A bit confused about Nightblade

Tabbycat

Currently I'm running around playing with my (level 8) Khajiit thief. I find myself using a mix of medium and light armor (mostly medium), duel wielding swords but using mostly magicka based skills. I really am not sure if I'm supposed to invest more in the magicka side or the stamina side as it seems to me that I am getting the most out of a mixture of the two. Is this even sustainable? At one point will I be forced to choose between stamina and magicka skills or can I continue to run around as a mixture of the two?

Mainly I play solo pve but I would like to at least be useful to my group when I do need to group.

Any recommendations?

Jitterbug

You have to choose to go magicka or stamina and use your primary pool for attacks and the other for utility.
It's up to you.

McSwaggins

Choose between magicka or stamina. As a stamblade, you will still use a few magicka abilities for buffs and what not, but if you go magicka, you want to use all magicka abilities and save your stamina for CC breaks and dodge rolls.

SirAndy

I just switched my NB (VR13) from stamina and medium armor (7 medium) to magicka and light armor (5 light, 2 heavy).

I did it mainly just to level the destro and resto staff skill lines but to my surprise it turns out that the sustain is actually quite a bit higher this way.
That's with all points in magicka and max. magicka enchants on the gear.

I normally open with my 2H bar, buffs and gap closer, then switch to the staff bar. There's usually plenty of stamina left for block/dodge etc. and i can even switch back to 2H if i run out of magicka during a boss fight and let the pool replenish.

Tabbycat

Thank you for the replies. I think I will need to invest points in a few more skills.

Cody

Depends. What abilities do you use the most? What do they cost?

Once you get to about level 15-20ish, ask yourself this question again; you will have your answer.

Nestor

One thing to remember, most of your damage comes from skills, weapon attacks are just there to weave in between skill attacks. You do get some damage from the weapons but more from skills. Of course you can create a build that does have high weapon damage, your still going to get most of the damage from skills in a fight.

Also, while any class benefits from being mobile, agile and hostile, a NB is really about setting up for a powerful opener from stealth then movement and attacks. Use crowd control skills to help with moving around and attacking.

Tabbycat

Right now, mostly what I'm enjoying is leaping out of the shadows and stunning my enemy and then stabbing them to death while I feast on their life essence (siphon health abilities).

If this wasn't a video game, that would sound so psychopathic killer.

Speely

Yeah unfortunately picking one resource to focus on is more effective. For your purposes (stabbing faces from the shadows and leeching life) either resource will serve you well. However, Magicka will likely provide you more overall utility in a greater number of situations and increase the amount of leeching, invisibility, and CC you can do. Magicka-based NBs are remarkably versatile. And with Siphoning Attacks, you can still enjoy a nice amount of Stamina return even if your pool is smaller. What I like about them is that their class skills still let them get very stabby even when using magicka-based attacks. Still feels like a melee toon. My opinion is that Magcika NBs are probably the most adaptable build type and thus great for someone exploring the mechanics of the game.

Tabbycat

Speely wrote: »

Yeah unfortunately picking one resource to focus on is more effective. For your purposes (stabbing faces from the shadows and leeching life) either resource will serve you well. However, Magicka will likely provide you more overall utility in a greater number of situations and increase the amount of leeching, invisibility, and CC you can do. Magicka-based NBs are remarkably versatile. And with Siphoning Attacks, you can still enjoy a nice amount of Stamina return even if your pool is smaller. What I like about them is that their class skills still let them get very stabby even when using magicka-based attacks. Still feels like a melee toon. My opinion is that Magcika NBs are probably the most adaptable build type and thus great for someone exploring the mechanics of the game.

Does that mean I'd have to give up my leather and run around in full light armor? Or can I mix a few pieces of cloth in with mostly leather or the other way around?

ScruffyWhiskers

Make sure you look at the 5 piece bonus passives for light and medium armor. If you are going Magicka, I would strongly recommend that you run 5 light to get the 5 piece bonuses. If you have the Undaunted passive for stat increases per different armor type then you should go 5 light, 1 medium and 1 heavy. Go heavy on the chest plate and medium on the legs. If not then it's a good long term goal to have so start doing the dailies.

Speely

Tabbycat wrote: »

Speely wrote: »

Yeah unfortunately picking one resource to focus on is more effective. For your purposes (stabbing faces from the shadows and leeching life) either resource will serve you well. However, Magicka will likely provide you more overall utility in a greater number of situations and increase the amount of leeching, invisibility, and CC you can do. Magicka-based NBs are remarkably versatile. And with Siphoning Attacks, you can still enjoy a nice amount of Stamina return even if your pool is smaller. What I like about them is that their class skills still let them get very stabby even when using magicka-based attacks. Still feels like a melee toon. My opinion is that Magcika NBs are probably the most adaptable build type and thus great for someone exploring the mechanics of the game.

Does that mean I'd have to give up my leather and run around in full light armor? Or can I mix a few pieces of cloth in with mostly leather or the other way around?

It does mean that. Once you open up the Light Armor 5-piece set bonus it will be very beneficial to wear 5 Light. Before then, mix and match as you like, preferably with pieces with the Training trait. It's generally advised to level all three armor types, both for the ability to change up your build/role later and to anticipate any future changes in the way armor functions (ZOS has done this before already.) That said, going Stamina is certainly viable and you will likely enjoy a greater damage output, so consider that as an alternative. Stamina regen is just fundamentally a bit more problematic now than is Magicka regen due to Dodge Roll costs and the lack of regen when blocking. If you find yourself not using these things regularly, you might prefer the superior pure damage options that Stamina and Med Armor offers. I prefer versatility to raw numbers, but that is just my play style.

Tabbycat

So now that we've determined I should go mostly light with magicka for my current playstyle, if I don't want to be a glass cannon, will putting points in health be offset by set bonuses and enchants? I don't really want to do the glass cannon thing if I can avoid it. I'd like my character to be at least a bit durable because I am not the best at moving around. I'm also not big into pvp so I'd say 99.99% of my time will be spent in pve.

Speely

Tabbycat wrote: »

So now that we've determined I should go mostly light with magicka for my current playstyle, if I don't want to be a glass cannon, will putting points in health be offset by set bonuses and enchants? I don't really want to do the glass cannon thing if I can avoid it. I'd like my character to be at least a bit durable because I am not the best at moving around. I'm also not big into pvp so I'd say 99.99% of my time will be spent in pve.

Yeah defninitely don't ignore Health unless you are trying to be a pure dedicated group DPS/Healer. I have found that investing about 1/3 of your stat points into Health is a good amount for survivability and still leaves your Magicka total high enough to be potent. If you split your armor enchants about the same (say, 4 Magicka, 3 Health) you should be golden. You will have good healing options, especially if you level Resto Staff for a back-up (which you should imo,) and combined with serviceable Health that means that very few threats in your level range will be able to kill you before you can react and mitigate, even in 5 Light. Rememver that every time you use a Shadow skill you get a big armor boost... NBs have the best mitigation in the game when it comes to not having to slot a dedicated ability to get it.

Once you are all leveled up and have an idea of what you want to do endgame, you can always change it up. But for leveling (specifically solo) I find that 1/3 Health and 2/3 Magicka is a sweet spot.

Tabbycat

Thank you to all of you for the help. I feel more sure about what I'm doing now.

ScruffyWhiskers

When you get to a higher level you can use something like kag's hope to give you both some spell power with the 5 piece bonus and a nice health stat boost. Also, when you go to buy willpower jewelry you can pick up some rings with the healthy trait for pretty cheap and that will give you a nice health boost. But remember it's a trade off. Using the gear though to change your health is a lot easier than having to go respec your attributes at the shrine.

I don't play a tanky nb but there are a lot of good ones out there. You should check out Sunshine/Early Bright's build video here

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/223390/sunshines-early-bright-magicka-nightblade-build-blood-flow#latest

TheNephilimCrow

I've been experimenting lately, as I want to unlock every skill and morph for all the weapons/armor, class and guild skills just to build the perfect Nightblade for PvE and PvP. I planned on putting up my final build after I have fully unlocked everything I can for that class.

Currently I'm running Magicka as my primary and using Destruction Staff/Healling Staff combo. Since the class truly does not have much in the lines of self-heals, the Healing Staff (Resto Staff) gives you enough healing to keep your Health up and some morphs offer additional buffs or Damage Shields with healing aspects to them. Really bumps up the survivability in PvE.

With Destruction staff, I've maxed out everything and current use the Reach morph and Pulser in combination with Harness Magicka, Inner Light and Impale for an execution. It works really well in PvP, because most enemies are not immune to Pulser's effect. Which is to lower the enemies overall health bar when damaged by Pulser. I sometimes switch out Harness Magicka for Debilitate because it gives back extra magicka when the target dies and boosts movement speed.


Though, since your character is a Thief, you may want to primarily go Stamina based and used Duel Wielding. If your goal is just PvE at the moment, unlock Steel Tornado (Whirlwind Morph) Relentless Focus, which gives you stam regina and weapon damage, Mirage (Blur Morph) which gives you Physical and Spell resistance on top of 20% dodge rate. and Quick Cloak (Blade Cloak more) Which increases your resistance and movement speed. You'll find that the little Magicka skills you use will be fine with the pool you have. You won't need to put anything into Magicka, because it is primarily just buffs that have 15-30 duration.

Even with my StamBuild I have Dark Cloak and can use it enough to bypass NPCs if I don't feel like grinding through them or if I don't have time to fight everything.


Edit: I should probably mention that even when putting nothing in Magicka, Dark Cloak gets roughly 4-5 uses before you have to sit in sneak mode and wait for the magicka to return. So if you are trying to skip through an entire dungeon, it may take a while. There is no Permastealth in this game.