Shade fix is good to hear.

Merciless change is interestingly going to lower the skill floor and raise the ceiling. On the one hand, bad mageblades who mess up their weaving will enjoy not being punished for being bad. On the other hand, good mageblades will be able to refresh Merciless' duration closer toward its end and carry over the light attack weaves since firing their last proc, accelerating their offensive tempo. I hope ZOS sees this one coming.

Merciless has a nasty bug which can be seen by watching Gilliamtherogue's stream from yesterday. Basically have to wait an entire second before firing the bow

LiquidPony wrote: »

Subversus wrote: »

Here's what I think of the new change: IT WAS NOT NEEDED. Magblade was in a fine place, both in top tier PvP and in PvE. All these buffs will ultimately lead to people complaining, then the inevitable mega nerfs into the ground. Magblade was in the best place it's been on in years, I don't get why they have to add all these damn changes nobody ever asks for.

Edit: also, the new change makes magblade even more ez mode than it was when they dumbed it down with morrowind. They slowly strip away all class identity, it wouldn't surprise me if soon they'll just make the merciless bow fire automatically. Stupid.

I'm not sure how much of a "buff" the Grim Focus change really is.

Doesn't seem like it's going to raise the ceiling for top-end players very much, at least, not in the PTS testing I was able to do yesterday on my magblade and stamblade.

It's a buff for players who currently aren't able to proc the bow as often as they should, sure, but that's not much of a big deal. It's been a bit strange for a while that a magblade/stamblade has to put together some crazy complex rotation to achieve the same DPS as a magsorc/stamsorc or stamDK who mostly just Heavy Attack --> DoT --> Heavy Attack --> DoT ... etc.

It isn't a buff It's a QoL change

This way I don't strain a muscle trying to use grim

I still don't get why people think it's a huge buff for merciless resolve, on the PVE it just "buffs" the lower dps players cause of more forgiving rotation, the high end people already have mostly perfect rotation so no difference to them. In PVP while ganking this does absolutely nothing, u still need to initiate a fight first to get stacks.

Subversus wrote: »

Here's what I think of the new change: IT WAS NOT NEEDED. Magblade was in a fine place, both in top tier PvP and in PvE. All these buffs will ultimately lead to people complaining, then the inevitable mega nerfs into the ground. Magblade was in the best place it's been on in years, I don't get why they have to add all these damn changes nobody ever asks for.

Edit: also, the new change makes magblade even more ez mode than it was when they dumbed it down with morrowind. They slowly strip away all class identity, it wouldn't surprise me if soon they'll just make the merciless bow fire automatically. Stupid.

You're really, really wrong IMO. Lag and broken animations shouldn't be a factor in whether you waste 4 stacks of merciless resolve or whether you get the proc. It wasn't fine. Magnb abilities should work consistent with all other abilities for all other classes in the game, but they do not.

In fact, magnb still isn't fine. The animation for various magnb abilities (funnel health for example) still prevents proper light attack weaving. If you receive the visual cue that your light attack went off by seeing the animation after funnel health, you should actually use a light attack, but this isn't the case. The animation of funnel health is still broken, and needs to be fixed. I believe the problem is caused by the animation itself just being too long, although I'm not positive.

You might suggest that these are changes "no one asks for", but everyone I know in game who plays magnb does not enjoy wonky/broken animation interactions or losing stacks because of lag/inconsistencies in the way abilities interact.

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Merciless change is interestingly going to lower the skill floor and raise the ceiling. On the one hand, bad mageblades who mess up their weaving will enjoy not being punished for being bad.

It's not about "being bad". Hitting a light attack 100ms earlier than you did the previous light attack and not using a light attack even though you see the animation should not be a determining factor in your dps. It's inconsistent with the way that every other class is played. If you see a light attack animation, a light attack should go off, and you should receive a stack of merciless resolve, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Instead, one mistake or one lag spike and woops, you've wasted 4 stacks. When you're racing the countdown of merciless resolve, this is a huge annoyance. On top of this, your framerate in game is inversely proportional to your input lag, so a lag spike does not have to just be a latency issue, it can be an issue with your framerate too, which causes discrepancies between the timing of your rotation while you are dummy parsing and in an actual raid setting.

I think they completely took all skill out of the Merciless Resolve ability and therefore need to adjust the damage to reflect that if they're going to leave it as is. I'm okay with the change to where it doesn't refresh the number of light attacks needed every time you activate the skill again but you should still have to land those light attacks within 20 or 30 seconds of each other.

Completely removing the time limit not only makes it too easy to proc since anyone can land 7 light/heavy attacks if they have a couple of minutes to do it and it allows a skilled player to land 6 light attacks and then just wait until they get the opponent low on health before they do the last light attack to get a huge burst of damage between the Spectral bow and an execute or Ult.

The skill with a Magblade right now is timing the Spectral bow and sometimes having to fire it a few times before you finally line up that perfect burst combo. Now you can just wait forever to use it since it doesn't run out until you're out of combat. The change really makes no sense.

usmcjdking wrote: »

I think this change is a massive QOL fix for magblades but it also puts Grim Focus into stupidly abusive territory for PVP. A mediocre base damage nerf 6-10% is not uncalled for if this change goes to live.

As long as being in/out of combat and keeping/loosing stacks actually work, it should be ok

Shadow image will be a welcome fix. Would also like to know if they have a fix planned for cloak (breaking on light atks)

Has anyone tested to see if the port to someone else shade works if theirs is in range but yours isn't?

That little "feature" has allowed for some very sneaky gameplay in the past.

Qbiken wrote: »

Shade fix was nice.

Merciless change not needed. Why buff a class that´s already #1 when it comes to range DPS???? I don´t see the logic...

Merciless change is very good as previously many players found very difficult to proc. They may reduce some damage but it has to be this way.

technohic wrote: »

Has anyone tested the merciless resolve change? Refreshing while already up sounds like no big deal at all. I think the real concern is after letting it expire and still keeping the stacks so long as you stay in combat is a concern; but what happens if you cloak? Does it consider that leaving combat and remove the stacks?

Might try to test myself later today if I get a chance.

stacks stay but only 4 secs than they are gone. u also need to be still concerned about them although its not that hard anymore