NB Planing build, need help

Hamztein

Hello!
I am (will be next week) a returning player from almost 1 year ago. And i need your kind help to build an archer/syphon NB with resto as second spec, since i forgot some details about the mechanics and also a lot changed since i quit.

1. do races really have some impact on later game? I dont want to be wood elf archer... i want breton, or even argonian... but they have nothing to do about archery. Breton is ok since i plan to go 3 class skills. Whats your opinion?
2. class skills use magicka and weapon skills use stamina, right? any exception?
3. bow (snipe ie) have sneak attack? i remember skyrim with 3x dmg on sneaking. Any passive to improve sneak attack?
4. class skills have sneak attack bonus?
5. Only 5 skills are possible to slot right? i was planing to go poison, snipe, strife, cripple and the vanish skill. Any suggestion?
6. can i have restoration staff as second weapon and heal dungeons without major impact on both specs? i plan to solo/pvp as archer and dungeon and grouping as healer. Is it possible to be good at both swapping only the gear?

Any inputs are welcome...
Thanks!

dreamfarer

Since 1.6 and the removal of soft caps for your stats, the optimal builds in the game have shifted towards either Stamina or Magicka based, but not both at the same time.

For most PvE play while leveling though, you're free to build however you like. For group dungeons and end game play though you'll probably want to specialize, or you'll wind up under-performing so much that you hurt your team's chance of finishing.

The good news is, Archer/Syphon NB can work just fine. Usually if you focus on one stat (like Stamina for an Archer), you then use the other stat for your buffs or other less frequently cast abilities (like Magicka for Funnel Health and Sap Essence in this case).

Resto staff on the back bar can even work ok, for a quick hit of Health to help get you through a fight.

The bad news is, if you go with a Stamina-build, you won't be much of a group healer at all. As a Nightblade you've got Funnel Health and the Resto Staff abilities as your heals, and for those to work well you need a lot of Magicka so that they heal for as much as possible, and so that you can cast them frequently.

You can make it work out with 2 separate sets of gear, one for +Stamina and one for +Magicka. That tends to work fine since if you're healing a dungeon, you should not be wasting time on your Bow bar trying to plink damage into the mobs. People die quick in hard fights and your job is to respond fast and prevent that from happening. When you're off soloing though, or doing regular PvE content, feel free to bust out the bow and go to town. For normal quests, people should be able to handle staying alive on their own if you happen to be in a part, and if you're solo it's often better just to kill things before they kill you.

Answers to your questions:
1.) Racial passives do have a noticeable impact, but you can play against type and be successful. If you're the type who needs to have a maximally optimized build though, consider taking a race that supports the type of play you intend to do.

2.) Class skills generally start out as magicka powered, but there are several that have morphs available which switch them over to using Stamina and being based off Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit instead.

3.) Bow doesn't have a "sneak attack" per se, but all attacks from "Hide" (the crouching down state) deal extra damage. As a note though, melee attacks from hide (including the Stamina morph of some of the Nightblade powers) hit for something like "Double Bonus Crit Damage". The difference between the Surprise Attack and Concealed Weapon morphs is really night and day in that regards.

4.) As mentioned above, all things get "sneak attack" damage, but some class skills get a LOT more than others.

5.) Technically you can have 12 skills slotted. 5 regular + 1 ultimate on Bar 1 and 5 regular + 1 ultimate on Bar 2. Plan on using both bars since weapon swapping is nearly instantaneous. As for suggestions, I'd say don't plan on sticking with 1 set of skills for all occasions. Early on that's fine, but later, when you've got more skills, you can adapt what you're working to fit specific fights or even styles of play better. In general too, pay attention to the passives, they can be build defining in some cases. Oh, and don't forget about your ultimates, use them often, they're not just for the end boss of a dungeon.

6.) As I mentioned above, I think it can work out to be both a PvE DPS and a Healer, but you do need essentially 2 entirely different sets of gear, and a LOT of skill points to make it work well. I suggest the Wykkyd's Outfitter add-on to help manage the gear and skill swaps too.

Another note: Check Youtube for Deltia's Gaming videos, he's got some good one on making builds and play in general. Also deltiasgaming.com has links to them.

Hamztein

dreamfarer wrote: »

Since 1.6 and the removal of soft caps for your stats, the optimal builds in the game have shifted towards either Stamina or Magicka based, but not both at the same time.

For most PvE play while leveling though, you're free to build however you like. For group dungeons and end game play though you'll probably want to specialize, or you'll wind up under-performing so much that you hurt your team's chance of finishing.

The good news is, Archer/Syphon NB can work just fine. Usually if you focus on one stat (like Stamina for an Archer), you then use the other stat for your buffs or other less frequently cast abilities (like Magicka for Funnel Health and Sap Essence in this case).

Resto staff on the back bar can even work ok, for a quick hit of Health to help get you through a fight.

The bad news is, if you go with a Stamina-build, you won't be much of a group healer at all. As a Nightblade you've got Funnel Health and the Resto Staff abilities as your heals, and for those to work well you need a lot of Magicka so that they heal for as much as possible, and so that you can cast them frequently.

You can make it work out with 2 separate sets of gear, one for +Stamina and one for +Magicka. That tends to work fine since if you're healing a dungeon, you should not be wasting time on your Bow bar trying to plink damage into the mobs. People die quick in hard fights and your job is to respond fast and prevent that from happening. When you're off soloing though, or doing regular PvE content, feel free to bust out the bow and go to town. For normal quests, people should be able to handle staying alive on their own if you happen to be in a part, and if you're solo it's often better just to kill things before they kill you.

Answers to your questions:
1.) Racial passives do have a noticeable impact, but you can play against type and be successful. If you're the type who needs to have a maximally optimized build though, consider taking a race that supports the type of play you intend to do.

2.) Class skills generally start out as magicka powered, but there are several that have morphs available which switch them over to using Stamina and being based off Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit instead.

3.) Bow doesn't have a "sneak attack" per se, but all attacks from "Hide" (the crouching down state) deal extra damage. As a note though, melee attacks from hide (including the Stamina morph of some of the Nightblade powers) hit for something like "Double Bonus Crit Damage". The difference between the Surprise Attack and Concealed Weapon morphs is really night and day in that regards.

4.) As mentioned above, all things get "sneak attack" damage, but some class skills get a LOT more than others.

5.) Technically you can have 12 skills slotted. 5 regular + 1 ultimate on Bar 1 and 5 regular + 1 ultimate on Bar 2. Plan on using both bars since weapon swapping is nearly instantaneous. As for suggestions, I'd say don't plan on sticking with 1 set of skills for all occasions. Early on that's fine, but later, when you've got more skills, you can adapt what you're working to fit specific fights or even styles of play better. In general too, pay attention to the passives, they can be build defining in some cases. Oh, and don't forget about your ultimates, use them often, they're not just for the end boss of a dungeon.

6.) As I mentioned above, I think it can work out to be both a PvE DPS and a Healer, but you do need essentially 2 entirely different sets of gear, and a LOT of skill points to make it work well. I suggest the Wykkyd's Outfitter add-on to help manage the gear and skill swaps too.

Another note: Check Youtube for Deltia's Gaming videos, he's got some good one on making builds and play in general. Also deltiasgaming.com has links to them.

Thanks a lot for your help!

I have some questions regarding your answer:

1. You say that i CAN be a successful archer AND healer IF i have 2 sets of clothing? Or i do need 2 different characters?

2. Having 12 sloted skills makes my life easier... but if i decide to be pure archer, can i set the same bow to both specs? (i will play in the PS4)

3. The main reason o want to go healer is the DPS waiting time on grouping... at least 1 year ago, dps wait were 1 hour and healer 1 minute... how this is behaving lately?

4. what you mean about the surprise attck and concealed weapon? surprise does better dmg because the weapon dmg scaling?

5. Any suggestion about a very good skill to go with archer? Ive heard about entropy from mages...

Thanks!

dreamfarer

Hamztein wrote: »

Thanks a lot for your help!

I have some questions regarding your answer:

1. You say that i CAN be a successful archer AND healer IF i have 2 sets of clothing? Or i do need 2 different characters?

Just 2 different sets of clothing and weapons. Basically you'll have one set for "Bow DPS" which should probably be Medium armor with Set Bonuses like Night's Silence, Ashen Grip or Hunding's Rage. Then you'll have another set for "Healing" which should probably be Light armor with Set Bonuses like Seducer's, or Magnus.

You may even want additional variations for "Added Health", like a chest and leg piece in Heavy armor with a set like Hist Bark.

Then you take that gear and enchant it with either +Stamina (for the Medium), +Magicka (for the Light) or +Health (for the Heavy).

Hamztein wrote: »

3. Having 12 sloted skills makes my life easier... but if i decide to be pure archer, can i set the same bow to both specs? (i will play in the PS4)

Absolutely. When I'm in "Healer mode" for example, I usually play with both bars set to Resto Staff (which requires having 2 resto staves to work with, but that's not hard to get). Having 2 Bows will be fine, all it means is that you'll be limited to Bow skills and Class/Guild/World skills when you're setup like that. Given how many great Nightblade skills there are, not to mention from the other skill lines, it's not hard at all to fill a bar with good skills.

Hamztein wrote: »

3. The main reason o want to go healer is the DPS waiting time on grouping... at least 1 year ago, dps wait were 1 hour and healer 1 minute... how this is behaving lately?

I rarely PUG dungeons, since 3 RL friends play ESO with me, but I've yet to see an MMO where Healers wait longer than DPS. I think there's more dungeon running in general now thanks to the Daily Pledges though so that may help overall.

Hamztein wrote: »

4. what you mean about the surprise attck and concealed weapon? surprise does better dmg because the weapon dmg scaling?

Technically Surprise Attack and Concealed Weapon do roughly the same damage - if they're used as a regular attack. If you sneak up on someone and start with an attack out of Hide though Surprise Attack (the Stamina based morph from Veiled Strike) will do substantially more damage than Concealed Weapon or Veiled Strike (which are both Magicka based).

Basically, weapon-based melee attacks out of Hide get a MUCH bigger critical damage bonus than any other "sneak attack". This is true for Surprise Attack, and for regular Light attacks and Heavy Attacks.

Sadly, for Bows, the Light and Heavy attacks are weapon-based but they're not melee, so they don't get the extra bonus damage for attacking from Hide, they just hit for regular critical damage + a special perk that only Bows get where a Heavy attack from Hide will knockdown the target for a couple of seconds.

Hamztein wrote: »

5. Any suggestion about a very good skill to go with archer? Ive heard about entropy from mages...

If you want to be a Healer, then definitely work on Mage's Light and get the Inner Light morph. That changes from reducing your magicka to increasing it (basically making it a completely different skill).

For an Archer? You want to get Drain Power (and then Sap Essense) which will grant you the "Major Brutality" buff for 20% extra Weapon Damage (Sap Essence adds in Major Sorcery which grants 20% Spell Damage).

You'll also want Venom Arrow (for interrupting casters at range, incredibly useful ability) and Arrow Spray -> Bombard for AoE. My Bosmer Nightblade has little problem with most multi-mob spawns because Arrow Spray just eats them alive.

Also, you may want to look into becoming a Werewolf. At the moment, it's all upside in the sense that you get a +15% boost to Stamina Regeneration just for having Lycanthropy and there's no downside at all while you're not transformed. If actually playing as a Werewolf is appealing at all, it can be kind of fun to use the Werewolf ultimate, shapechange and then Devour everything in a dungeon. With the transformation time limit, you're faced with a very different sort of gameplay then the careful sneaking around you do as a Nightblade usually. It's more "I need to rip your face off right NOW and then eat your guts to buy more transform time, so I can run for 2 seconds and then rip the next guys head off and repeat the process" or "everybody get in mah belly right now!"

Hamztein

very nice, thank you very much... if i am having so much difficulty choosing 5 skills, i wonder how will be when thieves and dark brotherhood comes out.

Johngo0036

Hi,
You need to decide weather you are going Stamina or Magicka,

If you are going Bow then Stamina is the answer,
You will find it difficult to be healer/bow user due to the way skills for bow need stamina and healing generally needs magicka,

It may not be as simple as just changing clothes,
Again there are skills that use magicka and those that use stamina,

Remember bows scale of weapon damage and weapon power,
healing will scale off spell damage and spell power.

you will need to choose skills that increase which ever is important to your build

Eg Entropy increases spell damage, therefore of no use to a bow user.