Feeling seriously underpowered

GrimMauKin

I've been enjoying ESO (bugs aside) and have been playing solo with a dual wield Nightblade focusing on stealth attacks and have been progressing well. I've been able to take out higher level opponents, even trolls and giants, fairly quickly but do tend to come unstuck with groups of more than 3 MOBS (less if they're particularly big and mean). I've tended to go with a stealth attack following by a flurry of dual wield skills, dropping back into invisibility occasionally to gain other bonuses.

However, I recently tagged onto a group of players doing the Lost Village public dungeon + in Coldharbour (groups of around 6+ MOBS) and watched one chap, a level lower than myself, go in against these single handed and hardy break a sweat. The first attack seemed to be a bow scatter/incendiary shot (which pretty much halved the MOBs' health) followed by him charging in and setting off some sort of flame burst which pretty much finished them all off; he was in plate armour with a big sword and anything left standing went down pretty much straight away (and there were lots of bats too on occasion so I suspect he might have been a vampire as well)! At best I could have taken down 2 or 3 MOBS before becoming mincemeat.

I don't seem to have many mass effect skills available (ultimates are okay but can't be used continually) and I haven't focussed on the bow as once an attack (mass effect or otherwise) is launched you loose your stealth bonus. I'm currently level 48, how long would it take to bring bow skills up to a usable level?

Thunderchief

I know how you feel. Even as a sorcerer I some times see lower level people with better builds doing things I can't do.

Enkil

It levels very fast for the initial levels. You don't have to actually use a bow to level it though. Just put a bow skill on your bar and keep using DW.. It will level the lower levels very fast. Once you get it to a decent level and un lock some skills, get a bow with the training trait on it to help with leveling the skill... Make sure you have your bow equipped when u turn in quests.

Locke_ESO

The biggest thing is to get out of the thought process of being exclusively "a guy in medium armour that dual wields". You need to have a mix of abilities if you want to kill big packs mobs at once (or medium sized groups in veteran ranks) and checking out the abilities that you may not have used before can be a big help when doing this. I am no expert on NB so I am not sure what you have specifically for helping with DW melee builds but if you are going to be melee based then you want some form of damage mitigation, some crowd control spell and probably some healing ability.

What the guy you are describing was doing was using a combination of AoE abilities to hit multiple targets in order to charge his ultimate (Vampire devouring swarm by the sounds of it) which is a pretty solid strategy. He also probably used Volcanic rune for the AoE knockdown and stun and the Fighter's Guild passive abilities that gives both extra damage and extra ultimate points for killing daedric enemies (making the next pack that much easier). This could quite easily work for you if you wanted to go Vampire and quite frankly at least for leveling it's not a bad idea given that the life drain and AoE life drain ultimate abilities are extremely good for dealing generic monsters.