Nightblade Class Identity Failures

Royalthought · September 2019

Pijng wrote: »

Royalthought wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Yeah and what we get here? Everyone asking for buffs to STAMBLADES, which are overnerfed a bit to I admit but nobody cares about MAGBLADES which are almost extinct.

Actually the class as a whole was gutted.

Stamblade's just end up using weapon skill builds and benefitting from stamina perks.

Stamblade's used to have major fracture on S.A. and a stun on incap. They've lost defile, fracture, stun, etc. The idea that the stamina variant of nightblades has more in their class is actually outdated. The only real difference is magblade's rely moreso on range more than melee so concealed isn't the focus. Strife is and that was nerfed too.

Pijng wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Surprise Attack should have the same sneak speed buff as Concealed Weapon. The Concealed Weapon sneak buff is an iconic part of sneak builds that are inherently medium-armor.

Then what's the point in CW except its being a magic damage ability?
Adding bonus ms while sneak to SA == basically removing unique bonus from concealed.

Deep fissure - Sub assault
Relentless focus - merciless resolve
Puncturing sweeps - biting jabs

I guess the real point is build diversity. I would've loved to see both concealed and surprise get major fracture/breech with the 25% speed tbh. But as it is ive only ever used concealed for speed and SA as a spammable. Perhaps if concealed had more going for it melee magblade would apeeal to more players... maybe.

Deep fissure – Magic damage and reduce to spell resists
Sub Assault – Poison damage and reduce to phys resist

Relentless – mitigation, disease dmg, heal
Merciless – mitigation, magic dmg but dealing more base dmg than alternative morph, heal

Puncturing sweeps – phys damage, reduce enemy's ms, gives you major savagery
Biting jabs – magic damage, reduce enemy's ms, heals you on % of dmg dealt

Morphs are very similar but each has it's own unique bonus except different type of damage.
But what FrancisCrawford suggest is going to be like this:

Surprise Attack – phys damage, off balance from sneak, reduce phys resists, bonus ms while in sneak
Concealed Weapon – magic damage, off balance from sneak, bonus ms while in sneak

Now here comes the question – what'll be so special about CW? Just because it's magic damage and it'll be unprofitable to run SA as a mag archetype? Oh and CW will have less bonuses in total than SA

But yeah, I do agree that CW right now is a very niche moprh. I used to run it with my 2h melee magblade in PVP back in a days. Now I use it for movespeed bonus as a bomblade only. 2h and dw are unprofitable for magblades in pvp atm. Maybe it's popular rn for bow/bow builds, I don't really care about them.
And what about pve: if you can go as a range dd -> go as a range one!

"I would've loved to see both concealed and surprise get major fracture/breech with the 25% speed tbh."

^Repost of my stance. The goal isn't to give stam more than mag or vice versa. Both need improvements although there are some that look to cater to one side or the other.

But for me scenarios like deep fissure and Sub assault are perfectly fine. Just stam and mag variants. Of course I'm not suggesting that for all abilities. But this is a case where it could make sense.

Mayrael · September 2019

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Yeah and what we get here? Everyone asking for buffs to STAMBLADES, which are overnerfed a bit to I admit but nobody cares about MAGBLADES which are almost extinct.

They're equally dead at this point, at least from a PvE perspective. In fact, unless I'm wearing Lokke, my dummy-humping sessions indicate that magblade is actually out-DPSing stamblade, and even with Lokke, the difference is nothing to write home about.

LiquidPony wrote: »

From a PvE perspective, it's really amazing how they turned a class that was arguably the most unique, interesting, and powerful DD in the game (for both magicka and stamina) into a ... tank I guess?

Complete failure all around. NB overperforming? Destroy it with fire! Same solution ZOS has to everything.

Yep... the class used to be set up well enough where both mag and stam versions were viable and felt completely different from each other, which I can't say is the case for some other classes. Now it's in shambles.

I'm talking about PvP, sorry I wasn't specific. In PvP you still can see good stamblades doing their stuff, pulling enemies, killing them etc. just now they use onslaught instead of incap.

But with new patch magblades are losing also range on shade (one of the most important skills for magblade). And you want talk about nerfs? Siphoning attacs made into semi useful skill, swallow soul and morphs lost minor vitality, funnel nerfed damage, twisting path - gutted, merciless - yeah... unreliable heal in melee range only and protection that you lose as soon as you use the smill instead of berserk working all the time... Lol. Cost increase on swallow soul, merciless, shade. Trust me magblades are one of the most overnerfed specs in the game and least played in PvP.

Edit:
Oh and I have forgott that they took away also major expedition from cripple, while leaving it only in path which was also nerfed to the ground as I mentioned before so they made sure we won't have it.

Red_Feather · September 2019

Nightblade was my main for half a year but it's really boring and I changed last year. It has a couple of unique skills. And then the rest feels very flat. I only felt the cloak and shadow archer were unique.

Rex-Umbra · September 2019

Shade dmg should be buffed back to Elyswer patch two major dmg nerfs after it was buffed to finally be worth using.

colossalvoids · September 2019

LiquidPony wrote: »

From a PvE perspective, it's really amazing how they turned a class that was arguably the most unique, interesting, and powerful DD in the game (for both magicka and stamina) into a ... tank I guess?

Complete failure all around. NB overperforming? Destroy it with fire! Same solution ZOS has to everything.

Completely agree. Too much effort was put into undoing old teams work at this point instead of small fixes and enhancements, sadly.

Finedaible · September 2019

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Yeah and what we get here? Everyone asking for buffs to STAMBLADES, which are overnerfed a bit to I admit but nobody cares about MAGBLADES which are almost extinct.

They're equally dead at this point, at least from a PvE perspective. In fact, unless I'm wearing Lokke, my dummy-humping sessions indicate that magblade is actually out-DPSing stamblade, and even with Lokke, the difference is nothing to write home about.

LiquidPony wrote: »

From a PvE perspective, it's really amazing how they turned a class that was arguably the most unique, interesting, and powerful DD in the game (for both magicka and stamina) into a ... tank I guess?

Complete failure all around. NB overperforming? Destroy it with fire! Same solution ZOS has to everything.

Yep... the class used to be set up well enough where both mag and stam versions were viable and felt completely different from each other, which I can't say is the case for some other classes. Now it's in shambles.

They're both equally dead in pvp too. The one interesting (fun) class in the game and it gets gutted for it.

Royalthought · September 2019

colossalvoids wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

From a PvE perspective, it's really amazing how they turned a class that was arguably the most unique, interesting, and powerful DD in the game (for both magicka and stamina) into a ... tank I guess?

Complete failure all around. NB overperforming? Destroy it with fire! Same solution ZOS has to everything.

Completely agree. Too much effort was put into undoing old teams work at this point instead of small fixes and enhancements, sadly.

NB's got unwarranted nerfs. I agree. But i disagree with what you said about the devs. I hate to say this but they aren't undoing the old teams work. This recent patch is aimed at undoing the new changes they made to the old teams work. lol

They over buffed and are now over nerfing. Regardless as to what the sweet spot may be, the old team was actually closer to it than where we are currently.

I hope for the best but as it stands NB's got destroyed.

evoniee · September 2019

great work op, litetally accurate and fair comparison

Maryal · September 2019

susmitds wrote: »

Blackleopardex wrote: »

Some ideas to improve magblade:

Shadow Image(change):
Shadow Image (morph): The teleport for this morph is now 22 meters, down from 28, since this morph is meant to operate on our gap closer or creator standard. This also prevents confusion in areas where the tooltip range would increase for the teleport, but fail to actually increase.

First of all the shades rage is limited enough as it is, if anything the range should have been slightly increased.

Secondly, using the argument that you wanna have to "gap closer or creator standard" is just ridicules. If you wanna go by gab-closer standard, make it a "gab-closer" lets us place it at 22 range...

Mass Hysteria:
This morphs either needs to increase further in number of targets, if not it needs maim back, or something along those lines to even compete with Turn Evil.

Manifestation of Terror:
This morph should be completely reworked into range cast ability that fears one target.(This, with a increased number of people feared on Mass Hysteria, You have a choice: fear on range 1 target or fear only melee many targets.

Twisting/Refreshing path
As mentioned further up in this thread by @AuraoftheAzureSea both these morphs could use a synergy of some kind specially with the new standardized low damage.

Concealed Weapon
This morphs need either a slight damage increase or some sort of minor debuff applied to the target(or maybe a buff to the caster?). As it stands now the sneak/cloak speed-buff is nice(please leave it alone) but the sacrifice if beeing in melee with light armor and a 22m shadow image is self destructive... It should also be more rewarding to go melee in PVE.

Dark Cloak
Good for tanking, can be left alone as long as the minor protection buff is fixed(does not apply it atm).

Funnel Health
The damage should be slightly increased with a slight decrease to the healing %. Not to the damage of swallow but closer then it is today.

Swallow soul
This morph should get changed so the healing tics every instead of every other second, and the healing adjusted accordingly.

Sap essence
The additional heal this ability does based on targets hits should be slightly increased.

Merciless Resolve
The heal from this ability should scale of max spell damage, we could use a heal not based on damage done or max health. This would also justify the short range of the heal as well as the fact that we need to stack it up and loose damage mitigation when casting it.

No need to change Manifestation of Terror, it is fine.

I agree ... no need to change Manifestation of Terror. It's fine and is very useful in both pvp and pve.

ThePhantomThorn · September 2019

Completely agree
Like why would u use killers blade over executioner rn?
The unique class execute is weaker than the 1 available to all classes?

Same with turn evil and fear.

A few changes:

-Fracture needs to be added to sa
Breach to concealed
-Fear needs to apply a snare and maim like it use to
-Cripple needs maj expo back
-Minor berserk back on grim focus and morphs
-Stun and defile back on dearh strike and morphs (along with removing cast times)
-Siphoning strikes and morphs need to restore at least 400 mag/stam on a la
-Shade needs the extra range and reduce cost back to pre scale
-Killers blade does 400% dmg
-Mark applies a unique debug ignoring 40% of resists along with kill buff (this will make magblade healers stronger)
-Refreshing path has a unique synergy
-1 morph of agony is a self targeted burst heal that scales of hp (for tanks and pvp)

That’s all I can think of rn

Edit: mark should be invisible to target. Just saying

ThePhantomThorn · September 2019

Royalthought wrote: »

Damage on refreshing path
Major expedition on cripple
Major fracture on surprise attack
Major defile on incap
Minor main on mass hysteria.

Yea I know. Great ideas that would improve the class. No idea where I get this stuff from. Lol

Extra credit: drop the heal and put major brut/sorc on grim focus.

Brut and scorcery would be awesome. Would buff a lot of builds and add more pot options

Maryal · September 2019

NBs should feel like stealthy assassins. Many NB abilities used to facilitate this style of gameplay, but not so much anymore. Let's take ambush as an example. You are surprising your victim with a hard hitting attack ... they should be momentarily stunned. The stun gives you a few seconds to land some good damage (combo), regen resources via a heavy attack or two, or even heal yourself. LOL ... even watching the visual effects of the stun (pve) on a more difficult to kill mob can be oddly satisfying.

Mob mobility -- another reason the stun should be added back to ambush. Mobs have become much more mobile since Summerset. When dealing with mobs that are more difficult to kill, as soon as you hit them they move. If they move away from you, you can gap-close or use a ranged skill/ability (I don't have a problem with that). BUT ... too often they move on top of you - their hitbox is on top of you so you can't target them. Moving to create enough space to target and hit them isn't helpful because the mobs that move 'on top of you' keep doing it (as long as you are in melee range). This has become very frustrating. I don't have room on my bar to slot 'fear' to use as a quasi-stun. Ranged attacks (bow) have been a work-around, but 'having' to use ranged attacks isn't very satisfying and is rather boring.

My suggestion would be to add the stun back to ambush as against non-players. When ambush is used against another player, instead of a stun, the ability can apply major fracture.

thankyourat · September 2019

I actually think that what nightblade needs is a boost to healing and a big boost to sustain. I think the damage is there it’s just hard to access it because of the need for all the sustain. It still feels like a nightblade to me just a watered down version.

To accomplish this I feel like one of the morphs to malevolent offering could be changed into a 2 second hot. So it would be heal yourself for 12k health over 2 seconds this would allow magblades to not be punished so heavily and give them a fighting chance to recover after being put on the defensive.

The way to help sustain is by buffing siphoning strikes. Siphoning attacks could keep the same function as now but add to it while active the cost of your magicka skills are reduced by 8%. Leaching strikes could double the health return you receive which would give stamblades more opportunities to apply pressure without disengaging.

I think these two simple changes would make nightblade feel a lot better. It will still suffer from being off meta because the meta is building tanky and stacking on top of each other which makes nightblade useless, but there is no real way for ZoS to change that. Unless they plan on addressing the tanky builds that are all over PvP

Kadoin · September 2019

Royalthought wrote: »

Perhaps if concealed had more going for it melee magblade would apeeal to more players... maybe.

lol, no. The problem is deeper than a single skill.

Royalthought · September 2019

Kadoin wrote: »

Royalthought wrote: »

Perhaps if concealed had more going for it melee magblade would apeeal to more players... maybe.

lol, no. The problem is deeper than a single skill.

No argument here.

The class has multiple issues that wouldn't be solved by just concealed being improved. Wouldn't claim otherwise. Just giving examples of improvements that could be made.