Soooo... [Morrowind] Magblades... and how they work now in BG

CavalryPK

Major streamers and other well known magbaldes in our community resonate the feeling that currently the Magblade is the worst pvp class in this update. As in they have been gutted to oblivion. Did any one of you managed to put something together that performs on par with other classes in battlegrounds/open workd?

And if you know of any videos . please let me know I would like to see.

Let us, Magblades, united and explorer all options possible to make this playable. I spent almost all my playtime theory crafting potential builds for my magblade. And end up torn between stamina management and damage ....

lastly, I tried light armor in BGs.... I cannot make it work with only 1 shield.

Torbschka

3x endureance,
5x amberplasm,
2x Monster set +
1x vsma staffs

5x amnerplaam
5x necro
1x vsma staffs

5x amberplasm
5x heavy set (seducer or a DMG set)
1x vsma staffs

3x endurance
5x heavy armor or light armor (seducer/kagrenacs)
2x Monster set
1x vsma staffs

Cant think oon anything else honestly (but im.not a mageblade main)

Lieblingsjunge

I've seen a lot of Magicka Nightblades performing quite well in battlegrounds.
You just need to find the correct build and it works wonders.

casparian

I still think we have a number of strong options this patch. Sure, we don't have built-in dual-resource sustain anymore (thanks ZOS), but we can fix that by running Leeching Strikes and building in magicka regen + the occasional heavy attack. We have excellent resource passives, high crit, and our burst combos still hit really hard, though they're a bit clunkier to set up now (thanks ZOS). Cloak also feels like it works more reliably now (thanks ZOS, this time non-sarcastically). Most importantly, we are still the sexiest class by far.

I think it will just take a little bit more testing to find new gear setups. I'm still optimistic.

CavalryPK

Torbschka wrote: »

3x endureance,
5x amberplasm,
2x Monster set +
1x vsma staffs

5x amnerplaam
5x necro
1x vsma staffs

5x amberplasm
5x heavy set (seducer or a DMG set)
1x vsma staffs

3x endurance
5x heavy armor or light armor (seducer/kagrenacs)
2x Monster set
1x vsma staffs

Cant think oon anything else honestly (but im.not a mageblade main)

@Torbschka, mind sharing what kind of stats you are aiming for ?

Health - ?
Magicka - ?
Stamina - ?

Stamina Regen -?
Magicka Regen -?

Spell Damage -?
Crit chance - ?
Cirt Resist - ?

This is what I am shooting for :

Health - 23K+
Magicka - 33K+
Stamina - 12k+

Stamina Regen -800+
Magicka Regen -1.5k+

Spell Damage - 2.0k+
Crit chance - 30%+
Cirt Resist - 1.7K+

Knootewoot

I have not tried BG yet, but I cannot get my magblade (melee) work in cyrodill so far. I die in 1-2 blows and myself, with a concealed weapon tooltip of almost 9k non non-CP campaign, I hardly do damage.

I tried staff and works better then melee but still I die in 1-2 hits or an pinned down and cannot break free.

I use
5 julianos (or 5 krag's hope)
5 spinner
1 kena when using staff and grothdar when using dual wield

armor is impen
mundus is shadow (used to be thief but I changed)

LegacyDM

First attempts at death match with my Magicka NB. At least in BG, Magicka NB is viable and fun. Things I noticed so far:

1. Control. Control of when I can enter and exit a fight because of cloak. Most people are concentrated on brawling and focused on high intensity fast paced combat. They are not popping magelight, or flare as much as in Cyrodil. Gives NB's an edge on picking fights and retreating when resources are low.

2. Healing. Putting out supplemental heals while doing DPS is one of the mageblade's biggest strengths. It really shines in BG more so than in Cyrodil. Most of the time your heals are hitting random zergs or people. In BG your heals are more helpful to the limited number of people in your group.

3. Damage. Due to resource nerfs most classes/players are still trying to find their footing on balancing sustain with damage. Indirectly, this was a slight buff to NBs. Most people now have to sacrifice defense or damage to gain more sustain. Magicka NBs have decent sustain already which means they can focus slightly more on damage while others are struggling to focus slightly more on sustain. I'm noticing that I can melt people a bit easier than before.

I will say that I was very disappointed in my performance in capture the flag. In Death match, I was able to score 4800 and 3577 pts, however, in my first capture the flag game I scored a terrible 150 points. While I did well in k/d ratio and healing, it didn't matter much because points are accrued based on flag objectives, not kill performance. So bare in mind that if your character is built a certain way, it may not translate well into other types of BG objectives.

If you are curious as to what I am using it is a very unique niche build, built to my playstyle. Not sure others would find it worthy. I have built my character for group play and not duels or 1v1s. I use Grothdarr, 2 piece rattlecage heavy, 3 piece rattlecage jewelry (gem of curses) and 4 piece seducer. The fourth piece being Resto sharpened and Resto Defensive. You may wonder, why do I run resto/resto? guaranteed hit on light attack without the possibility of reflection, dodge roll, or unlike destro just plain missing do to people moving around so fast. I'll take the DPS loss over inferno to gain guaranteed hits and it fits my weaving playstyle better. Plus I don't have to swap bars to restore magicka. Some may scoff at the idea of using rattlecage, but I like having the extra skill slot without slotting entropy or using sap essence. I can use the slot for another damage skill and have piece of mind of not worrying about keeping major sorcery up.

CavalryPK

LegacyDM wrote: »

First attempts at death match with my Magicka NB. At least in BG, Magicka NB is viable and fun. Things I noticed so far:

1. Control. Control of when I can enter and exit a fight because of cloak. Most people are concentrated on brawling and focused on high intensity fast paced combat. They are not popping magelight, or flare as much as in Cyrodil. Gives NB's an edge on picking fights and retreating when resources are low.

2. Healing. Putting out supplemental heals while doing DPS is one of the mageblade's biggest strengths. It really shines in BG more so than in Cyrodil. Most of the time your heals are hitting random zergs or people. In BG your heals are more helpful to the limited number of people in your group.

3. Damage. Due to resource nerfs most classes/players are still trying to find their footing on balancing sustain with damage. Indirectly, this was a slight buff to NBs. Most people now have to sacrifice defense or damage to gain more sustain. Magicka NBs have decent sustain already which means they can focus slightly more on damage while others are struggling to focus slightly more on sustain. I'm noticing that I can melt people a bit easier than before.

I will say that I was very disappointed in my performance in capture the flag. In Death match, I was able to score 4800 and 3577 pts, however, in my first capture the flag game I scored a terrible 150 points. While I did well in k/d ratio and healing, it didn't matter much because points are accrued based on flag objectives, not kill performance. So bare in mind that if your character is built a certain way, it may not translate well into other types of BG objectives.

If you are curious as to what I am using it is a very unique niche build, built to my playstyle. Not sure others would find it worthy. I have built my character for group play and not duels or 1v1s. I use Grothdarr, 2 piece rattlecage heavy, 3 piece rattlecage jewelry (gem of curses) and 4 piece seducer. The fourth piece being Resto sharpened and Resto Defensive. You may wonder, why do I run resto/resto? guaranteed hit on light attack without the possibility of reflection, dodge roll, or unlike destro just plain missing do to people moving around so fast. I'll take the DPS loss over inferno to gain guaranteed hits and it fits my weaving playstyle better. Plus I don't have to swap bars to restore magicka. Some may scoff at the idea of using rattlecage, but I like having the extra skill slot without slotting entropy or using sap essence. I can use the slot for another damage skill and have piece of mind of not worrying about keeping major sorcery up.

@LegacyDM , very interesting approach. Can you post a screen shot of your character buffed stats?

Neloth

Why no-one here considering lich for sustain?

Neloth

Also:

If we are going light armor, are we going 7 light, 5/1/1, or 6/1 (heavy)?

If we are going light armor, we go harness or dampen? Before the patch I was enjoying my ~14k dampen with necro, but it will be hard to sustain shield staking. Btw, before dark brotherhood, the only shield I (and most of you, I think?) was using was healing ward + cloak, since cloak was working, and dmg output wasn't that high. Maybe it's time to return to this approach?

Also, I may be totally wrong, but it looks like sustain dmg is much more important than burst in no-CP. I noticed the my soul harvest + assasin's will + impale combo not killing people as reliably, as in CP campaign, and I doubt that I'm doing it wrong.

fred4

I also noticed cloak working more reliably and am thankful for the reduced gap closer snare. It's made my magblade more enjoyable to play.

Harness Magicka helps a lot against other magicka builds. I switched from Dampen.

I use Leeching Strikes for stamina sustain. We'll see. On the first day, in IC, I thought damage was generally lower in both CP and non-CP, therefore being able to break free was less critical. On the second day the good players returned and I could be burst down just as quickly, as before, in the CP campaign.

I have stuck with my existing 5/1/1 light armor setup, consisting of Troll King, Skooma Smuggler on back bar, Spinner's on front bar. I use Witchmother's and Atronach. For non-CP I went 3x cost reduction on the rings, which is just about good enough. On the other hand, using 3x cost reduction in the CP campaign feels fairly close to 3x damage before the patch, in terms of resources, albeit without having the old Siphoning Attacks, which is missed.

In the CP campaign, the tooltip for Soul Assault has gone from 66K before patch, to 58K with 3x damage jewelry after patch, to 54K with 3x cost reduction jewelry. Swallow Soul is 7580 with all damage glyphs, 7120 with all cost reduction glyphs. I have 40K magicka, 2.1K spell damage with damage glyphs, 1.58K spell damage with cost reduction glyphs. In other words, the damage glyphs have a surprisingly small impact on tooltip damage in my build, despite the abysmal Spell Damage.

The flag guards in IC are just as easy to clear as before, in CP campaign, which makes me wonder whether they were slightly nerfed. Anyone having trouble with the Eclipses, get yourself CCd, and you can break it. If a guard won't CC you, you can Flame Reach yourself, then break free, clear the Eclipse and get immunity. I usually pop an Immov potion at the start, cause the guards are such a nuisance otherwise.

kaithuzar

People aren't using lich because when lich proc's it gives you a ton of recovery; however, if you are blocking then you just negated getting that recovery. Warlock may be better depending on whether or not you block.

I haven't tried bg's yet but here is some things I'm working with:
Since there is a "direct damage" cp section, & since resources were nerfed into oblivion I've decided to give dual wield swords + resto another shot & put away the destro for the time being. This will give me 1 extra piece of armor.

***Note: in my testing lotus fan dmg was increased using direct dmg cp tree but concealed was not, concealed was increased dmg using the typical fire/frost/lightening/magic dmg section. (so cp is basically split between these two for me)

I'm using my typical previous no-cp build (now in a cp campaign) of 5x worm cult + 5x kags, the primary thing i have changed is by instead of using tri-stat food, now i'm using witch mother's potent brew.

The stam pool gets sacrificed, however, I can use blood spawn or tremor scale or any 1 piece increase stam recovery monster helm or shoulder & it's still manageable.
***Note: love to try out amberplasm but don't have it, depending on situation maybe willows path or seducer is better?

My other monster helm is still being tested, right now I'm looking at 1 piece chudan or pirate for the inc tankiness but may change to a magic recovery or crit dmg or spell dmg

currently using thief mundus for inc crit putting me at 46% in heavy but may swap out for atro mundus if resources still an issue although they haven't been; in this case i would put a crit or sp dmg 1 piece on

I'm also using my typical 5 heavy + 2 light setup
by default i'm sitting around 26k sp resist & 26k phys resist & buffed I'm at over 31k for both (with chudan 1 piece)

stats:
25k health, 11k stam, 39k mag
sp dmg: 2,445 (unbuffed) , 2,934 buffed
magic recovery: 1,734

***Note, I have 2 tri-stat armor glyphs for chest & pants

bars:
siphoning attacks, lotus fan, sap, concealed, inner light - ult: soul harvest
dark cloak, immovable brute, magicka harness, healing ward, prolonged suffering - ult: meteor

The key thing with this build is being able to be on the correct bar at the correct time & knowing when to swap back & forth.
I have just over 50 points into spell erosion although it was broken & idk if it's been fixed.
***Note try to ani-cancel light/heavy with concealed for some resources with siphoning attacks, it's not great but every little bit helps.
Also, #tri-pots


-Kai

fred4

CPs definitely benefit from testing with a target skeleton and combat text (I use FTC). I wouldn't completely trust the ability tooltips.

Ferrofluid

kaithuzar wrote: »

People aren't using lich because when lich proc's it gives you a ton of recovery; however, if you are blocking then you just negated getting that recovery. Warlock may be better depending on whether or not you block.

Since when? Isn't it only blocking with a frost staff that stops magicka recovery? Mistform stops your regen though, so warlock is better if you use that.

kaithuzar

Ferrofluid wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

People aren't using lich because when lich proc's it gives you a ton of recovery; however, if you are blocking then you just negated getting that recovery. Warlock may be better depending on whether or not you block.

Since when? Isn't it only blocking with a frost staff that stops magicka recovery? Mistform stops your regen though, so warlock is better if you use that.

Yea, sorry I didn't clarify with frost staff. And good point on the mist form.

thankyourat

I was thinking of going duel weild/destro and using 5 amberplasm/5 necro/2 skoria or engine guardian. I think with hots, cloak and the new siphoning strikes heal i can be decently survivalble even with one damage shield.

If my sustain is decent i may just run 5 necro/ 5 julianos/ 2 engine guardian

CavalryPK

thankyourat wrote: »

I was thinking of going duel weild/destro and using 5 amberplasm/5 necro/2 skoria or engine guardian. I think with hots, cloak and the new siphoning strikes heal i can be decently survivalble even with one damage shield.

If my sustain is decent i may just run 5 necro/ 5 julianos/ 2 engine guardian

Can you use 5x necro 5x amber 2x skoria and keep the 5x bonus on both bars.

thankyourat

No i can only have necro active on my front bar for the increase in damage i also slot my damage shield on my front bar. Sucks that you can't have both active, but it works because i use my dual weild bar for burst and my destro bar for pressure.

CavalryPK

thankyourat wrote: »

No i can only have necro active on my front bar for the increase in damage i also slot my damage shield on my front bar. Sucks that you can't have both active, but it works because i use my dual weild bar for burst and my destro bar for pressure.

Got it thanks

casparian

CavalryPK wrote: »

thankyourat wrote: »

I was thinking of going duel weild/destro and using 5 amberplasm/5 necro/2 skoria or engine guardian. I think with hots, cloak and the new siphoning strikes heal i can be decently survivalble even with one damage shield.

If my sustain is decent i may just run 5 necro/ 5 julianos/ 2 engine guardian

Can you use 5x necro 5x amber 2x skoria and keep the 5x bonus on both bars.

No, but you can have one up at all times if you use dual wield. I'm experimenting with a setup running 3 Necro Jewelry, 1 Necro sword, and Necro Gloves, with a Necro staff on the back bar. This allows me to have the Necro bonus up at all times.

LegacyDM

@LegacyDM , very interesting approach. Can you post a screen shot of your character buffed stats?

Now, I could get my magicka regen higher but I'm using 1 cost reduction glyph on jewelry. I just realized that my gold cost reduction is lying to me. It's not actually giving me a reduction of 203. Only 177, so I'll change it out for regen.

I've found this to be the sweet spot. If I trade out the cost reduction or a magicka regen jewelry piece for spell damage, I lose too much magicka too quickly for my playstyle. I'm using tri witches brew and atronach mundus. I could change out a skill for siphoning strikes and then up the jewelry pieces to full damage glyphs. But then I would be giving up a direct damage skill like cripple or grim focus.

This screen shot is buffed with food and mundus. It works, but I'm sure others will theory craft something much better. Like I said, this fits my playstyle.

thankyourat

What does everyone think will be the way to go with magblade heavy or light armor?

CavalryPK

LegacyDM wrote: »

@LegacyDM , very interesting approach. Can you post a screen shot of your character buffed stats?

Now, I could get my magicka regen higher but I'm using 1 cost reduction glyph on jewelry. I just realized that my gold cost reduction is lying to me. It's not actually giving me a reduction of 203. Only 177, so I'll change it out for regen.

I've found this to be the sweet spot. If I trade out the cost reduction or a magicka regen jewelry piece for spell damage, I lose too much magicka too quickly for my playstyle. I'm using tri witches brew and atronach mundus. I could change out a skill for siphoning strikes and then up the jewelry pieces to full damage glyphs. But then I would be giving up a direct damage skill like cripple or grim focus.

This screen shot is buffed with food and mundus. It works, but I'm sure others will theory craft something much better. Like I said, this fits my playstyle.

i am liking the magicka/health pools and mag regen. i am not liking the stamina pool. i am afraid with that much stam you will need to run leaching strikes. Also the crit is below 30% i guess you can sort of use potions to get up a little.

Thanks for sharing!!

CavalryPK

thankyourat wrote: »

What does everyone think will be the way to go with magblade heavy or light armor?

I am leaning light armor in NO CP. and heavy in CP..

kaithuzar

Let's start by listing all possible combinations, that way we can try each out & figure out what works best: (please add to this list if I forget something)
***Note: this is regarding pvp only
Some of these will "only be viable for light or only be viable for heavy"; due to gear stat limitations

Witch mothers brew
Cost reduction glyph
Dmg armor set x10 (2 x5 sets)
Crit mundus

Witch mothers brew
Cost reduction glyphs
Dmg armor set x5
Crit armor set x5
Stam recovery mundus (this could really be anything if you used stam recovery or inc stam monster helms)

Witch mothers brew
Armor w/reduction (worm or seducer) x5
Dmg armor set x5
Sp dmg glyphs
Crit mundus

Witch mothers brew
Atro mundus
Dmg armor set x5
Crit armor set x5
Sp dmg glyphs

The reason why these are the only possibility is I can think of is because all good builds have similar stats.
I chose not to list tri-stat food as viable because you would need to stack multiple places for recovery/reduction which always ended up losing other areas that are needed to be effective, such as crit or base sp dmg.
***Note: there is one really awkward condition to the above mentioned groups which is " in certain scenarios, such as using sp dmg glyphs, you can replace sp dmg armor with x5 spinner", because you can go witch brew + atro mundus + x5 crit armor or the reverse of seducer + crit mundus.

In my opinion all good builds will have approximately the following:
~20k health (out of cyro)
36k-40k mag
11k-15k stam or 800-1200 stam recovery
1700 or greater mag recovery (now days aka Morrowind patch but this could be lower if you have more cost reduction)
2.1k-2.5k unbuffed sp dmg
44-55% crit

These are listed w/o vma/master weapons & w/o monster helms for your tweaking.
***Note: it's been previously stated stacking reduction does not work as well as stacking recovery; is this still true?

There are some specific builds that don't fall into these categories such as if you are using five piece alchemist or if you were going for a straight heavy attack build but due to the way CP now works I don't know how viable these are anymore.

Generally speaking you never want to stack just straight spell damage because of the heavy armor Meta which may or may not still be around.
Since critting on players is how you kill them even though you cannot crit on shields, there should always be an opportunity when they don't have their shields up.

If you're having problem with stamina I would advise trying a one piece monster helm to increase stamina recovery or the base stamina stat. You can even go 2 if you like. Don't forget about engine guardian as a possibility.

If you are weaving it may make more sense to put a decent number of points into tenacity for increasing the resource return my question is " is siphoning attacks still worth a slot as how much stats are you really getting back? I'm still slotting it for the time being."

Due to the inc number of sorcs we'll be seeing, I feel magicka harness deserves a slot & has some resource return, at least it's an extra shield against stam users.

Don't forget about tri-stat glyphs on armor pieces, you get more base stats on bigger pieces, I run 2 of them, I would recommend 2-3 for balancing out your stam a bit better.


-Kai

LegacyDM

CavalryPK wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

@LegacyDM , very interesting approach. Can you post a screen shot of your character buffed stats?

Now, I could get my magicka regen higher but I'm using 1 cost reduction glyph on jewelry. I just realized that my gold cost reduction is lying to me. It's not actually giving me a reduction of 203. Only 177, so I'll change it out for regen.

I've found this to be the sweet spot. If I trade out the cost reduction or a magicka regen jewelry piece for spell damage, I lose too much magicka too quickly for my playstyle. I'm using tri witches brew and atronach mundus. I could change out a skill for siphoning strikes and then up the jewelry pieces to full damage glyphs. But then I would be giving up a direct damage skill like cripple or grim focus.

This screen shot is buffed with food and mundus. It works, but I'm sure others will theory craft something much better. Like I said, this fits my playstyle.

i am liking the magicka/health pools and mag regen. i am not liking the stamina pool. i am afraid with that much stam you will need to run leaching strikes. Also the crit is below 30% i guess you can sort of use potions to get up a little.

Thanks for sharing!!

Stamina not an issue. I'm vamp so I just mist form. I barely ever dodge roll. If I need to break free more than once or need stamina in a pinch I pop a tri pot.

Yeah crit is lower than I'd like but in today's meta something has to get sacrificed to balance regen with direct damage. With everyone running impen and shield stacking in pvp anyways it's not that important to me.

CavalryPK

LegacyDM wrote: »

CavalryPK wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

@LegacyDM , very interesting approach. Can you post a screen shot of your character buffed stats?

Now, I could get my magicka regen higher but I'm using 1 cost reduction glyph on jewelry. I just realized that my gold cost reduction is lying to me. It's not actually giving me a reduction of 203. Only 177, so I'll change it out for regen.

I've found this to be the sweet spot. If I trade out the cost reduction or a magicka regen jewelry piece for spell damage, I lose too much magicka too quickly for my playstyle. I'm using tri witches brew and atronach mundus. I could change out a skill for siphoning strikes and then up the jewelry pieces to full damage glyphs. But then I would be giving up a direct damage skill like cripple or grim focus.

This screen shot is buffed with food and mundus. It works, but I'm sure others will theory craft something much better. Like I said, this fits my playstyle.

i am liking the magicka/health pools and mag regen. i am not liking the stamina pool. i am afraid with that much stam you will need to run leaching strikes. Also the crit is below 30% i guess you can sort of use potions to get up a little.

Thanks for sharing!!

Stamina not an issue. I'm vamp so I just mist form. I barely ever dodge roll. If I need to break free more than once or need stamina in a pinch I pop a tri pot.

Yeah crit is lower than I'd like but in today's meta something has to get sacrificed to balance regen with direct damage. With everyone running impen and shield stacking in pvp anyways it's not that important to me.

Good point. I think mist form is better since the charge snare last less time.

ChairGraveyard

Magblades are the one-shot gods of Battlegrounds right now. If you're on deathmatch or capture-point, good luck scoring against even a single NB.

Other than unkillable health builds, NBs are probably #2 in terms of power in BGs.

kaithuzar

I'm a high elf vamp, maybe there aren't issues in bg's but I've just been on a quest for the "one build to rule them all". While pvp & PVE isn't really possible, I like something I can use for both 1v1 & open world 1vx style.

Dottzgaming

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

Magblades are the one-shot gods of Battlegrounds right now. If you're on deathmatch or capture-point, good luck scoring against even a single NB.

Other than unkillable health builds, NBs are probably #2 in terms of power in BGs.

What kinds of builds are doing that to you?

Lexxypwns

Ferrofluid wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

People aren't using lich because when lich proc's it gives you a ton of recovery; however, if you are blocking then you just negated getting that recovery. Warlock may be better depending on whether or not you block.

Since when? Isn't it only blocking with a frost staff that stops magicka recovery? Mistform stops your regen though, so warlock is better if you use that.

Lich outperforms warlock even on builds that use mist form. Sure, with no regen bonuses you need 18 of the 20 second proc to make it outperform warlock. But with High elf(10%), CP (10%), 5 Light(10%), vamp (10%) and a potion(20%) you only need ~10 seconds of the proc