Berenhir wrote: »

Greetings @ZOS_Gilliam and @ZOS_BrianWheeler

I watched your explanation of your most recent class balancing attempts and felt while you had a lot of good ideas for other classes, your vision of the "old" class Nightblade, especially its Magicka variation, was lacking any form of inspiration.

I therefore assembled the patch notes how I would have liked them to be to save Magblades from drowning in the next patch. I understand that you want to sell Necros as a class and that there is a certain opportunity to shift players to the necro class who formerly played Magblades but I nevertheless hope that you consider my feedback (maybe in conjunction with the huge amount of feedback other people provided in other threads).

I mainly look at the game from a PvP perspective and I am mainly focusing here on MAGBLADES as a spec but also included PvE stuff and Stamina stuff as I went through the abilities and morphs to touch.

TLDR:

Buff Healing, buff group utility, give synergy, put mitigation on Path, Revive Malevolent Offering, rework Cloak to be useful and create a system without bandaids.

Nightblade

• Assassination
  • Teleport Strike
    This ability and its morphs will no longer stun NPC enemies. Instead, it now grants a synergy for allies which deals x Damage against the jumped target and grants Minor Expedition to up to 12 group members in a 28m radius.
    • Ambush (morph): No longer grants Empower. Instead, the target is affected with Minor Fracture for 8 Seconds and Poisoned.
    • Lotus Fan (morph): Increased the damage the DoT applies from this ability by approximately 175% to put it on par with our DoT standards. No longer snares the opponent. Additionally affects the target with Minor Breach for 8 Seconds.
    Nightblade Comment
    We wanted to make the iconic nightblade gap closer worth casting, so we added an incentive to actually jump into melee range and a synergy for the group that fits the theme of jumping ahead into a fight and the group following suit.
  • Blur:
    • Double Take (morph): Renamed and reworked this morph. Renamed this morph to Phantasmal Escape. This morph no longer grants Major Expedition for 4 seconds. Instead, it grants immunity to snares and immobilizes for 2.5 to 4 seconds, based on the rank. While active, it reduces the cost of break free by 30%. This morph no longer becomes cheaper as ability ranks up.
      Nightblade Comment
      Double Take is a rather expensive ability and meant to provide a tool of escaping from the fight in addition to its base morph functionality. To not make it inferior to Race against Time as an offensive tool or Mist Form as a defensive tool, we decided to add a break free cost reduction to this morph to give players a choice between cheap speed and damage (race against time), long lasting mitigation, short snare immunity and ressource sustain (Phantasmal Escape) or high damage mitigation for a short period of time with CC/snare immunity and speed but drawbacks (Mist Form)
  • Mark Target: Casting this ability is not free but keeps its current cost.
    • Piercing Mark (morph): Reworked this morph. It no longer has an increased duration but debuffs the enemy with Minor Vulnerability instead of countering cloak.
    • Reaper's Mark (morph): This morph now applies Minor Mangle to the target and grants Minor Berserk instead of Major Berserk for 8 instead of 5 seconds after killing the marked target.
      Nightblade Comment
      If you want us to slot this skill, you have to make it worth slotting. That means that is has to be better than Elemental Drain for killing and worth slotting in a group with a tank in PvE or a group with a DK (Noxious) or Warden(Shalks) in PvP.
  • Grim Focus:
    • Removed the Minor Berserk buff from this ability and its morphs. Instead, Light Attacks now have a 20% chance to grant empower while Grim Focus is active.
    • Reduced the minimum travel time on this ability and its morphs to 250ms from 450ms.
      • Merciless Resolve (morph): Additionally grants Major Sorcery and keeps the increased damage (as on live).
      • Relentless Focus (morph): Additionally grants Major Brutality and keeps Minor Endurance (as on live).
      Nightblade Comment
      While the 8% damage buff from Grim Focus pushed Nightblade Damage too high for too little investment in solo content and PvP, it was detrimental in group play due to the fact that most healers provide minor berserk with combat prayer in groups with a diversity of classes. We wanted to underline the light attack theme of grim focus so we added a chance to gain empower which helps with general damage output when weaving correctly while making pre buffed burst less of an issue.
  • Death Stroke: This ability and the Incapacitating Strike morph will no longer apply Major Defile to the target.
    • Incapacitating Strike (morph): This morph will now additionally grant two stacks of empower.
      Nightblade Comment
      While Incapacitating Strike is an iconic skill in the nightblade kit, we want it to fit into the assassin kit it is designed for. The upfront burst of a stamina nightblade is what defines the class, so we added Empower to increase the damage the nightblade can dish out against the incapacitated target. However, we do not want to disable counterplay against nightblades, so we disabled the punishing major defile from the morph that already stuns to ease the ressource strain on the target able to live through the burst by blocking, dodging and instant healing.
    • Soul Harvest (morph): The Ultimate return on kill has been reworked. Soul Harvest now grants Major Heroism if the target has below 20% health while being affected by Soul Harvest (the debuff). Additionally, the target is affected with Minor Lifesteal for 20 seconds if the ultimate is cast with 120 or more ultimate .
      Nightblade Comment
      As Soul Harvest does not stun and a magicka nightblade's burst is generally more backloaded than that of their stamina counterpart, we wanted to keep major defile as a means of pressure against the target. Note that magicka nightblade's damaging skills like Impale, Merciless Resolve, Swallow Soul and Concealed Weapon are all block and dodgeable, so the lack of an initial stun enables forms of direct counterplay which make the defile necessary to keep pressure on a knowledgeable target. Magicka Nightblades struggle with healing in PvP and thus we added minor lifesteal to the ultimate to grant nightblades a form of group utility while also giving a small boost to their own survivability.
      
      The Ultimate gain from soul harvest was too situational for our liking. While providing huge amounts of ultimate when fighting mobs in PvE, the ultimate return was rather useless in difficult fights in PvP. We therefore - in an attempt to keep the "Reward for Killiing" theme of nightblades while making it useful even if the kill is not secured - stretched the ultimate return over time and gave nightblades an incentive to hold onto their ult for the perfect combo. This should also help PvE nightblades to make use of this morph during execute phases.
• Shadow
  • Veiled Strike: This ability and its morphs now give you and everybody who attacks this target minor courage for 6s after you attacked the target from the flanks or behind, increasing your weapon and spell damage by 156 for 6 seconds.
    • Surprise Attack: This morph no longer applies Major Fracture. Instead, it additionally grants the caster 5% penetration when attacking from the flanks or behind.
    • Concealed Weapon: This ability no longer gives speed while being invisible. Instead, it heals you for 20% tooltip damage over 6 seconds.
      Nightblade Comment
      The Veiled Strike abilities were overloaded and underwhelming at the same time, depending on their respective morphs. While Surprise Attack provided Health, Major Resistances and Major Resistance Debuffs for spamming it, Concealed was underwhelming as it was only useful when you didn't actually use it. We therefore reworked the base morph to make nightblades useful for the group and added a bit of the penetration back on Surprise Attack without debuffing the enemy for all other players as well.
      Concealed Weapon is the melee spammable of Magicka Nightblades but lacks healing in comparison to it's ranged spammable. So we gave it a small self heal to enable Magicka Nightblades to stay offensive when visible and thus taking damage. Unlike Swallow Soul, the healing is not tied to actual damage done but to damage potential due to the forced melee range of this fight.
  • Shadow Cloak
    
    • Shadowy Disguise: Adjusted how this ability operates. It now gives Major Expedition for 4 seconds after casting but no longer grants a critical strike.
      Nightblade Comment
      Nightblades need mobility. Taking all mobility from magblades and putting it on a stationary mediocre healing ability like Path of Darkness which is expensive and counterintutive to use for an evasive Nightblade is one of the worst decisions in your nerf history. Just give cloaked/sneaking nightblades speed and fix the double stacking from concealed and vampire in one go. This will not change much for stamblades as they can dodge into cloak at will and don't have much magicka to cloak to begin with. Make gankblades invest into critical strike rating by removing the auto crit from cloak. Give Magblades the mobility you want to give them by slotting concealed (and not using it).
    • Dark Cloak: Adjusted how this ability operates. It will now heal the caster for 4.5% of their Max Health Highest Ressource every 1 second, and duration can increase to a maximum of 8 seconds with other passives.
      Nightblade Comment
      Please don't only enable troll builds by giving a max health scaling heal to the class that is able to stack over 70k health on working builds in PvP. Instead, make this skill useful for all specs. Giving up invisibility should not only be possible for full tanks but a choice for all roles. This obviously leans more in the direction of max Magicka specs as Stamina builds tend to stack Weapon Damage. But losing invisibility on a magblade needs much higher healing power as the investment in survivability is generally higher on those specs than on stamina specs with baked in dodge and speed capabilities.
  • Path of Darkness: We removed the Major Expedition from the morph. It made no sense to give AOE Major Expedition to a stationary skill for a class that wants to be highly mobile. Instead, we reconsidered our decision to put damage mitigation on Grim Focus and shifted it to Path instead. Staying in your path now builds up 3% damage mitigation per second up to a maximum of 15% damage mitigation that persists for up to 2 seconds after leaving your path.
    
    • Twisting Path (morph): Damage is increased by 5% for every enemy inside it up to a maximum of 30%.
    • Refreshing Path (morph): This morph now gives Minor Vitality to everyone inside
    Nightblade Comment
    PvE Trial Blades get speed from Race against Time, Stamblades from Bow or Quick Cloak. Thieve Guild Players use Cloak or Rapids. There is no need for speed on path but a need for making it worthwhile for healers, tanks and melee magblades to use.
    
    
  • Aspect of Terror: This ability and its morphs no longer snare the target after the fear ends. Aspect of Terror now fears up to 3 enemies, up from 2.
    • Mass Hysteria (morph): This morph no longer applies Minor Maim to the targets affected. Also increased the number of feared targets to 6 enemies from 2.
      Nightblade Comment
      We actually like that change more than we regret the loss of the short snare and Maim.
    
    
  • Summon Shade:
    This ability now scales with the caster's Max Magicka and Spell Damage, or Stamina and Weapon Damage.
    The shades will now attack every 2 seconds, rather than every 1.5 seconds. Renamed the attacks the shades deal with each morph to help improve clarity. Fixed an issue where these abilities did not increase in damage as they ranked up.
    • Dark Shade (morph): This ability now deals 50% more damage as a part of its morph functionality. The AoE attack it casts can happen 5% more frequently than before, and deals 20% more damage than the default attack.
    Nightblade Comment
    Okay.
  • Dark Veil: Adjusted this passive to grant a flat 1 and 2 second duration increase to Shadow abilities, rather than 8 and 15% duration extensions. The duration of these abilities before allocating this passive have been adjusted to ensure the total duration remains relatively the same to their current Live values.
    Nightblade Comment
    Okay.
    • Bolstering Darkness: We finally gave this morph a friendly AOE indicator to make it visible during fights! Hooray! We also did that to Warden trees btw! Double Hooray!
  
  
• Siphoning
  • Funnel Health: This morph was absolute wack. We reworked how this ability operates. It now targets up to 3 allies and heals them for [insert swallow soul tooltip damage], [insert damage * 66%] and [insert damage *33%] over 10 seconds, smart targeting the lower health targets with the bigger heal portion.
    Nightblade Comment
    Providing so little damage with more healing is just completely useless, so we changed the way Funnel operates to bring it in line with other healing abilities. Targeting allies also fits very well with the way we reworked the psijic light attacks
  • Malevolent Offering: At first we wanted to apologize for the state of this skill during the last years. We completely reworked the way this skill operates and renamed it to Rouge Offering. It now scales off Magicka and Spell Damage again. The base ability provides a heal over time for you or an ally. It has an 8s duration and the potency of the heal increases in strenght with every tick. If the healed target drops below 50% health, it can activate a synergy that immediately heals the target for the strenght of all ticks combined. This synergy can also be activated by the caster himself if he has been targeted by his own heal.
    • Shrewd Offering (morph): This morph grants the synergizer minor protection and minor vitality once he activates the synergy.
    • Healthy Offering (morph): This morph grants the caster minor mending for 8 seconds.
    Nightblade Comment
    There you go. Burst heal capability without having a burst heal, Synergy for NB healers and a unique game mechanic.
  • Cripple: Adjusted this ability and the Debilitate morph to follow our standardized Damage Over Time ruleset.
    Increased the total duration to 10 seconds from 8 seconds, and increased the damage per tick by approximately 4%.
    Reduced Snare potency to 30% from 40%. Removed Major Expedition from the skill and its morphs but they can both be casted on multiple targets now.
    
    • Crippling Grasp (morph): Added a 2 second delay between the first Damage Over Time tick and the initial hit. Also increased damage of the initial hit by approximately 25%, and increased the damage of each DoT tick by approximately 25% to make up for the damage loss of the first tick.
    • Debilitate (morph): Increased the Snare potency to 50%. Now also applies Minor Magickasteal.
      Nightblade Comment
      Cripple was the main tool in the nightblade kit to enable mobility against single opponents. Moreover, the removal of snares from PvP with the introduction of Race against Time makes the snare potency of debilitate not very valuable. A change to these abilites is therefore only advised, if the changes to Shadowy disguise as noted above will be implemented.
  • Drain Power: Increased the damage of this ability and the Sap Essence morph by 25% to adhere it to our PBAoE damage standards. As Grim Focus now grants the Major Damage buff, we decreased the cost of this ability and it's morphs.
    • Power Extraction (morph): Increased the damage of this ability by 20%.
  • Soul Shred: Increased the radius of this ability and the Soul Tether morph to 8 meters from 6 meters.
    • Soul Tether (morph): Adjusted this morph to adhere to our DoT standards. Added a 1 second delay between the initial hit and the first DoT tick. Increased the damage by approximately 4% per tick to make up for loss of first tick. This will result in the same DPS/HPS, but with less burst. Fixed an issue where these abilities did not get stronger as they ranked up. The initial hit and DoT will both gain 1.1% damage per rank.

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Trandaner wrote: »

Really good post, can agree with everything of it, these changes would make magicka Nightblade a viable option in Open World PvP. You clearly understood the core issue of a mgicka Nightblade which was the lack of healing, aswell as the missing mobility. I especially like the changes of the invisible cloak and Double Take, as they would bring magicka Nighblade more in line with stamina Nightblade for example.

Magika NB with Cloak, Concealed Weapon and vampire have the best mobility in the game. What are you even talking about?