Probably best to ask what class you are playing. Detection potions are, by far, the most effective, not least because the NB can only tell indirectly that you've used one.

In any event, don't waste time trying to find a nightblade. Use your detection methods to prevent them from escaping when you hear or see them. This is especially true for Magelight and Expert Hunter, due to the short range.

DKs tend to use Volatile Armor and Breath. Flames of Oblivion will not detect NBs, but hit them as soon as they uncloak, which can be helpful to react to an attack from behind. You'll cop on to it more quickly, as you'll see the direction of the fireball.

The templar Sweeps / Jabs snare is nasty and it's an AOE skill. Spamming that skill is often more effective than trying something more elaborate, although Power of the Light / Purifying Light is also annoying, as it knocks NBs out of cloak, when it goes off. A good NB will counter Sweeps / Jabs with the Shade or with RAT / Forward Momentum. I wear Overwhelming Surge on my magplar to help detect nightblades. A fairly nasty anti-nightblade set, when it procs, which will knock them out of cloak, even if they have not engaged yet. 12m radius is bigger than many other methods.

Sorcs use Hurricane / Lightning Form, Streak, Curse, Mage's Fury. A standard sorc build is quite nasty against nightblades, as there are so many things that will *** it out of cloak, even if only Lightning Form is an outright detection method.

The best way to kill a nightblade on a warden is probably to wait for your ice ult.

Some pets will run after nightblades, even if they are cloaked. Shadowrend has done this in the past. Not sure whether it still does.

Turn on the ZOS combat text to show DOT damage on players and you can see where the nightblade is, because you can see the text "Miss".

Consuming Trap (Soul Trap) has, in the past, exposed cloaking nightblades, knocking them out of cloak, although this may have been fixed around the same time Sloads was fixed.

As a nightblade yourself you can speculatively use Fear. Also, if you are perma-cloaking, you tend to run across other nightblades, because they don't see you coming, especially stamblades that can't keep cloak up themselves and are merely crouching.

There is also Revealing Flare, but it's a bit specialised and not part of standard builds.

Kaysha wrote: »

things that annoy me as magblade are:
mark target, detection pots, ritual of retribution, jabs, streak, curse, hurricane, wirling blade, mage light.
apart from that of course all AOEs.
as you can see, sorc and temp have a good toolkit, dk and warden are a bit easier. but they are harder to take down, so it balances out I guess.

Everything damage related (except curse) to break cloak only works against bad players though, good nightblades will always have a Shadow Image up, port to it, cloak and theyre gone, gl finding them with your PBAoE damage spam.
And if they dont have an image up, they just set an image on flat ground, kite you away from it, port, cloak and they're gone, but most people dont even use shadowy image because they're just bad and it doesnt help them Xv1ing and then come to the forums to justify the power level of cloak because its all so bad and it has so many counters.
The reliable counters are literally just mark, which is a nightblade skill (the irony) and detect pots which have 15 seconds uptime with a 45 second cooldown.
So no, it doesnt balance it out, cloak is a stupid strong skill, but its THE defining skill of nightblade so we cant really take that away from them.