I have a stamina sorc wood elf and I use the 2 hander for the cleave bubble and momentum heal. You could probably do the same thing with your NB. Yes it would mean having to level up another weapon but would probably be worth it for solo and pvp. You can always just switch back to duel weld for group pve.

Shadow Barrier Passive: Provides major spell and armor resistance buffs for 4 sec when any shadow ability is cast. Duration is increased for each piece of heavy armor!

This passive is the best way for a NB to keep mitigation buffs up as it is passive. Otherwise, you can always use immobile!

If it is damage shields you want, you either use resto for the ward skill or you use brawler for a shield...brawler shield is only good for fighting a large number of mobs. Trying to depend on its shield against bosses or solo PVP players is pointless!

You can also use bone shield as it will provide the user a stam based shield in 1.6!

Thanks everyone for the responses, @Cody, what is this siphoning shield you mentioned? Thank you!

You said mitigation right, so why not use Immovable, that gives you both a ton of spell resistance as well as armor.

at lvl 50 u should have leveled all 3 armors, and be able to use immovable like Cody suggest, if you like me using light armor, just dont morph it when possible.

Cody wrote: »

Surfinginhawaii wrote: »

Thanks everyone for the responses, @Cody, what is this siphoning shield you mentioned? Thank you!

its something i thought about a few weeks ago, The strength would be about the size of say blazing shield. While this "siphoning shield" is up, 30% of the damage taken would be used to heal the caster(whom in this case would be a NB) this would give NBs a class based damage shield while solving the lack of a good self heal problem; at least to a certain extent.

The morphs would be a magicka and stamina morph; the magicka morph would also convert 30% of the damage taken to magicka; meaning one would recover some magic while the shield is up(this seems redundant though, so im trying to think of something else) and the stamina morph would do the same thing, but restore stamina instead of magicka. health would still be restored along with one of these bonuses.

each rank I'm thinking the value could go up 1-2% , or something like that.

This would replace agony in the siphoning skill line, and its place on the skill tree would be switched with cripple to make it require a siphoning skill of 20, that way NBs don't have access to a damage shield so early in the game, and so some form of balance can be maintained.

That makes sense, every other class has a class based shield (e.g. blazing shield for Templars, hardened ward for Sorcs and igneous shield for DKs) why not create one for NBs.

I guess I could try mirage (20% miss chance), I wonder if it would stack with the medium armor skill elude. Thanks again everyone for the helpful comments.

Um come on folks,

Does not the dw line take away spark, and replace it with the cloak line, which does a damage and provide a damage ABSORBER.

let's get these terms right

Damage shield-
Deals damage back to its source
IE everquest shield of thorns line

Damage absorber
Negates damage up to a fixed variable
IE shadowbane warlock damage absorber
IE 2500da negates up too 2500 of damage.

And in 1.6 I think brawler, cloak, and healing ward stack
But u cannot stack absorbers from the same skill.

Hmmmm. Per 1.6 I'd rather just make sure the shadow line passive Shadow Barrier is maxed out and use shadow line abilities for the extra protection instead of immovable. Immovable is a nice skill but to me 13.5 seconds of immovable compared to Shadow barrier basically being up 100% of the time simply by attacking with a shadow ability I would take Shadow Barrier. Also considering I am a magicka based NB I'd rather save my stamina for other stuff like break free. Plus the knock back immunity is only 5 seconds. It's a nice skill don't get me wrong, but I've done fine without it. You could use the one morph and wear heavy armor to reduce break free cost but that's not really conducive to a magicka build where light armor would be better.

If I had to pick between mirage and double take for 1.6 I'd pick mirage for the extra armor bonus. However, considering we get one major buff and minor at a time it doesn't line up with my planned setup since I'm centering my build around offense.

It is very true that some of the most successful NB builds actually base their healing and protection from non NB skill lines like stuff from the restoration staff skill line and a couple of others. Though a damage shield or self heal would be cool. I don't think it is as needed as many think. I myself do perfectly fine without it.

self heals already include swallow soul/funnel health, refreshing path, leeching strikes, and sap essence. Now refreshing path isn't really a good heal (at least in PvP), even though it's being buffed in 1.6. Sap essence is great in PvE but lack luster in PvP because A) regardless of the heal it's hard to keep up with the amount of damage you're taking from multiple enemies unless you have the new bolstering darkness ult going and it's damage output is absolutely horrendous. Leeching strikes might actually not be to bad in PvP per 1.6 since people will most likely be utilizing light and heavy attacks more often simply to gain ultimate. I just wish the % gained per hit was higher. Swallow Soul/Funnel Health combined with rapid regen is actually quite a good heal as long as you are moving around and not letting the enemy lock you down but the downside is when the skill is blocked the heal is horrible.

As far as damage shield we have none, as some of you have already stated. At the moment I use Ward Ally simply because I want a guaranteed shield as opposed to healing ward which may end up on a player with lower health than you. Brawler does give a bit of a shield but it's more useful in PvE than PvP. With the new Ult system I think Carve will be better for PvP. I also use Magicka Harness (possibly switching to Dampen Magic). Great skill against sorcs and ranged magicka NB's.

I think a damage shield like Cody suggested is a cool idea. Some other ideas could be a shroud of darkness that is similar to soul tether where it leeches health from surrounding players within a certain range. Or you could create shadows around you that absorb damage and disappear one at a time. A morph of this could be "place 4 shades around you that absorb 40% of each attack then disappear after each attack....any shades left heal you for 10% of total damage per shade left.

A lot of possible ideas out there, it's a matter of ZoS actually doing something about it. I do think they made NB to really be like the NB of Elder Scrolls lore. But considering every other class has a shield or burst self heal it would be nice to give us NB's something.

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Hmmmm. Per 1.6 I'd rather just make sure the shadow line passive Shadow Barrier is maxed out and use shadow line abilities for the extra protection instead of immovable. Immovable is a nice skill but to me 13.5 seconds of immovable compared to Shadow barrier basically being up 100% of the time simply by attacking with a shadow ability I would take Shadow Barrier. Also considering I am a magicka based NB I'd rather save my stamina for other stuff like break free. Plus the knock back immunity is only 5 seconds. It's a nice skill don't get me wrong, but I've done fine without it. You could use the one morph and wear heavy armor to reduce break free cost but that's not really conducive to a magicka build where light armor would be better.

If I had to pick between mirage and double take for 1.6 I'd pick mirage for the extra armor bonus. However, considering we get one major buff and minor at a time it doesn't line up with my planned setup since I'm centering my build around offense.

It is very true that some of the most successful NB builds actually base their healing and protection from non NB skill lines like stuff from the restoration staff skill line and a couple of others. Though a damage shield or self heal would be cool. I don't think it is as needed as many think. I myself do perfectly fine without it.

self heals already include swallow soul/funnel health, refreshing path, leeching strikes, and sap essence. Now refreshing path isn't really a good heal (at least in PvP), even though it's being buffed in 1.6. Sap essence is great in PvE but lack luster in PvP because A) regardless of the heal it's hard to keep up with the amount of damage you're taking from multiple enemies unless you have the new bolstering darkness ult going and it's damage output is absolutely horrendous. Leeching strikes might actually not be to bad in PvP per 1.6 since people will most likely be utilizing light and heavy attacks more often simply to gain ultimate. I just wish the % gained per hit was higher. Swallow Soul/Funnel Health combined with rapid regen is actually quite a good heal as long as you are moving around and not letting the enemy lock you down but the downside is when the skill is blocked the heal is horrible.

As far as damage shield we have none, as some of you have already stated. At the moment I use Ward Ally simply because I want a guaranteed shield as opposed to healing ward which may end up on a player with lower health than you. Brawler does give a bit of a shield but it's more useful in PvE than PvP. With the new Ult system I think Carve will be better for PvP. I also use Magicka Harness (possibly switching to Dampen Magic). Great skill against sorcs and ranged magicka NB's.

I think a damage shield like Cody suggested is a cool idea. Some other ideas could be a shroud of darkness that is similar to soul tether where it leeches health from surrounding players within a certain range. Or you could create shadows around you that absorb damage and disappear one at a time. A morph of this could be "place 4 shades around you that absorb 40% of each attack then disappear after each attack....any shades left heal you for 10% of total damage per shade left.

A lot of possible ideas out there, it's a matter of ZoS actually doing something about it. I do think they made NB to really be like the NB of Elder Scrolls lore. But considering every other class has a shield or burst self heal it would be nice to give us NB's something.

Strife heals based on 25% of the damage you do to the affected target; and since most players in PVP(this is from a PvP POV btw) either block cast or stack/spam damage shields; very little damage will often get thru, and very little healing will be done, not to mention only magicka build NBs would really benefit from this heal in the first place, stamina/hybrid builds get little healing from it.

leeching strikes only restores 2% health per strike, which is absolutely horrible; it is not enough to keep a NB sustained during a battle, it really should go up to 3 or 4%, maybe even 5%, per strike.

not disagreeing with your post, just posting the facts so others can see why NBs need a good self heal.