Online:Death Stroke

	Death Stroke
Line		Assassination
Line Rank		12	Cost	70 Ultimate
Cast Time		0.4 seconds	Duration	–
Target		Enemy
Range		7 meters
Morphs
		Incapacitating Strike Deals Disease Damage. Improves the ability significantly if cast with more Ultimate.
		Soul Harvest Also afflicts the enemy with Major Defile. While slotted on either bar, gain Ultimate whenever you kill an enemy.
Notes Values are based on Max Magicka/Stamina 12000, Max Health 16000, and Weapon/Spell Damage 1000.

Death Stroke and its morphs' under 120 Ultimate cast visual

Death Stroke: Ravage an enemy with a swift strike, dealing [9839 / 9947 / 10055 / 10163] Magic Damage and causing them to take 20% more damage from your attacks for 8 seconds.

Incapacitating Strike: Ravage an enemy with a swift strike, dealing [10164 / 10275 / 10387 / 10499] Disease Damage and causing them to take 20% more damage from your attacks for 8 seconds. If cast with 120 or more Ultimate, you instead deal [11179 / 11301 / 11424 / 11548] Disease Damage, stun the enemy for 3 seconds, and increase the duration of the damage taken effect to 12 seconds.

Soul Harvest: Ravage an enemy with a spinning attack, dealing 10164 Magic Damage and increasing your damage against them by 20% for 8 seconds. Also afflicts the enemy with Major Defile, reducing their healing received and damage shield strength by 12%. While slotted on either bar, any time you kill an enemy you gain [7 / 8 / 9 / 10] Ultimate.

Death Stroke deals Magic Damage and increases damage against the affected enemy. The Incapacitating Strike morph changes the damage to Disease Damage and gets improved if cast with more than 120 Ultimate, which increases the damage and stuns the target. Or you could choose the Soul Harvest morph, which earns you extra Ultimate for each kill when it is slotted and inflicts Major Defile, reducing the target's Healing Received and damage shield strength.

Notes

• Death Stroke is the cheapest of all the Ultimate abilities, especially when the Soul Harvest morph is chosen, because you earn some back for every kill.
• While under any effect that raises Ultimate costs, Incapacitating Strike will be unusable between 120 Ultimate and the adjusted cost of the improved version that stuns the target. For example, the stunning version costs 123 Ultimate for a stage 1 Vampire, and neither version of the skill will be usable between 120 and 122 Ultimate. The icon will still change color at 120.
• Before Update 41, Incapacitating Strike had a slotted effect called Reave which restored 100 Magicka and 100 Stamina every Light and Heavy Attack.
• Soul Harvest is a recommended morph for the Nightblade Initiate build, while Incapacitating Strike is recommended for Umbral Assassin.

Recolored icon of Incapacitating Strike when over 120 Ultimate

Gallery

• 

  Death Stroke and its morphs' over 120 Ultimate cast visual

• 

  Incapacitating Strike hit visual

Patch Notes

1.1.2

• This ability no longer receives the critical damage bonus when used as a sneak attack. It will still cause a stun and a guaranteed critical hit.

1.5.2

• This ability now deals 35% increased damage, and no longer scales up with increased Ultimate.
• Death Stroke now increases the damage you deal to a target by 20% for 6 seconds.

1.6.5

• Death Stroke and its morphs will now apply the Major Defile buff.

2.4.5

• Reduced the damage of this ability and its morphs by 4.5%.
• Incapacitating Strike: This morph now always stuns the target when it is used, regardless of the caster's health. This morph now also deals Disease Damage instead of Magic Damage.

2.7.5

• Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 70 Ultimate from 50 Ultimate.
  • Developer Comments: With the Nightblade's high Ultimate generation, Death Stroke is available too frequently for how powerful it is. Increasing the cost keeps its current burst potential while making Nightblades think more tactically about when to use it.

3.0.5

• Fixed an issue where this ability and the Soul Harvest morph's damage was being mitigated off the target's Physical Resistance instead of their Spell Resistance.

3.3.5

• Soul Harvest: Fixed an issue where you could not dodge this morph.

4.1.5

• This ability now only stuns if you have 120 Ultimate or more. To visually show its readiness state, the icon will change to a recolored version and the animation of the cast will change.

5.0.5

• This ability and the Incapacitating Strike morph will no longer apply Major Defile to the target.
  • Developer Comment: Death Stroke has been notorious for being a very potent Ultimate. We wanted to retain this ability's identity as a mark for death on your target, helping the Nightblade excel at assassinating high priority targets while reducing some of the over bearing nature it enables. You'll note that Soul Harvest has been left untouched, which is due to the morph only granting a conditional bonus previously. Now, Soul Harvest offers a guaranteed bonus with a conditional, while Incapacitating Strike doubles down on offering two powerful conditional bonuses.
  • Incapacitating Strike (morph): This morph will now Silence the enemy for 3 seconds if cast with 120 or more Ultimate. This Silence can be CC broken, and will fail to apply to CC immune enemies.
    • Developer Comment: The goal with the change to Incapacitating Strike's conditional bonus was to tone down some of the shut-down mechanic to it, since Silences are essentially stuns that allow the target to continue moving, blocking, and dodging. We are aware of the nature that Silences have in terms of effectiveness on varying builds, which is why we found the ability to CC break this effect would be an ideal compromise; it still has the counter play options of a traditional stun, but no longer needs to always be broken.

5.3.6

• Incapacitating Strike: This Ultimate no longer silences the target, but instead stuns them for 3 seconds if cast with 120 or more Ultimate. This change was primarily done to fix an issue where the unique silence applied from this ability conflicted with some recent hard-coded block behaviors.

5.3.7

• Incapacitating Strike: Fixed an issue where you could continue to move while under the effects of this Ultimate's stun.

9.0.5

• Death Stroke: Increased the duration of this Ultimate and morphs' debuffs to 8 seconds, up from 6.
  • Developer Comment: For the masters of assassination, the Nightblade class is a little bit further behind in single target damage than we'd like. We're increasing the uptime on this debuff to help Nightblades get more DPS and kill potential on priority targets.

9.3.5

• Incapacitating Strike: Increased the damage done of the enhanced version of this Ultimate by 10% and extended the duration of its effects to 12 seconds, up from 8. This Ultimate no longer grants Reave for slotting.
  • Developer Comment: To help differentiate these morphs more, we’re moving away from both of them granting a passive and active effect, and instead splitting them up. Soul Harvest will now focus more on its passive effect of printing Ultimate in high kill count situations, while Incapacitating Strike doubles down on saving up extra Ultimate for devastating bonuses in the moment of its cast.
• Soul Harvest (morph): This morph’s slotted bonus now persists through bar swap.