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https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8098811/#Comment_8098811
Nightblade Melee Mage
shaddrispreub18_ESO
Soul Shriven
Attributes
I poured all 49 into health, since you get 15 health per point while you only get 10 mag/stam per point. Enchants and food give point for point the same amount of health/mag/stam dependent on quality and level. 49 points in magicka nets you 490 magicka points, while 49 points in health nets you 735 health. If you realy want to, you could trait 49 stamina and enchant magicka, in which case, godspeed you magnificent beast.
Shadow mundus for crit damage because it works well with the Hemorrhage passive for a total of 15% more crit damage. You can go with Mage for more magicka if you prefer, just remember the diminishing returns when you hit overcharge.
Your melee class skills and teleport gain damage from magicka and critical chance from weapon crit, and can gain the surprise/backstab bonus. Your other class skills gain damage from spell power and critical chance from spell crit and can not gain the surprise/backstab bonus.
Sneak Attack/Backstab
A strike from stealth on a target’s back deals bonus damage, stuns and auto-crits on attacks that use weapon critical, such as your assassination skills. Melee hits have a greater damage bonus to sneak attack than ranged weapon attacks, and ranged spells gain no benefit. Assassination damage skills are considered melee spells in this regard.
Since the from stealth backstab auto crits, you add the bonus damage for a backstab, then multiply it by 150% (165% hemorrhage + shadow)
Note: The back of a target for these purposes is slightly larger than 90 degrees in both directions (a little over 180 total) from the center point of the target’s back, so side hits are still considered back-stabs.
Loadout
Sets: 5 Twilight’s Embrace, 3 Willow’s Path, 3 Warlock. I would use Night Mother’s Embrace if the set had both weapon and spell crit for the 5 piece bonus. Most of my armor has the infused (bloodstone) trait. All enchanted magicka. At 50+ you will be hitting the softcap without other bonuses on vendor enchants. With orange VR-12 enchants, I suspect you would be nearing the hard cap.
Armor: 2 Medium (chest and legs) 5 Light
Jewelry: 3 Warlocks. If you do not have these, spell cost reduction or spell damage will work with +magicka rings.
Weapons: Dual swords and destruction staff, enchanted with lifesteal for improved survivability. You can go for un-resistible damage if you prefer more damage. All weapons have crit trait.
Potions: I use two potions and have a mousewheel scroll add-on to cycle them as needed by the situation. The nuke potions are good as openers and for executing something below 20% health. The healing potions are for when a pull goes sideways.
Magicka Regen/Spell Damage/ Spell Crit (Nuke)
Health Regen/Magicka Regen/Spell Crit (Heal)
Stock Bugloss, Cornflower, Lady's Smock, and Water Hycinth if you make these yourself.
Food: Blue Magicka and Stamina.
Bar 1: Dual Wield since I can’t use sword and staff like a proper loremaster
Assassin’s Blade: Killer’s Blade: Single target execute, regen health on a kill
Veiled Strike: (Either morph): Single target melee dps
Teleport Strike: Ambush: Single target stun, mobility skill
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
Other two skills your preference, I recommend a stamina burner with utility (such as Silver Bolts) and either Cripple or Strife. Use whichever morph fits your style. Strife heals while Cripple gets you out of the bad faster. Strife is instant damage with a heal over time effect while Cripple is damage over time, and both are ranged spells that use spell crit and spell power.
So why not Death Stroke or Consuming Darkness?
Death Stroke: Your burst target should be dead before you need this, if not, you picked the wrong target to burst down. Death Stroke works better for a prolonged fight where the target or its friends have a chance to cast a heal. As such, Death Stroke is more situational.
Consuming Darkness and its morphs are great for a tank-blade style, and thus it is situational. I have never had a fight where my Consuming Darkness saved me or my group. An AoE stun is more likely to save you in a solo situation. Stunning adds for convenient group destruction will also be welcomed by the AoE Sorcerer/Dragon Knight in the group.
Bar 2 (option 1, single target): Destruction Flame Staff
Destructive Touch: (either Morph): Damage and knockback, use to yo-yo victims when you have a fire staff equipped.
Strife: (either morph): Damage and self-healing.
Weakness to Elements: Elemental Drain: Damage and magicka restore.
Force Shock: (either morph): Combo with Elemental Drain for more magicka.
Shadow Cloak: (either morph): Emergency button and positioning. (Currently, shadow cloak breaks on your hots, dots and pet attacks as well as any damage, including late hits, you may need to cloak twice to get the full duration.) The crit morph is situational, costing 2 animations to get 165% damage on one hit, so save it for an ultimate, the remove dot effects morph is currently bugged.
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
Use this bar when you need distance, or need options. Bar 2 should have something resembling crowd control on it, and self-healing is highly recommended.
Bar 2 (option 2, AoE): Destruction Staff (Any element)
Path of Darkness: Refreshing Path: Mobility and healing
Fire Rune: Volcanic Rune: AoE crowd control
Drain Power: Sap Essence: AoE leach
Impulse: (Either Morph): AoE damage
Shadow Cloak: (either morph): Emergency button and positioning. (Currently, shadow cloak breaks on your hots, dots and pet attacks as well as any damage, including late hits, you may need to cloak twice to get the full duration.)
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
For AoE, you want to rotate the volcanic rune, drain and impulse, path of darkness is for healing and positioning/escape.
Passive Skills
Passives are all good, take every Nightblade passive. Problem is, all but one require you to have at least one of that skill on the bar to access the passives, even though most are global.
Shadow Barrier requires a shadow skill, though works well with shadow cloak for defence, but better yet opening fights from stealth. (Currently mislabeled, should say “With a shadow ability slotted.”)
Refreshing Shadows after using a shadow skill keeps stamina recharging. Magicka Flood gives 8% more magicka.
Master Assassin gives weapon damage, and stun, which makes the Teleport Strike/Ambush backstab stun more effective.
Pressure points gives 3% spell and weapon crit per assassin skill slotted.
Hemorage requires one assassin skill on the bar to get 10% bonus crit damage.
Executioner is what makes Assassin’s Blade the finisher of choice.
Your class passives do not allow as much flexibility in your build. For maximum advantage, you need one active skill of each tree on your bar.
The only exception is catalyst. So potions are a must have (you should have them anyway, potions can do amazing things to your burst and/or survivability.) I recommend even going as far as leveling alchemy just for the medicinal use passive.
For armor passives, take all the light armor and the medium armor passives except the attack speed.
Assassinations
While in stealth get to the target’s back arc --> Ambush --> Veiled Strike --> Assassin’s Blade. Use Cloak to get position if needed. Even veteran Leather and Cloth armor targets will drop from this combo while remaining stun-locked. Pick your target; if you try to burst down a tank, you will be disappointed.
If the target uses their cc break, they will lock in the "hulk" animation for a second, long enough to get the veiled strike in, and only a teleport skill will get them out of Assassin's Blade range. If you experience trouble here, Impale morph might be a better choice over Killer's Blade. You can also burst a target down, then cloak and re-assess or use an escape.
At 81 spell power I push over 2200 damage in a burst combo without a light attack woven in. With food, better enchants and/or potions this number is much higher.
The concept here is that on my chosen target, my Teleport Strike/Ambush and Veiled Strike combo must bring the target down to where the base damage of Assassin's Blade drops the target under 20% health.
Assassin’s Blade is your execute skill. This is one of your class defining skills. It is cheap, and low damage, until the target falls under the magical 20% health mark, then it is just cheap. If the basic damage of this skill drops a target below that 20% threshold, the bonus damage kicks in for an additional 300% damage.
Morphed to Impale, this skill reaches 15 meters.
Morphed to Killer’s Blade, this skill gives a heal over time on a kill.
With the Executioner passive, you get a magicka over time when the target is killed by an assassination skill. Always use this skill to finish targets when possible.
Escaping
Cripple and path of darkness are the two obvious escapes for the speed boost and combo with sprint for more run speed.
Cloaking can avoid targeted attacks, but if you are low on magicka, cloak will be limited.
You can use a Summon Shade: Shadow Image to juke with ranged weapon equipped by dropping the shadow while running in one direction, then teleporting to the shadow and running in another direction.
Options, Tricks and Tips
You can burst a target and run out on a path of darkness, sprinting on a path of darkness when you need extra speed.
Burst combo --> Soul Shred: Soul Tether and drop the non-tethered victim.
Train up syphoning strikes and aspect of terror for situational use and swap them in for long fights or when extra crowd control is needed.
Agony is good if you don’t have AoE happy friends, and won't miss opening from stealth.
Blur is good for extended fights (cloth/leather=squishy) so you don’t overtax the healer in a group. Use blur over evasion for the assassin passives, otherwise, evasion may be better.
As an example, swap out destructive touch for blur so you get the extra 10% crit damage and 3% crit rate just for having an assassination skill slotted on the second bar if you’re on a single target boss fight, need range, and the boss is immune knockback.
Mark Target is also a good choice if you know the boss is not going to hit you.
Shadow Cloak --> Veiled Strike sets up for a knockdown.
Necrotic orb looks like a great group sustainability boost, and at undaunted 5, it will be some time before I get to it.
Blood Alter is great for helping with group heals as a fire and forget skill, I just need a sixth skill slot for it.
Mage Light: Inner Light another skill for that elusive sixth skill slot, as critting on Strife: Swallow Soul is yummy (pun intended.)
Evasion is a stamina version of blur that doesn’t open assassination passives, but can morph to give snare escapes or additional dodge.
Annulment grants a damage bubble that morphs to return magicka when hit by a spell or mitigate more damage.
If you get to where you are using orange enchants, spell damage may be a superior choice over the warlock jewelry set on sheer burst potential. The warlock 3 piece set is currently the best choice for magicka based sustain.
Final Thoughts
One of the Nightblades strengths is the crowd control options we bring to a group, this isn't to say others do not have cc abilities, look at the Sorcerer, for example. In addition, we can be slippery through creative employment of our cloak and movement skills.
Nightblades have some of the best from stealth tool sets. The burst combo above wrecks from stealth. We have longer stuns from stealth. We are the only class with invisibility, thus can bypass hard or annoying trash fights. Upon exiting stealth/invisibility we have a passive that ups armor and spell resist.
Nightblades have the highest damage execute with the 300% additional bonus, most others have up to 150% bonus damage. Sorcerers have fury and disintegrate, dual wield has whirlwind and slaughter, two handed has reverse slash, and bow has poison injection. When a target drops below the magical 20% health, execute skill spam, combine with regen/power/crit potion for best results.
I poured all 49 into health, since you get 15 health per point while you only get 10 mag/stam per point. Enchants and food give point for point the same amount of health/mag/stam dependent on quality and level. 49 points in magicka nets you 490 magicka points, while 49 points in health nets you 735 health. If you realy want to, you could trait 49 stamina and enchant magicka, in which case, godspeed you magnificent beast.
Shadow mundus for crit damage because it works well with the Hemorrhage passive for a total of 15% more crit damage. You can go with Mage for more magicka if you prefer, just remember the diminishing returns when you hit overcharge.
Your melee class skills and teleport gain damage from magicka and critical chance from weapon crit, and can gain the surprise/backstab bonus. Your other class skills gain damage from spell power and critical chance from spell crit and can not gain the surprise/backstab bonus.
Sneak Attack/Backstab
A strike from stealth on a target’s back deals bonus damage, stuns and auto-crits on attacks that use weapon critical, such as your assassination skills. Melee hits have a greater damage bonus to sneak attack than ranged weapon attacks, and ranged spells gain no benefit. Assassination damage skills are considered melee spells in this regard.
Since the from stealth backstab auto crits, you add the bonus damage for a backstab, then multiply it by 150% (165% hemorrhage + shadow)
Note: The back of a target for these purposes is slightly larger than 90 degrees in both directions (a little over 180 total) from the center point of the target’s back, so side hits are still considered back-stabs.
Loadout
Sets: 5 Twilight’s Embrace, 3 Willow’s Path, 3 Warlock. I would use Night Mother’s Embrace if the set had both weapon and spell crit for the 5 piece bonus. Most of my armor has the infused (bloodstone) trait. All enchanted magicka. At 50+ you will be hitting the softcap without other bonuses on vendor enchants. With orange VR-12 enchants, I suspect you would be nearing the hard cap.
Armor: 2 Medium (chest and legs) 5 Light
Jewelry: 3 Warlocks. If you do not have these, spell cost reduction or spell damage will work with +magicka rings.
Weapons: Dual swords and destruction staff, enchanted with lifesteal for improved survivability. You can go for un-resistible damage if you prefer more damage. All weapons have crit trait.
Potions: I use two potions and have a mousewheel scroll add-on to cycle them as needed by the situation. The nuke potions are good as openers and for executing something below 20% health. The healing potions are for when a pull goes sideways.
Magicka Regen/Spell Damage/ Spell Crit (Nuke)
Health Regen/Magicka Regen/Spell Crit (Heal)
Stock Bugloss, Cornflower, Lady's Smock, and Water Hycinth if you make these yourself.
Food: Blue Magicka and Stamina.
Bar 1: Dual Wield since I can’t use sword and staff like a proper loremaster
Assassin’s Blade: Killer’s Blade: Single target execute, regen health on a kill
Veiled Strike: (Either morph): Single target melee dps
Teleport Strike: Ambush: Single target stun, mobility skill
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
Other two skills your preference, I recommend a stamina burner with utility (such as Silver Bolts) and either Cripple or Strife. Use whichever morph fits your style. Strife heals while Cripple gets you out of the bad faster. Strife is instant damage with a heal over time effect while Cripple is damage over time, and both are ranged spells that use spell crit and spell power.
So why not Death Stroke or Consuming Darkness?
Death Stroke: Your burst target should be dead before you need this, if not, you picked the wrong target to burst down. Death Stroke works better for a prolonged fight where the target or its friends have a chance to cast a heal. As such, Death Stroke is more situational.
Consuming Darkness and its morphs are great for a tank-blade style, and thus it is situational. I have never had a fight where my Consuming Darkness saved me or my group. An AoE stun is more likely to save you in a solo situation. Stunning adds for convenient group destruction will also be welcomed by the AoE Sorcerer/Dragon Knight in the group.
Bar 2 (option 1, single target): Destruction Flame Staff
Destructive Touch: (either Morph): Damage and knockback, use to yo-yo victims when you have a fire staff equipped.
Strife: (either morph): Damage and self-healing.
Weakness to Elements: Elemental Drain: Damage and magicka restore.
Force Shock: (either morph): Combo with Elemental Drain for more magicka.
Shadow Cloak: (either morph): Emergency button and positioning. (Currently, shadow cloak breaks on your hots, dots and pet attacks as well as any damage, including late hits, you may need to cloak twice to get the full duration.) The crit morph is situational, costing 2 animations to get 165% damage on one hit, so save it for an ultimate, the remove dot effects morph is currently bugged.
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
Use this bar when you need distance, or need options. Bar 2 should have something resembling crowd control on it, and self-healing is highly recommended.
Bar 2 (option 2, AoE): Destruction Staff (Any element)
Path of Darkness: Refreshing Path: Mobility and healing
Fire Rune: Volcanic Rune: AoE crowd control
Drain Power: Sap Essence: AoE leach
Impulse: (Either Morph): AoE damage
Shadow Cloak: (either morph): Emergency button and positioning. (Currently, shadow cloak breaks on your hots, dots and pet attacks as well as any damage, including late hits, you may need to cloak twice to get the full duration.)
Ultimate: Something that stuns, such as soul shred or meteor
For AoE, you want to rotate the volcanic rune, drain and impulse, path of darkness is for healing and positioning/escape.
Passive Skills
Passives are all good, take every Nightblade passive. Problem is, all but one require you to have at least one of that skill on the bar to access the passives, even though most are global.
Shadow Barrier requires a shadow skill, though works well with shadow cloak for defence, but better yet opening fights from stealth. (Currently mislabeled, should say “With a shadow ability slotted.”)
Refreshing Shadows after using a shadow skill keeps stamina recharging. Magicka Flood gives 8% more magicka.
Master Assassin gives weapon damage, and stun, which makes the Teleport Strike/Ambush backstab stun more effective.
Pressure points gives 3% spell and weapon crit per assassin skill slotted.
Hemorage requires one assassin skill on the bar to get 10% bonus crit damage.
Executioner is what makes Assassin’s Blade the finisher of choice.
Your class passives do not allow as much flexibility in your build. For maximum advantage, you need one active skill of each tree on your bar.
The only exception is catalyst. So potions are a must have (you should have them anyway, potions can do amazing things to your burst and/or survivability.) I recommend even going as far as leveling alchemy just for the medicinal use passive.
For armor passives, take all the light armor and the medium armor passives except the attack speed.
Assassinations
While in stealth get to the target’s back arc --> Ambush --> Veiled Strike --> Assassin’s Blade. Use Cloak to get position if needed. Even veteran Leather and Cloth armor targets will drop from this combo while remaining stun-locked. Pick your target; if you try to burst down a tank, you will be disappointed.
If the target uses their cc break, they will lock in the "hulk" animation for a second, long enough to get the veiled strike in, and only a teleport skill will get them out of Assassin's Blade range. If you experience trouble here, Impale morph might be a better choice over Killer's Blade. You can also burst a target down, then cloak and re-assess or use an escape.
At 81 spell power I push over 2200 damage in a burst combo without a light attack woven in. With food, better enchants and/or potions this number is much higher.
The concept here is that on my chosen target, my Teleport Strike/Ambush and Veiled Strike combo must bring the target down to where the base damage of Assassin's Blade drops the target under 20% health.
Assassin’s Blade is your execute skill. This is one of your class defining skills. It is cheap, and low damage, until the target falls under the magical 20% health mark, then it is just cheap. If the basic damage of this skill drops a target below that 20% threshold, the bonus damage kicks in for an additional 300% damage.
Morphed to Impale, this skill reaches 15 meters.
Morphed to Killer’s Blade, this skill gives a heal over time on a kill.
With the Executioner passive, you get a magicka over time when the target is killed by an assassination skill. Always use this skill to finish targets when possible.
Escaping
Cripple and path of darkness are the two obvious escapes for the speed boost and combo with sprint for more run speed.
Cloaking can avoid targeted attacks, but if you are low on magicka, cloak will be limited.
You can use a Summon Shade: Shadow Image to juke with ranged weapon equipped by dropping the shadow while running in one direction, then teleporting to the shadow and running in another direction.
Options, Tricks and Tips
You can burst a target and run out on a path of darkness, sprinting on a path of darkness when you need extra speed.
Burst combo --> Soul Shred: Soul Tether and drop the non-tethered victim.
Train up syphoning strikes and aspect of terror for situational use and swap them in for long fights or when extra crowd control is needed.
Agony is good if you don’t have AoE happy friends, and won't miss opening from stealth.
Blur is good for extended fights (cloth/leather=squishy) so you don’t overtax the healer in a group. Use blur over evasion for the assassin passives, otherwise, evasion may be better.
As an example, swap out destructive touch for blur so you get the extra 10% crit damage and 3% crit rate just for having an assassination skill slotted on the second bar if you’re on a single target boss fight, need range, and the boss is immune knockback.
Mark Target is also a good choice if you know the boss is not going to hit you.
Shadow Cloak --> Veiled Strike sets up for a knockdown.
Necrotic orb looks like a great group sustainability boost, and at undaunted 5, it will be some time before I get to it.
Blood Alter is great for helping with group heals as a fire and forget skill, I just need a sixth skill slot for it.
Mage Light: Inner Light another skill for that elusive sixth skill slot, as critting on Strife: Swallow Soul is yummy (pun intended.)
Evasion is a stamina version of blur that doesn’t open assassination passives, but can morph to give snare escapes or additional dodge.
Annulment grants a damage bubble that morphs to return magicka when hit by a spell or mitigate more damage.
If you get to where you are using orange enchants, spell damage may be a superior choice over the warlock jewelry set on sheer burst potential. The warlock 3 piece set is currently the best choice for magicka based sustain.
Final Thoughts
One of the Nightblades strengths is the crowd control options we bring to a group, this isn't to say others do not have cc abilities, look at the Sorcerer, for example. In addition, we can be slippery through creative employment of our cloak and movement skills.
Nightblades have some of the best from stealth tool sets. The burst combo above wrecks from stealth. We have longer stuns from stealth. We are the only class with invisibility, thus can bypass hard or annoying trash fights. Upon exiting stealth/invisibility we have a passive that ups armor and spell resist.
Nightblades have the highest damage execute with the 300% additional bonus, most others have up to 150% bonus damage. Sorcerers have fury and disintegrate, dual wield has whirlwind and slaughter, two handed has reverse slash, and bow has poison injection. When a target drops below the magical 20% health, execute skill spam, combine with regen/power/crit potion for best results.
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