Nightblade advice sought... please?

LadyLethalla

Any advice welcomed...


Am running a Redguard Nightblade, v2 on EU server(PS4), where there are far fewer players around on my timezone than on the NA server. I gave this character up for this reason mainly, and because my stats were so low that every battle with more than two enemies would end up with me dead. (And, well, because of Fallout 4.)

So, a bit of background: this is my first character, which I have returned to after getting my NA Khajiit DK up to v5. I had "help" on that one, so had a full set of Hundings (including weapons) and 3 pc Night Mothers (with most attribute points into Stamina) and I know my weapon crit was quite high (up to about 47% I think, by the time I left that character).

Now, I've respecced my attribute points for this character almost entirely into Stamina, and reset my Skill points as well so have put some into passives mainly involving Stamina, in order to buff that Weapon Crit (and presumably, WD as well. Haven't paid that nearly as much attention). I don't have many CP yet so may just leave those as is. But, I'm still finding battles tough. (I'm in the 2nd Cadwell's Silver zone.) I found a trader selling Hunding's pieces yesterday but all the respec costs mean I don't have enough gold to get a full set - and my crafting skills are well short of being able to make either Hundings or Night Mothers for myself.

Now, I'm not a pro player - I want to finish Cadwell's Gold and then I'm probably calling it quits - and PvP scares me lol. Even group dungeons scare me right now tbh and public dungeons/group bosses... well, I could solo most of them on my Khajiit (who benefitted by 2-3 vet levels from the Jubilee Cake) but wouldn't try on my NB as is.

So, what's the best way to make fighting a bit easier, given a lot of it will be solo? Should I try levelling up on daily Cyrodiil and maybe Wrothgar quests, using Psijiic or Crown XP scrolls? Should I just quest and try to get enough gold to buy a complete Hundings etc?


Thanks.

cjhhickman39

First ? what weapons are you using ? What skills did you slot ? Can you use the Mage and fighters guild skill trees ? Range or meelie? In your face or stealth? There are many ways to play it but you should do it the way that's fun for you. I use bow/DW start at range hit with the poison morph of snipe then bombard to freeze them change to meelie ambush in group steel tornado single cloak then surprise attack finish with killer blade. Werewolf on meelie flawless dawn breaker on bow bars for ulitamite.

LadyLethalla

I run melee. Stealth occasionally but mostly in your face. Sword Saint's (purple) greatsword is my primary weapon and Eagle's Longbanner bow as secondary, though I haven't used that much at all (haven't put any abilities on 2nd bar yet).

Slotted: Soul Harvest Ult, Mark Target, Impale, Veiled Strike and Uppercut (two handed). Have mainly heavy but intending to switch to medium armour for the passives. Have Mages at 7 and Fighters at 9, with 3/3 on Slayer passive.

Sorry, should have included this in first post but wasn't online at the time.

Sunburnt_Penguin

Regarding CPs:
1. You really need to put at least 30 in to Ritual as soon as possible in order to get the 12% critical rating passive.
2. I've dumped my first 100 in to Mighty (green), Hardy & Elemental Defender split (red) and Mooncalf (blue). This probably isn't the most optimal at my current CP Rank (305) as I'd have likely benefitted more from not getting the 0.1% increase per point from Mighty and Mooncalf but putting say 10 points from there in to other ones like Thaum'ge & Precise Strikes and Warlord, Tumbling and Health.

Every other specific question kind of follows what the person above said, without more info it's difficult to offer specific advice.

A couple of additional things, though:
1. You should definitely try out PvP and group dungeons as they can be a lot of fun and add another dimension to the game (not sure if you've tried these on other characters, though). PvP can take some getting used to and getting over the whole dying aspect can be difficult (as it will happen a lot, even to the best players).
2. You could always grind/quest you Redguard up to v5 and then gear swap with your Khajit. It's a bit of hassle but it'll save you money in the short term.
3. Having two DPS stamina nightblades of different races will mean that they'll basically be playing the same, albeit with different racial passives. As you don't seem like a min/maxer and so racial passives offer benefit but won't make or break your build: have you considered changing one of them? E.g. Switching your
- Khajit to a DPS magicka as stealth radius & crit damage and crit % would benefit a magblade
- Redguard to a stamina tank or a magicka "sap" tank

LadyLethalla

I can't swap gear, sadly, as the characters are on different servers... and I tried the PvP with my RG but got killed a few times by a stealthed enemy player who was between me and my Alliance gate. But I did do a set of the Cyrodiil dailies on my Khajiit a couple times.

So far as a stamina tank is concerned I did read others' posts but didn't understand all that much; seemed to me they were pro players of a much higher v rank... so I'm uncertain about what to do there.


Oh and i have 6 points in the Ritual atm.

cjhhickman39

If not using your back bar you might make it your oh crap bar. Entropy from mages guild for a heal then morph to the buff for bonus health and magicak . Cloak for run and if needed at work so might name this wrong dark path it gives you bonus speed slows them and causes damage

cjhhickman39

Sorry late so I'm running off at the mouth you might want to look at fighters guild dawnbreaker I always slot it never use it when you can morph it to flawless just having it on your bar gives you 5% weapon damage and the ulitamite you use put on the oh crap bar recommend vail of blades

Sunburnt_Penguin

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't swap gear, sadly, as the characters are on different servers... and I tried the PvP with my RG but got killed a few times by a stealthed enemy player who was between me and my Alliance gate. But I did do a set of the Cyrodiil dailies on my Khajiit a couple times.

So far as a stamina tank is concerned I did read others' posts but didn't understand all that much; seemed to me they were pro players of a much higher v rank... so I'm uncertain about what to do there.


Oh and i have 6 points in the Ritual atm.

Ah yeah, I forgot you said about the different servers. If you wanted to try PvP again, select a campaign which is equally populated as they'll be less gate camping. Due to being low CPs you may want to try Azura as that is now CP-less. Unless you've changed since TGuild, you'll get a free campaign switch.

Have a look on Tamriel Foundry (link below) for builds. The builds are always fully explained, offer gear alternatives, combat rotations and skill explanations. Whilst they're not always quick to up date (so you may have to adjust a morph or two) it's probably the most in depth site I've found. If you did want to completely respec a character, I wouldn't worry so much about race but just select a build that sounds enjoyable to you. Generally speaking, benefits of racial passives can be offset in someway up to the point of when you're at v16 and looking at full optimisation.

For example.
If you wanted to make your RG in to a tank and they say to choose:
1. Nord (+max health and health regen)
2. 4x health and 4x stamina enchants
3. Purple food (+max all)

You could:
1. RG (+max stamina + stamina regen)
2. 8x health enchants
3. Blue food (+max health and magicka or +health and health regen)

Obviously I'm not saying you should make your RG in to a tank - as that decision is entirely yours - I'm just showing how the use of gear can largely offset the racial passives. Even if you didn't try and offset them, the performance loss would be minimal and you probably wouldn't notice it at all.

http://tamrielfoundry.com/forum/classes/nightblade-class/

LadyLethalla

Oh thanks for that link, Sunburnt_Penguin; didn't know that site existed. Will have to study it in some depth.

I'd probably join Haderus since it seems fairly empty, just to do dailies.


My current stats are (just for interest's sake):
(All 50 pts in Stamina)
Mag 8281
Health 12691
Stam 15589
SD 1024
SC 22%
SR 10449
CR 626
MR 609
HR 667
SR 643
WD 1156
WC 38%
PR 10134.

CR is currently 37.

Reorx_Holybeard

Two general things to help survival when soloing is:

1. Don't get hit
2. Self-healing

For #1 you can use the Bombard morph of Arrow Spray with your bow to immobilize all normal mobs (and even a few boss mobs) for a few seconds. Either just spam Bombard until everything is dead or alternate with Light/Heavy Attacks.

For #2 you can use the 2-handed skill Rally morph of Momentum. This gives you both a self-heal and a weapon damage buff for 30 seconds.

A few other general things:

• Are you using food? Try to craft/buy purple food to boost your stats.
• Use dropped potions to help you in battle or spend a little to make/buy better crafted potions. Use Health potions if you need a quick heal, or Stamina potions to help finish off a mob.
• Your Stamina skill seems low. Make sure your equipment is using Stamina enchantments. This will boost your damage and let you cast things more times.
• Are you using a Mundus stone? If not I would suggest The Thief for more critical chance.

emily3989

I honestly don't see how you can't be face-rolling 6 mobs at a time, unless you put absolutely everything into stamina (points/food/etc) and are running around with like 10k health or something.

One big mistake people make is that they go forums or search for builds on youtube and mimic the meta builds for stamina dps - which are great with a group and a healer, but for soloing, you have to take care of yourself with at least some survivability and some health.

A few tips:


1. As a NB you have to integrate the class self healing into your rotations, mainly reapers mark and killer's blade do a whole lot for survivability.
2. Don't ignore health completely for dps numbers - you can't do any damage if your dead. For soloing cadwells, if you get over 15k hp you really should be fine.
3. Might want to consider a ranged skill bar for end of quest/world bosses. Some can be hard to swap blows with face-to-face. Either that or pick up werewolf, with my stamina toon, I smoke every boss in werewolf form.
4. Just my advice, half the fun of a game like this is testing stuff out.
5.

And block!!! Depends on your ui, I get a big green notice saying when to block. If not, watch the enemy animations, effective blocking can be the difference between a close fight and a stupid easy fight.

Stannum

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I run melee. Stealth occasionally but mostly in your face. Sword Saint's (purple) greatsword is my primary weapon and Eagle's Longbanner bow as secondary, though I haven't used that much at all (haven't put any abilities on 2nd bar yet).

Slotted: Soul Harvest Ult, Mark Target, Impale, Veiled Strike and Uppercut (two handed). Have mainly heavy but intending to switch to medium armour for the passives. Have Mages at 7 and Fighters at 9, with 3/3 on Slayer passive.

Sorry, should have included this in first post but wasn't online at the time.

If you go stamina you should use stamina morphs of attacking skills. So impale is wrong morph (you need killers blade), veiled strike should be morphed to surprise attack. You also need rally for surviving and dmg buff(on v2 you should have this skill open).
Now your main problem is that you have low dps (cause of use heavy armor, magika skills and no weapon buffs) and no self healing. So use at least 5 med (that gives you weapon dmg, crit and stamina regen), enchant armor on stamina. If you respec skills you re using Mark Target for reapers mark, Impale for killers blade, Veiled Strike for surprise, Uppercut (better use WB morph) and add Rally skill too bar your life will be much easier

Van_0S

LadyLethalla wrote: »

Any advice welcomed...


Am running a Redguard Nightblade, v2 on EU server(PS4), where there are far fewer players around on my timezone than on the NA server. I gave this character up for this reason mainly, and because my stats were so low that every battle with more than two enemies would end up with me dead. (And, well, because of Fallout 4.)

So, a bit of background: this is my first character, which I have returned to after getting my NA Khajiit DK up to v5. I had "help" on that one, so had a full set of Hundings (including weapons) and 3 pc Night Mothers (with most attribute points into Stamina) and I know my weapon crit was quite high (up to about 47% I think, by the time I left that character).

Now, I've respecced my attribute points for this character almost entirely into Stamina, and reset my Skill points as well so have put some into passives mainly involving Stamina, in order to buff that Weapon Crit (and presumably, WD as well. Haven't paid that nearly as much attention). I don't have many CP yet so may just leave those as is. But, I'm still finding battles tough. (I'm in the 2nd Cadwell's Silver zone.) I found a trader selling Hunding's pieces yesterday but all the respec costs mean I don't have enough gold to get a full set - and my crafting skills are well short of being able to make either Hundings or Night Mothers for myself.

Now, I'm not a pro player - I want to finish Cadwell's Gold and then I'm probably calling it quits - and PvP scares me lol. Even group dungeons scare me right now tbh and public dungeons/group bosses... well, I could solo most of them on my Khajiit (who benefitted by 2-3 vet levels from the Jubilee Cake) but wouldn't try on my NB as is.

So, what's the best way to make fighting a bit easier, given a lot of it will be solo? Should I try levelling up on daily Cyrodiil and maybe Wrothgar quests, using Psijiic or Crown XP scrolls? Should I just quest and try to get enough gold to buy a complete Hundings etc?


Thanks.

Try getting marksman set in cyrodiil, its a fusion of hunding rage and night mother set.
Use 2H maces/sword and Bow ( if your using marksman set, otherwise DW) and go all medium

Rings - agility rings or sustain go for endurance rings

Weapon glyps- poison

Armor trait- Divines
Weapon trait- nirnhorned/ sharpened.

emily3989

This is all great, but this guy is having trouble soloing the main over-world stuff, so I would keep it simple at first, then maybe tweak out some other stuff later.

I must have missed some info, but if you are not running at least 5 medium with all medium passives...that is the first thing you need to fix.

Second, if you run 2hd with [ rally, ambush, wrecking blow, killer's blade, evil hunter/reapers mark], Veil of Blades or flawless dawnbreaker, I have no idea why stuff is not dying before it even knows you are there.

For over-word, if this is all you do, you really should be fine, then make improvements off of this, like sets, glyphs, second bar, etc..

Hope this helps to get moving in the right direction.

LadyLethalla

Thanks for all the advice, everyone! A lot to think about, and a lot of upskilling required as some of those mentioned I have never used or else haven't used enough to morph. Plus I need to get my apparel, glyph and weapon crafting up too. (Am already a Master Provisioner.)

Draganta

In no way am I a pro player, but I have improved my NB a lot thanks to advice from here. I am running a VR5 magicka based destruction staff NB with light armor (and 1 heavy), and I must say, it works wonders if you stay close to the healer at all times. This makes me ranged, so I have less chance being hit, and if you have a good healer, nothing will happen to you.

I have 53% spell crit, only use 1 destruction staff ability, rest is siphoning and assassin. Most of those skills cost mana and are ranged, so they work perfectly with destruction staff builds. If you ever get bored of melee style NB, I suggest you to try out this "blood mage/warlock" style NB.

emily3989

Magicka NB is just sick, but stamina, at least to me, is a whole lot more in-your-face fun, if that is what you are looking for.

LadyLethalla

Just thought I'd post a quick update:

Got a full set of Hundings med armour, with Health glyphs. Put Rally (and something else I can't remember right now) on my bar and my goodness... my actual stats are a bit worse for the most part but the Health Recovery has made SO much difference. I dreaded taking on a v2 Harvester before the servers offlined but didn't come even close to dying


So thanks again for the advice.