Dark Shades Morph as a Toggle?

GrumpyDuckling · April 2016

The Nightblade's Dark Shades skill, the one that summons two melee shades to fight by your side, can be a bit tedious/annoying when having to constantly recast the ability to keep it up between battles (especially since you have to target enemies to cast it). As it currently plays, Dark Shades isn't as fun as Shadow Image and it feels more like a chore than a fun ability to use.

What does everyone think about the possibility of making the Dark Shades morph a toggle? Hopefully it would make the skill more fun and less tedious to use.

Making one morph a toggle while the other has a timer seems to work well with Leeching Strikes/Siphoning Attacks, and the same success could be replicated with Dark Shades/Summon Shade. Summon Shade would be too powerful as a toggle, but with Dark Shades it could work wonderfully.

Note: I am presenting this idea based solely on my experience while using the Shade abilities in PVE. I have never tried them in PVP.

Armann · April 2016

Wouldn't mind if they did something to make Dark Shades a spell I'd consider to use at all. I used to main a Dark Templar in AoC and had a spell called Dread Shadow that would debuff mobs much like NB Shades do and grab aggro as long as anyone else didn't taunt on the mob, very useful tank tool for DT's. It was extremly squishy with an insane evasion rate which meant that sometimes raid mobs would hit it and it would get oneshot. That said I like your suggestion.

GrumpyDuckling · April 2016

I've been looking at the other class skills in the game that are acquired at level 42 in their respective skill lines. The Dark Shades morph seems to be among the least useful of them all.

Also, consider that morphs are supposed to enhance a skill. I'm not quite sure how having two shades instead of one (which is what the Dark Shades morph gives us) is supposed to make it a viable morph. It's not like the shades do much damage. Both shades always attack the same target, so I'm not getting damage debuffs on multiple targets. It's just a waste.

lolo_01b16_ESO · April 2016

The main problem with dark shades is that it is the counter to a mechanic that got nerfed a lot. In the past shades used to be great to force tanks to drop block. But now that tanks are a rare and often very weak species, the dark shades morph has become nearly useless.
However I don't see how a toggle would improve anything. To get people to use it for pve dps it needs to be strong enough to either replace magelight or mercyless resolve + proxi. Most tanks will use heroic slash to get ultimate anyway, so they don't need the damage debuff from shades. And for pvp I couldn't imagine a single sane nb who would change shadow immage for a toggle that doesn't provide much utillity.

GrumpyDuckling · April 2016

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

The main problem with dark shades is that it is the counter to a mechanic that got nerfed a lot. In the past shades used to be great to force tanks to drop block. But now that tanks are a rare and often very weak species, the dark shades morph has become nearly useless.
However I don't see how a toggle would improve anything. To get people to use it for pve dps it needs to be strong enough to either replace magelight or mercyless resolve + proxi. Most tanks will use heroic slash to get ultimate anyway, so they don't need the damage debuff from shades. And for pvp I couldn't imagine a single sane nb who would change shadow immage for a toggle that doesn't provide much utillity.

Some great points.

In PVE I wonder if making them a toggle and also making it so they can take aggro (like sorc summons) would make them more viable/beneficial to tanks. However that would likely mean they'd have to be given health bars so they could die.

In PVP you nailed it. No reason to ever use Dark Shades. I haven't used them much in PVP so I'm not even sure where to begin making suggestions (yet) to make them more viable.

Silver_Strider · April 2016

Shades need to function like most other DoTs and constantly be up once they hit their target. Since enemies tend to move around a lot, shades constantly need to run around after them to do damage, which is terrible considering that it leaves periods of time where they aren't contributing at all and since they are on a timer, losing ANYTHING that the shades offer is a huge waste.

Another thing shades need to do is to offer some utility. You can get the same debuff as shades from Shadow Image or Low Slash but in the case of Shadow Image, you get a free teleport and in the case of Low Slash, you either get an AoE snare or Ultimate Regen, depending on the morph you pick. Dark Shades should either have a leeching effect for the caster as a form of resource recovery, offer up a synergy of some sort, or have a significant increase to their damage so that it at least makes up for the lack of utility.

If either one of these changes, or even both happened, maybe Shades would see some actual use but as it stands, you're better off with Shadow Image every time.

Brrrofski · April 2016

They apply maim, hence needing a target.

Reducing everyone's damage by 15% would be a bit much.

Mojmir · April 2016

possible make it into a mirror image type defense, or a clone of you.it could act as a shield.but personally I wouldn't use it.

susmitds · April 2016

To be honest, be it PvE or PvP, the Shadow Image teleport function is much better than two shades. And the Minor Maim seems to work a bit more reliably with an archer rather than two slow shades running around after the target. Though the damage of both the abilities is pretty minor, the archer can consistently hit the enemy at least. Two shades might be better for some tanks, but for me, the teleport function saved me a lot even as a tank, when I was out of stamina, or when I desperately needed heals but was out of resources.