A suggestion for a Tweak/Nerf to Cloak

Tryxus · October 2015

Okay, so after the recent QQ threads, it's time for a serious thread regarding the NB. More specifically, one of the skills: Cloak

Remember: this is a serious thread so please keep the QQ/complaints/rage/whatevs/... to a minimum.

No "ZOMG NO! JUST NERF!" kinda talk.

Okay?

...

-takes a deep breath-

Cloak is a necessary skill for the NB, both for Stam and Magicka builds. Stam builds alrdy have medium armor and other sneak detection boosts, which enables them to make clever use of the 2-3 Cloaks they can pull off before running out of Magicka. MagBlades don't wear Medium, so they rely more on the Cloak itself for stealth.

The Cloak itself removes up to 4 negative effects that the NB is suffering from, and also allows the NB to escape from combat (typical true assassin playstyle: the fight doesn't go in your favor, use your cunning and skills to escape)

However, there are so many different counters to the Cloak. A small summary:
- Luminous Shards (Templar)
- Piercing Mark (NB)
- Streak (Sorc)
- Mines (Sorc)
- Caltrops (Assault)
- Revealing Flare (Support)
- Radiant Magelight (Mages Guild)

And on top of that, there are several Potions that can be used to increase Stealth Detection, and the Cloak itself is also vulnerable to AoE attacks like Pulsar. There are also several actions that break stealth, like activating a Resto Staff ability.

So all in all: the Cloak itself is balanced. It helps the NB to sneak around while still having plenty of counters.

Then, oh Wise and Illustrious Tryxus, what IS the problem with Cloak?

The fact that Magicka NB can spam it indefinitely.

True, there are MagBlades who sacrifice a bit of Spell Power to increase Magicka Regen which enables them to Cloak indefinitely without losing any resources at all. Cloaking doesn't require Crouching, so no Stamina loss. And with enough Magicka Regen it enables them to walk across Cyrodiil cloaked ("Bring the Elder Scroll back home, MagBlade!")

Plus, even with the loss in Spell Power, a MagBlade is still a very dangerous opponent in the right hands. Ever seen a MagBlade pop up in the middle of a group, cast Devouring Swarm and then Sap Essence spamming? Or simply causing Mass Hysteria before teleporting back to their Shadow Image with only a minimum on Magicka usage?

My proposal is simple. Here are some numbers:

My Magicka Cost for Cloak is 2848 for 2.9 secs
For 1 sec, I have spent 983 Magicka (rounded up, it's actually 982.02 Magicka)

My Magicka Regen is 1538 for every 2 secs
For 1 sec, I get 769 Magicka back.

This means I currently CAN'T infinite cloak, since my Magicka Regen is about 78.2% of the Cloak cost
(btw, I'm also at 2.4k Spell Damage

)

But what if another player has the same Cloak cost, but with 2175 Magicka Regen? (random number)

For 1 sec, he gets 1086 Magicka back.

No Magicka loss for that player, he can spam that anywhere, anytime and use whatever he feels like using to take down players in PvP without spending any Magicka to keep the Cloak up.

Solution?

Tweak Cloak to bring the Magicka Regen of a player down to 80/90% of the Cloak cost should the player have a Magicka Regen that is higher than the Cloak cost

So for me nothing would change since my Magicka Regen is about 78.2% of the Cloak cost, but for that other player, his Magicka Regen gets taken down to 1573 (80%) so that player can't Infinite Cloak anymore

Also, this Reduced Regen should only happen DURING Cloak. The player with that 2175 Magicka Regen can have that regen all the time, but when he activates Cloak, then it should get reduced until the Cloaking stops

The reason why I'm asking for these numbers and percentages is to prevent ZOS from setting the Magicka Regen to 0 (like what they did to Tanks and Stam Regen), since Magicka is desperately needed for a Magicka Build. Without it, we'd simply be a burden to our group and other players in PvP.

Quite a wall of text here. But now I'd like to hear your input. Not just from other NB, but from the entire community.

And please keep it civil

I thank you
Tryxus

SemiD4rkness · October 2015

You don't want them to remove magicka regen as you see it as a mistake just like they did with stam regen. As a pvp stamina based tank it hurt me a lot actually but i l2p after that and i think that now im a better player because of it. I truly believe that no magicka regen qhile cloaked is the perfect solution. Maybe you'll become a better player too.
Note that I said "I believe" it might actually be a disaster but hey, that's why we're here for, to give feedback.

TheNephilimCrow · October 2015

Honestly, I read through the entire post. Firstly, it was really well thought out, I felt truly well informed. So, I applaud you on your stats you provided. With that said, I agree. This does seem like a real happy medium that ZOS could apply to make it more fair. In all of my facts, debates and disagreements, I never said that Magblades should be able to infinitely stay cloaked. That's completely unfair by any standard. To offer up such a fix, which I think ZOS Gina mentioned similar to this, would be well accepted. Only, because, it wouldn't effect Stamina users and the normal Blade player.

The only issue I see them running into is the application of this. Coming up with a code to put this in effect should be the only challenge.

Tryxus · October 2015

@SemiD4rkness
Hmm, true.

I've been using the Phoenix set for a while in Cyro in order to learn PvP, and I recently switched back to Magnus which I love using as a MagBlade for the 8% of a skill not having a Magicka Cost, essentially a free Cloak. Plus I can make Essences of Spell Power to restore Magicka and gain some Spell Damage when coming out of Cloak.

But I think completely removing Magicka Regen while Cloaked may be overkill. As a NB, we rely on stealth, and as a Mage who wears Light Armor which provides no stealth bonuses, Cloak is our only way to achieve that. Plus without any Magicka Regen, we'd be too weakened to be of any further use in a battle since all of our class skills require Magicka to be used.

I guess my inner mage doesn't want to see other mages getting crippled, but maybe I have been a bit generous with the 80% Magicka Regen Reduction.

How about 50% and we call it a deal, k?

@TheNephilimCrow

Well have smth similar as Vampires: reducing Health Regen and a passive that partly restores that. Maybe ZOS could work with that as a basis to give Cloak this tweak?

SleepyTroll · October 2015

Great solution, but to much coding on ZOS's part. They could however revert nerf bolt escape and roll dodge and block and implement soft caps again. Also hard cap CP at 1/3rd of the max so builds won't be all the same for the rest of eso's existence.

Bloodgharm · October 2015

Tbh even with the reduced regen while cloaked, a magblade will still be able to cloak for over a minute. I use the cloak strategy in towns while I'm doing my thief thing. I can probably cloak up to 20+ times before I'm out of mana.

I don't really pvp so I don't know a lot of strategy with magblades. Aside from running a scroll across the map, why else would a magblade be in cloak that long? Essentially it's an escape tool. Magblades aren't known for their burst damage so it's not going to really give much undue advantage for a magblade to cloak, reset stealth and then lay on the opponent with a wet noodle attack. Concealed weapon is probably our hardest hitting and most costly dd skill, so we can't just spam away.

Since I'm not well versed in typical NB pvp strategy, why doesn't someone give me a play by play so I can figure out what makes cloak so OP. I'm all for changes if they're necessary, but I'd rather see other classes buffed instead of my favorite class nerfed.

eliisra · October 2015

So punish players running sustain builds in PvP?

Reward derps for stacking spell power and max magicka?

I'm no fan of this idea. If you want more dmg or more sustain in your build is up to you. Comes with different drawbacks and rewards. Cloak penalty should not be some deciding factor on top of that.

It's sort of like increasing the cost of next roll dodge, only IF the player have over 3k stamina recovery or similar. So that my build(max weapon dmg) wont be affected by the nerf

I wouldn't cry if Cloak got the Mist Form treatment personally, but now that IC is dead and Cyro full, we're back to having more alarming issues in PvP than a perma-cloaking magicka NB. They dont have the dmg output of stamblades, they cant gank or instakill anything. Pretty harmless outside if IC, without the ability to kill you with NPC's.

Levo18 · October 2015

I dont mind cloak when i get attacked. If the opponent uses it in combat its fine. But what absolutely makes me rage is if someone flees with it. No other class can do that.

You can catch up to a streaking sorc because he will run out of magicka quick , DK and Templar dont have any retreat moves. Just NB is able to end a fight how and when they want.

Sure there are counters to cloak but be honest a decent NB knows exactly how and where to move while invisble to not get caught.

TLDR . Cloak in combat yay, cloak to flee nay

Cody · October 2015

This is better than straight up nerfing it. I personally think cloak should be left alone; but who am i to argue with the vast majority?

As long as stamblades can still make use of it, I will be fine with the change. I have no effective self heals nor damage shields as a stamblade; and shadow image is too situational for my playstyle. I am not going to remember to set it literally every single time I sneak up behind someone, nor will I have the opportunity too. Meaning, without cloak, I would have no escape or effective means of survivaal (no vigor is not good enough. Its great, but in a straight up fight the HoT cannot keep me sustained, and would be even more of an issue with no cloak)

usmcjdking · October 2015

Too confusing and an utterly ridiculous idea, because cloak itself isn't the problem and doesn't need to be nerfed.

Detection need to be buffed.

- Revealing Flare radius increased to 12m and UNPURGEABLE 7 second debuff.
- Detect Pots duration increased to 20 seconds at V15.
- Cloaking then hitting a player (or vice versa) immediately moves you to the top of the NPC agro list (below taunt)
- Increase detection radius to 5m standard, 3m MINIMUM.

The NB needs some other tweaking in addition.

hardcore_gmr · October 2015

I honestly think that that only way to deter perma cloak and to balance the cloak mechanic is to go with a zero magic regen while cloak is active approach. I think the problem with this skill is that it falls into the same category as DK reflective scales, in that it effectively negates all of a certain type of an attack indefinitely. I play Dk and I agreed with the nerf to reflective scales. The way the skill worked before it effectively allowed DK's to perma cast the skill and effectively negate all ranged attacks. Cloak is the same in that it negates direct damage, because it does not allow the nightblade to be targeted and thus only able to be attacked by AoE. And yes there are tons of AoE attacks that will bring a nightblade out of cloak, on top of the fact the skill will not always trigger when used, the problem is that any skill that allows players to negate all attacks of a certain type at almost no cost is detrimental to balance.
As for why I think zero regen is the way to go is because the sustain meta allows the skill to be used with no penalty. In all honesty, I kinda wish ZoS would have taken this approach with scales because then players would be given the full breath of the skill. With no regen on activation cloak is still viable, it can still be used excessively, but it gives the skill a cost for perma cloaking.

Bloodgharm · October 2015

In my opinion, if they were to nerf cloak, they'd have to give stamina NBs another form of survivability. I'm of the mind that evasion should play a greater role in this game. We currently have a major evasion buff in the form of shuffle and double take. Would like to see a minor version of the buff added. This would give NBs ~30% chance to dodge attacks. I think that this wouldn't be too OP seeing as how everyone that hates cloak hates it because NBs can flee or break LoS. This damage mitigation would essentially keep them in the fight, but can't be abused since it's based on rng and there's a hard cap on how much dodge chance they can stack.

DannyLV702 · October 2015

Dear OP: you da real mvp!!

Darkeus · October 2015

i sugest make cloak last 5 secs or more and cost more with each use in next 5 secs.

willymchilybily · October 2015

magicka cost of cloak = magicka regen * 1.25 is a better option. don't reduce regen if they stack regen, price cloak on regen they have. Dont reduce their regen, their shouldn't be some kind of regen hard cap just for being a NB.

obviously Thats only IF the magicka regen is above a certain limit. (dont want to be giving stamblades riddiculously cheap cloaking)

i think it is better to do baby steps with cloak. Gradually reducing regen or increasing cost as OP describes. TBH no regen would kill stamina NB or force them to be a weak hybrid. be lucky if most have enough to do 2 cloaks.

Bashev · October 2015

willymchilybily wrote: »

magicka cost of cloak = magicka regen * 1.25 is a better option. don't reduce regen if they stack regen, price cloak on regen they have. Dont reduce their regen, their shouldn't be some kind of regen hard cap just for being a NB.

obviously Thats only IF the magicka regen is above a certain limit. (dont want to be giving stamblades riddiculously cheap cloaking)

i think it is better to do baby steps with cloak. Gradually reducing regen or increasing cost as OP describes. TBH no regen would kill stamina NB or force them to be a weak hybrid. be lucky if most have enough to do 2 cloaks.

Bad idea!
So you stack magicka and spell damage and you have 700 magicka regen. You hit super hard and you have super cheap cloak.

TheNephilimCrow · October 2015

I would like to get some feedback about this idea from the devs.

TheNephilimCrow · October 2015

Bashev wrote: »

willymchilybily wrote: »

magicka cost of cloak = magicka regen * 1.25 is a better option. don't reduce regen if they stack regen, price cloak on regen they have. Dont reduce their regen, their shouldn't be some kind of regen hard cap just for being a NB.

obviously Thats only IF the magicka regen is above a certain limit. (dont want to be giving stamblades riddiculously cheap cloaking)

i think it is better to do baby steps with cloak. Gradually reducing regen or increasing cost as OP describes. TBH no regen would kill stamina NB or force them to be a weak hybrid. be lucky if most have enough to do 2 cloaks.

Bad idea!
So you stack magicka and spell damage and you have 700 magicka regen. You hit super hard and you have super cheap cloak.

I think you are missing a key function of his suggestion, @Bashev . Please re-read his wall of text.

TheNephilimCrow · October 2015

Darkeus wrote: »

i sugest make cloak last 5 secs or more and cost more with each use in next 5 secs.

That wouldn't work. Only thing that would change would be the user waiting a second to cast it again. If a Magblade is who you are chasing, they would just need to pop Hysteria in that second and cloak again.

Bashev · October 2015

TheNephilimCrow wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

willymchilybily wrote: »

magicka cost of cloak = magicka regen * 1.25 is a better option. don't reduce regen if they stack regen, price cloak on regen they have. Dont reduce their regen, their shouldn't be some kind of regen hard cap just for being a NB.

obviously Thats only IF the magicka regen is above a certain limit. (dont want to be giving stamblades riddiculously cheap cloaking)

i think it is better to do baby steps with cloak. Gradually reducing regen or increasing cost as OP describes. TBH no regen would kill stamina NB or force them to be a weak hybrid. be lucky if most have enough to do 2 cloaks.

Bad idea!
So you stack magicka and spell damage and you have 700 magicka regen. You hit super hard and you have super cheap cloak.

I think you are missing a key function of his suggestion, @Bashev . Please re-read his wall of text.

Thanks. I reread it and now I saw the part that he said "only if the regen is above a certain limit". But this formula wont help a lot. If I have 4k regen then the cost should be 5k. for 3.6 seconds in cloak I will get almost 2 ticks. Even if I spam it every 2 seconds that means that I will lose 1k magicka per 2 seconds. Even if I have a pool from 10k magicka that means I will be able to cloak 10 times in a row every 2 seconds.
Personally I do not think that cloak is OP if ZoS bring back the old duration of the detection pots.

TheNephilimCrow · October 2015

Bashev wrote: »

TheNephilimCrow wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

willymchilybily wrote: »

magicka cost of cloak = magicka regen * 1.25 is a better option. don't reduce regen if they stack regen, price cloak on regen they have. Dont reduce their regen, their shouldn't be some kind of regen hard cap just for being a NB.

obviously Thats only IF the magicka regen is above a certain limit. (dont want to be giving stamblades riddiculously cheap cloaking)

i think it is better to do baby steps with cloak. Gradually reducing regen or increasing cost as OP describes. TBH no regen would kill stamina NB or force them to be a weak hybrid. be lucky if most have enough to do 2 cloaks.

Bad idea!
So you stack magicka and spell damage and you have 700 magicka regen. You hit super hard and you have super cheap cloak.

I think you are missing a key function of his suggestion, @Bashev . Please re-read his wall of text.

Thanks. I reread it and now I saw the part that he said "only if the regen is above a certain limit". But this formula wont help a lot. If I have 4k regen then the cost should be 5k. for 3.6 seconds in cloak I will get almost 2 ticks. Even if I spam it every 2 seconds that means that I will lose 1k magicka per 2 seconds. Even if I have a pool from 10k magicka that means I will be able to cloak 10 times in a row every 2 seconds.
Personally I do not think that cloak is OP if ZoS bring back the old duration of the detection pots.

I think the basis of his suggestion is to lower recovery depending on overall Magicka or Recovery. So if someone has X, which is higher than the limit of Y then the Recovery would drop to help balance out the cost. Giving maybe 5-7 casts if not a few more for the whole pool.

DannyLV702 · October 2015

I just want my Streak back. Give it back and cloak could last 10 seconds for all I care. Streak was my main useful counter but now I can only use it a few times before I'm all out of magic. It's an annoying guessing game having to figure out which side the NB went, and the stupid Streak nerf isn't helping considering the majority of the game consists of NBs

Forestd16b14_ESO · October 2015

You do know that nearly all the counters to cloak are garbage right ? Detect potions got nerf to be nearly useless, AOEs sure revile them but they just have to dodge roll to the left or right once and there out of it, RML doesn't help stamina users at all, and lastly not every is rank 6 or 7 in Alliance war to have caltrop or reviling flare and flare is only useful as reviling flare cause it stays active for a few seconds.

Please stop saying there are counters to cloak when most players know that there either not offer to every one or there total garbage. Either cloak gets re-worked to not be as OP as it is now or the counters get buffed up to actually do stuff or last long enough to do stuff.

Armitas · October 2015

Tryxus wrote: »

However, there are so many different counters to the Cloak. A small summary:
- Luminous Shards (Templar)
- Piercing Mark (NB)
- Streak (Sorc)
- Mines (Sorc)
- Caltrops (Assault)
- Revealing Flare (Support)
- Radiant Magelight (Mages Guild)

The counter to these counters are

Foot Speed
Stealth movement speed
Stealth detection reduction
CC + movement into stealth
Snare removal into stealth.
Shadow Image to stealth

I believe that we can also manage stealth in a way that doesn't break it by managing the counters to the stealth counters. There are just so many other ways to manage stealth without the 0 magicka recovery. I really hope they come up with something better than 0 magicka recovery.

Vangy · October 2015

"Magicka is desperatly needed for a magicka build" the same way "stamina is desperatly needed for a stam build" yet no one bats an eye when stam regen is set to 0 on block with dodge roll cost exponentially increasing per consecutive dodge roll. Why should cloak be any different?

/discuss

Tryxus · October 2015

Bloodgharm wrote: »

Tbh even with the reduced regen while cloaked, a magblade will still be able to cloak for over a minute.

Ofc a MagBlade will need to: without the reduced Stealth Radius from Med Armor, we rely on Cloak to sneak around. The point of this tweak basically is to allow the MagBlade to be able to go into stealth, and still have enough Magicka left to attack an unsuspecting victim

eliisra wrote: »

So punish players running sustain builds in PvP?

Reward derps for stacking spell power and max magicka?

I didn't say punish

You can run a sustain build all you want, and as a MagBlade have the 2172 Magicka Regen as I stated above in my first post. It's ONLY WHEN CLOAKED that the regen gets reduced, to prevent infinite cloaking.

No punishment here, just a small tweak during Cloak

Levo18 wrote: »

I dont mind cloak when i get attacked. If the opponent uses it in combat its fine. But what absolutely makes me rage is if someone flees with it. No other class can do that.

True, but that's the typical assassin playstyle: sneak, attack, attack failed?, escape

Cloak is supposed to be the NB escape skill

usmcjdking wrote: »

Too confusing and an utterly ridiculous idea, because cloak itself isn't the problem and doesn't need to be nerfed.

Detection need to be buffed.

I'm actually in a dueling guild (great ppl btw

) and one of my duels against a EP NB went horribly wrong:
I decided not to start with Piercing Mark, but to Cloak straight away. I wanted to try out smth, but it didn't work: he caught me with his Concealed Weapon. Why? He used a detection pot.

Duration maybe short, but then again, it still beats Cloak's 2.9 secs. StamBlades? Well they can't spam Cloak, so once you know there's one around, then there's plenty of counters to use against them. MagBlades on the other hand are a little trickier, especially if they can infinite cuz they can then regain small portions of Magicka. Hence this "ridiculous idea"

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

You do know that nearly all the counters to cloak are garbage right ?

Even a bad counter is still a counter: Cloak is very fragile and breaks easily

Vangy wrote: »

"Magicka is desperatly needed for a magicka build" the same way "stamina is desperatly needed for a stam build" yet no one bats an eye when stam regen is set to 0 on block with dodge roll cost exponentially increasing per consecutive dodge roll. Why should cloak be any different?

/discuss

That's a discussion for another time (currently planning to make a thread that includes this) and my 2 cents: yes, the Stam Block was totally unnecessary and I hope they remove it

Cloak shouldn't be nerfed, the other classes need to get boosted.

Alucardo · October 2015

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Please stop saying there are counters to cloak when most players know that there either not offer to every one or there total garbage. Either cloak gets re-worked to not be as OP as it is now or the counters get buffed up to actually do stuff or last long enough to do stuff.

Oh shut up. I got pulled out of cloak so much tonight by the red zerg I rage quit and logged my DK for some decent survivability. Seriously, I got hit with a resto staff every time I attempted to cloak, Templars jabs and shards, caltrops.. they were literally throwing everything everywhere so there was no place to hide.
One thing I've noticed in my campaign is that people are becoming more and more savvy on how to pull a NB out of cloak.

olsborg · October 2015

Make it so when youre cloaked, just as when youre stealthing with crouch, it costs stamina to move, so a magicka nb who keeps moving around will drain his stam/and not regain it either. This will be a very small nerf to the stamina nb, who cant rly spam it anyway, but a pretty impactful nerf to magicka sorc, who can spam it indefinately, but will now need to move smarter and watch his stamina more wisely if wanting to be invisible.

CP5 · October 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Please stop saying there are counters to cloak when most players know that there either not offer to every one or there total garbage. Either cloak gets re-worked to not be as OP as it is now or the counters get buffed up to actually do stuff or last long enough to do stuff.

Oh shut up. I got pulled out of cloak so much tonight by the red zerg I rage quit and logged my DK for some decent survivability. Seriously, I got hit with a resto staff every time I attempted to cloak, Templars jabs and shards, caltrops.. they were literally throwing everything everywhere so there was no place to hide.
One thing I've noticed in my campaign is that people are becoming more and more savvy on how to pull a NB out of cloak.

Just to point this out, a zerg would do that. People have said in the past to other classes that if they get zerged they should die.

Vangy · October 2015

olsborg wrote: »

Make it so when youre cloaked, just as when youre stealthing with crouch, it costs stamina to move, so a magicka nb who keeps moving around will drain his stam/and not regain it either. This will be a very small nerf to the stamina nb, who cant rly spam it anyway, but a pretty impactful nerf to magicka sorc, who can spam it indefinately, but will now need to move smarter and watch his stamina more wisely if wanting to be invisible.

I like this idea. Stam nbs never could perma cloak anyway. A good magicka nb can run circles around you. Dodge roll move away/behind pillar/wall/big tree cast cloak spam swallow soul Etc is kinda annoying. In cyro there might not be much terrain to use but in ic it's like magicka nb paradise. Not to mention the gazillions mobs that will aggro you while the magicka NB happily cloaks and wrecks havoc on you. None of these counters will do you any good in ic. You spam Aoe? Aggro x20 mob. Pop detect pot? No use that NB is behind a wall of adds. All these counters only work on newb nbs who engage you at the wrong place and don't even dodge roll before cloak.

Artis · October 2015

TheNephilimCrow wrote: »

The only issue I see them running into is the application of this. Coming up with a code to put this in effect should be the only challenge.

Choose
IF cloak==yes
magicka_regen=0.8*magicka_regen0
end;

WHILE cloak
magick_regen = 0.8*magicka_regen0
end;

But yeah, the idea itself needs more thinking, even though it's better than just setting regen to zero.
Seriously though, who plays a freaking magicka NB knows, that you can't really run away 100% of the time using cloak. Any aoe will reveal you, any NB will mark you..