They have been needing us more and more with every patch and now this change to surprise attack is the final nail in the coffin. Now we can’t even properly line up a stun anymore. If we accidentally flank a target at the wrong time now they get cc immunity when we try to line up the ulti. I don’t know how zos is so bad at creating a rogue style class.

Give ambush a stun or immobilize (like it used to have), give surprise attack a non-conditional de-buff and stun back to incap (regardless of ultimate amount).

Not that much QoL but changes overall.

Nightblade was great, we just need lost things moved back into the kit like breach on SA, strife animation fix and vitality added back, no cast times on ultimates period, made grim/merciless not an empty cast and probably some kind of purge on cloak as medium nb pvp was killed off by evasion change which was saving glassy ones greatly same as light armour users, just lock it from heavy armour and voilà.
Not even talking about new stuff that could and should be done.

But it's all will come at the same time as frag stun or wings reflect - never, as team proven completely incompetent over class balancing and reinforcing their uniqueness. Just craft your wrists and move along.

For 4 years Nightblades have been the kings of PVE and PVP, 4 years ZOS largely ignored them and now they are receiving justice. In time when other classes surpass them they will receive buffs here and there to bring them back up to speed where needed until then this is what every other class dealt with being backseat to the almighty Nightblade reign forever.

Plain and simple. Dmg increase. Atm nb is outclassed by everything. They're assassins, they should have high single target damage and huge burst. The timer needs taken off incap.


And while I'd like shadow to have a purge of some sort due to all the dots, that could be very broken.


With the low survivability outside of porting back to your phantom and being able to stealth, it takes perfectly lined up combos to do any real damage. But to be honest those combos don't come close to a lot of other classes.

Half my kills are due to kjalnars nightmare(or however its spelled) if I dotn line up 4 light attacks, fear them, get the 5th light attack causing the dmg instead of the stun, while dropping arrow and ult. The dps generally isn't enough to take out any real set up pvp player.

Basically to play the class like its meant to be played you gotta give up survivability or dmg. Sadly if you build for damage you die in a few hits.

It shows that Zos has it half right. We die quick. We don't kill quickly unless it's a perfectly played out combo on an unsuspecting player. So the overall damage isn't there.


Inb4 some noob complains about how some nbs top the leaderboard in bgs... First it's a bg full of ppl trying to get the daily quest done. 2nd half those nbs are stmablades shooting you off a ledge or into lava.

OlumoGarbag wrote: »

Before the nerfs and before all skills got put on the same powerlevel, NBs had the most potent single target damage, while having really low AoE damage outside of bombing. Similar to Sorcs they were meant to burst down a single person one after another. Now they got put "on par" with other classes lowering their single target damage to the point of other classes without giving them their survivalbilty and aoe/dot pressure.

Nb need to be Top of all classes when it comes to single target burst again. Its their class design and what they are meant to be. Atm magsorcs, templars, dks, stamcros and stamdens have better single target damage then nightblade while also having more sustain/survivalbilty and aoe damage.

NBs need a big buff in single target damage again. Its not fair that the class that can only do single target damage, is one of the weakest at doing so.

Couldn’t put it better myself.

A ranged morph for sneak attack that works with stamina specs.

Veiled Strike should move into Assassination so it benefits from Pressure Points (especially now that it does not require stealth anymore) and Blur moves into Shadow.

The Mirage morph of Blur should then be increased to Major Resolve instead of Minor and the Shadow Barrier passive gets changed to grant minor resolve at a longer duration, untangling it from using heavy armor.

Dark Veil (passive) gets scrapped completely. All affected Shadow skills get the extra 2 seconds added to their base duration. I don't really have an idea what kind of passive should take its place, but the passive design is lazy and could make room for something more intersting.

Catalyst gets changed to grant 20 Ultimate over a very short duration after drinking a potion rather than instantly, so in an instance where you are, say, 10 ultimate short of your ult, you do not waste any ultimate if you cast it immediately after drinking your potion.

Since self-healing remains a concern for Nightblades, it would be interesting to see the class design lean a bit more into leechy / drainy / blood magicky themes - particularly since I think the original "high single target burst assassin" idea somewhat fell by the wayside as they decided to make classes more homogeneous in that area (which I personally agree with).

It'd be interesting to see a change like making Swallow Soul's damage increase baseline for Strife, then replacing it with a Stamina morph to give Stamblades a source of constant sustain while not making Magblades choose between increased damage and healing another member of their group.

Opposite resource siphoning attacks. Spend Magicka to gain stamina. Or spend stamina to gain Magicka.

Isarii wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

red_emu wrote: »

Better self healing. With the upcoming nerf, it will be really tough to stay alive for Night blades. Literally every single class in game has a burst heal in their tool kit except for NB.

Not this.

I like the sweaty playstyle of glass cannon nightblade, where if I play well I get rewarded, but if I make a mistake I'm almost sure to die.

I do think this is part of the challenge with the Nightblade's design - it has two pretty distinct class fantasies rolled into one class (the stealthy assassin and the leeching blood mage) that are often at odds with one another. I don't think ZOS really knows which to lean into and sometimes you just end up with the class not fulfilling either - which is where we find ourselves now.

Well I think they should lean into both. I mean why not do it? Make both very viable options for the class. Also want to keep this thread alive until they can at least do something with Nightblades to make them in a better spot. No class should be underperforming to all the other classes and game based abilties. Nightblades do need to be tuned up in some way or another to be on par with everything else.
It should be as good of an option as templars,and dragonknights.

when wardens and necros stop selling really well i think NB will get a few buffs but i dont think NB will ever be on top like it was.