Nightblade Tanks

Lord_Archaic

Something that has alway rubbed me the wrong way about Nightblade Class abilities, is that we have no class damage shield or a taunt to make up for a lack of a shield. Arcaniats get damage shields galore, a taunt, and immobilizing, and grouping abilities.

Nightblades had a relatively good self heal over time that was mostly used by tanks, but that was put into the ground a year or so ago when they changed the Dark Veil Passive to explicitly remove Shadow Cloak and lower the time on Shadow Cloak. I used Shadowcloak as a sort of damage shield since it would heal for like 6-8 or so seconds afterwards. It was nuts.

So in that regard, when are the buffs and tank styled skills coming back to Nightblades? Can we get something that makes us standout as tanks, like an AoE Taunt. Something from the Shadow Line, the other morph opposite of Mass Hysteria. Where instead of making you fear others, you generate a taunt sort of like you yourself are cowering in fear, taunting a group and giving yourself the minor maim and or breach as well. A drawback to balance out the group taunt.

Just something to make Nightblade tanks more appetizing to players. Most of our skills, other classes have the same but way better. This coming from a Pure Nightblade since launch.

duagloth

Scribing

DarkStrifeYT

Night blades aren't supposed to take hits but evade it, the whole stealth thing. However subclassing can make it tank, but similar to templar (which its "tank" is more of out healing the damage coming in instead of straight out resistances), while the shadow line can be looked as a tank style build its more of evasion and dodging.

Classes defence comes in these:

Dragon Knight- Exists as a tank

Sorc - Damage shields and CC

Templar - Out heal and block

Nightblade - Evade and stealth

Warden - Stun, CC, damage mitigation

Necromancer - Guardian damage mitigation and Natural mitigation

Arcanist - Damage shields beams

o_Primate_o

nightblade tanks are very strong. they don't need a dmg shield thanks to S&B shield and you could go as far as the undaunted shield. they don't need a taunt thanks to undaunted and destro skill lines. i used to play with a guy who only played nb tank. but nowadays gameplay is much more about what does the class bring to the group, this is where nightblade and most others lag behind. nothing beats arc for what they bring to the group.

konrad.reibinger

Does damage shield even make sense on tanks? Last time I tanked (pretty long ago), shields received damage before the reduction by block, and disappeared immediately in vet trials. Which seems quite useless for their mana cost.

Replacing the second "trap" morph of the fear with an aoe taunt sounds like an interesting idea.

o_Primate_o

@konrad.reibinger
yeah, i never see anyone use selfish shields in trials and rarely in 4-man (for boss HA mitigation). i sometimes use S&B shield as a crutch in 4man when doing DLC achievements bc sometimes T is far away from DD&H or i'm absorbing boss and mini heavies.

Soldier/Grave lord/Bone Tyrant for coordinated 4man setup
Soldier/Living Death/Bone Tyrant for bad pug setup

BXR_Lonestar

Nightblades have the most health of any tank due to the health bonus passive from Shadow Tree. You can literally make a NB tank with ~ 100k health if you want. Paired with a health-based heal, and you literally don't need a damage shield or even to block, you can just out-heal incoming damage.

Gabriel_H

Damage Shields and tanking do not go together. Lets say you are blocking an incoming hit that is 100,000 damage raw, and you have maximum mitigation in doing so, which is around 97.5%.

You therefore take 2,500 damage.

Now lets say you throw up a 15,000 damage shield. On the same hit, the 100,000 becomes 85,000 and at 97.5% mitigation you take 2,125 damage.

A difference of 375 damage is meaningless given the self-healing and healer over-healing that goes on. It just doesn't matter.

That said, you want a taunt and damage shield - that's what the one handed weapon skill line is for.

Gabriel_H

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

but similar to templar (which its "tank" is more of out healing the damage coming in instead of straight out resistances)

A Templar tank has one of the best self-buffed mitigation plus self-buffed block mitigation out of all the classes. A basic Templar tank can easily run at ~98% sustained damage mitigation, and in mob heavy fights gets a huge sustain boost and provides group wide healing.

No Templar tank should be slotting a direct healing skill, it's a waste of a slot, and unnecessary in 99.99% of encounters.

Vulkunne

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Damage Shields and tanking do not go together. Lets say you are blocking an incoming hit that is 100,000 damage raw, and you have maximum mitigation in doing so, which is around 97.5%.

You therefore take 2,500 damage.

Now lets say you throw up a 15,000 damage shield. On the same hit, the 100,000 becomes 85,000 and at 97.5% mitigation you take 2,125 damage.

A difference of 375 damage is meaningless given the self-healing and healer over-healing that goes on. It just doesn't matter.

That said, you want a taunt and damage shield - that's what the one handed weapon skill line is for.

Anyone who has ever used the Aegis Mythic in PvP knows full the well how strong damage shields can protect your health and curb enormous amounts of incoming damage, especially from siege artillery and cold fire dots. So, damage shields curb dot damage as well. I don't use that Mythic in PvE but my build supports it should I need it, among many other different things. The proof is how well my tank is excelling in the Night Market and it's easy to see how damage shields are a big part of the reason why.

Vulkunne

Gabriel_H wrote: »

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

but similar to templar (which its "tank" is more of out healing the damage coming in instead of straight out resistances)

A Templar tank has one of the best self-buffed mitigation plus self-buffed block mitigation out of all the classes. A basic Templar tank can easily run at ~98% sustained damage mitigation, and in mob heavy fights gets a huge sustain boost and provides group wide healing.

No Templar tank should be slotting a direct healing skill, it's a waste of a slot, and unnecessary in 99.99% of encounters.

And I can now do the same thing with my subclass DK, who does not use any Templar skills and has a direct heal which also buffs and heals allies in a radius.

Vulkunne

Lord_Archaic wrote: »

Something that has alway rubbed me the wrong way about Nightblade Class abilities, is that we have no class damage shield or a taunt to make up for a lack of a shield. Arcaniats get damage shields galore, a taunt, and immobilizing, and grouping abilities.

Nightblades had a relatively good self heal over time that was mostly used by tanks, but that was put into the ground a year or so ago when they changed the Dark Veil Passive to explicitly remove Shadow Cloak and lower the time on Shadow Cloak. I used Shadowcloak as a sort of damage shield since it would heal for like 6-8 or so seconds afterwards. It was nuts.

So in that regard, when are the buffs and tank styled skills coming back to Nightblades? Can we get something that makes us standout as tanks, like an AoE Taunt. Something from the Shadow Line, the other morph opposite of Mass Hysteria. Where instead of making you fear others, you generate a taunt sort of like you yourself are cowering in fear, taunting a group and giving yourself the minor maim and or breach as well. A drawback to balance out the group taunt.

Just something to make Nightblade tanks more appetizing to players. Most of our skills, other classes have the same but way better. This coming from a Pure Nightblade since launch.

NB has everything it needs for tanking though subclassing it can be much more effective. ZOS has already provided the solution. I would look at the class again. Experience should tell you exactly what you need to pull from the NB class. It's not a ZOS issue.

SirBanana1992

I quite like my nightblade tank personally, it's not my main but for what I tailored it toward I have fun with it.

I have a rnd normal setup where I group up and greatly debuff trash packs for DDs to clear out then proceed to minor + major expedition buff the group and move it at high speed from encounter to encounter while chugging potions with Arkasis along the way. Then on bosses I have every debuff imaginable ready to use with a Nazaray + aggressive horn combo and then more potion and arkasis (and hope the rest of the group catches up and spams their ults too).

And in one specific instance for my casual guild I tailored this nightblade for vHRC HM meteor shower just to help my guildmates massively increase their survival with stacked buffing AoEs around myself from banner, Ulfsid's contingency and syrabane's Ward. Just to see what it would look like.

Sure I get better results in general with my main but it does things in a way my main can't and sometimes it breaks the monotony of same thing day in day out.

Treeshka

It has Siphoning Strikes and well it allows you to be in permablock in dungeons and raids.

Gabriel_H

Vulkunne wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Damage Shields and tanking do not go together. Lets say you are blocking an incoming hit that is 100,000 damage raw, and you have maximum mitigation in doing so, which is around 97.5%.

You therefore take 2,500 damage.

Now lets say you throw up a 15,000 damage shield. On the same hit, the 100,000 becomes 85,000 and at 97.5% mitigation you take 2,125 damage.

A difference of 375 damage is meaningless given the self-healing and healer over-healing that goes on. It just doesn't matter.

That said, you want a taunt and damage shield - that's what the one handed weapon skill line is for.

Anyone who has ever used the Aegis Mythic in PvP knows full the well how strong damage shields can protect your health and curb enormous amounts of incoming damage, especially from siege artillery and cold fire dots. So, damage shields curb dot damage as well. I don't use that Mythic in PvE but my build supports it should I need it, among many other different things. The proof is how well my tank is excelling in the Night Market and it's easy to see how damage shields are a big part of the reason why.

You are comparing PvP damage mitigation to PvE damage mitigation. There are several reasons that doesn't work, from Battle Spirit to Champion Points to much much much smaller raw damage. A typical DoT from a boss in PvE will tick at 5k- 10k every 0.5s - 1.0s after ~70% damage mitigation reduction. i.e. even against a DoT a damage shield lasts 1 hit in PvE.

The reason you might be seeing it "work" in the Night Market is because you aren't. You are seeing the natural consequence of everything in the Night Market doing much much lower damage than the same bosses in dungeons. There are not the same strength of DoTs or AoEs or direct hits.

Comparing NM tanking to tanking anywhere else in PvE is a false comparison.

Vulkunne

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Damage Shields and tanking do not go together. Lets say you are blocking an incoming hit that is 100,000 damage raw, and you have maximum mitigation in doing so, which is around 97.5%.

You therefore take 2,500 damage.

Now lets say you throw up a 15,000 damage shield. On the same hit, the 100,000 becomes 85,000 and at 97.5% mitigation you take 2,125 damage.

A difference of 375 damage is meaningless given the self-healing and healer over-healing that goes on. It just doesn't matter.

That said, you want a taunt and damage shield - that's what the one handed weapon skill line is for.

Anyone who has ever used the Aegis Mythic in PvP knows full the well how strong damage shields can protect your health and curb enormous amounts of incoming damage, especially from siege artillery and cold fire dots. So, damage shields curb dot damage as well. I don't use that Mythic in PvE but my build supports it should I need it, among many other different things. The proof is how well my tank is excelling in the Night Market and it's easy to see how damage shields are a big part of the reason why.

You are comparing PvP damage mitigation to PvE damage mitigation. There are several reasons that doesn't work, from Battle Spirit to Champion Points to much much much smaller raw damage. A typical DoT from a boss in PvE will tick at 5k- 10k every 0.5s - 1.0s after ~70% damage mitigation reduction. i.e. even against a DoT a damage shield lasts 1 hit in PvE.

The reason you might be seeing it "work" in the Night Market is because you aren't. You are seeing the natural consequence of everything in the Night Market doing much much lower damage than the same bosses in dungeons. There are not the same strength of DoTs or AoEs or direct hits.

Comparing NM tanking to tanking anywhere else in PvE is a false comparison.

You mention CP, well I was going to drop it but there is actually a CP Perk called, "Ward Master" that reduces my incoming damage by another 10% while blocking under a damage shield. I have full mitigation plus damage modifiers, so your entire argument saying that damage shields are bad for tanks is not right. That's why I'm saying what I'm saying because that is not true. You guys are welcome to ignore me or say what you will, but the game does not agree with that conclusion. Some forms of damage are still damage, doesn't matter PvE or PvP. I'm not certain why you would say that. I don't just goto PvP and damage is no longer what it is. Ward Master works for both PvE and PvP btw so...

As a case in point, I have used and you know what, I will login tonight and use Aegis Belt Mythic in PvE. It's the same thing. I know the Aegis Belt Shield lasts a second (at a minimum) but there are other shields that last longer and can be quickly recast during a fight. Let alone, the duration of the ward isn't even as relevant as much as having them running (consistently) to start with. I have Hardened Ward on all my weapons and at least one or two shields in use at a time, in PvE, which gives me a consistent uptime receiving the Ward Master bonus then if I had no shields at all. Sufficed to say, very rarely do I die, especially when I sit there and watch Tanks around me consistently fail, sadly. I tank for PvE but there's no reason these same principles that I have described here cannot work for PvP either. DOT in PvE is stil a DOT in PvP. Burst damage is still burst damage. Crits are different and Impen and even Battle Spirit, but I'm not talking about any of that stuff. Just damage modifiers and mitigation itself.

Another thing too, then I'm done with this discussion, when I built my Tank, never did I ever have any ambitions to be a perma-blocker or exploiter. I learned the hard way and honed a really great build over many years, plus experience. So, I know to some they just go meta and don't care but that was never anything I had any part of, just like with pretty much all of my builds. Everything I have is quality, its unique and not a copy of paste to exploit or take short cuts vs learning fundamentals.