short duration. Granted, the duration could be extended for another couple of seconds but it is there and works.

I can attest that the design already in the game does work and works well. So yes, a brilliant solution and it is already in the game.

Actually it's there but the implementation is lacking when you account for how strong NB is

Currently you can reveal them and they will either go strongly offensive or be able to out heal your damage, have enough movement speed to get out of range or both by which time the debuff has expired. There can be a similar effect even when using a detect potion.

So you could even extend it and that might not help if they are setup with strong possibly crit heals and enough speed to get out of range and maybe throw a roll dodge in.

Currently only certain classes have any good chance of catching and killing a NB setup with one of the common bis builds. I mostly don't even try chasing them anymore unless I notice they just aren't healing or keep coming back

Bushido2513 · November 2023

Galeriano wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I have the solution. I have thought it and it is brilliant.

When a nightblade breaks cloak in combat (or their cloak gets broken), they get the revealed debuff for 5 seconds. That's 5 seconds that cloak cannot be crutched on in combat every time they use cloak offensively or defensively.

Then, make cloak a toggle. Make it work like sneak, but cost magicka per second and provide invisibility.

There we go, a significant in combat limitation and out of combat quality of life buff. Everyone wins.

That solution could work 2-3 years ago before ZoS started overbuffing whole nightblade toolkit to the point nightblade now is just a semi brawler class with cloak on top of it and with one of the highest burst dmg pressures in the game. Now what we need is complete separation of nightblade playing like other setups and nightblade playing like an assains and there needs to be distinct line between those two setups to the point when one is possible other isn't. Being everything at the same time is just silly. One of the things ZoS could do is either making that when nightblade enters cloak all negative effects he applied to enemy are removed or that cloak either costs more or lasts less time for each negative effect applied to enemy or that when nb enters cloak every time some negative effect or DoT is procced during that time period cloak will be broken. Alternatively they could switch effects on dark cloak and malevolent offering so that when nightblade would want to have a burst heal he would have to give up stealth.

I like the idea of forcing the choice for stealth or a strong heal.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I have the solution. I have thought it and it is brilliant.

When a nightblade breaks cloak in combat (or their cloak gets broken), they get the revealed debuff for 5 seconds. That's 5 seconds that cloak cannot be crutched on in combat every time they use cloak offensively or defensively.

Then, make cloak a toggle. Make it work like sneak, but cost magicka per second and provide invisibility.

There we go, a significant in combat limitation and out of combat quality of life buff. Everyone wins.

It is already there. When we pull a NB out of cloak or any player out of sneak with a hard counter they do get a debuff that prevents them from cloaking or going invis by any means for a short duration. Granted, the duration could be extended for another couple of seconds but it is there and works.

I can attest that the design already in the game does work and works well. So yes, a brilliant solution and it is already in the game.

Actually it's there but the implementation is lacking when you account for how strong NB is

Currently you can reveal them and they will either go strongly offensive or be able to out heal your damage, have enough movement speed to get out of range or both by which time the debuff has expired. There can be a similar effect even when using a detect potion.

So you could even extend it and that might not help if they are setup with strong possibly crit heals and enough speed to get out of range and maybe throw a roll dodge in.

Currently only certain classes have any good chance of catching and killing a NB setup with one of the common bis builds. I mostly don't even try chasing them anymore unless I notice they just aren't healing or keep coming back

Same, I gave up on chasing NBs as well. Unless they can be killed by my retaliation, there's no reason to play to the game their way when you know they will deal tons more damage than you, burst heal out of your combos. They already have so much advantage over you.

Turtle_Bot · November 2023

Same here, the minute I see that the ganking NB uses offering/path and actually uses defensive moves (dodge roll, block etc) to defend against my counter attacks and evade my detect pots, instead of just crutching on cloak and crouch, I don't bother chasing any further, there's just no point to it.

I just keep my buffs and heals up and try to move on and hope they aren't thirsting for the kill enough to follow me from one end of cyro to the other (oh, and the hate whispers I get from most of them for ignoring them and moving on instead of chasing them to play their little game of hide and get killed)...

StaticWave · November 2023

I normally don't base my opinion on just numbers, but NB is a special case. The best brawler NB build I've seen right now is Rally/WoF/Balorgh/Markyn. Here's the link to the build if anyone wants to see:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?id=585232

Front bar stats with CP:

Back bar stats with CP:

The UESP editor is bugged and doesn't include the 300 WD from Assassin's Will, so here's the final WD value when I manually include it:

So let's look at the offense and defense this build offers:

1) Offense:
- 6.3k WD before Balorgh
- 115% crit damage
- 44% crit chance
- 26k mag
- 6.2k base pen and 15k+ with Balorgh and debuffs
- 10% Major Berserk
- 20% Vulnerability from Incap
- 5% Vulnerability from Elesus
- Forced 100% crit chance from Cloak
- Pressure from WoF that can potentially crit for 4k with Incap

2) Defense:
- 30k resistances
- 3.2k crit resist
- 83% crit healing
- Defensive Cloak
- Major Savagery back bar for extra crit heals
- Major Evasion
- Snare/Root cleanse and immunity for 4s
- Minor Expedition
- Minor Cowardice
- Minor Mending
- Free dodge roll every few seconds

This build's only weakness is DoTs, but that's literally every class' weakness lol. NB arguably has the most efficient bar space right now. They get all of their important buffs on their existing abilities, and a passive that gives Major Resolve. Not even DK is as efficient.

With the direction we're going, I wouldn't be surprised if NB gets all the buffs in the future lol.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

Math is always a great way to put things but this is one of those cases where it's almost not even needed because it's just that obvious.

I feel like the simple suggestion above would solve a lot of the issues. Just make the morph of cloak into healthy offering. Or even reduce healing for a time after coming out of cloak.

Either way should have one or the other as defense but not both.

System_Data · November 2023

If I could nerf Nightblades, it would be the following:

Shadow Cloak:
-- Remove the guaranteed critical chance on for the next attack from cloak and reduce it to 50% chance.
-- If Shadow Cloak is broken by an enemy player, the skill is locked for 2 seconds before it can be used again.

Shadow Barrier passive:
-- Have it exclude Shadow Cloak from activating it or give the Major Resolve to another skill and rework the passive.

Strike from the Shadows:
Vampire passive, not a Nightblade passive, but can easily be used by them.
-- Have the "Weapon and Spell Damage is increased by 300 for 6 seconds" for only vampire abilities.

Grim Focus:
-- Take a third of its total damage and convert it to a 3s damage over time, limiting it's potential to one shot and allowing more counterplay against it.

-- Reduce the heal portion of the Merciless Resolve morph to that of the other morph or remove it completely and healing only if the enemy dies within 2 seconds of being struck by it.

I would be in favor of buffing Expert Hunter and Magelight:
-- Reduce the cost of the abilities.
-- Increase the radius of detection to 10m.
-- Increase the duration that exposed enemies cannot return to stealth to 5 or 6 seconds.

I think these proposed changes would help and are not overbearing. It would be using a scalpel and not a hammer.

Also, my Undeath nerf would be changing it to give 2s of damage immunity when your health reaches 30% and then the passive goes on a 30s cooldown.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

So I put together a nightblade today just because I wanted to play with the sentry set and be a nb detecting nb for fun. I paired this with another heavy armor set. Sentry turned out to not be what I was looking but I noticed some things that were just wild to see being all in one class.

Easy access to movement speed

Good healing

Invisibility

multiple damage and defense increasing modifiers

Tooltip on Merciless with stacks that DON'T go away

Being able to easily put on war maiden because all of the damage types are of one easy type to boost. This is vs something like having a mix of flame, shock, frost, etc.

After some modifications I was able to easily remain tanky and have enough damage to burst people with incaps into bows, concealed spam, the built in execute or some combo of them.

All in all I can personally say it's too much to have access to in one class. As mentioned by @StaticWave the only thing to worry about would be dots, that's pretty much the only thing that was giving me trouble.

Turtle_Bot · November 2023

Bushido2513 wrote: »

So I put together a nightblade today just because I wanted to play with the sentry set and be a nb detecting nb for fun. I paired this with another heavy armor set. Sentry turned out to not be what I was looking but I noticed some things that were just wild to see being all in one class.

Easy access to movement speed

Good healing

Invisibility

multiple damage and defense increasing modifiers

Tooltip on Merciless with stacks that DON'T go away

Being able to easily put on war maiden because all of the damage types are of one easy type to boost. This is vs something like having a mix of flame, shock, frost, etc.

After some modifications I was able to easily remain tanky and have enough damage to burst people with incaps into bows, concealed spam, the built in execute or some combo of them.

All in all I can personally say it's too much to have access to in one class. As mentioned by @StaticWave the only thing to worry about would be dots, that's pretty much the only thing that was giving me trouble.

I did this on my nightblade about 3 patches ago (when they changed mist form and long before the buffs to bow and cloak disguised as "QoL") and this was the conclusion I reached then as well. Too much payoff, for far too little investment.

With the build I was running, it felt like I was still playing my magsorc, but I had everything I had ever wanted on a magsorc and more.
- Better/more reliable healing
- Better speed, buff/debuff access and utility
- More damage
- Invisibility (better LoS than pets could ever be)
- Shade teleport/DoT/mitigation
And with mist form, it didn't feel like I was losing out on streaks teleport either, despite what others say about mist form.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

So I put together a nightblade today just because I wanted to play with the sentry set and be a nb detecting nb for fun. I paired this with another heavy armor set. Sentry turned out to not be what I was looking but I noticed some things that were just wild to see being all in one class.

Easy access to movement speed

Good healing

Invisibility

multiple damage and defense increasing modifiers

Tooltip on Merciless with stacks that DON'T go away

Being able to easily put on war maiden because all of the damage types are of one easy type to boost. This is vs something like having a mix of flame, shock, frost, etc.

After some modifications I was able to easily remain tanky and have enough damage to burst people with incaps into bows, concealed spam, the built in execute or some combo of them.

All in all I can personally say it's too much to have access to in one class. As mentioned by @StaticWave the only thing to worry about would be dots, that's pretty much the only thing that was giving me trouble.

I did this on my nightblade about 3 patches ago (when they changed mist form and long before the buffs to bow and cloak disguised as "QoL") and this was the conclusion I reached then as well. Too much payoff, for far too little investment.

With the build I was running, it felt like I was still playing my magsorc, but I had everything I had ever wanted on a magsorc and more.
- Better/more reliable healing
- Better speed, buff/debuff access and utility
- More damage
- Invisibility (better LoS than pets could ever be)
- Shade teleport/DoT/mitigation
And with mist form, it didn't feel like I was losing out on streaks teleport either, despite what others say about mist form.

What do you mean too much pay off for far too little investment?! Didn't you hear? 'NB is a high risk, high reward class' and ZOS HATES it so much that they gave out high burst healing on top of boosting damage further! /s

StaticWave · November 2023

@Bushido2513 @Turtle_Bot

The DoT weakness can be easily solved by dropping some damage and wearing a healing set or by dropping Phantasmal Escape. But we all know they won't do that and will claim something along the line of "we can't drop a damage set or Phantasmal Escape because they are too important".

They aren't wrong, but when you play a class with the most efficient bar space and the most amount of damage modifiers in existence, you tend to forget how far ahead you are compared to other classes. Dropping a damage set or Phantasmal Escape for extra healing won't even hurt them in the slightest bit.

StaticWave · November 2023

Vaqual wrote: »

According to people on the forums NBs have all 15 NB abilities + vigour slotted at all times, run 5-6 full proc sets and reach full pen, 7k WD and are capped with resistances, while sitting at 40 k HP.

Look I know this was sarcasm, but NB can actually get very close to those stats lol..

For example look at this build:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?&id=586057

Sets: Rally/Stuhn/Balorgh/Markyn

For some reason, the UESP Editor is bugged and doesn't include the 300 WD from Assassin's Will OR the 200 WD and 2.3k armor from Markyn, so I have to manually include them in a separate screenshot.

Front bar stats with 120 Balorgh ult, Stuhn, Major + Minor Breach, & Minor Brittle:

When adjusted for missing 500 WD and 2.3k armor:

Back bar stats adjusted for missing 2.3k armor (gonna look at the resistances only):

Not wearing procs obviously, but that's:
- 39.5k HP
- 3.2k crit resist
- capped resistances back bar and nearly capped front bar
- 6.9k WD and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 24k+ pen and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 115% crit dmg
- 41% crit chance
- 1.7k regen

Had to sacrifice some magicka to get those stats, but if I swapped to DDF then I'd get these stats:

40k HP, 24k mag, and 6.6k WD with more room for extra WD.

NB can get pretty close to the exaggeration in your post lol.

Turtle_Bot · November 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot

The DoT weakness can be easily solved by dropping some damage and wearing a healing set or by dropping Phantasmal Escape.

This is pretty much what I did with my build when I ran NB a few patches ago. Mara's balm on the back bar. Full cleanse + heal + HoT. It was much more of a tankier brawler, but it was not lacking for damage, that's for sure.
Full build was Mara's back, NMG front (guaranteed proc of breach thanks to cloak), Zoals monster set (defensive stun + damage boost) and I swapped mythics between markyn, SSC, DDF and even wild hunt and all of them were good.

DoT builds were only starting to become somewhat common then, but yes, running something like Mara's (even post nerf) or an equivalent set (or swapping killers blade for refreshing path) easily gives a lot more healing to reduce the effectiveness of DoT builds against you without giving up much for it.

TechMaybeHic · November 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

According to people on the forums NBs have all 15 NB abilities + vigour slotted at all times, run 5-6 full proc sets and reach full pen, 7k WD and are capped with resistances, while sitting at 40 k HP.

Look I know this was sarcasm, but NB can actually get very close to those stats lol..

For example look at this build:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?&id=586057

Sets: Rally/Stuhn/Balorgh/Markyn

For some reason, the UESP Editor is bugged and doesn't include the 300 WD from Assassin's Will OR the 200 WD and 2.3k armor from Markyn, so I have to manually include them in a separate screenshot.

Front bar stats with 120 Balorgh ult, Stuhn, Major + Minor Breach, & Minor Brittle:

When adjusted for missing 500 WD and 2.3k armor:

Back bar stats adjusted for missing 2.3k armor (gonna look at the resistances only):

Not wearing procs obviously, but that's:
- 39.5k HP
- 3.2k crit resist
- capped resistances back bar and nearly capped front bar
- 6.9k WD and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 24k+ pen and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 115% crit dmg
- 41% crit chance
- 1.7k regen

Had to sacrifice some magicka to get those stats, but if I swapped to DDF then I'd get these stats:

40k HP, 24k mag, and 6.6k WD with more room for extra WD.

NB can get pretty close to the exaggeration in your post lol.

Do people really run with only 16-19k in each resource? No speed on a NB also seems a bit off. If I am on a templar with jabs, or anything with cone/AOE; cloak is going to become almost mute. Lack of jab spamming templars might also be attributed to the rise in NBs as lets face it. They hated it more than anyone.

Still; not to take away from the damage modifiers, burst, and healing you get on NB when they say on other classes "you can't have everything" and then literally give one class the ability to do everything.

MindOfTheSwarm · November 2023

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Impen trait does desperately need a buff, since they refuse to nerf nightblade at all, buffing that would be a good place to start. Oh, and let it reduce crit damage to below base again.

Disagree hard on this one. Making Impen required for pvp is a bad move. Crit Damage has always been the issue 50% base is way too high. ZoS tried to balance this by reducing the ease of stacking crit, but it’s not crit chance that needed nerfing it is the base damage.

Solution for Crit Damage and Chance:

Nerf: Reduce base crit damage from 50% to 25%.

Buff: Increase the value of Thief and Shadow Mundus and the values of Crit chance in Armor.

Solution for Crit Defence:

Remove Impen or rework it.

Make Crit Resistance equal to 10% of the average between your Physical and Spell Resistance.

Eg. 20000k average resistance = 2k crit resistance.

Give Medium armor bonuses and penalties like Light and Heavy.

Eg.

Each piece increases Critical Resistance by 2%.

Each piece increases Critical Damage by 1%.

Each piece increases susceptibility and damage received from Status Effects by 2%.

With this change Critical Damage would still have a place in PvP for players that build into it. Players would no longer be required to run Impen as the risk of absurd Crit Damage would be reduced, thus opening up other traits for use in PvP. Finally, Medium Armor would have pros and cons like the other 2.

This would also reign in the stupid damage numbers that are in PvE right now and open up the viability of underused sets.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

According to people on the forums NBs have all 15 NB abilities + vigour slotted at all times, run 5-6 full proc sets and reach full pen, 7k WD and are capped with resistances, while sitting at 40 k HP.

Look I know this was sarcasm, but NB can actually get very close to those stats lol..

For example look at this build:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?&id=586057

Sets: Rally/Stuhn/Balorgh/Markyn

For some reason, the UESP Editor is bugged and doesn't include the 300 WD from Assassin's Will OR the 200 WD and 2.3k armor from Markyn, so I have to manually include them in a separate screenshot.

Front bar stats with 120 Balorgh ult, Stuhn, Major + Minor Breach, & Minor Brittle:

When adjusted for missing 500 WD and 2.3k armor:

Back bar stats adjusted for missing 2.3k armor (gonna look at the resistances only):

Not wearing procs obviously, but that's:
- 39.5k HP
- 3.2k crit resist
- capped resistances back bar and nearly capped front bar
- 6.9k WD and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 24k+ pen and can be increased further with more Balorgh stacks
- 115% crit dmg
- 41% crit chance
- 1.7k regen

Had to sacrifice some magicka to get those stats, but if I swapped to DDF then I'd get these stats:

40k HP, 24k mag, and 6.6k WD with more room for extra WD.

NB can get pretty close to the exaggeration in your post lol.

Do people really run with only 16-19k in each resource? No speed on a NB also seems a bit off. If I am on a templar with jabs, or anything with cone/AOE; cloak is going to become almost mute. Lack of jab spamming templars might also be attributed to the rise in NBs as lets face it. They hated it more than anyone.

Still; not to take away from the damage modifiers, burst, and healing you get on NB when they say on other classes "you can't have everything" and then literally give one class the ability to do everything.

It's more common to see that kind of low number, especially when the person's build don't use tri-stat food and/or Death Dealer's Fete. Most do run recovery food with max health benefits and they still kinda can sustain indefinitely if played right anyways.

FoJul · November 2023

I Disagree. Nightblades aren't the best solo class for OW. They aren't the best dueling class. They aren't the best BG class. They aren't the best group support class. The only thing Nightblade shines in is ganking.

The hybrid blade has shot to S tier and back down to A tier where everything else is besides DK and Warden.

Ranged Magblade is the worst archetype in the game outside of both necros. Some would argue. Traditional Stamblade is also very mid compared to other classes.

Taking specific builds from build editor doesn't prove anything. I've seen these builds in action and I've used one of them before. And DK/rangeplar/warden and some proc stamsorcs have beaten these setups (Not just me).

The only thing that's outrageous is Merciless Resolve Damage potential and Cloak. As the rest of nightblade is easily counterable. And maybe Healthy offering potential.

In most cases you wont see anything above 12k Merciless resolves. Unless of course its an all damage Nightblade and he lands the full combo on you without you doing anything about it. Basically going limp will cause you to get 20k+ merciless'd. Or your attacking squishier targets that aren't familiar with PvP.

So 12k merciless' are fine. What's not fine is the damage potential on merciless. you can get the tooltip to read easily over 20k. In some cases even 40k on the tooltip alone. And the major bezerk in the melee spammable, the 20% vuln from incap, the debuffs, all of these things take skill and precision to apply to a target and land. Templar is a hard counter to this entire Combo. As you can purge just about 40% or a little more of raw damage multipliers.

Cleansing CP can clear the damage multipliers. Sets like maras/wyrd tree can also remove the damage multipliers. A simple timed roll dodge can evade damage. You add another roll dodge and you avoid the bow.

I will add that I am a little biased as I am a nightblade myself. But i can only defend my class so much. I hate the melee playstyle. I'm a rangeblade personally, and I don't get to see these high numbers almost never. So nerfing something because of 1 build potential isn't really balancing. It's just removing something people don't like fighting.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

FoJul wrote: »

I Disagree. Nightblades aren't the best solo class for OW. They aren't the best dueling class. They aren't the best BG class. They aren't the best group support class. The only thing Nightblade shines in is ganking.

The hybrid blade has shot to S tier and back down to A tier where everything else is besides DK and Warden.

Ranged Magblade is the worst archetype in the game outside of both necros. Some would argue. Traditional Stamblade is also very mid compared to other classes.

Taking specific builds from build editor doesn't prove anything. I've seen these builds in action and I've used one of them before. And DK/rangeplar/warden and some proc stamsorcs have beaten these setups (Not just me).

The only thing that's outrageous is Merciless Resolve Damage potential and Cloak. As the rest of nightblade is easily counterable. And maybe Healthy offering potential.

In most cases you wont see anything above 12k Merciless resolves. Unless of course its an all damage Nightblade and he lands the full combo on you without you doing anything about it. Basically going limp will cause you to get 20k+ merciless'd. Or your attacking squishier targets that aren't familiar with PvP.

So 12k merciless' are fine. What's not fine is the damage potential on merciless. you can get the tooltip to read easily over 20k. In some cases even 40k on the tooltip alone. And the major bezerk in the melee spammable, the 20% vuln from incap, the debuffs, all of these things take skill and precision to apply to a target and land. Templar is a hard counter to this entire Combo. As you can purge just about 40% or a little more of raw damage multipliers.

Cleansing CP can clear the damage multipliers. Sets like maras/wyrd tree can also remove the damage multipliers. A simple timed roll dodge can evade damage. You add another roll dodge and you avoid the bow.

I will add that I am a little biased as I am a nightblade myself. But i can only defend my class so much. I hate the melee playstyle. I'm a rangeblade personally, and I don't get to see these high numbers almost never. So nerfing something because of 1 build potential isn't really balancing. It's just removing something people don't like fighting.

So you qualify this discussion is definitely only about melee. Ranged is trash and even those that play it won't argue

Best is relative but what's fairly easy to see is how efficient the skills and passives are when compared to other classes.

Warden and DK are similar but NB has the combo of very easy high damage, high healing, and cloak.

I've tried the same tanky damage build on other classes and NB is just one that offers the most options to make it work in the most optimized way based on its own skills and passives

I say that too be clear because in a way an Arcanist might be the tankiest class with damage in an easy package I've seen in a while but it's crutching on sets where NB doesn't have to if the player knows how to use the built in kit correctly.

So no not the best just highly overly optimized with stealth on top

Y_so_Syrius · November 2023

Nb class needs nerfed or every other class needs to be brought up to par with them!
I want major beserk on my class spammable and Major Expedition & Minor Expedition, Minor mending, Major Defile, Minor Vulnerability, Minor Resolve, Major Evasion, Minor Endurance, Minor Intellect, Major & Minor Cowardice, Minor courage, Major Protection & Minor Protection, Major Prophecy, Minor Maim, Major Vitality, ect. ect. would all be nice to have too!
Why should nb's get all the fun?!?!?
Anyone who says nb's aint OP is most likely playing nb atm and doesn't want the fun to end let's be honest though this class has got everything it's complete 100% cheese, lot's of damage lot's of recovery lot's of Major/Minor buffs

FoJul · November 2023

Bushido2513 wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

I Disagree. Nightblades aren't the best solo class for OW. They aren't the best dueling class. They aren't the best BG class. They aren't the best group support class. The only thing Nightblade shines in is ganking.

The hybrid blade has shot to S tier and back down to A tier where everything else is besides DK and Warden.

Ranged Magblade is the worst archetype in the game outside of both necros. Some would argue. Traditional Stamblade is also very mid compared to other classes.

Taking specific builds from build editor doesn't prove anything. I've seen these builds in action and I've used one of them before. And DK/rangeplar/warden and some proc stamsorcs have beaten these setups (Not just me).

The only thing that's outrageous is Merciless Resolve Damage potential and Cloak. As the rest of nightblade is easily counterable. And maybe Healthy offering potential.

In most cases you wont see anything above 12k Merciless resolves. Unless of course its an all damage Nightblade and he lands the full combo on you without you doing anything about it. Basically going limp will cause you to get 20k+ merciless'd. Or your attacking squishier targets that aren't familiar with PvP.

So 12k merciless' are fine. What's not fine is the damage potential on merciless. you can get the tooltip to read easily over 20k. In some cases even 40k on the tooltip alone. And the major bezerk in the melee spammable, the 20% vuln from incap, the debuffs, all of these things take skill and precision to apply to a target and land. Templar is a hard counter to this entire Combo. As you can purge just about 40% or a little more of raw damage multipliers.

Cleansing CP can clear the damage multipliers. Sets like maras/wyrd tree can also remove the damage multipliers. A simple timed roll dodge can evade damage. You add another roll dodge and you avoid the bow.

I will add that I am a little biased as I am a nightblade myself. But i can only defend my class so much. I hate the melee playstyle. I'm a rangeblade personally, and I don't get to see these high numbers almost never. So nerfing something because of 1 build potential isn't really balancing. It's just removing something people don't like fighting.

So you qualify this discussion is definitely only about melee. Ranged is trash and even those that play it won't argue

Best is relative but what's fairly easy to see is how efficient the skills and passives are when compared to other classes.

Warden and DK are similar but NB has the combo of very easy high damage, high healing, and cloak.

I've tried the same tanky damage build on other classes and NB is just one that offers the most options to make it work in the most optimized way based on its own skills and passives

I say that too be clear because in a way an Arcanist might be the tankiest class with damage in an easy package I've seen in a while but it's crutching on sets where NB doesn't have to if the player knows how to use the built in kit correctly.

So no not the best just highly overly optimized with stealth on top

I mean, if your implying that Nb is tankier than DK/Warden/Plar/Arcanist/even necro, I would have to disagree with you. A build on a nightblade isn't going to work as good as a build on DK or a build on a templar.

Nightblades are pretty damn squishy as they dont get no resistance passive outside of major resolve which every single class has access too. There isn't any damage mitagation outside of minor maim and the 2 cowardices.

I do agree that ranged is trash. But the OP is making seem like nightblade as a whole class is too busted for pvp. Which is not the case. My argument is implied that if you nerf melee...ranged will be even worse than trash.

I mean even when it comes to passives. Realistically speaking nightblade doesnt have an advantage over other classes? If you think so ellaborate.

Passive for ult gen is good, but not broken like it is for DK. The only dmg multiplier nbs get is 10% crit dmg and some crit chance. There is no passive for damage mitagation outside of the major resolve one. A small sustain passive. Nothing broken. Increase health passive. Increase mag passive. still nothing that breaks NB.

If you want to talk about its evasive skills like phantasmal/shade/cloak. Thats part of NB and has always been part of NB. Probably wont change. Only if you remember the old mirage days where you can completely dodge things. Such a good time. Cloak is and always will be invisibility. Only if they didnt nerf dark cloak would people actually use it again. Adding the crit chance to disguse was a crazy change. Can't lie there.

As for healing, nothing is out of line compared to other classes. As Warden still has the most broken burst heal. Templar has the most broke HoTs, and Dk has the most broken healing rotation. Nightblade doesn't surpass any of these.

Now we get to the actual damage itself and not the passives. Merciless resolve is overtuned. Killers blade is overtuned. Concealed weapon overtuned only cause the Bezerk. Swallow Soul undertuned. Class dots undertuned. pretty much everything else is undertuned.

Nightblade always has had evasive skills, as thats what makes them feel tanky. It has always been this way. In open world, where being tanky matters, I've began to notice how easy DK is compared to the other classes. Also slotting shade on nb in OW makes a world of a difference.

All in all, people are just tired of hybrid melee blade. Not really an excuse to beg for nerfs. In reality, NB is not as crazy as people make it out to be.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

FoJul wrote: »

I mean, if your implying that Nb is tankier than DK/Warden/Plar/Arcanist/even necro, I would have to disagree with you. A build on a nightblade isn't going to work as good as a build on DK or a build on a templar.

Nightblades are pretty damn squishy as they dont get no resistance passive outside of major resolve which every single class has access too. There isn't any damage mitagation outside of minor maim and the 2 cowardices.
.

No I'm saying that if you put the same tanky build on all classes nb would likely still generate the highest damage output of them all. By this I mean it's unfair because while the other classes would hit like wet noodles the NB might be able to combo you out because of multipliers the others just don't have.

And of course if NB is going to be the burst class with a cloak that's fine but it shouldn't be to level of multiplication that it is now or certainly shouldn't have access to a burst heal without perhaps giving up some or all of cloak

FoJul wrote: »

I do agree that ranged is trash. But the OP is making seem like nightblade as a whole class is too busted for pvp. Which is not the case. My argument is implied that if you nerf melee...ranged will be even worse than trash.

Well again the class is a bad example of overall design for pvp. The class has high burst, stealth on demand and healing on one kit and the skills have great synergy and support having useful bar space. I have no problem with the burst but having cloak, mobility, and healing on top presents an issue.

Class balance is about having strengths and weaknesses but the NB has lots of strength and few weaknesses.

I've recently spent the day analyzing the NB kit and while I still don't find it interesting enough to keep playing in can't deny how well the overall kit performs and how many options you get.

Ranged being trash overall is another thing that needs to be handled separately. That's something people want but the current topic is actually effecting the game as we speak and therefore generally speaking should be resolved first.

FoJul wrote: »

I mean even when it comes to passives. Realistically speaking nightblade doesnt have an advantage over other classes? If you think so ellaborate.

Passive for ult gen is good, but not broken like it is for DK. The only dmg multiplier nbs get is 10% crit dmg and some crit chance. There is no passive for damage mitagation outside of the major resolve one. A small sustain passive. Nothing broken. Increase health passive. Increase mag passive. still nothing that breaks NB.

If you want to talk about its evasive skills like phantasmal/shade/cloak. Thats part of NB and has always been part of NB. Probably wont change. Only if you remember the old mirage days where you can completely dodge things. Such a good time. Cloak is and always will be invisibility. Only if they didnt nerf dark cloak would people actually use it again. Adding the crit chance to disguse was a crazy change. Can't lie there.

Sorry I was more speaking of the skills themselves and things you get just for using them or having them slotted.

Again, DK and Warden have similar but they don't have cloak and in dks case a hot with expedition rolled into one or the burst modifiers. Classes shouldn't have easy access to all of these things in one kit, that's a lack of balanced design.

FoJul wrote: »

As for healing, nothing is out of line compared to other classes. As Warden still has the most broken burst heal. Templar has the most broke HoTs, and Dk has the most broken healing rotation. Nightblade doesn't surpass any of these.

The healing is out of line when you have high damage and cloak.

Generally speaking you should have glass cannons, middle of the road with okish damage and healing, and flat out tanks with low or no damage. You shouldn't have any scenario where a character can consistently hit hard and heal.

Clever Alchemist is a good example, for a window of time you can have good damage and healing but you have to plan out things around that. With modern NB you just have damage and healing on tap but as I indicated before the damage is higher than others and you still have cloak and shade. That's not good design.

FoJul wrote: »

Now we get to the actual damage itself and not the passives. Merciless resolve is overtuned. Killers blade is overtuned. Concealed weapon overtuned only cause the Bezerk. Swallow Soul undertuned. Class dots undertuned. pretty much everything else is undertuned.

Nightblade always has had evasive skills, as thats what makes them feel tanky. It has always been this way. In open world, where being tanky matters, I've began to notice how easy DK is compared to the other classes. Also slotting shade on nb in OW makes a world of a difference.

All in all, people are just tired of hybrid melee blade. Not really an excuse to beg for nerfs. In reality, NB is not as crazy as people make it out to be.

Evasion and high damage is fine but not with healing and.

As an example I regularly see a NB player in bgs that runs 20k health and gets a lot of kills and doesn't die all that much. This is done with great use of shade, outright killing the enemy player, or making you turn your camera if you try to chase.

I'm ok with that because it just requires skill but then you have all the others that just run around with high damage and crit heals including myself who also hit like trucks and easily out heal or cloak away.

This alone doesn't make you invincible or anything like that but it's setup in a way that's inviting to even the novice player. NB should be more skill based in order to get kills and escape and that's just not the case when they can heal or cloak

I don't think people would have such an issue with getting blown away by a NB if they knew it was just a good player but not when it's because it's just super easy.

Also just as an example why do spectal stacks stick but similar skills with stacks like bounds armaments don't I mean really?

FrancisCrawford · November 2023

Mayrael wrote: »

silentxthreat wrote: »

every nightblade stacks crit damage. with rally cry up 6 inpen they still crit for 18k+ with a non ult skill merc bow. they made it very easy to get stacks. either buff inpen, nerf crit damage or nerf nightblade... atm if you only pvp in this game there is zero reason to play if you are not a nightblade. a lot of other games are looking good right now

Can I have your stuff?

Naah. It's all bound.

FoJul · November 2023

Bushido2513 wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

I mean, if your implying that Nb is tankier than DK/Warden/Plar/Arcanist/even necro, I would have to disagree with you. A build on a nightblade isn't going to work as good as a build on DK or a build on a templar.

Nightblades are pretty damn squishy as they dont get no resistance passive outside of major resolve which every single class has access too. There isn't any damage mitagation outside of minor maim and the 2 cowardices.
.

No I'm saying that if you put the same tanky build on all classes nb would likely still generate the highest damage output of them all. By this I mean it's unfair because while the other classes would hit like wet noodles the NB might be able to combo you out because of multipliers the others just don't have.

And of course if NB is going to be the burst class with a cloak that's fine but it shouldn't be to level of multiplication that it is now or certainly shouldn't have access to a burst heal without perhaps giving up some or all of cloak

FoJul wrote: »

I do agree that ranged is trash. But the OP is making seem like nightblade as a whole class is too busted for pvp. Which is not the case. My argument is implied that if you nerf melee...ranged will be even worse than trash.

Well again the class is a bad example of overall design for pvp. The class has high burst, stealth on demand and healing on one kit and the skills have great synergy and support having useful bar space. I have no problem with the burst but having cloak, mobility, and healing on top presents an issue.

Class balance is about having strengths and weaknesses but the NB has lots of strength and few weaknesses.

I've recently spent the day analyzing the NB kit and while I still don't find it interesting enough to keep playing in can't deny how well the overall kit performs and how many options you get.

Ranged being trash overall is another thing that needs to be handled separately. That's something people want but the current topic is actually effecting the game as we speak and therefore generally speaking should be resolved first.

FoJul wrote: »

I mean even when it comes to passives. Realistically speaking nightblade doesnt have an advantage over other classes? If you think so ellaborate.

Passive for ult gen is good, but not broken like it is for DK. The only dmg multiplier nbs get is 10% crit dmg and some crit chance. There is no passive for damage mitagation outside of the major resolve one. A small sustain passive. Nothing broken. Increase health passive. Increase mag passive. still nothing that breaks NB.

If you want to talk about its evasive skills like phantasmal/shade/cloak. Thats part of NB and has always been part of NB. Probably wont change. Only if you remember the old mirage days where you can completely dodge things. Such a good time. Cloak is and always will be invisibility. Only if they didnt nerf dark cloak would people actually use it again. Adding the crit chance to disguse was a crazy change. Can't lie there.

Sorry I was more speaking of the skills themselves and things you get just for using them or having them slotted.

Again, DK and Warden have similar but they don't have cloak and in dks case a hot with expedition rolled into one or the burst modifiers. Classes shouldn't have easy access to all of these things in one kit, that's a lack of balanced design.

FoJul wrote: »

As for healing, nothing is out of line compared to other classes. As Warden still has the most broken burst heal. Templar has the most broke HoTs, and Dk has the most broken healing rotation. Nightblade doesn't surpass any of these.

The healing is out of line when you have high damage and cloak.

Generally speaking you should have glass cannons, middle of the road with okish damage and healing, and flat out tanks with low or no damage. You shouldn't have any scenario where a character can consistently hit hard and heal.

Clever Alchemist is a good example, for a window of time you can have good damage and healing but you have to plan out things around that. With modern NB you just have damage and healing on tap but as I indicated before the damage is higher than others and you still have cloak and shade. That's not good design.

FoJul wrote: »

Now we get to the actual damage itself and not the passives. Merciless resolve is overtuned. Killers blade is overtuned. Concealed weapon overtuned only cause the Bezerk. Swallow Soul undertuned. Class dots undertuned. pretty much everything else is undertuned.

Nightblade always has had evasive skills, as thats what makes them feel tanky. It has always been this way. In open world, where being tanky matters, I've began to notice how easy DK is compared to the other classes. Also slotting shade on nb in OW makes a world of a difference.

All in all, people are just tired of hybrid melee blade. Not really an excuse to beg for nerfs. In reality, NB is not as crazy as people make it out to be.

Evasion and high damage is fine but not with healing and.

As an example I regularly see a NB player in bgs that runs 20k health and gets a lot of kills and doesn't die all that much. This is done with great use of shade, outright killing the enemy player, or making you turn your camera if you try to chase.

I'm ok with that because it just requires skill but then you have all the others that just run around with high damage and crit heals including myself who also hit like trucks and easily out heal or cloak away.

This alone doesn't make you invincible or anything like that but it's setup in a way that's inviting to even the novice player. NB should be more skill based in order to get kills and escape and that's just not the case when they can heal or cloak

I don't think people would have such an issue with getting blown away by a NB if they knew it was just a good player but not when it's because it's just super easy.

Also just as an example why do spectal stacks stick but similar skills with stacks like bounds armaments don't I mean really?

Me personally, I don't have a problem fighting other nightblades. If you want to talk about unfairness. Nightblade isn't the culprit.

Warden can get to 40k HP, and their burst heal is based off of that stat alone. so their burst heal can crit for 20k+ easily. Not to mention they have 30k resistances and crazy HoT's. Which they can also do a ton of damage aswell.

DK can do the impossible and 1 shot any living creature. and if not 1 shot then 2. DK is the tankiest of all the classes yet they can put out INSANE pressure. I've seen upwards of 6k dps in pvp.

Templar can literally outheal almost all pressure builds with a single button and can parse you while healing the entire time. Bubble is extremely broken.

Necro can body block with its pets, and also are tanky individuals.

Arcanist , dont even get me started.

Last but not least, Sorc does a really good job of using evasive skills to its potential. As good sorcs will streak away reset and re-enter. Sorc has a built in Pale order so when you stack that, sorc is really stronk. Some sorcs even do more damage than DKs and NBs.

So you see when you say Nb shouldn't have damage, healing, and cloak. Tell me, do you think nightblade will be even more balanced without cloak?

Zos recognized that brawlers DON'T use cloak. They buffed cloak so it would be used more often. They did a good job of doing that.

The real problem is that zos keeps changing things and as they do, Nightblade suffers. Talking from a PvE standing point. Nightblade is one of the worse DPS/Tanks/and healers for Eso PvE. They are always giving nightblade ridiculous buffs for pve and nothing to show for it as nightblades in PvP get blamed for being too strong.

I don't think I have ever died to a 20k hp Nightblade unless you wanna count the ganking guild that 10+ sit in a field and snipe you and bow ult you. You can take cloak away, you can take nightblade away, and these gankers will still exist.

So what is it? You want cloak gone? You want nightblade gutted? If your tired of fighting NBs just say that.

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION: The above sentence isn't pointed at no one, I'm stating this in general to everyone.

Bushido2513 · November 2023

FoJul wrote: »

Me personally, I don't have a problem fighting other nightblades. If you want to talk about unfairness. Nightblade isn't the culprit.

Warden can get to 40k HP, and their burst heal is based off of that stat alone. so their burst heal can crit for 20k+ easily. Not to mention they have 30k resistances and crazy HoT's. Which they can also do a ton of damage aswell.

DK can do the impossible and 1 shot any living creature. and if not 1 shot then 2. DK is the tankiest of all the classes yet they can put out INSANE pressure. I've seen upwards of 6k dps in pvp.

Templar can literally outheal almost all pressure builds with a single button and can parse you while healing the entire time. Bubble is extremely broken.

Necro can body block with its pets, and also are tanky individuals.

Arcanist , dont even get me started.

Last but not least, Sorc does a really good job of using evasive skills to its potential. As good sorcs will streak away reset and re-enter. Sorc has a built in Pale order so when you stack that, sorc is really stronk. Some sorcs even do more damage than DKs and NBs.

So you see when you say Nb shouldn't have damage, healing, and cloak. Tell me, do you think nightblade will be even more balanced without cloak?

So I've said this above and what I said is that NB should have to make a choice between cloak and healing. I don't want either really taken away but it should be a choice as to which one you're slotting.

So regarding all of your examples I'll say that yes those are all scenarios that do happen in the game. The difference is that with nb a lot of people flock to it because it's high damage with a chance to get away easily if things go wrong.

In all other classes you don't have an easy escape button. The issue I believe that people are speaking of is generally that nb has gotten so good at being an easy high damage class with a heal with cloak that a lot of people tend to play it.

In any game like this where there are choices of what to run you want to make equally fun choices that attract different types of people.

I believe that if you changed cloak right now to be either one morph that hides you or one that heals you and then took away healthy offering you would see who truly enjoys nb and who is just on it because it's undeniably strong with an escape button.

I believe people want to see the class brought in line so that others can be more viable. When op says out of control I believe it's in part to do with just the sheer number of nb you encounter in pvp these days. It's to the point where you generally will not have a fight that doesn't feature one or more nb waiting to jump in

For the record I've raised the same things at different times when one class was just too prevalent. It's not fun for me as a player to look up and see x amount of dks wardens or anything. I want all of them to be viable attractive options and sometimes that means bringing the other in line because bringing things up would likely just lead to more issues and op builds

OBJnoob · November 2023

@Dekrypted Nothing wrong with a reallocation indeed. I would rather see NB balanced for PvP AND PvE with a reallocation of power from Concealed/Incap/AW to some DoTs and some cleave than to have ZOS just tack on some sort of minor slayer buff.

NBs already have percentage modifiers in spades. What they need is more/different abilities to use, not more damage for the abilities they already use.

Vaqual · November 2023

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Dekrypted Nothing wrong with a reallocation indeed. I would rather see NB balanced for PvP AND PvE with a reallocation of power from Concealed/Incap/AW to some DoTs and some cleave than to have ZOS just tack on some sort of minor slayer buff.

NBs already have percentage modifiers in spades. What they need is more/different abilities to use, not more damage for the abilities they already use.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

Bushido2513 wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Me personally, I don't have a problem fighting other nightblades. If you want to talk about unfairness. Nightblade isn't the culprit.

Warden can get to 40k HP, and their burst heal is based off of that stat alone. so their burst heal can crit for 20k+ easily. Not to mention they have 30k resistances and crazy HoT's. Which they can also do a ton of damage aswell.

DK can do the impossible and 1 shot any living creature. and if not 1 shot then 2. DK is the tankiest of all the classes yet they can put out INSANE pressure. I've seen upwards of 6k dps in pvp.

Templar can literally outheal almost all pressure builds with a single button and can parse you while healing the entire time. Bubble is extremely broken.

Necro can body block with its pets, and also are tanky individuals.

Arcanist , dont even get me started.

Last but not least, Sorc does a really good job of using evasive skills to its potential. As good sorcs will streak away reset and re-enter. Sorc has a built in Pale order so when you stack that, sorc is really stronk. Some sorcs even do more damage than DKs and NBs.

So you see when you say Nb shouldn't have damage, healing, and cloak. Tell me, do you think nightblade will be even more balanced without cloak?

So I've said this above and what I said is that NB should have to make a choice between cloak and healing. I don't want either really taken away but it should be a choice as to which one you're slotting.

So regarding all of your examples I'll say that yes those are all scenarios that do happen in the game. The difference is that with nb a lot of people flock to it because it's high damage with a chance to get away easily if things go wrong.

In all other classes you don't have an easy escape button. The issue I believe that people are speaking of is generally that nb has gotten so good at being an easy high damage class with a heal with cloak that a lot of people tend to play it.

In any game like this where there are choices of what to run you want to make equally fun choices that attract different types of people.

I believe that if you changed cloak right now to be either one morph that hides you or one that heals you and then took away healthy offering you would see who truly enjoys nb and who is just on it because it's undeniably strong with an escape button.

I believe people want to see the class brought in line so that others can be more viable. When op says out of control I believe it's in part to do with just the sheer number of nb you encounter in pvp these days. It's to the point where you generally will not have a fight that doesn't feature one or more nb waiting to jump in

For the record I've raised the same things at different times when one class was just too prevalent. It's not fun for me as a player to look up and see x amount of dks wardens or anything. I want all of them to be viable attractive options and sometimes that means bringing the other in line because bringing things up would likely just lead to more issues and op builds

Yep, I mean, the class got so many named buffs attached to it. It might as well be the walking Oakensoul without 1 bar restriction. Hence, they need not make much sacrifices when making a build. Anything will basically work better with them than other classes save for DoT builds.

StaticWave · December 2023

Call me elitist or whatever, but I don't really like seeing my class being picked up because it's overperforming.

It's kinda like Sorc being fotm because of 1 build. You take away that build, and all the fotm players will disappear. The OGs remain and they can make any build work.

Take away some of the unnecessary buffs NB got recently for PvP, and the only NBs you will see are OG mains who had years of experience on their class. Those guys will make anything work on NB.