The traditional magblade burst comes from Assassin's Will (Merciless Resolve proc after 5 light attacks). It should typically be combined with a CC, e.g.MooseKnuckles88 wrote: »Also, what skills are you using in your burst. My burst seems to hit like a wet noodle. I'm sure it's a l2p issue for this, but I'd like to have a general idea of what skills to have and the correct order.
Caluurion lets you play a magblade like a stamblade. It's ideal for ganking, but Alcasts setup is all wrong for that. You need a Caluu weapon on one bar only, and you need the following on that bar:More recently I tried building flat attributes with the necropotence and War maidens sets, but I never found a reliable way to burst from stealth.
MooseKnuckles88 wrote: »I have a magblade, but I can't seem to cloak longer than 4 secs. I see other magblades that seem to cloak once but are able to run from one side of cyrodiil to other and never be seen.
Also, what skills are you using in your burst. My burst seems to hit like a wet noodle. I'm sure it's a l2p issue for this, but I'd like to have a general idea of what skills to have and the correct order.
That's what stamblades are kind of ... forced into .rfennell_ESO wrote: »MooseKnuckles88 wrote: »I have a magblade, but I can't seem to cloak longer than 4 secs. I see other magblades that seem to cloak once but are able to run from one side of cyrodiil to other and never be seen.
Also, what skills are you using in your burst. My burst seems to hit like a wet noodle. I'm sure it's a l2p issue for this, but I'd like to have a general idea of what skills to have and the correct order.
I guess the point to make is... you don't actually have to cloak to be invisible. Vampire nightblades in stealth move at full speed and with full legerdemain you can sustain stealth for a fairly long period of time.
A mix of just stealth (with double take and concealed weapon and swift jewelry) and then switching stealth off and using just cloak will balance you stat usage for a while. Getting low on stamina? switch to using magicka invis (shadowy disguise) and let your stamina regen. Getting low on magicka, switch to only using stealth and let your magicka regen.
While I don't disagree with the gist of your post, I think the damage loss from being able to perma-cloak need not be pronounced. At least in CP. You just have to know some stuff that's not widely talked about, certainly not in any YouTube video I've ever seen. If you play the cloak game, and you don't group up, the game will consider you in-and-out-of-combat all the time. You can maximise your cloak sustain by choosing the right sources of magicka sustain. You don't need all that much of it. I prefer to have more, and I also run Swift, so I am personally in the "elusive" bracket you refer to. You don't need to be the same though. At a minium you need:thankyourat wrote: »As a magblade if you want to play a Cloak spam build your burst is going to be low because of all the sustain you need to run to spam cloak. So you kind of have to decide if you want to be very elusive and spam cloak or have enough burst to threaten players. You can go the proc set route but your Max stats will be very low meaning your damage shield will be weak and you would have to get some regen from glyphs meaning all your damage will have to come from procs and you would be squishy. I think it's best to meet somewhere in the middle. Magblade burst is delayed though so you will never be coming out of stealth with huge damage spikes. Unless you build a ganker
thankyourat wrote: »Magblade burst has to be built up is delayed though so you will never be coming out of stealth with huge damage spikes. Unless you build a ganker
Vermintide wrote: »You don't permacloak.
You become a vampire and flip between regular sneaking and shadowy disguise so that you don't burn through all your stam/mag.
I used to play magden when Shalks still CCd. I thought it was underrated, at least in CP open world. Now you also see health builds and ice control builds on YouTube. Might take it up again.MooseKnuckles88 wrote: »Some really great responses! I appreciate the feedback. I think I understand enough about the cloak at this point.
My magwarden can burst like a truck compared to my magblade, and that's with no ultimate ready. I don't like relying completely on proc sets to carry me through, but if that's what it takes to make my build work I'll conform to it.
I give up.pdebie64b16_ESO wrote: »You only need cloak to escape or for your next attack to get the bonus from sneak attack but not for moving around, the Vamp passives, concealed weapon and legerdermain is for moving around in stealth.
I used to play magden when Shalks still CCd. I thought it was underrated, at least in CP open world. Now you also see health builds and ice control builds on YouTube. Might take it up again.MooseKnuckles88 wrote: »Some really great responses! I appreciate the feedback. I think I understand enough about the cloak at this point.
My magwarden can burst like a truck compared to my magblade, and that's with no ultimate ready. I don't like relying completely on proc sets to carry me through, but if that's what it takes to make my build work I'll conform to it.
Caluurion is by no means necessary to play magblade successfully. It's just that I haven't played all the different magblade playstyles, of which there are many. Caluu is arguably the best for ganking, as it enables the kind of melee up-front burst playstyle stamblades are famous for. However magblade gankers have also been done with destro heavy attack builds. If you search for Kena's posts, he listed the various archetypes once.
Playing with high cloak uptime generally calls for light armor for the cost reduction. Concealed + Cloak gives you a 25% speed bonus in cloak, which is what drew me to the melee playstyle, but honestly, before Caluu, it wasn't very viable. The problem was always that dual-wield light attacks didn't do enough damage, compared to a stamblade. You could try and compensate with Infused Torug's Pact weapons, but meh. These days, of course, with 2H and staves counting as two slots, we have more options.
In general, a fire staff will give you the best sustained, safest, and easiest to land damage. You are totally screwed against flappy DKs, but other than that it's very good. This is typically played as a destro / resto build. Crippling Grasp gives you a brief root and snare with no cooldown, against which the only immunity is Forward Momentum or Shuffle. Use that to control your enemy and stay at range. Funnel / Swallow Soul is probably still your best bet for a spammable. Crushing Shock interrupts and is non reflectable, whereas Elemental Weapon is cheaper and seems to do 2K more PvE DPS with just about any of my builds, but I prefer Funnel in PvP for the heals. Siphoning Attacks adds more healing and sustain, indirectly allowing for more damage (e.g. from jewelry glyphs, mundus or sets). Your CC will be either Flame Reach / Clench or Mass Hysteria.
Honestly, magblades who master destro staff with Shadow Image, CC, and Assassin's Will tend to be very strong duellers. One of the reasons I don't like that, open world, is the time to build Assassin's Will. If you're going for that type of build, with Flame Reach and Crippling Grasp, Skoria goes well with that. Soul Assault and Zaan are also viable options. In fact, Soul Assault is a pretty easy way to destroy medium armor builds, if you have enough punch behind it. You'll want at least a 65K unbuffed tooltip in CP. I played that initially, but then made a decision to go with Incap, as I find it more versatile.
I played resto / 2H for the longest time. The attraction with that playstyle is combining Forward Momentum and Healing Ward. Add Swift jewelry as well, and you are basically so fast that you can dispense with the shade. One of your main problem of cloaking to safety is roots and snares. Forward Momentum fixes that. Extremely valuable against jabbing templars and Talon-spamming DKs. If you don't have Forward Momentum, you have to be very proactive with Crippling Grasp.
Playing melee is hard though. Whoever designed the speed bonus into Concealed probably thought it was viable to play melee without a gap closer, but it's not really. You waste too much time and mag on cloak. Fine for a gank, but not for duels. This is why I recommend Lotus Fan to land Caluurion, if you're using that.
2H / resto covers you well defensively (except against Mark + Shield Breaker), and gives you some ranged options, but I find the resto staff doesn't do enough damage. I am now playing 2H / destro (fire), and the difference is noticeable.
As a light armor build, I play with shield. I recommend Dampen over Harness. Harness is very nice, but useless in duels against stamina, and burst too easily by stamblades, even with 40K+ mag. I currently only play with 34K mag (Swift jewelry and other compromises), but I have Temporal Guard on the same bar as the shield, which effectively increases it by 8%. I swore I needed Healing Ward, but this also works for me.
Should you wish to play heavy armor, I have no first-hand experience, but believe that Refreshing Path is a staple. Another option is a bomb build. Again, it's a speciality that requires specific sets and skills - probably something like Vicious Death + Spinner + Grothdarr - but I have no experience with it.
A last random comment. I find Double Take useful on stamblade to alternate between sprint and cloak / using stamina and magicka. On magblade, however, I find it fairly useless. Since I have the Concealed speed, sprinting is kind of pointless, and combining it with cloak is far too costly. In terms of defenses, there's just no bar space when you have a shield. I could see it being useful in a heavy armor build, though, especially one without cloak.
Vermintide wrote: »You don't permacloak.
You become a vampire and flip between regular sneaking and shadowy disguise so that you don't burn through all your stam/mag.
It's astonishing how people don't bother to read the thread and just regurgitate the conventional wisdom. While there's nothing wrong with your approach, especially as a stamblade, you can do better as a magblade, and you won't run down your resources. See above.
Vermintide wrote: »I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about...
...I just saw that you were wrong.
Vermintide wrote: »I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about...
...I just saw that you were wrong.
Care to make up your mind?
Let me guess. You're using heavy, or you're building with sets like Seducer, Amber Plasm, Transmutation, perhaps Alteration Mastery, and you use Tri-Food to get your health and stamina up? I have a friend, a very strong player, who swears by that approach. He is the kind of guy who agonises over build choices. It's a good build strategy, and if you are invested in it, I'm not saying you must change.