You need to cloak every 2.9 seconds. If you want to run from one side of Cyro to the other, that means you will be out of combat while you cloak. What you need to know is that your in-combat and out-of-combat magicka regen are not the same thing. Out of combat magicka regen comes from:

Atro mundus
Food or drink
Potions
Arcanist CP
Light Armor
Racial passives (Altmer)
Willow's Path set (not a good set on the whole, I don't recommend it)
Siphoning Attacks

The only other way to sustain cloak is to have cost reduction, e.g. from:

Light Armor
Cost reduction jewelry enchants
Seducer set (not that effective for some reason, I don't recommend it for magblade)
Racial passives (Breton)

What does NOT work: Armor sets and jewelry enchants that give you magicka recovery. Amber Plasm, Shacklebreaker and so on do NOT raise your out-of-combat magicka recovery. IMO Lich is also a terrible idea. If you were relying on the Lich proc, that could mean you arrive at your combat location with 33% magicka. Very bad.

For comfortable cloak sustain you could run what I run, which is a Breton with 5x light armor, Atro mundus, Ghastly Eye Bowl drink (use all prismatic enchants on gear to get your health up and a few attribute points in health), 2x cost reduction enchants on jewelry (1x spell damage). I also use Siphoning Attacks. This setup is very comfortable in CP without potions. In no CP you should still be able to sustain with Siphoning Attacks while you cloak.

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.

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

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:

Atro Mundus
A food / drink that includes regen, e.g. Ghastly Eye Bowl (preferred) or Witchmother's Potent Brew
5x Light Armor
Siphoning Attacks

I haven't tested this, but you should be very close to perma-cloaking, in CP, with that setup. You can throw everything else into damage, no sustain sets, and full spell damage enchants on jewelry.

TL/DR: It matters where you mag sustain comes from.

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

Sadly Mageblade has no delayed damage at all. That's why MagNB is weak in bursting compared other builds IMO. Assassins Will is a joke, build up 5 LAs and you able to do the same damage as a snip spam...

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.

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 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.

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.

fred4 wrote: »

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 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.

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.

Psst. Love this post, so many good points. I don't even use assassin's will on mageblade unless I know there are people around I cannot possibly burst without it (ie, very skilled magsorcs or stamdens). A properly timed concealed is imo better, faster, and easier to auto-crit. Ik some can't fathom magnb without the bow but oh well. To me it's best used with a destro staff with a destro ability on the bar, but that's all really. TBH I think the spectral bow is a LOT stronger on a stamblade and increases their already sick burst to absurd levels whereas on a mnb my burst is from cheaper ultis and a typically softened target.

As far as perma cloak goes, to me it is barnone the best fight control mechanism in the game. First strike matters big time.

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.

On the other hand, knowing the above, and if you value cloak sustain a lot, you can build as I do. That means Atro mundus, Ghastly Eye Bowl, all Hakeijo enchants to get health and stamina up, and basically Shacklebreaker as your default set choice to get stam to Tri-Food-like levels. If you compare stats by the end of that, I am convinced it's all a bit of a wash, but you get the better cloak sustain. The other set will be a damage set. If you use Ghastly, your health will still only be around 20K without diverting attributes. This is one reason why shields go well with that approach. Without them I'd probably use WItchmother's, but that is a noticeable damage and sustain nerf for my type of build.

I'm not here to push one build philosophy over another, but I think I have provided rational arguments for mine. "I just saw that you were wrong" isn't really helpful to the OP, unless he knows you, and you have his respect already.