As it stands currently, Cloak is extremely inconsistent in its effectiveness in PvP. This is mainly due to the on/off nature of the invisibility it grants. When you are engaged in a fight with another player, your cloak will either be completely useless or extremely overpowered. If the opposing player has an ability/item and the skill to consistently take you out of cloak, you effectively have a dead ability on your bar. Due to the current weakness of nightblades in PvP in general, this means that they will most likely die. the nightblade will be unable to escape from the engagement and their class is too weak to be able to compete with another player with equal skill on a different class. But, if the opposing player is unable to take you out of cloak consistently, the nightblade then has full control of the pace of the fight. In previous patches, when nightblades were much stronger, this meant that they would usually defeat the opposing player if they played well. Currently however, nightblades lack the damage output that they need to defeat competent opponents, usually having to build fully for damage, forsaking defense, just so they can actually score eliminations. Both nightblade variants are affected by this.

In previous patches, in response to good nightblades being able to both nuke people and easily escape from a lot of engagements, ZOS decided to target every tool that nightblades had except cloak. Death stroke used to have a very cheap cost of 50 ultimate. Incapacitating strike had a stun at 50 ult as well. Soul harvest was used. When people started complaning about the stun that incap brought, ZOS nerfed both incap and soul harvest, bringing the cost up to 70 ult. When people kept complaining about incap, they nerfed it further, making it so it stunned only at 120 ult. When people complained even more, they replaced the stun with a comparatively much more useless silence. Then Death stroke and its morphs got a cast time because ZOS. Grim focus and its morphs used to provide minor beserk. They don't anymore. Surprise attack used to apply major fracture. Now it reduces physical resistance by 5%, which is comparatively much worse in a solo situation. Mass hysteria used to apply minor maim to feared targets. Not anymore. Cripple and its morphs used to grant Major expedition. Not anymore. All of these nerfs completely ignored that the main factor in Nightblade being basically in a lot of situations was cloak. These aren't even all the nerfs, these are just the ones I can think of right now. Keep in mind that Magblade wasn't really complained about and they still received nerfs just because they shared the same core skills as stamblade. Nightblade as a whole is a shadow (haha) of its former self.

So what now? Well, because ZOS has not shown much competency in being able to balance appropriately, I thought I might as well provide some ideas on reworking cloak so that it was actually balanced, instead of being this weird skill that is either overpowered or useless. The only way to do this unfortunately is to mess with invisibility and how it functions as a mechanic.

List of Changes for invisibility:

• Remove reveal affects entirely from the game, or make them much more rare and costly. This is one of the main culprits why invisibility is so unbalanced. Using one skill to counter another skills seems alright in theory, but in practice this collapses because these reveal abilities have other affects attached to them, meaning the invisibility user is immediately disadvantaged. This is even worse in 1vX scenario's. If one player reveals a nightblade, every player can see them.
• AoE abilities that previously removed invisibility now longer do not. They still do damage and apply their effects however.
• Invisible players now take more damage from AoE abilities. This damage taken increase should be around 20% to counteract the effects of major evasion. This means that spamming AoE abilities in the general area of a cloaked player can still be used to finish off nightblades at low health.
• Using any ability in invisibility does not break invisibility. The only thing that breaks invisibility is directly affecting another player with a new ability, whether it be damaging/debuffing an enemy or buffing/healing an ally. Your own Dots or Hots that were applied before cloak was used will not break cloak.

This would be a big buff to invisibility as it is now more consistent and useful. To counteract this, these changes to cloak should be made:

• Double the cost of cloak, but also double the duration. Now you don't have to spam cloak as much.
• When Cloak is used, apply a stacking debuff to the player that increases its cost by 50% for the next 12 seconds.

As usual these numbers can be changed around. The idea behind these changes is that cloak is more reliable for all players. For the nightblade, they can reliably use cloak to engage in a fight, disengage from a fight, or gain a reprieve from pressure. But the cost increases to cloak are made to ensure that cloak needs to be used in a smart manner. As a stamblade, you will only be able to use cloak once or twice a fight, and never very close to one another. If you use cloak to engage in a fight and suddenly find yourself overwhelmed, cloak will not be available for an easy escape. As a magblade, you will able to use cloak more often, but it will definitely eat into your magicka if you attempt to use it too much.

If these changes were to made, nightblade would need some buffs to really emphasize them being quick and able to pack a punch, but vulnerable if caught off guard.

Suggestions and criticism are welcome.