Hilgara wrote: »

OkieDokie wrote: »

But you can't get sneak bonus once you're engaged. Sneak only applies for the first strike.

ps: you can blame the poor description, but that is how it works.

You get a stun and armour reduction from surprise attack. You also get a 10% damage increase and stun duration increase from the master assassin passive. You can basically stun lock anything below a 2 pip boss. You get a guaranteed crit from the Shadowy Disguise. You get 15% more damage for hitting a stunned opponent from Ruffian (duel wield passive that applies to all damage against stunned mobs) It is definitely worth reclaoking and reopneing with surprise attack then piling on the damage for the duration of the stun. You have to be careful not to reapply the stun before it runs out though otherwise the mob still comes out of stun for the initial duration. E.g. if you stun again at 3 seconds it will still come out of stun at 4 seconds. You have to wait for hm to stand upright again

I think you misread my post or quoted the wrong message mate.

I was just explaining to the other player (who said it is not working properly) why he can't get sneak bonuses once he is in combat. Nothing really to do with all this.

Aoifesan wrote: »

Just thought I'd chime in that the number of defeats due to Non-responsive client bull, is still too damn high as well.

Agreed- if you are standing in a mobs face when it gets unresponsive its not fun.

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

Lyall84 wrote: »

Because the Cloak only lasts 2.9 seconds, which is pathetic for the costs, you should stay cloaked, but still take the damage from damage over time effects or aoe or in transit attacks. I would gladly bleed or burn or be poisoned to death while invisible if it ment that my Cloak actually worked enough to at least allow me to get my corpse out of harms way in PvP.

The other issue is that at least for the Shadowy Disguise morph, 100% crit for next damaging attack. I think the issue with the coding as it is now, is that any damage over time effect that we applied, the next tick uses that next damaging 100% critical and breaks us out of stealth. Even if the DoT is not able to critical. They need to change that to be next damaging ability. Yes, remove normal/heavy attacks from the equation as well. Odds are you are not going to cloak only to use a normal attack, and the cloak duration is too short for most heavy attacks. That way we don't accidentally break ourselves out of stealth. If you use a normal attack and break it, then you lost your critical, but at least it would be intended.

I would not want that to happen because I actually use shadowy disguise to use as a 4 second defense boost because of shadow barrier and I use normal attacks with the ability because I can get a heavy attack bow attack before the cost is over.

At least agree with me on the receiving damage not breaking. It kills me (literally and mentally) when in pvp and I use it to try and get away only to have people spam AOE and get kicked out literally 1 second into it.

Eivar wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

matprzewlokaeb17_ESO wrote: »

Jarnhand wrote: »

But how about the people in PvP that use cloak to restealth to get higher damage on surprise attack/veiled strike/concealed weapon in-combat?

Its not possible. When you attack someone, for some time you cant restealth, and cloak alone dont give you stealth bonus damage.

Most NBs don't seem to understand that constantly cloaking is actually reducing their DPS. For some reason, most NBs seem to think they need to constantly be invisible to be a real NB. Cloaking has one positive, the stun. It is great in PvP and can be used to an advantage in PvE, but if your rotation is cloak/surprise attack, than you are gimping your DPS.

This is especially true in PvE. If you don't spam cloak, than most fights don't even require Siphoning or Leeching, which improves your DPS even further.

Try to figure out your damage as a cost per damage. Cloak costs a lot, does NO damage, and takes time that you could be casting another damage ability.

Regardless in PvE or PvP there is another very powerfull feature cloaking brings along with stunn, 100% crit chance and damage increase on attack out of cloak. The famous, the one and only "100% dps mitigation of any attack after cloaking animation was performad successfully", because it cancels any attack focused at you immediately when you are cloaked. If that is not worth the little dps penalty when not perma cloak, I dunno.

I would bet that most people don't know that mechanic exists and certainly don't know how to use it. I didn't include it for that reason. However, it is overkill to stay perma-cloaked in PvE for that reason.

Granted, there are more reasons to use cloak in PvP than in PvE. The point that I am trying to stress isn't that cloak is worthless, but that relying on it too much is counterproductive. Using a standard rotation of cloak/surprise attack/cloak surprise attack is not the way to go.

I agree with perma cloak surprise attack rotation not being very effective in any situation, but in the right moment triggered the 100% damage mitigation makes it for me definitely worth a bar slot.

Eivar wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

matprzewlokaeb17_ESO wrote: »

Jarnhand wrote: »

But how about the people in PvP that use cloak to restealth to get higher damage on surprise attack/veiled strike/concealed weapon in-combat?

Its not possible. When you attack someone, for some time you cant restealth, and cloak alone dont give you stealth bonus damage.

Most NBs don't seem to understand that constantly cloaking is actually reducing their DPS. For some reason, most NBs seem to think they need to constantly be invisible to be a real NB. Cloaking has one positive, the stun. It is great in PvP and can be used to an advantage in PvE, but if your rotation is cloak/surprise attack, than you are gimping your DPS.

This is especially true in PvE. If you don't spam cloak, than most fights don't even require Siphoning or Leeching, which improves your DPS even further.

Try to figure out your damage as a cost per damage. Cloak costs a lot, does NO damage, and takes time that you could be casting another damage ability.

Regardless in PvE or PvP there is another very powerfull feature cloaking brings along with stunn, 100% crit chance and damage increase on attack out of cloak. The famous, the one and only "100% dps mitigation of any attack after cloaking animation was performad successfully", because it cancels any attack focused at you immediately when you are cloaked. If that is not worth the little dps penalty when not perma cloak, I dunno.

The problem with that idea is that it only cancels spells/abilities with cast times, which are fairly few and far between in this game. weapon attacks can still hit you out of stealth, aoes as well, and what I think of as delayed attacks, any projectile attack that is instant cast, they tap a button it goes off, you hit invis, projectile hits you out of stealth. the only frequently used ability in pvp(that i can think of) that has a cast time is crystal fragments, and that can be morphed to be instant cast frquently.

AOE is a problem. As a meele you have to be outta aoe at any time anyway. So depends on own movement and awareness.

Projectiles are a problem, too. Depends on who sees whom first. The cloaked guy has kinda advantage.

The faster I move, the less chance you will have to hit me with a fast weapon attack. In that time, between two hits, I have got plenty of time to cloak. I am not sure about heavy attacks in PvP. From mobs they are canceled on cloak, too.

[EDIT] Even from bosses. You just need to find the right moment to activate cloak.

I'm talking about invis from a pvp standpoint, I play a vet 8 nb and pretty much live in cyrodiil most days, the fact that by comparison to a temps healing, a dks survivability, or a sorcs BE, NB invis is by far the weakest, you can still make it work but there are SO MANY easy counters that it's pathetic. If you survive being jumped by a nb their only real recourse is to stealth and run because our sustained melee dps is pathetic, and with self healing anyone that survives can pop right back up to full hp. So yes invis is easily exploitable in pve where you can just invis-attack-invis over and over and never take any dmg, but imo that's an unintended side effect and will eventually go away. I'd like to rely on something real rather than a cheesy gimmick to get by.

Agreed, sorcs and templar have their huge damage shileds (close to 30% max health) that last 6 or 8 seconds. Dks have their huge heal (I know this is 30% max health). For them you have to burn through or wait 6+ seconds. NB one aoe, and your only class line escape is gone. Only 2.9 seconds to start with and gone a half second in.

Lyall84 wrote: »

Eivar wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

matprzewlokaeb17_ESO wrote: »

Jarnhand wrote: »

But how about the people in PvP that use cloak to restealth to get higher damage on surprise attack/veiled strike/concealed weapon in-combat?

Its not possible. When you attack someone, for some time you cant restealth, and cloak alone dont give you stealth bonus damage.

Most NBs don't seem to understand that constantly cloaking is actually reducing their DPS. For some reason, most NBs seem to think they need to constantly be invisible to be a real NB. Cloaking has one positive, the stun. It is great in PvP and can be used to an advantage in PvE, but if your rotation is cloak/surprise attack, than you are gimping your DPS.

This is especially true in PvE. If you don't spam cloak, than most fights don't even require Siphoning or Leeching, which improves your DPS even further.

Try to figure out your damage as a cost per damage. Cloak costs a lot, does NO damage, and takes time that you could be casting another damage ability.

Regardless in PvE or PvP there is another very powerfull feature cloaking brings along with stunn, 100% crit chance and damage increase on attack out of cloak. The famous, the one and only "100% dps mitigation of any attack after cloaking animation was performad successfully", because it cancels any attack focused at you immediately when you are cloaked. If that is not worth the little dps penalty when not perma cloak, I dunno.

I would bet that most people don't know that mechanic exists and certainly don't know how to use it. I didn't include it for that reason. However, it is overkill to stay perma-cloaked in PvE for that reason.

Granted, there are more reasons to use cloak in PvP than in PvE. The point that I am trying to stress isn't that cloak is worthless, but that relying on it too much is counterproductive. Using a standard rotation of cloak/surprise attack/cloak surprise attack is not the way to go.

I agree with perma cloak surprise attack rotation not being very effective in any situation, but in the right moment triggered the 100% damage mitigation makes it for me definitely worth a bar slot.

Eivar wrote: »

Cepeza wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

matprzewlokaeb17_ESO wrote: »

Jarnhand wrote: »

But how about the people in PvP that use cloak to restealth to get higher damage on surprise attack/veiled strike/concealed weapon in-combat?

Its not possible. When you attack someone, for some time you cant restealth, and cloak alone dont give you stealth bonus damage.

Most NBs don't seem to understand that constantly cloaking is actually reducing their DPS. For some reason, most NBs seem to think they need to constantly be invisible to be a real NB. Cloaking has one positive, the stun. It is great in PvP and can be used to an advantage in PvE, but if your rotation is cloak/surprise attack, than you are gimping your DPS.

This is especially true in PvE. If you don't spam cloak, than most fights don't even require Siphoning or Leeching, which improves your DPS even further.

Try to figure out your damage as a cost per damage. Cloak costs a lot, does NO damage, and takes time that you could be casting another damage ability.

Regardless in PvE or PvP there is another very powerfull feature cloaking brings along with stunn, 100% crit chance and damage increase on attack out of cloak. The famous, the one and only "100% dps mitigation of any attack after cloaking animation was performad successfully", because it cancels any attack focused at you immediately when you are cloaked. If that is not worth the little dps penalty when not perma cloak, I dunno.

The problem with that idea is that it only cancels spells/abilities with cast times, which are fairly few and far between in this game. weapon attacks can still hit you out of stealth, aoes as well, and what I think of as delayed attacks, any projectile attack that is instant cast, they tap a button it goes off, you hit invis, projectile hits you out of stealth. the only frequently used ability in pvp(that i can think of) that has a cast time is crystal fragments, and that can be morphed to be instant cast frquently.

AOE is a problem. As a meele you have to be outta aoe at any time anyway. So depends on own movement and awareness.

Projectiles are a problem, too. Depends on who sees whom first. The cloaked guy has kinda advantage.

The faster I move, the less chance you will have to hit me with a fast weapon attack. In that time, between two hits, I have got plenty of time to cloak. I am not sure about heavy attacks in PvP. From mobs they are canceled on cloak, too.

[EDIT] Even from bosses. You just need to find the right moment to activate cloak.

I'm talking about invis from a pvp standpoint, I play a vet 8 nb and pretty much live in cyrodiil most days, the fact that by comparison to a temps healing, a dks survivability, or a sorcs BE, NB invis is by far the weakest, you can still make it work but there are SO MANY easy counters that it's pathetic. If you survive being jumped by a nb their only real recourse is to stealth and run because our sustained melee dps is pathetic, and with self healing anyone that survives can pop right back up to full hp. So yes invis is easily exploitable in pve where you can just invis-attack-invis over and over and never take any dmg, but imo that's an unintended side effect and will eventually go away. I'd like to rely on something real rather than a cheesy gimmick to get by.

Agreed, sorcs and templar have their huge damage shileds (close to 30% max health) that last 6 or 8 seconds. Dks have their huge heal (I know this is 30% max health). For them you have to burn through or wait 6+ seconds. NB one aoe, and your only class line escape is gone. Only 2.9 seconds to start with and gone a half second in.

DK heal is not 30% max health. It is 30% of missing health. In practice it usually comes nowhere near 30% unless you're lucky enough to get it off just before you die. It is less effective than a pot quite often but it doesn't have a 30 second cooldown. People need to understand dragonblood a bit better. It does provide increased health regen (and stamina for the green morph) which is extremely useful but it's not an instant heal.

DKs have another heal on dropping Ulti but that's usually a small amount (depends on UP banked).

Jacques Berge wrote: »

Hey guys, I have a V12 NB and I have a blast being the sneaky stabby type. I'll be honest, I don't do much pve any more, I just lurk in the shadows of Cheydinhal and kill people. However, I've done my fair share. So, here are some tips to follow in regards to questing the same build.

- first things first, don't fight what you don't have to. We have invisibility, use it. I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna waste my time fighting trash mobs. I just run right passed em. let those all powerful dks and sorcs fight em, I'll be busy killing the boss. If you morph veiled strike into concealed weapons you will move faster than sprint while invisible.

- When fighting world bosses use sparks/veiled strikes with siphoning strikes. It may take a while, but you can stun lock casters and blind melee bosses indefinitely with this strategy.

- When in group dungeons, use your battle field mobility granted by Invis with cw to get behind groups so you can kill the healers and the ranged dps.

Playing a stealthy NB isn't the easiest. If you can't hack it, well you may be below the challenge level. Should it be easier, given that it's the play style most would associate with the class? Absolutely... But it's not, and I kind of like it that way... Haha makes me feel special.

There are a lot of broken skills/passives, but that's the whole game. Take for instance: Why can I not use, let's say... Momentum (a 2-handed skill) when using duel wield, but can use immovable (heavy armor skill) when I wear all light armor? Now to me, that just doesn't make sense.

Some people complain that the NB can only kill people if they get the jump on em or stun lock em. DUH!!! I don't know about you guys, but I didn't choose to play as a cut throat to duel people in honorable combat. The biggest asset for being a rogue is combat mitigation... Learn to determine who you should and shouldn't be fighting... You get that choice.

Also... Vamp NB is awesome... Dark stalker with CW slotted let's you sneak at sprint speed... It's disgustingly awesome.

You aren't special. You are also a vampire, which is a cop out. If you were 'special' you'd be able to do all you do as a Nightblade alone. And then if you added the supernatural ability of the vampire in you'd be 'better than that'

I'm honestly tired of talking about this. The list of broken abilities at the start of this thread isn't up to date and doesn't represent all the broken abilities we have that have been discussed in this thread.

I don't believe ESO will ever fix the NightBlade class or Stamina builds in general. I've lost hope and am either respect my NightBlade or Staff/Light Armor or just roll another class that uses Staff/Light Armor since it's the only viable build in this game.

Aoifesan wrote: »

You aren't special. You are also a vampire, which is a cop out. If you were 'special' you'd be able to do all you do as a Nightblade alone. And then if you added the supernatural ability of the vampire in you'd be 'better than that'

I've always wondered why some people have a problem with vampires. Why do you think it changes that much to make a build more viable? Last time I used an active vampire skill was before the VoB update. The damage mitigation passive does not work, it is only speed during stealth really. How does that make a broken class unbroken?

Tosalius wrote: »

Way to post another build of Light Armor/Staff. Welcome to Elder Staff Online...

You're exaggerating. I'm vr12 and I still use my vr1 akavari set (sword and board) for soloing public dungeons. Somewhere in the middle of this topic some people said they use dw for a combo with tornado. It works with any weapon.

Tosalius wrote: »

Way to post another build of Light Armor/Staff. Welcome to Elder Staff Online...

Can't understand why people want to slot and use only weapon abilities in their bar. Even if you use why do you complain about your class. DK also use similar way to solo(ultimate spam and inhale) group dungeons.

I can do the same thing with medium armor and DW using warlock set and pots for regen.

Aoifesan wrote: »

You aren't special. You are also a vampire, which is a cop out. If you were 'special' you'd be able to do all you do as a Nightblade alone. And then if you added the supernatural ability of the vampire in you'd be 'better than that'

Anyone who is vampire knows that it sucks in PvE. I have no skill point on vampire tree except passives.
NBs are OK. Show me a sorc or templar soloing 4-man dungeon in craglorn. I dont think they can(I dont mean they are weak). But NB can for sure.

Vuron wrote: »

Aziz006 wrote: »

NBs are OK. Show me a sorc or templar soloing 4-man dungeon in craglorn. I dont think they can(I dont mean they are weak). But NB can for sure.

Nothing against you but I am tired of seeing the example above as an argument to determine if a class is strong or weak and if a certain class is better or worse than another.

Being able to solo a certain dungeon is not proof of anything. So a class can solo a dungeon in 4 hours and use a stack of V5 potions. Another class can solo a different dungeon by cheesing a certain mechanic. These are not baseline examples and have no bearing on class balance or viability.

Sorry if you and others misunderstand me I totally did not mean that. I just wanted people to stop complaining about their classes(NB in that case).

Aziz006 wrote: »

Vuron wrote: »

Aziz006 wrote: »

NBs are OK. Show me a sorc or templar soloing 4-man dungeon in craglorn. I dont think they can(I dont mean they are weak). But NB can for sure.

Nothing against you but I am tired of seeing the example above as an argument to determine if a class is strong or weak and if a certain class is better or worse than another.

Being able to solo a certain dungeon is not proof of anything. So a class can solo a dungeon in 4 hours and use a stack of V5 potions. Another class can solo a different dungeon by cheesing a certain mechanic. These are not baseline examples and have no bearing on class balance or viability.

Sorry if you and others misunderstand me I totally did not mean that. I just wanted people to stop complaining about their classes(NB in that case).

Complain about something that is broken and you paid/are paying for seems totally legit to me.
Most comments here are written by players who have played NB since day one, If not earlier, and when someone jumps in just to say that the class is fine (mind you, most of the times that person is not a NB user) that is irritating.
NB might be ok, but they are NOT working as intended.

Targanwolf wrote: »

Gisgo wrote: »

Targanwolf wrote: »

The skill MARK TARGET is still broken.It does NOT reduce targets armor protection.

Its not supposed to reduce armor, it does ignore armor.
How can you say its not working?

When a large portion of a targets armor protection is ignored.... the amount of armor protection it provides should be reduced... resulting in far more damage.Damage should be significantly greater with 75% of the targets armor being ignored by your attack.Damage does NOT increase when using the MARK TARGET skill.

Because as i already said (did you read the whole thread? yeah i agree its too long) he was testing mark target in PVE.

Which you shouldnt.

RatsnevE wrote: »

Hi, my name is Florasteel and I'm a V-1 Nightblade no less. I'm so casual I can't kill Molag Bal to end this deplorable mess. I've respec'd but still in 'school' [sarcasm] figuring out where to apply all the points differently in both attributes ratio and active and passive skills. I like medium armor and don't like staves and 2-H swords. I don't know what to do because as soon as I 'fix' things to work one way ZOS will negate that need and leave we ineffective in some other way that I wrongly compensated for now. I don't like this kind of strategy game and feel I have been deceived with no recourse. I'm going to cry now...I haven't played for two days.

ZOS actually sent me to this 49 page thread: "We have heard all the complaints on the forums. Below is a link to our response to the uproar of the players." I have torn a little hair out and ROTFL.

Shhh it'll be okay. Welcome to the family.

Developer discussions...should I allow myself a little bit of hope?


My summary:

Bugs:

Shadow: when you use food to increase your magicka pool the skill does not trigger unless you have 700+ magicka.

Concealed blades/morphs: It is quite frequent you get the stun effect but no damage. Other times sneak bonuses just don't apply, no matter how good you place yourself before a fight starts. I noticed this happens more often when I'm experiencing some lag.

Skills:

Spell Critical x Weapon Critical: there is no good explanation for having both for class skills. This only divide resources and therefore unbalance the class. NB skills should be all based on spell critical.

One could ask 'why not all weapon critical?' Well, the problem is, you're splitting resources again because you still need magicka recovery/reduced cost in order to use class skills.

Also, if you change to weapon crit you'll put NB in even more disadvantage because they wouldn't have resources comparable to other classes, like inner light.

This should have been changed already. I would really appreciate an answer regarding this issue. Please don't ignore it when you are trying to balance classes, it is not trivial.

Here is another way of dealing with it (probably better because you don't punish players for the armor choice).

Lyall84 wrote: »

Instead of nerfing the weapon critical, they should combine them into just critical, no weapon or spell, just critical. For the missing place on the character sheet, add a block for critical damage, so we can see the effect of weapon traits and shadow mundus.

Shadow/morphs:

I think the duration time should be higher. Could be easily doubled without negative consequences and by doing that you'd have better resource management.


Siphoning attacks:

There was no need to nerf this skill. In fact, it needs a buff. NBs are behind dks and sorcs in dps. Yes, it is doable and even competitive with some specific rotations, but still behind. There is no need for a reduction in damage in 10% for a class under performing. Or you could keep the reduction and considerably increase resources regeneration.

In any case, it needs a buff, not a nerf.


Summon Shade/morphs:

Not sure what to do with this skill. Although I do understand the ability of keeping enemies attacking the shadow was removed in order to prevent abuses, that wasn't a big issue. It does not affect pvp and in the way it is now there is no need for using it except for the damage reduction (not a big deal really). So, I don't know what I could suggest here. It could cause snare effect, but I'm not sure what would be the implications for pvp.

Aspect of terror/morphs:

From a pve point of view, this skill would work better if enemies just crouch and stayed in place when affected. Then it could be used with other aoe skills. However, I heard of people that like the way it works in pvp. Again, not sure what to do with this skill.

Here is a good suggestion:

arobertson.eeb14a_ESO wrote: »

I mentioned something similar in a long post some 12 pages ago. Sure, people might want both options, and that is what morphs are for. I'm fine with having to make some tough choices on how to build my character if the results are effective. Mass hysteria could easily be changed to include a root effect for melee players who don't want to chase stuff down while manifestation of terror remains a ranged fear for those who like to stay at a distance. Trying to have it all is will just end up with sub-effective skills all around.

General view:

It wouldn't be hard to balance dps between nbs and dks/sorcs. NBs are not broken, it is completely doable with some specs, but they are still behind dks/sorcs. Also, it is important to say that this game does not start at vr12, most of people are not vr12. There are two constants in this game, pve and pvp. And in vr pve NBs are far behind dk/sorcs. It is not necessary to nerf them, I think they are fine. Just get us to the same level. How?

The spell critical damage and leaching strikes would get us closer. After that, we could get there just by increasing the damage of the two skills commonly used for rotation (funnel health/concealed blades) in trials/pve/pvp by a bit.

How much increase? Depends on accepting the other changes I suggested or not. We can easily test it (honestly, just a basic math will do it), just let us know.

About Medium armor:

Although this is not a class issue (and yeah, people hate me when I say that), there are lots of posts in this topic about it. What I can suggest is to copy the Evocation passive from light armor and put it in medium armor to reduce stamina cost. This will make them more viable.

Unsanctified wrote: »

Wonder why this thread isn't stickied anymore?

Did you notice that it's been moved to the Developer Discussion section in which there are currently only two threads?