Online:Grim Focus

	Grim Focus
Line		Assassination
Line Rank		42	Cost	1890 Magicka
Cast Time		Instant	Duration	–
Target		Enemy
Range		28 meters
Morphs
		Relentless Focus Converts into a Stamina ability and deals Disease Damage. Increases the amount of Weapon and Spell Damage each stack grants, and reduces the cost.
		Merciless Resolve Increases the damage and healing of the spectral arrow.
Notes Values are based on Max Magicka/Stamina 12000, Max Health 16000, and Weapon/Spell Damage 1000.

The spectral bow of Assassin's Will

Grim Focus: When slotted on either bar, you focus with lethal intent, causing your Light and Heavy Attacks to generate a stack of Grim Focus, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 60 up to 5 times. Fully-charged Heavy Attacks grant two stacks. When at full stacks, you can consume them all to fire a spectral arrow to deal [11068 / 11189 / 11310 / 11433] Magic Damage, and heal for 33% of the damage dealt if you are within melee range.

Relentless Focus: Cost: 1377 Stamina.
When slotted on either bar, you focus with lethal intent, causing your Light and Heavy Attacks to generate a stack of Relentless Focus, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by [65 / 70 / 75 / 80] up to 5 times. Fully-charged Heavy Attacks grant two stacks. When at full stacks, you can consume them all to fire a spectral arrow to deal 11434 Disease Damage, and heal for 33% of the damage dealt if you are within melee range.

Merciless Resolve: When slotted on either bar, you focus with lethal intent, causing your Light and Heavy Attacks to generate a stack of Merciless Resolve, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 60 up to 5 times. Fully-charged Heavy Attacks grant two stacks. When at full stacks, you can consume them all to fire a spectral arrow to deal [12579 / 12716 / 12855 / 12994] Magic Damage, and heal for 50% of the damage dealt if you are within melee range.

Grim Focus increases your damage done with each light or heavy attack, stacking up to five times. At five stacks you can fire Assassin's Will which deals Magic Damage to a target and heals you for a portion of the damage if cast from melee range. The Relentless Focus morph costs Stamina and less, increases the amount of Weapon and Spell Damage each stack grants and deals Disease Damage. Or you can use Merciless Resolve, which increases Assassin's Will's damage and healing.

Notes

• Until Update 19, Merciless Resolve used to snare Assassin's Will's target
• Grim Focus was added in Update 6, replacing Haste.
• Merciless Resolve is a recommended morph for the Nightblade Initiate and Deathweaver builds.

Gallery

• 

  Relentless Focus morph's disease projectile

• 

  Grim Focus and its morphs' perma-glow visual

Patch Notes

1.6.5

• Haste: This ability has been removed, and replaced by the new ability Grim Focus.
• Grim Focus: This ability has replaced Haste in the Assassination tree. Any experience gained in Haste will now apply to Grim Focus.
  • When Grim Focus is activated, all weapon attacks will do additional damage for 20 seconds. Using light attacks or heavy attacks while the effect is active will grant a charge. When you gain eight charges, Grim Focus changes to Assassin's Will.
• Assassin's Will: This ability allows you to fire a spectral projectile at your target, dealing magic damage.

2.0.1

• This ability now only requires 7 light and/or heavy attacks to trigger Deadly Throw.
• This ability will now always play visual effects while it's active so you know when the ability needs to be refreshed.
• Fixed some visual issues with the spectral bow.

2.3.8

• Fixed an issue where the Assassin's Will proc from this ability could be interrupted.

2.4.5

• Relentless Focus: This morph's spectral bow proc has been renamed to "Assassin's Scourge", and now deals Disease Damage instead of Magic Damage.

2.7.5

• The Assassin's Will proc from this ability and the Merciless Resolve morph now only scales with your Spell Damage and Maximum Magicka stats.
• Relentless Focus:
  • The Assassin's Scourge proc from this morph now only scales with your Weapon Damage and Maximum Stamina stats.
  • The initial cast of this morph now costs Stamina instead of Magicka.
  • Fixed an issue where the Assassin's Scourge proc from this morph was being mitigated off the target's Spell Resistance instead of their Physical Resistance.

3.0.5

• You can now fire multiple Assassin's Will or Assassin's Scourge bow procs from a single cast of this ability and its morphs.
• Increased the amount of Light or Heavy Attacks needed to obtain an Assassin's Will or Assassin's Scourge bow proc to 5 attacks from 4.
• Merciless Resolve: Reduced the duration of the snare from this morph's Assassin's Will bow proc to 3 seconds from 5 seconds.
  • Developer Comments: Allowing you to fire multiple Assassin's Will procs from a single cast of Grim Focus should streamline the ability usage by eliminating the need to recast it early. We've increased the amount of attacks needed to obtain a proc slightly, but the net result should be an increase in Nightblade DPS with the extra global cooldowns.

3.2.5

• The Assassin's Will and Assassin's Scourge procs from this ability and its morphs no longer have a 100ms cast time, but the speed of the projectile has been reduced by approximately 10%.
• Relentless Focus: Fixed an issue where this morph could not be cast while silenced.

3.3.5

• Grim Focus: The stacks you build towards the bow proc for this ability and its morphs will now remain if you recast the ability early, or if the ability expires. The partial stacks are removed if you exit combat.
  • Developer Comment: This change makes the ability effectiveness more consistent among players of different skill levels. It still rewards more skilled play, but is less punishing when someone makes a mistake.

3.3.7

• This ability and its morphs will now generate stacks towards the Assassin's Will and Scourge procs when you begin the Light or Heavy Attack against the enemy target, rather than when the Light or Heavy Attack successfully hits its target.

4.0.5

• Merciless Resolve: Fixed an issue where the snare from this morph would not apply to a target that blocked the damage.

4.1.5

• Merciless Resolve: Removed the snare from this ability.

4.2.5

• Fully-Charged Heavy Attacks now grant 2 stacks towards the spectral bow proc for this ability and its morphs.
• The spectral bow proc is no longer free, and costs half the amount of a regular Grim Focus.
  • Developer Comments: This ability was too productive for the amount of damage and effective resource management it provided, and was another part of the reason that Nightblade DPS was too high.
• Fixed an issue where you could generate stacks towards the spectral bow proc through unintended means.
• Added a brief minimum travel time to the Assassin's Will proc of this ability and its morphs.
  • Developer Comment: This change was made to ensure you have a brief window to react to this powerful attack when the caster uses it in close combat quarters.

5.0.5

• Removed the Minor Berserk buff from this ability and its morphs.
  • The spectral bow now heals for 33% of the damage dealt if you are within 7 meters of the target when firing it.
  • Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs would continue to persist after logging off.
  • Reduced the minimum travel time on this ability and its morphs to 250ms from 450ms.
  • This ability and its morphs will now reduce your damage taken by 3% for each Light or Heavy Attack you use, up to 5 times. Note that this bonus will persist even if the Grim Focus buff fades from you, as it is tethered to the amount of stacks you had while the buff was active. This effect will be consumed when you use your stacks by firing the spectral bow or when you leave combat.
    • Developer Comment: The goal of this change is to alleviate some of the pains that were brought up where this ability required a cost and global to activate, but only enabled you to participate in a mini-game before you were able to be rewarded, unlike any other skill in the game. The initial intent was to remove the overloaded nature of this ability where it granted you more passive damage, but then also granted you more burst damage. Now, the focus has shifted for this ability to be tangible with multiple play styles, and can be used by tanks, damage dealers, or even healers with the bonuses it provides. We went with damage mitigation in order to help reinforce the desire to gain the healing from this skill, and wanted to avoid granting more flat damage or resource management.
  • Merciless Resolve (morph): Now increases healing done to 50%.
  • Relentless Focus: Increased the duration to 30 seconds from 20 seconds. Additionally, this morph no longer grants Minor Endurance.
    • Developer Comment: Nightblades traditionally, while masters of high single target damage and a wide toolkit, were given too many potent tools on skills they'd continue using even without added bonuses. We've removed the Minor Berserk bonus from this ability since its overall performance is roughly where it should be comparatively to other abilities, and we've introduced a healing bonus to it to help the Nightblade class gain access to more high-risk staying power. Now, the caster will want to ensure their target hasn't prepared themselves with defenses, otherwise the heal will return an unsubstantial amount. Additionally, they must be in the range of their opponent where they are most susceptible to risk.

5.1.5

• Grim Focus:
  • Fixed an issue where the spectral bow from this ability and its morphs could consume all of your stacks even if you failed to fire the projectile.
  • Reduced the amount of mitigation the stacking bonus of these abilities provides to 2% from 3%.

5.2.5

• Increased the base duration of this ability and its morphs to 40 seconds, up from 20 seconds.
• Removed the minimum travel time of the bow proc from these abilities since they are slower than other projectiles, such as Crystal Fragments or Snipe.
• Relentless Focus (morph):
  • This morph now lasts 60 seconds at Rank IV instead of 30 seconds.

6.1.5

• This ability and its morphs now grant 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack, rather than reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack, in order to help this ability feel more aggressive and assassination oriented.
• Stacks removed from these abilities after ending combat will now only be removed in PvP zones, rather than all the time, fixing numerous issues where you could lose all stacks generated where you appeared to still be in combat.

7.2.5

• This ability and its morphs now grant 60 Weapon and Spell Damage per stack , rather than 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack.
  • Developer Comment: This change was done to ensure the class does not lose too much of its healing potency and self-sufficiency from the original conversion where it granted Critical Damage and Healing since Critical Potency has a cap as well, and having this bonus often felt like a loss in group content.

7.3.5

• Grim Focus: Fixed an issue where the override for this ability and the morph, Assassin Will, was 30 meters instead of the standard 28.