HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
I’m hoping the same thing. Right now I use trans and buffer of the swift and am hoping I can drop buffer after the changes.
Your sustain is bad? Are you in 5x light, otherwise your sustain and damage take a big hit. It’s easier to be tanky in 5x light then have good sustain and damage in 5x heavy. I’m planning on trying merciless with 3x protective and no defensive set.
I’d switch from BT to spinners. Looking at the new food/drinks on PTS I think longfin is the best choice and it’s a food.
You could run double bloody Mara with BT but you’re giving up a ton of stamina for a small amount of health and magicka.
thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
I’m hoping the same thing. Right now I use trans and buffer of the swift and am hoping I can drop buffer after the changes.
Your sustain is bad? Are you in 5x light, otherwise your sustain and damage take a big hit. It’s easier to be tanky in 5x light then have good sustain and damage in 5x heavy. I’m planning on trying merciless with 3x protective and no defensive set.HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
If you think aoe is bad now you haven’t seen anything. AoEs hit just as hard as all the spammables. Besides impale I don’t know if any single target abilities are worth a skill slot. Like concealed in a dark cloak build, it doesn’t make sense because sap is just better... reach with the staff that boosts it is good too.
thankyourat wrote: »thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
I’m hoping the same thing. Right now I use trans and buffer of the swift and am hoping I can drop buffer after the changes.
Your sustain is bad? Are you in 5x light, otherwise your sustain and damage take a big hit. It’s easier to be tanky in 5x light then have good sustain and damage in 5x heavy. I’m planning on trying merciless with 3x protective and no defensive set.HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
If you think aoe is bad now you haven’t seen anything. AoEs hit just as hard as all the spammables. Besides impale I don’t know if any single target abilities are worth a skill slot. Like concealed in a dark cloak build, it doesn’t make sense because sap is just better... reach with the staff that boosts it is good too.
I run 5 light for the most part. But I switch up my build from time to time. Both heavy and light sustain about the same in my opinion when you factor in viable ways to build using each armor type. I give light the advantage though because harness magicka is broken sustain. Against Stam players my heavy armor magblades actually sustain better than my light armor due to me not having to waste 4k magicka every 3 seconds Just casting a damage shield. The only problem with heavy magblade is that it is very weak to other light armor users playing with harness which is practically most of cyrodiil.
I'm also a solo pvper who prefers 1vX open world cyrodiil so my sustain is going to be tested more than your average everyday pvper. So I can see a huge difference when I used sets like armor master which give no magicka benefits what so ever. If I could drop armor master for lich or BTB my sustain wouldn't feel so horrible. But the shield changes ruined that for magblade
I’d switch from BT to spinners. Looking at the new food/drinks on PTS I think longfin is the best choice and it’s a food.
You could run double bloody Mara with BT but you’re giving up a ton of stamina for a small amount of health and magicka.
thankyourat wrote: »thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
I’m hoping the same thing. Right now I use trans and buffer of the swift and am hoping I can drop buffer after the changes.
Your sustain is bad? Are you in 5x light, otherwise your sustain and damage take a big hit. It’s easier to be tanky in 5x light then have good sustain and damage in 5x heavy. I’m planning on trying merciless with 3x protective and no defensive set.HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
If you think aoe is bad now you haven’t seen anything. AoEs hit just as hard as all the spammables. Besides impale I don’t know if any single target abilities are worth a skill slot. Like concealed in a dark cloak build, it doesn’t make sense because sap is just better... reach with the staff that boosts it is good too.
I run 5 light for the most part. But I switch up my build from time to time. Both heavy and light sustain about the same in my opinion when you factor in viable ways to build using each armor type. I give light the advantage though because harness magicka is broken sustain. Against Stam players my heavy armor magblades actually sustain better than my light armor due to me not having to waste 4k magicka every 3 seconds Just casting a damage shield. The only problem with heavy magblade is that it is very weak to other light armor users playing with harness which is practically most of cyrodiil.
I'm also a solo pvper who prefers 1vX open world cyrodiil so my sustain is going to be tested more than your average everyday pvper. So I can see a huge difference when I used sets like armor master which give no magicka benefits what so ever. If I could drop armor master for lich or BTB my sustain wouldn't feel so horrible. But the shield changes ruined that for magblade
That’s odd, maybe you aren’t building tanky enough for light armour. Light armour has pen, crit and 20% better regen.
If you’re building 5x light without boosting your survivability enough yea, heavy will be better. However you can hit mitigation cap in 5x light if you want, light armour doesn’t mean being squishy.
thankyourat wrote: »thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
I’m hoping the same thing. Right now I use trans and buffer of the swift and am hoping I can drop buffer after the changes.
Your sustain is bad? Are you in 5x light, otherwise your sustain and damage take a big hit. It’s easier to be tanky in 5x light then have good sustain and damage in 5x heavy. I’m planning on trying merciless with 3x protective and no defensive set.HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »It comes down to these points:Ugg, still don’t understand the complaints about the merciless mitigation. If you ever take damage in pvp, and you do, mitigation helps.
(1) If I take too much damage I shade or cloak. At that point I am mitigating all damage, resistances don't help me one bit, but I need some healing.
(2) Magblade healing has gotten so bad that it's, frankly, a priority. All the resistances in the world won't help you, when you don't heal well.
This is totally different from magden, by the way, who has reliable non-damage-related healing from every animal attack and, most of all, from that fantastic ability: Living Trellis. Would I swap cloak for that? No. Am I wrong to ask for something that synergises better with magblade playstyles, though?
Anyone who says that magden got nerfed and is a weak underdog class frankly hasn't got a clue. They have, most likely, not played all classes themselves and are only going by reputations. I play magden too. Magden has a bad reputation, because people couldn't figure out how to play it at first. In my experience the class works very well as a straight up magicka-stacking damage dealer, but probably even better as a controlling ice build. The reason I don't play it much is because I find the gameplay kind of bland.
Please don't get me wrong. Cloak is awesome at enabling open-world solo play. Only Streak comes close. I wouldn't trade that for the world, however there are 3 other classes and I wouldn't put magden, or any of them, as the clear underdog magicka class in PvP. One of the reasons you still don't see that many magdens is, IMO, that the class is/was hidden behind a paywall and, perhaps, that stamden has the better reputation.
(3) Of course resistances are not nothing and every little help is welcome. However I have played with and without Minor Maim (15% mitigation) and it really doesn't make a difference to my playstyle. Let's explore why that is. I play a Zaan + Caluu ganker. My playstyle is that of a traditional stamblade, e.g. I will try and burst you from cloak. The biggest mitigation I have does not come from mitigation at all, it comes from putting people on the defensive at that moment and from their team mates not immediately realising what's going on. More upfront burst works far better than anything else on a nightblade.
The next best thing, on magblade, is IMO speed. Speed and the shade have a high synergy with cloak. I find mitigation works better on other classes, magplar for example, and when you stack enough of it. On nightblade - this comes after playing the class for a long time - it works better to be squishy, all damage, and elusive. At the very least I feel this is what makes nightblade unique. When I play the class, I want to build that way, otherwise I'd play something else.
I know what you're going to say. Poor me, I can build for all damage with no compromise. You are wrong. My friend plays sorc. He pointed out that, even while wearing Armor Master, his Force Pulse tooltip is 3K. That is an insane number I can only dream of. My Force Pulse tooltip is below 2K. For all the damage buffs NB has / had, I don't know how to get magblade to similar straight up damage. Not without compromising my Cloak sustain and speed, which are essential to my playstyle. This is perhaps why many magblades claim melee magblade is not viable and is suicide. So please be aware: Yes, Caluu + Zaan is strong open-world, but in order to make this a viable build I rely on that high Cloak sustain and speed. Inbetween the procs my damage is hugely compromised.
In my book Grim Focus is a fine skill for duelling. In open world it is a crap skill. The wind-up time is far too long. Supposing I only used the skill for the mitigation, that has the opposite of a synergy - an anti-synergy? - with Cloak. (A) because a successul cloak means no damage and (B) because Cloak can quite quickly take you out of combat, once ZOS fix the "in combat" bug, which will cancel the mitigation.
@fred4
Yea, I’ve seen your opinion before and remember your playstyle. Your posts are well articulated, but I still don’t agree with them.
Here’s some things I think you haven’t considered:
1. ZoS has gone out of their way to nerf your playstyle. The issue is newer pvpers have too rough of a start to pvp because they get bursted down in seconds. Not everyone uses the forums and new players tend to get demolished.
Why do I think that? All forms of single target burst have been nerfed: Snipe, Dark Flare, Incap. So while gankers are already ineffective against experienced players they went ahead and nerfed it anyways to try and improve the new player experience.
The other thing that not a lot of people have talked about in regards to NBs is the aoe buffs. It will be close to impossible to stay in cloak post patch because of aoe spam. Have you seen the new caltrops? 28m range, huge area, damage the same as sap with a trailing dot. If abilities like this are spammed, it will be next to impossible to cloak.
2. Right now you’re going through a live scenario and applying it to a PTS environment believing pvp will remain relatively the same post patch. It will not.
3. Mitigation is better then more self healing. It’s a math thing. If you reduce incoming damage by half for example, you need half the self healing to break even. Mitigation is like having a higher health pool plus more self healing.
However this isn’t the main benefit. The main benefit is during cc, while cc’d you either have enough mitigation plus health to survive the burst until you have control again or you don’t. Surviving that burst while cc’d is what separates good pvpers from mediocre ones.
In your case you’ve likely been able to escape and been on the giving end of cc and burst. With aoe changes escaping will be WAY more difficult. I imagine shade will become more effective then cloak. Lotus fan in > stun > burst > shade out with dark cloak depending on how bad the aoe is.
Exactly. Less damage taken = less healing needed. The AoE meta has been pretty rampant for some time, I officially gave up trying to slot stealth and adapted to even more of a brawler build with the cloak heal + br resto it’s excellent. This coupled with the increased duration of major protection and the passive mitigation brawler is 100% the way to go next patch in my opinion.
If you think aoe is bad now you haven’t seen anything. AoEs hit just as hard as all the spammables. Besides impale I don’t know if any single target abilities are worth a skill slot. Like concealed in a dark cloak build, it doesn’t make sense because sap is just better... reach with the staff that boosts it is good too.
I run 5 light for the most part. But I switch up my build from time to time. Both heavy and light sustain about the same in my opinion when you factor in viable ways to build using each armor type. I give light the advantage though because harness magicka is broken sustain. Against Stam players my heavy armor magblades actually sustain better than my light armor due to me not having to waste 4k magicka every 3 seconds Just casting a damage shield. The only problem with heavy magblade is that it is very weak to other light armor users playing with harness which is practically most of cyrodiil.
I'm also a solo pvper who prefers 1vX open world cyrodiil so my sustain is going to be tested more than your average everyday pvper. So I can see a huge difference when I used sets like armor master which give no magicka benefits what so ever. If I could drop armor master for lich or BTB my sustain wouldn't feel so horrible. But the shield changes ruined that for magblade
That’s odd, maybe you aren’t building tanky enough for light armour. Light armour has pen, crit and 20% better regen.
If you’re building 5x light without boosting your survivability enough yea, heavy will be better. However you can hit mitigation cap in 5x light if you want, light armour doesn’t mean being squishy.
Yes, 2 shields with I believe 56ish in bastion. Harness magicka is excellent for sustain. Couple this with an infused back bar with mag steal and you should be able to sustain great.HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
Tried this for a bit. Are you slotting two shields tho? Found that VERY resource heavy.
thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
Hey man, nice seeing you in cyro yesterday it’s been a while haha. I was on my sorc but told Loko to let you do your thing. I would drop armor master for sure. Have you tried bright throat yet? Highly recommend paired with necro / spinner / shackle. I’ve started running full protective on jewelry and it lets me get much flexible with my builds without having to run any tank sets really. Spring loaded infused drink + bright throat is absolutely amazing for any mag build at the moment.
ProzTh3Almighty wrote: »Magblade is supposed to be a hybrid ranged/melee build. If you want to play a pure ranged build magsorc is probably a better option.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »thankyourat wrote: »HEBREWHAMMERRR wrote: »The mitigation buff + change to dark cloak is going to be huge for brawler builds. The damage lost will hurt but the mitigation access we are gaining is going to make timing burst more crucial but easier to pull off without having to worry about self heals as much. I’d recommend trying dark cloak with a black rose resto. It’s changed my play style on magblade but I’m starting to almost prefer it over the old ward.
On live dark Cloak is actually stronger than shadowy disguise because of the healing it provides in my opinion. it's actually stronger than vigor. I play more of a brawler type playstyle with armor master and blood spawn as well but I feel like that build has possibly been nerfed. My survivability is already incredibly high with my set up. The hard part of the build is putting out enough damage to kill certain opponents. So the 8% damage loss is going to be pretty big.
If the new mitigation from merciless is strong enough to where I can drop armor master and slot something like BTB and still have the mitigation I need then I think the change will be overall a positive because armor master and other defensive sets just kill your sustain. If the 15% isn't enough to where I can drop armor master then magblade just became borderline unplayable because you lost alot of damage to the point where you can't kill anyone and if you drop you defensive set you will still have bad survivability. I'll have to wait and see with this one.
I'm upset that they nerfed dark cloak though. The skill was fine as is. It provided good healing and defense for the cost of going invisible. If the healing is lowered I don't see much reason to use it over shadowy disguise unless I'm planning on dueling. The minor protection is nice but the bursty nature of the heal is really what made this ability good. Use annulment and then use dark Cloak and you where able to keep your health topped off.
Hey man, nice seeing you in cyro yesterday it’s been a while haha. I was on my sorc but told Loko to let you do your thing. I would drop armor master for sure. Have you tried bright throat yet? Highly recommend paired with necro / spinner / shackle. I’ve started running full protective on jewelry and it lets me get much flexible with my builds without having to run any tank sets really. Spring loaded infused drink + bright throat is absolutely amazing for any mag build at the moment.
When you saw me yesterday I was actually running BTB/spinner/blood spawn I plan on running this next patch. My damage is alot higher than yours but your health is alot higher than mine. Our resistances are about the same when my bloodspawn procs but that's not always active. What are you doing to get your health so high healthy jewelry? Or are you running all tri-stat glyphs? My spell damage is about 2700 coming out of stealth without my berserker glyph active and my magicka is about 3k higher than yours. My health is only 23k though. I also have the extra pen from spinners which puts me at almost 18k pen.
What I like about armor master though is that it makes me not weak to magsorcs whose burst damage is just way too high right now. With armor master it gives me more breathing room to actually set up a burst combo. It's basically the same thing you are doing with protective jewelry. Your stat sheet is almost identical to my armor master build when buffed with continuous attack. I have about 2300 sd 44k magicka 19k stam 2400 regen 25k resist and 27k health, all of this is with continuous attack and potion buff active but no stealth bonus. So the start sheet in pretty much exactly the same. In my opinion this is what a viable magblade stat sheet looks like this patch. The only problem is that it's low damage.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
I'm a fan of stacking mitigation buffs over armor for a long time now, basically since bleed meta and even more after shields changes - as everyone is running spinner/spriggan. Pirate skeleton is such a fantastic set as long as you have hots up to heal you up. Also minor protection via dark cloak and major evasion are extremly underestimated, as well as maim (which we sadly lust to our fear....)
ProzTh3Almighty wrote: »Magblade is supposed to be a hybrid ranged/melee build. If you want to play a pure ranged build magsorc is probably a better option.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
I'm a fan of stacking mitigation buffs over armor for a long time now, basically since bleed meta and even more after shields changes - as everyone is running spinner/spriggan. Pirate skeleton is such a fantastic set as long as you have hots up to heal you up. Also minor protection via dark cloak and major evasion are extremly underestimated, as well as maim (which we sadly lust to our fear....)
Hum yea, pirate skeleton might be a really good setup. I was more thinking something along the lines of this:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=144139
Though I haven’t played a pure dps build in a while, it looks like it would be fun. Pirate skeleton might be better then Skoria for major protection and added tankiness.
Debilitate getting minor magic steal opens up icy conjuror on the back bar.
Probably best to add harness magicka too since 7 light will boost it a lot too.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
I'm a fan of stacking mitigation buffs over armor for a long time now, basically since bleed meta and even more after shields changes - as everyone is running spinner/spriggan. Pirate skeleton is such a fantastic set as long as you have hots up to heal you up. Also minor protection via dark cloak and major evasion are extremly underestimated, as well as maim (which we sadly lust to our fear....)
Hum yea, pirate skeleton might be a really good setup. I was more thinking something along the lines of this:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=144139
Though I haven’t played a pure dps build in a while, it looks like it would be fun. Pirate skeleton might be better then Skoria for major protection and added tankiness.
Debilitate getting minor magic steal opens up icy conjuror on the back bar.
Probably best to add harness magicka too since 7 light will boost it a lot too.
That build looks really strange to me. I'm not sure what you're going to kill with shock ring and sap essence.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
I'm a fan of stacking mitigation buffs over armor for a long time now, basically since bleed meta and even more after shields changes - as everyone is running spinner/spriggan. Pirate skeleton is such a fantastic set as long as you have hots up to heal you up. Also minor protection via dark cloak and major evasion are extremly underestimated, as well as maim (which we sadly lust to our fear....)
Hum yea, pirate skeleton might be a really good setup. I was more thinking something along the lines of this:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=144139
Though I haven’t played a pure dps build in a while, it looks like it would be fun. Pirate skeleton might be better then Skoria for major protection and added tankiness.
Debilitate getting minor magic steal opens up icy conjuror on the back bar.
Probably best to add harness magicka too since 7 light will boost it a lot too.
That build looks really strange to me. I'm not sure what you're going to kill with shock ring and sap essence.
Look closer. Icy conjuror procs from the back bar, elemental ring puts a dot on all targets and on PTS sap hits as hard as concealed blade. There’s no reason to use concealed blade unless you use shadowy disguise.
My concern is moreso lack of defense, not offense.
Premise is to put shade up, ring for a dot, debilitate for icy conjuror from range, lotus fan and sap in melee. 4 dots plus conjuror should be a lot of pressure.
I’m thinking master’s staff reach might be a better spammable, then drop ring and sap and put harness magicka on the front bar. Add pirate skelly. Have to play test these things to see what works best.
You guys are still planning on running blood spawn post patch?
15% mitigation from merciless is substantial. For example looking at your guy’s stat sheet against a competent sorc you’ll be brought down to 15000 magicka resists or 23% mitigation with penetration.
So merciless plus minor protection will give you the same amount of protection as everything you’ve put into resistances.
One thing you might want to try...
7 light using buffer of the swift and merciless. Basicly tank resistances and depend on merciless 15%, Buffer 10% and maybe 8% minor protection for 33% mitigation immune to penetration.
I'm a fan of stacking mitigation buffs over armor for a long time now, basically since bleed meta and even more after shields changes - as everyone is running spinner/spriggan. Pirate skeleton is such a fantastic set as long as you have hots up to heal you up. Also minor protection via dark cloak and major evasion are extremly underestimated, as well as maim (which we sadly lust to our fear....)
Hum yea, pirate skeleton might be a really good setup. I was more thinking something along the lines of this:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=144139
Though I haven’t played a pure dps build in a while, it looks like it would be fun. Pirate skeleton might be better then Skoria for major protection and added tankiness.
Debilitate getting minor magic steal opens up icy conjuror on the back bar.
Probably best to add harness magicka too since 7 light will boost it a lot too.
That build looks really strange to me. I'm not sure what you're going to kill with shock ring and sap essence.
Look closer. Icy conjuror procs from the back bar, elemental ring puts a dot on all targets and on PTS sap hits as hard as concealed blade. There’s no reason to use concealed blade unless you use shadowy disguise.
My concern is moreso lack of defense, not offense.
Premise is to put shade up, ring for a dot, debilitate for icy conjuror from range, lotus fan and sap in melee. 4 dots plus conjuror should be a lot of pressure.
I’m thinking master’s staff reach might be a better spammable, then drop ring and sap and put harness magicka on the front bar. Add pirate skelly. Have to play test these things to see what works best.