NB's Veil of Blades - how to use it?

tintin_milou · June 2014

Hi everyone, many many NB's think very highly of the Veil of Blades ultimate. I have it but haven't used it much. Sort of confused on how to use it. $:\$

I use the other two ultimates, Soul Harvest and Soul Tether, more often since they just deal damage and are easy to understand. After casting those, I keep on dealing damage until all the mobs are dead (or I die).

So what do I do after casting Veil of Blades? Do I keep on dealing damage? Run away? Stop and admire the scene? And why is Veil of Blades better than the other two ultimates?

Thanks for your help!

audabon2013 · June 2014

the tooltip reads, in order:

snares enemies

aoe dmg every 0.5 sec

dmg reduction for allies (even more for the caster)

slip away synergy to allies (think shadow cloak)

but what does all this mean??

2 things: dmg and utility

dmg. aoe on adds and decent single target on boss without using mag/stam.
makes this one of the top nb dmg abilities.

reduction. 30% less dmg for allies in the area is huge.

Jaxom · June 2014

PvP: drop it on a Flag for team damage reduction and damage to honorguard
: Drop it on yourself when doing small scale PvP since you take significantly less damage in it and damages your enemy.
:Choke points (bridge, stairway, ect)

PvE: World Bosses (same reason as dropping on a flag)
:Dungeon Pulls with lots of adds
:Dungeon Bosses

It's not as usefull for 1v1 but has it's place.

These are my uses for it

Thejollygreenone · June 2014

tintin_milou wrote: »

Hi everyone, many many NB's think very highly of the Veil of Blades ultimate. I have it but haven't used it much. Sort of confused on how to use it. $:\$

I use the other two ultimates, Soul Harvest and Soul Tether, more often since they just deal damage and are easy to understand. After casting those, I keep on dealing damage until all the mobs are dead (or I die).

So what do I do after casting Veil of Blades? Do I keep on dealing damage? Run away? Stop and admire the scene? And why is Veil of Blades better than the other two ultimates?

Thanks for your help!

I'll try to break this down for you since I think I know what the problem is. Veil of Blades is a instacast place-able big purple circle basically. You hit the ult button then a big purple circle will drop on your location.

While enemies stand inside this circle and while the circle remains on the ground, they will take damage every .5 seconds and be slowed by 70% as the tooltip for the ability reads. Secondarily, (I may be wrong about how this part works, you may have to stand in the circle to benefit) casting this ultimate will place a buff on you and any allies near you that will reduce your damage taken by quite a lot, which will last for as long as the circle is on the ground (15-17.5 seconds depending on passives)

Basically the idea with this and this sort of ability in general, is that you're trying to keep the enemies inside the circle so they take the damage the circle is doing, but on top of that you are able to do damage with your own abilities since the circle is doing its own thing.

So an example to use this would be as someone with any sort of melee weapon in a pack of enemies, or even one tough one, charge in as close to all of them as possible, throw veil of blades down, and then just do your normal damage abilities while the circle does work.

So SHORT ANSWER HERE: After casting veil of blades and the circle goes down, the idea is to keep them on the circle while you do your own damage. That way the circle is doing damage and you're also doing your own damage.

tintin_milou · June 2014

Thanks everyone, especially Thejollygreenone for helping me understand Veil of Blades better! It is indeed a fantastic ultimate. Deals damage, reduces incoming damage and snares enemies in case an escape becomes necessary! Wow!

dastone · June 2014

How is that better then soul tether? 4 second stun is better then a 30 percent damage reduction . Instant damage is better the a dot if the enemy stands in a circle and it so as a single target dot.

Still not getting it. It may have situational uses but seems way inferior over all

Thejollygreenone · June 2014

dastone wrote: »

How is that better then soul tether? 4 second stun is better then a 30 percent damage reduction . Instant damage is better the a dot if the enemy stands in a circle and it so as a single target dot.

Still not getting it. It may have situational uses but seems way inferior over all

there are a couple things here that i'd like to argue.

firstly, in pvp a 4 second aoe stun sounds good on paper, but due to the availability of cc breaks it doesn't end up doing much for a one time use, whereas the effects of veil of blades are there til the end. (a whopping 17 seconds)

secondly, the 30% damage reduction is on allies, you get DOUBLE that bonus. which is a whole boat load of survivability.

thirdly, veil does WAY more damage overall if you keep the enemy standing in the circle for the full duration. my soul tether tooltip reads about 500 aoe damage followed by another 400 or so on one target for soul tether.

my veil reads 85ish damage every .5 seconds for 17.25 seconds. over the full 17 second duration that's around 2500 base damage to any one target you can get to stand in the circle the whole duration which really isn't so hard. even half the duration would amount to the same damage with an arguably better utility. so really which is better, 1000-1400 total over 4 seconds with a stun for the duration which can be dispelled or 2500-4000 over 17 seconds with a massive damage reduction for the duration? (the choice is clear to me)

from a pure numbers standpoint, veil of blades will allow you to survive longer while dealing overall more damage to multiple enemies, while soul tether is only half as effective against multiple enemies as it is against one, on top of dealing less overall damage and having an arguably weaker utility. it may be a better choice for single target in pvp where burst and lifesteal are nice, but for an aoe ult i'd say veil is superior. if you'd like to argue otherwise i'd love to hear it.

EDIT: *** i didn't even mention the 70% slow making it easier to keep enemies inside the circle.

GreenSoup2HoT · September 2015

You have to pick Veil of Blade or Bolstering Darkness @Thejollygreenone You gotta pick the DoT or 60% damage mitigation.

Blackjak-33 · September 2015

[/quote]secondly, the 30% damage reduction is on allies, you get DOUBLE that bonus. which is a whole boat load of survivability.[/quote]

Veil isn't double damage mitigation for the caster the other morph, Bolstering Darkness, is the 60% damage mitigation for the caster but does no offensive damage. Veil is 30% damage mitigation for both caster and allies, but does good damage.

Artis · September 2015

You press R by default.