Oh boy, this may be my moment haha. For perspective: I've been a nightblade main since beta, 17,000 hours on the class (2,000 hours on my second most played class). I've gotten most of my dungeon and trial hm/tris on my nightblade, gotten her to grand overlord and used to pvp a lot on her in cyrodiil/ic/battlegrounds/duels/you name it, done pretty much every quest and bit of content on this character because they're my comfort character and the class is my favorite by a large margin compared to the others. Sadly I did not get to fill out the class survey back in October due to dealing with a lot of irl health issues at the time so I missed the window so some of what I talk about here might be related to that.

Why I like Nightblade over other classes:
It started off simple. I am obsessed with rangers in fantasy settings and looking at the early classes in beta, nightblade felt like it most fit that. Over time, I fell in love with how compared to other classes that felt more rigid in theme or function, nightblade felt like it could be versatile and have many facets to explore. My main started out as a stamblade and is still mostly a ranger/fighter/assassiny type. I also have a nightblade tank who uses shadow and blood magic to bolster his defenses and protect others. My third nightblade started as my magblade, then moved to a dps/healer hybrid for a time, before finally now he is a dps or healer whenever I need him to be but still fits a flavor of a thief who got good at essence/soul/blood magic to help and heal others. While most classes have had struggles to reach the modern day role diversity they have, nigthblade felt like it more comfortably and naturally could shift through the pve roles. For pvp, while gankblade has been a popular archtype, it also felt like it was offered the versatility to play different ways depending on the battlefield. I will note that I stopped pvping in eso a lot when nightblade got some nerfs that gave them less playstyle options and largely hurt skirmishing/brawler nightblades more than gankblades.

What was lost:
Again, I've played nb a lot in a lot of different scenarios. I always advocated for other classes to be built up to nb's level, but nb over the years had a history of nerfs that felt very bad and have def made me a bit bitter about class balance. While I still enjoy nigthblade most and it feels like the most free class to explore and be versatile for me, it also has lost playstyles I personally loved.

• Nightblade tank was a niche underdog in the early years of the game but I loved the challenge and grouping puzzles through line of sight to mitigate not having a chain and also a lot of the tanky tools in kit felt fun and rewarding and unique. The old evasion, while it could be absolutely busted, felt very bad to lose. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, old evasion gave the player a chance to dodge an attack. While it felt terrible to see someone highroll on this in pvp and pve, losing that kind of mechanic felt like it took something away from the identity of the class. Similarly, nightblade tank's dark cloak being nerfed to be conditional on immobility and blocking felt antithetical to a class that has a general theme of agility and mobility and was part of the appeal for nightblade tank for me. I am not advocating for the old evasion to come back (though in the modern game I do wonder if it would be less problematic than it used to be given power creep or other things) but nightblade tanks lost a lot of identity and never got a fitting or rewarding replacement for it. That is a problem. that is something I strongly hope is addressed because as you will see a theme here going forward, I stopped playing nigthblade tank when it felt like I lost what made it enjoyable and interesting and fun.
• There was a pretty infamous balance time where due to a vocal portion of the community, people were upset that magblade could do damage and output a lot of healing. I both dps'd and healed at the time, and while it was true that healers were often feeling irrelevant and unwanted in group content (especially in dungeons/4 man content), that issue was more related to power creep and mechanics for group content being very dps centric or occasionally for tanks. Still, the solution given was magblade had a lot of their group healing gutted and a lot of nightblade morphs were changed to either choose damage or healing or they kept both but with such awful ratios that the morph was killed entirely in terms of viability of play. While this feels less frustrating in modern day, at the time healer desired classes were pretty rigid (warden required, templar preferred) and for those who wanted nightblade healer to be good it did not help the viability while costing magblade group utility.

I want to pause for a relevant aside here. Nigthblade has often been accused of being a selfish class that offers far less buffs and utility than others. This is somewhat true, but with the magblade nerfs I mentioned, it became completely true. Nightblade in the pve meta especially has suffered from this as if you offer no group buffs or utility that others do, the only thing you can offer is your damage, and if that damage isn't dramatically ahead of others, it's hard to justify what you bring to the table that another class can't. This is why nb has had a rough pve history of desirability in all roles. Due to the lack of utility compared to others and the insistence of balancing only on metrics such as raw damage output, people often forget that other classes when underperforming damage wise can also sometimes fall back on utility (see dk's history as a support dps even in patches where it's damage output was lackluster compared to other classes). This is also why when as I mentioned above magblade lost it's group utility of additional heals to the group, it stopped seeing play as much.

• Anyway, pvp wise, stealth is a frustrating mechanic. I personally enjoy it (obviously given the class I chose to main and talk about), but even in other games I play, stealth is a mechanic that is frustrating and players often complain about. Early nightblade was somewhat dependent on stealth, then balance leaned away from that a bit, but then in recent years put it back in a bit with changes to concealed weapon and cloak. Another game I play has a stealthed based character/class that the devs have explicitly stated "we have to balance this character around player frustration" and I feel that is the heart of the problem with nigthblade and pvp balance. A lot of the changes and nerfs to nightblade caused by pvp feel more based on player frustration than what is actually healthy for the class. This is tricky because stealth and player frustration is a tale as old as time, but I will say that often the balance changes aimed at nightblade in pvp often felt like they did less to deter or stop the frustration of stealth/gank builds and more hit bruisers/skirmishers and forced nightblade in pvp into a place where stealth/gank or unkillable tank were all that were viable. I admit full disclaimer I have stopped pvping except for rare occasions for the past few years and pvp in other games partially due to this and I know a lot of nb mains who pvp'd who have quit eso entirely or quit eso pvp. I think the main thing I'd urge here is that balancing against player frustration is valid but overdoing it will make mains of said thing feel like they are not welcome or that their options are limited unfairly.
• Finally, healer...nightblade healer is in a better spot than it's ever been probably in some ways, especially since siphoning is a desirable skill line. It still leaves a lot to be desired. As I mentioned with the group utility dilemma, that kept nigthblade healer down for many years. While the raw healing numbers of nightblade have always been strong and I'd argue in terms of raw healing output nb and dk healers are unmatched, that level of healing is seldom needed in content. Overheal really doesn't have any major benefits (yes, it procs spc and other sets, but outside of that what really does it matter?). If overhealing had a mechanic or utility offered, it might help some of the strong raw heals but little utility healers like nigthblade more (ex maybe overhealing for nightblade has a passive of skill that converts excess healing into resources for said ally?) but as it stands most of what the siphoning line is used for is selfish (ult gen, resource regen for self, etc). It is worth noting that nigthblade healers also got hurt by the magblade nerfs in their damage output got gutted and one of the few things you could ague they offered was a little bit of damage. Either way, nightblade healer largely has suffered from less losses than the other portions of nightblade but still enough to be felt.

Other problems
The elephant in the room is often pvp vs pve with nightblade. As I mentioned balancing around pvp frustration has put pve nigthblade in a very bad spot on more than one occasion. Nightblade's damage rotation in pve has a lot more of a bursty swing than other dps which can be advantageous at times but also punishing in others such as dps calculations in longer fights and burst windows. Changes to bow proc has made it easier for nightblades to control their burst a little bit more in pve, but it also can sometimes lead to overburn on mechanics due to a sudden burst of dps coming out of the woodwork.

Also, I did not like the class identity announcement chart for various reasons but as I pointed out then, making stealth relevant in pve is difficult, especially for support roles. When your job is to have the mini in vcr or vas jump on you to avoid jumping in group, what benefit is stealth to a healer? When you are the tank, what benefit is steatlh at all? Given the initial slide and the first rework, we know that while supports get some things, it feels like the mindset for the reworks is still very dps centric. For nightblade especially this will not work well. I have very big concerns if this is the only direction on the radar.

What nigthblade needs:
Finally to the main question of the thread. Sorry it took so long but I had to say some of the above to have this part make sense because some of these suggestions relate to history of the class.

• The elephant in the room is nigthblade needs reliable group utility that others can't offer. This has been a major general problem for nightblade in pve. When you have less to offer utility wise and don't have damage to make up for it, you just aren't wanted. Obviously player restrictions have ebbed and flowed over the years in regards to this but even with comfort and experience I still have run into groups who have asked me to play a meta class I barely play over my main that I know like the back of my hand. This is something that especially affects mid tier raiders that blindly copy the more experienced raiders without understanding the nuance of group comp and when to break tradition. It's gotten better in some regards but it still can be a problem.
• Controllable burst in pve. I have thought a bit about whether increasing the trap and foresight/planning/strategist part of nightblade's kit could help with pve pain points. The roots are already there-mark target, aspect of terror, cripple, the old agony which was replaced by malevolent offering in 2018. Part of the problem is as much as I enjoy controller class/archtypes, similar to stealth being useless in pve, cc in pve is more niche/not useful at times so these skills that should have some use do not really see play as much. Leaning into rogue/strategist things for nightblade in pve and offering them a way to uniquely debuff ads could also help with the first problem a lot.
• More fleshed out magic. Ok so this one is a bit more lore/flavor but also relevant to magblade and healer. Magic is undivorcable from nigthblade's kit, even for more martial builds and flavor. Spectral bow, all of siphoning, shadow, etc. Nightblade in Morrowind and Oblivion also emphasize a martial class which also has at least some magic. Ideally, it'd be nice to see nightblade dps choose the flavor of how much or little of that they want to show (as I mentioned above one of my characters is more rogue/ranger while another is more mage/healer/thief). This also is related to nigthblade and identity being "stealth" not always feeling accurate.
• Tanks need some of their uniqueness back. Almost every other class has a defining skill or set of skills that have not been gutted and changed as much as nightblade tank has. It also would be nice to see the theme of unorthodox endurance and adaptability. This also helps with another thing I mentioned above about cunning, adaptability, and creativity of solutions being more what feels to me like nigthblade's core than stealth.
• PvP nigthblades need encouragement to do more than just stealth builds or unkillable tank troll builds. As I said I feel a lot of the more brawler/survival/skirmisher nightblades got gutted to answer other playstyles. There should be ways to balance skills that encourage this playstyle without benefiting the other two as much. Also leaning into traps as a playstyle and not just stealth might also feel better for player frustration while offering nightblades still that feeling of preparation and fighting on their terms. Though I will also note some players want to play assassins, not trappers and that should be okay too. Again, more options are a good thing not less.

Closing:
I've played this class a lot and I love it and am very passionate about it, but I am not the be all end all expert on nigthblade. There are others who will probably disagree with me or only agree with parts of this and that's more than valid too. Imo the importance of these class reworks are we get all perspectives, not just me. Even being a dk casual I still gave feedback in the pts relating to dk and the parts of it I enjoy (my magdk and dk healer). As they say you don't have to be a five star chef to know a meal is missing something or what it's missing. Thank you for this thread, OP, and I'm excited to see what others have to say and waht they think too!

Emeratis wrote: »

Oh boy, this may be my moment haha. For perspective: I've been a nightblade main since beta, 17,000 hours on the class (2,000 hours on my second most played class). I've gotten most of my dungeon and trial hm/tris on my nightblade, gotten her to grand overlord and used to pvp a lot on her in cyrodiil/ic/battlegrounds/duels/you name it, done pretty much every quest and bit of content on this character because they're my comfort character and the class is my favorite by a large margin compared to the others. Sadly I did not get to fill out the class survey back in October due to dealing with a lot of irl health issues at the time so I missed the window so some of what I talk about here might be related to that.

Why I like Nightblade over other classes:
It started off simple. I am obsessed with rangers in fantasy settings and looking at the early classes in beta, nightblade felt like it most fit that. Over time, I fell in love with how compared to other classes that felt more rigid in theme or function, nightblade felt like it could be versatile and have many facets to explore. My main started out as a stamblade and is still mostly a ranger/fighter/assassiny type. I also have a nightblade tank who uses shadow and blood magic to bolster his defenses and protect others. My third nightblade started as my magblade, then moved to a dps/healer hybrid for a time, before finally now he is a dps or healer whenever I need him to be but still fits a flavor of a thief who got good at essence/soul/blood magic to help and heal others. While most classes have had struggles to reach the modern day role diversity they have, nigthblade felt like it more comfortably and naturally could shift through the pve roles. For pvp, while gankblade has been a popular archtype, it also felt like it was offered the versatility to play different ways depending on the battlefield. I will note that I stopped pvping in eso a lot when nightblade got some nerfs that gave them less playstyle options and largely hurt skirmishing/brawler nightblades more than gankblades.

What was lost:
Again, I've played nb a lot in a lot of different scenarios. I always advocated for other classes to be built up to nb's level, but nb over the years had a history of nerfs that felt very bad and have def made me a bit bitter about class balance. While I still enjoy nigthblade most and it feels like the most free class to explore and be versatile for me, it also has lost playstyles I personally loved.

• Nightblade tank was a niche underdog in the early years of the game but I loved the challenge and grouping puzzles through line of sight to mitigate not having a chain and also a lot of the tanky tools in kit felt fun and rewarding and unique. The old evasion, while it could be absolutely busted, felt very bad to lose. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, old evasion gave the player a chance to dodge an attack. While it felt terrible to see someone highroll on this in pvp and pve, losing that kind of mechanic felt like it took something away from the identity of the class. Similarly, nightblade tank's dark cloak being nerfed to be conditional on immobility and blocking felt antithetical to a class that has a general theme of agility and mobility and was part of the appeal for nightblade tank for me. I am not advocating for the old evasion to come back (though in the modern game I do wonder if it would be less problematic than it used to be given power creep or other things) but nightblade tanks lost a lot of identity and never got a fitting or rewarding replacement for it. That is a problem. that is something I strongly hope is addressed because as you will see a theme here going forward, I stopped playing nigthblade tank when it felt like I lost what made it enjoyable and interesting and fun.
• There was a pretty infamous balance time where due to a vocal portion of the community, people were upset that magblade could do damage and output a lot of healing. I both dps'd and healed at the time, and while it was true that healers were often feeling irrelevant and unwanted in group content (especially in dungeons/4 man content), that issue was more related to power creep and mechanics for group content being very dps centric or occasionally for tanks. Still, the solution given was magblade had a lot of their group healing gutted and a lot of nightblade morphs were changed to either choose damage or healing or they kept both but with such awful ratios that the morph was killed entirely in terms of viability of play. While this feels less frustrating in modern day, at the time healer desired classes were pretty rigid (warden required, templar preferred) and for those who wanted nightblade healer to be good it did not help the viability while costing magblade group utility.

I want to pause for a relevant aside here. Nigthblade has often been accused of being a selfish class that offers far less buffs and utility than others. This is somewhat true, but with the magblade nerfs I mentioned, it became completely true. Nightblade in the pve meta especially has suffered from this as if you offer no group buffs or utility that others do, the only thing you can offer is your damage, and if that damage isn't dramatically ahead of others, it's hard to justify what you bring to the table that another class can't. This is why nb has had a rough pve history of desirability in all roles. Due to the lack of utility compared to others and the insistence of balancing only on metrics such as raw damage output, people often forget that other classes when underperforming damage wise can also sometimes fall back on utility (see dk's history as a support dps even in patches where it's damage output was lackluster compared to other classes). This is also why when as I mentioned above magblade lost it's group utility of additional heals to the group, it stopped seeing play as much.

• Anyway, pvp wise, stealth is a frustrating mechanic. I personally enjoy it (obviously given the class I chose to main and talk about), but even in other games I play, stealth is a mechanic that is frustrating and players often complain about. Early nightblade was somewhat dependent on stealth, then balance leaned away from that a bit, but then in recent years put it back in a bit with changes to concealed weapon and cloak. Another game I play has a stealthed based character/class that the devs have explicitly stated "we have to balance this character around player frustration" and I feel that is the heart of the problem with nigthblade and pvp balance. A lot of the changes and nerfs to nightblade caused by pvp feel more based on player frustration than what is actually healthy for the class. This is tricky because stealth and player frustration is a tale as old as time, but I will say that often the balance changes aimed at nightblade in pvp often felt like they did less to deter or stop the frustration of stealth/gank builds and more hit bruisers/skirmishers and forced nightblade in pvp into a place where stealth/gank or unkillable tank were all that were viable. I admit full disclaimer I have stopped pvping except for rare occasions for the past few years and pvp in other games partially due to this and I know a lot of nb mains who pvp'd who have quit eso entirely or quit eso pvp. I think the main thing I'd urge here is that balancing against player frustration is valid but overdoing it will make mains of said thing feel like they are not welcome or that their options are limited unfairly.
• Finally, healer...nightblade healer is in a better spot than it's ever been probably in some ways, especially since siphoning is a desirable skill line. It still leaves a lot to be desired. As I mentioned with the group utility dilemma, that kept nigthblade healer down for many years. While the raw healing numbers of nightblade have always been strong and I'd argue in terms of raw healing output nb and dk healers are unmatched, that level of healing is seldom needed in content. Overheal really doesn't have any major benefits (yes, it procs spc and other sets, but outside of that what really does it matter?). If overhealing had a mechanic or utility offered, it might help some of the strong raw heals but little utility healers like nigthblade more (ex maybe overhealing for nightblade has a passive of skill that converts excess healing into resources for said ally?) but as it stands most of what the siphoning line is used for is selfish (ult gen, resource regen for self, etc). It is worth noting that nigthblade healers also got hurt by the magblade nerfs in their damage output got gutted and one of the few things you could ague they offered was a little bit of damage. Either way, nightblade healer largely has suffered from less losses than the other portions of nightblade but still enough to be felt.

Other problems
The elephant in the room is often pvp vs pve with nightblade. As I mentioned balancing around pvp frustration has put pve nigthblade in a very bad spot on more than one occasion. Nightblade's damage rotation in pve has a lot more of a bursty swing than other dps which can be advantageous at times but also punishing in others such as dps calculations in longer fights and burst windows. Changes to bow proc has made it easier for nightblades to control their burst a little bit more in pve, but it also can sometimes lead to overburn on mechanics due to a sudden burst of dps coming out of the woodwork.

Also, I did not like the class identity announcement chart for various reasons but as I pointed out then, making stealth relevant in pve is difficult, especially for support roles. When your job is to have the mini in vcr or vas jump on you to avoid jumping in group, what benefit is stealth to a healer? When you are the tank, what benefit is steatlh at all? Given the initial slide and the first rework, we know that while supports get some things, it feels like the mindset for the reworks is still very dps centric. For nightblade especially this will not work well. I have very big concerns if this is the only direction on the radar.

What nigthblade needs:
Finally to the main question of the thread. Sorry it took so long but I had to say some of the above to have this part make sense because some of these suggestions relate to history of the class.

• The elephant in the room is nigthblade needs reliable group utility that others can't offer. This has been a major general problem for nightblade in pve. When you have less to offer utility wise and don't have damage to make up for it, you just aren't wanted. Obviously player restrictions have ebbed and flowed over the years in regards to this but even with comfort and experience I still have run into groups who have asked me to play a meta class I barely play over my main that I know like the back of my hand. This is something that especially affects mid tier raiders that blindly copy the more experienced raiders without understanding the nuance of group comp and when to break tradition. It's gotten better in some regards but it still can be a problem.
• Controllable burst in pve. I have thought a bit about whether increasing the trap and foresight/planning/strategist part of nightblade's kit could help with pve pain points. The roots are already there-mark target, aspect of terror, cripple, the old agony which was replaced by malevolent offering in 2018. Part of the problem is as much as I enjoy controller class/archtypes, similar to stealth being useless in pve, cc in pve is more niche/not useful at times so these skills that should have some use do not really see play as much. Leaning into rogue/strategist things for nightblade in pve and offering them a way to uniquely debuff ads could also help with the first problem a lot.
• More fleshed out magic. Ok so this one is a bit more lore/flavor but also relevant to magblade and healer. Magic is undivorcable from nigthblade's kit, even for more martial builds and flavor. Spectral bow, all of siphoning, shadow, etc. Nightblade in Morrowind and Oblivion also emphasize a martial class which also has at least some magic. Ideally, it'd be nice to see nightblade dps choose the flavor of how much or little of that they want to show (as I mentioned above one of my characters is more rogue/ranger while another is more mage/healer/thief). This also is related to nigthblade and identity being "stealth" not always feeling accurate.
• Tanks need some of their uniqueness back. Almost every other class has a defining skill or set of skills that have not been gutted and changed as much as nightblade tank has. It also would be nice to see the theme of unorthodox endurance and adaptability. This also helps with another thing I mentioned above about cunning, adaptability, and creativity of solutions being more what feels to me like nigthblade's core than stealth.
• PvP nigthblades need encouragement to do more than just stealth builds or unkillable tank troll builds. As I said I feel a lot of the more brawler/survival/skirmisher nightblades got gutted to answer other playstyles. There should be ways to balance skills that encourage this playstyle without benefiting the other two as much. Also leaning into traps as a playstyle and not just stealth might also feel better for player frustration while offering nightblades still that feeling of preparation and fighting on their terms. Though I will also note some players want to play assassins, not trappers and that should be okay too. Again, more options are a good thing not less.

Closing:
I've played this class a lot and I love it and am very passionate about it, but I am not the be all end all expert on nigthblade. There are others who will probably disagree with me or only agree with parts of this and that's more than valid too. Imo the importance of these class reworks are we get all perspectives, not just me. Even being a dk casual I still gave feedback in the pts relating to dk and the parts of it I enjoy (my magdk and dk healer). As they say you don't have to be a five star chef to know a meal is missing something or what it's missing. Thank you for this thread, OP, and I'm excited to see what others have to say and waht they think too!

This was extremely insightful as I have also gained nightblade up until Arcanist came out. The lack of utility in pve is definitely a real problem especially if it falls behind in damage especially when cleave on nightblade is almost non-existent. I think a utility buff for pve would be something like expose weakness which provides a window where the target suffers X% reduced damage reduction after all armor and penetration calculations, given the opportunistic nature of the class.

As far as dps improvement goes for pve, I'm thinking something along the lines of where nightblade gets a unique buff where the longer it stays on one target, the more damage it does to it.

my eso have 11k hour,and maybe 8k is a pure nb
nightblade the only one good part is playing healer and be a drink pot spc/pp ult robot,tank and dps is F tier,because they have 0 group buff and 0 aoe power
so they lacking everything

Nyseto wrote: »

Renato90085 wrote: »

my eso have 11k hour,and maybe 8k is a pure nb
nightblade the only one good part is playing healer and be a drink pot spc/pp ult robot,tank and dps is F tier,because they have 0 group buff and 0 aoe power
so they lacking everything

Yeah, this class refresh has to do more than just bring pure classing up to par with subclassing. It literally has to make pure nightblade viable vs other pure classes in pve at least. ZOS just needs to lean into burst even more for nightblade without worrying about cleave.

Definitely, it is worth noting for the past year or so before subclassing, nightblade was underperforming against other pureclasses often and at times had under 10 showings at all in trial logs on esologs in recent years (I know because I was one of them for several patches and kept up with looking at the logs back then).

The problem right now with that is for pve right now cleave is king. Part of why arcanist beam is so oppressive in the balance sphere is it gives safe ranged cleave without any drawbacks. Even if nightblade was equal or slightly higher but single target and melee, it would still fail to compete.

It does not help that ZOS has been designing a lot of pve fights in recent years to have more ads or ads that are punishing if ignored or left up for too long, which is another reason that beam, azureblight, etc have become desirable and reasons why older more single target sets and skills such as relequen fell off.

I did also forget to mention in my first post but nightblade being chained to flanking bonus gives it a similar pain point to bow when you are somewhere like sunspire where flanking is impossible. For bow, that's another conversation for another day, but for nightblade a suggestion I could give is to open up master assassin to give you a different perk based on positioning. Like a frontal assault gives a damage perk, flanking gives another. This would add to the strategic nature of nightblade that I mentioned in my original post and give some degree of control to the player on how they want to output damage based on how they position in a fight (or how they can position in a fight on fights where there is only one option).

Also I want to make a slight additional note on my first post and re: magic and nightblade
I want to be a bit more clear I wanted it to be not so much a required thing as not a thematic that gets tossed out similar to how dk lost poison damage. In morrowind, nigthblade had mysticism, illusion, alteration, and destruction. In oblivion, nightblade had alteration, destruction, and restoration. I know it's generally considered one of the more martial classes, and it is, but it also has magic flavor as well. That being said I want my stamblade and magblade to feel different again and each feel they fit with their class so I absolutely the worry and even I myself don't want to make it seem like I want nigthblade to be all magic. The main thing is for some nightblades, magic is more subtle, others more overt. I just want to see the fantasy of nigthblade stay diverse and full of flavor overall so it can keep the many archtypes and options under it's umbrella.

If they touch Shadowy Disguise again, I'm going to lose it.

Other than that, with how they reworked the DK's breath attack, I wonder if they plan to give every class an AoE spammable/spender. If that's their plan, I can't imagine which Nightblade skill would fulfill that role. Maybe they can move Veiled Strike and Drain Power to the same skill line, and have Veiled Strike be the builder, Drain Power the spender, and change Drain Power so that it becomes a conal, channeled ability?

Honestly, just buff consuming darkness/bolstering darkness and we´re good