New player: is stamina viable?

Lumenn

Brand new player here and of course reading as much (recent) info as I can. Want to give the stamina nb a shot as my favorite toon from EQ was a monk(can solo, stealth, and dps) but everything I'm reading so far almost says be magicka unless you have 8000 cp and then still be magicka. More specifically magicka templar. My question is if a stamina nb is viable for a new player(I actually want to USE my weapons. Dw and bow. Mostly solo, pve? I plan on taking my time and learning the game.
Hopefully asked this in the right forum.

Volkodav

I love my Stamina NBs! I get great gameplay with them. They were so easy to get into the vet levels.I tried magicka but didnt work well for me.
I have no problem running dungeons or delves alone,and the one I was just playing tonight was only level 18. I ran through Toothmaul Gully,Mehrune's Spite,and Soulfire Plateau with ease.
Everyone can have their magicka builds.I'll stick to my Stamblades.

Nestor

It all depends on what your doing. PvP and Trials are special cases, and even then most things can be made to work. Magic NB has the edge in that content, but it really comes down to the player and what they can do with it.

For PvE content, a Stamina NB is a great way to go, but then so is Magic NB. Since you can respec and change from one to the other, try both. Just make sure you get your skills to the Morph stage so you can easily pick the morphs for either Stamina or Magic. Then you just need to select the right gear for each (Hundings Rage or Julianos for instance)

Sunburnt_Penguin

Yes a StamNB is great. DW/Bow & 2H are usually the preferred setups because 2H grants increased damage (Major Brutality) and a heal over time from one ability, the morphs of Momentum.

Whilst Major Brutality can be gained from a DW ability, the morphs of Hidden Blade, the only other constant stamina heal is obtained from gaining Alliance Points (AP) within PvP, the morphs of Vigor. So really you're going to need to choose between 2H or PvPing enough obtain Vigor.

Lumenn

Well, I'm not OPPOSED to PvP entirely, just don't know much about it in this game. My only experience was EQ and at the time it was rife with group ganking and corpse camping toons that had nothing better to do than sit on your corpse(seeing this game is better) so I may try it.

failkiwib16_ESO

Nightblade with Dual Wield and Bow is good for solo questing and pvp, but it is not optimal for group pve.

For the sake of your own future, I advice you to level up 2-handed alongside Dual Wield and Bow. You don't have to do it in the beginning though you can go with whatever weapon you like, and at level 15 you unlock the ability to weapon-swap, that means you can carry 2 sets of weapons.. allowing you to have a bar, where you level up skills and weapon type, and the other bar for actual playing.

2-handed weapon gives much higher damage against single targets, so it's the preferred stamina weapon to use during bossfights in group dungeons.

Madness1

Yes, a stamina nightblade is very viable and worth playing. My main is a nightblade and I keep switching between stam and mag as both are great and my thoughts on both keep changing. Right now it's a stamina nightblade and at vr10 I'm pulling 10-20k DPS, have 15000 health (not potions), and having decent resource sustain. My mag nightblade only got around 3-10k DPS, same health, but had much better resource management and never really needed to use potions (excluding PVP) whenever using that build even before I became veteran.

It's also worth noting that stamina builds on all classes are supposedly getting buffed with the DB update. Even if people are saying mag is better now it may not last as their thoughts on the matter could be switched soon.

Cuyler

Stamina is getting a big buff next patch and Stam NB will be competitive in endgame PvE again. I say go for it! min/max as say a pure stamina race like redguard, khajiit or bosmer.

If you're worried about the meta changing you can always go for Dunmer as a race, which gets a passive bonus to both max Magic and max Stamina.

Lumenn

Thanks for the tips. So far I'm trying out imperial(stamina and that 10% chance on healing) if I decide to go magicka later I'll probably create a new toon. I tend to be a completionist so I'll probably be hitting all the quests first time around that I find. I'm glad to see some saying stamina is good though. Seems every post going back a year says magicka. Thanks again guys.

failkiwib16_ESO

Stamina builds have always been viable in group-pve, but it requires a little more effort to pull off as good as magicka builds.

This game is heavily biased toward magicka builds and all class skills used to be magicka based ...but now we have 3-4 class skills that scale off of stamina, and a stamina based healing skill + with Dark Brotherhood DLC they will change some stamina skills to provide more utility. The game is improving on this regard