Magicka Nightblade Imperial City Build

Dojohoda

@fred4 I really like this build. Thanks!

fred4

That's awesome! Let me take this opportunity for an update.

The change from Soul Assault to Soul Harvest has stayed. The major consequence is that the build now plays as melee where possible. I think it's better. Soul Assault is great when it works, but otherwise the original build was out of DPS options. Funnel doesn't do enough damage against experienced players. The Infused Prismatic enchant can hit squishy players for up to 5K, but not all are vampires. Against tankier or experienced players, I feel the combination of Concealed + Soul Harvest, amounts to greater pressure. This is espcecially noticeable when you gank them. Using Concealed -> Soul Harvest -> Sap -> swap to ranged and finish with Funnel / Impale is dead right for how some people react, even if the power still feels a little low.

I tried Incap Strike against a Target Skeleton, but Soul Harvest hits almost 50% higher in CP, thus Soul Harvest stays. I also changed the 2H enchant to shock. No point in having both Prismatic.

I am now trying a variation where I removed Prolonged Suffering, moved Piercing Mark to the resto bar, and added Lotus Fan to the 2H bar.

fred4

One thing that surprised me: Concealed, on the 2H bar, does more damage than going ranged. As I've said, the light attacks from 2H are in the same ballpark as the light attacks from resto or destro. This is partially due to a 2H weapon having higher stats than the resto staff, and due to Nirnhoned, but most importantly the CP changes where you now get most of your damage from Master-At-Arms, rather than Elemental Expert. I had thought melee magblade difficult to build, because of missing light attack damage. This is no longer the case, and it's the combination with Soul Harvest that really puts the pressure on.

On the other hand, I don't want to overstate what magblade can do. The element of surprise can take even experienced players off guard, but there is no question that it's underpowered. When I compare this build to my magwarden, with the same buffs - Major Sorcery + Minor Berserk for comparison purposes - you get these tooltips:

Funnel Health: 8.5K
Concealed Weapon: 10.5K
Screaming Cliff Racer: 12.3K

It isn't a fair comparison, since my warden uses Necropotence for 52.7K magicka, but there's no way you'd ever get Funnel into the same ballpark as Cliff Racer, I would say. Instead, you have to go melee and throw in that 6-second buff, from Soul Harvest, to get anywhere near the damage warden pulls with minimal effort. This isn't meant as a complaint. Funnel is cheap, and a joy in prolonged fights against IC bosses on that account. I find warden versatile, due to Fissure, but it's a bit one-dimensional in the way it plays. This magblade, on the other hand, has it all:

Cloak
Speed
Melee
Ranged
AOE (Sap)
Execute (Impale)
Anti-nightblade (Mark)
Anti-snare (Forward Momentum)
CC on demand (Concealed, Prolonged Suffering)
Quite good defense / healing

When you look at the build, it's almost purely reactive. The only "buff" you need to keep up, after your opening / gank rotation, is Harness Magicka. You then have lots of situational options. This is how I like to play! I met a player who prefers heavy armor mitigation builds, because the buffs last longer and are not prone to sudden failure, like shields. Therein also lies a rub though. It is invariably "buffs" - plural. You might have Shuffle, Hurricane, and Crit Surge, for example. That's 3 things to keep on top of, which keeps you focused inwardly, at your build, rather than outwardly at the world. I don't want to overstate this. With a shielding build you have to very much keep track of your health bar to see whether the shield is holding, but that's pretty much it.

kaithuzar

I think the reason why concealed does more damage on 2 hander is because there is a 2 handed passive that gives an extra 3% damage, or something like that.
The reason why people always chose duel wield over two hander for magblade in the past was b/c the damage from duel wield was 3%, now 2.5%, each sword.
But as you stated, forward momentum is well worth the damage sacrifice if you can afford it; which people can now due to sets like war maiden

fred4

Just a quick update. After private discussion with @Lexxypwns, I got rid of Shacklebreaker and am now running 2x Blood Spawn + Wizard's Riposte, on the resto bar, in combination with one of these on the 2H bar:

Clever Alchemist
Skooma Smuggler
War Maiden

I switched drinks to Ghastly Eye Bowl, which allows 3x Spell Damage enchants on jewelry while retaining the ability to perma-cloak. Sustain and magicka are a little down, but spell damage is up. With Clever Alchemist procced, it can reach 3.8K. It would be over 4K with a Berserker enchant. Despite smaller shields and less health (except with Alchemist), the build feels noticeably tankier, yet retains it's damage with War Maiden and exceeds it with an Alchemist poc. Alchemist also buffs weapon damage to 3K, which is advantageous for the light attacks with the 2H sword.

As Agony is going to be completely changed, I have substituted Refreshing Path for now, which adds to the feeling of tankiness. In this form the weakness of the build is that it's only CC comes from a cloaked Concealed Weapon, and either speed (with Alchemist / War Maiden) or damage (with Skooma Smuggler) is nerfed. It's well suited to IC, but despite it's melee / ranged versatility, it feels like I wouid probably make changes for Cyrodiil, if I played that more and knew what to do.

This is a CP-based build. As far as sustain, it will work in no CP with minimal jewelry glyph changes. During a recent visit to no CP (Bruma), however, I had the impression that procs and DOTs overperform there and, for magblade specifically, Skoria would be a good fit. As the build is basically completely DOT-less, and defense based on shields, I don't think it's very good for no CP. I was able to defeat some sorcs, but fell easily to two nightblades I met (these were all duels).