Might be referring to overall mitigation. Dark Shade for AOE minor maim, Minor Protection on Dark Cloak, Mirage's AOE Reduction + minor resistances, Consuming Darkness for 18s of Major Protection..

Well. We use to have a damage mitigating skill called Shadow Cloak.

Shadow Cloak
This skill had a unique property to remove ticking damage from DoTs and channeled attacks while they’re invisible and an evasion against gap closers when the ability was activated before the gap closer contacts. These three defensive qualities of the ability shaped the classes’ unique identity. This was the classes’ damage shield mechanic variance to avoid damage, whereas, Sorcerers had the option to shield stack with good efficiency and other classes had strong damage mitigating heals. I believe it’s important to review the history of the ability, and why it’s the iconic talent of the class for those who never had the pleasure to play in its proper form. The elusive power it brought to the class on the battlefield had no other unparalleled by other classes. It was the signature of the class.

THEN nerfs to the skill began. Update 1.4.3 created exceptions where it would no longer remove ticking damage abilities and all proc sets. This updated introduced other bugged behavior of the skill, such as the infamous ticking damage removing cloaked players from invisibility from all sources. Update 1.6.5 made an interesting change where the damage over time component from Poison Arrow would remove the player from Shadow Cloak and fixed an issue where Spear Shards and Volley would not hit an enemy using Shadow Cloak, and the ability was not removing damage over time effects while in combat. These two updates destroyed the defensive properties of Shadow Cloak. Update 2.0.1 fixed the ability when it wasn’t removing channeled damaged abilities, such as Radiant Destruction. Update 2.1.4 was meant to fix an issue where direct attacks were still hitting the player while the ability was active, which may be a direct connection to the mechanics of channeled abilities. Yet. The Developers decided in Update 2.1.4 the ability will no longer cancel channeled attacks i.e., gap closers and channeled attacks. Update 2.3.5 changed the ability to no longer suppress ticking damage over time effects that have already applied to the caster while the ability is active versus removing damage over time effects due to the baseline changes of Shadow Cloak. When Update 2.3.5 released, the Developers have removed any, and all, the defensive properties the ability offered for the class; hence, destroying the classes’ unique identity. It was never a cheap costing ability then and now.

All Nightblades should take a long hard look at the harm the Developers did to our one iconic defensive skill, and protest to have our defensive properties get reverted back that removes all ticking damage from abilities and procs, removes channeled attacks and procs, and restore the evasion against gap closers while the ability is active. The history of changes to Shadow Cloak revolves around fixing the original defensive benefits of the ability centered around ticking damage abilities and procs.
When Summerset was released, Update 4.0.5, the Developers introduced the DD, Healer, Tank trilogy concept for all classes. Dark Cloak was then converted to a 32% max health heal over time and gained Minor Protection. This would be a very strong tanking skill, IF they reverted and carried through all the defensive properties of Shadow Cloak into its morphs: Simply remove Minor Protection then and buff the heal effect to 50% max health over 3 seconds.

The Developers made a poor decision to exclusively identify Shadow Cloak solely, as a castable invisibility when the ability was our defensive skill more than a castable utility skill.

THEN People complained about and now proc sets can zero you out in 1-2 GCD before you can react. I hope they will decide to restore Shadow Cloak back to its damage mitigation origins.

Talyndor wrote: »

I heard someone talk about how a magicka nightblade has some good damage mitigation skills. Anyone know what this skill would be? I have looked at my skill lines and cannot find much other than the Phantasmal Escape skill.

For what purpose? PvE? PvP? Dungeons? Solo PvE? Easy stuff, such as questing? Hard stuff, such as veteran (solo) arenas?

I main a PvP magblade and I have no idea how you could have gotten that advice. The one thing that comes to mind is Shadowy Disguise. In case it wasn't obvious from the long discussion above, that skill basically still suspends any DOTs (damage over time) that's ticking on you, so you don't take damage. This helps in PvP as long as you are not detected and you have the sustain to keep cloaking. In PvE, however, this tends to reset boss fights and arena fights after a few seconds, if you're solo. It's not a good thing to do, although you can use it to purge those "taking aim" archers from hitting you by cloaking once.

Mirage / Double Take is mitigation, but the minor armor buff is laughable and the AOE damage reduction is specific. In PvP Race Against Time (Psijic skill) is just hands down better. Your objective is to not take damage and, when it comes to AOE, to simply not be where the AOE is, which is frankly good advice for PvE as well.

The person you were talking to may have referred to an iteration of Merciless Resolve giving a rather strong defensive buff, but this only lasted for a few patches and has been reverted. They may also have referred to Shadow skills giving you the major armor buff, but every class has that. They may have referred to the shade, but Minor Maim is another nerfed thing that's IMO not especially worthwhile. In PvP, at least, you use Shadow Image for the mobility. The maim is merely nice to have.

If you're building tanky, I believe Dark Cloak is quite good, but you give up the stealth. It's also not so much mitigation, but a heal. In general I find nightblade squishy. It can heal from damage and in PvE the combination of Swallow Soul and Sap Essence is quite strong for self-healing, yet outclassed by Puncturing Sweeps for how tanky that makes you feel or by a stamina Brawler build for how really tanky that makes you feel. I suppose the one advantage a magblade has over a magplar in solo content is that it can block cast it's spammables.

Sort of like @Vermintide above said. The Shadow Barrier (NB Shadow skill line) actually gives you Major Resolve (increasing your physical and spell resists by 5948) for 6 seconds whenever you cast a Shadow skill +25% more time for each piece of heavy armor you wear. My Magblade wears 5 light & 2 heavy so her duration is 9 seconds. Between Twisting Path and Dark Shade, her uptime on Major Resolve is generally 100% in combat.