Are there any 1.6 Stamina Nightblade builds that...

kylerjalen · June 2015

... can enable one to solo Craglorn?
For me, the ultimate test of the viability of one's solo survivability is to be able run through Craglorn overland as well as delves alone (of course Im looking at endgame).
Right now, I am having THE most awful time with my NB.
I don't get it. My templar is able to rip through most group delves alone (the only sticking point are the bosses which I am unable to take down) but my Nightblade can just somewhat handle overland mobs and often dies or barely survives mobs in dungeons.
My build in short:
I have Siphoning Attacks always up. From bar 1 I activate Relentless Focus. I switch to Bar 2, Focus Aim attack the healer(s), activate Double Take, then switch back to bar 1 and start spamming Whirlwind Tornado, alternating it with Sap Essence magicka dump). The only saving grace is Mass Hysteria if it gets too rough which buys me a couple precious seconds.

Yet I still get killed often.

Any help as to how I can fix things so that my survivability will go up?

Zanen · June 2015

You want 2H.

My glass cannon NB can solo the craglorn delves pretty easily without resorting to siphoning attacks or even using ultimates.

Pretty much just need brawler and rally, whatever else you like will probably work.

helediron · June 2015

I am soloing Craglorn with magicka NB. The downsides to tempars are lack of heals and shields. But OTOH Siphoning Attacks give great resource management. Because it is slow going, i think you might try 2H instead DW. It gives two important changes: Rally gives self healing and Brawler gives shields. With Brawler the fighting is pretty similar to Jabs.

Using Fear is great because it pushes melee attackers away momentarily, if you need to deal with e.g. illusionists - fighting fear with fear.

Have you tried regen drinks?

kylerjalen · June 2015

helediron wrote: »

I am soloing Craglorn with magicka NB. The downsides to tempars are lack of heals and shields. But OTOH Siphoning Attacks give great resource management. Because it is slow going, i think you might try 2H instead DW. It gives two important changes: Rally gives self healing and Brawler gives shields. With Brawler the fighting is pretty similar to Jabs.

Using Fear is great because it pushes melee attackers away momentarily, if you need to deal with e.g. illusionists - fighting fear with fear.

Have you tried regen drinks?

You're the second person to say level the 2H line. I guess its time to respec

Thanks guys.

kylerjalen · June 2015

helediron wrote: »

I am soloing Craglorn with magicka NB. The downsides to tempars are lack of heals and shields. But OTOH Siphoning Attacks give great resource management. Because it is slow going, i think you might try 2H instead DW. It gives two important changes: Rally gives self healing and Brawler gives shields. With Brawler the fighting is pretty similar to Jabs.

Using Fear is great because it pushes melee attackers away momentarily, if you need to deal with e.g. illusionists - fighting fear with fear.

Have you tried regen drinks?

And yes, I have tried soloing using regen drinks or attribute raising food and I get killed either way.
I just don't want to give up my Twice Born Star and Hunding's Rage armor.

PBpsy · June 2015

2Handed is the word. You need heals. Rally works great. Then Brawler for the shield and you just mostly aoe without much thought in lower crag . Wreaking blow for the archers.
Hunding's or
Whitestrake's Retribution 5 cool safety
Vicious Ophidian or some of those crazy expensive sets
Cheap jewels are 3 Footmans with cost reduction and maybe put some heavy footman for the 4 piece.There are certainly better expensive options.
2 piece Engine guardian Is very nice.
On the second bar you can go Bow for opening aoe or snipe,S&B if things get hairy and and dual wield for some other reason.Have double take on this bar.
Also why exactly do you have Siphoning attacks always up?

Addition: Although this would get you trough the over world Crag and probably most of the easy delves it is not an indication that the build is good for any other pve content. For solo Crag You need only sustain ,sustain ,sustain.In other PVE content you will sacrifice a lot of that sustain for dps.

f047ys3v3n · June 2015

Nb's are in general a holy class, by which I mean they have a great deal of holes in their ability line up that greatly limit their versatility. Perhaps the most gaping hole is that their most powerful healing skills are all magica only. The result of this is that to solo you have to get heals elsewhere and the best skill for this, Vigor, is so far up the PVP line that you won't have it for 6 months in the post AP nerf world. Your other option is rally from the two handed line. Not as good, but it's really all you've got. Bottom line, it's just a hazard of playing NB which is a poorly designed class.

As for your success with templar. Go with that, post 1.6 the templar is the best DPS, Heals, and Tank class. Forget NB, if they were going to make it work they have had more than a year to do it. NB's have some neat tricks, like the only class fear, which is amazing, but they are not a swiss army knife. They are more like an electric can opener. Their not much use unless you happen to have a can to open in which case they are really good. I haven't found many cans in ESO, seems like mostly barrels, crates and sacks. If I do find a can I'm sure I could find a sorc to power the opener as they don't have much to do either.

Lithium Flower · June 2015

What other class has access to class based stamina healing? There is plenty of healing available for nightblades. It's not a 'stand your ground' class like Dragonknights or Templars and instead has access to very nice escapes - Shadow Cloak, Path of Darkness, Fear, Cripple, Blur as well as class based, magicka or stamina gap closers.

Balance doesn't mean every class should have access to the same re-skinned skills as any other class or be good at the same things.

helediron · June 2015

Upper Craglorn is the place for Siphoning Attacks. It is tougher place compared to lower Craglorn. The lower C delves can be swept with high DPS builds. In upper C there are usually combinations of melee, casters and minibosses. You really need a build which combines tank, DD and healer. I doubt glass canon builds could take the pounding.

I wear several nirnhoned armors to withstand casters while removing melees. Spell resistance is at hardcap. I think using Blur and fear is good to all builds. Against bosses i add Piercing Mark and shades. Other skills i use are scaling from magicka and not usable for stamina build. I would drop Sap Essence from OPs build.

If anyone wants to try soloing upper Craglorn, a good place to test a build is to solo the overland bosses around Valley of Scars wayshrine.SW near the river is a pair of melee and mage with some mobs. NE Orc chief is 2H using uppercut liberally with Welwas and spawning mobs give some hasty moments and further NE at abandoned anchor is mage and storm athronac. The group in front of Loth'Na Caverns represent a standard mob setup in many delves. These give a good test of doing damage while receiving it as both melee and magic.

OdinForge · June 2015

Can't give a build since i tend to change setup depending on where i am, but i can give a typical rundown of what skills i run that allow me to solo most of craglorn with my NB.

2H / Whatever other weapon you desire. Specced for high stamina and magicka regen.

-Brawler: Spam for the damage shield and AoE damage, it's nice to get an addon that will display your shield value as it can get quite high but also drop very quick. There will be moments where you can take a break and use another ability.

-Power Exaction or Sap Essence: I use it periodically for the passive that generates ultimate. I don't spam it, i prefer the stamina morph.

-Rally: Keep this up for the brutality and strong HoT, flash it if you need quick burst HP (typically during a boss fight).

-Executioner or Killer's Blade: I typically go with the 2H for the extra damage across the board, but you can also run KB for the heal on kill which is nice for solo.

-Refreshing Path: The heal value is small, but it adds up with other heals. You'll basically keep this up along with your other heals, your HPS will jump. I've even survived upper craglorn boss fights by inches with this ability. Idc what anyone says, this isn't a bad supplemental heal.

-Swallow Soul: Keep this up on several enemies, it's a smallish heal but every little bit counts. Your HP should be shielded most of the time.

-Ultimate: Soul Tether or Bolstering Darkness, i like Tether better these days huge heal and damage especially combined with the rest of your heals.

-Piercing Mark or Reapers Mark: Keep this up on small adds if you can, the heal on kill is sweet.

-Double-Take or Mirage: Keep this up for the dodge chance, huge for staying alive.

-Siphoning Attacks: To keep your resources sustainable, low resource situations are dangerous in solo play.

-You can use vigor if/when unlocked, but i don't like it for solo play. It heals a lot, but it's short and tends to need to be reapplied a lot. The other heals combo i mentioned will keep you alive, vigor isn't game breaking.

Jeckll · June 2015

There are already a ton of legit suggestions in this thread but I'm always suprise how regularly Stamina NBs have survival issues.

The core mechanics in Nightblade play are avoidance/migration and heal via kill.

Avoidance can be achieved by Double Take or kiting. Your Healing is Reaper's Mark and Killer's Blade, which brings you back to full HP after every kill you land. So if you face a ton of mobs, you mark target the weakest one, run in with Double Take or DPS with bow and if you are getting low, you focus down the marked mob -> back to full HP. Rise and Repeat.

Using Surprise Attack means constant Shadow Barrier, a really strong migration mechanic and a build in Armor Debuff.

You can choose to use 2h/Brawler for slower AoE DPS with strong Shields or DW/Steel Tornado with awesome AoE DPS. Combined with Snare skills like Bombard/Caltrops, you can kite + Steel Tornado tons of mobs without getting hit at all. Steel Tornado also synergizes well with Soul Tether, which is the best AoE DPS/CC/Heal Ultimate we have.

We are not tanks that run in mindlessly and hope for the best. We're Nightblades, we plan ahead, we use trickery and our full arsenal of awesome skills.

Hope that helps.

helediron · June 2015

Jeckll wrote: »

...clip...
We are not tanks that run in mindlessly and hope for the best. We're Nightblades, we plan ahead, we use trickery and our full arsenal of awesome skills.

And there is of course magicka saptank build, with which i solo mindlessly without plan in upper Craglorn delves, using trickery and full arsenal of awesome skills. Apologies to OP. This thread is about stamina nightblades and not about saptanks that wipe the hordes of Oblivion.. krhm.

Love_Chunks · June 2015

I run a heavy armor NB for crag soloing. I use 5 ravagers 4 dreugh and 2 piece undaunted set with 2h and s/b. 2h bar is brawler executioner wrecking blow siphoning and rally for the heals. S/b bar is puncture (master sword heals) shades or twising path (for the shadow barrier passive which has increased duration with heavy armor) unstoppable siphonig and caltrops(procs ravager and siphoning attacks). Shadow barrier passive is awesome and stacks with unstoppable which gives 5000+ mitigation x2. Its not as strong as a medium armor build but you can take many more hits with it. The typical fight rotation is: rally>caltrops>unstoppable>shadow ability>brawler all the things>wrecking blow/execute stragglers. I run twisting path in conjunction with caltrops specifially to proc the valkyn set otherwise its shades on the hardest hitting mob for the major maim debuff.

I understand that you may not have access to ravager or dreugh as they are quite expensive but you can still run a decent heavy armor build with hunding and ashen with shadow walker jewelry. Or you could get a dreugh neck with 3 of the cheaper dreugh armor pieces with 5 pieces of hundings and 2 shadow walker rings.

Dixa · June 2015

you only need 2h and refreshing path to solo all soloable content as a nightblade.

lolo_01b16_ESO · June 2015

Love_Chunks wrote: »

Shadow barrier passive is awesome and stacks with unstoppable which gives 5000+ mitigation x2.

Sry for off topic but are you sure about this? Last time I tested, immovable reduced my armour when I used it while the shadow barrier passive was active.

Xsorus · June 2015

Every stamina build in the game can solo upper craglorn with a two hander... Like seriously just spam brawler with rally up... You kill everything, and based on the fact you have siphoning attacks nightblades make the best stamina class for this.

Magicka wise I never needed anything more then sap essence to kill everything in upper craglorn

Anyone who complains nightBLADES are weak at soloing anything in this game are frankly bad players.. There really is no execuse other then that

Jeckll · June 2015

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Love_Chunks wrote: »

Shadow barrier passive is awesome and stacks with unstoppable which gives 5000+ mitigation x2.

Sry for off topic but are you sure about this? Last time I tested, immovable reduced my armour when I used it while the shadow barrier passive was active.

You are right.

Shadow Barrier + Blood Spawn stacks
Immovable + Blood Spawn stacks
Shadow Barrier + Immovable doesnt stack

kylerjalen · June 2015

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

Nb's are in general a holy class, by which I mean they have a great deal of holes in their ability line up that greatly limit their versatility. Perhaps the most gaping hole is that their most powerful healing skills are all magica only. The result of this is that to solo you have to get heals elsewhere and the best skill for this, Vigor, is so far up the PVP line that you won't have it for 6 months in the post AP nerf world. Your other option is rally from the two handed line. Not as good, but it's really all you've got. Bottom line, it's just a hazard of playing NB which is a poorly designed class.

As for your success with templar. Go with that, post 1.6 the templar is the best DPS, Heals, and Tank class. Forget NB, if they were going to make it work they have had more than a year to do it. NB's have some neat tricks, like the only class fear, which is amazing, but they are not a swiss army knife. They are more like an electric can opener. Their not much use unless you happen to have a can to open in which case they are really good. I haven't found many cans in ESO, seems like mostly barrels, crates and sacks. If I do find a can I'm sure I could find a sorc to power the opener as they don't have much to do either.

You described/analogized it all PERFECTLY. Thank you!

Savos_Saren · June 2015

Hey there! You may see me around Crag or DSA. I run as Mephis Stopholis

I actually run Craglorn pretty easily by myself. I'm a VR14 Bosmer Stamina NB build. Here's my set up:

2pc Valkyn Skoria: hat (light) and shoulders (medium)

5pc Hunding's Rage for the rest of my armor: all medium except the gauntlets are heavy (3pc nirnhoned, the rest infused and divines)

3pc Shadow Walker: rings have damage enchant and the neck is reduced stam cost

Master's 2H great sword

Nirnhoned bow w/ fire enchant. (I hope to get get the Master's Bow and start using Scorched Earth to make up for the fire dmg)

I utilize Valkyn Skoria with poison from the bow, bleed damage from brawler (cleave), flame damage from the bow, and I toss in a Swallow Soul for the magica DoT. So, the poison, flame, bleed, and magica DoTs= 20% chance for Valkyn to proc.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Junkogen · June 2015

How do you guys distribute your attributes?

Jeckll · June 2015

Junkogen wrote: »

How do you guys distribute your attributes?

62 Stamina

SHADOW2KK · June 2015

Zanen wrote: »

You want 2H.

My glass cannon NB can solo the craglorn delves pretty easily without resorting to siphoning attacks or even using ultimates.

Pretty much just need brawler and rally, whatever else you like will probably work.

Yup completely agree, I have a full stamina spec NB and have no problem at all soloing the vast majority of Crag, 2H rules.

Rally, caltrops and brawler, and some WBs, job done.