blnchk wrote: »

zammo wrote: »

As far as identity goes, i'm not sure Magblade has anything specific for itself. I'd say Nightblade class defining skills are limited to the base/invis cloak and shade. (It's only opinion, but amusing when only 1 morph of a skill counts as class defining, and the other skill hasn't worked for a year). I think identity is fine though, seems to have as much as any other class.

That's the thing, though. MagBlades have so much potential to be unique and interesting. Never mind cloak; the whole "hurt to heal" theme could be so much more than it is. It should be more. It's too bad that we were apparently threatening the existence of dedicated healers. ...And I guess we're now threatening the existence of dedicated stamina crowd controllers.

So no, I don't think things are fine as they are. Not just for MagBlades, at that. Once they're done with this audit of theirs (including passives come Q4), I sincerely hope that class identity will be examined next.

Mag blade is the new stam sorc. Oh gawd, too bad to see another class gets butchered in favor for generalization.

Feel you in my kokoro

Glad that ZOS listened to us, AWESOME patch notes :P

So magblades will be screwed for another few months at least.

Well... We got cloak. Thats enough reason for everything else about Nightblades being convoluted as **** and generally ineffective.

MagSorcs are basically OP. Look at their toolkit, they have almost everything. And soon Fear as well.

DKs of all stripes are basically OP. What cant a DK do? Awesome damage output, survivability is extreme, tankiness, good self healing and sustain.

Yet they get more buffs, constantly.

Nightblades have largely been nerfed constantly, intentionally or not, by changing skills around so much you basically dont know whats gonna happen. The Grim Focus skill is generally messy to use well, especially if it gets laggy, for instance(at least thats my experience). Blur is useless. Path of Darkness, anyone use it? Removed Fracture from Surprise Attack, isch...
Most buffs in the game are completely external to Nightblades, Major Brutality and Sorcery... Minor Berserk, Expedition etc... Most other classes have them in their toolkits, either from proc passives or by active skill use or as a passive on a skill. Wardens basically have every buff available.

There is so much more to say on Nightblades, but I'm gonna close with one thing. I think Nightblades will be the only class that cant in any way, that springs to mind at the moment, use Seventh Legion set in the upcoming patch. Sure I didnt know the set would proc of Shadow Barrier passive, but now it wont anymore and that makes the set pretty useless for nightblades. I mean getting the proc on other classes is kinda annoying at the moment, if you want decent uptime at least, but Nightblades dont even have an active Resistance buff.

//tbh, should have left Seventh Legion well alone. Or at least make it proc on passives. Tankblade idea, rejected.

Iskiab wrote: »

Blur, mirage, whatever it’s called doesn’t work? It gives more minor resolve/ward. It isn’t ideal but it should work.

Should work... But not a very good skill, guess it could be justified with Seventh Legion. If its even worth using Seventh Legion in the upcoming patch.
There are easier ways to get those same buffs than having to reapply an armor buff every 10 seconds.

Iskiab wrote: »

Blur, mirage, whatever it’s called doesn’t work? It gives more minor resolve/ward. It isn’t ideal but it should work.

Shhh.... don't tell them. Mirage only gives minor ward/resolve and major evasion, still not enough reason to use the skill.

Drachdhar wrote: »

Well... We got cloak. Thats enough reason for everything else about Nightblades being convoluted as **** and generally ineffective.

MagSorcs are basically OP. Look at their toolkit, they have almost everything. And soon Fear as well.

DKs of all stripes are basically OP. What cant a DK do? Awesome damage output, survivability is extreme, tankiness, good self healing and sustain.

Yet they get more buffs, constantly.

Nightblades have largely been nerfed constantly, intentionally or not, by changing skills around so much you basically dont know whats gonna happen. The Grim Focus skill is generally messy to use well, especially if it gets laggy, for instance(at least thats my experience). Blur is useless. Path of Darkness, anyone use it? Removed Fracture from Surprise Attack, isch...
Most buffs in the game are completely external to Nightblades, Major Brutality and Sorcery... Minor Berserk, Expedition etc... Most other classes have them in their toolkits, either from proc passives or by active skill use or as a passive on a skill. Wardens basically have every buff available.

There is so much more to say on Nightblades, but I'm gonna close with one thing. I think Nightblades will be the only class that cant in any way, that springs to mind at the moment, use Seventh Legion set in the upcoming patch. Sure I didnt know the set would proc of Shadow Barrier passive, but now it wont anymore and that makes the set pretty useless for nightblades. I mean getting the proc on other classes is kinda annoying at the moment, if you want decent uptime at least, but Nightblades dont even have an active Resistance buff.

//tbh, should have left Seventh Legion well alone. Or at least make it proc on passives. Tankblade idea, rejected.

Nightblade has:
1-major brutality/sorcery from drain power skill morphs
2- major ward and resolve from shadow worrier passive.
3- minor ward and resolve as well as major evasion from mirage.
4- minor protection from dark cloak.
5- major protection from consuming darkness ult.
6- 10% damage reduction unamed.
7- major expidtion from path of darkness.
8-major berserk from reaper mark.
9-minor vitality from funnel health.
10-major vitality from soul shred.
11- minor mending from healthy offering.
12- unnamed 20% damage buff from death stroke.
13- minor vunierability from teleport strike.
14- major fracture and breach from mark target.
15- silance from incap.
16- major defile from soul harvest.
17- off balance from sneak/stealth attack by vieled strike.
18- minor maim from shade

I only included shadow worrior passive, but there are more buffs in NB passives. Overall, I see many buffs and debuffs. Just because a certain buff/debuff does not fit your play style, does not mean it does not exsit or not fit for other play style. As all other classes, in certain instances, buffs/debuffs work in PVP does not mean they should work well in PVE as well. Balance. If you talk about lower buffs/debuffs, I suggest you look at sorcs tool kit, probably lowest buffs and debuffs class in the game.

Lyar09 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Magblades are probably smallest group here and in general false. Stamsorc is - false it's just your opinion same as mine.

Give us a reason to pick mass histerya over the Turn Evil.
You’re Magicka, not stamina

Give us a reason to use Lotus fan over the Flying Blade
Stammmmmmmina

give us reason to use Phantasmal Escape over the Shuffle.
Sta.... you get the point by now

I think you don't understand the rest. Why play magicka NB if EVERY aspect of character is better when playing stamina? The only advantage you have as a magblade is that you can use cloak more but everything else is worse than stamblade has. Magblade has every skill worse, can't use roll dodge, needs to invest a lot in stamina to be able to cc break.

universal_wrath wrote: »

Nightblade has:
1-major brutality/sorcery from drain power skill morphs not worth slotting for most builds
2- major ward and resolve from shadow worrier passive. yes
3- minor ward and resolve as well as major evasion from mirage. mirage isn't worth slotting over phantasmal escape and that one gets outclassed by RAT (at least for magblade) after the removal of nearly any source of major expedition
4- minor protection from dark cloak. yes. Means giving up the invis morph tho, which is pretty much all that can give magblade an edge over other classes for open world pvp
5- major protection from consuming darkness ult. expensive ult, barely used
6- 10% damage reduction unamed. yes
7- major expidtion from path of darkness. bad skill, not worth slotting on most builds, speed buff on a small stationary aoe skills is contratdictory
8-major berserk from reaper mark. too conditional, usually not worth using
9-minor vitality from funnel health. got removed some patches ago
10-major vitality from soul shred. rather expensive ult, low duration, still a good skill so yes
11- minor mending from healthy offering. doesn't work solo, only worth using on dedicated healer builds
12- unnamed 20% damage buff from death stroke. yes
13- minor vunierability from teleport strike. yes, clunky and easily countered skill tho
14- major fracture and breach from mark target. yes
15- silance from incap. breakable silence, usefullness is situational
16- major defile from soul harvest. yes
17- off balance from sneak/stealth attack by vieled strike. yes, limited usability on magblade
18- minor maim from shade yes

My comments in bold inside the quote

Just looking at the quantity of something (eg buffs and debuffs in this case) doesn't really show how good or bad a class is in this certain aspect nor in general, because quality matters a lot more. Just because something is there on paper doesn't mean it will be incorporated into a good build. Now that doesn't mean nb is in a bad spot when it comes to access to buffs and debuffs. Not at all. I just miss my major expedition, otherwise i think the class is fine in this regard.
I just don't like when important factors get igored to paint a certain (wrong) picture about a class.

Also the vast majority of those buffs and debuffs are accessible to every class via class or non class skills, pots or poisons, or sets - whether those are practical sources is ofc a different story once again.

xeNNNNN wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

Saril_Durzam wrote: »

Magblade issues:

1) Magicka class.
2) The other build, stamina, is top DPS (maybe not today with necro, shrug).

Hard to change the magicka issues. Not sure if it will help you but at least the class got an awesome stamina build. This stage of the game is Stamina > Magicka and we magicka users have to cope wiht it. ZOS won´t change.

The real problem? It´s not easy to buff magblade DPS without buffing stamblade. And believe me, noone wants to buff more stamblade (but stamblades).

I see people say this all the time but I don’t think it’s true. They’ve been nerfing magblade specific abilities, I think they’re intentionally nerfing magblade.

Some things that irk me:

Refreshing Path - nerfed because stacking it was too powerful, so we got a semi-crappy ability that either heals or does damage
This Patch - Ritual of retribution for Templars became twice as strong as refreshing path ever was. It heals and damages like refreshing used to be, plus a ton more effects. Why is this not an issue?

Lotus Fan - nerfed this patch. I mean it was just buffed and I was starting to like it!

Merciless mitigation - yea it was strong, still sucks to be reduced, this is the patch where we’ll need it the most with buffs across the board for other classes burst

Mass Hysteria - they increased the target cap which was nice, but at the same time removed the minor main because both would be too powerful
This Patch - added a stam ability for aoe fear that’s also heavily loaded with side effects and stronger then mass Hysteria.

It’s like ZoS is schizophrenic. Things are ‘too powerful’ and nerfed for magblades in one patch, then the next patch they add stuff for others that are two times more powerful then the magblade ability ever was. It makes no sense.

In regards to the ritual change, I am assuming that ZoS want to have X = Role like they originally intended and because of that while trying to deal with the whole "overhealing" issue they realised that they needed to compensate X = Role, I.e templars for healing due to the change to orbs and springs. Dont agree with it but it seems to be their logic.

As for ritual of retribution yeah......we'll see just how strong that is.

Maybe yea, but if that was the case then there’d be more Nightblade damage buffs. Stamblade is more middle of the pack in dps behind stamsorc and stamnecro, magblade is sucking hind *** along with MagWarden and Magnecro.

Everyone looking at buffs for NB. Please... there are only so many good buffs and having a buff doesn’t mean it’s as good as another one.

Best buffs: Minor/major vulnerability. Minor/major protection. Major evasion. Minor/major expedition. Minor/major mending. Major vitality.

Everything else isn’t a game changer.

Minor mending - tied to a skill that’s now relatively weaker but needs to be used still as a healer
Minor vulnerability - tied to a melee charge
Minor Protection - tied to a skill and choosing it means you can’t cloak
Major evasion - diluted in value and its on multiple skills now
Major expedition - tied to a crappy skill

It is weird yea. I would have said self utility buffs were a good thing about magblade. Now they’ve turned into a weakness because they’ve either been nerfed or similar abilities in alliance/guild skill lines are better. It’s become a weakness.

I mean shade doubling in cost! Must have been because of all the nerf NB threads... oh wait, there are none.

Rianai wrote: »

universal_wrath wrote: »

Nightblade has:
1-major brutality/sorcery from drain power skill morphs not worth slotting for most builds
2- major ward and resolve from shadow worrier passive. yes
3- minor ward and resolve as well as major evasion from mirage. mirage isn't worth slotting over phantasmal escape and that one gets outclassed by RAT (at least for magblade) after the removal of nearly any source of major expedition
4- minor protection from dark cloak. yes. Means giving up the invis morph tho, which is pretty much all that can give magblade an edge over other classes for open world pvp
5- major protection from consuming darkness ult. expensive ult, barely used
6- 10% damage reduction unamed. yes
7- major expidtion from path of darkness. bad skill, not worth slotting on most builds, speed buff on a small stationary aoe skills is contratdictory
8-major berserk from reaper mark. too conditional, usually not worth using
9-minor vitality from funnel health. got removed some patches ago
10-major vitality from soul shred. rather expensive ult, low duration, still a good skill so yes
11- minor mending from healthy offering. doesn't work solo, only worth using on dedicated healer builds
12- unnamed 20% damage buff from death stroke. yes
13- minor vunierability from teleport strike. yes, clunky and easily countered skill tho
14- major fracture and breach from mark target. yes
15- silance from incap. breakable silence, usefullness is situational
16- major defile from soul harvest. yes
17- off balance from sneak/stealth attack by vieled strike. yes, limited usability on magblade
18- minor maim from shade yes

My comments in bold inside the quote

Just looking at the quantity of something (eg buffs and debuffs in this case) doesn't really show how good or bad a class is in this certain aspect nor in general, because quality matters a lot more. Just because something is there on paper doesn't mean it will be incorporated into a good build. Now that doesn't mean nb is in a bad spot when it comes to access to buffs and debuffs. Not at all. I just miss my major expedition, otherwise i think the class is fine in this regard.
I just don't like when important factors get igored to paint a certain (wrong) picture about a class.

Also the vast majority of those buffs and debuffs are accessible to every class via class or non class skills, pots or poisons, or sets - whether those are practical sources is ofc a different story once again.

That is correct, just because you have minor protection, does not mean you can have ot with cloak. Browler blades and many magblades I have seen in BGs take minor protection morph over sneak, and their are too hard to kill. snare immunity versus minor ward/resolve, I do agree that RAT is kind of taking the spot here, but the thing is that RAT is more effensive oriented and mirage is defensive oriented. incap silance versus soul harvest defile. It is what makes builds worth playing, do you sacrifice stealth for protection and health or no? Need more burst dmg of incap or pressure of defile from harvest. Both piwer extraction morphs are widely used by bombers and zerglings eho run in a group and spam fear and power ectraction whatever form of it. I can go over all points I wrote and give you siruations and people who constantly use them all the time.

Stam sorcs usually use crit surge and two hand rally/FM. Only reason to use crit surge is for heal. They take rally over surge anytime in no cp as it'more relaible there. Major fracutre is taken from snb skills. Sorcs have major vitality but never use it because it's attached to weird utility skill, only tanks in pve use it. Sorce have major ward and resolve skill but some drop the skill for something else and wear mighty chudan to get the same buff. You can have everything in your tool kit available to you to use withoit any draw back.

I do agree on the part that Warden have lots of buff the boost there survivabily by alot in compare to other classes so they only need to focus on building dmg from sets, bit that is another topic ti discuss. Some classes are strong with their skills and passive, and some are meh. Good combitantion of inside and outside of class toolkit is balance.

Lyar09 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Lyar09 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Magblades are probably smallest group here and in general false. Stamsorc is - false it's just your opinion same as mine.

Give us a reason to pick mass histerya over the Turn Evil.
You’re Magicka, not stamina

Give us a reason to use Lotus fan over the Flying Blade
Stammmmmmmina

give us reason to use Phantasmal Escape over the Shuffle.
Sta.... you get the point by now

I think you don't understand the rest. Why play magicka NB if EVERY aspect of character is better when playing stamina? The only advantage you have as a magblade is that you can use cloak more but everything else is worse than stamblade has. Magblade has every skill worse, can't use roll dodge, needs to invest a lot in stamina to be able to cc break.

Welcome to the world of Stamsorc. Magblade is still really strong. I don’t understand the complaint here. Change your build to your weaknesses instead of asking for buffs. Every player is different. You can’t always just copy some youtubers build and expect it to be God tier for you.

1) You can perma cloak (I understand cloak is unreliable)
2) You have arguably the best class passives in the game
3) You have access to multiple class skills that make you tanky (Phantasmal, Merciless, Dark Cloak)
4) You have some of the best sustain passives
5) You have the best burst potential

1. Yes.
2. Stamblades have them to... And I wouldn't be so sure are those the best passives in the game.
3. Stamblades have better skills, any stam toon have them.
4. Again stamblades have them to, some classes have even built in passives to be tanky.
5. Stamblades have way better burst potential.

As I said before, there is no reason to play magblade when stamblade outclasses it in every aspect. This is the case for most magicka vs stamina classes. It a topic for a PhD but in general magicka specs are in a bad spot and it gets worse with every patch (there is a reason why Cyrodiil is filled with stam specs), while magblade is arguably the weakest mag spec. It may look strong but it's mostly because most magblades you can find are very experienced players, they would steamroll on other specs. Rookies quit this class very fast.

Mayrael wrote: »

universal_wrath wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

universal_wrath wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

I still don't understand why they changed Turn Undead right after the patch they removed all buffs from Fear

Ture. Unfortunetly, sorcs threads (eventhough sorcs got some serious buffs in this patch) are flooding this forums, while threads concerning magblades can be barely noticed in all this crowd. I really sticked to magblade for a very long time, but now? Lets say I have no space for ESO in near future.

What serious buffs arw you talking about? I only see streak hard cc and penalty decrease. I don't thing penalty to should be a thing to begin with as long as gap closers and cloak don't have. The decrease penaly is welcome and longed for, streak is surely buffed, otherwise, nothing of sorcs toolkit has been buffed, rather they were nerfed.

Dark Magic

Crystal Shard: Decreased the base cost of this ability and its morphs to 2970 from 3510, and decreased the damage by approximately 10%.
Crystal Blast (morph): The AoE portion of this ability now deals the same damage as the initial hit.
Crystal Fragments (morph): Increased the bonus damage dealt of the proc from this ability to 33% from 20% to retain the damage of this proc.

Summon Unstable Familiar:

Decreased the special ability of this summon and the Volatile Familiar morph to 2808 from 3510.
Increased the damage per tick by approximately 8% of the base ability, but reduced the damage per tick of Volatile by approximately 3% since it was using the wrong rank up.

Not to mention sorcs are already on top of the food chain, while magblades are on the bottom but heII yeah, why not nerf them even more and since almost nobody plays them let's give their stuff to everyone.

For crystal shards, they basically only in creased the dmg by 3% since they reduced base dmg by 10% and increased shard by 33%, only 3% stronger.
For summon monkey, they decrease the cost, but also reduced the dmg of the skill, see what they did? Shard and streak are on there way to be back to former glory 4 years ago.

They also reduced cost of frags. And they buffed damage of pet by 5% (8% increase of base and 3% nerf of morph). And please explain how buffs to sorc (strongest magicka class) are ok, when magblades (one of the weakest specs) are only nerfed and their unique abilities are given away.

My pet is going to do -69% DPS. Yeah, no nerf!

Ah phooey . When's it gonna be our time again? The most fun class should not be forced to covert from killer to healer to actually enjoying Pvp .

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lyar09 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Lyar09 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Magblades are probably smallest group here and in general false. Stamsorc is - false it's just your opinion same as mine.

Give us a reason to pick mass histerya over the Turn Evil.
You’re Magicka, not stamina

Give us a reason to use Lotus fan over the Flying Blade
Stammmmmmmina

give us reason to use Phantasmal Escape over the Shuffle.
Sta.... you get the point by now

I think you don't understand the rest. Why play magicka NB if EVERY aspect of character is better when playing stamina? The only advantage you have as a magblade is that you can use cloak more but everything else is worse than stamblade has. Magblade has every skill worse, can't use roll dodge, needs to invest a lot in stamina to be able to cc break.

Welcome to the world of Stamsorc. Magblade is still really strong. I don’t understand the complaint here. Change your build to your weaknesses instead of asking for buffs. Every player is different. You can’t always just copy some youtubers build and expect it to be God tier for you.

1) You can perma cloak (I understand cloak is unreliable)
2) You have arguably the best class passives in the game
3) You have access to multiple class skills that make you tanky (Phantasmal, Merciless, Dark Cloak)
4) You have some of the best sustain passives
5) You have the best burst potential

I will exchange all pack of NB's passives for sorc's passives any time. And bow for frags too.

Funny thing is, he's talking about stamsorc. You know, the other sorc class with only 50% useful passives and no frags.
But yeah, looks like my mNB is going to craft for a while. I'm truely curious if this patch is really the final effort to build a coherent base to re-build nice classes on again.