Nightblade: best leveling skills/passives

Bloodgharm

Hello all. I'm new to ESO (purchased it for Xbox1), but have been a huge Elder Scrolls fan since the days of Morrowind. I've loved the stealthy rogue type of playstyle and am enjoying it immensely for the brief amount of time I've spent in game. I'm running a lv 8 dark elf nightblade and am planning to focus on dw/bow with a stamina heavy stat allocation. So far I have the following skills:

Killers blade
Teleport strike
Surprise attack
Shadowy disguise
Strife
Death stroke
I also took the first passive in the assassin skill line.

So my question is this. What skills and passive are going to be invaluable to me as I'm leveling up? I'm already planning on getting ambush and reaper's mark from the assassin line and siphoning strikes from the siphoning line. I'd also like to replace a couple skills in my dw bar with some actual weapon skills. I've heard to take an aoe so something like whirling blades? Which fighter's guild skills should I take? The crafts I'm focusing on now are blacksmithing and clothier. Should I just focus on those two or throw in woodworking for when I need a well crafted bow? I intend to take most of the passives in all 3 nightblade skill lines as well as the medium armor passives and several from the dw and bow lines. I'll probably also try to get werewolf just for the Stam regen. Should I worry about spreading myself too thin or will the number of skill points I get catch up with how fast I'm spending them? I'm not planning on min/maxing, but some advice would really be appreciated. I want to be viable once I hit the VR content.

Kobaal

Get Whirlwind from dual wield. Then morph it to Steel Tornado. This is your most powerful AOE.

God-eater

Bumping as I have pretty much the same plan. ☺

Bloodgharm

Self bump. I'm also planning on taking a few legerdemain passives. Anyone know if I'll have enough skill points for all of this?

Bloodgharm

Kobaal wrote: »

Get Whirlwind from dual wield. Then morph it to Steel Tornado. This is your most powerful AOE.

So I shouldn't take whirling blades for the stamina regen?

Tankqull

nope for "regen" you have "siphoning attacks"

add flying blade from DW too
you will have momentum from 2h as it is essential preferably with rally as morph
you might want some bow skills too


in other words lvl as much skills as possible as you recieve less skill xp above v1 than below...

dreamfarer

Bloodgharm wrote: »

Self bump. I'm also planning on taking a few legerdemain passives. Anyone know if I'll have enough skill points for all of this?

Skillpoints are pretty precious and tight till you hit Veteran levels. That said you can probably spare a few for Legerdemain if you really want (and aren't crafting, which sucks up a huge amount of SP).

Skills to look for in Legerdemain are:

Light Fingers - this raises your success rate with Pick Pocketing and probably has the most return on investment. With enough points Easy Targets will go to a 100% success rate and Medium targets will go to 100% when they're distracted. Worth building up to 4 when you can.

Trafficker - 1 point in this changes your daily max for Fences to 110/110 (up from 50/50). If you plan to level Legerdemain up, it's worth it since that more than doubles the number of XPs you can get for selling things off (or laundering them) to a Fence. Any addition points only add 10/10 more transactions though which is a tremendous waste of an SP.

All of the rest are pretty "meh", even the reduced sneaking cost.

Bloodgharm

Tankqull wrote: »

nope for "regen" you have "siphoning attacks"

add flying blade from DW too
you will have momentum from 2h as it is essential preferably with rally as morph
you might want some bow skills too


in other words lvl as much skills as possible as you recieve less skill xp above v1 than below...

I do plan on taking some bow skills. My bow bar I'm planning on looking something like this:

Venom arrow/poison injection
Focused aim
siphoning attacks
Reaper's mark
magnum shot/arrow barrage

Not sure on an ultimate for this yet. Maybe flawless dawn breaker or veil of blades

Tankqull

Bloodgharm wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

nope for "regen" you have "siphoning attacks"

add flying blade from DW too
you will have momentum from 2h as it is essential preferably with rally as morph
you might want some bow skills too


in other words lvl as much skills as possible as you recieve less skill xp above v1 than below...

I do plan on taking some bow skills. My bow bar I'm planning on looking something like this:

Venom arrow/poison injection
Focused aim
siphoning attacks
Reaper's mark
magnum shot/arrow barrage

Not sure on an ultimate for this yet. Maybe flawless dawn breaker or veil of blades

i anticipate they will look totally different later on

Kobaal

Bloodgharm wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

nope for "regen" you have "siphoning attacks"

add flying blade from DW too
you will have momentum from 2h as it is essential preferably with rally as morph
you might want some bow skills too


in other words lvl as much skills as possible as you recieve less skill xp above v1 than below...

I do plan on taking some bow skills. My bow bar I'm planning on looking something like this:

Venom arrow/poison injection
Focused aim
siphoning attacks
Reaper's mark
magnum shot/arrow barrage

Not sure on an ultimate for this yet. Maybe flawless dawn breaker or veil of blades

If your taking Bow you don't need Flying Blade from DW. Focused Aim and Poison Injection are the ones you want. Magnum Shot is good as well.

For Ultimate I use Flawless Dawnbreaker when solo. Give you about 200 weapon power as a passive. In a group Veil is very good.

If your concerned about stam regen you can always take some drink to boost it.

RavenSworn

Some tips as a nightblade:

Go werewolf for stamina builds, the stamina recovery alone can help tremendously.

Shadow passives is best with tanking and stamina builds. Catalyst from the siphon tree is absolutely underrated, having an additional increase passively to your ult generation is huge. Transfer passive from the siphon tree is also crucial to stamina builds. Death strike is nice but I find it lackluster to veil of blades and esp soul tether.

Try this for kicks: shadowy disguise - lotus fan - soul tether - steel tornado - lotus fan - mass hysteria - Steel tornado.. Rinse and repeat. Not only will they not touch you, they wont even be able to react since you keep mass hysteria every 5s. Taking executioner passive from the assassin tree, using killer's blade to finish them off mean Everytime you kill, you regain health and magicka. And all these while gaining armor from mass hys and cloak, heals from soul tether and absolute aoe destruction from steel tornado.

For magicka builds however, being a vampire will help, as bat swarm is an ult like no other. You can weave in and out of fights, casting impale, sap essence and lotus fan.

One thing about NBs is that many of their abilities are utility abilities and really awesome when used on conjuction with weapon skill lines. Experiment and think out of the box. Cheers!

- RavenSworn

Bloodgharm

uniq_faznrb18_ESO wrote: »

Some tips as a nightblade:

Go werewolf for stamina builds, the stamina recovery alone can help tremendously.

Shadow passives is best with tanking and stamina builds. Catalyst from the siphon tree is absolutely underrated, having an additional increase passively to your ult generation is huge. Transfer passive from the siphon tree is also crucial to stamina builds. Death strike is nice but I find it lackluster to veil of blades and esp soul tether.

Try this for kicks: shadowy disguise - lotus fan - soul tether - steel tornado - lotus fan - mass hysteria - Steel tornado.. Rinse and repeat. Not only will they not touch you, they wont even be able to react since you keep mass hysteria every 5s. Taking executioner passive from the assassin tree, using killer's blade to finish them off mean Everytime you kill, you regain health and magicka. And all these while gaining armor from mass hys and cloak, heals from soul tether and absolute aoe destruction from steel tornado.

For magicka builds however, being a vampire will help, as bat swarm is an ult like no other. You can weave in and out of fights, casting impale, sap essence and lotus fan.

One thing about NBs is that many of their abilities are utility abilities and really awesome when used on conjuction with weapon skill lines. Experiment and think out of the box. Cheers!

- RavenSworn

The only problem I see with your rotation there is that the skills are magicka heavy. I understand that I'll need a magicka dump, but I was already planning on that being shadowy disguise for the most part in order to proc that 100% crit chance. I'm still going to stick with ambush, but that in combination with steel tornado and shadow disguise could prove deadly if the crit hit procs on all opponents hit with the aoe.

Is mass hysteria really that good? I hear it works for trash mobs, but is completely negated on bosses. I'm tempted to grab it while leveling, but don't want to waste skill points. I know I can respec, but if it proves too situational, I'll probably just skip it.

On the topic of werewolf. Is the stam regen really as amazing as people say it is? I want to try out the whole werewolf thing, but becoming one seems daunting as you have to be pretty high level to access places to be bit. I don't have a large active guild atm, so doing it solo is my best bet. Btw, if anyone reading this want to be awesome and donate a free were bite to lowly noob like me, I'd greatly appreciate it. :P

Tankqull

mass hysteria is primarily a pvp skill, and there it is a must have.

my pvp NB looks like ->this

for solo pve as the difficulty has been erased long time ago it doesent matter what you are using aslong as you have 1 option to regain HP (killerblade e.g.) and a attack ability that is rapidly reusable. all other slots can and should be used to lvl skills.

RavenSworn

Mass hysteria works on mobs, gives a snare when effect ends, buffs your armor due to it being in the shadow tree and will definitely interrupt any casters. It is also a need for Nightblades for PvP since currently it cannot be blocked.

That magicka dump is useful since 1) by having killer's blade (which uses stamina) allows you to regain magicka with each kill. 2) Steel tornado is a nice stamina dump but it is only an aoe stamina dump with Increased radius. 3) lotus fan allows for magicka gap closing, and snares which in turn when feared, does not allow mobs to run far. This means when you are steel tornado-ing, they wont run out of your radius and pull more mobs on you.

This is an aoe bar which means on single target, the build would and should be diffferent. You like sneaky play yes? Shadowy disguise - surprise attack - reaper's mark - killer's blade. Use the last slot for whatever buffs you need. More stamina regen? Relentless resolve. More weapon damage? Sap essence. More defense? Double take. Fighting undead or daedra? Evil hunter. Cloaking crit with surprise attack deals more damage than on bosses than rapid strikes. Execute? Spam killer's blade.

- RavenSworn

Bloodgharm

uniq_faznrb18_ESO wrote: »

This is an aoe bar which means on single target, the build would and should be diffferent. You like sneaky play yes? Shadowy disguise - surprise attack - reaper's mark - killer's blade. Use the last slot for whatever buffs you need. More stamina regen? Relentless resolve. More weapon damage? Sap essence. More defense? Double take. Fighting undead or daedra? Evil hunter. Cloaking crit with surprise attack deals more damage than on bosses than rapid strikes. Execute? Spam killer's blade.

- RavenSworn

This was the type of rotation that I've been looking for. I've already got 3 of the 4 you've mentioned so it'll come down to that last slot that I can interchange depending on what I'm fighting. I can always switch to an aoe quick bar for when I'm questing. It all comes down to what bow skills I want as well as the bevy of passives I'll need to unlock once I start getting more skill points.

Junkogen

If you're more in to soloing in this game, switch the dual wield to two-handed weapon and use brawler, surprise attack, executioner, and rally, and soul tether is just too awesome. The damage shield and aoe from brawler are absolutely priceless. Rally gives you a HoT that keeps you alive and killing.

If your heart is set on dual wield, perhaps use the mirage morph of blur for the armor boost. However, I like double take, though, for use with the bow.

As far as fighter's guild skills, silver shards and evil hunter are pretty great. I love silver shards because it makes me feel like a Daedra-hunting Clint Eastwood gunning evil down one crossbow bolt at a time.

Bloodgharm

Junkogen wrote: »

If you're more in to soloing in this game, switch the dual wield to two-handed weapon and use brawler, surprise attack, executioner, and rally, and soul tether is just too awesome. The damage shield and aoe from brawler are absolutely priceless. Rally gives you a HoT that keeps you alive and killing.

If your heart is set on dual wield, perhaps use the mirage morph of blur for the armor boost. However, I like double take, though, for use with the bow.

As far as fighter's guild skills, silver shards and evil hunter are pretty great. I love silver shards because it makes me feel like a Daedra-hunting Clint Eastwood gunning evil down one crossbow bolt at a time.

I am looking to solo quite a bit. I just don't know if 2h is really my style though. I like my attacks to be quick and hit for insane amounts of damage (e.g. crits). While I don't know about giving up my assassin and shadow skills for more weapon skills, I am planning on ranking up 2h if only for the rally skill. That HoT just looks too good to pass up. I definitely wouldn't replace killer's blade with execute as KB returns health and is just an awesome execute. If I were to build a 2h bar I'd go with something like this:

Shadowy disguise
Rally
Surprise attack
Killer's blade
Brawler/ambush

Another big problem with 2h is the lack of good aoe skills.