I used to use Agony/Prolonged Suffering/Malefic Wreath? as a way to line up my burst on my ranged Magblade. This has since been reworked to a burst heal, which causes a small Oblivion Damage stun to the caster, and can't target ourselves.

That leaves us with no reasonable options for a ranged stun. Here are our options:

Manifestation of Terror: Conceal two sinister traps, one at the targeted location and another next to you, which take 3 seconds to arm and last for 1 minute. When each trap is triggered, a dark spirit is summoned to terrify up to 6 enemies, causing them to flee in fear for 4 seconds. After the fear ends, their Movement Speed is reduced by 50% for 4 seconds.

While this skill is unblockable, it has an arm time can easily be avoided by moving a small distance out of the way. My suggestion would be to set 1 trap underneath yourself, and instantly fear a single enemy you are "aiming" at, as Agony and morphs used to function. This skill in it's current state is probably one of the strongest defensive CCs in the game for protecting objectives in Battlegrounds, maybe even THE strongest.


Destructive Touch & Morphs: Devastate enemy with an enhanced charge from your staff, dealing X Magic Damage and Y Magic Damage over 8 seconds.
- Flame Touch knocks back the enemy.
- Frost Touch immobilizes the enemy.
- Shock Touch stuns the enemy.

This skill is kind of a joke. Slow projectile velocity, terrible stun duration, moderate damage at best and can be blocked/dodged This skill is so easy to dodge/block, I often see noobs spamming it hoping their opponent runs out of stamina before they run out of magicka.


Volcanic Rune: Inscribe a rune of cosmic fire on the earth, which takes 2 seconds to arm and lasts for 30 seconds. When triggered, the rune blasts all enemies in the target area for 3000 Flame Damage, knocks them into the air, and stuns them.

This ability is just a worse version of Manifestation of Terror with a bit of damage added in. At least it enables the Mage's Guild passives I suppose, that's something.


Time Stop & Morphs: Freeze the passage of time at the target location, gradually reducing the Movement Speed of enemies in the area during the channel before finally stunning them in place for 3 seconds when the channel completes.

This skill shares a similar problem with Manifestation of Terror & friends. This time a cast time rather than an arm time. However, I do believe this skill has value when supporting a team of coordinated people on offense. Still not what we're looking for though.


Drain Essence & Morphs: Consume an enemy's life force, dealing [x] Magic Damage and restoring 20% of your missing Health every 1 second for 3 seconds.
When you activate the drain, the enemy is stunned for 3 seconds.

You can hardly call this a ranged skill with it's 12 meter range, it can be blocked, and forces you to cripples yourself with the nasty-looking vampire curse. However, the healing component synergies pretty well with Nightblade self healing.


I think that covers all the ranged CC skill options available to Magicka Nightblades. I'd like to see something done for 1v1 CC options, like the change I mentioned above for Manifestation of Terror, or even something like allowing magic skills to auto-stun from stealth/invisibility like stamina skills do. (I know even mentioning this second half will bring about a riot, but I'm just throwing out options.)

Also, if I left a skill out feel free to mention it down below.