Need some help understanding Magika NB

Eliteseraph

So I leveled from 1-50 using a stamina build. Mainly 2H, with a bow for backup. That worked pretty damn well, I have to say. But I started in on veteran levels and figured I'd respec and try out light armor and staves with a magika based build.

What's going on with the damage using staves and magika. I hardly even scratch enemy hitpoints, despite respeccing out of stamina and into magika. Is it something to do with veteran NPCs? Are the calculations screwed up somehow? How do you people who use magika survive?

Bati

I was in a similar situation as you when I swapped to magicka build around VR2 - it felt like the dps dropped off the cliff.

I think the main reason for it is the lack of any real ranged hard hitting ability on the NB, you got Funnel Health which should be a staple skill on a magicka build but it doesn't really hit that hard. You could use Concealed Weapon comboed with Shadowy Disguise for some burst, the problem is that you also want to fit Inner Light and Entropy on your action bars somewhow. I'm thinking of switching back to magicka because I had a really fun time with it and it made soloing heroic quests rather easy because of all the selfhealing but I'd really miss the burst potential of the stamina build I'm currently using.

Ideally you'll want to split your bars into single target and aoe.

For single target I'd go with Inner Light, Structured Entropy (or Degeneration), Funnel Health, Impale and Crippling Grasp. Alternatively you could drop two of these skills to fit in Shadow cloak and concealed weapon. For regular questing I think doing this and dropping Crippling Grasp and Entropy wouldn't be such a bad idea.

For aoe I'd probably pick the following skills:

Siphoning Attacks, Sap Essence, Refreshing path (or the other morph), Inner Light and something else to your liking, maybe elemental ring. You could also move impale to the AOE bar and switch it with something else on your ST one.

Mind you, this is just for questing, in dungeons and endgame you'd probably want to run a different setup.

Eliteseraph

I think I might just stick with 2H stamina....except everyone says you have to have a ranged option for group content. Honestly, if leveling up an alt wasn't such a mind-numbing grindfest, I'd switch to DK or Templar. Bah....stupid champ/vet level system.

RoyJade

I see some very good magicka templar. They are even weaker than sorcerer, but the good thing it they are good healer support at the same time. My guildmate have a roughly 10k dps (when I have 13k as a sorcerer) and a 5-6k hps for each group member. Now, our healer heal nothing in pack mobs, he's doing some dps with us.

The main problem with CP system is all NB magicka skill are "magic", but the "magic" star is Thaumaturge in the ritual, where the bonuses are useless for a magicka character.

Evandus

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/1-6-pve-correct-magicka-nightblade-dps-amstelx/

helediron

Don't expect top DPS from NB mage. After 1.6 you can't chaincast Veil and the top mage skills Sap and Funnel got nerfed too. I am doing mostly crafting on my main and can't much respec it because crafting takes half of skillpoints. It is still a versatile build and very resilient. My build is very close to the one @Evandus linked. But that DPS comes only with costly and maxed gear, in perfect conditions, with full PvP buffs, enough CP and with group buffs. I am leveling up a stamina NB to become a new main. With 2H it's a cakewalk. It only needs new Hunding's Rage/Ashen Grip crafted set at every few levels. Now at VR7 i keep grinding all the areas between VR6 to VR10 and everything drops dead.

You don't need to use yet ranged, during leveling the 2H is sufficient nearly everywhere. Only certain bosses like engine guardian and Vila in fungal require ranged. We always stop for a small gear shuffle before them. Use your progression to level up skills of other weapons. Whatever you are leveling up, keep it behind weapon swap and swap to it when returning quests. This way when toiling through the veteran ranks you get the skills for free. If you don't work on them now, you can expect grinding them later.

Eliteseraph

Does anyone else see a problem with a build that requires PVP buffs and 'perfect conditions' to work? That seems more and more like there's a flaw with the class to me.

But I do appreciate the info. My understanding makes me lean more and more to just skip Magika alltogether and stick with 2H, and use a bow if it turns out to be needed.

Celless

Hi OP,

You won't need raid conditions or PvP buffs to push the 10k DPS mark. But you may also not be regularly seeing the 15k DPS outside of that environment, optimal gear, and possibly race combo.

I've found that my foray into magicka Nightblade is requiring tighter gameplay and there's still room for me to improve in terms of gear, execution, and based on mechanics. I'm not satisfied with my performance, but gonna dump this off below.

Sharpened Restoration Staff (not certain about this in hindsight)
Apprentice mundus
7 Light Armor (set bonuses and quality may result in varied DPS mileage, but I've been prioritizing spell damage > max magicka > spell critical)
(If VR10+) Push 18k without PvP buffs
Champion points - on the fence - I like Thaumaturge for consistency, but liked the spell crit potential of Elfborn

Soloing or burst fights in small parties (60 continuous seconds or less):
Funnel Health, Impale, Merciless Resolve, Structured Entropy, Inner Light, Soul Harvest (in hindsight, a Meteor morph to keep distance)

Leaning on the tank for Pierce Armor debuff. Not leaning on Combat Prayer in this instance as I suspect the way I play could change if I did.
1) Pre-cast Merciless Resolve.
2) Weapon attack weaving with Structured Entropy for Major Sorcery buff
3) Weapon attack weaving with Funnel Health while enemy is above 25%, moving in slowly
4) Weapon attack weave Soul Harvest on the sixth light attack
5) Weapon attack weave Structured Entropy on the seventh light attack for empower and refreshing Major Sorcery
6) Fire off the empowered Assassin's Will with the Soul Harvest debuff still on the enemy and hope it crits
7) Weapon attack weave with Funnel Health until Merciless Resolve falls off
8) Refresh Merciless Resolve when it falls off or ignore if there are estimated less than seven light attacks remaining in the fight
9) Try to ensure magicka reserve is high enough to complete execute phase without a heavy attack - this may involve heavy attacks before that phase and potion quaffing
10) Weapon attack weave with Impale at 25%
11) Weapon attack weave Soul Harvest over Impale
12) If magicka looks like it will deplete before final Impale AND Assassin's Will is available, use Assassin's Will
13) When desperately low on magicka, Heavy Attack to repeat from step 10 to 11, but this should be less an issue if the other DDs are bursting

There's room for synergy in small parties and may even afford the healer to contribute toward DPS. And if xyr doesn't want to, beseech them for Siphon Spirit on the boss target.

Mashille

Check Out Sypher On Youtube. He has some good Magicka NB builds.

Eliteseraph

Weapon Attack Weave.....I'm assuming you're talking about animation cancelling?

Nestor

Eliteseraph wrote: »

Weapon Attack Weave.....I'm assuming you're talking about animation cancelling?

Cancel or not for this. Weaving just means using one attack then another rather than spamming the same skill over and over again. Although I think most people mean using a weapon attack then a skill attack when they talk about Weaving more so than using one skill then another skill. Canceling will give you a higher DPS for sure while weaving, but I basically use a heavy attack in between each skill attack. Sometimes I let the staff wind up a bit to get a Heavy when doing this, then cancel the animation, but I am probably not giving it enough time to build a heavy attack each time. Most of the time I give it enough time to make sure it's heavy.

I also have some good regen rates with my Syrbane or Warlock buffed with Gold Regen enchantments so that helps too.

kgold0

I was stamina medium 7/7 dual wield and bow, redguard nightblade until vr1 then changed to magicka heavy 7/7 1hs and resto staff. My damage dropped drastically. While I was able to heal myself well in pve, I melted like butter in pvp in the veteran cyrodiil.

I gave up and went stamina medium 7/7 2hs and bow and crafted green night's silence to stealth around and nuke from afar. It is way way better. My 2h light attacks hit for 800 ish at vr2 whereas my 1h light attacks were hitting for 500. My damage with the bow and 2hs abilities are drastically better. Plus I can sprint for more than 20 seconds and sneak for a much longer time which makes me happy.

Once I get momentum and rally I will be a happy camper. The change back to stamina was so refreshing that I celebrated by buying a senche leopard and a house cat.

Celless

My terminology may be a bit different/off. For this, I do mean interrupting the staff attack with an ability. It should roughly end up as two attacks in quick succession.

For soul harvest, it seems interrupting the animation with bash seems slightly more responsive than block.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

Bati wrote: »

I think the main reason for it is the lack of any real ranged hard hitting ability on the NB, you got Funnel Health which should be a staple skill on a magicka build but it doesn't really hit that hard.

I'm leveling a Magicka melee build (currently 36) around Impale, Concealed Weapon, Teleport Strike (unmorphed), and Dark Cloak, with Soul Tether as my ultimate. For the longest time I used Swallow Soul in my 5th spot, but decided to give Cripple (Crippling Grasp) a try.

I was floored with how hard it seems to be hitting when combined with the rest of my bar. I really feel like I'm just tearing targets down. Not sure how it'll pan out at max level, but right now my Crippling Grasp seems to be hitting like a truck, even though it's a CC/DoT.

On a related note, how effective is Death Stroke (or its morphs) in a single-target burst build? I tried it out but don't really like it, even though I LOVE the animation. Is it worth taking, and - if so - what's the proper way to be using it?

Thanks!

Celless

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Bati wrote: »

I think the main reason for it is the lack of any real ranged hard hitting ability on the NB, you got Funnel Health which should be a staple skill on a magicka build but it doesn't really hit that hard.

I'm leveling a Magicka melee build (currently 36) around Impale, Concealed Weapon, Teleport Strike (unmorphed), and Dark Cloak, with Soul Tether as my ultimate. For the longest time I used Swallow Soul in my 5th spot, but decided to give Cripple (Crippling Grasp) a try.

I was floored with how hard it seems to be hitting when combined with the rest of my bar. I really feel like I'm just tearing targets down. Not sure how it'll pan out at max level, but right now my Crippling Grasp seems to be hitting like a truck, even though it's a CC/DoT.

On a related note, how effective is Death Stroke (or its morphs) in a single-target burst build? I tried it out but don't really like it, even though I LOVE the animation. Is it worth taking, and - if so - what's the proper way to be using it?

Thanks!

I would say when soloing, Soul Tether or Consuming Darkness morphed to Veil Blades are pretty nice.

Death Stroke morph to Soul Harvest can be nice for building ultimate in weak group mob situations. Then switching to your other bar to use your real ultimate.

RavenSworn

https://youtu.be/xkzVRmyHzN8

Check out his build. Even the way he plays a magicka nb is slightly different from playing a magicka templar. Very informative player and definitely a good foundation for your magicka nb.

kylerjalen

I haven't tried my NB in PVP yet as I'm still a V1 character but I can honestly say that with my hotbar I'm having fun with anything PvE.

My loadout looks like this:
Teleport Strike (unmorphed)
Manifestation of Terror
Surprise Attack
Reapers Mark
Dark Cloak

What works for me: Reapers Mark -> Teleport Strike -> Manifestation of Terror (for the usual mobs, there's rarely a sole enemy. if there really is just one, I always like to TS after them hehe) -> Surprise Attack (because they're stunned) -> Dark Cloak if needed.
Rinse and repeat.

I rarely do any weapon attacks to be honest. Its just more fun being all ninja-ey.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

Celless wrote: »

I would say when soloing, Soul Tether or Consuming Darkness morphed to Veil Blades are pretty nice.

Death Stroke morph to Soul Harvest can be nice for building ultimate in weak group mob situations. Then switching to your other bar to use your real ultimate.

Yeah, I'm thinking that Soul Tether is just too good to forego.