Newish player looking for stam blade build for cp grinding

Blackedge7

Returning player, still relatively new tho, almost level 30, and I was looking for a decent build to grind out CP once I hit 50.

Currently running duel wield swords, haven't decided on a secondary weapon or a build in general, just that I want to be running a stam nightblade and grind out to 160 cp efficiently

any help/recommendations would be great.

EldritchPenguin

Jam your kit full of AoE. Run bow with Endless Hail on your back bar, and DW with Steel Tornado on the front bar.

Blackedge7

Any kind of defensive skills? I'm already feeling kinda squishy in full leather

davey1107

My main is a stamblade and I've helped many a stamblade to fifty and c561. Some tips for grinding CPs specifically:

1. It's always faster to grind in a team of 2 or 3. You plow through enemies faster, and the computer awards a bonus for group play.

2. You get xp for any monster you deal 10%+ of the total damage to. If you're grouped, this applies to the group and not you as a solo player -anyone can contribute to the damage. If you're solo, then your character has to get hits in. This is part of why group grinding is more effective. And it's why AOEs are more important when alone.

3. Dual wield is a natural attack bar for grinding. Whirlwind is a great AOE. Ambush for gap closing. For sustain, I use killers blade and reapers mark when grinding. If you make sure to you them as you move, they will be all the heal you need in a grind scenario. I also ABSOLUTELY rely on shrouded dagger for xp grinds. It has a 20 meter range and bounces to hit three enemies each strike. This can be a more important ability than whirlwind for me, because I can get hits in on mobs all over the field with it.

4. For a retreat bar, 2h sword or bow is okay. With either, I slot vigor for emergency heals, dark cloak mostly for mobility in a grind, and siphoning attacks to keep the stamina supplies up. On a bow I add poison inject and acid spray to get hits in. On a 2h I add rally and the execute...morphed to cause splash damage. If I'm teamed up, the bow is great. But I find it a it weak for solo, and like the 2h.

5. Retreat bar skill note: if you're still feeling squishy, dark cloak or siphoning can flip out for mirage or shuffle (medium armor skill). These are both powerful defense skills. Also, if you don't have vigor you will eventually NEED VIGOR. Lol. It takes 85,000 AP total to unlock it...spend a couple hours in cyrodiil here and there repairing walls and assisting with keep defense to get there (if you don't pvp a lot already).

6. Gear: gear isn't as important for grinding...you don't have to worry about best in slot. Once you're c160, an engine guardian set is helpful because of the resource assistance, but not imperative. A good base set is Hundings Rage...the crit and 300 weapon damage will help you mow down mobs. I supplement this with briar heart on one stamblade and vipers sting on the other...but that's spendy. Any cheap stam set that comes in jewelry is fine...blue jewelry is fine. It's hard to get jewelry under c160...look up a drop set and run dolmens in the zone it drops. You should get at least a blue jewel set pretty quick. Like the set Senches Bite...that works...it drops in Reapers. Run dolmens for an hour, do some world bosses, don some delves. You will get a five piece set pretty quickly.

7. Baharas Curse as a grind set: this is a set from hews bane. I love it as a grind set for stam or mag toons, especially for getting up to c160. You get pieces of it for hews quests, in delves, dailies, or it's cheap in guild stores. It comes in all weights so you can gear up as needed for leveling, and it comes in jewelry (blue only). And the fifth trait is pretty powerful for grinding - any damage can proc desecrated ground that does aoe damage, heals you and slows them. This is not a set you'll use to run vMSA as a c561, but it's a nice set to collect as soon as you hit vet to help,you push through your grind faster.

8. Enlightenment. This is gonna get complex, lol. Ok, so once you are vet you will early one allotment of "enlightenment" each day to your account. You get a notice each time (it's always the same time of day...the exact time you became vet.)

Each allotment of enlightenment gives you 400,000 xp earned at 8x the normal rate. In other words, if a quest or kill rewards 10,000 xp normally, then when you're enlightened it becomes 80,000. If I become enlightened and turn in a quest for 80k, my bank goes from 400k more to 320k. Your account can stack up to 12 days enlightenment (4.8 million Xp). How much you have is on the character sheet for any vet toon.

Enlightenment is a catch-up mechanism. Your toon will power grind champion points and power level their abilities when enlightened. It's designed to allow players to step away for a few days and not fall behind their friends. So, for your purposes here it's obvious that you'll want to be using your enlightenment to grind champion points. However, keep in mind that it's also veeeeery powerful for leveling abilities. Don't stress too much about working all your skills up before you turn vet. Putting them on your bar when you're working through your enlightenment points is way faster - three days enlightenment is about 3 hours of play, and represents as much xp for your skills as levels 1-30 got them.

9. CP speed: So how fast can you expect to grind CPs? early champion points come quickly for very little xp the slow down. Your first point is earned with 33,000 xp. The 50th is 85,000ish. 100 - 150,000 xp. 600 - 2 million. So, let's say you turn vet. You get 400,000 xp of enlightenment, so it takes about an hour to grind this and get 8-9 CPs. Then your enlightenment ends and your xp gains drop 800% to their normal rate. The next CP take a full hour. The next day you get another 400k enlightenment...which will be worth another 7-9 points. Then enlightenment is spent and the rate slows. Maybe you don't play for three days. When you pick it up again, now you have 1.2 million enlightenment and in 2-3 hours earn another 25 CPs.

If you use just your enlightenment, you should get to c160 in about a month. If you grind hard...long weekend runs, especially using psijic occasionally...you can get to c160 in 7-10 days.

Blackedge7

ty very much for the thorough and detailed post! will be coming back to this until I've got it all down and in a groove

Albino_Dunmer

Just adding to the above.

For a nightblade, Vigor is a must for solo play and even more critical in group play. Ask to join a group in Cyrodiil through zone chat and just run with them, follow their lead and stay with them. Do this before you hit level 50 and start gaining CP and do it in the campaign that has no CP levels. Idk what it is elsewhere but it is called Blackwater Blade on PS4. Around level 30 is probably the best time to do it. You'll be buffed up and have better access to gear. Do not do what I did. Which was dabble in PvP just a few times and waiting till I hit CP to grind Alliance Points in cyrodiil. From CP 1-160 you will be out-leveled, out-geared and more than likely out-skilled by nearly every other player. Even after CP 160, that won't change much until you get better gear and more experience. You'll still be out-leveled and likely out-geared (unless someone helps you out in that respect) until you have 300ish CP, but noticeably less so. 160 CP is max gear level so you can't start really collecting gear until then.

As a substitute for Vigor or even as something complimentary to it, Bloodcraze, Bloodthrist and Rally can be helpful. Rally requires 2H and DW outperforms 2H in PvE. So you'd give up the bow bar mentioned above, which would be a big DPS loss, to gain rally. Not really worth it imo. 2H is great for PvP however. I'd swap out DW for 2H in Cyrodiil but DW can work just fine.

Now Bloodcraze and Bloodthirsty are morphs of Twin Slashes and Flurry. They both heal you as you deal damage. They can help with survivability but you absolutely need Siphoning Strikes to complement them to keep your resources up. So for example, you'd Cast Siphoning Strikes, apply the Bloodcraze DoT then slam into them with Bloodthirst repeatedly and recast SS and BC as needed while weaving your other rotations in. Such as the DoTs from your Bow Bar, Ambush, Killers Blade or Steel Tornado.

Edziu

if you are going to do pve then dele this char espeially if it will be nb on stam
mag dk or sorc are the only good choice to do great pve in upcomming patch or atleast stam dk if we talking about dps, rest will be just garbage which no on want to take into good groups
#ZO$Balance

Cavarka

Also, you only need 3%+ dmg on mobs for exp now.

Blackedge7

Edziu wrote: »

if you are going to do pve then dele this char espeially if it will be nb on stam
mag dk or sorc are the only good choice to do great pve in upcomming patch or atleast stam dk if we talking about dps, rest will be just garbage which no on want to take into good groups
#ZO$Balance

I actually have a level 50 stam dk that I made long ago before i quit, would you be so kind as to link me an updated stam dk build? preferably with a 2 hander

darkllord

Edziu wrote: »

if you are going to do pve then dele this char espeially if it will be nb on stam
mag dk or sorc are the only good choice to do great pve in upcomming patch or atleast stam dk if we talking about dps, rest will be just garbage which no on want to take into good groups
#ZO$Balance

Drama queen alert!

Upright_man

darkllord wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

if you are going to do pve then dele this char espeially if it will be nb on stam
mag dk or sorc are the only good choice to do great pve in upcomming patch or atleast stam dk if we talking about dps, rest will be just garbage which no on want to take into good groups
#ZO$Balance

Drama queen alert!

Drama Queen or just a hard truth??

Since stamina are already hardly taken for the end game PvE and since mnb isnt the favoured magicka class either... surely you can see that's actually quite good advice.

Nighn_9

if you're going to be leveling solo, get a x5 nightmothers gaze set crafted. The other 4 pieces could be hundings. Use sharpened daggers with steel tornado-klllers blade-most importantly suprise attack, bow on back bar with endless hail and poison injection.

You could use Reapers Mark for your main heals for mobs until you unlock vigor from alliance/assault tree
Make sure to level your fighters guild to try and get the ulti flawless dawnbreaker asap

Narvuntien

Well there is a few options for heals and defense.

Shuffle is a great ability gives dodge chance.

Killers blade gives you a heal if you get a kill, Reapers mark as well.

Siphoning strikes is a good way to sustain I have seen in many builds. but its hard to level that skill tree.

Gulkrim-mur

Blackedge7 wrote: »

Any kind of defensive skills? I'm already feeling kinda squishy in full leather

Blackedge7 wrote: »

Any kind of defensive skills? I'm already feeling kinda squishy in full leather

Blackedge7 wrote: »

Any kind of defensive skills? I'm already feeling kinda squishy in full leather

Run 5 medium 2 heavy, always run 2 heavy you'll want ur monster set as heavy unless u go tank then all heavy but evasion from medium tree will help and vigor heal from assault in PvP will help also. Which also only levels on AP not exp.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Upright_man wrote: »

darkllord wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

if you are going to do pve then dele this char espeially if it will be nb on stam
mag dk or sorc are the only good choice to do great pve in upcomming patch or atleast stam dk if we talking about dps, rest will be just garbage which no on want to take into good groups
#ZO$Balance

Drama queen alert!

Drama Queen or just a hard truth??

Since stamina are already hardly taken for the end game PvE and since mnb isnt the favoured magicka class either... surely you can see that's actually quite good advice.

End game PvE(IE vMaw) is something only like 3% of people will actually do man, most people will only ever do the four man dungeons and stam is more then good enough to do that sort of thing. Like most dungeons do not require more then 15k DPS to get them done and all stam toons can do at least 30k. So yes you are going all chicken little over it.