So, the other pvp game I play had a dev talk about the insight of stealth based characters are partially balanced around player frustration and that might be what they mean by that. Even at some of the lowest points for nightblade in eso, I still have heard people crying for nerfs because they find stealth frustrating. Everything you said about stealth in pvp is correct, that it's been gutted into the ground to the point it's not useful except for niche ganking.

I will say when the class reworks were revealed, many of us, myself included pushed back against stealth as nightblade's identity on the slide. For several roles, stealth is next to useless and I do not see it being functional in pve unless there is a massive combat/npc overhaul which is past the scope of the class reworks. Maybe we get it down the line but for now that's too much to ask to make one niche class skill that not everyone agrees is the identity useful.

Going more into that, stealth in pve for supports is useless and for nightblade tank especially it is the antithesis of their role. Currently if a nightblade tank happens to cloak/stealth, they instantly drop taunt and the boss starts wrecking their team. Nightblade tank has always been enjoyed by players even if it was not always competitively viable. The drain tank/shadow knight archetype deserves to be a part of nightblade's class and identity. For healers, stealth might seem to be more useful but many group dungeons/trials require a healer to kite a ranged attack to keep it out of group and half of them will not hit you if you are stealthed and instead go into the group and cause chaos. These class reworks need to be about more than just dps. Support only or mostly players exist and deserve to get changes that benefit them also. Nightblade as a class has always had the problem of being attractive to supports but less useful than any other class for support. That should change.

I do want to note that similar to nightblade, sorcerer had all their class mastery passives not buff pets and a common complaint about sorcerer is "I like it as a mage but I hate the pets" so I am assuming that nightblade wise they were trying to address similarly how stealth is not desired or useful for everyone so focusing on it would only benefit a small percentage of nightblade players versus something that benefits more players.

I do like and enjoy stealth in nightblade's kit and I do agree it deserves to be fixed up from the sorry state it's in but I also don't think class mastery passives or making it encompass the entire class is the way to go at all. Nightblade has always encompassed more than just stealthy archetypes for a lot of us.

Emeratis wrote: »

So, the other pvp game I play had a dev talk about the insight of stealth based characters are partially balanced around player frustration and that might be what they mean by that. Even at some of the lowest points for nightblade in eso, I still have heard people crying for nerfs because they find stealth frustrating. Everything you said about stealth in pvp is correct, that it's been gutted into the ground to the point it's not useful except for niche ganking.

I will say when the class reworks were revealed, many of us, myself included pushed back against stealth as nightblade's identity on the slide. For several roles, stealth is next to useless and I do not see it being functional in pve unless there is a massive combat/npc overhaul which is past the scope of the class reworks. Maybe we get it down the line but for now that's too much to ask to make one niche class skill that not everyone agrees is the identity useful.

Going more into that, stealth in pve for supports is useless and for nightblade tank especially it is the antithesis of their role. Currently if a nightblade tank happens to cloak/stealth, they instantly drop taunt and the boss starts wrecking their team. Nightblade tank has always been enjoyed by players even if it was not always competitively viable. The drain tank/shadow knight archetype deserves to be a part of nightblade's class and identity. For healers, stealth might seem to be more useful but many group dungeons/trials require a healer to kite a ranged attack to keep it out of group and half of them will not hit you if you are stealthed and instead go into the group and cause chaos. These class reworks need to be about more than just dps. Support only or mostly players exist and deserve to get changes that benefit them also. Nightblade as a class has always had the problem of being attractive to supports but less useful than any other class for support. That should change.

I do want to note that similar to nightblade, sorcerer had all their class mastery passives not buff pets and a common complaint about sorcerer is "I like it as a mage but I hate the pets" so I am assuming that nightblade wise they were trying to address similarly how stealth is not desired or useful for everyone so focusing on it would only benefit a small percentage of nightblade players versus something that benefits more players.

I do like and enjoy stealth in nightblade's kit and I do agree it deserves to be fixed up from the sorry state it's in but I also don't think class mastery passives or making it encompass the entire class is the way to go at all. Nightblade has always encompassed more than just stealthy archetypes for a lot of us.

That's fair, but I'm not saying it should encompass the entire class... there's five Class Mastery passives and none of them have anything to do with stealth as a mechanic because "stealth can be problematic".

Yet we get a generic Critical Damage/cap increasing passive, which is exactly why stealth can be problematic.


That's the disconnect.

I'm all for there being alternative playstyles to stealth for nightblade, just like there's various different playstyles viable on DK after the rework.

To elaborate a bit more on how stealth could be incorporated in PvE... I don't think it should be part of a tank's playstyle, but you could make it part of a nightblade DDs & supports' PvE identity very easily:

• Incorporate stealth into more abilities - 1-2s invisibility when casting Lotus Fan or Ambush for example, refreshing invisibility each second within Veil of Blades/Bolstering Darkness area and so on.
• Add stealth modifiers to abilities, i.e. "applies a X DoT over Y seconds if used while invisible", "deals X damage after Y seconds if used while invisible" or for support: "also apply X damage shield if used while invisible".

Simple, but efficient. I'm sure the developers could come up with more interesting mechanics also, but that's just off the top of my head.

What I don't want to see though: stealth modifiers amplifying the "one shot" - ganking shouldn't be made more prevalent than it is.

Decimus wrote: »

What I don't want to see though: stealth modifiers amplifying the "one shot" - ganking shouldn't be made more prevalent than it is.

Respect your opinion, I watch your streams sometimes and recognize you have a lot of knowledge on the game. However! Can we not pretend like Nightblade one shot ganking is prevalent in Cyro? It’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time. The best Ganking setups right now are Sorcs, which shows how this playstyle has been gutted over the years. The bulk of people in Cyro are running tanky brawler builds, these are the last types of players a ganker would want to fight.

Related, when you reduce the ability of pure stat ganking, you increase the amount of pure stat bombers. It’s kind of pick your poison, personally I would rather deal with a ganker than a bomber killing me cause I’m standing next to someone who can’t block. We’ve seen this over the years have we not, there’s probably 10 bombers to every 1 ganker out there. The playstyle is similar but bombing’s reward is much greater than ganking, and frankly it’s much easier to do, and the gear sets are easier to acquire.

One shots from stealth are almost a relic of a fun game we used to play. By no means is it prevalent in current ESO and it is not the boogeyman it’s being made out to be.

NB Cloak and stealth functions, and timing are fine.

Decimus wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

What I don't want to see though: stealth modifiers amplifying the "one shot" - ganking shouldn't be made more prevalent than it is.

Respect your opinion, I watch your streams sometimes and recognize you have a lot of knowledge on the game. However! Can we not pretend like Nightblade one shot ganking is prevalent in Cyro? It’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time. The best Ganking setups right now are Sorcs, which shows how this playstyle has been gutted over the years. The bulk of people in Cyro are running tanky brawler builds, these are the last types of players a ganker would want to fight.

Related, when you reduce the ability of pure stat ganking, you increase the amount of pure stat bombers. It’s kind of pick your poison, personally I would rather deal with a ganker than a bomber killing me cause I’m standing next to someone who can’t block. We’ve seen this over the years have we not, there’s probably 10 bombers to every 1 ganker out there. The playstyle is similar but bombing’s reward is much greater than ganking, and frankly it’s much easier to do, and the gear sets are easier to acquire.

One shots from stealth are almost a relic of a fun game we used to play. By no means is it prevalent in current ESO and it is not the boogeyman it’s being made out to be.

I think the main reason people not that many people play "gank" builds is because it's almost impossible to survive on them... like why play something that can one shot people and then dies when someone sneezes in your direction.

You can still do it even without subclassing, it's just not particularly fun compared to doing it with subclassing and being a troll tank basically while doing so and getting more damage out of it even.

Solving the damage difference via Class Mastery passives and discouraging subclassing is one thing, but you still leave the survivability atrocious.

The way I view things is that you should need to build up combos on NB to get the "one shot" burst, not leave opponents unable to fight back unless they're built extremely squishy.


There should also be more ways to utilize stealth for survivability, DoT pressure etc... since right now it seems designed just for running away given how easy it is to counter and how little it provides you when countered.


There's so much more potential to how stealth plays currently and seeing it entirely neglected in the class mastery passives reveal is a bit disappointing to say the least, especially when it seems there's some kind of a misunderstanding on how the game's PvP plays at the moment and what/why things are broken.

IMO the amount of gankers nowadays compared to the yesteryears has nothing to do with survival, and everything to do with complexity and success. It is very hard to gank on a pure NB without specific proc sets/builds. And the HP threshold has just gone up and up. Honestly, ever since they changed Empower, ranged pure NB ganking has become purely reliant on proc sets. Melee ganking can still be done based on pure stats but it’s exactly what you say, a combo. One you have to save up for in order to land a successful attack and cross your fingers the target has at least two broken thumbs.

Anyway, I don’t disagree they could/should have done a mastery involving cloak. I just think the majority of players don’t know how to properly use cloak if I’m being honest. Another user brought it up, but maybe bring back the purge would help, it would greatly increase survivability on a NB. Currently Dark Cloak is an unused morph, unless you’re a 55k troll build.

The cost is too high. Magicka's recovery is 0.
The total cost will be more than double what it used to be.
"Shadowy Disguise" is practically a slow suicide in PvP.
I'd rather abandon the Shadow skill and use invis potions or Vamp 4.

PvE 10% damage bonus for 10 seconds is far too short.
Please make it at least 20 seconds.

How exactly would a stealth class mastery passive help NBs get into line in terms of DPS with other classes?

Not like you can use stealth in a trial which would make such a passive useless in PvE content and besides not every Nightblade uses invisibility.

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

How exactly would a stealth class mastery passive help NBs get into line in terms of DPS with other classes?

Not like you can use stealth in a trial which would make such a passive useless in PvE content and besides not every Nightblade uses invisibility.

It wouldn't, that would take the class rework in 2027 most likely.

The post is mostly from PvP perspective since there seemed to be some misunderstanding regarding PvP during the ESO Live and what exactly causes stealth to be "problematic".

I did however write about how stealth could eventually be incorporated into PvE on comment #5:

To elaborate a bit more on how stealth could be incorporated in PvE... I don't think it should be part of a tank's playstyle, but you could make it part of a nightblade DDs & supports' PvE identity very easily:
Incorporate stealth into more abilities - 1-2s invisibility when casting Lotus Fan or Ambush for example, refreshing invisibility each second within Veil of Blades/Bolstering Darkness area and so on.
Add stealth modifiers to abilities, i.e. "applies a X DoT over Y seconds if used while invisible", "deals X damage after Y seconds if used while invisible" or for support: "also apply X damage shield if used while invisible".

...this however is beyond the scope of the thread.


I just wanted to bring up the disconnect between the perceived problem (stealth) and actual problem (damage stacking) in PvP - after all, if problems aren't correctly identified then how can we expect ZOS to fix them?

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

If I were reworking Nightblade, I'd have a:

1) Sithis skill line (DPS, Assassination is the name probably) - "What is the color of Night?"
2) Nocturnal Skill Line (support, stealth + healing + buffs, call it the Night's Quiet or something lol): Nocturnal, whose touch is mink!
3) Namira Skill Line (tank, call it the Ancient Darkness) Namira, whose works endure forever!

I'd theme the skills around:
1) Murdery murder (honestly I currently like the assassination skill line, just rework the anims and tweak the numbers)
2) stealthing *allies* to protect them, and crowd controlling enemies. Normal healing stuff.
3) Determination and endurance/eternity; a tank through passive endurance and durability, "one that has suffered everything that life can throw at it - what's one more thumping blow from St. Olms?" (lol). May her Works endure forever!

This would mean the Tank skill line would need access to some of the debuffs (like Major Vulnerability or something like that), the Assassination skill line probably would need DoTs improved, and the support/healing skill line can get aggro control skills (I am still into the idea of stealthing allies to make adversaries drop aggro on them briefly).

Not sure about PVP though.

I like these ideas but it really shows how low Necromancer has sunk that two different class mastery threads on the forum are wanting to use Major Vuln, what was supposed to be the Necromancer's unique debuff when it launched, as part of their own mastery ideas.

Just goes to show how badly Necromancer needs something, anything to call its own and justify its place in raids. Because Major Vuln ain't it. Everybody and their dog can source that easily without ever once having to call a Necromancer.

My idea for stealth-related mastery passive:

Protective Cloak:

When you cast Shadow Cloak, you also cast Blur on yourself and up to 3 group members if Battle Spirit is active, or up to 11 group members if Battle Spirit is not active. Born from Shadows duration increased by 5 seconds if Battle Spirit is not active. While you're in stealth or have Born in Shadows, gain Major Protection. Dark Cloak duration increased by 3 seconds, it grants Major Vitality to you, and you don't need to brace to get increased healing.

In PvP, it will give you good defensive buffs, Major Evasion, Minor Resolve or snare removal+immunity. And that's for a small-scale group. If you're a ganker, you'll be getting Major Protection after leaving stealth to increase the chance that you'll survive your failed attempt to gank. If you're a brawler, you can also try to use Shadowy Disguise for Major Protection, or use Dark Cloak as your self-heal.

In PvE, you're still providing good defensive buffs. Minor Resolve is easy to get from the Runeguard of Still Waters/Combat Prayer/Contingency, but that's one more reliable way to get it. Major Evasion is not always needed, and DDs can easily source it from the Blade Cloak, but sometimes you need it, and DDs have no barspace for Cloak. Major Protection is useful for a tank, same for good self-heal. ZOS just have to make sure that you're not losing taunt when restealthing. Idk, like if you have a hard taunt active, immediately remove you out of stealth, so you'll be able to get your Born from Shadows and keep taunt.

Vaqual wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

If I were reworking Nightblade, I'd have a:

1) Sithis skill line (DPS, Assassination is the name probably) - "What is the color of Night?"
2) Nocturnal Skill Line (support, stealth + healing + buffs, call it the Night's Quiet or something lol): Nocturnal, whose touch is mink!
3) Namira Skill Line (tank, call it the Ancient Darkness) Namira, whose works endure forever!

I'd theme the skills around:
1) Murdery murder (honestly I currently like the assassination skill line, just rework the anims and tweak the numbers)
2) stealthing *allies* to protect them, and crowd controlling enemies. Normal healing stuff.
3) Determination and endurance/eternity; a tank through passive endurance and durability, "one that has suffered everything that life can throw at it - what's one more thumping blow from St. Olms?" (lol). May her Works endure forever!

This would mean the Tank skill line would need access to some of the debuffs (like Major Vulnerability or something like that), the Assassination skill line probably would need DoTs improved, and the support/healing skill line can get aggro control skills (I am still into the idea of stealthing allies to make adversaries drop aggro on them briefly).

Not sure about PVP though.

All I would say to that is that I would prefer not to owe my power to any entity by default. I'd rather make up my own story. I dislike how some Sorc skills are just attributed to Meridia. And I don't find that Namira is a good fit for NB to begin with. I'd prefer to stay with the current themes and just see a structural rework. But honestly, NB doesn't need all that much work. I bit of extra offensive power needs to go to Shadow and Siphoning, while Assasination needs to be broken up a little. Assasination needs the most work when it comes to animations though. Dead and outclassed skills like Sap, Debilitate, Mark, Hysteria, Consuming and to a lesser extent Teleport and Swallow need a bit of a tune-up, if only to restore fairness between abilities, e.g. compare Mark Target with Ele Sus.
And once more I'd urge the devs to keep all new animations weapon compatible, because it matters if a player choose to be a "Bow-NB" or "Dagger-NB". The abilities should be able to reflect those choices.

I agree with this completely. Let the players flavor their characters, there are many in universe sources to types of power and I would prefer if we got to decide for ourselves what that looked like.

I also agree with the power shift of skills in lines. An easy start would be swapping veiled strike back to shadow and blur back to assassination (I always preferred this anyway). Malevolent Offering getting a damage morph again for siphoning (pre-u16 it was the thorns stun/dot that npcs still have for reference). Bumping up numbers on the damage skills in shadow and siphoning that already exist and are kinda nice to put them more in line with other similar spammable/dots would also help. I don't think nightblade needs dramatic changes to thrive as monoclass, just some reverts to a lot of the lost power over the years.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I know its off topic a bit but I think it applies.

If DK can lose its poison identity then quite honestly I think that nightblade can lose its shadow tree. Redo the entire skill line and drop the stealth aspects. Focus on the other areas where night blades shine like evasion and high burst damage.

I know it was designed as the rogue/assassin/thief High fantasy plot but there are ways to do that without the stealth aspects.

And for everyone that likes cloak and stealth then rephrase that into the dark brotherhood and theives guild trees. I find it rather odd that these are "guilds" but dont have active skills in them. Why not move cloak and some of the other shadow skills there where they are more accessible?

This is an idea I briefly thought about, but am unsure whether I would want to lose the cloak ability on my nightblade since I have had it since the beginning of the game. It has been a big part of her identity. I am not sure I like the idea that sorcs and other classes can be the sneaky thief that nightblade has always been as the ideal. At the same time I would also like my character to have higher dps, and again like I said before, stamina NB needs to on par with magicka NB which has not been the case for a long time.

I don’t have the answers but in the past both have been possible and therefore they can be again. Maybe class mastery is not the place for it though.

Vulkunne wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

NB Cloak and stealth functions, and timing are fine.

Completely agree. Stealth is a concept that's become 'transformative' and is not rooted behind the cloak anymore. It works, its not 'great' but it works and last time they touched the cloak, it ceased to become a viable part of the stealth toolkit. I don't use it anymore anyways. And even before that, lots of things broke a cloak that was still expensive, then they made it just as easy to break and more expensive.

Quite frankly I think they should just leave stealth alone but focus on fixing the gaps in lore, gameplay and continuity in general rather than ruin something they don't seem to really understand the way players do. I also don't think one-shotting players from stealth is a concept to be entertained specifically. I mean if it happens, then it happens organically, as it should thru creative & innovative builds. But I wouldn't encourage it.

The problem is that if it's not "great" then it's not something people who want to be competitive will ever build around because the "works" part then become very situational. Anything can work in this game, given the right opponents or circumstances...


In the world of game balance, you buff up what is weak and try to make it competitive with the "meta" - that's how you keep games interesting.

This is why I made this thread, because something that is weak was called "problematic", while the only problematic aspect of it (ironically nothing to do with nightblade or Shadowy Disguise either) is getting boosted by the increased damage people can dish out from invisibility with the class mastery passives.


I would also argue that Shadowy Disguise as an ability is very problematic from new player perspective as well - I've watched countless new players (and even more experienced ones) wonder why their cloak stopped working or what revealed them... it's incoherent, annoying to utilize and doesn't provide immediate value on cast like Streak or Ball of Lightning for example.

I'd say it was much better designed on Vengeance where a substantial burst heal was included on the cast and there weren't as many things constantly pulling you out of invisibility. I'd even go as far as to say Shadowy Disguise right now on Live wouldn't be considered an "op" ability if it cleansed debuffs like it did back in the days.

That's how far the "stealth" playstyles have fallen in this game - most people in the game subclass away from Shadow, not towards it.

SneaK wrote: »

Just a thought…

Change Evasive Trance, remove the blocking part and increase dodge chance to .5 seconds and say activating a Shadow ability causes you to dodge attacks.

This would extend the dodge chance comfortably when rolling into cloak which is pretty much a staple defense mechanic on NB.

Well, you might want to check out some class sets...

Decimus wrote: »

Emeratis wrote: »

So, the other pvp game I play had a dev talk about the insight of stealth based characters are partially balanced around player frustration and that might be what they mean by that. Even at some of the lowest points for nightblade in eso, I still have heard people crying for nerfs because they find stealth frustrating. Everything you said about stealth in pvp is correct, that it's been gutted into the ground to the point it's not useful except for niche ganking.

I will say when the class reworks were revealed, many of us, myself included pushed back against stealth as nightblade's identity on the slide. For several roles, stealth is next to useless and I do not see it being functional in pve unless there is a massive combat/npc overhaul which is past the scope of the class reworks. Maybe we get it down the line but for now that's too much to ask to make one niche class skill that not everyone agrees is the identity useful.

Going more into that, stealth in pve for supports is useless and for nightblade tank especially it is the antithesis of their role. Currently if a nightblade tank happens to cloak/stealth, they instantly drop taunt and the boss starts wrecking their team. Nightblade tank has always been enjoyed by players even if it was not always competitively viable. The drain tank/shadow knight archetype deserves to be a part of nightblade's class and identity. For healers, stealth might seem to be more useful but many group dungeons/trials require a healer to kite a ranged attack to keep it out of group and half of them will not hit you if you are stealthed and instead go into the group and cause chaos. These class reworks need to be about more than just dps. Support only or mostly players exist and deserve to get changes that benefit them also. Nightblade as a class has always had the problem of being attractive to supports but less useful than any other class for support. That should change.

I do want to note that similar to nightblade, sorcerer had all their class mastery passives not buff pets and a common complaint about sorcerer is "I like it as a mage but I hate the pets" so I am assuming that nightblade wise they were trying to address similarly how stealth is not desired or useful for everyone so focusing on it would only benefit a small percentage of nightblade players versus something that benefits more players.

I do like and enjoy stealth in nightblade's kit and I do agree it deserves to be fixed up from the sorry state it's in but I also don't think class mastery passives or making it encompass the entire class is the way to go at all. Nightblade has always encompassed more than just stealthy archetypes for a lot of us.

That's fair, but I'm not saying it should encompass the entire class... there's five Class Mastery passives and none of them have anything to do with stealth as a mechanic because "stealth can be problematic".

Yet we get a generic Critical Damage/cap increasing passive, which is exactly why stealth can be problematic.


That's the disconnect.

I'm all for there being alternative playstyles to stealth for nightblade, just like there's various different playstyles viable on DK after the rework.

To elaborate a bit more on how stealth could be incorporated in PvE... I don't think it should be part of a tank's playstyle, but you could make it part of a nightblade DDs & supports' PvE identity very easily:

• Incorporate stealth into more abilities - 1-2s invisibility when casting Lotus Fan or Ambush for example, refreshing invisibility each second within Veil of Blades/Bolstering Darkness area and so on.
• Add stealth modifiers to abilities, i.e. "applies a X DoT over Y seconds if used while invisible", "deals X damage after Y seconds if used while invisible" or for support: "also apply X damage shield if used while invisible".

Simple, but efficient. I'm sure the developers could come up with more interesting mechanics also, but that's just off the top of my head.

What I don't want to see though: stealth modifiers amplifying the "one shot" - ganking shouldn't be made more prevalent than it is.

your 100% right about crit damage being to OP but id rather see zos re-work battle spirit and control crit damage as an whole in PVP as it would not only help with NB but all critical damage becoming problematic