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Invisibillity and ESO

kypranb14_ESO
kypranb14_ESO
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Invisibility and ESO

Currently, invisibility is broken by practically anything that isn't single target or a targted DoT.

Could you imagine if your wards
- Only lasted 3 seconds
- Only protected you from targeted single target Damage Over Time and single target Direct Damage.
- Didn't block any damage from any AoEs at all, and were removed instantly upon taking damage.
- Could be removed from you with utility abilities like Magelight and such.

This is the nonsense that Nightblades deal with, with their Class defining skill. Nightblades don't get a dozen bleeds to stack, and built in proc that still crits post-proc nerf, or a passive finisher. We also don't get a class ward.

My idea is to completely rework invisibility, as follows.

Rework Idea
- Invisibility can only be broken by Magelight/Expert Hunter and Caltrops/Revealing Flare and their morphs.
- Piercing Mark would remain unchanged, allowing you to see your target should they go invisible.
- Invisible players would take a large increase in damage while damaged during invisibility.
- Shadow Cloak and it's morphs would become a toggle.
- While toggled on, you do not regenerate magicka. Instead, it drains ~1,300 per second.
- For the first 3 seconds after toggling Shadowy Disguise on, all damage/healing done would be critical.
- While Dark Cloak is toggled on, the incoming damage penalty is reduced. Upon exiting Dark Cloak, you gain minor protection for 8 seconds.
- Attacking while any invisibility is active would remove the invisibility effect.
- Shadowy Disguise would only critical it's first attack upon leaving exiting invisibility, assuming it was done within the 3 second time limit.
- Detection Potions would allow you to see invisible opponents. (They may already do this, I have never used one.)


That's my idea, feel free to post your ideas, or give mine some healthy criticism!

Disclaimer: I'm not a salty Nightblade that thinks Nightblades are inferior to everything, I'd just like to see our class defining mechanic work to it's fullest potential.
  • Didgerion
    Didgerion
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    Invisibility and ESO

    Currently, invisibility is broken by practically anything that isn't single target or a targted DoT.

    Could you imagine if your wards
    - Only lasted 3 seconds
    They last less than 3 seconds (2s at most). One heavy attack is removing one shield while also filling the attackers stamina pool.
    - Only protected you from targeted single target Damage Over Time and single target Direct Damage.
    One shield protects one single target attack
    - Didn't block any damage from any AoEs at all, and were removed instantly upon taking damage.
    They don't block oblivion damage or shield breaker damage
    - Could be removed from you with utility abilities like Magelight and such.
    again you can remove them with your spam-able targeted attack - 1 attack = 1 shield down.
    This is the nonsense that Nightblades deal with, with their Class defining skill. Nightblades don't get a dozen bleeds to stack, and built in proc that still crits post-proc nerf, or a passive finisher. We also don't get a class ward.
    Same with mag sorcs - nonsense!
  • victoriana-blue
    victoriana-blue
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    Hmm, this would make magicka ganking much more difficult, because there wouldn't be any magicka regen while cloak was toggled. Bug or feature?

    Making everything crit for three seconds is to powerful, imo. While attacking would break cloak, you can fit a lot of healing in three seconds. Maybe something like how siphoning & leeching strikes used to be would work instead, where dark cloak becomes a toggle and shadowy disguise remains an on-use ability.

    The rework doesn't address another negative: using cloak forces you to build entirely for direct damage to be effective in PvP, because every time your dots tick (like caltrops or a siege weapon) you're pulled out of cloak. Once you attack you should absolutely be pulled out of stealth for that first hit and at some interval thereafter, and burst is already king, but the lack of dots limits builds and makes cloak useless as a getaway tool if you dare use siege or a single dot.
    CP 750+
    Never enough inventory space, even with storage coffers and a mule account
  • kypranb14_ESO
    kypranb14_ESO
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    Hmm, this would make magicka ganking much more difficult, because there wouldn't be any magicka regen while cloak was toggled. Bug or feature?

    Making everything crit for three seconds is to powerful, imo. While attacking would break cloak, you can fit a lot of healing in three seconds. Maybe something like how siphoning & leeching strikes used to be would work instead, where dark cloak becomes a toggle and shadowy disguise remains an on-use ability.

    The rework doesn't address another negative: using cloak forces you to build entirely for direct damage to be effective in PvP, because every time your dots tick (like caltrops or a siege weapon) you're pulled out of cloak. Once you attack you should absolutely be pulled out of stealth for that first hit and at some interval thereafter, and burst is already king, but the lack of dots limits builds and makes cloak useless as a getaway tool if you dare use siege or a single dot.

    Feature. It's intended to be used for quick re-positioning, escapes, or a tactical crit buff, not permanently being undetectable. It's punishing on your resources as most of the suggested changes are buffs to cloak.

    It does address that - Making all abilities crit for 3 seconds would fix this. 3 seconds of all attacks/heals critting is not overpowered. We have a set that does this for a longer duration, Shadowy Disguise does this for heals already.

    Templars have a built in proc that can crit, and can proc twice per second. Sorcerers have a built in proc that can crit, though the restrictions on this one are much stricter. These are both extremely potent non-ultimate damage dealers, and they are passive, FREE.

    I will add more to this later, I G2G for now.
  • davey1107
    davey1107
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    Player with three Nightblades here...hmm. My thoughts.

    The premise - invisibility is off.

    I concur. It’s effing messed up as a pile of mating zombie skeevers. (Which we will all admit is pretty messed up). The problems with it seem to fall into a couple of major categories:

    1. Abilities break in this game, and cloak is vulnerable to being broken while also vulnerable to being exploited by broken abilities. Right now it’s so-so. Not as bad as some patches, but still wonky. Some abilities are breaking it that don’t seem like they should.

    2. There are too many abilities that break cloak that are intended to. There are just too many AOEs, snares, roots, stuns amd piddly damage abilities in the game now. NBs can’t fight groups as they’re intended to if everyone in the group can use their most powerful abilities they’d slot anyway to break stealth.

    3. The lag is probsbly the biggest reason cloak sucks. As a result, when playing as a nightblade you face the constant challenge of spending resources on cloak, then attacks that were queued up before you proc’d it come through and break it. Cloak functions fine against NPCs...use it when approaching resource guards, and they shoot, you cloak, then their missiles fly by. This works ok with a few human enemies, but once the server slows a bit you’re screwed. You cloak, get hit anyway and cloak breaks, then in come three more attacks, you cloak, again it breaks, and you’re chased down and killed.



    The solutions

    I generally like these ideas, but they’d take a lot of testing...cloak is a versatile ability that has a lot of uses in the game, so any changes need to ensure it works for them.

    - only specialized abilities break it. I like the idea. People should have to slot a specialized skill and sacrifice a slot to break cloak. This is similar to how magic shields work...if I want to break through powerful shields, I need to bring special abilities or gear into my build.

    - bigger damage during cloak. Hmm...obviously I’m skeptical as a nightblade. I feel like we already pay a price for stealth by being squishy...I just want stealth to work well, I don’t feel that’s asking for a buff that needs an offset. I’m not against a damage penalty, but I’d have to think about how it would work and what kind of damage. I mean...cloak is an essential skill during melee fights. I use it to confuse my opponent all the time. I will cloak even while taking damage just so my opponent loses sight of me. Cloak, roll behind them, pop up fighting. I don’t want to take more damage during these types of fights, which is a big part of nightblade play.

    But what you were talking about are other types of damage. If I sat in the middle of a hurricane while cloaked and it wasn’t broken, I should pay a price for that. Probably.

    - toggle / regen. It’s hard to imagine how playing it as a toggle would feel. It might work, or it might be tough. It would be useful for distance cloaking....but then we consider fighting again and I’m not sure it wouldn’t be clunky. Possibly not...it’d be a big change! I don’t think cutting off resource regen would work. Maybe its cost could be set so that it flowed mostly like it does now...but shutting off regen is a pretty annoying mechanic when they employ it.

    I wonder if the toggle idea would even be possible in the programming. We don’t have abilities that are a cost-over-time. At least, I don’t think we do. The system might not be able to do this.

    - temporary Crit - sure. I’ve never been married to this feature anyway...it creates limited rotations...so I like your way better. It allows a non-attack ability to be used after cloak, then preserve the crit bonus for the next attack.


    So overall I think those suggestions would warrant some trials. There seem like other solutions that are simpler changes to the game and play style, but most end up making cloak too powerful by seeking to make it usable. For example, cloak could have a dodge feature, or snare/root immunity, or some sort of purge...any of these might solve the issues with laggy cloak, but then Nightblades would be dang near impossible to track down. These ideas seem to have far fewer drawbacks than most anything else I’ve heard proposed.

  • Lynx7386
    Lynx7386
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    Your suggestion would make cloak even more useless. Right now you can cloak indefinitely with enough magical recovery, and always have enough magicka to attack.

    This is a case of get good and learn when to use your cloak.
    PS4 / NA
    M'asad - Khajiit Nightblade - Healer
    Pakhet - Khajiit Dragonknight - Tank
    Raksha - Khajiit Sorcerer - Stamina DPS
    Bastet - Khajiit Templar - Healer
    Leonin - Khajiit Warden - Tank
  • Apache_Kid
    Apache_Kid
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    Cloak is broken way to easily by DoT abilites and AoEs. Anyone that complains that cloak is too strong needs learn all the direct, hard counters to cloak that are in the game.
  • danno8
    danno8
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    I personally prefer the GW2 style of cloak where you can take all damage while you are cloaked but are not revealed.

    Initiating any attack while cloaked reveals you for 5 seconds making you unable to cloak for the duration.

    In this game though I think magical regeneration would have to be paused while cloaked for something like this to work.

    It would certainly fix the "x still breaks cloak!!" problem.
  • Waffennacht
    Waffennacht
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    R you struggling with an NB? There's plenty of guides to help
    Gamer tag: DasPanzerKat NA Xbox One
    1300+ CP
    Battleground PvP'er

    Waffennacht' Builds
  • kyle.wilson
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    Most of the reasons people struggle with cloak, is that they aren't running anything to combat it.
    I know in non-vet NBs are common because very few people have counters to it.

    Vivec is similar, where zerglings get to comfortable in group and complain when they are ganked.
    I used mark target on a nb, then he cried to me for about 15minutes.




  • kypranb14_ESO
    kypranb14_ESO
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    davey1107 wrote: »
    Player with three Nightblades here...hmm. My thoughts.

    The premise - invisibility is off.

    I concur. It’s effing messed up as a pile of mating zombie skeevers. (Which we will all admit is pretty messed up). The problems with it seem to fall into a couple of major categories:

    1. Abilities break in this game, and cloak is vulnerable to being broken while also vulnerable to being exploited by broken abilities. Right now it’s so-so. Not as bad as some patches, but still wonky. Some abilities are breaking it that don’t seem like they should.

    2. There are too many abilities that break cloak that are intended to. There are just too many AOEs, snares, roots, stuns amd piddly damage abilities in the game now. NBs can’t fight groups as they’re intended to if everyone in the group can use their most powerful abilities they’d slot anyway to break stealth.

    3. The lag is probsbly the biggest reason cloak sucks. As a result, when playing as a nightblade you face the constant challenge of spending resources on cloak, then attacks that were queued up before you proc’d it come through and break it. Cloak functions fine against NPCs...use it when approaching resource guards, and they shoot, you cloak, then their missiles fly by. This works ok with a few human enemies, but once the server slows a bit you’re screwed. You cloak, get hit anyway and cloak breaks, then in come three more attacks, you cloak, again it breaks, and you’re chased down and killed.



    The solutions

    I generally like these ideas, but they’d take a lot of testing...cloak is a versatile ability that has a lot of uses in the game, so any changes need to ensure it works for them.

    - only specialized abilities break it. I like the idea. People should have to slot a specialized skill and sacrifice a slot to break cloak. This is similar to how magic shields work...if I want to break through powerful shields, I need to bring special abilities or gear into my build.

    - bigger damage during cloak. Hmm...obviously I’m skeptical as a nightblade. I feel like we already pay a price for stealth by being squishy...I just want stealth to work well, I don’t feel that’s asking for a buff that needs an offset. I’m not against a damage penalty, but I’d have to think about how it would work and what kind of damage. I mean...cloak is an essential skill during melee fights. I use it to confuse my opponent all the time. I will cloak even while taking damage just so my opponent loses sight of me. Cloak, roll behind them, pop up fighting. I don’t want to take more damage during these types of fights, which is a big part of nightblade play.

    But what you were talking about are other types of damage. If I sat in the middle of a hurricane while cloaked and it wasn’t broken, I should pay a price for that. Probably.

    - toggle / regen. It’s hard to imagine how playing it as a toggle would feel. It might work, or it might be tough. It would be useful for distance cloaking....but then we consider fighting again and I’m not sure it wouldn’t be clunky. Possibly not...it’d be a big change! I don’t think cutting off resource regen would work. Maybe its cost could be set so that it flowed mostly like it does now...but shutting off regen is a pretty annoying mechanic when they employ it.

    I wonder if the toggle idea would even be possible in the programming. We don’t have abilities that are a cost-over-time. At least, I don’t think we do. The system might not be able to do this.

    - temporary Crit - sure. I’ve never been married to this feature anyway...it creates limited rotations...so I like your way better. It allows a non-attack ability to be used after cloak, then preserve the crit bonus for the next attack.


    So overall I think those suggestions would warrant some trials. There seem like other solutions that are simpler changes to the game and play style, but most end up making cloak too powerful by seeking to make it usable. For example, cloak could have a dodge feature, or snare/root immunity, or some sort of purge...any of these might solve the issues with laggy cloak, but then Nightblades would be dang near impossible to track down. These ideas seem to have far fewer drawbacks than most anything else I’ve heard proposed.

    I agree with you man, many tests would need to be done to assure this worked. It would be cool if Zenimax staff took a look at this.
  • kypranb14_ESO
    kypranb14_ESO
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    Lynx7386 wrote: »
    Your suggestion would make cloak even more useless. Right now you can cloak indefinitely with enough magical recovery, and always have enough magicka to attack.

    This is a case of get good and learn when to use your cloak.

    This is a case of I am good, and already know when to cloak.

    This is a case of a class defining skill being underwhelming.

    This is a case of nobody wants you or your condescending tone on this forum.

    Thank you.
  • kypranb14_ESO
    kypranb14_ESO
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    R you struggling with an NB? There's plenty of guides to help

    I'm not, I have played over 2,000 hours on Magblade between Xbox and PC, with a further ~300 on Stamblade.
  • kyle.wilson
    kyle.wilson
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    R you struggling with an NB? There's plenty of guides to help

    I'm not, I have played over 2,000 hours on Magblade between Xbox and PC, with a further ~300 on Stamblade.

    Hours played is not an indication of skill. Just look at the number of terribad grand overlords now in the game.
    Even players that have a reputation for snipe and poison inject spamming are reaching that level.

    But, maybe its time to take a break from the game if its upsetting you this much.
  • kypranb14_ESO
    kypranb14_ESO
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    R you struggling with an NB? There's plenty of guides to help

    I'm not, I have played over 2,000 hours on Magblade between Xbox and PC, with a further ~300 on Stamblade.

    Hours played is not an indication of skill. Just look at the number of terribad grand overlords now in the game.
    Even players that have a reputation for snipe and poison inject spamming are reaching that level.

    But, maybe its time to take a break from the game if its upsetting you this much.

    I agree that hours played is not an indication of skill. I've already clarified that I'm not mad, I'm not even upset. Someone suggesting an improvement to the game does not insinuate them being upset, it means that they care for the game and would love to see things improved upon.

    You can see here, I successfully 1v4 without using fear or wards. I don't claim to be a top tier player, but I'm far from bad. There are more videos on my channel similar to this one.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p8jKzY72E

    This is the last time I will respond to you if you just keep spouting unintelligent nonsense though, because you are obviously trolling and not adding anything constructive to the discussion. :smile:
  • KingYogi415
    KingYogi415
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    Cloak takes skill and timing to use effectively.

    Working as intended!
  • aeowulf
    aeowulf
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    Used to be awesome in PVE when a taunted boss just hung round looking for you.

    I actually think one of it's morphs should be reworked into a tanking skill, a heavy armoured dude with 100% invis does not 'feel right' somehow. I actually felt guilty when i used it pre-morrowind :D
  • Solariken
    Solariken
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    I'm not a fan of the OP suggestion... I would prefer a Cloak that is unbreakable from damage but instead of preventing DOT damage it would do the following:

    Caster remains visible but untargetable
    Decrease all damage taken by X%
    Decrease all healing received and damage done by X%
    Increase movement speed by X%

    This would shift its value into more of a repositioning/mitigation tool instead of giving such a massive offensive combat advantage.
  • NyassaV
    NyassaV
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    No... How about they just fix it
    Flawless Conqueror ~ Grand Overlord
    She/Her ~ PC/NA | I record things for fun and for info
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