I've recently discovered the joy of playing the caster nightblade as both a healer and a dps. I did however notice several spells that one would normally feel would go well with this spec actually nerfed to oblivion and it's a crying shame. Now keep in mind this is all from a PVE pov as I rarely pvp. I have enjoyed PVP in this game however they need to make some major changes when in PVE scenarios for many of these skills and yes you can code to detect whether or not the target is an NPC (aka mob) or a pc (player) so they have different behaviors.



Cripple in any of it's incarnations are terrible even for CC. It does hardly anything for damage. The DoTs from so many other spells are more powerful than this one so you cannot effectively change it out for one of your other DoTs and maintain DPS.

Agony and all of it's incarnations are terrible. Mobs like bosses that have immunity don't even take damage and it's a waste of bar space for the tiny amount of damage it puts out in all DPS builds.

Grim focus is a terrible design, why is there a delay before the big attack goes off?





Then there are the guild spells that have to do with shadow death and blood.

Entropy. I thought it would be a valuable DoT. Hardly. It does nothing significant in the way of damage or healing. Does degeneration work as well as siphoning strikes? Because if not they need to redesign this so that we can replace siphoning strikes on our bar. We shouldn't have to keep a toggle on the bar to keep it active btw change it to a buff please.

Evil Hunter should allow the restoration of magicka as an alternative to other forms of magicka restoration so we're not so limited.

When playing the healer version of this class, (and yes I love red) I would love to see the design of the Ring of Preservation changed so that it doesn't merely increase the amount healed but actually heals those standing in it. You could even make it steal life from the Daedra standing in the zone, increase the size slightly and then send that health to those around the caster depending on the DPS output. That would be far far more useful a thing than a simple buff to such a tiny area.




Vampire skills:

Everyone who likes the darkness gothic approach to the classes love the vampire in fact I haven't seen that many regular people running around.
The skills on the vampire are great but could use some work for builds like these (some folks use the vampire for their death knight builds and they will be just as glad to see some of these changes.)

Midnight Drain. It's great that you wanted us to have more skills at night more buffs but this doesn't belong in the skill line it belongs in the passive. This skill needs to be changed to regain magicka. That way there's a useful single target drain with a magicka restoration component directly in it for solo play or for single target focus on bosses.

Poison Mist. If you're not going to buff this then change this to a heal. Make it possible to turn into the mist but heal by life steal. That is part of the lore of the vampire not to turn into a poison cloud but definitely to turn into a mist that feeds on whole villages.

Trapping Webs needs some serious help. I used this a couple of times but this is out of hand weak. It needs a high damage poison component it's lacking, skills shouldn't have to rely totally on synergies for them to be useful.



Finally: Unknowns.

So far I've yet to get enough skills together to get these particular skills so if someone could advise me as to if they are well designed or not it's much appreciated.

Energy Orb.

Mystic Orb.

and

Bone Surge.

Thanks!