Builds/skills on hotbar that have worked for you for nightblade PvP

ozgod22_eso

Yes I know that nightblades are broken, that there's a laundry list of things to fix with it, blah blah blah. Unfortunately Patch 1.2 isn't coming anytime soon so we have to made the best of a bad situation.

So taking into account some of the broken abilities, what builds are people using that are working for them in PvP? More specifically, what do you have on your action bars?

I've been going with the following for my VR1:

Action Bar 1: DW melee nightblade attacking out of stealth

Armor: mix of medium and heavy
1 - Invigorating Drain (morphed Vamp ability)
2 - Concealed Weapon (morphed Shadow ability)
3 - Killer's Blade (morphed Assassin ability)
4 - Swallow Soul (morphed Siphon ability)
5 - Dark Cloak (morphed Shadow ability)
Ult - Devouring Swarm

My problem with the above is I don't really have any ranged attack other than Swallow Soul and I don't have a Stam dump. Is it really worth having Invigorating Drain? It was very useful in PvE levelling but is it worth in in PvP? Health + Stam replen sounds good but I would like to replace one of the above with Flying Dagger or Blood Craze or Rapid Strikes.

When fighting Vamps or WW I swap out Swallow Soul for Silver Shards.

I haven't really come up with a viable 2nd bar yet. Not sure if it should be ranged with resto staff or just a different type of melee. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Eivar

Invigorating drain doesn't seem to work in PVP, at least I've had no luck getting it to work, so I could be wrong. At the moment my build is pretty close to your own except instead of invigorating drainl I have ambush(to useful for countering bolt escape) and instead of swallow soul i have a sorta variable slot depending on what need at the time, mage light for counter stealth, manifestation of fear(cause it's hilarious) path of darkness(run!) or whatever else i might need.

Zabus

I don't use invigorating drain at all, the only reason I'm even a vamp is because of the stam + mag regen and undeath stalker. I'm also a DW NB.

My only "ranged" is ambush, which I usually use from stealth and when someone is trying to blink away. It's also my opening move. I run concealed weapon for the extra stealth speed, but shadowy disguise bugs it out. I'm actually not sure if it messes up the concealed weapon stealth or the one I get from undeath stalker.

Anyways shadowy/dark + concealed/surprise attack as a stun after the ambush, and then I spam blood craze. I finish off with impale.

Depending on how much health the player has, I might use concealed 2/3 times before bloodcraze or skip bloodcraze and just impale.

I usually avoid people with 2500+ health, and I'm always in sneak.

If you want range, I'd suggest taking a bow with you or maybe even a staff.

With bow, I suggest mark target + focus aim for the extra range distance + damage. I also take swallow soul for self healing and shadowy disguise in the same slot in case I need to get away. Oh, and I almost forgot, venom arrow. It's a must have. The range is pretty good and it stuns casters, so it's great against sorcs.

That is all

ozgod22_eso

Thanks for the feedback guys. I guess I should have morphed Assassin's Blade into Impale instead of Killer's Blade - the extra heal from Killer's Blade was useful to me while levelling. I don't really want to pay 25k gold to remorph one skill so I guess I am stuck with Killer's Blade.

Why Blood Craze ahead of Flying Dagger? Is it because of the a) self heal and b) the low stam cost?

Also I thought of opening with Ambush too but doesn't that get you out of stealth soon as you use it? Meaning your Concealed Weapon doesn't hit as hard?

Eivar

In pvp ambush is fantastic, cyrodiil is a huge area and frequently people are on horseback, you aren't going to be able to get up close and use a concealed weapon as much as you would like, imo any chance i get i open with concealed, but if i need ambush to even get combat going i use it, killer's blade is king in pve because targets always run straight at you, impale is kinda dumb outside of pve imo, but in pvp impale is fantastic, you may not get the heal but if someone tries to run from you at low health, they're gonna have a bad time :P as far as blood craze vs flying dagger, i think it's just a matter of preference, if you're going to be dispatching opponents quickly i'd use flying dagger, longer fights against people with a lot of health, putting a DoT on them will help a lot....but most of use stealthy types go for quick kills so we focus on high burst.

Knootewoot

Vr6 currently and this is my PvE/PvP setup which i use for ganking and regular.

1:

-poison arrow
-lethal arrow
-arrow spray
-mark target (the one you can see stealhed dudes)
-shadow

2:

-blinding flurry
-concealed weapon
-blood craze
-teleport strike
- shadow


sometimes i use sword and board for fun and then mainly

-puncture (morphed into something)
-conceealed weapon
-teleport strike
-deadly bash
-shield charge (morphed into something)