dw stamblades

Lynx7386

What primary attack do you use: surprise attack, flurry, or hidden blade?

I'm considering swapping my nightblade from 2h/bow to dw/bow, just not sure about the playstyle these days, been using 2h for too long.

psychotic13

I use flurry myself, but I'm sure @IzakiBrotherSs can give you better advice when it comes to stamblade

Izaki

PvE or PvP?
In PvE you should not be running anything other than DW/Bow in PvE (its just the most DPS by a large margin). You have 2 options for running DW: Rapid Strikes with Maelstrom weapons in group content and Surprise Attack in vMA and solo content. Without Maelstrom weapons there's no point in even running a stamina DPS in serious group content (vDSA or vTrials).

In PvP its Surprise Attack all the way. Rapid Strikes is a channel, its not bursty and Surprise Attack just has loads more utility (armor buff through Shadow passives, extra health, extra penetration, optional stun that no one uses lol).
The only 2 decent skills in DW skill line for PvP are Rending Slashes (its a bleed that ignores all resistances and gets stronger at 25% health) and Deadly Cloak (20% AoE damage reduction, the things you can't dodge will be instantly doing less damage to you, and it acts as an extra damage source in close range and crits for up to 4k). Keep that in mind while making your build.
Also in PvP stamina NB lacks healing badly. So if you're in medium armor, you're not going to survive long with just Vigor. So basically, a DW/Bow build is out of question in PvP. You pretty much have to have a 2H and you can pair that with anything you like as long as you have Rally on your bar.

Hidden blade just sucks. Don't even think of slotting that piece of poop in either PvE or PvP. Just no!!!

Lynx7386

Mostly soloing and imp city farming.

Izaki

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Mostly soloing and imp city farming.

For Imp City farming (I just picture a city of Imps its pretty funny tbh) its a mix of both worlds. So you need AoE, but you also need sustained single target damage for bosses. You also need to be pretty evasive if you cross paths with some farming group. I farm IC with a DW + 2H setup so I can benefit from the AoE of Steel Tornado, the heal from Rally and the bleed from Rending Slashes.

I use Vicious Ophidian in there for my speed buff and sustain. The other set I'm using is Bone Pirate Tatters (sustain FTW) with the purple recovery drink. I'm just using vMA Axes with poisons and a vMA Greatsword. You can use Leki's daggers and an off set 2H, its almost as good.

Bars:
DW:
- Rending Slashes
- Surprise Attack
- Killer's Blade
- Mass Hysteria/Relentless Focus
- Steel Tornado
- Incap

2H:
- Shadowy Disguise
- Rally
- Shuffle
- Vigor
- Relentless Focus/Siphoning Attacks
- Dawnbreaker of Smiting or Soul Tether.

This is pretty good for just farming Tel Vars. You don't need a gap closer in there because its quite rare to actually bump into players and anyway if you do meet a lone dude running around, just cloak up to him and gank him lol. Its by no means a creative build, but it does its job for farming. Hope that helps

Lynx7386

I've pretty much been running 5 pc hunding's Rage and 3 pc night mothers since I was able to craft both. Using sword singers jewelry at the moment. With the 2h/bow build, which I've been running pretty much since pc launch, I've always focused primarily on weapon damage over other stats, trying to get the most out of wrecking blow.

It wasn't until this past week when I finally started doing the same type of content on my second Character, a magicka dk, that I realized how weak my nightblade is. Up until then I always thought his survivability and damage seemed pretty good, but my magdk was steamrolling imperial city mobs faster than my stamblade ever has, and with moderately less risk of dying.
Example, the elite dremora in the sewers were a tough fight for my stamblade especially with adds around, but my magdk was killing them in a couple rotations and melting adds at the same time.

So I figured it was time to look at my nightblade build and see what I was doing wrong, or if he really should just be demoted to crafting slave.