DPS issues - stamina nightblade

therogue

Hey everyone ,
Long time forum reader, but first time post.

I know everyone's probably sick of reading about Stamina DPS posts - they seem to pop up quite often. But hopefully you all don't mind if I bug you again with one.

My issue is with poor DPS for what, as far as I have read, should be alot better. I have played ESO since day one along with my partner. I am a stamina nightblade and he is a magicka sorcerer. And we are both having the same issues. We are at our wits end trying to work out what we are lacking. We have researched and tried many suggested builds and combos. Yet our DPS is low and neither of us can beat VMA or even normal.

My CP is 361. He is in the early 400's.

When running dungeons I can only do around 10k - 13k DPS. However most of the time I am doing 10k (unless its a group damage situation). Ive tried everything and don't understand why I am so low. My partner does more than me but not as much as what people say you should at this point. I am still experienced with all dungeons and still do well. But don't think I have enough DPS to try trials yet.

So like many stam NB, I have followed most of Gilliamtherogue's build suggestions and gameplay. I have tried lots of other builds too and watched many gameplay videos. There has been improvement. But not seeing what everyone else seems to.

The Vet Maelstrom daggers are highly recommended for a stam nightblade like me, but I can't even beat it on normal mode? So getting that is a long way off for me. Trying to find a good build without the VMA daggers is difficult. But I haven't got vigor yet, so was waiting for that before I try again.

I should also mention I am a Wood Elf. Which I know isn't a very recommended race for stam NB. Not sure how this impacts me and if its worth swapping for a Kajit.

So my current build:
Attribute Points: All 64 points in stamina
Mundus Stone: The Shadow
Undaunted set (head and shoulders): Valkyn Skoria (one is heavy and one is light in divines, for health boost, as I haven't picked up medium divines yet)
Other main set: 5 piece Night Mothers Gaze (including my two daggers) all medium, yellow and divines
Other set: 5 piece sunderflame including all 3 jewelry. Medium, divines. (still purple as I was testing it)

I did have 2 piece hundigs rage and 3 agility for jewelry before but changed recently to sunderflame for the 5 piece bonus. The rest of the perks are basically the same. Still got a hundigs bow on my second bar I havent changed yet.


Moves (Bar 1)
Rapid Strikes, Rending Slashes, Killers blade, steel tornado, relentless focus (sometimes I swap it for Deadly Cloak) and ult is Rend.

Moves (Bar 2)
Rearming Trap, Poison Injection, Endless hail, Acid Spray (because I don't have caltrops yet), Siphoning Attacks and ult is Soul Harvest


I always run food which gives me 5395 health and 4936 stamina. When I got that up:
Max stam: 34394
Max health: 17951

Weapon crit: 59.7%

I appreciate everyone's suggestions and advice. Thanks .

Narvuntien

I mostly stamblade in PVP rather than PVE but I'll see if I can help you.

Mundus: The Shadow only works for Stamblades if you are using your deadly cloak, to always give you crits. (best for PVP burst) Otherwise you'll want The Thief particularly for Wood elf (rather than Khajti)

You are going to want to be closing in on 80% crit, with buffs.

Monster Sets: Selene's or Kragh's monster sets, or Velidreth but I don't know if you have DLC.

Sets: NMG, is a good set stick with it.. but sunderflame isn't great.

You are going to want a proc set. (I believe the recent nerf means the proc doesn't crit but the attack still crits). How often are you on your dual wield compared to your bow?
If you are doing most of your damage through your dual wield you are going to want.. Viper's sting set, It procs off melee attacks can be found in fungal grotto
However if you are switching between them regularly then Red mountain proc set is what you want, it procs off weapon abilities. Found in stonefalls. You have a lot of weapon abilities in your skill bars.

If you think procs are a bit unreliable or awkward in how they restraint your build.
there are three other sets.
Spriggan's Thorns set, Found in Bangkori. Lots of penetration.
Strenght of the automation. Found in Darkshade caverns. Lots of weapon damage.
Hulking dragur. Found in direfrost keep. Lots of Stamina.

Skills: The issue I see here is you are under valueing Buffs and you are adding more attacking skills than you need.

Bar 1: Relentless focus,Rapid strikes, Suprise attack, Steel tornado, Hidden blade, Rend
Bar 2: Rearming trap, Siphoning attacks, Poison injection, Endless hail, Camo hunter. Flawless Dawnbreaker

Try this, see what you like and don't like.

Hidden blade gives Major brutality increasing your damage, alternatively you can use Power extraction. Supprise attack weakens the enemies armor. Focus is one of the most important skills for NB straight up more damage. Trap gives force. Camo hunter gives you crit chance just by being on your bar, and Dawnbreaker increases your auto damage as well. you get 3% extra weapon damage from sloting a fighter guild ability since bows lack weapon damage it is a good way to improve that damage.

Deadly cloak and Ambush are also good, but that might be my PVP player thinking.

edit* oh take a look at the passives for the assassination skills you might want to rearrange to have Focus on the bow bar and Incapacitating Strike as the ultimate on the Dual wield bar just to give you access to those passives.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Assassination+Skills

Edziu

TL;DR
as for today I have only 1 thing to say

*** stamina

MartinDeShade

I doubt that Shadow is better than Thief on a Wood Elf or even on Khajit. I assume you are running Power/Crit Potions. You are running a Dot heavy build so I hope your Thaumatage is nearly even with Mighty. Instead of Sunderflame you might be better off with Spriggan. The only problem is you are likely near the penetration soft cap of 18200 with just a few more things(5000 sharpenned, 4000 Spriggan, 3000 NM, 5200 fracture)

But those won't triple your damage which is what you want.

You might want to invest in a small house and get a test dummy. To try to improve your weave timing. The problem with Sunderflame is it requires you to do a full Heavy Attack which is a dps loss.

tunepunk

In what situations are you doing 10-13k dps? Is that single target bosses? or groups of trash mobs?

Playing Stamina class has pretty weak skills, Long term low damage, so most importantly is to stack up on as many damage sources as possible. So stacking them up one by one will add you many smaller damage sources, so require very nimble fingers to keep up all the skills to do as much damage as possible.

This playstyle didn't work for me, I'm not nimble fingered enough. Very hard for me to get decent DPS stacking all those skills, especially with all the bar swapping.

I completely reinvented my gear and skill setup to better match my playstyle, instead of changing my playstyle to match my bar setup. So now I'm doing about 20-30k damage on a single bar in most situations and I'm only switching bar depending on situation (If I want to go range, I use the ranged bar, if you want to go melee you have I melee bar, and they perform pretty well seperately)

I still find myself doing as little as 15-20K in some situations, but that's mostly when there's a lot of trash mobs very spread out so AEO skills can't reach them all. Or when a boss uses a lot of heavy One shot mechanics that you have to avoid, so you're losing a lot of DPS avoiding red circles etc.

All in all, I find stamina builds very hard to master. They have good potential but you need really nimble fingers with a lot of bar swapping and animation cancelling to get the most out of it. This didn't fit me at all so i built very differently.

Savage_Audacity

your build is solid. Its just about mastering ur rotation and maximizing uptime on buffs and dots. Also for maelstrom i reccomend surprise attack over rapid strikes, because shadow abilities grant you resistance buffs. Not to sound rude, but with that build i dont understand how youre having issues with normal maelstrom. Keep vigor up and burn everything. If you have resource management issues try the serpent mundus (stam recovery). Lastly, everyone saying thief>shadow are wrong. Shadow mundus=highest dps.

Izaki

Savage_Audacity wrote: »

your build is solid. Its just about mastering ur rotation and maximizing uptime on buffs and dots. Also for maelstrom i reccomend surprise attack over rapid strikes, because shadow abilities grant you resistance buffs. Not to sound rude, but with that build i dont understand how youre having issues with normal maelstrom. Keep vigor up and burn everything. If you have resource management issues try the serpent mundus (stam recovery). Lastly, everyone saying thief>shadow are wrong. Shadow mundus=highest dps.

Shadow mundus isn't the highest DPS. There is actually a formula to find out which one is better. In short, if your critical modifier is 10% (or more) higher than your critcal chance, Thief > Shadow. You can check Sorcerer Arithmagic and Introduction to Homestead DPS Calculations posts by Asayre. In almost every DPS build, your critical modifier is higher than your critical chance. So here @Savage_Audacity you are the one who needs to do his homework and you are the one who is wrong. Just because you see higher numbers on your screen, it doesn't mean you're pulling more DPS.

@therogue don't use Rapid Strikes without vMA weapons.
Work on your rotation, light attack in between EVERY skill.
Rough guideline:
Trap>Endless Hail>Poison Injection>bar swap>Rending Slashes>Surprise Attack x5
Actual rotation:
Start every fight with Relentless Focus and Siphoning attacks up. Use ults on cooldown, potion always after the ultimate.
Step 1: Trap>Hail>Injection>swap>Slashes>Bow Proc>Relentless Focus>Surpruse Attack x3
Step 2:
Trap>Hail>Injection>swap>Slashes> Surprise attack x5
Repeat from step 1.
In execute phase spam Killer's Blade instead of Surprise attack and use soul harvest instead of rend.

Replace Arrow Spray with a defensive skill. Never take off Relentless Focus, your flex spot is Rending Slashes. Deadly cloak should always be on your bar. For AoE put on Steel Tornado instead of Slashes, for bosses keep Slashes.

Flameheart

I would advice you for this guide for PvE:

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/stamina-nightblade-pve-dps-for-homestead/

It's the most solid stamina NB DD guide I know and it was freshly updated for Homestead.

As you mentioned that you do dungeons (not trials) I would go for the group setup with Surprise Attack. The rotation is much easier then (and Suprise Attacks lower the physical resistances, which is a most valuable stat especially in 4-man-content), although you have to weave with light attacks of course to get the best results. Weaving Surprise Attacks and (later) your execute with light attacks needs some experience. Without Mahlstrom weapons (I don't have them too, just a precise Masterbow) you should be able to do 30k dps single target in a good (not superior) 4-men group, where here and there a Warhorn pops up and your tank uses Pierce Armor (and not just the ranged taunt...) and Crushing enchants. You should get around 30k dps with a perfect rotation in a mostly stationary fight without much moving and maybe just blocking a boss attack here and there as single target dps without even using weapon power potions.

t3hdubzy

Quick advice, get rid of sunderflame, its useless in your situation. Go with hundings rage 5 piece, spriggan, morag tong, viper, automaton, night mothers embrace (if you do pvp as well) sheer venom.

Also what is your weapon dmg? Id personally go with the warrior, but thats because i do pve and pvp, otherwise if you are over 50 percent crit, id try theif or shadow and see which you like best.


Valyn skoria is fine, but grothdar is better FYI. For single target aka boss fights you may want veildreth instead. Personally I still with 1 kena 1 veil, or kena, or veil.

For pve id invest in arrow barrage, caltrops, power extraction, and steel tornado. Add in poison injection and light attack weaving with your other favorites and you will easily be pulling 25k dps. If you dont have a tank applying major fracture you can use the skill mark on the target. You can also use poisons to give debuff them as well.

Also if you have sustain issues you may want to trade your stamina for stamina recovery by going to triple trufle wrothgar food. Will help you keep the pressure up in longer fights, otherwise your health and stam look good. You could take off siphoning attacks or even relentless focus if you add in some recovery, but thats all about personal playstyle.

Narvuntien

Deltia made a video that will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgUZNaxD3M

Edziu

Narvuntien wrote: »

Deltia made a video that will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgUZNaxD3M

this thread is for NB stamina dd problem or sorc stamina thread? you confused me