The Nightblade Nerfs are coming, better let the good ones negotiate the changes
BohnT
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Right now Nightblades are more popular than ever, they have always been very popular as most people seem to be drawn to the rouge or assassin's playstyle.
But with past balance changes nightblades performance jumped from being a good to overperfoming.
When going into Cyrodiil stamina nightblades make about 25-35% of the whole playerbase in cyro while there are 10 specs.
When counting magicka nightblades aswell you'll see that 30-40% of Cyrodiils population is nightblades.
When looking at the other parts of the game, stamnbs and magnbs pull the highest ST meele and ranged damage thus are prefered for Trial groups. They also grant their group decent damage buffs with a high uptime on major slayer by utilising warmachine or master architect.
So why did they became so popular especially in pvp?
First nightblades have the easiest time to get kills even at low skill levels.
Your burst is front loaded so you don't need to survive to get the most out of your burst.
The burst is very high even when running a sustain build you pull equally high numbers as the other classes even when they are using offensive focused builds.
Also NB feature the cheapest single target nuke ability with 3 powerful effects, cc, major defile and a unique 20% damage boost for 6 seconds, aswell as an non ultimate nuke that has a higher tooltip than incap which got changed twice to become useable even for the worst players and a high damage spammable that also applies major fracture.
These 3 things are enough to kill 80% of all players in cyro even if you have no idea about the game.
The fun doesn't stop here however, nightblades also have great defence and the best mobility skill in the game, shadow image. There is no skill in the whole game that can compete with the kiting opportunities this skill has to offer. And what you shouldn't forget nightblades also have access to cloak, when used right cloak prevents you from taking any kinds of damage, gives you unlimited crit heals which equals to having major mending and vitality all the time and makes you invisible for your enemy so he has no idea where you are going or that you are even there.
This strength comes at a price tho. Cloak only saves you as long as it doesn't get countered here is what distinguishes good nightblades from bad nightblades. A good Nightblade won't let you counter cloak with things like AoEs or mage light. The only way to catch them is by using mark aka being a nightblade yourself or using detection pots which come at a very high opportunity cost while having a long cooldown on top.
To round up the package nightblades have access to some of the greatest passives in the game along with other strong utility skills and due to their defence being able to completely negate any incoming damage they are able to run high damage builds with bad in-fight survivability because they don't have to be in a fight they don't want to be in.
This results in a class that can kill most players in few seconds, while being able to escape reliably when they fail to be successful. Mixed with the low cost of incap and the overall effectiveness of the nightblades toolkit they can continue to engage and disengage at will until they are successful or mess up. With increasing skill level the numbers of times you die because you messed up goes to zero.
So we have nightblades, a class that can hunt everyone but doesn't have to fear the other classes. The only natural predator a nightblade has today is ,outside of its own lack of skill, other nightblades.
All this will result in changes to the nightblade class or to say the bad words: Nightblades will be nerfed!
Due to their popularity in game the nightblade lobby here on the forums is really loud and big but consists of many people who can't fully utilise the class to its full strength and thus saying that they are weak.
But every good Nightblade agrees that they are currently too strong.
So we are heading towards nerfs, they will come and when the community doesn't provide good proposals nightblades will end where stamdk is in pvp or magwarden is in pve right now, completely outclassed by everything else.
There are a few things which are hot candidates for getting nerfed:
Incap: even magnbs are running this over the magicka version as it gives you so much burst with the high damage and cc tied to it. and the skill is overloaded to begin with. This would be the attempt to make the killing power of nightblades a bit less threatening. The easiest way is to remove the CC. This forces the nb to use one additional GCD for a CC to land its burst. In pvp this is a lot.
Short Example: With CC on Incap:
(1.GCD) Heavy attack+ incap from stealth ~9k damage 10k when using Bash aswell
(2.GCD) Light attack+will ~ 12k damage/ 10k when light attack+ Suprise attack
Most players cannot react fast enough to break the CC and avoid the will because the incap cc is as buggy as it is but also due to lag.
Most players in cyro have 23-26k health. So in just 1 second of fight they are at 1-5k health with major defile on them + 20% more damage taken. To survive in this situation you have to dodge, heal to atleast 12k health before the dodge roll ends and pray that the lag doesn't make the next Suprise attack hit you through dodge or that you didn't lost any health to begin with or had a dot on you. If one of these things fails you are dead.
Now the same fight without a CC on Incap:
(1. GCD) Heavy attack + fear to CC your target ~ 3-4k damage
(2.GCD) Light attack + incap ~ 7-8k damage
(3. GCD) now you want to use your will or suprise attack to secure the kill but your enemy isn't CC'ed anymore and will likely dodge so you have to wait and be more strategic when to use your abilities. The damage output against NPCs and bad players stays the same but it's harder to kill good players as easy as it is now.
Cloak: @Ragnaroek93 made a great post how to balance cloak so i hope he can share his ideas in this post. (I'm not a fan of nerfing cloak as it's the iconic nightblade skill and it gives NBs a different approach of surviving but you have to be open for everything when talking about balance)
And here is my rant for everyone who plays a nightblade himself and doesn't want the class to be nerfed. It will happen so please let the good nightblade players lead the discussions about changes to nightblades they have no intrest to kill the class by any means but make it balanced and fun to play. If you have never played alone as a stamblade, fail to reach 40k single target self buffed or haven't completed atleast 4 hm trials, have more than 10 deaths during a 4 hour pvp session or lose many 1v1 fights you should rethink if you have the needed insight for balance discussions about nightblades.
This is not elitism this is to prevent overnerfs for one class
Edit: never write BB code and mix up \ with /
It's expected that everyone reading this post has the cognitive abilities to appraise the rigour of all numerical informations based on how we have access to them. If you need someone to explain them this post is not for you. I'm sorry
Edited by BohnT on March 28, 2018 12:43AM But with past balance changes nightblades performance jumped from being a good to overperfoming.
When going into Cyrodiil stamina nightblades make about 25-35% of the whole playerbase in cyro while there are 10 specs.
When counting magicka nightblades aswell you'll see that 30-40% of Cyrodiils population is nightblades.
When looking at the other parts of the game, stamnbs and magnbs pull the highest ST meele and ranged damage thus are prefered for Trial groups. They also grant their group decent damage buffs with a high uptime on major slayer by utilising warmachine or master architect.
So why did they became so popular especially in pvp?
First nightblades have the easiest time to get kills even at low skill levels.
Your burst is front loaded so you don't need to survive to get the most out of your burst.
The burst is very high even when running a sustain build you pull equally high numbers as the other classes even when they are using offensive focused builds.
Also NB feature the cheapest single target nuke ability with 3 powerful effects, cc, major defile and a unique 20% damage boost for 6 seconds, aswell as an non ultimate nuke that has a higher tooltip than incap which got changed twice to become useable even for the worst players and a high damage spammable that also applies major fracture.
These 3 things are enough to kill 80% of all players in cyro even if you have no idea about the game.
The fun doesn't stop here however, nightblades also have great defence and the best mobility skill in the game, shadow image. There is no skill in the whole game that can compete with the kiting opportunities this skill has to offer. And what you shouldn't forget nightblades also have access to cloak, when used right cloak prevents you from taking any kinds of damage, gives you unlimited crit heals which equals to having major mending and vitality all the time and makes you invisible for your enemy so he has no idea where you are going or that you are even there.
This strength comes at a price tho. Cloak only saves you as long as it doesn't get countered here is what distinguishes good nightblades from bad nightblades. A good Nightblade won't let you counter cloak with things like AoEs or mage light. The only way to catch them is by using mark aka being a nightblade yourself or using detection pots which come at a very high opportunity cost while having a long cooldown on top.
To round up the package nightblades have access to some of the greatest passives in the game along with other strong utility skills and due to their defence being able to completely negate any incoming damage they are able to run high damage builds with bad in-fight survivability because they don't have to be in a fight they don't want to be in.
This results in a class that can kill most players in few seconds, while being able to escape reliably when they fail to be successful. Mixed with the low cost of incap and the overall effectiveness of the nightblades toolkit they can continue to engage and disengage at will until they are successful or mess up. With increasing skill level the numbers of times you die because you messed up goes to zero.
So we have nightblades, a class that can hunt everyone but doesn't have to fear the other classes. The only natural predator a nightblade has today is ,outside of its own lack of skill, other nightblades.
All this will result in changes to the nightblade class or to say the bad words: Nightblades will be nerfed!
Due to their popularity in game the nightblade lobby here on the forums is really loud and big but consists of many people who can't fully utilise the class to its full strength and thus saying that they are weak.
But every good Nightblade agrees that they are currently too strong.
So we are heading towards nerfs, they will come and when the community doesn't provide good proposals nightblades will end where stamdk is in pvp or magwarden is in pve right now, completely outclassed by everything else.
There are a few things which are hot candidates for getting nerfed:
Incap: even magnbs are running this over the magicka version as it gives you so much burst with the high damage and cc tied to it. and the skill is overloaded to begin with. This would be the attempt to make the killing power of nightblades a bit less threatening. The easiest way is to remove the CC. This forces the nb to use one additional GCD for a CC to land its burst. In pvp this is a lot.
Short Example: With CC on Incap:
(1.GCD) Heavy attack+ incap from stealth ~9k damage 10k when using Bash aswell
(2.GCD) Light attack+will ~ 12k damage/ 10k when light attack+ Suprise attack
Most players cannot react fast enough to break the CC and avoid the will because the incap cc is as buggy as it is but also due to lag.
Most players in cyro have 23-26k health. So in just 1 second of fight they are at 1-5k health with major defile on them + 20% more damage taken. To survive in this situation you have to dodge, heal to atleast 12k health before the dodge roll ends and pray that the lag doesn't make the next Suprise attack hit you through dodge or that you didn't lost any health to begin with or had a dot on you. If one of these things fails you are dead.
Now the same fight without a CC on Incap:
(1. GCD) Heavy attack + fear to CC your target ~ 3-4k damage
(2.GCD) Light attack + incap ~ 7-8k damage
(3. GCD) now you want to use your will or suprise attack to secure the kill but your enemy isn't CC'ed anymore and will likely dodge so you have to wait and be more strategic when to use your abilities. The damage output against NPCs and bad players stays the same but it's harder to kill good players as easy as it is now.
Cloak: @Ragnaroek93 made a great post how to balance cloak so i hope he can share his ideas in this post. (I'm not a fan of nerfing cloak as it's the iconic nightblade skill and it gives NBs a different approach of surviving but you have to be open for everything when talking about balance)
And here is my rant for everyone who plays a nightblade himself and doesn't want the class to be nerfed. It will happen so please let the good nightblade players lead the discussions about changes to nightblades they have no intrest to kill the class by any means but make it balanced and fun to play. If you have never played alone as a stamblade, fail to reach 40k single target self buffed or haven't completed atleast 4 hm trials, have more than 10 deaths during a 4 hour pvp session or lose many 1v1 fights you should rethink if you have the needed insight for balance discussions about nightblades.
This is not elitism this is to prevent overnerfs for one class
Edit: never write BB code and mix up \ with /
It's expected that everyone reading this post has the cognitive abilities to appraise the rigour of all numerical informations based on how we have access to them. If you need someone to explain them this post is not for you. I'm sorry
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Drachenfier✭✭✭✭✭
✭I play mine like a shadow knight or a death knight, so hopefully that type of playstyle doesn't get changed too drastically.8 -
Korah_Eaglecry✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭NBs are Rogues. Rogues are always popular in every MMO. Theyre High DPS with quick TTK. The playstyle itself is very popular and should never be the basis for nerfs or ideas of nerfs.Penniless Sellsword CompanyCaptain Paramount - Jorrhaq VhentKorith Eaglecry * Enrerion Aedihle * Laerinel Rhaev * Caius Berilius * Seylina Ithvala * H'Vak the GrimjawlTenarei Rhaev * Dazsh Ro Khar * Yynril Rothvani * Bathes-In-Coin * Anaelle Faerniil * Azjani Ma'LesAban Shahid Bakr * Kheshna gra-Gharbuk * Gallisten Bondurant * Etain Maquier * Atsu Kalame * Faulpia SeverinusWhat is better, to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? - Paarthurnax17 -
Lynx7386✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Seems like you typed all that for nothing. We all know wrobel just throws darts at a nerf board when making balance decisions.Edited by Lynx7386 on March 20, 2018 5:05PMPS4 / NA
M'asad - Khajiit Nightblade - Healer
Pakhet - Khajiit Dragonknight - Tank
Raksha - Khajiit Sorcerer - Stamina DPS
Bastet - Khajiit Templar - Healer
Leonin - Khajiit Warden - Tank28 -
Maryal✭✭✭✭✭
✭Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »NBs are Rogues. Rogues are always popular in every MMO. Theyre High DPS with quick TTK. The playstyle itself is very popular and should never be the basis for nerfs or ideas of nerfs.
Agreed.4 -
Seraphayel✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) during ESOs first years. I am glad that they are a great class now but - as you said - they are a bit overperforming. Too many great skills (Grim Focus, Cloak, Fear) for PvP.
Instead of nerfing NB I would prefer buffing the other classes.Edited by Seraphayel on March 20, 2018 9:54PMPS5EUAldmeri Dominion- Khajiit Arcanist -42 -
TequilaFire✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭You people with the agenda of nerfing nightblades are going to be in for huge disappointment.20 -
BohnT✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭rfennell_ESO wrote: »It's too bad these forums don't support double or triple BOLDING
Yeah shame on me
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Oakmontowls_ESO✭✭✭✭✭
✭I could be wrong but stam blades only have the highest dummy parse due to their self buffs. I'm pretty sure sDk still holds the highest single target raid dps with stam sorc taking the top aoe.3 -
BohnT✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Oakmontowls_ESO wrote: »I could be wrong but stam blades only have the highest dummy parse due to their self buffs. I'm pretty sure sDk still holds the highest single target raid dps with stam sorc taking the top aoe.
Not anymore with Off balance changes. Stamdk gained lots of damage with the damage increase on heavy attacks2 -
Marginis✭✭✭✭✭1: Nightblades have a very specific role in the meta. Perhaps instead of calling for a blanket nerf you could suggest changes that would balance the game, not just roll a class you don't like into the grave. For example, call for Nightblade tanks to become not the worst tanking option in the game according to the meta, then maybe have a small decrease to their power in PVP.
2: Why call for nerfs and not buffs? Nerfs seem overly... antagonistic. Would it not be better to buff other classes? Buffing makes people happy, nerfing makes people sad.
3: Do you not realize how strong some other tactics are? How about unkillable Dragonknight tanks in PVP? We're still talking about a specific class performing a specific role in PVP. Why not bring them into line instead, or at least as well? My suggestion would be to lessen the power of specific classes playing specific roles. I think it would be awesome for any class to be as effective a tank as any other, or just as effective a DPS as any other. That way we would be talking about balancing roles, that players can change, not classes, which players cannot change unless they delete their character and completely remake them.
4: Play the game, not the metagame. According to the metagame, something may be popular, because it's easy and powerful, but that does not mean it's the only option. Try unique and different solutions to adapt to the meta. Perhaps try to make one of those unkillable Dragonknight tanks. I doubt you'll have as much a problem with those PVP Nightblade gankers then.@Marginis on PC, Senpai Fluffy on Xbox, Founder of Magicka. Also known as Kha'jiri, The Night Mother, Ma'iq, Jane Shepard, Damia, Kintyra, Zoor Do Kest, You, and a few others.10 -
NyassaV✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭A majority of magic nightblades in Cyrodiil are not very good TBH. Stamblade is a problem in that it doesn't even need grim focus to succeed. That is part of why magic nightblade is more balanced than stamblade IMO. By requiring 5 light attacks to give off your big burst (That you can combo with other skills) you effectively increase counterplay and increase the TTK. But you don't increase the TTK to the point where it's not viable. I would like to see Surprise attack get a damage reduction but increase the damage of Assassin's Scourge. That way PvP nightblades can adapt to play in a more balanced way and PvE stamblades don't get much of a DPS nerf.
Stamblade is also very strong becuase stamina just has the best Mobility and weapon skills. I don't use Shade on my stamblade OR Grim Focus. I use Snipe. It hits to hard, is super buggy when it comes to predicting when it will hit, and the defile is way to strong. Executioner also hits really hard so maybe give it the Radiant Oppression treatment from homestead (Or was it 1T) and reduce it's damage by 10% or whatever. Incap I don't want to touch too much becuase it is a vital part of the kit, the one sugegstion I can think of is make the CC less buggy. The fact incap has a Knock Down CC means your body has a travel time to hit the ground, in that time they can land a hit and kill you easy. I suggest making the CC a mere stun that way there would be time to react. Fear's CC is easily breakable where as incap has a body travel time.
Magic nightblade is mostly fine. A majority of the ones I encounter are not that good. And the ones who best me and are good I think to deserve the power they have as they certainly aren't being carried. I would appreciate some changes made to shade and to Destro passives so that I am not required to have a flame staff abilty on my bar to get the passive damage. Most of the time if I die to a magblade I die to Flame Clench + Merciless combo. Because of the Knock back travel time of flame clench the merciless cannot be avoided. Removing the requirement to have a destro passive on your bar would actually give magblades a reason not to have that CC on their bar in that they COULD, if they wanted to, use a different skill in it's place. I certainly would because I tend to fight in Melee range anyways and always have fear on my bar. Soul Harvest should be undodgable, have the debuffs undodgable, or have another affect added to it.Flawless Conqueror ~ Grand OverlordShe/Her ~ PC/NA | I record things for fun and for info2 -
TarrNokk✭✭✭✭OPs post is worthless as it's all just theoretical and far away from real pvp. He wants to propagate hit points made which would theoretical only be against inexperienced players. Stop crying for nerfs.13 -
Tandor✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Right now Nightblades are more popular than ever, they have always been very popular as most people seem to be drawn to the rouge or assassin's playstyle.
The former is probably explained by all the lipstick that drops in the crown crates
!
Let's not forget the archer however, that's another role well-suited to the nightblade which is such a versatile class.5 -
BohnT✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Seraphayel wrote: »Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) in during ESOs first years. I am glad that they are a great class now but - as you said - they are a bit overperforming. Too many great skills (Grim Focus, Cloak, Fear) for PvP.
Instead of nerfing NB I would prefer buffing the other classes.
You'd have to buff 7 specs in pvp. The number of changes required to fulfil this is way too high and in the end we'll just have other things which are overperfoming.
In pve we already need to buff certain specs like magdk, Magplar or magwarden as they are underperforming and this will result in New Balance issues.
It's like reworking Code or trying to find an error with an experiment. You want to change as few things as possible and once it's working again you improve it further3 -
Narvuntien✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Okay... sure nightblades are currently the highest dps for both Stam and Mag. They have always been a huge pain in the arse for PVP. Now I think it is important to note that getting the highest dps out of them requires skill with light attack weaving. Compared to PetSorcs free damage and StamDks just heavy attack.
I really do feel like Nightblades should be doing the highest burst out of all the classes because that is what rouges do. damage damage damage.
I think there is a bit of an issue with them doing the most overall dps, but I feel that is because of their great sustain rather than anything else. The off balance changes really hurt Magsorcs and magDKs damage.
So I feel like in many ways its the other classes that need buffs.
Buff:
Magsorcs (Need some damage returned to the kit with off balance changes)
Stamsorcs (Badly need a spamable skill)
MagWarden (Rework Ice magic skill line)
MagDk (Horrifyingly bad sustain issues have to be in melee range)
Good
Stamdk (Heavy attacks are strong)
Magplar (So much utility)
Stamwarden (So much utility, sub assault is strong)
Stamplar? (Fix repentance)
PVP wise, there are a million counters to stealth and NBs get greedy and get squishy. Easiest way to deal with them is to zerg'em down. Perhaps Incap strike needs a nerf, personally I think a longer wind up on the skill so you can see it coming after stealth could help a lot.Edited by Narvuntien on March 20, 2018 5:29PM0 -
oXI_Viper_IXo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Tan9oSuccka wrote: »What’s the deal with the recent spike in NB hate/salt?
I have a feeling it has a bit to do with Miat's no longer working like it used to.19 -
Violynne✭✭✭✭✭
✭
Couldn't agree with this statement more. I know many "new" players have been playing the game for about a year, but when this came out (console), NBs were hard to play. At least for me. I finally walked away from the class, choosing sorc instead.Seraphayel wrote: »Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) in during ESOs first years.
With the changes over the past couple of years, NBs are actually fun to play, as they should have been from the start.
I'm no expert in the game, but I'm dying far, far less than I had when it came out playing this class.
I'm still adapting to the most recent changes (having been gone for nearly a year), but it's not taking me long to do so.
Gone is the "healing crutch" we had to rely on to play the class.
Now, it's "Die! Die!! DIE!! I'll heal as I sit upon your corpse."
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Samadhi✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Right now Nightblades are more popular than ever, they have always been very popular as most people seem to be drawn to the rouge or assassin's playstyle.
...
So why did they became so popular especially in pvp?
...
Personally speaking
generally prefer mages in the Elder Scrolls series
Illusion being a favoured tree
but went Bosmer Nightblade and Bosmer StamSorc back at launch
because of how Sneak and Cloak work in PvP
Social anxiety + inherently social setting of mass PvP = just want to be able to hide from everyone
and so, Cloak spam and invisibility + speed potions...
There are a few things which are hot candidates for getting nerfed:
Incap: even magnbs are running this over the magicka version as it gives you so much burst with the high damage and cc tied to it. and the skill is overloaded to begin with. This would be the attempt to make the killing power of nightblades a bit less threatening. The easiest way is to remove the CC. This forces the nb to use one additional GCD for a CC to land its burst. In pvp this is a lot.
...
Personally use Incap over the Magicka Version
due to disliking Fear and not wanting it on my bar/prefering to troll around with the trap version
but wanting a hard CC
would rather the defile be removed than lose the CC off the skill
or at least be given some more options for hard CC in the class skills
Fear is lame and cheesy
Cloak + Surprise Attack is fiddly and not always reliable
Agony got replaced with a non-CC skill
Destructive Reach with a Lightning staff is okayish; but prefer running Frost Staff
But not one of 'the good Nightblades'
just someone bored with narrowing of my available skill pool"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." -- the 14th Dalai Lama
Wisdom is doing Now that which benefits you later.
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Ragnaroek93✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Right now Nightblades are more popular than ever, they have always been very popular as most people seem to be drawn to the rouge or assassin's playstyle.
But with past balance changes nightblades performance jumped from being a good to overperfoming.
When going into Cyrodiil stamina nightblades make about 25-35% of the whole playerbase in cyro while there are 10 specs.
When counting magicka nightblades aswell you'll see that 30-40% of Cyrodiils population is nightblades.
When looking at the other parts of the game, stamnbs and magnbs pull the highest ST meele and ranged damage thus are prefered for Trial groups. They also grant their group decent damage buffs with a high uptime on major slayer by utilising warmachine or master architect.
So why did they became so popular especially in pvp?
First nightblades have the easiest time to get kills even at low skill levels.
Your burst is front loaded so you don't need to survive to get the most out of your burst.
The burst is very high even when running a sustain build you pull equally high numbers as the other classes even when they are using offensive focused builds.
Also NB feature the cheapest single target nuke ability with 3 powerful effects, cc, major defile and a unique 20% damage boost for 6 seconds, aswell as an non ultimate nuke that has a higher tooltip than incap which got changed twice to become useable even for the worst players and a high damage spammable that also applies major fracture.
These 3 things are enough to kill 80% of all players in cyro even if you have no idea about the game.
The fun doesn't stop here however, nightblades also have great defence and the best mobility skill in the game, shadow image. There is no skill in the whole game that can compete with the kiting opportunities this skill has to offer. And what you shouldn't forget nightblades also have access to cloak, when used right cloak prevents you from taking any kinds of damage, gives you unlimited crit heals which equals to having major mending and vitality all the time and makes you invisible for your enemy so he has no idea where you are going or that you are even there.
This strength comes at a price tho. Cloak only saves you as long as it doesn't get countered here is what distinguishes good nightblades from bad nightblades. A good Nightblade won't let you counter cloak with things like AoEs or mage light. The only way to catch them is by using mark aka being a nightblade yourself or using detection pots which come at a very high opportunity cost while having a long cooldown on top.
To round up the package nightblades have access to some of the greatest passives in the game along with other strong utility skills and due to their defence being able to completely negate any incoming damage they are able to run high damage builds with bad in-fight survivability because they don't have to be in a fight they don't want to be in.
This results in a class that can kill most players in few seconds, while being able to escape reliably when they fail to be successful. Mixed with the low cost of incap and the overall effectiveness of the nightblades toolkit they can continue to engage and disengage at will until they are successful or mess up. With increasing skill level the numbers of times you die because you messed up goes to zero.
So we have nightblades, a class that can hunt everyone but doesn't have to fear the other classes. The only natural predator a nightblade has today is ,outside of its own lack of skill, other nightblades.
All this will result in changes to the nightblade class or to say the bad words: Nightblades will be nerfed!
Due to their popularity in game the nightblade lobby here on the forums is really loud and big but consists of many people who can't fully utilise the class to its full strength and thus saying that they are weak.
But every good Nightblade agrees that they are currently too strong.
So we are heading towards nerfs, they will come and when the community doesn't provide good proposals nightblades will end where stamdk is in pvp or magwarden is in pve right now, completely outclassed by everything else.
There are a few things which are hot candidates for getting nerfed:
Incap: even magnbs are running this over the magicka version as it gives you so much burst with the high damage and cc tied to it. and the skill is overloaded to begin with. This would be the attempt to make the killing power of nightblades a bit less threatening. The easiest way is to remove the CC. This forces the nb to use one additional GCD for a CC to land its burst. In pvp this is a lot.
Short Example: With CC on Incap:
(1.GCD) Heavy attack+ incap from stealth ~9k damage 10k when using Bash aswell
(2.GCD) Light attack+will ~ 12k damage/ 10k when light attack+ Suprise attack
Most players cannot react fast enough to break the CC and avoid the will because the incap cc is as buggy as it is but also due to lag.
Most players in cyro have 23-26k health. So in just 1 second of fight they are at 1-5k health with major defile on them + 20% more damage taken. To survive in this situation you have to dodge, heal to atleast 12k health before the dodge roll ends and pray that the lag doesn't make the next Suprise attack hit you through dodge or that you didn't lost any health to begin with or had a dot on you. If one of these things fails you are dead.
Now the same fight without a CC on Incap:
(1. GCD) Heavy attack + fear to CC your target ~ 3-4k damage
(2.GCD) Light attack + incap ~ 7-8k damage
(3. GCD) now you want to use your will or suprise attack to secure the kill but your enemy isn't CC'ed anymore and will likely dodge so you have to wait and be more strategic when to use your abilities. The damage output against NPCs and bad players stays the same but it's harder to kill good players as easy as it is now.
Cloak: @Ragnaroek93 made a great post how to balance cloak so i hope he can share his ideas in this post. (I'm not a fan of nerfing cloak as it's the iconic nightblade skill and it gives NBs a different approach of surviving but you have to be open for everything when talking about balance)
And here is my rant for everyone who plays a nightblade himself and doesn't want the class to be nerfed. It will happen so please let the good nightblade players lead the discussions about changes to nightblades they have no intrest to kill the class by any means but make it balanced and fun to play. If you have never played alone as a stamblade, fail to reach 40k single target self buffed or haven't completed atleast 4 hm trials, have more than 10 deaths during a 4 hour pvp session or lose many 1v1 fights you should rethink if you have the needed insight for balance discussions about nightblades.
This is not elitism this is to prevent overnerfs for one class
Edit: never write BB code and mix up \ with /
Well I would give Cloak and simple stacking cost. It wouldn't be too dramatic because Nb did still OK when Cloak was buggy. The main problem with stam Nb is that it has so much burst out of Cloak.
The best thing would probably to give stamnb more healing and a class based dot while nerfing Cloak and Incap. This way the class won't be so overpowered against unexperienced players anymore while still being competitive against good opponents.I used to think that PvP was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a comedy.0 -
Dubhliam✭✭✭✭✭
✭Seraphayel wrote: »Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) in during ESOs first years. I am glad that they are a great class now but - as you said - they are a bit overperforming. Too many great skills (Grim Focus, Cloak, Fear) for PvP.
Instead of nerfing NB I would prefer buffing the other classes.
How can people still cling to this kind of logical thinking?
There is one rotten apple in the basket - the solution? Let's try to make them all equally rotten.
Take a look at GOOD balancing: the overly needed and overly tardy nerf of Sharpened.4 -
Sixty5✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I'd say remove the 100% crit chance on cloak for heals before anything else.
It means Nightblades are going to have to spends more time and resources to reset a fight, and makes detect pots and such a better counter.Lord and Savior of the Association of Serious S***posters.
I play a character called "Gives Me Wood Elf" because I am a mature and sensible person.
Stam Sorc main in Battlegrounds2 -
aaylas✭✭✭OP, can you please post your DPS parse on nightblade? I have heard many people beg for nerfs for classes they don't play, so I would just like to make sure OP is someone who actually understands the class he/she wants to weaken.9
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zyk✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Most Nightblades I see in Cyrodiil seem to choose nb because they lack confidence to be visible. They often seem inexperienced and lost. This is an AD POV.
I believe Nightblade is probably the most popular class for the new solo player for obvious reasons. That does not make them OP. Further, I don't think it's fact it is the most popular PVP class. I think they stand out more because so many play solo and they tend to be on the periphery.
Nightblades are probably the most hated class because of ganking. Ganking is an intended part of the game and the Nightblade class is supposed to specialize in that. I think that contributes to a bias against the class.
As Nightblade is one of the classes predispositioned as damage dealers, you're supposed to die to them more than most other classes.
Beyond that, in the grand scheme of game balance, I do not believe they are OP in AvA. I don't have much experience in other facets of ESO PVP such as Battlegrounds.
This is what most ESO class debates look like to me now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephantThe moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to project their partial experiences as the whole truth, ignore other people's partial experiences, and one should consider that one may be partially right and may have partial information.Edited by zyk on March 20, 2018 5:57PM16 -
Yolokin_Swagonborn✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I probably die to Nightblades in Cyro more than any other class. I don't want them nerfed. I want the entire PvP meta to go back to resource management, instead of burst.
And I want the other classes that have huge holes in their toolkits to be fixed.11 -
Seraphayel✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Seraphayel wrote: »Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) in during ESOs first years. I am glad that they are a great class now but - as you said - they are a bit overperforming. Too many great skills (Grim Focus, Cloak, Fear) for PvP.
Instead of nerfing NB I would prefer buffing the other classes.
You'd have to buff 7 specs in pvp. The number of changes required to fulfil this is way too high and in the end we'll just have other things which are overperfoming.
In pve we already need to buff certain specs like magdk, Magplar or magwarden as they are underperforming and this will result in New Balance issues.
It's like reworking Code or trying to find an error with an experiment. You want to change as few things as possible and once it's working again you improve it further
I think nerfs are not necessarily solving problems. Nerfing p* off the players that get nerfed. Buffs make the players happy that get buffed. That's a difference. ZOS should do something about balance but not by ruining class defining skills like they did with DK for example.PS5EUAldmeri Dominion- Khajiit Arcanist -0 -
JobooAGS✭✭✭✭✭
✭I would be inclines to remove forced crit heals from shadowy disguise (aka the infamous morph that allows your rally and vigor to always crit)2 -
Seraphayel✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Seraphayel wrote: »Nightblades were very, very unpopular (or better: underperforming) in during ESOs first years. I am glad that they are a great class now but - as you said - they are a bit overperforming. Too many great skills (Grim Focus, Cloak, Fear) for PvP.
Instead of nerfing NB I would prefer buffing the other classes.
How can people still cling to this kind of logical thinking?
There is one rotten apple in the basket - the solution? Let's try to make them all equally rotten.
Take a look at GOOD balancing: the overly needed and overly tardy nerf of Sharpened.
Your logic isn't working. Why should the best be the "rotten apple"? All classes that are underperforming are rotten apples. Nightblade is just the juicy apple everyone wants to eat. You don't replace a good apple with rotten ones.Edited by Seraphayel on March 20, 2018 5:46PMPS5EUAldmeri Dominion- Khajiit Arcanist -1 -
BohnT✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭OP, can you please post your DPS parse on nightblade? I have heard many people beg for nerfs for classes they don't play, so I would just like to make sure OP is someone who actually understands the class he/she wants to weaken.
I'm a stamnb main since closed beta but have played every other spec in the game aswell.
I've done all vet trials + hm on Carglorn+ vhof
All dungeons speed/ no death hm and VMSA on all classes.Edited by BohnT on March 20, 2018 5:50PM0
