Help with Black Dragon

briannewton_ESO

Hey all,

I'm working through the Dark Brotherhood questline, and having a really hard time with the Black Dragon boss in the Wrath of Sithis questline. I've been primarily a casual player that focuses mostly on story content, though I try to keep my gear up to date (mostly crafted) and aim for set bonuses, though I wouldn't consider myself "raid ready". Despite this, I've never had quest content destroy me like this. On my first set of attempts, I could not get her below perhaps 80-90% health before dying.

I did a bit of research on my build, and tried to do what I could to improve, despite the fact that I'm not going to grind maelstrom etc gear just to kill this boss. I don't even have 6 researched traits on most of my gear, so can't get Nightmother's Gaze etc. So here's what I'm dealing with:

I'm a Stamina Nightblade (~45 Champion points) with the following gear:

All medium armor (Just recrafted to 40 Champion point level, all Blue, a couple purples from Sithis gear), 2X daggers.
5X Sithis Gear
5X Night's Silence
Thief Mundus

Skills:

Surprise Attack
Rending Slash
Rapid Strikes
Killer's Blade
Ambush

Ult: Death Stroke

Here are my stats:

http://i.imgur.com/NB4rLVj.png

After updating all my equipment, getting my critical chance to 60%, and getting my health to above 20K with food, I can get her down to about 75% of max health. The fight literally lasts about 5-10 seconds before I'm dropped even after a potion.

Any thoughts? I'm really hoping the answer here isn't that I need to go grind gear for a while etc in order to kill this quest boss. =(

Thanks!

UrQuan

To be clear, is it the fight with her shadows that's giving you issues, or is it the fight where you're actually facing her after already defeating her shadows one by one?

I've heard from some people that there's a bug where she'll sometimes one-shot you regardless of how much health you've got, so maybe you're experiencing that. I haven't had an issue like that on the characters I've done that quest with, though, so I can't be sure.

Have you considered using Shadowy Disguise? Ambush from stealth, hit with Rending Slash and maybe Rapid Strikes, pop back into stealth using Shadowy Disguise, use Surprise Attack from stealth, and so on. The nice thing about Shadowy Disguise (well, one of the nice things about it) is that if the enemy is telegraphing an ability use or something when you use it, they'll stop, so it can be a great way to buy yourself a little time and get them to stop whatever they're doing (including healing - I don't remember if she heals herself or not).

Also, what do you have on your back bar? For my stamina nightblade I usually like to use a two-handed weapon on the back bar, and prepare for a fight by using Rally, Mark Target, and Grim Focus before I Ambush in to start the fight.

But of course, if you're getting one-shotted by a bug, none of that will help you.

briannewton_ESO

Thanks for the advice. I cross-posted on Reddit and got advice about needing a heal, which I think is definitely needed. I'm Dual Wield dagger on main bar and Bow on back bar, but honestly I pretty much completely ignore Bow. I like your idea of using Back Bar mostly for prep abilities, fits my playstyle, but I think it'd take me quite a while to build up 2H enough for this purpose alone.

Other thread recommended remorphing rapid strikes to Bloodthirst, which should at least give me a heal. I actually had shadowy disguise on my bar and swapped it out for Ambush. I really like your idea of using shadowy disguise for re-applying surprise attack, that's how I'd intended using it, but found against bosses etc they seemed to just ignore when I would re-stealth, but perhaps I'll give that a shot as well.

I could be getting one-shotted for all I know, but I do know that my health just melts away, so who knows.

UrQuan

I like two-handed as my back bar mostly because of Rally, because it's a great buff and self-heal, but if you don't have it leveled it will take a while to unlock that.

I find that whether or not Shadowy Disguise works on a boss can depend on timing - sometimes it's too late and they're already at the stage in their attack that they see you anyway. It can also depend on the boss - some seem to always ignore it.

Peekachu99

You need a heal or a drain. Since you're stamina-based, Vigor is your best bet. Just do one afternoon in Cyrodil to unlock it; even if you hate PVP it's a must for stamina builds.

briannewton_ESO

Thanks all for the replies, I finally got her. Final assessment was I had far too little healing for any sustain. I re-morphed Rending Slash to Bloodthirst and Rapid Strikes to Blood Craze. I also put Grim Focus, Mark Target and Blur on my Bow bar, and put all those up before fighting her. In the end, I took her down without much effort, and the burden shifted to keeping my stamina up long enough for the fight.

On that note, whereas my previous build was "DPS fast enough for them to die first, or fast enough for me to heal via killer's blade", now I see that I have enough variability to keep my HP bar full as I DPS, but since the fights might last longer, it puts more burden on my stamina. I now see why basically all stamina builds say just put attributes in Stamina. Are there other abilities/mechanics for regenning stamina mid-fight?

I do enjoy PvP, I've just been focusing on quest stuff, I'll go grab Vigor, as it does seem to kinda "handle" the healing side of things and allow for focusing on DPS otherwise.