Stamina night blade help

iord_stryker

I'm planning on starting a nightblade and use bows and dual wielding. My problem is all the racial abilities are powered by magicka.
Is there a way around that? Is there a sweet spot with splitting attributes that won't leave either short while enabling high dps?

Reeko

Please see this thread: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/204526/need-a-stamina-bow-and-dual-wield-high-dps-crit-build-for-nightblade-ps4#latest

WyldfireWyrm

First off, there are no racial abilities. There are racial passives and each race's passives support 1-2 resources. So I'm not entirely sure what you mean. I'm going to assume you mean class abilities.

All class abilities start off as magicka. Some have stamina morphs. Stamina builds are more about weapon skills than class skills, IMO. Magicka based class skills are used for utility, such as damage mitigation, shields, buffs, etc, in stamina builds while weapon skills and stamina morphed class skills do the damage.

Sorcerer has 1 arguably pointless stamina morph and is the worst class to base a stamina build off of.

Dragonknights are a decent class to choose for a stamina build. They only have 2 stamina morphs, but they have great magicka utility skills.

Templar and Nightblade are the two best stamina classes right now.

Templar has several stamina morphs and some great class utility.

Nightblade has the most stamina morphs and are all about bursting down single targets. They have good utility, though IMO DK and Temp have better utility for survivability.

As for attributes, is okay to split them evenly for the first 30-40 levels, but you'll be feeling pretty lackluster in the DPS department by level 40 and will need to focus on one over the others to be competitive.

gamsir

Yes while lvl up the first maybe 15 lvl, distribute approx 5 points into each attribute. No matter how you choose to play later this will serve as a good base template.

As wyldfire wyrm writes, most burst-damage focused NB skills are morphed into stamina skills.

That said, 4-5 points in magika is still good later on, giving the magika for an extra invisibility spell faster.

I've put my skills (mag/health/stam) 5/23/23. This adds some survivability (I use 5 medium and two heavy armor), and sufficient stamina + a magika reserve buffer.
Going stamina only doesn't increase damage signifikantly, and will make you more squishy as a NB.

I do run out of stamina in prolonged or boss fights, but a couple of heavy attacks gives 1/2 - 2/3 full stamina in a couple of seconds with the right passives.
As an added bonus hitting with normal/heavy attacks does significantly increase ultima, keeping your ultimate up more often, making soul tether a good option.
In general it's easy to get very skill focused when fighting, don't underestimate basic combat skills like dodging, blocking and regular non-skill attacks.

Doing a magika build NB is a good choice too, but the experience is totally different than the normal melee fighter. The siphoning skill line is actually pretty great and have a good impact on enemies, making you feel powerfull, but dps on a single opponent is lower than a melee stamina build. So it's a trade off. Magika builds are pretty fun to mess around with, but they are more viable late game, because you'll get better results with the right passives.

Sandshark95

I have a VR 2 Wood Elf Stamina NB that uses Bow/DW. I run 5 pieces of medium armor and 2 heavy.

At first, it may appear that your class abilities (I assume this is what you meant by racial; there's no such thing as racial abilities, just passives) cater to a magicka build. However, once you level up those abilities, you can morph a fair number of them to use and scale with stamina instead of magicka. Here's a link to all of the Nightblade abilities and their morphs so you can see which ones have available stamina morphs:

http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Nightblade

As for your attribute points, if you're going for a stamina DPS build, I'd highly advise against putting any points into magicka. As a stamina NB, you want to stack as much stamina as possible to maximize your damage potential. Going stamina will also benefit your weapon damage and weapon ability damage. If necessary, you can drop a few points into health (maybe 10-15 points, or so) for survivability. I currently have 10 in health and the rest in stamina, and have had little trouble progressing through the game thus far; though I might be a little squishy, I can usually kill stuff quickly enough to compensate. I've yet to find myself in a situation where I wished I had more magicka.

Ability-wise, a few I'd recommend picking up and toying around with:

NB skills
--Killer's Blade (morph of Assassin's Blade): decent skill for your close-range bar, morph scales with stamina, a self-heal
--Ambush (morph of Teleport Strike): excellent gap-closer, morph scales with stamina, nice stun on most enemies
--Reaping Mark (morph of Mark Target): enemy armor debuff, amazing self-heal upon kill, a must-have on your bow bar IMO (unless you're in a group where someone else is using an ability that inflicts Major Fracture because the effects won't stack)
--Relentless Focus (morph of Grim Focus): gives Minor Berserk (increases damage), morph gives stamina regen
--Shadow Cloak (either morph): great escape ability, I prefer Shadowy Disguise morph for guaranteed critical hit
--Surprise Attack (morph of Veiled Strike): enemy armor debuff, morph scales with stamina, perfect for your DW bar in place of Reaping Mark (as both abilities inflict Major Fracture and will cancel each other)
--Funnel Health (morph of Strife): lack-luster magicka-based self-heal for a stamina build but really the only self-heal available to you for some time, I prefer the Funnel morph (even for soloing) for the utility of being able to heal allies slightly and because I'm not impressed with the other morph
--Power Extraction (morph of Drain Power): grants Major Brutality (increases weapon damage), morph scales with stamina, other morph is still an option

Bow skills (all of them are actually really good and worth trying out)
--Poison Injection (morph of Poison Arrow): great DPS skill, other morph is still a very tempting option for the ranged interrupt
--Volley (either morph): situational skill, AoE, one morph adds fire damage while the other increases radius, not my favorite
--Magnum Shot (morph of Scatter Shot): great knock-back and stun, morph is great for managing distance from enemies
--Bombard (morph of Arrow Spray): one of my favorites, immobilizes enemies, definitely worth passing up Acid morph IMO
--Snipe (either morph): every archer's favorite skill, hard to choose between morphs but I personally prefer Lethal Arrow for the poison damage and for the fact that I have NB class abilities that can reduce enemy armor (and thus don't really need the other Snipe morph)

Dual Wield skills (meh, you'll probably want to use class abilities over most of the DW ones)
--Rapid Strikes (morph of Flurry): good damage skill, not much else to say
--Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind): a MUST have, godlike AoE, Tornado morph doubles the effective range

Hope that helps