ZOS's balance seems to be in a weird circle, where they are used to giving some classes a wide range of talents, while driving others into narrower spaces, including but not limited to PvP-only NB and Support-only Necro. I sincerely hope that Scribing is just providing more options for players, and not replacing the true class balance that should be there.

I think any big balance changes towards classes or already existing sets will come next update. Not this chapter.

Nah, I'll be sitting here hoping against all odds for stamplars to get even a scrap of identity back..ya know, the thing they have been missing since u35

I don't really have any hopes for necro or nightblade this patch, they have their hands full with the scribing stuff.

pls make blighted blast bones also grave lord sacrifice but green

Foxtrot39 wrote: »

Id say don't have any expectation

NB PVE rotations tend to be more complex and only good for a single target when everyone else can get similar number for cleave attacks on a much simplier rotation

Any buff to PVE NB always end up as an OP buff in PVP

A proper Necro rework as much as I'd like to happen for those who plays it, is also unlikely

Not enough time to redo some skill from the ground up to actually function reliably or figure out the stuff to give proper passive-skill synergy

It took 1 week to add deseased status to blighted and also 1 week to add aoe+corpse generation for skull if under the effect of GLS. Slap a brtuality\sorcery on a skeletal arcanist\archer, higher chanse to apply status with tethers, changing summoner armor secondary effect to something useful will take them mere minutes to do.
They have enough time, they just dont want to change necromancer. They have no intent to change it. They never even admitted that class is in a bad spot balance wise. They didnt admit that after losing burst from graveyard, and then burst from stalking class is only good as a PvE support and absolutly pathetic in PVP.
They consistantly took damage off the class and gave nothing of value in return.

This needs fixed. This isn't even fun anymore. They made NB completely non-competitive in PVE, and you had to work absurdly hard as Nightblade before. This last update just made my main character-- that I have put a ton of work into-- irrelevant and alienated me as a player from trials and even Vet DLC dungeons. At least before U41 I could have niche relevance as a boss burner if I wanted to do Vet trials.

I am getting random Vet dungeons with two or three other DPS, usually arcanists. Class penetration passives don't mean anything if you cannot flank or there is no tank to hold him still even for a moment. Also, if you are melee, you have to chase the boss the entire time, and never get an opportunity to apply your 10-button rotation to do your non-existent DPS. Trash? Forget it, they are melted by the time I reach my spammable. Also with these groups, getting a rez to the melee character who isn't a significant part of the DPS Equation is usually not a priority. I am left dead until the instance is over often enough. Or everyone else dies too.

I can run the logs and see that the Arcanists have Dawnbreaker and Camouflaged Hunter slotted on both bars, usually resolving vigor on one, too. There is usually the damage shield Arc skill and maybe that green circle for healing/recov/weap damage on the back bar too along with Wall of Elements for extra cleave with the Maelstrom Inferno staff. 5 buttons to put to shame anything I can do with 10.

One of these groups I had in Scrivener's and we kept wiping. I suggested maybe we needed a tank and the response was that I needed to do more DPS. So these imbalances increase player arrogance and escalate general toxicity. We saw something similar with the Oakensorcs, when literally every player was running Normal Wayrest and Tempest Island to gear up then acting like they were Princes of The Endgame running ahead of entire groups in normal dungeons, essentially disrespecting players who were trying to learn mechanics or how to play the game independent of copying some build from the internet. I remember this being so pervasive that several of the trial guilds became prejudiced against them and had the "No Oakensoul" rule.

Giving players the potential for even ground is just as important in PVE as PVP, for these stated reasons. Also, they did not make the Nightblade rotation any simpler by removing the CW buff. All this did is remove opportunities for Nightblade in PVE. I ran logs before and I run logs now after the update, and I can see a significant difference. I now am performing well below players of similar skill level that play a different class.

It does not seem to me that NB is Overpowered in PVP, either. Least not in BG. Mostly I see the Nightblades going after the weaker players, or easier targets. Everyone does this in BGs to some extent, maybe it is just easier to notice the NB stalking what they perceive as an quick kill. I am sure there are great Nightblades that dominate, but it is not the norm. Mostly what I see are dominant DKs and Sorcs. Those are the classes I see racking up the kills. I see DKs going around with what I consider absurd uptime on Magma Shell and Sorcs who nuke me from orbit when I am invisible.

The loss of opportunity for my Nightblade is really hard to accept. That's like being excommunicated or banished from a community in which you want to participate. It is genuinely difficult for me to articulate the depth and gravity of my disappointment.

Dracane wrote: »

topsecretagentx wrote: »

They made NB completely non-competitive in PVE, and you had to work absurdly hard as Nightblade before. This last update just made my main character-- that I have put a ton of work into-- irrelevant and alienated me as a player from trials and even Vet DLC dungeons.

I am getting random Vet dungeons with two or three other DPS, usually arcanists. Class penetration passives don't mean anything if you cannot flank or there is no tank to hold him still even for a moment. Also, if you are melee, you have to chase the boss the entire time, and never get an opportunity to apply your 10-button rotation to do your non-existent DPS. Trash?

Personally, I don't see it. My husband plays Stamina Nightblade (which I often hear people regard as worse in pve?) in dungeons, trials etc. and he always has by far the largest portion of the DPS. Yes, Arcanists are braindead stupid, and we have them in our group all the time, but he still out dpses them. I am a Sorc tank, and he has no problem keeping up with me and bosses since Stampede is what everyone should be using anyway in pve. He also has 0 issue flanking or back attacking constantly. Might be harder if you run with fake tanks, as you say.

He is so good a DD, that I have layed out my built in full support of this. I use Catalyst, Crimson Oath and spam Elemental Sus constantly to keep up vulnerability and brittle. Maybe he could do even better on a different class if he put his mind to it? Could be, but we are not going to try, because this is what's fun and we are extremely successful.

Last night we did Shriveners hall with me, him, and a strong stam Arcanist friend (3 people only). My husband dealt 45% of dps, and I deal a lot of damage myself as well. So it's not like the Arcanist dealt 50% or so. In pugs, he usually deals around 80% of all damage, and I probably deal 5%. My point is, that there is nothing wrong with Nightblade on a day to day basis. ESO logs rankings frustrate me too, seeing as Magsorc doesn't exist there either. Whatever.

Nightblade typically does ok in 4 player group dungeons, where it’s rare to be over penetration limit and over crit damage limit. I even prefer having a Bosmer (extra stamina regen/ penetration) stamblade in 4 player content because there’s usually less resources replenished by the supports and I’m seldom ever at the penetration cap, and they’re fast little buggers. Both types of damage (single target and AOE damage) are usually fine for 4 player content as long the player knows what to do, if a group of enemies dies in 9 seconds instead of 7 seconds it all still feels ok. If they’re in a group with 3 experienced arcanists the mobs will die in 4.5 seconds instead of 4 seconds (as an example), the only ones to notice a difference are the ones sharing dps through an addon. If a boss dies at 21 seconds and an extra mechanic is allowed to happen, instead of 19 seconds where the mechanic got skipped, the only ones who would notice is a group that wipes. It’s mostly just way less AOE damage than an arcanist can dish out, and the beam takes very little time to charge up to max damage.

But where it all falls flat for nightblade is 12 player trials, where the group is building around arcanists/dk/etc. Nightblade buffs do nothing in trials when they are over penetrating and likely over the crit damage cap, and all the latest trials have many adds to eliminate. The performance is much more stunted, and they offer the group nothing good for a buff unless they’re missing a sorcerer or nightblade healer. A nightblade would often feel obligated to change their build to deal more AOE damage, but that always causes their already sad single target dps to drop. They just can’t do everything as effectively at the same time like other classes

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

topsecretagentx wrote: »

They made NB completely non-competitive in PVE, and you had to work absurdly hard as Nightblade before. This last update just made my main character-- that I have put a ton of work into-- irrelevant and alienated me as a player from trials and even Vet DLC dungeons.

I am getting random Vet dungeons with two or three other DPS, usually arcanists. Class penetration passives don't mean anything if you cannot flank or there is no tank to hold him still even for a moment. Also, if you are melee, you have to chase the boss the entire time, and never get an opportunity to apply your 10-button rotation to do your non-existent DPS. Trash?

Personally, I don't see it. My husband plays Stamina Nightblade (which I often hear people regard as worse in pve?) in dungeons, trials etc. and he always has by far the largest portion of the DPS. Yes, Arcanists are braindead stupid, and we have them in our group all the time, but he still out dpses them. I am a Sorc tank, and he has no problem keeping up with me and bosses since Stampede is what everyone should be using anyway in pve. He also has 0 issue flanking or back attacking constantly. Might be harder if you run with fake tanks, as you say.

He is so good a DD, that I have layed out my built in full support of this. I use Catalyst, Crimson Oath and spam Elemental Sus constantly to keep up vulnerability and brittle. Maybe he could do even better on a different class if he put his mind to it? Could be, but we are not going to try, because this is what's fun and we are extremely successful.

Last night we did Shriveners hall with me, him, and a strong stam Arcanist friend (3 people only). My husband dealt 45% of dps, and I deal a lot of damage myself as well. So it's not like the Arcanist dealt 50% or so. In pugs, he usually deals around 80% of all damage, and I probably deal 5%. My point is, that there is nothing wrong with Nightblade on a day to day basis. ESO logs rankings frustrate me too, seeing as Magsorc doesn't exist there either. Whatever.

Nightblade typically does ok in 4 player group dungeons, where it’s rare to be over penetration limit and over crit damage limit. I even prefer having a Bosmer (extra stamina regen/ penetration) stamblade in 4 player content because there’s usually less resources replenished by the supports and I’m seldom ever at the penetration cap, and they’re fast little buggers. Both types of damage (single target and AOE damage) are usually fine for 4 player content as long the player knows what to do, if a group of enemies dies in 9 seconds instead of 7 seconds it all still feels ok. If they’re in a group with 3 experienced arcanists the mobs will die in 4.5 seconds instead of 4 seconds (as an example), the only ones to notice a difference are the ones sharing dps through an addon. If a boss dies at 21 seconds and an extra mechanic is allowed to happen, instead of 19 seconds where the mechanic got skipped, the only ones who would notice is a group that wipes. It’s mostly just way less AOE damage than an arcanist can dish out, and the beam takes very little time to charge up to max damage.

But where it all falls flat for nightblade is 12 player trials, where the group is building around arcanists/dk/etc. Nightblade buffs do nothing in trials when they are over penetrating and likely over the crit damage cap, and all the latest trials have many adds to eliminate. The performance is much more stunted, and they offer the group nothing good for a buff unless they’re missing a sorcerer or nightblade healer. A nightblade would often feel obligated to change their build to deal more AOE damage, but that always causes their already sad single target dps to drop. They just can’t do everything as effectively at the same time like other classes

I noticed that Nightblades are basically no topic in most trial groups. I just wanted to offer some comfort to the person I quoted, since he primarily spoke of dungeons.

ZoS absolutely has to look at some of the older classes and give them more group utility, and Pragmatic Fatecarver's nerf clearly did nothing to make Arcanist less dominant.

topsecretagentx wrote: »

Yeah, if you look at the dungeon statistics they really don't look any better for NB either, in my opinion. You can find more of them in the dungeon stats, but their numbers are just as unimpressive for the most part. I was venting just a bit earlier but the point was to support what people were saying in this and numerous other threads with my own experience as player. These imbalances really have become pervasive. I can "get by" in dungeons fine, but does it feel like I am playing? Not a bit. Three Arcanists crossing the streams like Ghostbusters and I have time to stampede, carve, throw down twisting maybe I get off a spam, but usually then it is just corpses.

I bought Necrom and I bought Gold Road. Not excited for Gold Road in the least, I'll say that.

We notice the Arcanists too. I wonder why Zenimax even allows such a playstyle. Whenever something is too easy or too much gain for your effort, it gets dusted next patch. Fatecarver remained untouched since 2 cycles now, with everyone complaining about the skill?

This is aggregate data in the ESO Logs website. I am not totally sure how the scoring works, friend, but scores are parse compared to a metric. Scores are derived from a players highest recorded parse, so it takes the best sample from the uploaded data on a player. There is a ton of raw DPS data on there to compare as well. The data tells the story.

Yeah the state of Nightblade in PvE is just sad. I only play my main nightblade. It was okay in veteran dungeons when combined with rushing agony. But now considering that that set is going to be nerfed to have a 800ms delay it's trash.

I just don't enjoy other classes and now don't enjoy nightblades. I only paid for ESO+ this month to farm Baron mask with my girlfriend. After that I'm planning to uninstall ESO for a few (hopefully) months until they fix up nigthblades in PvE.

All Yakuza games are on sale on GoG so I bought them, gonna have some whacky adventures for the next few months.