Add a Ramping cost to shadowy disguise

Aurielle

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The reason why cloak & invisibility skills do not have ramping cost is because they have hard counters instead. Hard counter = things that prohibit the use of the skill or outright cancel its effect. Things like detection potions or detection skills etc. On top of hard counters, there are also soft counters that can minimize the effectiveness of invisibility (dot, aoe dot, CC etc).

Roll dodge, streak or bow scribing skill for example do have ramping cost because those abilities do not have any hard counters present in the game. There are no skills or potions that would prevent the use of those skills or that would cancel the effect. Those abilities only have soft counters that can minimize the effects of the skill. Like some gap closers that can minimize the final result of the streak or in case of roll-dodge - aoe abilities that can not be dodged.

ZOS balanced the game this way, so I guess the only way invisibility skills can have ramping cost added is if all of the invisibilty hard counters would be removed or at the very least toned down significantly.

The hard counters to cloak force every other class to slot skills or potions that are often completely unnecessary for their builds, taking away another potential source of damage or another buff -- that in and of itself gives NBs an additional advantage above and beyond the extremely powerful advantage of invisibility on demand. Sure, tone down the hard counters slightly if we must to account for ramping costs on cloak, but nerfing hard counters "significantly" would take us right back to square one. Invisibility is far more powerful as an escape tool than skills that merely enable rapid repositioning, so yes, it needs some hard counters.

I am not sure if I understand. Flare gives major protection just for slotting. How this is not a part of a PvP build ? ZOS provides very effective tools to deal with invisibility mechanics and just not using those tools & complain seems a bit silly to me. And just like I have mentioned with Flare - those detection skills provides significant buffs just for slotting them. And if by some chance one would not use them - then there are also potions, sets and even direct damage aoe skills that will interupt invisibility.

Besides... if you mentioned that the need to use dedicated counter skill is too much... then how would nerfing those skills affect builds that don't use them anyway ? It just does not make sense.

To me it looks like: "I want to have a cake & eat a cake". You know... I want to adapt my PvP build to be better without changing the build...

If some one has troubles with NBs still in 2024, then perhaps it would be a good idea to make a NB character, play a bit with it (yes, in PvP), see how it operates & then you will know exactly how to deal them

Yeah, you aren't understanding. People are using dedicated counters to cloak despite the limited use those skills generally have for their own builds.

The only people I know who can generally afford to make room for Flare on their skill bars are healers and supports (the Major Protection and added magicka sustain from the Support passives helps them far more than it helps a damage dealer). Flare is an expensive skill to use multiple times, though, and most NBs can get away before subsequent flares hit them -- again, because there's no ramping cost on cloak. The skills that are mainly used for revealing NBs on most classes are Camouflaged Hunter/Evil Hunter and Inner Light/Radiant Magelight. The only benefit the FG skills add for most classes is a negligible increase to weapon damage via one of the FG passives, as most classes have alternate superior sources of Major Savagery/Prophecy. The only benefit the MG skill adds for most classes is a negligible increase to max magicka and magicka sustain, because again, most classes have alternate superior sources of Major Savagery/Prophecy. Players are wasting skill slots on skills that are mainly useless against the vast majority of non-NBs, just so they can have a shot at dealing with NBs spamming cloak. It's never guaranteed.

Regarding detect pots, have you ever tried playing ESO on a controller? Do you know how long it takes to swap from your regular potions to a detect pot without the use of an addon when you're using a controller? I'll give you a hint: it takes just ever so slightly longer to swap to a detect pot than it does for the nightblade to easily spam cloak and get out of detection range. I'm not going to run detect pots as my main potion 24/7 when immovables or tri-stats are better every time against players who aren't NBs.

As for... "To me it looks like: "I want to have a cake & eat a cake". You know... I want to adapt my PvP build to be better without changing the build... "

Pots, kettles, all that jazz. If there's a ramping cost added to cloak, NBs might have to (gasp!) build for more sustain rather than investing fully into damage, y'know, like most of the other PVP classes in the game have to think about sustain instead of going full glass cannon because they can't instantly turn invisible and spam that invisibility constantly when they need to. So many NBs in this game are all about having their cake, eating that cake, and then refusing to acknowledge that their cake is so much tastier than everyone else's cake, and that this has historically been the case for them update after update after update, ad nauseam.

fred4

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. What change would you make to cloak or to NB in general to balance the class in PvP when used by top players without "ruining it for the rest"?

It's unclear to me what problem the OP is trying to solve, because a ramping cloak cost doesn't address nightblade damage nor the offensive use of Cloak. I have some idea what Aurielle is getting at, using both Rally and Siphoning Attacks in Cloak. On the other hand I find his video unconvincing, because it is theoretical. It does not capture the pressure you're under in combat situations against good players. In my experience, using Siphoning Attacks in those situations - cloaked or not - is dangerous, because it has a health cost.

At any rate, what I object to is the proposed ramping cost specifically. Assuming that Cloak and Cloak sustain is the pressing issue and not something else, I would be happy with any of the following options:

• Change Rally so it uncloaks you, like every other heal.
• Change Siphoning Attacks / Leeching Strikes so it uncloaks you.
• Make Siphoning Attacks / Leeching Strikes return only stamina. AFAIK this skill has it's main other use in PvE tanking where it is arguably (also) OP, if not for creating meta tanks, then for ease of use. Returning only stamina would keep it alive for that purpose - easy tanking / blocking - while reining in it's OPness and disabling it's use for Cloak sustain. It would still help hybrids and dodge roll sustain.
• The most extreme option - not sure this is necessary: Disable cloak automatically for 5s after attacking a player with direct damage from invisibility, putting the blue light above the NB like Canou Hunter / Magelight. This would not affect PvE nor activities like burning siege, when you're not attacking a player.

Of course I may be stepping on someone else's toes with the above suggestions, possibly PvE DDs. This is, therefore, merely up for discussion. Furthermore:

• Give Tarnished Nightmare the 1s delay treatment that every other proc set has. The tooltip of the proc is also rather high, considering it's AOE and applies Sundered, and the proc condition compares with Caluurion. It suits nightblades. The latter set should have been ZOS' reference. It got nerfed from a 10s cooldown down to 5s, distributing the damage over two 5s intervals and making it unattractive for burst as a ganking set. With an attractive 8s cooldown for Tarnished, I don't know what ZOS were thinking. The set should never have existed in it's current form.
• Rein in Grim Focus. When ZOS got rid of requiring activation, they (accidentally?) made it so the skill remains procced inbetween combat. This, in effect, gives nightblades the use of two ultimate strength skills during ganks, even if both share the 400ms delay and you can technically break free from Incap and dodge Grim Focus in time. At any rate, I would re-introduce a timeout so the skill isn't always up. Basically it should fall off outside of combat. Maybe keep it for 20s after combat ends, although I'm not sure exactly how this should work. On the one hand cloaking can cancel a nightblade's "in combat" state pretty quickly and it's a nuisance if Grim Focus would fall off immediately due to that. On the other hand the infamous "stuck in combat" bug would keep the Grim Focus proc up, if the timeout was tied to combat. So I'm not sure exactly what to do, but something along those lines.

2. What is your opinion on Hardened ward in its current state? (I will explain the reason for this question further once we have an answer)

I only play sorc occasionally, so I'm less up-to-date on it. I believe there have been contributing factors to making Hardened Ward as strong as it is, such as Bound Aegis buffing your magicka by a percentage and Major Vitality being available from a scribed skill that suits sorc. I think Hardened Ward is too strong, but I like how it plays and what it does for bar space. Off the top of my head, I would say the heal on Hardened Ward needs to be cut in half for magsorc to be better balanced, but I haven't thought about it that much.

Tommy_The_Gun

@Aurielle

I see it from a completely different stand point, but not what many may think. I try to be as much objective as possible and the reason why I say thing I say is this: I have been here for around 10 years. I have seen changes being done to the game & its combat system, skills, abilities etc. Some skills were nerfed badly, some were buffed and then nerfed and then buffed (it is a cycle).

But what I have noticed is that one thing remains constant. For over 10 years, some people (not all) were always, always complaining about cloak, invisibility, stealth and its mechanics. It did not mattered if it was a moment in history in which cloak was utterly broken (it had build in negative effect removal and then at some point even dot suppression), or it was underperforming (Elsweyr update and invisibility was being useless as everything was breaking it).

The point I am trying to make is it is not about skill, but rather mechanics. Just like certain people who don't like stealth in PvP games (like they don't like Spy in TF2 or Loki in Smite) - here people who don't like stealth don't like NB & Vamp.

My point is: Even if you nerf cloak to the ground, even if it will be "a meme skill" - people will complain about Cloak & Vamp till it exists. For as long as it is a mechanic in the game - people (some people) will still complain and those "nerf cloak threads" will be up.

I mean I am 101% confident in what I am saying is true. If there will be some update in the future, like 2025, or 2026 or whatever, when cloak will get ramping cost on top of hard & soft counters it already has - even after that people will complain about it. Players (some players) will still die to stealth ganks and for as long as this type of builds will be possible to do in PvP (whatever you will use potion or vamp invisibility) - people will complain about it. This is what current trends are unfortunately.

So um... idk. I guess if it will happen, some one will quote me in like 1 or 3 years and say that some one, long time ago was right.

Bashev

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My point is: Even if you nerf cloak to the ground, even if it will be "a meme skill" - people will complain about Cloak & Vamp till it exists. For as long as it is a mechanic in the game - people (some people) will still complain and those "nerf cloak threads" will be up.

Do you see somebody complaining that defensive stance reflect a projectile or even that Spell wall reflect all projectiles? No. The mechanic is there but people do not complain as it was in reflective scales.

CrazyKitty

System_Data wrote: »

React wrote: »

snip
It means I don't know which direction I should be moving or turning my camera in, I can't be sure which ability I should be casting, it affects my positioning in a way that nothing else in the game does, it affects my perception of a fight as I can't be sure how many players I'm actually fighting.

Cloak is undoubtedly one of the strongest abilities in the game, and has been for a while, but even more so now with the added major savagery on both bars. A ramping cost would hardly impact the ability in a way that it would make you drop it from your bar, but would help alleviate the frustration of fighting people (or groups of people) who rely on spamming it to be practically invincible in many scenarios.

NB main here, btw.

Aurielle wrote: »

snip
If you think this is an issue of "meta sorcs" not understanding NB, React is one of the best NB mains on PC NA, and he's right here in this thread telling you that cloak needs ramping costs.

Don't know who React is, but you have plethora of ways to deal with nightblades including a 8 meter aoe class skill which allows you to not aimlessly turn your camera and needing barely to move to pull nighblades out. If you're dealing with multiple nightblades, it's not like one detect pot won't reveal all of them and just because you're dealing with multiple nightblades, it doesn't mean you need to engage them. It should be quite normal that multiple players would beat one player.

Are you really asking ZOS to balance nightblade around the supposedly top nightblade players? You realize that most nightblades/players are casuals right? You won't be seeing new players in pvp that'll stay if you do so. There's a reason why ffxiv balances around the casual demographics and in turn have more players participating on a wide range of content.

I played a bow stamina necromancer, one of the weaker class in pvp, against a melee tarnished nightblade and wasn't even worried at all. You bet they were spamming cloak, but they got pulled out of it every time and then they died. It is actually doable to bring out nightblades from stealth, and if you don't kill them and they reset, well guess what, you also can reset.

This whole stick of wanting to add ramping cost to nightblade's cloak and comparing it to sorcerer's streak is wrong because they don't even function remotely similar. At best, cloak is more similar to sorcerer's conjured ward and last time i checked, there's no ramping cost on that.

The NB meta in Cyro right now gives the NB a 42m range proc that one shots anything below 35k health. The cloak combined with broken sets like tarnished nightmare and RoA have put NB's way, way beyond what is generally considered overpowered.

It's the NB invisible one shot proc meta that drives more new PvP players away from Cyrodiil and IC than any other factor by far.

These threads always reveal the players who main NB in PvP. Nobody wants the class or skill they're crutching on to be nerfed, but it's better for the health of the game if "skills" like cloak are toned down a bit.

Alchimiste1

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

If you get ganked by Nightblades, you're not tanky enough.
Reveal them and they're not that hard to kill normally.

Both statements are false

CrazyKitty

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

React wrote: »

monkidb16_ESO wrote: »

This has been a talking point for years and as always serves only as a litmus test for terrible ideas.

All the other examples have instant tactical advantages Sorc/Vamp/Bow give you an instant positional advantage that can't be undone by just hitting the target. Dodge/Vamp give an instant minor positional advantage with a major mitigation advantage, where you cant be hit by a lot of abilities for a short frame.

Cloak on the other hand gives you a 3 second frame to potentially gain a positional advantage as well as an information advantage. Contrary to the other examples this can be instantly negated by Potion/AoE/Hunter/Magelight. A ramping cost would only make sense if Cloak could not be negated by such means.

Furthermore there is the issue with the implementation of such a penalty. How long should the ramping window last?
Anything under 3 seconds is meaningless and will only further punish newer NBs who can't cast it in a correct rhythm, a higher window would go counter to your point asking for parity between these abilities.

A suggestion that would be much more reasonable would be to disable Cloak for a few seconds after striking from stealth and/or to reveal the NB on preparing any attack while cloaked.

Also that myth of "strongest burst heal" is still going strong I see, let me counter with this list of abilities that heal more than Healthy Offering:

Dragon Knight:
Coagulating Blood under 90% health

Sorcerer:
Twilight Matriarch Heal
Vibrant Shroud with Blood Magic passive.

Templar:
Rushed Ceremony & morphs

Warden:
Polar Wind above 29k max health

Necromancer:
Render Flesh & morphs

Arcanist:
Runemend & morphs

Scribing:
Healing Soul

Not being able to track a target due to them being invisible is a lot more impactful than you're giving it credit. It means I don't know which direction I should be moving or turning my camera in, I can't be sure which ability I should be casting, it affects my positioning in a way that nothing else in the game does, it affects my perception of a fight as I can't be sure how many players I'm actually fighting.

Cloak is undoubtedly one of the strongest abilities in the game, and has been for a while, but even more so now with the added major savagery on both bars. A ramping cost would hardly impact the ability in a way that it would make you drop it from your bar, but would help alleviate the frustration of fighting people (or groups of people) who rely on spamming it to be practically invincible in many scenarios.

NB main here, btw.

Stam NB isn't spamming cloak. They don't have enough Magicka.

The vast majority of all NB's spam cloak. That's just how it is.

Tommy_The_Gun

Bashev wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My point is: Even if you nerf cloak to the ground, even if it will be "a meme skill" - people will complain about Cloak & Vamp till it exists. For as long as it is a mechanic in the game - people (some people) will still complain and those "nerf cloak threads" will be up.

Do you see somebody complaining that defensive stance reflect a projectile or even that Spell wall reflect all projectiles? No. The mechanic is there but people do not complain as it was in reflective scales.

That is not the point. After 10 years of game live, it can not possibly be about NB skill (namely shadowy disguise) or any other specific skill. It is about the whole idea of invisibility in PvP games. Some people love it, but some people hate it. In ESO, NB & Vamp are such "stealth" classes. In other words - people who complain about invisibility in ESO, would also complain about Spy in TF2 or Loki in Smite or whatever can be invisible in any other PvP game. It is just about personal preferences, opinions and type of personality. Some people simply will always think/say that being invisible has no place in any type of PvP game. Also - notice how no one minds cloak in PvE & how it allows to skip mobs & make grinding faster etc. It is always about PvP.

Hence why I think that for as long as you can actually be invisible in ESO PvP at least some people will complain about it. For as long as there is a possibility to play effectively using stealth in PvP - some people will always, always complain about it.

Cloak is just a scape goat here and I bet if it gets nerfed - Vamp & invisibiity potions will be next to complain about.

CrazyKitty wrote: »

The vast majority of all NB's spam cloak. That's just how it is.

They do it due to lag & random stuff interrupting cloak. NB only tend to "spam" cloak in certain conditions, mainly 2 or 3 1st casts and then it is every 3 seconds.

CrazyKitty

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My point is: Even if you nerf cloak to the ground, even if it will be "a meme skill" - people will complain about Cloak & Vamp till it exists. For as long as it is a mechanic in the game - people (some people) will still complain and those "nerf cloak threads" will be up.

Do you see somebody complaining that defensive stance reflect a projectile or even that Spell wall reflect all projectiles? No. The mechanic is there but people do not complain as it was in reflective scales.

That is not the point. After 10 years of game live, it can not possible be about NB skill (namely shadowy disguise) or any other specific skill. It is about the whole idea of invisibility in PvP games. Some people love it, but some people hate it. In ESO, NB & Vamp are such "stealth" classes. In other words - people who complain about invisibility in ESO, would also complain about Spy in TF2 or Loki in Smite or whatever can be invisible in any other PvP game. It is just about personal preferences, opinions and type of personality. Some people simply will always think/say that being invisible has no place in any type of PvP game. Also - notice how no one minds cloak in PvE & how it allows to skip mobs & make grinding faster etc. It is always about PvP.

Hence why I think that for as long as you can actually be invisible in ESO PvP at least some people will complain about it. For as long as there is a possibility to play effectively using stealth in PvP - some people will always, always complain about it.

Cloak is just a scape goat here and I bet if it gets nerfed - Vamp & invisibiity potions will be next to complain about.

Why not just make cloak a scribing skill, as others have suggested in this thread? That way all classes can have access to the "skill".

Joy_Division

fred4 wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

Also also You don't need to spam cloak to be invisible, usually You need like 2-3 cloak casts to smoothly go from cloak invisibility to regular stealth invisibility.

Exactly and a 33% cost increase will only marginally affect your ability to cloak 3 times in a row. This is why I'm puzzled as to how this affects hardcore players. It would, on the other hand, completely destroy my playstyle. A playstyle which Joy Division described thusly:

"The sort of NB that you describe and how you play ... I and the vast majority of players with experience are not worried about. That NB is nothing more than a nuisance and an irritant."

This arguably describes not just me, but also new (solo) players who lean on Cloak to get their feet wet in PvP.

Joy Division implied he is more experienced than me when, in reality, he simply doesn't know me. No, I'm not a top player, but I've played for 9 years, with most of that time spent in open world PvP. This is how I'm at least able to judge Aurielle's video. That video showed Aurielle as a bow ganker, killing a target who, for one reason or another, didn't defend. I grant you that everyone may have different reasons for a Cloak nerf, but if I am to believe that Cloak is imbalanced at the high level, then this wasn't an example of it.

I do not accept, by the way, that the game is or should be balanced strictly according to the needs of experienced players. Not that ZOS have been doing that. I think they have walked a tightrope between balancing for experienced players and accomodating new ones, and also in balancing what's too effective with retaining what is fun. In my view too many things have already been sacrificed on the altar of balance, such as the original reflecting DK wings. IMO the game has become more bland as a result.

In other words, there ought to be a compelling case for modifying Cloak. I don't see that here. Indeed what I see instead is a bunch of experienced players trying to weaken a tool that less experienced players lean on, the change of which doesn't impact the experienced ones all that much. You got to wonder why.

To make things clear: I made no such implication that I was more experienced than you. I said flat out that players who have thousands of hours in Cyrodiil know how the abilities in the game interact with the Nightblade class. Which you may be one. I do not recognize your @ name at all. No clue what your game name is. Don't even know what server you play one. As for myself, I am one of those players who has fought thousands and thousands of Nightblades so I do include myself in that group.

I absolutely 1000% disagree that ZOS has been walking any sort of tightrope between experienced and inexperienced players when it comes to balance. No way, Ten years of balance decisions show the opposite is the case, not to mention a continuous stream of developer comments explicitly mentioning the need to "raise the floor" "lower the ceiling" and do something to navigate a imbalance caused by "high APM players"

The very fact that new players can "lean" on anything to make them competitive is precisely the ZOS means of attempting to balance the game towards less experienced players. Ask yourself this: if any skill, set, or mechanic is powerful enough for inexperienced players to "lean" on (or more pejoratively, crutch on), what is going to happen why highly skilled players use that very same mechanic? The answer is not somehow become less effective.

I would agree with the statement that the game has become too bland. But that is the consequence of ZOS attempting to balance to the lowest common denominator and make the skills and abilities too basic and too similar to what every other class has. So what happens when every other class's unique abilities have been neutered except Nightblade Cloak and Sorcerer Streak? OK, I get it. You don;t want to be like templars who have had to watch multiple other classes steal their unique ability to cleanse, the "assassin" class get a heal just as potent as theirs, lose their ability to reflect damage and induce force misses from other players. It's certainly not fun! But there are reasons NBs have spent the most amount of time as top dog while possessing one of the game's original unique/power abilities potent enough that new players can "lean" on. And those reasons aren't because players just don;t understand they can just randomly spam jabs when a NB cloaks.

The better case for Cloak is that by nerfing it, are we continuing the undesirable pattern of ZOS balance that rips the uniqueness and what little identity classes have left? So in that respect I can certainly sympathize with NB players who are aghast at the suggestion of nerfing Cloak. But fair is fair. Even sorcerers got hit with a ramping cost and guess what? It hasn't hurt them one bit and they can still Streak Streak Streak around and have spent long, long periods as one of the perceived top dogs in PvP. I'm perfectly fine with classes having unique and powerful abilities - even stuff that newbies can "lean" on. It's not fine when access to such capabilities are restricted, and its even more frustrating when the restricted classes just happen to be the same ones that are consistent stand-out performers

Lumsdenml

Until I can pop a pot to keep Sorcs from streaking, I say no way.

fred4

@Joy_Division Can you please have a look at my response to @Turtle_Bot and tell me what you think of those solutions?

It is the ramping cost specifically that I take issue with. I have previously explained why I use permanent invisibility and how that differs from mixing cloak and crouch. It makes the game fun to play and counters other nightblades, who I frequently uncover and get the jump on. It makes you fast, not merely by also building for speed, but because you bypass all the NPCs in Imperial City. You don't have to watch your distance to them. You don't get bogged down by becoming embroiled in NPC fights or by having to navigate carefully when cloak runs out. You can pass right under the nose of flag guards, which you can only do while invisible.

This playstyle is also good for questing in towns, where you might simply want to avoid hostile players altogether. Depending on the town you can even quest in a hostile one while avoiding guard aggro. Can you work around that otherwise? Maybe, but not at the same speed. This is why I have called it a utility build and that's what's fun about it.

What I ask is that Cloak not be nerfed for these purposes. An escalating cost would do that. Assuming the playerbase feels the existing counters are insufficient, then there are other solutions, such as the ones I've outlined.

It's hard to tell how many other people and how many PvEers use this type of build. I sometimes hear other nightblades of my kind, or at least ones that cloak near me and never become visible. The reason I notice them, while you may not, is because I'm the same and they don't see me. They may cloak right on top of me. A visible player they would run around. A crouching player they would see on approach and do the same.

System_Data

CrazyKitty wrote: »

The NB meta in Cyro right now gives the NB a 42m range proc that one shots anything below 35k health. The cloak combined with broken sets like tarnished nightmare and RoA have put NB's way, way beyond what is generally considered overpowered.

It's the NB invisible one shot proc meta that drives more new PvP players away from Cyrodiil and IC than any other factor by far.

These threads always reveal the players who main NB in PvP. Nobody wants the class or skill they're crutching on to be nerfed, but it's better for the health of the game if "skills" like cloak are toned down a bit.

How is it not clear that even in what you wrote, cloak isn't the issue. You clearly have overtuned sets and instead of asking those to be nerfed, you ask for NB's cloak to be nerfed because it enables that playstyle easier. Yeah, no thanks. It's like someone else said, it's always something x and cloak and not solely because of cloak.

As what others mentioned, how does adding ramping cost help deal with NBs that are hitting you at 42m range?

You want NB to be nerfed? That's fine, do it, there are many ways to nerf NB without even touching cloak, yet it's the first thing people ask for because echo chamber mentality.

ESO could add a sound cue when activating cloak to help detect NBs, similar to how another game deals with invisibility, Smite's Loki.

fred4

CrazyKitty wrote: »

The NB meta in Cyro right now gives the NB a 42m range proc that one shots anything below 35k health. The cloak combined with broken sets like tarnished nightmare and RoA have put NB's way, way beyond what is generally considered overpowered.

It's the NB invisible one shot proc meta that drives more new PvP players away from Cyrodiil and IC than any other factor by far.

These threads always reveal the players who main NB in PvP. Nobody wants the class or skill they're crutching on to be nerfed, but it's better for the health of the game if "skills" like cloak are toned down a bit.

Thank you! While Aurielle keeps telling me not to focus on their bow build, you've given examples of two actual pain points.

Does everyone agree these are two of the pain points? High range bow builds and Rush of Agony (bomb) builds?

I'm a nightblade, by the way, and I agree both Tarnished and Rush of Agony are BS and shouldn't exist in their current forms, at least not in PvP.

That said I wear the Esoteric Greaves in 3 of my builds, precisely so I don't have to be paranoid about ganks. Nightblade (gank) damage - not cloaking - feels out of control, at least against my typical builds without the Greaves. I'm actually a bit surprised no one ever talks about them as a meta item for magicka builds, magblades, magsorcs and magplars in partiular. Malcolm (the YouTube sorc) mentioned them in passing. They're made for magicka classes that can either disengage to recover stamina or that, in the case of a templar running Sweeps, can't block while spamming that skill.

@Aurielle, you've been trying to give me build advice. Here's mine. Try the Greaves on magplar. You will need dual-regen food and Wretched Vitality for the stam regen, but you can go full damage otherwise, such as Deadly and Balorgh. The Greaves allow you to attack into people's burst, not just nightblade's. They are finnicky for sure, perhaps not the best for 1vX nor the easiest to play with in general, due to the stam consumption. They also don't make you OP against an Imperial Physique sorc on a magplar . They do, however, almost completely neutralise ganks and burst in general while your stamina is up. They're a brutal counter to nightblade and general enough to have made it into some of my builds. It's only if you have 1vX ambitions, or if you play hybrid or stamina, that I wouldn't recommend you at least try.

Are we ... worried about ganks while you are inbetween combat yourself? Or is it the bow player who shoots you down while you are otherwise engaged?

What I don't get, in either case, is how escalating cloak cost is the answer to bow ganks. If they are already that far away, they won't need multiple cloaks to disengage completely. Also, ironically, if I'm on the battlefield with my perma-cloaking speed build, they are precisely the targets I go after. I see a bow player shooting at someone, I get to them fast, unseen, and I melee gank them. They are vulnerable precisely because they are at the edge of battlefields and usually not grouped. This is where I like to operate as a nightblade myself. Since I'm melee and use Sap Essence when they start rolling or cloaking, they don't get away unless they're a good player and beat me.

@Joy_Division Is this an example of how good players abuse nightblade - the bow ganker? Genuine question, because I am still confused what problem the escalating cost is supposed to address. I play an awful lot in IC to be fair. I am less familiar with what commonly happens in Cyro and not at all in BGs.

As to Rush of Agony, the times I've encountered nightblades using this has actually been rare. Dark Convergence is also still used. It's been more frequent for ball groups to pull me in with Agony. It looks good on paper for bombing. Specifically Ulfsild will only proc at the target location. I briefly tried an outright NB bomb build, but bombing seems like such a niche occupation. It's a lot of waiting and I do not find it easy. Also, where a nightblade has bombed the flag I was standing on, it's been 50/50 as to whether they get away. Someone frequently survives and kills them. When that's been me, my build is brutal at tracking another nightblade and killing them. I run detection potions by default and I have the speed, in cloak, to reach them while they don't even realise they're being pursued. Just another example of why I have stuck with my build.

fred4

System_Data wrote: »

ESO could add a sound cue when activating cloak to help detect NBs, similar to how another game deals with invisibility, Smite's Loki.

There already is a sound cue. If you are close enough to another NB, you hear them cloaking, using Siphoning Attacks, or Race Against Time. I also sometimes briefly see NBs in plain view in their runup to an IC flag while they cast Proximity Detonation. That skill also creates a big ring around them, which I sometimes see when they approach. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe if they're only crouched and not cloaked at that point. At any rate, while it's not the majority of cases, I have both heard and seen nightblades before their gank or bomb and wished I was on voice chat, because none of the other players standing on the flag with me would react. Either they're always all listening to podcasts or they play with the game sound down, or ... I don't know. The cues are subtle, but they exist. I think the way they're implemented is quite appropriate.

fred4

Joy_Division wrote: »

The better case for Cloak is that by nerfing it, are we continuing the undesirable pattern of ZOS balance that rips the uniqueness and what little identity classes have left? So in that respect I can certainly sympathize with NB players who are aghast at the suggestion of nerfing Cloak. But fair is fair. Even sorcerers got hit with a ramping cost and guess what? It hasn't hurt them one bit...

I disagree that a cost increase is the one size fits all solution to also fit Cloak. Streak and dodge rolls don't have the same utility that Cloak has, namely to disengage from NPC combat, or avoid it in the first place, or to avoid player combat altogether in a PvP area, if that's what the (PvE) player chooses. I don't know whether you have the time and inclination to go over all of my other responses, where I ended up elaborating on more facets of what makes this playstyle unique and valuable over mixing cloak and crouch. I would however appreciate, if you could give your input on the alternatives I suggested in my response to @Turtle_Bot.

Bashev

fred4 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

The better case for Cloak is that by nerfing it, are we continuing the undesirable pattern of ZOS balance that rips the uniqueness and what little identity classes have left? So in that respect I can certainly sympathize with NB players who are aghast at the suggestion of nerfing Cloak. But fair is fair. Even sorcerers got hit with a ramping cost and guess what? It hasn't hurt them one bit...

I disagree that a cost increase is the one size fits all solution to also fit Cloak. Streak and dodge rolls don't have the same utility that Cloak has, namely to disengage from NPC combat, or avoid it in the first place, or to avoid player combat altogether in a PvP area, if that's what the (PvE) player chooses. I don't know whether you have the time and inclination to go over all of my other responses, where I ended up elaborating on more facets of what makes this playstyle unique and valuable over mixing cloak and crouch. I would however appreciate, if you could give your input on the alternatives I suggested in my response to @Turtle_Bot.

I can give you another proposal if you think ramping cost is too bad.

ZoS should check blinding flashes and reflective scales changes and do the same with cloak.

fred4

Bashev wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

The better case for Cloak is that by nerfing it, are we continuing the undesirable pattern of ZOS balance that rips the uniqueness and what little identity classes have left? So in that respect I can certainly sympathize with NB players who are aghast at the suggestion of nerfing Cloak. But fair is fair. Even sorcerers got hit with a ramping cost and guess what? It hasn't hurt them one bit...

I disagree that a cost increase is the one size fits all solution to also fit Cloak. Streak and dodge rolls don't have the same utility that Cloak has, namely to disengage from NPC combat, or avoid it in the first place, or to avoid player combat altogether in a PvP area, if that's what the (PvE) player chooses. I don't know whether you have the time and inclination to go over all of my other responses, where I ended up elaborating on more facets of what makes this playstyle unique and valuable over mixing cloak and crouch. I would however appreciate, if you could give your input on the alternatives I suggested in my response to @Turtle_Bot.

I can give you another proposal if you think ramping cost is too bad.

ZoS should check blinding flashes and reflective scales changes and do the same with cloak.

I don't know what that means. Abolish Cloak altogether?

Renato90085

CrazyKitty wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My point is: Even if you nerf cloak to the ground, even if it will be "a meme skill" - people will complain about Cloak & Vamp till it exists. For as long as it is a mechanic in the game - people (some people) will still complain and those "nerf cloak threads" will be up.

Do you see somebody complaining that defensive stance reflect a projectile or even that Spell wall reflect all projectiles? No. The mechanic is there but people do not complain as it was in reflective scales.

That is not the point. After 10 years of game live, it can not possible be about NB skill (namely shadowy disguise) or any other specific skill. It is about the whole idea of invisibility in PvP games. Some people love it, but some people hate it. In ESO, NB & Vamp are such "stealth" classes. In other words - people who complain about invisibility in ESO, would also complain about Spy in TF2 or Loki in Smite or whatever can be invisible in any other PvP game. It is just about personal preferences, opinions and type of personality. Some people simply will always think/say that being invisible has no place in any type of PvP game. Also - notice how no one minds cloak in PvE & how it allows to skip mobs & make grinding faster etc. It is always about PvP.

Hence why I think that for as long as you can actually be invisible in ESO PvP at least some people will complain about it. For as long as there is a possibility to play effectively using stealth in PvP - some people will always, always complain about it.

Cloak is just a scape goat here and I bet if it gets nerfed - Vamp & invisibiity potions will be next to complain about.

Why not just make cloak a scribing skill, as others have suggested in this thread? That way all classes can have access to the "skill".

and welcome join all class control and move skill got cast time nerf like nb ult and fan world(?

Bashev

fred4 wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

The better case for Cloak is that by nerfing it, are we continuing the undesirable pattern of ZOS balance that rips the uniqueness and what little identity classes have left? So in that respect I can certainly sympathize with NB players who are aghast at the suggestion of nerfing Cloak. But fair is fair. Even sorcerers got hit with a ramping cost and guess what? It hasn't hurt them one bit...

I disagree that a cost increase is the one size fits all solution to also fit Cloak. Streak and dodge rolls don't have the same utility that Cloak has, namely to disengage from NPC combat, or avoid it in the first place, or to avoid player combat altogether in a PvP area, if that's what the (PvE) player chooses. I don't know whether you have the time and inclination to go over all of my other responses, where I ended up elaborating on more facets of what makes this playstyle unique and valuable over mixing cloak and crouch. I would however appreciate, if you could give your input on the alternatives I suggested in my response to @Turtle_Bot.

I can give you another proposal if you think ramping cost is too bad.

ZoS should check blinding flashes and reflective scales changes and do the same with cloak.

I don't know what that means. Abolish Cloak altogether?

Whatever ZoS decides, but usually the skill functionality is gone after that

Turtle_Bot

fred4 wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. What change would you make to cloak or to NB in general to balance the class in PvP when used by top players without "ruining it for the rest"?

It's unclear to me what problem the OP is trying to solve, because a ramping cloak cost doesn't address nightblade damage nor the offensive use of Cloak. I have some idea what Aurielle is getting at, using both Rally and Siphoning Attacks in Cloak. On the other hand I find his video unconvincing, because it is theoretical. It does not capture the pressure you're under in combat situations against good players. In my experience, using Siphoning Attacks in those situations - cloaked or not - is dangerous, because it has a health cost.

At any rate, what I object to is the proposed ramping cost specifically. Assuming that Cloak and Cloak sustain is the pressing issue and not something else, I would be happy with any of the following options:

• Change Rally so it uncloaks you, like every other heal.
• Change Siphoning Attacks / Leeching Strikes so it uncloaks you.
• Make Siphoning Attacks / Leeching Strikes return only stamina. AFAIK this skill has it's main other use in PvE tanking where it is arguably (also) OP, if not for creating meta tanks, then for ease of use. Returning only stamina would keep it alive for that purpose - easy tanking / blocking - while reining in it's OPness and disabling it's use for Cloak sustain. It would still help hybrids and dodge roll sustain.
• The most extreme option - not sure this is necessary: Disable cloak automatically for 5s after attacking a player with direct damage from invisibility, putting the blue light above the NB like Canou Hunter / Magelight. This would not affect PvE nor activities like burning siege, when you're not attacking a player.

Of course I may be stepping on someone else's toes with the above suggestions, possibly PvE DDs. This is, therefore, merely up for discussion. Furthermore:

• Give Tarnished Nightmare the 1s delay treatment that every other proc set has. The tooltip of the proc is also rather high, considering it's AOE and applies Sundered, and the proc condition compares with Caluurion. It suits nightblades. The latter set should have been ZOS' reference. It got nerfed from a 10s cooldown down to 5s, distributing the damage over two 5s intervals and making it unattractive for burst as a ganking set. With an attractive 8s cooldown for Tarnished, I don't know what ZOS were thinking. The set should never have existed in it's current form.
• Rein in Grim Focus. When ZOS got rid of requiring activation, they (accidentally?) made it so the skill remains procced inbetween combat. This, in effect, gives nightblades the use of two ultimate strength skills during ganks, even if both share the 400ms delay and you can technically break free from Incap and dodge Grim Focus in time. At any rate, I would re-introduce a timeout so the skill isn't always up. Basically it should fall off outside of combat. Maybe keep it for 20s after combat ends, although I'm not sure exactly how this should work. On the one hand cloaking can cancel a nightblade's "in combat" state pretty quickly and it's a nuisance if Grim Focus would fall off immediately due to that. On the other hand the infamous "stuck in combat" bug would keep the Grim Focus proc up, if the timeout was tied to combat. So I'm not sure exactly what to do, but something along those lines.

2. What is your opinion on Hardened ward in its current state? (I will explain the reason for this question further once we have an answer)

I only play sorc occasionally, so I'm less up-to-date on it. I believe there have been contributing factors to making Hardened Ward as strong as it is, such as Bound Aegis buffing your magicka by a percentage and Major Vitality being available from a scribed skill that suits sorc. I think Hardened Ward is too strong, but I like how it plays and what it does for bar space. Off the top of my head, I would say the heal on Hardened Ward needs to be cut in half for magsorc to be better balanced, but I haven't thought about it that much.

Thanks for the responses, ok, so:
1. Regarding your proposed changes to cloak:

• Changing rally to not work in stealth wouldn't do much, rally isn't all that common on the problematic brawler and range ganker builds and rally isn't limited to NB (other classes using invis pots or vamp sprint stealth aren't nearly as obnoxious to go against due to significant cooldowns and build up times to gain invis respectively).
• Siphoning attacks would certainly help, but tbh that skill is a whole other issue (block castable burst sustain) that needs its own addressing outside of being usable in stealth.
• Siphoning attacks needs a cast time on it. The fact that it is burst sustain (even with a "health cost") that can be block cast is absolutely insane just how strong that is. But that is a discussion that should be it's own topic.
• The "extreme" option, depends, but the issue with this change is that it only really hinders melee gankblades (which while still annoying to face, are less obnoxious than ranged gankblades and brawlerblades that are abusing cloak to no end) because the range blades are already 40m away and sprinting away as soon as the damage is landing and the brawlers really should be using dark cloak instead, but shadowy disguise is too strong comparatively, even when it's not needed.

In regards to Tarnished and Merciless Resolve:

• Tarnished is it's own issue as well. It definitely needs the delay treatment, but the other thing with tarnished is that it should not be a guaranteed proc off the forced crit that cloak gives. This synergy with cloak is another reason that set is just so obnoxious when ran on a NB. NB essentially gets to ignore the "downside" of Tarnished being an rng proc set, because the class can guarantee an on demand critical strike every time the set is off cooldown. No other class can do. It's the same thing with cloak proccing the strike from the shadows passive in the vampire skill line. These "incidental synergies" that become guaranteed effects when paired with a spammable invis, make cloak much stronger than it needs to be. Removing these synergies would go a long way to reining in cloaks offensive power.
• Grim focus definitely should not be keeping its stacks outside of combat and the fact that it does when the other similar ability doesn't makes it seem like a bug. This is something that definitely needs addressing, but the problem with straight up nerfing MR is the same issue plars are having with beam. The class's PvE DPS is tied into that 1 ability, so fixing it would require a complete rework of the class kit.

2. Ok, I wanted to check your thoughts on ward because I have the same arguments you are having in regards to cloak (I'm using ward in a fair way with sub 40k mag where wards total value of heal + shield, is on par with every class's burst heal), but I am seeing what the meta builds that are abusing wards peak potential are capable of and agree with others that the meta build for ward is not ok to remain as is.

I hope you (and others trying to defend cloak) can see this aspect to the debate about cloak, because it's not specifically your build that needs addressing (even if it would be a casualty of a much needed nerf to cloak), it is the meta builds that get to use cloak in unfair ways that need addressing, but the only way to address those builds (without completely deleting the class) is to adjust cloak itself. As for how cloak is used by the meta builds, brawlers use it as a magicka dodge roll that doesn't have a ramping cost so they get to split the dodge roll sustain between both resource pools, while the range gank builds use it to ensure safety since they can use it freely outside of the range of any counters and not have to worry about it ever being countered.

As I mentioned in my original post about giving cloak a ramping cost, if cloak is to get a ramping cost, I would like to see it being tied to the following 2 conditions:
1. battle spirit being active, AND
2. being in combat
This should prevent the ramping cost from affecting utility builds, since they won't be in combat and it won't affect PvE because they won't have battle spirit active. This way cloak can still be used to avoid a fight entirely (i.e. utility) and can be used (with limitations) to reset a fight, it just cannot be constantly spammed as a magicka dodge roll with no ramping cost to make resetting the fight much easier than it ever should be.

As for the ranged gank builds, maybe have cloak only get its guaranteed crit on melee targets, that way they need to get in range of the counters to gank someone instead of attempting the gank from the absolute safety of 40+m max range while completely ignoring the counters.

Joy_Division

@fred4

My feedback to your #63.

I don;t think it's a mystery what the OP is getting at. NBs used to have no in-class burst heal and thus an escape like Cloak, while annoying, made sense and was something that was bearable. Years later, NBs got a burst heal as good as a Templar, yet the Templar did not get Cloak. The weakness is gone, the strength remains.

I would agree that a ramping cost would not resolve much of the power with Cloak. People who used it selectively would hardly noticed and it's offensive power would be the same. That's - good. We don;t want to make the skill useless. We don;t want to deprive NBs the ability to use the skill judiciously from being just as effective as they are now. The ramping cost proposal just wants to make NBs actually think about when to use it and be mindful of the negative consequences of slamming that button down repeatedly whenever they get in a sticky situation, much the same way a sorcerer who just slams streak will soon find themselves out of resources and surrounded.

I might be the wrong person to ask because I don't play NBs very much, but if given a choice of either accepting all the your proposed changes or a ramping coast to cloak, I would pick the ramping cost to cloak. Siphoning Attacks is fine. It makes sense to me that the description of Rally would not break cloak as opposed to an actual magic spell. I think there should be some heal in the game that doesn't break cloak to add options. The 5 second cooldown might work but kind of sounds arbitrary and would leave me wondering why I can;t cloak now, but could before? As someone who does not opt to perma cloak, I don't think I'd be fine with the logic of siphoning not returning magicka when the issue at hand is Cloak. It seems to me as if you are searching for ways to keep cloak as it is for your specific playstyle, which would negatively affect the other ways NBs play in order to do so.

What I think the issue here is that you feel that perma-invisibility is fine whereas I think it is a highly dubious concept. A town of NPCs or even a boss might not be bothered by a player who can disappear at will for as long as they want, but human being who spend money and are invested in the game should not be treated like NPC. Just because ZOS is utterly clueless with this concept and makes no distinction between PvE and PvP abilities or torments its player base with stuff like the Rush of Agony set does not mean it's a good idea. When I used to play dungeons and Dragons, there was a specific part in the Dungeon Master's guide that recommended to Game-Masters what do to with players whose strategy was: "Now I'll sneak up on the dragon invisibly!" I will quote the requisite advice

Invisibility is not what most players desire it to be. It is neither a sound-proofing nor an odor preventative. Monsters might well be able to hear, smell, or see [via non traditional means] the invisible character. Furthermore, the associates of the invisible party are not able to see him or her any better than foes are, so this can cause problems, too ... Consider also the dust on the floor will betray most invisibility, as will dust or powder in the air ... Finally, we have the consideration of the ability to detect invisible creatures even though they are not actually seen. This is explainable as the observer's ability to note a minor disturbance in the air - a shimmering or haze - or by keen hearing, and/or keen sense of smell. A chart for chance of detection based on the intelligence attribute and the creatures level follows

ESO's Cloak makes zero allowance for any of this, Even if I was in the process of cleaving a NB's head off with an axe, *poof* I suddenly miss even though the NB is in the same spot. So they can do that whenever they want and yeah give that same class a heal just as good as the "healer" class and a cheap ultimate capable of doing 20K damage with battle spirit against a build with max resistances? ESO is not known for its vigorous combat balance for a reason.

System_Data

Joy_Division wrote: »

@fred4

My feedback to your #63.

I don;t think it's a mystery what the OP is getting at. NBs used to have no in-class burst heal and thus an escape like Cloak, while annoying, made sense and was something that was bearable. Years later, NBs got a burst heal as good as a Templar, yet the Templar did not get Cloak. The weakness is gone, the strength remains.

I would agree that a ramping cost would not resolve much of the power with Cloak. People who used it selectively would hardly noticed and it's offensive power would be the same. That's - good. We don;t want to make the skill useless. We don;t want to deprive NBs the ability to use the skill judiciously from being just as effective as they are now. The ramping cost proposal just wants to make NBs actually think about when to use it and be mindful of the negative consequences of slamming that button down repeatedly whenever they get in a sticky situation, much the same way a sorcerer who just slams streak will soon find themselves out of resources and surrounded.

I might be the wrong person to ask because I don't play NBs very much, but if given a choice of either accepting all the your proposed changes or a ramping coast to cloak, I would pick the ramping cost to cloak. Siphoning Attacks is fine. It makes sense to me that the description of Rally would not break cloak as opposed to an actual magic spell. I think there should be some heal in the game that doesn't break cloak to add options. The 5 second cooldown might work but kind of sounds arbitrary and would leave me wondering why I can;t cloak now, but could before? As someone who does not opt to perma cloak, I don't think I'd be fine with the logic of siphoning not returning magicka when the issue at hand is Cloak. It seems to me as if you are searching for ways to keep cloak as it is for your specific playstyle, which would negatively affect the other ways NBs play in order to do so.

What I think the issue here is that you feel that perma-invisibility is fine whereas I think it is a highly dubious concept. A town of NPCs or even a boss might not be bothered by a player who can disappear at will for as long as they want, but human being who spend money and are invested in the game should not be treated like NPC. Just because ZOS is utterly clueless with this concept and makes no distinction between PvE and PvP abilities or torments its player base with stuff like the Rush of Agony set does not mean it's a good idea. When I used to play dungeons and Dragons, there was a specific part in the Dungeon Master's guide that recommended to Game-Masters what do to with players whose strategy was: "Now I'll sneak up on the dragon invisibly!" I will quote the requisite advice

Invisibility is not what most players desire it to be. It is neither a sound-proofing nor an odor preventative. Monsters might well be able to hear, smell, or see [via non traditional means] the invisible character. Furthermore, the associates of the invisible party are not able to see him or her any better than foes are, so this can cause problems, too ... Consider also the dust on the floor will betray most invisibility, as will dust or powder in the air ... Finally, we have the consideration of the ability to detect invisible creatures even though they are not actually seen. This is explainable as the observer's ability to note a minor disturbance in the air - a shimmering or haze - or by keen hearing, and/or keen sense of smell. A chart for chance of detection based on the intelligence attribute and the creatures level follows

ESO's Cloak makes zero allowance for any of this, Even if I was in the process of cleaving a NB's head off with an axe, *poof* I suddenly miss even though the NB is in the same spot. So they can do that whenever they want and yeah give that same class a heal just as good as the "healer" class and a cheap ultimate capable of doing 20K damage with battle spirit against a build with max resistances? ESO is not known for its vigorous combat balance for a reason.

Your whole post can be summed up as "I know that sticking ramping cost won't do much and despite the changes that other players have proposed, I still want ramping cost on cloak.". Are you serious? You mentioned in your post about NB's burst heal, about NB's damage and yet the only thing that springs up is "ramping cost on cloak" instead of asking for nerfs in other areas of NB's kit that would still allow NB's to be viable.

You do realize that someone able to keep cloak up indefinitely just mean that they got enough regen to do so. Such regen would allow anyone else to spam whatever skills they want indefinitely as well, so how is that really a problem? I remember a certain saying that goes "Play as you want". If someone doesn't want to engage with other players, isn't that their choice? How is that wrong in any way? People who spend money is none of my business nor should it be. You can't force people to play how you want.

Not only is there a plethora of ways to counter cloak, you also ask for a ramping cost added too. Should ZOS remove all the other ways to counter cloak if it gets ramping cost? There's no other skill in the game that has this many dedicated counters for it.

There's ramping cost on dodge, mist form and streak. They all displace you. How does cloak displace you? It doesn't. Oh no, my head will be cleaved off, nope just kidding, i can burst heal or shield myself. Where are the ramping costs on those type of skills? I compare cloak to burst heal and shielding abilities because they provide momentary relief, you still have to manually move around and juke your opponents.

Again, there are so many ways to nerf NBs other than adding ramping cost on cloak. People need to stop hopping on the ramping cost bandwagon.

fred4

System_Data wrote: »

Your whole post can be summed up as "I know that sticking ramping cost won't do much and despite the changes that other players have proposed, I still want ramping cost on cloak.". Are you serious?

This.

There's ramping cost on dodge, mist form and streak. They all displace you. How does cloak displace you? It doesn't. Oh no, my head will be cleaved off, nope just kidding, i can burst heal or shield myself. Where are the ramping costs on those type of skills? I compare cloak to burst heal and shielding abilities because they provide momentary relief, you still have to manually move around and juke your opponents.

And this. @Turtle_Bot even pointed out that melee brawler NBs use Cloak specifically to avoid direct damage. He raised that as an issue. Two classes, (mag)sorc and arcanist, have strong shields that can absorb all types of damage. React, a nightblade also in this thread, is currently trying Lefthander's Aegis, because he thinks this may be better than dodge rolling, since it mitigates all damage, including DOTs. He isn't dropping Cloak that I can see, but it bears pointing out that Cloak shares the limitation of dodge rolls in mitigating only direct damage. It does so while having the opportunity cost of a skill, e.g. it must fit in and uses up a GCD. It isn't the panacea it's made out to be.

warm_blanket

To be clear, you can put a ramping cost on cloak, that's fine. But a ramping cost is not going to affect the current nb meta.

Proc stacking range blades don't have any reason to spam cloak, they're sitting at range after all. Their burst also usually comes at a long enough cadence that their cloak casts fall outside of a ramping window. Not to mention if they're opening with destro heavies they're getting mag back to neutralize a cost increase anyway.

What makes those builds good is the number of damage procs they can trigger at once (while sitting beyond the range of a detect pot) bypassing the proc delay cooldown. Fix that and they'd lose some actual power.

Brawler nbs don't have a reason to spam cloak either, they just need to cast it regularly to keep its amazing passives up. They're too busy actually playing the game between casts to run into any issue with a ramping cost. Even then nb sustain is so jacked they can effortlessly handle the occasional double cast from invis bugging out.

What makes brawlers good is how overloaded most of the nb class skills are. This includes cloak, but not so much the invisibility part of it. The evidence of this is from back when cloak didn't include the free major crit chance buff, the majority of brawler builds did not have cloak on their bars despite it providing invis.

Fixing brawlers is harder because they're using the class kit to its full potential. You would have to carefully limit the power the class kit provides behind certain playstyle conditions, amongst other things. To follow a recent example the major crit chance buff on cloak could be changed to only be available while <30k max hp. A change like that would put a healthy wedge into nb playstyles by introducing a passive survivability tradeoff for slotting cloak. It wouldn't harm their pve dps at all either.

As far as invis itself goes the best overall counter is detect pots, but detects aren't as good as they should be. Detects have an issue where sometimes when a player is revealed their position will bug out and they'll randomly disappear / reappear, making your attacks against them fail. They also only have a ~20m range against invis which isn't really sufficient with all the speed & ranged damage nbs can pull off.

If that bug could get fixed and the range on pots increased that'd be great. Buffing active counters against cloak invis like detect pots / abilities would ultimately do more against it than a ramping cost could. Also may be worth considering locking cloaks very strong cc% buff behind max hp limits to prevent nb builds from stacking their stats to the moon.

Aurielle

System_Data wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

@fred4

My feedback to your #63.

I don;t think it's a mystery what the OP is getting at. NBs used to have no in-class burst heal and thus an escape like Cloak, while annoying, made sense and was something that was bearable. Years later, NBs got a burst heal as good as a Templar, yet the Templar did not get Cloak. The weakness is gone, the strength remains.

I would agree that a ramping cost would not resolve much of the power with Cloak. People who used it selectively would hardly noticed and it's offensive power would be the same. That's - good. We don;t want to make the skill useless. We don;t want to deprive NBs the ability to use the skill judiciously from being just as effective as they are now. The ramping cost proposal just wants to make NBs actually think about when to use it and be mindful of the negative consequences of slamming that button down repeatedly whenever they get in a sticky situation, much the same way a sorcerer who just slams streak will soon find themselves out of resources and surrounded.

I might be the wrong person to ask because I don't play NBs very much, but if given a choice of either accepting all the your proposed changes or a ramping coast to cloak, I would pick the ramping cost to cloak. Siphoning Attacks is fine. It makes sense to me that the description of Rally would not break cloak as opposed to an actual magic spell. I think there should be some heal in the game that doesn't break cloak to add options. The 5 second cooldown might work but kind of sounds arbitrary and would leave me wondering why I can;t cloak now, but could before? As someone who does not opt to perma cloak, I don't think I'd be fine with the logic of siphoning not returning magicka when the issue at hand is Cloak. It seems to me as if you are searching for ways to keep cloak as it is for your specific playstyle, which would negatively affect the other ways NBs play in order to do so.

What I think the issue here is that you feel that perma-invisibility is fine whereas I think it is a highly dubious concept. A town of NPCs or even a boss might not be bothered by a player who can disappear at will for as long as they want, but human being who spend money and are invested in the game should not be treated like NPC. Just because ZOS is utterly clueless with this concept and makes no distinction between PvE and PvP abilities or torments its player base with stuff like the Rush of Agony set does not mean it's a good idea. When I used to play dungeons and Dragons, there was a specific part in the Dungeon Master's guide that recommended to Game-Masters what do to with players whose strategy was: "Now I'll sneak up on the dragon invisibly!" I will quote the requisite advice

Invisibility is not what most players desire it to be. It is neither a sound-proofing nor an odor preventative. Monsters might well be able to hear, smell, or see [via non traditional means] the invisible character. Furthermore, the associates of the invisible party are not able to see him or her any better than foes are, so this can cause problems, too ... Consider also the dust on the floor will betray most invisibility, as will dust or powder in the air ... Finally, we have the consideration of the ability to detect invisible creatures even though they are not actually seen. This is explainable as the observer's ability to note a minor disturbance in the air - a shimmering or haze - or by keen hearing, and/or keen sense of smell. A chart for chance of detection based on the intelligence attribute and the creatures level follows

ESO's Cloak makes zero allowance for any of this, Even if I was in the process of cleaving a NB's head off with an axe, *poof* I suddenly miss even though the NB is in the same spot. So they can do that whenever they want and yeah give that same class a heal just as good as the "healer" class and a cheap ultimate capable of doing 20K damage with battle spirit against a build with max resistances? ESO is not known for its vigorous combat balance for a reason.

Again, there are so many ways to nerf NBs other than adding ramping cost on cloak. People need to stop hopping on the ramping cost bandwagon.

“Bandwagon”? People have been asking for ramping costs to cloak for years. It isn’t some trendy idea that just recently become popular.

Here’s a thread from 2017: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/361212/cloaking-in-pvp/

And 2015: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/224332/cloak-is-ridiculous/ (OP doesn’t ask for ramping costs, but a number of replies do)

And that’s just two of the many, many examples you will be able to find.

Cloak combined with NB’s inherent speed and sustain is, right now, arguably in the best position it has ever been in. It has never been this easy to sustain near permanent invisibility in a PVP environment while still being able to go full damage — especially now that certain skills are no longer bugged, no longer breaking cloak when they shouldn’t.

Have you guys even played other MMOs with PVP and rogue/assassin classes? Rogue-type classes in other games typically can’t even recast stealth in combat, because having that ability is understood by the developers as being significantly overpowered. Stealth in other games is generally only used as an opener, to give the rogue/assassin the element of surprise — but if they fail to kill the player(s), they can’t just escape or reset the fight by spamming invisibility to gain the upper hand again.

We aren’t even asking for cloak to be unusable in combat — something that is common in other games. We’re simply asking for a ramping cost to bring cloak in line with other OP escape tools that also have ramping costs. Is that really so much to ask?

Cloak is only OP in PVP environments. Target the problem ability, not the other skills that enhance the effectiveness of the problem ability. Asking for nerfs to sustain or healing or whatever so that you can continue to eat your tasty invisibility cake in PVP environments merely hurts PVE NBs.

fred4

Joy_Division wrote: »

NBs used to have no in-class burst heal and thus an escape like Cloak, while annoying, made sense and was something that was bearable.

No, but stamblades were strong. They used Rally, Vigor, and magblades used Healing Ward. Is the in-class burst heal better? Yes. Partially because Healing Ward got nerfed into the ground over the years, but definitely because it gives you freedom in weapon choice, I grant you that.

Cloak also had a lot of changes. It used to purge DOTs. Then, for the longest time, it used to suppress DOT damage while you were cloaked. That was changed. You now take DOT damage. This is when the ongoing issues with DOTs uncloaking you came to the fore, but it also created a significant weakness. When Master DW was strong and (duelling) DOT builds were prominent, those builds would simply melt me. I basically couldn't engage them at all, despite Swallow Soul healing and cloak. This weakness persists. In my experience it's just less often felt by NBs nowadays, because the stamsorcs have turned into magsorcs . Not that fighting a magsorc is easier.

ZOS, then, made a tidy-up pass over cloak. They fixed bugs and clarified the rules regarding what breaks cloak. That was combined with increasing, first of all, the pulse frequency from Magelight and Camou Hunter from 2s down to 1s. This made those skills more reliable, because the nightblade can't get out of range with pure speed anymore, before those skills tick. In addition those skills got their range and duration increased.

Current fixes to Structured Entropy and Ele Sus have been a tidy up of things that broke again, after the above balance pass by ZOS.

I guess you thought Cloak was somewhat balanced - bearable as you say - when I simply would have called it broken due to DOTs. This included your own DOTs by the way. Putting Cripple on a target would uncloak you every 2s as the DOT ticked at one point. That's how bad it was.

You're ignoring the buffs to detection ZOS implemented. You're ignoring that the Sentry set has unlimited range and continues to exist. You're ignoring the single most brutal counter to cloak, detection potions.

I would agree that a ramping cost would not resolve much of the power with Cloak.

Yet you insist on implementing this particular fix anyway. I'm flabbergasted. That's just nasty. It's an unwarranted attack on my playstyle, which you have stated doesn't bother you.

The ramping cost proposal just wants to make NBs actually think about when to use it and be mindful of the negative consequences of slamming that button down repeatedly whenever they get in a sticky situation, much the same way a sorcerer who just slams streak will soon find themselves out of resources and surrounded.

As you mention next, you don't actually play NB very much. Please bear with me through this long explanation. It really seems like it would help everyone.

As someone who mains the class, Cloak alone does not get you out of sticky situations. Shadow Image + Cloak does. Race Against Time + Cloak + investment into more speed does. Yes, over and above slotting Concealed, if you want to get away from competent players or where there are (suddenly) a lot of them around. Running like a hare, changing direction and combining Cloak with line-of-sight does. You also need RAT for the snare removal.

The important thing to note is that, unlike Streak, Cloak never saves you in a single GCD. It might mitigate single-target (burst) attack(s) in the hands of a competent NB who times it right. But to completely disengage, you essentially always need at least two GCDs. Not so with Streak. Streak, properly used, stuns the people you're disengaging from and it creates distance. Maybe not 22m when you're streaking through people, but most of them will be busy breaking free. A second streak and you're out of range from almost everyone, except for someone with extreme speed or spamming a gap closer on you. A nightblade, on the other hand, really only gets going after 2 GCDs, when they've removed the snares and gained more speed with RAT.

Nightblade's burst heal uncloaks you, by the way. If you're bleeding with DOTs in Cloak and you have no HOT running (and since Swallow Soul is weak as a HOT) you're inbetween a rock and hard place. It's much like a sorc trying to Dark Deal. You need to find line-of-sight to do it. You certainly won't cast Siphoning Attacks either, to sustain your Cloak, because that costs health. Only Rally heals you in cloak, which is one of the reason's I mentioned it, albeit Rally needs a lead time.

The effect of this is that nightblade's burst heal leads to much the same problem that magplar always had. How do you get from spamming Honor the Dead back to your front bar and on the attack. Or into cloak and away in this case. If I'm being focused or simply bursted, I don't cloak. I don't get away by doing that. If I was as smart as the brawler nightblades Turtle_Bot mentions, I might cloak specific attacks, but I can't do that with the AOE Dawnbreakers, Shalks, Leaps, Meteors, Whirlwinds, Power Extractions and all that stuff. I block-heal, preferably with an ice staff or 1H+S back bar in those cases. You can't move while doing that. Blocking snares the crap out of you. You can dodge roll, if one dodge roll gets you to LoS. That's what you're aiming for. Noticing or creating an opening where you can possibly start cloaking. I find you don't have time to cast RAT first, by the way. It's generally better to cast Cloak first. It does momentarily protect you, when people don't run detection or are already spamming AOE. However you are still there. As a magblade, or any nightblade who uses RAT, RAT is your next step and only then do you start getting out of trouble. If you succeed. If you don't get detected. If you're not using RAT, it's the bow passive for the Major Expedition and you still need a snare removal skill. And if you use Snow Treaders ... don't do that. Everything else is better. Wild Hunt. Something defensive. Something aggressive. Anything. Snow Treaders are very "meh".

This is the experience when two or more players focus you. Now contrast that with Streak. A single Streak and you've stunned all or most of the assailants, those that weren't currently immune, and you've created some distance. How on earth players keep comparing those two skills, certainly ones who have played both classes, is beyond me. The tactical effectiveness of Streak as an escape tool is in a different league above Cloak. The latter is more strategic. Yes, if your goal is to reset a fight or disengage from it completely, Cloak is better. Nothing ultimately beats nightblade for getting away, taking control and cutting off pursuit. However first you must succeed in actually pulling that off. If you find that easy against players trying to counter you, then you're probably only tentatively engaging in the fight to begin with. Perhaps from a distance. This is what I was thinking of when I previously referred to new players leaning on cloak. Those that may fire a shot to see what happens.

Of course I'm describing my experience. I play mixed melee and ranged as a magblade using Swallow Soul. I go in for Incaps and I try to execute dodge rolling or cloaking players with Sap Essence. My experience is a cross between a melee ganker, brawler and a ranged magsorc, albeit without the damage from range that the latter has.

The bow ganker is something else entirely. I wonder whether the 40m range of Snipe, combined with proc sets, isn't simply the real problem. At any rate, we seem agreed that a ramping Cloak cost won't actually do much. I don't see it changing bow-ganking much.

I might be the wrong person to ask because I don't play NBs very much, but if given a choice of either accepting all the your proposed changes or a ramping coast to cloak, I would pick the ramping cost to cloak.

At this point, since you've conceded that won't even do much, I can only conclude that you simply hate invisibility. It's like @Tommy_The_Gun said.

Siphoning Attacks is fine. It makes sense to me that the description of Rally would not break cloak as opposed to an actual magic spell.

Then again Vigor does break Cloak, just FYI. As far as I can see this is because Momentum and it's morphs were always self-targeted skills, whereas the base morph of Vigor is not. Any heals that have area or cone targeting (in one of their morphs), e.g. basically almost all heals, uncloak you as far as I'm aware. Self-targeting is what made Momentum the exception, not that it's a stamina skill.

At any rate, I was responding to @Aurielle when proposing that. He has been explaining - see his post and video earlier in this thread - how the combination of Rally and Siphoning Attacks might be OP. It allows you to regain resources in cloak, with Siphoning Attacks, while healing away the health cost with Rally. In other words you might use this method to sustain Cloak indefinitely without having to invest in magicka sustain. Invest everything into attack, but have your cake and eat it with this skill combination. At least that's the theory.

I think the merit of what @Aurielle says is debatable. Yes, when you're running around idle, this method can be used to sustain cloak, possibly outright perma-cloak. Indeed I also find Siphoning Attacks extremely powerful for block sustain as a PvE tank. However that's in PvE, where you have double the healing, are running Dark Cloak, you typically have a healer healing you as well, and you have a tank-sized health pool. The Siphoning Attack health cost is absorbed just like that. I do not find this the case in solo PvP. I think spending a GCD on Siphoning Attacks in PvP combat can be extremely dangerous, leading either to your death, or leading to you having to recover from the loss of health, and from intervening attacks, with your next skill or a dodge roll. In that case the magicka / stamina you restored may actually leave you at a net loss. This is why I was so critical of @Aurielle's video, because he doesn't show good, hardcore combat.

The 5 second cooldown might work but kind of sounds arbitrary and would leave me wondering why I can;t cloak now, but could before?

This must have been hastily written or it betrays a big gap in your experience. When you get detected with a detection skill, e.g. Magelight or Camou Hunter, you cannot reenter Cloak for 4 seconds. Cloak will fail. You simply cannot cast it. During that time you have a blue orb floating above your head. You know or you soon learn that this is what it looks like when you are detected by those skills (or certain NPCs) and prevented from cloaking. I specifically mentioned that my proposal included "putting the blue light above the NB like Canou Hunter / Magelight". I also did not mean the timeout to be arbitrary, so let me correct this. If this was the accepted solution, then I think the timeout should match the detection skills, e.g. 4 seconds (I had thought it was 5).

As someone who does not opt to perma cloak, I don't think I'd be fine with the logic of siphoning not returning magicka when the issue at hand is Cloak. It seems to me as if you are searching for ways to keep cloak as it is for your specific playstyle, which would negatively affect the other ways NBs play in order to do so.

That is why I said these are merely proposals for discussion. I'm not mad keen on Siphoning Attacks only returning stamina. @Turtle_Bot asked for alternate proposals, so I tried to put myself in his shoes and find some that might work for both of us.

Your argument is basically "leave well enough alone", because it might affect other NB playstyles. However I've already told you how your championed change affects mine in a major way. You can't have it both ways. You want me to be careful about stepping on other people's toes, but you dismiss stepping on mine.

You don't play nightblade much yourself. Then please don't shoot the messenger and don't dump on a playstyle you don't value, but that other people do. When templar Jabs got nerfed from 4 hits down to 3 with no damage compensation, I pointed out to Skinny Cheeks - a PvE expert - in a YouTube comment that this would be a major nerf for PvP. He replied. His attitude was as blasé as the one you and the other proponents in this thread are displaying. He thought it wasn't a big deal and people would calm down after the patch. This might have turned out true for PvE, I'm not too sure. In PvP however, the meta players, the Deltia's who love templar, switched away from Jabs and templar is regarded as a weak class now. It's easy to think you understand the game well enough that you can judge the concerns of other players fairly. You really can't. That's why we're having a discussion in a public forum.

That said, I can see that you want to be mindul of other players. You don't want changes that seem random to you either, and whose consequences you can't foresee, such as removing the magicka sustain from Siphoning Attacks. I feel the same way about ramping Cloak sustain. It is random to me and I cannot see what problem that really solves. However I can tell you the collateral damage in this case.

I think @Turtle_Bot's proposal of dropping the guaranteed crit from cloak is much more rational and constructive, as it would blunt / disable (ranged) ganking with Tarnished. Does any other skill have a 40m range? Do basic bow attacks even have that range? The reason bow ganking at that range works must be from stacking Snipe with procs, otherwise the bow ganker has to move closer. Losing the crit actually makes sense to me. It would also blunt burst from melee / brawler buids using the bash trick @React / @Aurielle mentioned. Arguably a dumbing down and power loss for nightblade, but something it seems to me the people in this thread would agree with?

What I think the issue here is that you feel that perma-invisibility is fine whereas I think it is a highly dubious concept. A town of NPCs or even a boss might not be bothered by a player who can disappear at will for as long as they want, but human being who spend money and are invested in the game should not be treated like NPC.

Every human also bought the nightblade class. They can use it themselves. It makes PvP more varied for all of us. Above all it's the solo class. It's the class for every player who is averse to group play and voice chat, or who has no friends online and wants to open world PvP. Cloak is your tool against uneven numbers first and foremost, so you don't end up riding or respawning. It's also a tool to get your feet wet in PvP, not because you instantly become a bow ganker, but because you can hang back and survive, even if that means you don't actually engage all that much. This is a big thing for people. I literally made a friend via zone chat who was about to call it quits in PvP until he picked up my build.

Just because ZOS is utterly clueless with this concept and makes no distinction between PvE and PvP abilities or torments its player base with stuff like the Rush of Agony set does not mean it's a good idea. When I used to play dungeons and Dragons, there was a specific part in the Dungeon Master's guide that recommended to Game-Masters what do to with players whose strategy was: "Now I'll sneak up on the dragon invisibly!" I will quote the requisite advice

Invisibility is not what most players desire it to be. It is neither a sound-proofing nor an odor preventative. Monsters might well be able to hear, smell, or see [via non traditional means] the invisible character. Furthermore, the associates of the invisible party are not able to see him or her any better than foes are, so this can cause problems, too ... Consider also the dust on the floor will betray most invisibility, as will dust or powder in the air ... Finally, we have the consideration of the ability to detect invisible creatures even though they are not actually seen. This is explainable as the observer's ability to note a minor disturbance in the air - a shimmering or haze - or by keen hearing, and/or keen sense of smell. A chart for chance of detection based on the intelligence attribute and the creatures level follows

ESO's Cloak makes zero allowance for any of this, Even if I was in the process of cleaving a NB's head off with an axe, *poof* I suddenly miss even though the NB is in the same spot.

Actually Cleave is an AOE ability and would hit the NB. Just saying.

So they can do that whenever they want and yeah give that same class a heal just as good as the "healer" class and a cheap ultimate capable of doing 20K damage with battle spirit against a build with max resistances? ESO is not known for its vigorous combat balance for a reason.

I agree that balance, or rather the way balance is currently achieved, is out of whack. Nightblade damage is part of the equation, but we also have the players who are actually so tanky you still can't kill them, even as a nightblade. Not my kind of nightblade, but I myself build in such a way that I basically cannot be ganked other than by the most extreme builds, and I only run 25K to 30K health.

I've speculated this may be the result of having too many counters built atop counters. It results in extreme builds at both ends. I too have been Incapped for or Mercilessed with 20K+ attacks, however when I was not tanky. If you mean conventionally tanky and you're playing in IC, then I think the ease with which nightblades can build ultimate for Balorgh by fighting NPCs must have something to do with that. In other words the amount of penetration you can get. Shattered Fate is regarded as one of the best PvP front bar sets, whereas scripting probably gives you Major and Minor Breach, if you didn't have it already.

My favorite anti-NB / anti-burst item is the one I mentioned in the above spoiler, the Esoteric Greaves. As long as you're in an even-numbered fight, it turns a lot of things around. You can't essentially be burst as long as you have stamina. I won a 1v2 on my magplar, when I put that on, against a sorc and some other player who weren't half bad. That surprised me. The Esoteric Greaves allow you to run a conventional / Sweeps / pressure-based templar, absorbing a certain amont of burst and staying on the attack. I shall see whether I can make Psijic / Meditate work on that build.

So in addition to the above I would be in favor of nerfing Balorgh down to 250 ultimate cap and I forgot to point out that the permanent upkeep of Merciless / Relentless also near-permanently grants them +300/400 weapon/spell damage when they don't even use the skill. There are reasons how NBs upfront damage has become so strong that are really just bugs and accidents. I would rather those be fixed than making changes to Cloak that we're not even hoping will accomplish all that much.

fred4

warm_blanket wrote: »

To be clear, you can put a ramping cost on cloak, that's fine. But a ramping cost is not going to affect the current nb meta.

Proc stacking range blades don't have any reason to spam cloak, they're sitting at range after all. Their burst also usually comes at a long enough cadence that their cloak casts fall outside of a ramping window. Not to mention if they're opening with destro heavies they're getting mag back to neutralize a cost increase anyway.

What makes those builds good is the number of damage procs they can trigger at once (while sitting beyond the range of a detect pot) bypassing the proc delay cooldown. Fix that and they'd lose some actual power.

Brawler nbs don't have a reason to spam cloak either, they just need to cast it regularly to keep its amazing passives up. They're too busy actually playing the game between casts to run into any issue with a ramping cost. Even then nb sustain is so jacked they can effortlessly handle the occasional double cast from invis bugging out.

What makes brawlers good is how overloaded most of the nb class skills are. This includes cloak, but not so much the invisibility part of it. The evidence of this is from back when cloak didn't include the free major crit chance buff, the majority of brawler builds did not have cloak on their bars despite it providing invis.

Fixing brawlers is harder because they're using the class kit to its full potential. You would have to carefully limit the power the class kit provides behind certain playstyle conditions, amongst other things. To follow a recent example the major crit chance buff on cloak could be changed to only be available while <30k max hp. A change like that would put a healthy wedge into nb playstyles by introducing a passive survivability tradeoff for slotting cloak. It wouldn't harm their pve dps at all either.

As far as invis itself goes the best overall counter is detect pots, but detects aren't as good as they should be. Detects have an issue where sometimes when a player is revealed their position will bug out and they'll randomly disappear / reappear, making your attacks against them fail. They also only have a ~20m range against invis which isn't really sufficient with all the speed & ranged damage nbs can pull off.

If that bug could get fixed and the range on pots increased that'd be great. Buffing active counters against cloak invis like detect pots / abilities would ultimately do more against it than a ramping cost could. Also may be worth considering locking cloaks very strong cc% buff behind max hp limits to prevent nb builds from stacking their stats to the moon.

Thank you! You're the first person who seems fully up-to-date and incisive with everything you say. I play off meta, but I have fun with my build. I perma-cloak, because I like that playstyle. I've been trying to wrap my head around why people want the cloak ramping cost. It would nerf my playstyle to the ground. Perhaps someone will take your analysis to heart and get behind real solutions to their problems, rather than remaining stuck on this idea.

Aurielle

fred4 wrote: »

At any rate, I was responding to @Aurielle when proposing that. He has been explaining - see his post and video earlier in this thread - how the combination of Rally and Siphoning Attacks might be OP. It allows you to regain resources in cloak, with Siphoning Attacks, while healing away the health cost with Rally. In other words you might use this method to sustain Cloak indefinitely without having to invest in magicka sustain. Invest everything into attack, but have your cake and eat it with this skill combination. At least that's the theory.

Please read post number 57 again and stop putting words in my mouth. The point of that video was not to claim that Rally/Siphoning Attacks was OP. The point of that video was not to demonstrate cloak spam abuse. And the point of that video was certainly not to show good, hardcore combat — because for the most part, that doesn’t really happen in IC, unless you’re deliberately seeking 1vX fights like React.

The point of that video was, once again, to demonstrate to you personally that you do not need to invest heavily into magicka sustain to achieve your playstyle of killing IC mobs, farming Tel Var, and engaging in occasional PVP while being almost constantly invisible.

fred4

Aurielle wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

At any rate, I was responding to @Aurielle when proposing that. He has been explaining - see his post and video earlier in this thread - how the combination of Rally and Siphoning Attacks might be OP. It allows you to regain resources in cloak, with Siphoning Attacks, while healing away the health cost with Rally. In other words you might use this method to sustain Cloak indefinitely without having to invest in magicka sustain. Invest everything into attack, but have your cake and eat it with this skill combination. At least that's the theory.

Please read post number 57 again and stop putting words in my mouth. The point of that video was not to claim that Rally/Siphoning Attacks was OP. The point of that video was not to demonstrate cloak spam abuse. And the point of that video was certainly not to show good, hardcore combat — because for the most part, that doesn’t really happen in IC, unless you’re deliberately seeking 1vX fights like React.

The point of that video was, once again, to demonstrate to you personally that you do not need to invest heavily into magicka sustain to achieve your playstyle of killing IC mobs, farming Tel Var, and engaging in occasional PVP while being almost constantly invisible.

Fair enough. But it's a moot point if we had ramping Cloak cost. Neither this, nor my current build would work.