Cloaking in PvP

Dalsinthus · July 2017

I really wish people would try out the different classes more throughly before coming to the forums to rant and ask for nerfs about sorc shields, unkillable tanks, templar heals, cloaking stamblades, or whatever complaint is the flavor of the week (undodgable cliff racers?). In my experience it takes a fair bit of practice to use any of these skills effectively when facing off against reasonably good players and there are plenty of counters to each.

To cloak 4-5 times in a row as a stamblade requires you to build for it and time it carefully. That means recovery food / drink like jewels of misrule, armor sets with magic recovery like shackle breaker, or recovery glyphs. All of this comes at a cost to damage and sustain on your primary resource. That is good game design. (And even then it commonly fails to work.)

Yes, cloak synergies well with shade and with fear, but that combo is 3/10 of your bar space - which doesn't give you damage or heals or much in the way of direct mitigation. Again this is also a good design trade off. These are also flavorful powers that give the class a unique identity.

On top of that, Cloak has lots of counters. I like piercing mark, templar jabs, or detect pots depending on which character I'm running. With those stamblades melt under pressure and magblades basically do as well, although magblades often have shields as a back up. The best things about detect pots is that they can be easily swapped for a more useful potion when you're not fighting a nightblade and they can be combined with immovability and magic recovery to counter fear and incap.

So please, try out a night blade for a while. They are fun but they aren't really any better than the other strong builds for the other classes (except maybe warden, I don't have much time logged on those).

Just my 2 cents. And yes, I recognize the irony in complaining about complaining.

s7732425ub17_ESO · July 2017

Cloaking is one of the silliest, most immersion breaking features of this game. I'm standing 5 meters away from you and all of a sudden you crouch down and disappear. Obviously I know that you are still right there, but for some silly reason the game won't let me target you.

coop500 · July 2017

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Cloaking is one of the silliest, most immersion breaking features of this game. I'm standing 5 meters away from you and all of a sudden you crouch down and disappear. Obviously I know that you are still right there, but for some silly reason the game won't let me target you.

You know what's also immersion breaking? Huge swarms of enemies wearing skimpy costumes but still being unkillable.

Danksta · July 2017

If a stamina NB can cloak 5 times without pots then they're likely using mag/stam regen drinks. This is how my stamina NB is set up and even with tri stat glyphs on big pieces of armor on a CP enabled campaign I'm coming in just under 18k health, that's the trade-off.

Runschei · July 2017

CavalryPK wrote: »

gaimers wrote: »

Using cloak and playing sneaky is part of being a nightblade, I know, and also it provides the class something unique.

However, lately I experienced fights, that have shown me, how annoying it can be to fight someone using cloak.

I am not really pointing at a magicka build right now, since they can sustain permanent cloaking. (Sadly )

But I want to talk about stamina builds. We all know cloak is an important part of stamblade builds. Crit heals, avoiding damage while waiting for dodge roll cost reset etc etc.

However very few skills, that SOLO/SMALLSCALE PvPers can get away with using , can detect cloaking players. Do keep in mind I'm not talking about someone, who sees 2-3 people riding on a horse, and goes into cloak to avoid a disadvantageous situation. The matter I'm talking about is engaging and disengaging combat.

I mostly play stam DK, group mostly consists of 2DKs, stamina and magicka. I do run volatile armor, which can break cloak. Magicka DK does use talons and volatile a. However the fact, that when we focus a stamblade who uses cloak after his health got down to ~10% AND ESCAPES WITHOUT EVER POPPING OUT OF STEALTH AGAIN, makes nightblade a really annoying class to fight against.

Stamina nightblades being able to cloak 4-5 times without a potion, USING A BUILD THAT IS VIABLE AND STILL DOES GOOD DAMAGE is an absolute no-go for me.

Cloak should get reworked like streak, making it cost more and more if cast more than once in a certain amount of time. No other class has the luxury, to get in and out of combat so quickly and being able to disappear in front of people.

Streak is a good example imo, it is used by both stamina and magicka sorcerer builds, magicka sorc still can afford to use it 4-5 times without draining his resources too much. Stamina can use it just enough to get behind line of sight etc.

Cloak should work the same way in my opinion.

What do others think about this?

P.S. the fact that half of the people we see in cyro are nightblades makes this even more annoying

I mostly agree with you . Please can you share a build (or tell me the name of a person) of a stamblade that can cloak 4-5 times with out using potion? I need this for reasons.

Will give you my build if you want to cloak 7 times without pot

Wreuntzylla · July 2017

gaimers wrote: »

Malmai wrote: »

gaimers wrote: »

Using cloak and playing sneaky is part of being a nightblade, I know, and also it provides the class something unique.

However, lately I experienced fights, that have shown me, how annoying it can be to fight someone using cloak.

I am not really pointing at a magicka build right now, since they can sustain permanent cloaking. (Sadly )

But I want to talk about stamina builds. We all know cloak is an important part of stamblade builds. Crit heals, avoiding damage while waiting for dodge roll cost reset etc etc.

However very few skills, that SOLO/SMALLSCALE PvPers can get away with using , can detect cloaking players. Do keep in mind I'm not talking about someone, who sees 2-3 people riding on a horse, and goes into cloak to avoid a disadvantageous situation. The matter I'm talking about is engaging and disengaging combat.

I mostly play stam DK, group mostly consists of 2DKs, stamina and magicka. I do run volatile armor, which can break cloak. Magicka DK does use talons and volatile a. However the fact, that when we focus a stamblade who uses cloak after his health got down to ~10% AND ESCAPES WITHOUT EVER POPPING OUT OF STEALTH AGAIN, makes nightblade a really annoying class to fight against.

Stamina nightblades being able to cloak 4-5 times without a potion, USING A BUILD THAT IS VIABLE AND STILL DOES GOOD DAMAGE is an absolute no-go for me.

Cloak should get reworked like streak, making it cost more and more if cast more than once in a certain amount of time. No other class has the luxury, to get in and out of combat so quickly and being able to disappear in front of people.

Streak is a good example imo, it is used by both stamina and magicka sorcerer builds, magicka sorc still can afford to use it 4-5 times without draining his resources too much. Stamina can use it just enough to get behind line of sight etc.

Cloak should work the same way in my opinion.

What do others think about this?

P.S. the fact that half of the people we see in cyro are nightblades makes this even more annoying

So you want to tell me to fight 1v1 vs stam dk with so many buffs that u cant even kill him 1v5 and with 10 k resist vs 30k and so many passives on dk that is just absurd if u wanna go 1v1 with dk... Let me just stand there while u beat me LoL...

Then again, you also missed my main point in this topic. The issue is, it's too easy to stay cloaked for insane amounts of time which makes you invulnerable basically. You can engage/disengage fights and escape with no punishment.

It's not a surprise you are a DK. This game is rock/paper/scissors and the Sorc class was given all of the best means to combat stealth. Followed by other NBs who have mark target.

That's not to say that DK's don't have the tools, but unlike a sorc, you have to be a decent player. You can't be slow about dropping your AoE. Alternatively, some players are very good at popping the destro ult, it's huge radius is good for the task although it seems a wste of ultimate. There are not many good NBs in the game worth hunting.

I keep detect pots for good NBs that use cloak to reset the fight rather than run. If they start to lose and just leave, it's annoying, but no more annoying than a streaking sorc. Templars and DKs are, of course, hamstrung by poor overall mobility, but it's the choice a player makes when they select a class.

Own · July 2017

perma block is worse

Solariken · July 2017

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

Anne_Firehawk · July 2017

*facepalm* at all the forumblades telling you to slot freaking AOEs in a smallscale scenario, you guys better stop zerging and experience how broken cloak really is

As a Magicka DK I don't have THAT many issues with cloak but all the *** forumblades claiming that cloak doesn't work is *** hilarious, people can even cloak INSIDE my talons because cloak surpresses the DoT and they just go invisible. It's an absolutely broken skill and unless you are a zergling and proud Xv1er there's not many counters to it, it's just broken on a Stamblade with Eternal Hunt and Shade (95% of Nightblades) and it's okayish on a Magblade which is kinda sad. A Magblade is barely gonna get out, a Stamblade just Shuffles -> Shade -> Roll - > Eternal Hunt Proc -> Roll -> Cloak -> Cloak -> Shade -> See ya!

Remove the DoT-Supression but don't let the DoTs pull the NB out of Cloak but they should continue to damage the NB.

TarrNokk · July 2017

crowfl56 wrote: »

The only thing I believe that is broken when a stamblade use's cloak, is the simple fact that they can cloak even when they have had a DOT of any kind hit them, just how and why can they be able to cloak when taking dmg ??????????

That my friends is the broken part. he he the rest is just skill by the player is all.

This! Let them cloak, but never successful with dots.

Shadowasrial · July 2017

We we seriously complaining about a nightblades ability to choose when they want to disengage from a fight? It's not hard to keep a nightblade from stealthing away.

Anne_Firehawk · July 2017

@CavalryPK

Whisper @Nafirian lol

idk · July 2017

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

Solariken · July 2017

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

Xvorg · July 2017

gaimers wrote: »

Malmai wrote: »

gaimers wrote: »

Using cloak and playing sneaky is part of being a nightblade, I know, and also it provides the class something unique.

However, lately I experienced fights, that have shown me, how annoying it can be to fight someone using cloak.

I am not really pointing at a magicka build right now, since they can sustain permanent cloaking. (Sadly )

But I want to talk about stamina builds. We all know cloak is an important part of stamblade builds. Crit heals, avoiding damage while waiting for dodge roll cost reset etc etc.

However very few skills, that SOLO/SMALLSCALE PvPers can get away with using , can detect cloaking players. Do keep in mind I'm not talking about someone, who sees 2-3 people riding on a horse, and goes into cloak to avoid a disadvantageous situation. The matter I'm talking about is engaging and disengaging combat.

I mostly play stam DK, group mostly consists of 2DKs, stamina and magicka. I do run volatile armor, which can break cloak. Magicka DK does use talons and volatile a. However the fact, that when we focus a stamblade who uses cloak after his health got down to ~10% AND ESCAPES WITHOUT EVER POPPING OUT OF STEALTH AGAIN, makes nightblade a really annoying class to fight against.

Stamina nightblades being able to cloak 4-5 times without a potion, USING A BUILD THAT IS VIABLE AND STILL DOES GOOD DAMAGE is an absolute no-go for me.

Cloak should get reworked like streak, making it cost more and more if cast more than once in a certain amount of time. No other class has the luxury, to get in and out of combat so quickly and being able to disappear in front of people.

Streak is a good example imo, it is used by both stamina and magicka sorcerer builds, magicka sorc still can afford to use it 4-5 times without draining his resources too much. Stamina can use it just enough to get behind line of sight etc.

Cloak should work the same way in my opinion.

What do others think about this?

P.S. the fact that half of the people we see in cyro are nightblades makes this even more annoying

So you want to tell me to fight 1v1 vs stam dk with so many buffs that u cant even kill him 1v5 and with 10 k resist vs 30k and so many passives on dk that is just absurd if u wanna go 1v1 with dk... Let me just stand there while u beat me LoL...

Then again, you also missed my main point in this topic. The issue is, it's too easy to stay cloaked for insane amounts of time which makes you invulnerable basically. You can engage/disengage fights and escape with no punishment.

It's no easy. You have to decide between fight or not fight. The very moment you decide to fight, the sustain becomes a great problem unless you go using light attacks.

Cloak is a very expensive skill not because of its cost, but due to the skill duration (3 secs, half the time a shield lasts)

Wreuntzylla · July 2017

Solariken wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

The problem here isn't really cloak. The problem is dodge. Dodge is seriously broken right now, they lowered the chance to 15% on shuffle but some players are able to combine shuffle with dodge roll to avoid literally all damage, and with great sustain.

Alot of it is tied to proc sets not scaling with stats, but my overall point is that they are going to adjust dodge somehow, at that point cloaking and dot suppression will be a non-issue.

Derra · July 2017

Sharee wrote: »

Berenhir wrote: »

Drink a detect potion next time.
Thread closed.

1, cast a shade
2, move away from shade
3, teleport 15m to shade, putting you behind the back of anyone chasing you in melee
4, dodge roll in the opposite direction they are running.

Congrats, now you are out of the 20m detection range of the potion and can cloak freely. There also is nothing short of a negate that your pursuer could do to prevent you from doing it. (In other words no, thread not closed)

Detect potion range gets reduced by any bonus that reduces sneak detection radius.
Ironically one of the reasons why stamblades (especially khajiit and bosmer) cloak better than their magica counterparts. Their detection radius is tiny even with a potion.

Rataroto · July 2017

Berenhir wrote: »

Drink a detect potion next time.
Thread closed.

in case of stam just wait they are bound to show up lol

magelight/expert hunter works as well

and everything breakes cloak lol

mrdankles · July 2017

I'm a stamblade, can only cloak 3 times before magic is out, 4 with tri stat food....I think.

Anne_Firehawk · July 2017

mrdankles wrote: »

I'm a stamblade, can only cloak 3 times before magic is out, 4 with tri stat food....I think.

Then you are definetely doing it wrong.

Dalsinthus · July 2017

Solariken wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

That's an interesting idea and it could work, but I think you'd have to give nbs some access to major mending or they would just melt. It's already the squishiest class.

rfennell_ESO · July 2017

TarrNokk wrote: »

crowfl56 wrote: »

The only thing I believe that is broken when a stamblade use's cloak, is the simple fact that they can cloak even when they have had a DOT of any kind hit them, just how and why can they be able to cloak when taking dmg ??????????

That my friends is the broken part. he he the rest is just skill by the player is all.

This! Let them cloak, but never successful with dots.

That would mean that 99% of the time in cyrondil you can't cloak.

Because... if it's not some 1v1 or really small scale fight... you always have dots on you and to tell you the truth... even in smaller fights you have a dot or two on you nearly always.

Wreuntzylla · July 2017

mrdankles wrote: »

I'm a stamblade, can only cloak 3 times before magic is out, 4 with tri stat food....I think.

Same. I

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

TarrNokk wrote: »

crowfl56 wrote: »

The only thing I believe that is broken when a stamblade use's cloak, is the simple fact that they can cloak even when they have had a DOT of any kind hit them, just how and why can they be able to cloak when taking dmg ??????????

That my friends is the broken part. he he the rest is just skill by the player is all.

This! Let them cloak, but never successful with dots.

That would mean that 99% of the time in cyrondil you can't cloak.

Because... if it's not some 1v1 or really small scale fight... you always have dots on you and to tell you the truth... even in smaller fights you have a dot or two on you nearly always.

Secondary effects from enchants are a huge source of dots. Part of the reason I use poison or disease over weapon damage, etc.

Rohamad_Ali · July 2017

Make detect pots with ward protection . Many times I am catching the mad bomber for the group or at least surviving the attempted gank with these wonderful potions .

Solariken · July 2017

Dalsinthus wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

That's an interesting idea and it could work, but I think you'd have to give nbs some access to major mending or they would just melt. It's already the squishiest class.

Properly built stamblades aren't squishy at all. You know that Shadowy Disguise > Rally is already a full-health heal right?

yodased · July 2017

Mag dk shots chains. Nightblade ggwp.

Wreuntzylla · July 2017

Anne_Firehawk wrote: »

mrdankles wrote: »

I'm a stamblade, can only cloak 3 times before magic is out, 4 with tri stat food....I think.

Then you are definetely doing it wrong.

It's spot on for a gank spec.

Xvorg · July 2017

Solariken wrote: »

Dalsinthus wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

That's an interesting idea and it could work, but I think you'd have to give nbs some access to major mending or they would just melt. It's already the squishiest class.

Properly built stamblades aren't squishy at all. You know that Shadowy Disguise > Rally is already a full-health heal right?

don't want to be that guy, but rally is a HoT, right?

yodased · July 2017

Xvorg wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Dalsinthus wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

The thing I hate most about cloak is that it suppresses all DOTs. That is such a stupid crutch get-out-of-jail-free card. Isn't it enough that Cloak makes you invisible, hit harder, and move faster?

I love playing stamblade but that particular feature of cloak is completely over the top.

One morph of cloak used to cleans the dots. It was a nerf when it was changed to mere suppression. Dots are to prevelent in the game to have cloak not work at all when dots are present. Would make it virtually unusable as intended.

Besides, OP is likely incorrect with his assumption of what he saw. Stamblades cannot cloak for long since they lack the max magicka and magicka regen. It was likely a potion used, and maybe cloak a time or two along with it.

No to be clear I don't think DOTs should break cloak, but the damage should continue IMO.

That's an interesting idea and it could work, but I think you'd have to give nbs some access to major mending or they would just melt. It's already the squishiest class.

Properly built stamblades aren't squishy at all. You know that Shadowy Disguise > Rally is already a full-health heal right?

don't want to be that guy, but rally is a HoT, right?

Rally itself is a HOT, but when it ends (by reapplying) it burst heals. So rally, cloak, wait 5 seconds, rally, heal

Sylosi · July 2017

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

That is good game design. (And even then it commonly fails to work.)

ESO in terms of balance is not remotely "good game design", it is terrible, it is basically a cheese fest, with a system that lets people build to extremes and a fine example of why people consider PvP in MMORPGs a joke (and even by the low standards of MMORPGs, ESO is pretty bad, I mean the fact they have 3 teams in their "competitive" PvP of battelgrounds is laughable).

The reality is in an open world type scenario like Cyrodil there is simply no way of balancing invisibility (and that includes crouching that every class can do), being able to open up on someone at any time with them completely unaware is a totally one sided imbalanced mechanic, not only do I as the invisible player decide when to engage and have the element of surprise on my side, then once I attack the skill onus is very much on the other player as opposed to me, it is more about him having more skill to deal with that scenario than me rolling my face along the keyboard, it is low risk / high reward, you can not balance that in any way.

Then that goes double for cloak, because even if I fail from stealth, I have the best disengage available in the game, so I can attack a player unaware in a totally one sided imbalanced way, and then if I screw up or am outplayed by that player, then most of the time I can still get away (even with alleged counters) so basically am not punished at all for failing, it is laughable.

That some MMORPG players don't get how imbalanced invisibility is in that situation just says a lot about the low quality of player in these type of games.