New NB-skills need adjustment for viability!

Jeezye · April 2018

I was very excited to test out the new shadow-cloak and healthy offering skills for my nightblades on the PTS. I have been asking for a long time to give NBs a reliable health-based self-heal so tanking is again an option. However, I was sort of disappointed after actually testing out these skills. Here's why:

Dark Cloak:
I originally thought this skill would be a burst heal, since this is exactly what NBs are lacking for self sustain. We already have swallow soul and healing path HoTs (and sap to some degree) that add up quite well on over-time heals. The new dark cloak however grants its 32% max HP value over 3 seconds, which translates into ~10% per second, in Cyrodiil its 5%. This means with 40k HP I get a 4k (2k in Cyrodiil) heal per second, which is pretty underwhelming. What makes this even worse is the short duration, which means you essentially have to spam this ability every 3 seconds to keep up minor protection and the lousy self heal.

Proposed changes:

Significantly reduce the timeframe to about 1-2 seconds
or Significantly increase the percentage to 40-60%
or make it an instant cast that applies the heal delayed (1 second e.g.)
significantly increase the minor protection uptime to ~10 seconds
pls think about applying a new animation, the old cloak one really looks unfitting

Offering:
This skill now finally looks useful, but what bugs me out is the percentage health cost of the skill: You basically share your own health to heal an ally, so far so good. BUT the higher you stack your health, the more the skill charges your own health pool, without amplifying its healing. This means that squishy nightblade healer with 20k hp will be able to spamm this skill much more effective than a nightblade that specs into health to share it, which is ironically what this skill is designed for.

Proposed changes:

change the health cost to be a flat value, so tanky nightblades actually benefit from their tankyness instead of getting punished
or make the healing also scale from your max HP
side note: fix the animation, for some reason it locks yourself up from time to time so you have to bash/ dodgeroll to cast skills again

Otherwise I am really hyped to what I can transform my nightblade next patch. Thanks for the great changes so far!

Lynx7386 · April 2018

Pretty sure offering is meant to be used by nb healers, not nb tanks. That's why dark cloak was changed.

As for dark cloak, It's still leagues better than arctic wind for wardens. You get 11% health per second for 3 seconds, we get 12% on the first second and then 2% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds afterwards. I'll take dark cloak over arctic wind any day.

RoyJade · April 2018

Agreed on :
- dark cloak minor protection duration's buff
- dark cloak animation (you should throw a cloak of darkness on you, who fuse with your character and heal you)
- offering's scaling (fixed cost as nearly every other skill in the game, and heal on max magicka/spell damage as usual)

Arctic wind also need a change, but it's an another thread.

Jeezye · April 2018

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Pretty sure offering is meant to be used by nb healers, not nb tanks. That's why dark cloak was changed.

As for dark cloak, It's still leagues better than arctic wind for wardens. You get 11% health per second for 3 seconds, we get 12% on the first second and then 2% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds afterwards. I'll take dark cloak over arctic wind any day.

well yes arctc wind is completely screwed I unfortunatly experienced that as well

But only because one ability is underperforming doesn't mean others have to as well.

Regarding offering, I just don't see how it makes sense to reward squishy playstyle if the ability is to share your own hp. The healing component still scales on magicka/spelldmg so it remains a healing skill for healers

Silver_Strider · April 2018

Dark Cloak heals for 11% max health per second, with the possibility to crit each tick. You're looking at closer to 3k tick on average in Cyrodiil, with 5-6k crits, before factoring in other sources that buff it (CP, Racials, etc.) Throw on Minor Protection + Major Resolve/Ward and the ability is fine as is. Let's compare this to Warden.

Warden gets Minor Protection + Major Resolve/Ward from Ice Fortress for 21 seconds and Arctic Winds Heals for 12% + 2% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

NB get Minor Protection for 3 seconds but Heal 33% over 3 seconds. I won't even factor in Major Resolve/Ward on Cloak as NBs keep that up with Refreshing Path that I'd count Path as the Ice Fortress equivalent for NB.

So, considering that NB is constantly being healed by Refreshing Path and has the superior Tank Heal in terms of both Max Health % and duration to heal ratio, does it not make more sense that a Warden have the longer Minor Protection buff? While I'm basing this entire evaluation on just these 2 abilities for NB/Warden and neglecting other factors, passives, etc. It seems like increasing the duration on Minor Protection would lean more towards NBs favor as they're already getting off with the superior heal ability. Idk, I feel the short duration balances itself out nicely with Warden, although I do feel Arctic Winds coud be buffed slightly, in which case I can agree with slightly improving the duration of Minor Protection for NB but still not to a full 10 seconds, more like 5-6 seconds.

Malevolent Offerings is probably in the best spot its been in since its inception IMHO. I can actually use it on my Healer without having to locate and aim at the person I'm trying to heal and the health cost is much more manageable now than it was before. While a tank might not get any mileage out of it now, it wasn't designed for them in the 1st place, they just happened to be the best job for it originally since they had the health to sacrifice for it but as of this rendition, they should probably just unslot it for something else. I do agree though, that there are still problems with the ability that need to be taken care of before being released to Live, the animation lock thing being the biggest one.

Strider__Roshin · April 2018

I'm fine with the heal from Dark Cloak, but it needs to crit off of either weapon or spell crit depending on what's higher. The minor protection duration is awful. A 10 second duration is what I'd recommend as well. And yeah change the name, icon, and animation.

Jeezye · April 2018

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Dark Cloak heals for 11% max health per second, with the possibility to crit each tick. You're looking at closer to 3k tick on average in Cyrodiil, with 5-6k crits, before factoring in other sources that buff it (CP, Racials, etc.) Throw on Minor Protection + Major Resolve/Ward and the ability is fine as is.

with 40k HP you end up with exactly 2,13k heals per second. I don't factor in healing amps because buffs and debuffs usually annul each other. Don't get me wrong, 33% HP heals are really good (I used purge heal with 20% a while ago with some success), but what NBs REALLY need is a reliable instant heal, not another HoT. While this is more of a PvP issue, sort of the same applies to PvE content as well.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Let's compare this to Warden.

Pls stop with these warden compares, the warden toolkit is completly different from NBs with excessive healing everywhere (I play a warden tank myself!). Yes arctic wind sucks, but you have to compare apples with apples...

Silver_Strider · April 2018

Jeezye wrote: »

sort of the same applies to PvE content as well.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Let's compare this to Warden.

Pls stop with these warden compares, the warden toolkit is completly different from NBs with excessive healing everywhere (I play a warden tank myself!). Yes arctic wind sucks, but you have to compare apples with apples...

I am comparing Apples to Apples, it's just Red Delicious Apples (Warden Tank) to Granny Smith Apples (NB Tank). A tank is a tank, the only difference is the tools at their disposal. If you can't compare one of the few tank abilities that is almost universal at this point to one another, then what are you to compare it to? Where's the other apple to compare to NBs Apple?

You're right that NB and Warden have different toolkits but by comparing what one class has different to another, you can identify the reason classes are viewed as superior in a role and try to balance them to be more in line with one another. It's why everyone is gaining Chains and an AoE CC, because those are viewed as important aspects to tanking and is partially why DK is the best tank with Warden a solid 2nd place because they both have those skills naturally in their class. The added group utility of both classes just furthers the gap between them and other class tanks and while ZOS has done a decent job bridging that gap, there is plenty more to do but that's not really what this discussion is about.

Its what you feel the problem is with Dark Cloak, of which I do not agree are the problem. You say a 3 second delay on Dark Cloak is too long for either PvP and PvE but I don't because it has a balancing factor with Warden and Arctic Winds. It's not about looking at 1 class in a vacuum but the whole picture and that's a problem a lot of people have. Sure, Warden can balance out its own crap heal with some of the other skills in its toolkit but so can every class to varying degrees of effectiveness. The game is balanced around this extent. How would you balance the HoTs NB has, 1 of which also offering Minor Vitality, with a 33% Burst Heal with Minor Protection on top?

aeowulf · April 2018

Dark Cloak is a heal, it should be in the siphoning line. That way it will also proc Transfer. It should be a morph of MO, so a NB either gives or self heals.

There are so many skills NB has that are simply in the wrong trees

I'd of loved the animation to be the the effect you see on the new gloom armour - that is very cool!

olsborg · April 2018

I agree with the needed buff to minor protection on dark cloak(also pls make a new animation). The heal can crit, so its not that weak in pvp, but the heal should be a bit more bursty (shorter over time)

Magblades should have some way to remove snares/roots, atm they are forced to slot forward momentum with a 2h weapon, wich just doesnt seem right imo.

RoyJade · April 2018

aeowulf wrote: »

Dark Cloak is a heal, it should be in the siphoning line. That way it will also proc Transfer. It should be a morph of MO, so a NB either gives or self heals.

No. Dark cloak is a tank heal, a tank tool : it should be (as it is now) in the tank tree. Same as dragon blood in the draconic tree, and arctic wind in the frost tree.

I agree that some NB skills aren't in the good tree, but this one is fine.

Jeezye · April 2018

olsborg wrote: »

I agree with the needed buff to minor protection on dark cloak(also pls make a new animation). The heal can crit, so its not that weak in pvp, but the heal should be a bit more bursty (shorter over time)

Magblades should have some way to remove snares/roots, atm they are forced to slot forward momentum with a 2h weapon, wich just doesnt seem right imo.

Just tested this skill in duels again with builds around 35k HP. The best heals I got out of it were ~3,5k crits per second, on an argonian with fully speced CPs into healing in heavy armor. To be honest, I give up so much offensive (and defensive) stats to achieve these high healing stats, just to get out 3,5k heals per second with relative high cost and low uptime. To cut it short, the heal is really lackluster and is not the "oh ***" heal that NB tanks need (in comparison to the "oh ***" cloak that is the counter morph...)

I agree snares/roots are a problem, my tankblade uses mist over cloak since homestead.

Strider__Roshin · April 2018

Jeezye wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

I agree with the needed buff to minor protection on dark cloak(also pls make a new animation). The heal can crit, so its not that weak in pvp, but the heal should be a bit more bursty (shorter over time)

Magblades should have some way to remove snares/roots, atm they are forced to slot forward momentum with a 2h weapon, wich just doesnt seem right imo.

Just tested this skill in duels again with builds around 35k HP. The best heals I got out of it were ~3,5k crits per second, on an argonian with fully speced CPs into healing in heavy armor. To be honest, I give up so much offensive (and defensive) stats to achieve these high healing stats, just to get out 3,5k heals per second with relative high cost and low uptime. To cut it short, the heal is really lackluster and is not the "oh ***" heal that NB tanks need (in comparison to the "oh ***" cloak that is the counter morph...)

I agree snares/roots are a problem, my tankblade uses mist over cloak since homestead.

This isn't meant to be a strong heal in PvP, it's meant to be a strong heal for PvE tanks.

Jeezye · April 2018

Daus wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

I agree with the needed buff to minor protection on dark cloak(also pls make a new animation). The heal can crit, so its not that weak in pvp, but the heal should be a bit more bursty (shorter over time)

Magblades should have some way to remove snares/roots, atm they are forced to slot forward momentum with a 2h weapon, wich just doesnt seem right imo.

Just tested this skill in duels again with builds around 35k HP. The best heals I got out of it were ~3,5k crits per second, on an argonian with fully speced CPs into healing in heavy armor. To be honest, I give up so much offensive (and defensive) stats to achieve these high healing stats, just to get out 3,5k heals per second with relative high cost and low uptime. To cut it short, the heal is really lackluster and is not the "oh ***" heal that NB tanks need (in comparison to the "oh ***" cloak that is the counter morph...)

I agree snares/roots are a problem, my tankblade uses mist over cloak since homestead.

This isn't meant to be a strong heal in PvP, it's meant to be a strong heal for PvE tanks.

I don't see where you take that statement from. Agreed, I can see this skill being used in PvE encounters with higher HP stats and lower pressure from incoming burst.

From a PvP standpoint however, the skills underperforms. I just really dislike that you are forced to run a resto staff with healing ward on a nightblade and have no class based heal that can compete with this playstyle. The new dark cloak offers the opportunity, but in its current state it too ineffective.

Pastas · April 2018

Jeezye wrote: »

Daus wrote: »

Jeezye wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

I agree with the needed buff to minor protection on dark cloak(also pls make a new animation). The heal can crit, so its not that weak in pvp, but the heal should be a bit more bursty (shorter over time)

Magblades should have some way to remove snares/roots, atm they are forced to slot forward momentum with a 2h weapon, wich just doesnt seem right imo.

Just tested this skill in duels again with builds around 35k HP. The best heals I got out of it were ~3,5k crits per second, on an argonian with fully speced CPs into healing in heavy armor. To be honest, I give up so much offensive (and defensive) stats to achieve these high healing stats, just to get out 3,5k heals per second with relative high cost and low uptime. To cut it short, the heal is really lackluster and is not the "oh ***" heal that NB tanks need (in comparison to the "oh ***" cloak that is the counter morph...)

I agree snares/roots are a problem, my tankblade uses mist over cloak since homestead.

This isn't meant to be a strong heal in PvP, it's meant to be a strong heal for PvE tanks.

I don't see where you take that statement from. Agreed, I can see this skill being used in PvE encounters with higher HP stats and lower pressure from incoming burst.

From a PvP standpoint however, the skills underperforms. I just really dislike that you are forced to run a resto staff with healing ward on a nightblade and have no class based heal that can compete with this playstyle. The new dark cloak offers the opportunity, but in its current state it too ineffective.

From PTS Patch Notes v4.0.0

Player Abilities
Developer Comments – Ability Changes: We’ve made numerous ability changes with this latest update – some have global implications, while others are specific tweaks and quality of life changes. Some of our major goals with these changes include:

Improving unpopular abilities and morph choices: Most of the abilities tweaks are targeting underused skills or morphs that we’ve found few players utilize.

Increasing the viability of all classes to perform the tank and healer roles: Some class skills have received significant updates to help improve their ability to tank and heal dungeon and Trial content.

He taked his statement from here.

Jeezye · April 2018

Pastas wrote: »

Increasing the viability of all classes to perform the tank and healer roles: Some class skills have received significant updates to help improve their ability to tank and heal dungeon and Trial content.[/i]

Haven't seen that last part so far, gotta say as a 80% PvP player I'm incredibly disappointed... Again leaving PvP out of consideration.

aeowulf · April 2018

So from an ex-NB tank's perspective:

Bolstering Darkness change: Does not help NB tank. Duration & 50% mitigation decrease. I cannot see DPS running in to pick up a buff they've done without since day 1 when doing so will decrease their DPS and put themselves at increased risk. Either way horn is better in trials/some groups. Until horn is not the best ulti in the game for trials, it will be taken over everything else.

Strife: 50% Increased cost...

Dark Cloak: nice heal, needs a slot though. Will probably go in instead of strife, so NB tanks will now loose 8% incoming healing or healing an ally.

Shades: Changed to AE maim, but does not have 100% uptime. Bosses need 100% uptime on maim...

No change to NB tank sustain. No useful change to group utility - if Bolstering was that attempt, it needs to be giving DPS something DPS want, like short term major slayer, or minor stamina steal or something.

Lynx7386 · April 2018

On bosses you should be using heroic slash anyways, shade is for applying maim to aoe packs.

Sustain did get a bug, just not through class abilities. You can use shield wall and meditation now to recover most or all of your resources without losing block.

umagon · April 2018

I believe due to the way dark cloak’s healing scaling works and its cost is why there is three second hot. It is basically a cool down without adding “you can use this skill right now” type of cool downs. If it was instant you could spam it non-stop with a resource regen build. With some of the builds I was testing I could easily be able to spam it every two seconds with the current cost and still be a full tank.

RavenSworn · April 2018

Dark cloak as a mechanic is fine as it is. It's the minor protection buff that needs a... Buff. 3s is not a good duration.

Shades also need a constant "every two seconds aoe hit". The rng chance for the aoe is just too finicky. At least, let the player activate the ability again to deal the aoe damage at a magicka cost. That way, you still get to balance it and the player can control the minor maim damage.

From the way I understand bolstering, you can cast it before engaging a fight and as long as the effect is up, you have major protection buff regardless of where you go after. That's what I had in testing but I might need to reconfirm on this.

With all the self heals a nb can get, a Stam nb tank with forward momentum and bolstering can presumably do a clutch rez. I might change my mind on the best setup for a nb to tank, it might have been Stam all along lol.

aeowulf · April 2018

Lynx7386 wrote: »

On bosses you should be using heroic slash anyways, shade is for applying maim to aoe packs.

Sustain did get a bug, just not through class abilities. You can use shield wall and meditation now to recover most or all of your resources without losing block.

Are you suggesting a tank not run horn??!!! Careful, I do crazy things like that sometimes too!

Honestly, it's almost a 'you're not a tank unless you run horn' thing these days

I can't remember life without War Horn anymore...

Silver_Strider · April 2018

aeowulf wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

On bosses you should be using heroic slash anyways, shade is for applying maim to aoe packs.

Sustain did get a bug, just not through class abilities. You can use shield wall and meditation now to recover most or all of your resources without losing block.

Are you suggesting a tank not run horn??!!! Careful, I do crazy things like that sometimes too!

Honestly, it's almost a 'you're not a tank unless you run horn' thing these days I can't remember life without War Horn anymore...

I've just stopped running Warhorn in PuGs, unless their DPS is amazing (Rare AF). There's just something so liberating about being able to use other Ultimates, unlike currently where every Magic build is using Destro Ultimate, every Stamina build is using Dawnbreaker (or Incap for NB) and every Tank/Healer is using Warhorn.