Nightblade skill questions...

milocricket

I have several questions about the Nightblade's skills.
1: Do the siphoning skills count as spells? I.E. would they benefit from champion points dedicated to spell penetration?
2: Do the assasination skills benefit from weapon damage? Would a weaker or stronger weapon affect the damage of the assasination skills?
3: What is the best weapon type/s for a nightblade?

LegacyDM

milocricket wrote: »

I have several questions about the Nightblade's skills.
1: Do the siphoning skills count as spells? I.E. would they benefit from champion points dedicated to spell penetration?
2: Do the assasination skills benefit from weapon damage? Would a weaker or stronger weapon affect the damage of the assasination skills?
3: What is the best weapon type/s for a nightblade?

1. Yes unless you take the stamina morph version e.g. Power extraction. That will convert to weapon damage. Yes they work with spell penetration if you use the magicka versions. Otherwise stamina version scale off physical penetration.

2. Only the stamina morph versions benefit from weapon damage. E.g., killers blade, ambush. Stronger weapons will affect the damage dealt. Dual wield swords will increase the damage of spell skills do to the blunt force passive.

3. For stamina based it is either Dual wield swords, dual wield maces (physical penetration) bows, or maelstrom two handed ax for bleed damage. It all depends on your play style. For magicka either dual wield swords/resto, destro/resto, or rest/resto. Again depends on play style.

exeeter702

milocricket wrote: »

I have several questions about the Nightblade's skills.
1: Do the siphoning skills count as spells? I.E. would they benefit from champion points dedicated to spell penetration?
2: Do the assasination skills benefit from weapon damage? Would a weaker or stronger weapon affect the damage of the assasination skills?
3: What is the best weapon type/s for a nightblade?

It appears you are still learning the nuance to class design in this game. Let me provide some info for you.

By default most (if not all) class skills pre morphed are considered magic spells, therefore there effectiveness scales directly with the magicka stat. When morphed, a select few class skills in the game have the option to change there properties or functionality and scale off of stamina instead.

An easy way to confirm this with the recent addition to the ui in the dark brotherhood update is to simply look at the resource cost in the skills tool tip, if the number is green, it is a stamina skill and blue it is a magicka skill.

All of NBS skills are magicka based before morphed and are considered spells and thus benefit from spell damage modifiers and max magicka pools.

For the exception of destro and resto staff skill lines (will scale off of magicka) all weapon skill lines scale off of stamina. Therefore it will be hard to really tell you what weapon is best suited for a nightblade as a) you have to figure out what kind of build you are making, either stam or mag and b) the entire weapon skill arsenal in game is great for every class in game, the choice here is not nearly as rigid as in other mmos.

If you want to be magicka based, meaning you will focus more or the nb class skills thst focus on stealing life, or dealing damage and healing at the same time, a bit of ranged caster play, or even some melee options like concealed weapon, lotus fan etc etc. You will likely want to focus on leveling destro and resto staff and dual wield (more for in the future on that).

If you want to use your class skills primary as utility spells, ie magicka pool being used to give you your evasion buff, mark the target, situational cloak, or any other buffs and focus your damage on the select few stamina morphs that an nb has in (suprised attack, ambush, killers blade etc etc) in conjuction with weapon skills, you will likely want to level dual wield and or 2h. With a passive effort on getting bow up eventually.


My 2 cents.

Acsvf

As a rule of thumb, if something costs magicka, it scales off magicka, if something costs stamina, it scales off stamina. There are many exceptions but for general play it suffices.

Cody

1. yes
2. if you pick stamina morphs, yes; if not, no. All class based abilities begin as mana based; some, such as assassin's blade, have stamina morphs. If you pick the stamina morph, it will scale off of weapon damage. Otherwise it will scale off of spell damage
3. Whatever you want to use. The NB can do all roles realitively well; though 2H stamblades can be a bit powerful