Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

ccfeeling wrote: »

I never run Concealed Weapon in PVE , it's useless skill for years , maybe give it a try this time .

Doesn't matter if someone says its OP , it gets to nerf , I'm fine to drop it atm ... maybe Magblade not worth a good class spammable ? IDK

Concealed Weapon on live is by any means not a bad spamable. It does pretty much same stuff as Surprise Attack.

The reason why you don't see many magicka Nightblades using it, is because it is a melee skill, that on top of that has short range (5 meters, while other spamables tend to have 7 meters). Magicka NB for the most part are ranged builds, because staves are ranged weapon. So they also tend to use ranged spamable too.

Given the nature of Veiled Strike and how infrequent one is casting it, I would not be surprised if even stamina based NBs would switch to Concealed Weapon. It just seems better, despite the magicka cost.

Right now I am thinking if I should run Dizzying Swing or Concealed Weapon on my stam NB brawler. Because for sure I am gonna drop Surprise Attack, especially given the fact that it no longer has a stun that I was using primarily for utility.

I can't speak for everyone but this is my take.

The reason you don't see more concealed weapon usage is because mag melee ganking is significantly behind Stam. One reason is the disparity between the two veiled strike morphs. The other is lack of access to buffs, like frenzied momentum.

I have tried many mag focused set ups for melee ganking. The damage just isn't the same. But if you use an inferno staff at range you get a big damage boost. So you get kind of boxed in to the old mag = range mindset.

I liked Concealed Weapon for my speed farming build... but them changing the 25% movement speed while sneaking to minor expedition pretty much screws me entirely. I had farmed the Jailbreaker set and adept rider, with concealed weapon, vampirism, and the steed to make my character extremely fast while sneaking so I could farm at a reasonable pace without mounting.

It made farming feel a little less bad since I'm still nowhere near high enough CP level to get the harvester talent.

But now Jailbreaker is useless, and I'm getting a 25% speed nerf -- which is going to force me to run the ring of the wild hunt -- which I have been trying to farm leads for unsuccessfully.

ninjagank wrote: »

Listen, if you are going to tell me "use fear" as a solution to losing the only way we can reliably chase down kiters, then we aren't going to agree on anything. Maybe if it actually worked well (it doens't) AND maybe if I didn't have to slot multiple passive skills just to get my damage remotely close to other classes, then I wouldn't have any issue fitting fear onto my bars.

Either way, let's focus on concealed weapon. The image below is from the PTS.

I don't understand the "in combat" requirement for a class that operates from stealth.

They need to clarify if this will proc when attacking -while not in combat-. So if I roll into a siege and go after a target while NOT IN COMBAT, will the condition proc on my first strike (like Stygian), or will I have to cloak AGAIN and attack AGAIN to get the proc? If it is the former, then okay. If it is the latter, then that's just silly and makes it useless.

Even if you're a bomber and you force yourself in combat with an inferno LA or HA, there's a good chance the moment you cloak and move in, you lose the combat condition. This is why Grim Focus fails so often (once again, pointing out to the person above who thinks it's some massive advantage). The

velt88_ESO wrote: »

I liked Concealed Weapon for my speed farming build... but them changing the 25% movement speed while sneaking to minor expedition pretty much screws me entirely. I had farmed the Jailbreaker set and adept rider, with concealed weapon, vampirism, and the steed to make my character extremely fast while sneaking so I could farm at a reasonable pace without mounting.

It made farming feel a little less bad since I'm still nowhere near high enough CP level to get the harvester talent.

But now Jailbreaker is useless, and I'm getting a 25% speed nerf -- which is going to force me to run the ring of the wild hunt -- which I have been trying to farm leads for unsuccessfully.

Wild hunt ring says hello.

velt88_ESO wrote: »

I liked Concealed Weapon for my speed farming build... but them changing the 25% movement speed while sneaking to minor expedition pretty much screws me entirely. I had farmed the Jailbreaker set and adept rider, with concealed weapon, vampirism, and the steed to make my character extremely fast while sneaking so I could farm at a reasonable pace without mounting.

It made farming feel a little less bad since I'm still nowhere near high enough CP level to get the harvester talent.

But now Jailbreaker is useless, and I'm getting a 25% speed nerf -- which is going to force me to run the ring of the wild hunt -- which I have been trying to farm leads for unsuccessfully.

Here's the thing about the current live version.

If you are vamp and are running the various speed CP, you don't really feel 25% faster when you switch to that bar. I'm assuming there is either a max sneak speed achievable or it's just calculated in such a way it doesn't translate to a straight increase. Especially if you're running wild hunt.

Firstmep wrote: »

Wild hunt ring says hello.

I run WH. So do a lot of targets. The one good thing about the cc stun on surprise attack is I just need to hit them once before they take off to stun. It isn't the biggest deal in the world to lose it. It's just annoying that they removed the cc to justify the buff, then they nerfed the buff to be useless.

ninjagank wrote: »

Concealed Weapon's 300 damage after leaving stealth would have allowed stamblades to switch to mag without losing the frenzied momentum buff. Now we have a paltry 7% to 10% increase to damage, which seems like a nerf to me (I'm going to check it out to be sure). Also am I reading this correctly that there is an "in-combat" requirement to even get this bonus? So if I am not in combat, and I attack someone from stealth, do I not get the bonus?

7-10% increase to damage is much stronger (for damage) than 300 weapon damage. The 675 weapon damage from clever alchemist 5 piece only adds like 8%-10% damage (exact amount depends on scaling coefficient for each skill). The change from weapon damage hurts your healing but imo nightblade healing is fine without an extra 300 weapon damage.

x99KungFuTacosx wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

Concealed Weapon's 300 damage after leaving stealth would have allowed stamblades to switch to mag without losing the frenzied momentum buff. Now we have a paltry 7% to 10% increase to damage, which seems like a nerf to me (I'm going to check it out to be sure). Also am I reading this correctly that there is an "in-combat" requirement to even get this bonus? So if I am not in combat, and I attack someone from stealth, do I not get the bonus?

7-10% increase to damage is much stronger (for damage) than 300 weapon damage. The 675 weapon damage from clever alchemist 5 piece only adds like 8%-10% damage (exact amount depends on scaling coefficient for each skill). The change from weapon damage hurts your healing but imo nightblade healing is fine without an extra 300 weapon damage.

I've seen my tooltips increase by more than 10% with 300 damage increase. I'll get some screen grabs tomorrow.

It's not that big of a deal or that big of a difference. It's just part of a bigger narrative that no matter what they do to nerf NBs, it's never enough. They've been giving players better abilities to kill us since August last year. They've made many sets unusable for stealth ops (clever, doyl, mechanical, etc). They've added CP to counter us. They've added new sets. They've buffed detects.

Not enough. Now they've hit Caluurions. Still not enough. Now we have a surprise attack that is less useful than live when it was supposed to be buffed.

The 4 second cooldown just makes no sense. If I come out of stealth with a surprise attack, it's going to crit anyway. Now I'm on a 4 second cooldown.

But I'm going to crit anyway if it keep hitting it, whether from flank or not, simply because my crit chance will make it happen.

So if the "guaranteed" crit isn't actually guaranteed anymore AND we've lost the cc, how is that not an overall nerf while many of us are also losing the one reliable proc set we have?

By the way, I don't run Caluurions. I'm glad it's gone but you can't pretend like it's not going to hurt players. It's funny how no one bats an eye at DKs with absurd w/s damage and infinite pen run proc sets but that's a difference topic.

The moment they put a guaranteed crit on surprise attack they were going to dismantle the entire skill in some gimmicky way. I knew it

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

The stun being removed is a buff for PvP for good players. Being able to control your stun with an off balance medium weave is 100x better than stunning every cast.

It only stuns on flank so you wouldn't be stunning every cast... In most cases the stun only happens on opening which you want in almost all scenarios.

DairyCat wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I really thought they were going to buff my class for like 3 solid weeks. Even said the nerf to Caluurions was worth the buffs.

This week, it's like reading my own obituary.

Yeah that's the other thing. 3 weeks they ignored the overreactions. Then they removed the cc because everyone was listing that as a complaint for the skill. Fair enough.

But then they nerfed the flank crit without returning the cc. The skill is worse off on pts than live for ganking, imo.

The flank crit was only good for PvE DPS NB. For PvP nightblades guaranteed crit is redundant since Surprise Attack is usually the opening skill following Shadowy Disguise meaning it was already going to be a guaranteed crit. If these changes go through, Concealed Weapon might be the best morph for both Stam and Magicka NB.

Well you kind of get 2 Shadowy Disguise procs without using a GCD if you open with Incap instead. I'm pretty sure thats the idea behind this change as they stated the goal was for Surprise Attack to be the Gank morph. The 4s CD won't mean anything to a Ganker because when your combo doesn't work you're going to reset anyway. It's mostly a nerf to Brawlers and PVE where damage is more consistent.

Plus, knowing you have guaranteed Crit for 2 hits means you can better focus on Crit Damage instead. It's esentially the Mechanical Acuity scenario.

It seems the stun was going out the door no matter what because we know ZOS doesn't like stun's being attached to spammables as seen with their changes made to Dizzy Swing before. I think they gave SA a stun as a bandaid because they didn't know what to do with Fear.. I'm not going to make a judgement call on whether or not Fear is good now, but at least they tried to finally adress that problem. Been seeing NB's complain about them since Turn Evil was adjusted.

NB still has a ton of cast times as someone highlighted earlier, I think if that was adjusted, this would be less of a problem. Concealed Weapon's 10% unamed damage seems a tad high, I'm unsure if SA is actually the better gank option as their intention stated which would be a bit unfortunate.

DairyCat wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I really thought they were going to buff my class for like 3 solid weeks. Even said the nerf to Caluurions was worth the buffs.

This week, it's like reading my own obituary.

Yeah that's the other thing. 3 weeks they ignored the overreactions. Then they removed the cc because everyone was listing that as a complaint for the skill. Fair enough.

But then they nerfed the flank crit without returning the cc. The skill is worse off on pts than live for ganking, imo.

The flank crit was only good for PvE DPS NB. For PvP nightblades guaranteed crit is redundant since Surprise Attack is usually the opening skill following Shadowy Disguise meaning it was already going to be a guaranteed crit. If these changes go through, Concealed Weapon might be the best morph for both Stam and Magicka NB.

If you're attacking a DK, templar or necro, you are often hitting more than one surprise attack. Here's an example (with weaving). This is basic stuff though. Every target is different.

Tougher Build
Cloak -> Incap or Soul Harvest -> Surprise Attack -> Surprise Attack -> Execute

Medium Build
Cloak -> Surprise Attack -> Surprise Attack -> Execute

Squishy Build
Cloak -> Surprise Attack -> Execute

In all those situations, you do not get any benefit from the flank crit while also losing the CC which is useful against runners. If the flank crit had no cooldown, we would actually see a benefit from it. What people haven't understood for 4 weeks now is how often you crit anyway. Even if your % is like 40 percent, between all the layers of damage you can drop within 1-2 seconds, your crits are going to land. If you naturally crit a surprise attack, either it shouldn't proc the cooldown (which calculating could cause potential lag) OR there shouldn't be a CD.