Is it just me or NBs have completely been butchered?

Kikazaru · October 2019

There's people out there saying to nerf cloak! Just NO!

I don't gank on my stamblade, and it feels like my sort of play style is very rare in which only a select few can truly master. And people whispering me that playing a NB is too easy and " I should play a real class".... pffft... evidently they don't play NBs enough in this patch.

dominguero96 · October 2019

I still play my magblade this patch and it still works. Yeah its harder to use it and against a good player its kind of impossible unless he does a mistake.

I wish they touch a bit of the nb but not too much, I hate when they are so OP that everyone is a NB

Rowjoh · October 2019

How is nerfing NB to virtual redundancy 'balanced' ?

The definition of balance is to make things more or less equal.

"Balance is having the right amount — not too much or too little — of any quality, which leads to harmony or evenness, typically involving one thing correctly weighed against another"

However, there is a continuous pattern of over buffing and over nerfing most updates, so its very clear that ZoS doesn't actually do balance, they just make CHANGES.

Vlad9425 · October 2019

Cloak is the last thing keeping NB even remotely relevant because every other aspect of fun and identity has been stripped from this class. I used to love my NB but now it’s just a shadow of it’s former self (no pun intended)

Tommy_The_Gun · October 2019

- Cloak - you can use invisibility pots. Besides, invisibility has way to many hard counters...
- Fear - you can use Turn Evil fighters guild skill (in fact it is superior to Manifestation of Terror & its morphs so even NB use Turn Evil over their own class skill).
- Ambush - you can use Flying Blade...
- Death Stroke & morphs - Dawnbreaker or even Onslaught after nerf is still superior...

EDIT:
- Grim Focus - Bound Armaments if you are sorc, so if you have one sorc character you have virtually no reason to roll NB.
(sorry forgot about that last one ^)

What I am basically trying to point out is, you dont need to roll NB... to be a NB...
Any other class can perform better, even as a ganker.

In fact I dont see a reason some one would roll a NB for PvP (both mag or stam). Maybe there is still some obscure place where NB can be used in PvE for example ? Anyone ?

Stamsorc or magsorc for example is way better, since we have an access to NB - exclusive skills in other skill trees available for other class.
And when it comes to ganking from stealth, it pains my soul to say it, by NB is no longer bis for this play style too. Stamplar seems a better choice... like WTF ?!

Vlad9425 · October 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

.
.
Yup...

And you know what is the saddest part ? Despite all that what OP pointed out, there are still people spamming NB nerf threads... I mean wow lol....

I can never take those people seriously because all they’re doing is identifying themselves as bad players who can’t figure out that Cloak has so many counters. The worst thing about those threads is the fact that 99% of them don’t even play NB so haven’t got a clue how the class operates yet they cry for nerfs...

Drako_Ei · October 2019

I liked the NB class for pve because if the healer was an idiot, grim focus' minor bersek had my back, if my tank was a total idiot, surprise attack's major fracture had my back, then ZoS took that away, then, they introduced the must-have stamina dps set "Lokkestiiz" so you depend on your healer even more. I swapped to necro and the damage difference is horrible, 105k on my necro, 85k on my nightblade

Shadowasrial · October 2019

Iv been playing my stamblade exclusively since launch. I can honestly say we have had our worst nerfs over this past year. It’s gotten to the point where we are no longer capable of being “assassins” trying to gank anyone these days is virtually impossible short of them being afk or just utterly new to pvp. But if you try to gank any decent player or especially experienced player it will more than likely lead to your death or you having to run away because other classes have such survivability that they quickly heal and are able to return the damage at a much higher rate than even a nb speced as a glass cannon can achieve

craybest · October 2019

what makes me sad is that all the things that are usually characteristic of a thief/rogue in fantasy can be done by everyone in here.
locking picks, hiding, backstab, assassination, fast movement, shadows, etc...

ZarkingFrued · October 2019

nsmurfer wrote: »

For last two months or so from my experience in pc/na both PvE and PvP, the number of NBs have substantially dropped.

In cyrodiil, few patches ago, there used to be a swarm of NBs everywhere. Right now, magblades are virtually non-existant except the last few Caluurion gankers. Stamblades for the most part are just as rare. I remember being quite a few variants of stamblades in Cyro, from rollerblades, bleedblades, brawlerblades, onslaught gankers, melee gankblades, SnB sNB, speedblades, snipers. Of all these types. The only type that has remained is snipers and the occasional DK wannabe dizzying swing spammers. Even then, they are one of the least seen specs right now and the remaining ones are hardly any threat.

In Bgs, it is even worse as even during the NB's best patches, they were easily the worst class to have in your team. Right now, having Nbs in a team substantially increases the chance of the losing. Only spec that is remotely useful are the healer magblades.

Havent done much Pve lately but from what I hear from guildies, Nbs have become the tank class and no longer a competitive DD class. Going forward, that seems to be the case even more, as magdks, stamdks, stamplar and magsorcs all got unique utility buffs that can only be given by DDs and thereby 4 slots of 8 dps slots in trials is already booked, leaving the remaining for stamcros, magplars and stamsorcs. Nbs lack both utility and raw dps to be a DD contender.

I am getting a feeling that NBs are largely becoming irrelevant as a class with pretty much the only thing that is keeping them on the scene being Cloak.

Kind of people who used to play NB now play Magplar instead. Nerf that then they will move to the next overperforming class

Tommy_The_Gun · October 2019

I think we can safely say that NB no longer states for a Night Blade... instead it is:

Nerf Blade

btw. Can some one who is more or less into making ESO UI add-ons, make an add-on that changes all NB descriptions to the one in the spoiler ? I would very much like to see that in game, just for LOLs...

goldCoaster · October 2019

I will always play NB until the day I die.

I’m glad less people are choosing to play this class.

We’re supposed to be a minority, anyway. Most nightblades are criminals and scumbags.

susmitds · October 2019

goldCoaster wrote: »

I will always play NB until the day I die.

I’m glad less people are choosing to play this class.

We’re supposed to be a minority, anyway. Most nightblades are criminals and scumbags.

Tbh, I personally feel the same. Playing the underdog class has its own benefits. I can still drop ultra-tanky people when the darned combo hits. I just wish Incap got its cast time removed. Will solve many of the issues.

Darsaga · October 2019

NB was OP for so long that the meta hoppers were not hopping. Now they are. The true NB mains and people that like skillful play are still a force to be reckoned with on the class. They are in a good place minus some utility that needs to be given back. Especially in MagBlades case.

blkjag · October 2019

Buff nightblade

nekura · October 2019

There have been so many undocumented changes that affect the stealth playstyle, and it's has been an every patch thing. I'm still enjoying mine, but I've been playing full glass cannon (all divines, heavy investments into penetration) on no-CP. It's kind of the only way I've found to make it work purely solo.

I'm leaning on Onslaught just like everyone else, but I've been using it for years before the buff. Even the nerf doesn't really affect me. If I'm not killing you in five seconds I'm going to have to reset.

Shantu · October 2019

Combat in this entire game, across all classes, is getting butchered...along with any enthusiasm and fun that came with it.

Iskiab · October 2019

Uryel wrote: »

Can't say much about PvP as I don't do that, but yeah, Nightblade has been butchered. And it's even worse if you're a Bosmer Nightblade.

Top assassination skill, Grim Focus, is a joke. It is now entirely unrelated to assassination, and it's not getting better in the next update. "I'm ready to attack my target and quietly take it out, so of course I'll buff myself with a skill that will gradually enhance my defense". Seems logical... Not.

Blur and its morph went from a passive +dodge chance, which made sense for a thief-styled character (ask every single game ever since pen and paper dungeon and dragon 1.0) to "yeah but passive dodge doesn't make sense so let's get some AoE damage reduction". Still makes some sense, but not as much in the "power fantasy" (to quote ZOS) of a stealthy character.

Veiled strike lost its debuff part. "But you can bring another skill to do that, and in a group there is always someone who brings an equivalent debuff so it's inconsequential". Except you only have 10 skills on your kit at a given time, and Nightblade's toolkit is more spread than any other class, and also you're not always in a group. Not a large groupe, at least. What other class has to bear with "we'll spread your kit because you need to rely on others in a group" ? That's right, none.

Shadow Cloak ? Had to be reworked recently because unless you had fully leveled the Shadow line and invested in passives, it lasted ONE SECOND, effectively making it entirely useless for new characters. Now it lasts 3 seconds but doesn't benefit from the passive. Huzzah. So, this skill is only useful to spam before attacking to guarantee a critical strike, or as a half decent heal if you pick its other morph. There are much better skills to take in your limited 10 spots kit, and its mechanics pretty much contradict the "power fantasy" of a stealthy character. Invisibility potions are MUCH more useful than this for hiding.

Path of darkness used to be AWESOME. An AoE that could both damage and heal over time with a morph, or have a large AoE damage with its other. Started as a normal sied AoE damage over time. Now ? Starts as a speed buff. Because apparently everyone and their mother want some speed buff. Then, morphs add EITHER damage or heal. Justification : "everyone has to bring something unique to the table". So I guess it's fine if the templar has a similarly functioning skill that does both damage and heal, on a larger area on top of that, so long as it's the Nightblade that gets nerfed.

Shades were always useless, damage-wise, and remain so, but their utility range for teleportation has been reduced.

Soul Siphon, the healing morph to Soul Shred, is worth mentionning as a skill that will get a buff in the next patch, if things haven't / do not change until then. It will get an increase in initial healing, to improve its "emergency survival tool" aspect. That's a good change, for once. Not especially needed, but good nonetheless.

Soul Strife has reduced utility as a self heal. It will either deal low damage and heal two targets, but the heal is based on damage dealt, so... Whelp... or it will deal decent damage, but have reduced healing effect and only affect self. So, would you rather do self-only lame heal, but decent damage, or lame heal on yourself and a friend, but lame damage ?

So far, Drain Power, the top siphoning skill, remains untouched by the nerf bat. It's still a pretty damn good skill. Its only recent modification was to remove the Major Sorcery buff from the stamina morph, which makes sense. I'm pretty worried about that one in the future.

And of course, if you're a Bosmer, you also lost every racial stealth bonus you might have had. My 5 years old Bosmer Nightblade had been created especially for that, now she's been butchered so much I can barely get around playing her at all.

[Edited to remove Sheogorath's influence on my spelling. At least some of it]

Soul Siphon isn’t getting buffed. It’s the damaging morph soul tether that will have an initial heal.

Btw, if PTS goes live things will get far worse for NBs. If you aren’t happy now just wait.

iCaliban · October 2019

Thanatos_inside wrote: »

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

This is due to nightblades refusing to tolerate a nerf to cloak. It needs adjustment so the rest of the toolkit doesnt become oppressive. A stacking cost incresase like streak or roll dodge would have allowed the class to be balanced in a far more appropriate manner.

Instead NB has had shade, incap, surprise attack, merciless, bow skill line, all nerfed. All because permanent invisibility is absolutely BROKEN unless you have a hard counter, in which case it is useless.

dominguero96 · October 2019

iCaliban wrote: »

Thanatos_inside wrote: »

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

This is due to nightblades refusing to tolerate a nerf to cloak. It needs adjustment so the rest of the toolkit doesnt become oppressive. A stacking cost incresase like streak or roll dodge would have allowed the class to be balanced in a far more appropriate manner.

Instead NB has had shade, incap, surprise attack, merciless, bow skill line, all nerfed. All because permanent invisibility is absolutely BROKEN unless you have a hard counter, in which case it is useless.

You seem like the kind of guy that doesnt get that cloak is garbage defensively compared to dodge or streak. Yeah I'm invisible but i can only walk around while you look for me with any AoE or pots, or magelight. Well if you don't find the nigtblade bad luck, he'll be 1 step away cuz he cant run.

If you want to nerf cloak because its so OP, get some counters for all the defensive options for the classes. And dont speak of stuns or inmobilization cuz they are already for the cloak, something more?

Cloak doesnt prevent damage income (except dots) and dont get distance with your target (which if you are ranged it's what you need)

GhostofDatthaw · October 2019

iCaliban wrote: »

Thanatos_inside wrote: »

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

This is due to nightblades refusing to tolerate a nerf to cloak. It needs adjustment so the rest of the toolkit doesnt become oppressive. A stacking cost incresase like streak or roll dodge would have allowed the class to be balanced in a far more appropriate manner.

Instead NB has had shade, incap, surprise attack, merciless, bow skill line, all nerfed. All because permanent invisibility is absolutely BROKEN unless you have a hard counter, in which case it is useless.

Nerf to cloak like what, removing the purge from it, people tend to forget cloak has been nerfed

Tommy_The_Gun · October 2019

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

iCaliban wrote: »

Thanatos_inside wrote: »

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

This is due to nightblades refusing to tolerate a nerf to cloak. It needs adjustment so the rest of the toolkit doesnt become oppressive. A stacking cost incresase like streak or roll dodge would have allowed the class to be balanced in a far more appropriate manner.

Instead NB has had shade, incap, surprise attack, merciless, bow skill line, all nerfed. All because permanent invisibility is absolutely BROKEN unless you have a hard counter, in which case it is useless.

Nerf to cloak like what, removing the purge from it, people tend to forget cloak has been nerfed

Tbh. Cloak has way to many counters. It is way too unreliable, unless you are escaping from a crowd of noob potatoes.
If a player you are against is at least average or has a tiny bit of experience - you will not get away 99% of times, unless you will be super lucky.

If something, cloak should have something like "reversed streak" treatment (at least on one morphs) example:
"Refund 20% of this ability cost if it was interrupted within less than 1 second of casting."

So one morph will have guaranteed critical damage, and the other will have this. One offensive, one defensive.

And the burst heal morph should be moved to one of Malevolent Offering morphs.

WacArnold · October 2019

This is from a PVP perspective from a magblade

Damage has been reduced over the patches without an increase in defense. Right now, they lack the damage to compensate for a weak defense. With a decrease in damage without an increase in defense for a class that was built to rely on high damage and low defense the class is crippled into a sub par class that lost its niche. Its a difficult class to play right now and I think that turns people away.

So what happens when a class is very squishy and damage is good but not enough to overcome defense? You have to invest more resources into damage through gear, skills, and cp thus you make a squishy class even more squishy. A big problem the class has now is that to get the burst damage that is needed you have to build it and combo it. Ah yes everybody knows merciless has a big juicy tool tip that looks great. However, the downside is that first you need to build it, and then hope it connects. Its not something that can be spammed or is guaranteed to hit, even if it does that 20k tool tip might only hit for 5k against an opponent. You need to combo this skill with an ulti or wear down an opponent to low health.

My point on this is, if an opponent is built to be a brawler they can easily take hits like this. Many classes can tank up to deal with a nbs damage and push enough damage to kill a squishy nb. Essentially every class has the power to have more defense and more damage than a nb, thus back to why nb has become subpar to other classes. Dont read that wrong, damage is relevant to defense. What I mean is a nb may have a 10k tool tip but only hitting 2.5k damage, while the opponent may have a 10k tool tip but hits 5k against a squishy nb, the opponent has more damage than the nb.

Because the class is so squishy setting up combos is hard because getting hit a few times while trying to build merciless will do so much damage it ruins the whole combo resulting the nb needing to take cover to reset and heal. While the opponent does not need combos to kill a squishy nb, as skill like jabs, sweeps, dizzy will pump out the same damage as a combo from a nb. This makes the class much harder to play than alot of meta brawler style builds you see now.

Everybody wants to talk about cloak being op, and I agree its a strong mechanic, but far from op (and very unreliable) when combined with a class with no defense. This is all that nbs have to get out of danger. ALL heals for nbs are hots if we had a burst heal and some reliable defense I could understand the consistant cloak breaks, however we need this to buy a few seconds of recovery we can not recover as fast as other classes which was fine when our damage was high. We did get a 10% damage reduction but that again brings me back to damage and defense argument we loose offense to gain a small amount of defense. And again building stacks requires a nb to risk serious injury resulting in disruption of defense and offence.

If a nb could be a brawler like it was in morrowind or before I cant remember the exact patch, most people would wish they still hid in the shadows. Spamming one skill would not be effective and back then a nbs combo was absolutely lethal. Right now most people are pursuing the classes that don't require combos (unless you consider use ulti and spam a spammable a combo) and just use brute force and broken mechanics.

Anyways thats a few thoughts on the decline of nbs and why you see less of them.

leepalmer95 · October 2019

iCaliban wrote: »

Thanatos_inside wrote: »

Forums say nb op but in real its dead. Welcome to reality

This is due to nightblades refusing to tolerate a nerf to cloak. It needs adjustment so the rest of the toolkit doesnt become oppressive. A stacking cost incresase like streak or roll dodge would have allowed the class to be balanced in a far more appropriate manner.

Instead NB has had shade, incap, surprise attack, merciless, bow skill line, all nerfed. All because permanent invisibility is absolutely BROKEN unless you have a hard counter, in which case it is useless.

How do you nerf the most countered skill in the game?

SipofMaim · October 2019

Some of the recent changes suggest they're planning to (try to) make melee magblade viable again. I'm all for this if they can actually do it, but it would be nice if they added things while they're taking things away instead of much, much later. Enjoy another 3 months of trying to make it work, mNB.

RIP shadowy bloodmages, casualty of too much PVE success and the idea that people roll the assassin class so they can heal dungeons and raids.

Iskiab · October 2019

Twenty bucks that the same sorcs who say cloak is OP would scream their heads off if the devs were to suggest trading streak and cloak between the two classes.

Czekoludek · October 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

Twenty bucks that the same sorcs who say cloak is OP would scream their heads off if the devs were to suggest trading streak and cloak between the two classes.

As magblade main, I would trade that any given time, cloak is good only against potatoes

Iskiab · October 2019

Czekoludek wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

Twenty bucks that the same sorcs who say cloak is OP would scream their heads off if the devs were to suggest trading streak and cloak between the two classes.

As magblade main, I would trade that any given time, cloak is good only against potatoes

Agreed. If streak had no stun it’d be close. With a stun on streak it’s a no brainer. Begs the question why play a magblade.

Shardaxx · October 2019

The problem with cloak and stealth in general is you often get pulled out for no reason at all. You can be crouched in the courtyard of your own keep and suddenly get DETECTED, pop out of stealth, then fade back in. There's no enemies around, and no explanation for this behavour. It does the same in all the overland zones. It's simply broken. If stealth actually worked right, that would be something.

MusCanus · October 2019

Shardaxx wrote: »

The problem with cloak and stealth in general is you often get pulled out for no reason at all. You can be crouched in the courtyard of your own keep and suddenly get DETECTED, pop out of stealth, then fade back in. There's no enemies around, and no explanation for this behavour. It does the same in all the overland zones. It's simply broken. If stealth actually worked right, that would be something.

Not only that, but you can also be stuck in combat mode forever until you change zones, thus not being able to stealth again.

As for the cloak, I would gladly trade its guaranteed crit, dots suppression and dodging incoming hits for one thing - that aoes wouldn't break it. So other classes would at least have to slot and use one of the many detection abilities, not just hard counter it automatically with their basic attacks or buffs.