One thing you probably don't know about is the change to Death Stroke. In the housing update it'll be 75 ult to use it. Further more;

Whyn Aurum wrote: »

ULT: Incapacitating Strike

This was changed to scale off of Weapon Damage/Stamina, you'll have to reset your skill points so you can grab Soul Harvest instead.


Incap Strike tool tip reads as:

1. Ravage an enemy with a spinning attack to deal [x] Disease Damage, stunning them for 3 seconds, and increase your damage against them by 20%.
2. Also causes Major Defile, reducing the effectiveness of healing on the enemy by 30% for 6 seconds.
3. Deals Disease Damage and stuns the enemy.

Soul Harvest

1. Ravage an enemy with a spinning attack to deal [x] Magic Damage and increase your damage against them by 20%.
2. Also causes Major Defile, reducing the effectiveness of healing on the enemy by 30% for 6 seconds.
3. While slotted, any time you kill an enemy you gain 7 Ultimate.
4. While slotted, any time you kill an enemy you gain Ultimate.

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While I can't really answer your gear questions, I can attempt to answer a few of the ones you listed under your second bolded statement

3. I'd like to know if Magicka NB is still inferior to Stam NB as it used to be back in the day.

This depends on play style. StamNB has mostly been shoehorned into a gank only playstyle since their toolset doesn't really allow them to play around with different armor types. A lot of StamNB you see are all in Weapon Damage / insta burst / proc set gankers.

Magicka is still fairly weak, but they have good tools for attacking at range and keeping enemies off of them, plus engaging whenever they feel like since they have more mana to cloak with. When I look at your bar, I see a lot of melee abilities. It saddens me to say most of these melee abilities do not get the job done in terms of killing the target. MagNB gets out classed in close range combat by stamina over all. However, with the buffs coming to Destro staff, I think MagNB are going to see some nice new damage come to them when Housing drops. Their abilities would benefit nicely with Flame Staffs 8% single target damage increase and lightning staffs 8% aoe damage increase for Sap Essence and Soul Shred.


4. Having only Imperial City as my only additional DLC, which DLCs should I buy in order to prevent crippling myself with unavaliable PvP gear?

Shadow of the Hist does provide equipment, but I do not believe any of it is considered BiS for MagNB. So the best BiS for MagNB, or a lot of Magicka classes now is;

1. Burning Spell Weave - drops from Normal/Vet City of Ash dungeon in Greenshade
2. Spinners - drops from bosses/dolemns/public dungeon in Malabal Tor
3. Trail gear from Maw of Lorkhaj can be good too, like Moondancer. But I think you need the Thieve's Guild DLC to get into it.

There is also a lot of monster 2 set pieces that came out with One Tamriel. Those you should definitely check out.

1. Illambris is great for PVE not really PVP
2. So is Grothdarr for PVE/PVP
3. Once the Housing update comes, we might see more people using Slimecraw, which would be good for PVE/PVP and is not effected by the crit nerf to proc sets.

1. The Willpower jewels and Kena Shoulders are worth keeping, but as for gear there are several better sets such as:

- Necropotence, which enables you to stack Magicka with the Shade (which counts as a pet btw), allowing you to hit harder against all enemies and buffing the strength of the Light Armor shield (which is an actual damage shield now, not just magical attacks anymore).
- Spinner, for a hefty amount of Spell Penetration. Ideal vs Heavy Armor users (which has gotten buffed, meaning there's plenty of them in Cyro
- Clever Alchemist. Drink a pot, gain a hefty Spell Damage buff. Great for ganking with the Elegant Set
- Seducer (crafted) or Lich (dropped set) for Magicka Sustain

Some good monster sets are Skoria (for keeping pressure with DoTs), Grothdarr (melee range), Infernal Guardian (great for getting ppl to back off while shielding), Troll King or Bone Pirate (both defensive sets)

2. Not bad, but MagBlades are better off at range nowadays. Drop both Lotus Fan and Concealed and use Swallow Soul as your main spammable.

Also, since the Light Armor shield is now a proper damage shield, put that on your bar along with Healing Ward. And go for the Dampen Magic morph, not Harness since with Siphoning Atacks you alrdy got plenty of sustain

If you're a vampire, use Mist Form instead of Double Take. It helps with the snares and damage ticks from powerful DoTs

3. Matter of opinion. When properly played both are good, although StamBlades do have a bit more "oomph"

4. Thieves Guild: you can make the Clever Alchemist set there

Honestly, I'd suggest you level another class. You can try and do well with magic nb but ultimately you're just a weaker sorc.

Whyn Aurum wrote: »

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Honestly, I'd suggest you level another class. You can try and do well with magic nb but ultimately you're just a weaker sorc.

That is rather depressing. I do not want to change my class just because the other one seems to have a better kit. Even though magical NB seems weaker, I do prefer the stealth element and play style of it over sorcerer.

is weaker but not useless. You can make a magblade work, plenty of examples of good players that rekt people really hard with a magblade.

You should check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRWX9iG-_Ms is long but worth.

Whyn Aurum wrote: »

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Honestly, I'd suggest you level another class. You can try and do well with magic nb but ultimately you're just a weaker sorc.

That is rather depressing. I do not want to change my class just because the other one seems to have a better kit. Even though magical NB seems weaker, I do prefer the stealth element and play style of it over sorcerer.

It's not better, it's different.

A correct (or typical) mSorc can and will burst an opponent from full to dead. Typically something along the lines of: Curse, Pulse, Wrath, Frag, meteor GG

My experience of NB is: Cripple, Agonize, Spam Swallow, Trigger Skoria, Impale. That is not a full to dead but more like a DoT build.

The spammable ability does make a huge difference- infact my swallow soul spam returns me 2k health per spam. Combine with rapid regen 1k tick you're gettin a minimum of 3k hps (in PvP) with wards. A sorc can't perform this style as well (unless you're using a build like my Shepherd King build)

Maim shades also flows well with the HPS and armor (plus 1k dps in PvP - don't underestimate this dps)

You'll be more tanky with better heals than a similar sorc.

I haven't posted much about the NB, just don't get stuck in the LA glass cannon mentality- they can be so much more.

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Whyn Aurum wrote: »

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Honestly, I'd suggest you level another class. You can try and do well with magic nb but ultimately you're just a weaker sorc.

That is rather depressing. I do not want to change my class just because the other one seems to have a better kit. Even though magical NB seems weaker, I do prefer the stealth element and play style of it over sorcerer.

The play style you remember (melee range, Lotus Fan, Cloak, etc.) no longer really works for magic NB. It's too squishy and doesn't have enough damage. Also, Cloak is no longer viable as an escape/repositioning tool (you'll see in the video @ManDraKE linked that they're running Mist Form in it's place) so the stealth element of magic NB is no longer really there.

Magic NBs these days play ranged casters, running destro/resto with several DOTs. As somebody who played both the DW/resto build that was popular when you last played and the destro/resto build that's popular now, they're nowhere near similar. It's also worth mentioning that the ranged caster's build's main spammable, Strife, is set to receive a 38% cost increase on the new patch coming Monday, and their ultimate Soul Harvest is set to receive a cost increase as well.

If you want to stick with magic NB, go for it, but know you're going to have to outplay others to get the same results as them. I'd suggest running 5 Transmutation (drops from PVP rewards for the worthy mails, can be bought from other players) jewlery+one body piece+restoration staff, 5 Clever Alchemist (craftable, you'll need the Thieves Guild DLC to craft it but you can get somebody that already has the DLC to craft it for you) 4 body pieces+destro staff, with any monster set 2pc that you've got (Kena, Grothdarr, Engine Guardian, Pirate Skeleton, Valkyn, etc.) Run five heavy pieces with two pieces of light armor. This isn't necessarily the best possible gear setup for magic NB, but it's cheap and easy to obtain.

He listed my build lol, so I had to agree. Alchemist + Transmutation + skoria, skoria for burst, transmutation for survivability and Alchemist cause it's a hauss

Don't let people dissuade you from running your MagNB. They are strong despite what people say. The biggest change for you though is melee magblades are pretty much gone. The most successful setups would kind of fall into the following -

Destro/Resto (Gank'ish/Well-Rounded)
Destro/DW (Bomber)
SwB/Resto (Tank)

There's obviously niche builds run by outstanding players that wouldn't fall into the above, but I'd say trying to reintroduce yourself to ESO you'd be best gearing around the above types of builds/playstyles.

I think you'd be fine just replacing your 5PC Willow's Path with Clever Alchemist, assuming all the gear you listed is max level.