OkieDokie wrote: »

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

Moved to Developer discussions that you can only access if you are logged in the forum. If you are not logged, there are no Developer discussions. No more a huge whining thread in the front page, that everyone can see before they buy the game.

Hope, I don't know. It looks more like hiding the dirt under the rug to me. I have no problem with that, if they intent to eventually clean up that dirt.

OkieDokie wrote: »

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.

I'd like to point out another rarely mentioned bug associated with shadow cloak and concealed weapons. If you have the vampire dark stalker passive, or the set bonus that ignores movement penalty while hidden, you do get a noticeable increase in movement speed. However, if you use shadow cloak it apparently counts as bringing you out of stealth when the effect ends and you lose the movement speed bonus granted by concealed weapons until you either reapply shadow cloak or leave stealth and return. Very annoying when trying to get around group of enemies.

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.

I think in the short term, changing veiled strike (and all class abilities really) to use spell critical would help the magicka based melee Nightblades a little bit due to the synergy of spell critical from item sets, light armor spell critical passive, and spell cost reduction passive. As it stands, strife is actually better than veiled strike despite the lower damage.

Ideally, however, the medium armor passives should be re-designed to mimic the same (or better) sort of resource management and damage options light armor offers so that having melee class abilities based on weapon critical isn't so bad as long as you build your character around that. Changing all class abilities to spell critical will just be the final nail in the coffin for medium armor in the current state of the game.

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.

Personally, I think the main issue mostly comes back to the cost associated with it when you don't have 7 pieces of light armor on. I normally use shadow cloak for evading power blows or interrupting spells from afar, and getting an instant stun from concealed weapon from relative safety. I personally don't spend the full duration in stealth unless I am trying to bypass large groups and its still manageable with increased movement speed, light armor passives, and a nearly maxed magicka pool. That said, I do think something needs to be done to get away from those totally attainable, but frustratingly restrictive requirements for enjoyable use of this skill.

As far as PvP goes, it is not really an effective escape skill with all the AoE and magelight available. That's not even mentioning being unable to sprint, dodge roll, etc while invisible to get away faster (not that you can even return to fully hidden or walk out of range of most spells without casting it two or three times). So increasing the duration could help in that respect.

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.

Agreed. Currently, the best single target builds actually use the restoration staff for the 10% additional damage while at full health. But also having the (necessary) ability to recover about 2/3 of maximum magicka (assuming ~3 normal hits at a current average of 5.5% recovery vs one power attack for 10% recovery), means you are just hurting every other weapon set besides restoration staff with this sort of change. The leeching strike morph 'fix' has likewise left me feeling a little sour especially when you start fighting vetran content that hits for 300+ on auto attacks. It might help, but nowhere near enough when limited to normal attacks at 2%.

It may not be the end of the world, but I think the majority of the Nightblade community is just left feeling boggled and betrayed by the apparent direction without providing some counterbalancing buffs at the same time.

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.

For me, it's always been a purely tanking ability on my second bar for boss fights. It does stack with the 1h and shield damage reduction ability so it does make a difference there. It's a niche use to be sure.

I think the main thing holding this skill back is the invincibility of the shadows. They are basically just a long DoT and debuff with a fancy animation. Having a health pool and good AoE damage reduction could open up additional paths for this skill without becoming too powerful.

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.

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.

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.

Copying the evocation passive would certainly help, but I'm not a fan of balancing though copy/pasted mechanics. Medium armor does need something better for resource management as long as magicka based class abilities far outperform in burst and sustain compared to their weapon counterparts. Something like 21% chance to negate spell/feat cost would be the sort of alternative I'd be interested in seeing which, on average, is the same thing as light armor.

I do think that stamina based attacks and medium armor need more directions. If the intent is to make class abilities high cost, high burst while weapon abilities and medium armor offer are equivalent DPS through sustain compared to light armor's burst and recovery cycles, then that's perfectly acceptable to me. However, it's nowhere near that point yet.

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

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).

30% of missing health is still huge, and it is a permanent class line "oh shi.." button Vs NB get 2.9 seconds and on top of that, the only class line that can be broken.

Edit: by permanent I mean the effects do not dissappear after a set time.

Lyall84 wrote: »

OkieDokie wrote: »

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.

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.

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.

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.

not a bad idea, but i doubt the symmetry of the character sheet is a big concern :P

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.

Hm...yeah, that might solve the splitting resources problem without punishing players for the armor choice. Nice one.

*Preassure Points should be changed to
"While an assassin skill is slotted, increase crit by 15%/30%"

*Suprise attack/Concealed attack should be the hardest hitting ST skill from stealth/hidden.

*Impale should do more base dmg.

*Mark target shouldnt debuff yourself.

*Magelight shouldnt see through stealth

*That root NPC nightblades have would be nice, that also knocks down.

*Nightblades shouldnt be forced to get Vampire line or use a 5 set to move faster in hidden state. Nightblades should be the best at moving in hidden, not as good as everyone else.

Selodaoc wrote: »

*Preassure Points should be changed to
"While an assassin skill is slotted, increase crit by 15%/30%"

*Suprise attack/Concealed attack should be the hardest hitting ST skill from stealth/hidden.

*Impale should do more base dmg.

*Mark target shouldnt debuff yourself.

*Magelight shouldnt see through stealth

*That root NPC nightblades have would be nice, that also knocks down.

*Nightblades shouldnt be forced to get Vampire line or use a 5 set to move faster in hidden state. Nightblades should be the best at moving in hidden, not as good as everyone else.

I disagree about magelight, I don't think it should see through invis, but as for stealth absolutely. Though I think you should still be able to land a sneak attack for like 1s after Magelught reveals you, that way if a player doesn't react and you have the correct positioning...

Selodaoc wrote: »

*Preassure Points should be changed to
"While an assassin skill is slotted, increase crit by 15%/30%"

*Suprise attack/Concealed attack should be the hardest hitting ST skill from stealth/hidden.

*Impale should do more base dmg.

*Mark target shouldnt debuff yourself.

*Magelight shouldnt see through stealth

*That root NPC nightblades have would be nice, that also knocks down.

*Nightblades shouldnt be forced to get Vampire line or use a 5 set to move faster in hidden state. Nightblades should be the best at moving in hidden, not as good as everyone else.

Disagree on the impale damage. It does plenty when targets are low health. If you pop shadowy disguise before, it can hit/critical for 1500. Seeing the low cost, that is a lot of damage.

Selodaoc wrote: »

Eivar wrote: »

I disagree about magelight, I don't think it should see through invis, but as for stealth absolutely. Though I think you should still be able to land a sneak attack for like 1s after Magelught reveals you, that way if a player doesn't react and you have the correct positioning...

I think we mean the same thing

Theres Hidden = Crouched. Magelight should be able to see through that. Although it maybe should have lower range against Nightblades.

And Stealth = Going red. Magelight shouldnt be able to see through that.

Lyall84 wrote: »

Disagree on the impale damage. It does plenty when targets are low health. If you pop shadowy disguise before, it can hit/critical for 1500. Seeing the low cost, that is a lot of damage.

Was just more that i want more "spam" skills among Nightblade class skills. Right now we only have Suprise attack/Concealed.
Impale does crap dmg before the 300%

we do mean the same thing apparently, but stealth is crouched, shadowy cloak and it's morphs grant invisibility, by their own in game wording, 2 separate things, seems like semantics but it's best to be clear about what you mean.

Selodaoc wrote: »

Eivar wrote: »

I disagree about magelight, I don't think it should see through invis, but as for stealth absolutely. Though I think you should still be able to land a sneak attack for like 1s after Magelught reveals you, that way if a player doesn't react and you have the correct positioning...

I think we mean the same thing

Theres Hidden = Crouched. Magelight should be able to see through that. Although it maybe should have lower range against Nightblades.

And Stealth = Going red. Magelight shouldnt be able to see through that.

Lyall84 wrote: »

Disagree on the impale damage. It does plenty when targets are low health. If you pop shadowy disguise before, it can hit/critical for 1500. Seeing the low cost, that is a lot of damage.

Was just more that i want more "spam" skills among Nightblade class skills. Right now we only have Suprise attack/Concealed.
Impale does crap dmg before the 300%

Yes, but after that 300% it does an overwhelming amount. It is the same for the other "execute" type abilities as well. It is not suppose to be a general attack damage ability, it is meant to be a finisher.

If we wanted to go down the buff impale road, I would also suggest increasing the base damage on other execute type abilites and removing the execute function of them. Add the execute function to ultimate abilities, like Death Stroke. Low enough ultimate cost to use several times in a fight, but max damage is currently sub-par to Impale in that danger zone.

Ilterendi wrote: »

OkieDokie wrote: »

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.

Hm...yeah, that might solve the splitting resources problem without punishing players for the armor choice. Nice one.

Not to mention it would go a long way for fixing NB passives and make Shadowy Disguise that much more appealing. It would also raise damage across the board assisting with VR content.

Part of the issue behind shadowy disguise not "working" with spells maybe be due to the travel time nature of most projectiles. The tool-tip (for what they are worth) makes no distinction between melee and weapon critical, yet you'll still fail to get a critical strike with strife very often because the bonus only lasts for the duration of the cloak. Since the critical strike bonus ends immediately upon casting the spell and damage and stat modifiers don't come into play until it hits the target you effectively can't force a critical with a spell. One of my earlier suggestions for shadow cloak was simply to maintain invisibility until the attacks connect if this is the case. Adding a 1-2 second buff coming out of cloak might also work, but might be abused with animation canceling.

Eivar wrote: »

Selodaoc wrote: »

*Preassure Points should be changed to
"While an assassin skill is slotted, increase crit by 15%/30%"

*Suprise attack/Concealed attack should be the hardest hitting ST skill from stealth/hidden.

*Impale should do more base dmg.

*Mark target shouldnt debuff yourself.

*Magelight shouldnt see through stealth

*That root NPC nightblades have would be nice, that also knocks down.

*Nightblades shouldnt be forced to get Vampire line or use a 5 set to move faster in hidden state. Nightblades should be the best at moving in hidden, not as good as everyone else.

I disagree about magelight, I don't think it should see through invis, but as for stealth absolutely. Though I think you should still be able to land a sneak attack for like 1s after Magelught reveals you, that way if a player doesn't react and you have the correct positioning...

I kind of agree with you on the issue of magelight. However, as long as Nightblades are capable of setting up the perfect ambush that can bring the majority of players from 100-0 on their own in a couple of seconds I think there should be some defense against that. The problem in my mind is that when tagged onto a 20% spell critical toggled ability it becomes a no-brainer for PvP. There should be a much higher opportunity cost given the limited 5-10 skill slots for those who want to do more burst damage and those who want protection from ambushes. You could just make only Radiant magelight detect invisibility or something like that.

arobertson.eeb14a_ESO wrote: »

Eivar wrote: »

Selodaoc wrote: »

*Preassure Points should be changed to
"While an assassin skill is slotted, increase crit by 15%/30%"

*Suprise attack/Concealed attack should be the hardest hitting ST skill from stealth/hidden.

*Impale should do more base dmg.

*Mark target shouldnt debuff yourself.

*Magelight shouldnt see through stealth

*That root NPC nightblades have would be nice, that also knocks down.

*Nightblades shouldnt be forced to get Vampire line or use a 5 set to move faster in hidden state. Nightblades should be the best at moving in hidden, not as good as everyone else.

I disagree about magelight, I don't think it should see through invis, but as for stealth absolutely. Though I think you should still be able to land a sneak attack for like 1s after Magelught reveals you, that way if a player doesn't react and you have the correct positioning...

I kind of agree with you on the issue of magelight. However, as long as Nightblades are capable of setting up the perfect ambush that can bring the majority of players from 100-0 on their own in a couple of seconds I think there should be some defense against that. The problem in my mind is that when tagged onto a 20% spell critical toggled ability it becomes a no-brainer for PvP. There should be a much higher opportunity cost given the limited 5-10 skill slots for those who want to do more burst damage and those who want protection from ambushes. You could just make only Radiant magelight detect invisibility or something like that.

The funny thing is, that if you're worried about a NB ganking you, there are a number of PASSIVE defenses you can use to defuse it, I.e. Stacking impenetrable traits on your armor(sneak attack is a crit with a x4 dmg modifier) radiant magelight for its sneak attack dmg reduction. If you suspect a nb is around pop a detect potion, stay with a group and don't fall to the back or sides. Just the first two options will pretty much guarantee you don't drop in the first couple seconds, and after that opener most NBs need to flee as our sustained dps and survivabilty are extremely low.

This is why I think magelight shouldn't see through invis, as it's so easy to counter/defend against a nb in the first place,

I hope we will have a free respec with all those changes. I'm tired to pay thousands of gold because of tooltip errors and bugged/non functional skills...

Did some PvP today.

Cloak is so broken.

If your in hidden state, find someone and you detect eachother, you cant use cloak. It just decloaks you instantly again if your close to the player that detected you.