The Night Blade - Stamina? Magicka? Heavy? Medium? Light?

Mricci1988 · October 2014

GOOD MORNING MY GAMING THEORISTS, FLAMERS AND ALL OTHERS INBETWEEN!

Posing this question to you all for guidance as I am a low humble level 20 nightblade getting confused on how to build my Nightblade!

Attributes: 0/19/0 (I hear at veteran you need to have 49 into health so why not make myself more tanky already)

Skills:
- Shadowy Disguise (For the crit)
- Concealed Weapon (Speed bonus)
- Twisting Path (Path of Darkness morph) for the AoE damage and Dot damage
- Rapid Strike (Flurry morph) for the single target bosses and stamina dump

I cannot decide between Killer's Blade for the execute or shrouded dagger (Hidden dagger morph) for the AOE Damage....

Now...for armor (God help me)

I prefer heavy armor (in your face Tank-Blade DPS) but I cannot ignore some of the armor passive bonuses (they are just really really good).

So I am debating doing 2 or 3 heavy (Chest and shoulders for now for the look and armor).

and 4 or 5 pieces light or medium - I cannot decide!

I use a lot of class skills that are magicka based (so light armor magicka recovery is nice) but I hear that concealed weapon and killer blade works off weapon crit...so...does that mean I need to use medium armor? I don't really sneak a lot I use cloak...so is that not a bit different from the bonuses in medium armor passives?

Gear Enchants:
Magicka or Stamina? I have no idea....magicka for cloak, twisting path and concealed weapon spam?

Stamina for rapid strike spam or shrouded dagger? also good for blocking mob attacks and dodging and cc breaks?

Anyone mind helping me out

Mricci1988 · October 2014

Bump please!

Tamanous · October 2014

Play your NB based on the skill set you want. Future changes are bringing stamina morph options to some class skills so if you use a stamina weapon as primary then build for stamina which then leads to your choice of armor.

Your layout will also determine if you want 5+2 in different sets depending on the resource demand.

Do not worry about stats at low level. Just put them into your offensive stats to bump them as close to overcharge as possible. You likely won't reach caps unless using crafted gear with set bonuses anyway. What allows all stats in health later is the use of far superior gear than you level with. Adjust stats later or each time you craft a new set to wear so you aren't wasting points. Stat resets are cheap.

Your build not will be vastly different once resource balancing hits the game and the champion system arrives with it's removal of soft caps. Everyone will be adjusting builds like mad but one thing seems apparent: hybrid builds appear to be going the way of the Dodo. Every mmo seems to go this way. Developers simply cannot balance them.

The future of the NB is likely full stamina or full magicka for offense as well as with all classes.

Mricci1988 · October 2014

Tamanous wrote: »

Play your NB based on the skill set you want. Future changes are bringing stamina morph options to some class skills so if you use a stamina weapon as primary then build for stamina which then leads to your choice of armor.

Your layout will also determine if you want 5+2 in different sets depending on the resource demand.

Do not worry about stats at low level. Just put them into your offensive stats to bump them as close to overcharge as possible. You likely won't reach caps unless using crafted gear with set bonuses anyway. What allows all stats in health later is the use of far superior gear than you level with. Adjust stats later or each time you craft a new set to wear so you aren't wasting points. Stat resets are cheap.

Your build not will be vastly different once resource balancing hits the game and the champion system arrives with it's removal of soft caps. Everyone will be adjusting builds like mad but one thing seems apparent: hybrid builds appear to be going the way of the Dodo. Every mmo seems to go this way. Developers simply cannot balance them.

The future of the NB is likely full stamina or full magicka for offense as well as with all classes.

That's really inspiring to say and you are right...I am thinking WAY to short term....

Im going to play my Tank DPS Night Blade melee....how I want.

You are 100% right...at the end of the day changes will come making classes different from today.

Cody · October 2014

as of now, heavy armor is almost completely useless, and the best way to go is block and spam with a staff/shield, while in Light armor.

ZOS is changing things in the future, I advise you wait for a bit before making a permanent NB character,

Still_Mind · October 2014

Cody wrote: »

as of now, heavy armor is almost completely useless, and the best way to go is block and spam with a staff/shield, while in Light armor.

ZOS is changing things in the future, I advise you wait for a bit before making a permanent NB character,

Holding block and spamming skills leaves you dry pretty quick. That's a "foo strategy" (first-order optimal strategy), and it doesn't really go well beyond basic levels of play.

Stam builds are a little behind, yes, but there's real improvement. Massive stam cuts from med armour and weapon style passives really untie your hands, compared to prebuff. And there seems to be more changes to come.

GrimMauKin · October 2014

I put equal attribute points on Magicka, Health and Stamina and this works well enough for me. A morph respect. is pretty affordable too so it's perfectly possible to try out different morphs and see what works best for you.

guybrushtb16_ESO · October 2014

As a rule of thumb, decide between either magicka or stamina for your primary resource and stick with it. This is helpful, because all skills scale their damage (or healing respectively) with the resource they use. For your final endgame build, is also beneficial to decide between either spellpower or weapon power and melee crit and spell crit depending on the skills you use but that doesn't really come into play while levelling because you won't have much of either.

The advice about attribute points you got is slightly outdated. A few patches ago, health and magicka gains from equipment and levelup were not divided equally so you always wanted to go full health from level ups, but this is no longer the case. In fact, it's generally considered better now to go full magicka now, since more damage means faster killing, and survival is not that much of an issue usually.

For starters, I'd recommend a magicka based build with funnel health, concealed weapon, impale and maybe regeneration. And whatever you do, make sure to use sould harvest on one bar and veil of blades on the other.

Still_Mind · October 2014

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

As a rule of thumb, decide between either magicka or stamina for your primary resource and stick with it. This is helpful, because all skills scale their damage (or healing respectively) with the resource they use. For your final endgame build, is also beneficial to decide between either spellpower or weapon power and melee crit and spell crit depending on the skills you use but that doesn't really come into play while levelling because you won't have much of either.

The advice about attribute points you got is slightly outdated. A few patches ago, health and magicka gains from equipment and levelup were not divided equally so you always wanted to go full health from level ups, but this is no longer the case. In fact, it's generally considered better now to go full magicka now, since more damage means faster killing, and survival is not that much of an issue usually.

For starters, I'd recommend a magicka based build with funnel health, concealed weapon, impale and maybe regeneration. And whatever you do, make sure to use sould harvest on one bar and veil of blades on the other.

It's not about equipment. It's about food.

Shader_Shibes · October 2014

I normally switch between DW and Bow for my nb. Using bow atm so i respec'd my atts to 19 health and 30 stam, this gets me overcharged slightly on stam when using enriched honey brittle, and with overcharged wep power i can do massive burst damage. Using all medium with hundings and ashen grip set. If i get bored with bow i respec atts again to max out magicka using fort sweetrolls, then use my other armour sets, stygian and some other i forget, 5 medium and 2 light. I use the typical bow/dw abilities also. Respec of atts only costs like 1k, so nothing really and it means i can play 2 styles.