Because IC is infested with nightblades, i would go tanky/stamina. As glass cannon with ~20k you will be one shotted within 1 gcd.

Nocturne Saint wrote: »

opethmaniac wrote: »

Because IC is infested with nightblades, i would go tanky/stamina. As glass cannon with ~20k you will be one shotted within 1 gcd.

this build im going to use recommends 20 health 44 stamina, or should i go half and half?

Depends what other sources of health you have (set/passives/enchants), for PvP you'll typically want to aim for a minimum 30k health pool, these days it's even common to see people with 35k+ health.

oh yeah, 44 stam, 20 health sounds good...

you can even out your build with glyphs for all your gear...

If it has to be a templar, make it magicka and use Puncturing Sweeps. One of your main concerns while farming is to keep your health topped off, making your harder to gank. It's much easier doing that on a magplar. Healing from damage is not subject to the PvP 50% (55%?) heal debuff. Your damage against mobs / bosses is your full PvE damage and, therefore, the healing is as a good as in PvE. It's hard to kill a jabbing magplar who has PvE targets.

This rules out stamplars as well as Deltia's current PvP builds, which no longer rely on Sweeps. Alcast's magplar build looks ancient. Bright-Throat's, Shacklebreaker and Skoria are no longer meta in the slightest.

Assuming CP IC, my tanky setup is still mostly light armor, because I find the pen and crit too valuable on magplar.

Front bar: Rallying Cry lightning staff
Back bar: Wretched Vitality 1H+S
Mythic: Wild Hunt
Monster set: Zoal
1x Trainee

Key skills include:

Sweeps
Radiant Glory
Living Dark
Extended Ritual
Restoring or Channeled Focus
Honor the Dead
Race Against Time or Mist Form
Spell Wall

Other skills I use include: Magelight (crit + NB detection), Degeneration (Major Sorcery), Toppling Charge and Crescent Sweep.

This is quite a tanky setup, even in mostly light armor. Yes I use both Wretched Vitality and I actually use Restoring Focus for some stamina sustain while blocking. Maybe with Mist Form that could be different, but in I simply find dodge roll sustain one of the best defenses in PvP. Between that, Rallying Cry, Zoal and the 1H+S ult, it's quite a defensive build. Doesn't have that much damage, but you want to bring your Tel Var home, right? That said, the optimal class for Tel Var farming is IMO magblade.

geonsocal wrote: »

gotta build your magblade tanky too...blinding/revealing flare along with its major protection is a nice bonus to also outing nightblades...

gotta fear or pull folks so.etimes just to disengage from all the flares flying around...

As a magblade I can confirm that I would stay away from incessant flare spammers. However, IMO that's a group skill. It's expensive. I wouldn't run it solo, at least not on a magblade.

Major Protection is extremely meh. Nice to have, if it's "free". However it's not free. It costs you a skill slot. Magblade is in the relatively unique position that the Esoteric Environment Greaves work well on it. 50% damage reduction against burst (ganking) skills versus 10% from Major Protection is no contest. Of course you could run both, but in a balanced build you weigh every single armor piece and skill carefully, selecting only the most powerful ones.

When I talk about magblade being better, I refer to it's ability to (a) heal from damage and keep health topped off, like magplar, and (b) it's ability to disengage from fights via Shadow Image and Disguise. Nothing beats that to bring your Tel Var home short of binding a key to hop out to Cyrodiil. However, magblade allows you to carry more Tel Var for longer. It wastes less time porting to Cyrodiil and back. It's ability to disengage also allows it to manage it's stamina well, which makes the Esoteric Greaves viable.

Personally, I leave tankiness on the table as a magblade. I prefer high speed, high mag sustain and decent stam sustain. I also run Wyrd Tree on the back bar, which purges all lingering effects, including the nasty, buggy stuff that uncloaks you, like Structured Entropy. It helps you to disengage. With all those measures and the Greaves protecting against ganks, I feel that's enough and there isn't any room left in my build for conventional tankiness. It's a light armor build for the cost reduction / cloak sustain. Damage (and healing) comes curtesy of Soulcleaver and Balorgh.

That said, mine is possibly an advanced build for the lifelong magblade. It combines a lot of situational options that can fail in various ways. The Greaves fail, if your stamina drops. Wyrd has a 15s cooldown. Shadow Image needs to be placed in advance. To a beginner player I would possibly recommend plain tankiness, but I don't know. Escape options are the way to go for hanging on to Tel Var, to be honest. Regardless of how good or how tanky you are, you can always find yourself in a situation where you are suddenly overwhelmed by numbers.

geonsocal wrote: »

as always, so much to learn from everything you say fred...

Thanks! I enjoy theory-crafting...

ever think about doing some part-time eso pvp coaching

...but do not PvP much at present. I've been stickerbook farming, including vTrials. What I do in PvP is quite specialised. It's PvPvE in IC. I've kept my magblade up-to-date for this purpose, but that's it.

nightblade healing sucks so much I equip a resto staff on magblades just to stay alive...vigor for stamblades...

I don't really feel that way. That said, even with the above measures, I still consider NB a damage-avoidance class who either overwhelms their target or disengages when they fail. I brawl to some degree, but I've never made an outright NB brawler, because I don't see the point. There are other classes for that, in fact most others. So the upshot is that, on nightblade, I accept that if I can't match the damage or healing of my opponent, and I die, then that was my fault for not disengaging early enough.