I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

Kalgert

Since i got fairly tired of people bemoaning about my DPS not being "Up to snuff" for Veteran Dungeons, I decided to take initiative and visit the forums to hopefully figure out what is wrong exactly with that is going on (Because if you ask me, I don't exactly see anything wrong being done)

So... I'm not quite sure what exactly should be told here, so I'll just dig through my character and tell what I find which might very well be useful to know, namely in how my stats look like and what gear I'm using

Nord Nightblade, Stamina based
34 Health, 30 Stamina (In attribute points spent)

Max health: 18310
Max Stamina: 23417

Health Recovery: 438
Stamina Recovery: 1282

Weapon Damage: 2279
Weapon Critical: 57.6%

Spell Resistance: 13559
Physical Resistance: 14827

Used Boon: The Warrior

Dual Wielding tree maxed out
Medium Armor maxed out
Bow Maxed Out

Item set being worn: Toothrow
Weapons used: Swords (Considering switching to daggers for a critical strike centered build)

Now, with all of that listed out, what is it that I am doing wrong? Am I supposed to use some kind of build posted by some dude a few years ago as to what is the best? Because honestly, the current skill set that I do have brings me a decent amount of enjoyment, and my class skill trees are actually underdeveloped (So I don't feel inclined to level those if I have to).

Oh, and no, I don't want to switch to being magic-based. Just a few things to say beforehand.

Help, please.

VaranisArano

A. Just put all your attributes into stamina. Your stamina and weapons abilities scale off of your max stat, so the more stamina you have, the harder they hit. 23k is very low for a DPS. My Breton Stam Sorc has 28k, my Imperial Stam Sorc in Spriggan/Hundings has close to 40k stamina. If your health feels too low, make sure you have a food/drink buff active.

B. Look up stamblade builds, or take one from the forums. Then practice the rotation. Most DPS comes from efficient rotations. Practice, practice, practice.

Seriously, getting a proper rotation was what let me break 20k on my stam sorc. On my own, I was only getting 16k.

Some basic needs for almost all stam DPS builds will be:
Bow: Endless Hail, Poison Injection
Assault: Caltrops, Vigor

Anotherone773

https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/#content4

That should help

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Your stamina is at least 10k too low, and your weapon damage is missing about 1k at least. Something you might not know, most skills in this game scale off of two things. If it costs stamina, it scales of max stamina AND weapon damage, and if it costs magic, it scales off max magic and spell damage. A useful ratio is about 10.5:1 for most things.

What does that mean? If you want a skill like surprise attack (your main spam skill on stamblade) to hit harder, you have four options.

1. Increase your max stamina pool (only the max number matters, not how much you have at the time).
2. Increase your weapon damage
3. Increase both. Using the ratio above, about 1,050 stamina gives the same damage increase as about 100 weapon damage. Yours are both way too low.
4. Increase your physical penetration. Most things you fight in this game have armor of about 18.2k. Your goal is always to get the your physical penetration as close to that as possible, without going over. It's not practical to get to 18.2k by yourself, but that is the number one focus of an optimized trial group. This is the only one that wont show up in your skill tooltip values.

*You can also obviously increase your weapon crit, but that doesnt make your base skill actually hit harder, just makes them crit more often

This brings me to my next point. Your gear is simply garbage. No nice way to say that. Toothrow is a trash set, I had to look it up to even know what it does. You should be running 3 good sets, not one garbage set. Haha

The best way to get gear, is to pair a damage set with a penetration set and then add a monster set. Damage sets boost 1-3 (and crit), penetration sets boost number 4.

Viable Damage sets: Hundings, Mechanical acuity, War Machine, Vicious Ophidain, Briarheart etc. Hundings is the most obvious and its craftable.

Penetration Sets: Night Mothers, Twice Fanged Serpent, Spriggans, Sunderflame, Alkosh. Nightmothers is easiest to get, but its craftable so no jewelry. Spriggans is not ideal for end game, but its pretty cheap to buy. The best penetration sets give boosts to you and your group. Twice fanged and Spriggans do not do that, but Night Mothers, Sunder and Alkosh do. If you get serious about endgame, you will carry multiple sets.

Monster Sets: Velidreth, krags, selenes, or you could look to mix and match (1 kragh, 1 Kena). Velidreth is a little tough to get the helm, but krags and selenes are easiest. Veli is best IMO.

Now put them all together. Easiest build out of the gate is 5 Hundings (weapons and 3 body pieces), 5 Spriggans (jewelry and 2 body pieces) and 2 piece of any monster set you can get your hands on. A good stamblade can break 40k on a dummy with this setup, and you should be able to put it together pretty fast. Alcast also has beginner gear posted, which will also work really well. 5 Hundings, 4 Night Mothers, 3 agility. What I listed will get you more DPS on a dummy because Alcasts beginner build really lacks penetration.

Once you get it together, try to make as much of it gold as possible. Always start with weapons (daggers are way better than swords), followed by your enchants. Then work on the actual armor. Basically all your attributes and enchants should be in stamina/weapon damage, a little in health is okay. I would suggest the lover mundus stone (penetration) until you get into a proper 12 man raid group in which case you will switch to warrior (weapon damage). Lover is your best option for most things.

I will also point out that Nord is the worst race in the game from a passive standpoint, but you have bigger concerns. If you are up for a race change, redguard all day, but racc wont be noticeable until everything else is on point.

This is the part where we tell you that as important as all this is, rotation is WAY more important. You just got to get on a dummy and practice. There is no substitute. Alcast is probably a good place to start with that. His bars are Meta for stamina DPS for end game PVE. You will need to PVP a bit, but it doesnt take long. Posting vids of your dummy parses is a useful way for us to critique. You also need to know that stamina nightblade is the second hardest rotation in the game (behind magic nightblade). It is far and away the most skill dependent class, so practice is even more important.

If you have specific questions, i am happy to try and answer.

Edit: made some edits, got a little longer.

DeadlyRecluse

Kalgert wrote: »

my class skill trees are actually underdeveloped (So I don't feel inclined to level those if I have to).

Any endgame character needs all those class skill lines leveled to 50 for passives--even if you don't plan on using any active skills from that line.

Your max stats seem low--if you aren't using food, find and use some blue CP150 +health+stam food or some Dubious Camoran Throne.

Kalgert wrote: »

Item set being worn: Toothrow
Weapons used: Swords (Considering switching to daggers for a critical strike centered build)

Toothrow isn't really great, but it's okay--the bigger issue is you only list 1 itemset.

You have 12x possible item slots, if you are dual wielding. 7x armor pieces, 3 jewelry, 2 weapons. You should probably start by getting 2x 5piece sets and either a monster set or 2x Agility. That alone will yield HUGE dividends and move you in a direction that will allow for growth and progress.

Joy_Division

It's not that you are doing anything "wrong."

Rather, some choices you made are not the most efficient for DPS and all those choices compounded into a lower DPS.

1. Your stats seem low. Are you using food, how many CP do you have?
2. It's typically best to put all attribute points into stamina
3. Nord race is arguably the worst in the game, certainly so for DPS
4. What's your other item sets?

Also, the best improvements to DPS come from practicing a fluid and consistent rotation more so than gear or stats I think.

beetleklee

Put all points into stamina. Also your weapon damage is low. Your damage will scale off both max stam and weapon damage.
Also make sure your gear has stamina enchants.
Use blue food with max stam + max health. Ideally you should be close to 18k health with food. Any more and you're sacrificing damage.
Wear one heavy armor and one light armor for the Undaunted passive and this should get you close to 18k health. You can go all 7 medium but you'll be a bit more squishy and may need a health enchant on an armor piece. If your Undaunted level is not at 9 yet, do daily pledges on normal (since you're struggling with vets) and random normals until it levels up.

Nord is not a good race but not the biggest deal unless you wanna min/max. It'll definitely be easier if you go Redguard or Khajiit though and will put out more damage. The most important thing is rotation.

Your gear is definitely hurting you.

If you haven't farmed any 2 pc monster sets yet, go 5 Hundings 4 Night Mother's Gaze (craftable) and get 3 Agility Rings from the guild store. Make sure armor is Divines with Stamina enchants, and enchant the rings with Weapon Damage enchants. Make sure 5 Hunding's are all body pieces so you don't lose the set piece bonuses when switching to your bow bar. Have the Night Mothers as your 2 daggers (or 1 dagger 1 axe), your bow, and 2 body pieces. Have Nirnhoned as your main hand, Infused as off hand for Dual Wield. Have Bow as Nirnhoned. If you don't have access to Nirnhoned, do Infused main hand and Precise as off hand, with Infused bow.

This is a decent beginner set up.

For Monster sets, Velidreth is best but you're going to need to improve a lot before even attempting Cradle of Shadows on Veteran.
Next best bets are Selene's and Kragh, and I find Kragh to be better as Selene hits random targets. Kragh increases your physical penetration and is great for solo, small group play and if your group doesn't have all the optimal penetration sets for trials. But that stuff is far off right now...

Another beginner set up is to do 5 Hunding's, and mix match 2 monster sets that give Max Stam (if you have any head pieces, not sure if you completed many Vets yet) until you can farm a complete 2 piece set. Then have 3 jewelry and your weapons with a farmed stamina set from overland or a dungeon.
Overland: Spriggans (Bangkorai), Briarheart (Wrothgar)
Dungeon sets: Sunderflame (City of Ash 1+2) and Automaton (Darkshade Caverns 1+2) do these on normal until you improve and you can farm for purple jewelry)

Use the Warrior or Lover mundus. Lover is good for small groups and solo, Warrior for trials. But if you want you can use Warrior all the time. I typically switch between the two depending on the situation.

You need to work on a good rotation. Make sure your weapon, class, and armor lines have all passives (if you're wearing 1 light 1 heavy, don't put any points in the passives that require wearing 5 pieces of that weight, you won't need those)
Also good to have the Fighter's guild passives that generate ultimate when killing undead and daedra, and the one that does more damage to those types of enemies with your fighter's guild abilities (which will be Rearming Trap...morph of Trap Beast)

Dual Wield: Killer's Blade, Deadly Cloak, Surprise Attack, Rending Slashes/Blood Craze (DPS difference is very very small, so if you want more survivability go Blood Craze), Relentless Focus. Ult: Flawless Dawnbreaker (Fighter's Guild, gives 5% weapon damage increase)
Bow: Endless Hail (your biggest source of DPS), Rearming Trap, Razor Caltrops, Poison Injection, Leeching Strikes. Ult: Incapitating Strike

Use Incap ult over Dawnbreaker when fighting single targets, like bosses. Dawnbreaker is mostly for the weapon damage on your front bar BUT it's good in trash fights.

Also good to have Vigor from Assault (you need to level up in PVP to get this, as well as Caltrops.) I would replace Rearming Trap with this in most circumstances until you run with great healers. You'll need a burst heal as you're melee and squishy, and more susceptible to damage. It also gives a heal over time and heals allies near you a bit.

Nightblades are the hardest class to play, because of the way Grim Focus and its morphs work.

This is a great in depth video, from the Clockwork City patch but goes in depth about the class and rotation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=f1vXGrDcFQc
This is an update for the Dragon Bones patch and goes through gear, CP, Mundus, ect: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bfRgKwnIJe4
Do watch both as the first goes through rotation and he slows it down so you can learn it easier.

Once you improve, your next goal is to farm better gear. You'll need Hunding's and Night Mother's still for the future, but eventually you'll want to farm Twice Fanged Serpent, Vicious Serpent, War Machine, and craft a set of Mechanical Acuity. Stamina needs a lot of sets depending on the situation when it comes to trials.

Kalgert

Well... This is a lot to take in. Actually kinda makes me want to abandon the whole thing and just do regular dungeons (I don't even want to end-game, I just wanna do dungeons on Veteran for purple tempers without having to spend loads of gold on them).

But oh well, I have different plans now. Such as me currently leveling an Altmer DPS Templar Magicka based, and after that I plan on rolling out with a Warden Bosmer, Stamina focused.

Thanks for the efforts of going through this, except for that one guy who basically went "Your item set sucks haha", as if he was making fun of me for my choice of gear... Not very nice when you wanna tell someone what they're doing wrong.

Turelus

Kalgert don't give up.

ESO had a strange learning curve when it comes to moving from base mechanics to advanced ones as much of the information you need is hidden and only comes out via players and guides.

If you haven't already try and find a nice relaxing guild which does veteran content and join up with them, they should be able to talk you through things which will help from builds to sitting with you at test dummies and showing you how to weave/cancel skills.

Much of the rotations and animation cancelling side of DPS gain is just down to practice and getting the muscle memory. Also some DPS increases come from your team (healers and tanks buffs and debuffs) so it's not just down to you to get better but also reliance on others to be helping you.

Shantu

I feel for you my friend. My DSP suckage factor on vet dungeons bosses pissed people off and got me kicked many times. Eventually I got so bummed out I just quit doing dungeons altogether and dumped any aspirations towards end game content.

But the upside is if you really want to increase your DSP, there are a lot of good people willing to share their knowledge and cheer you on. I've worked hard at taking their advice and have been able to improve my DSP skills considerably, though honestly I still suck when compared to the guys who can do 40k blindfolded with one finger.

Try take the crass comments with a grain of salt. There will always be some who feel empowered to take that route. But I've found the positive help and encouragement far outweighs the negativity. Good luck with whatever route you choose

Kalgert

I guess I could try to find a guild and see if I can get some help from those fine folks, might consider looking through the forums (Because finding a guild in-game gives off the impression you need to be multilingual as many guilds are recruiting in different languages, at least on the EU side). While getting a rotation and what have you in order, along with the right gear is good and all, what sounds scary is the idea that I have to learn how to cancel out animations at the right time and such, like sheesh, have some mercy, people who expect crazy high performances in 40k+ just to do a Veteran dungeon.

I also have an Imperial Tank character, which I am trying to utilize as well, but as said earlier, currently leveling up a fancy Altmer Templar Mage, because it seemed like a fun idea. So maybe I will delve in to the whole "Doing DPS on a Stamina Nightblade" at a later time, because right now I feel a little taken aback.

Mureel

Anotherone773 wrote: »

https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/#content4

That should help

Anotherone773 wrote: »

https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/#content4

That should help

Anyone can google a build but he needs to understand what is going on. In my humble opinion.

LittlePinkDot

I wish ZoS would allow us to zerg vet dungeons instead of forcing everyone to fit into a 4 man dungeon. We should be allowed to do it with 10 people through group finder. What people lack in skill they could make up for with sheer numbers.

On a side note... im wondering if 4 x pet sorc would work.. I mean with so many pets to take aggro you would think it could work.
And storm attronach was buffed.

DeadlyRecluse

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

On a side note... im wondering if 4 x pet sorc would work.. I mean with so many pets to take aggro you would think it could work.
And storm attronach was buffed.

There's a video somewhere of some folks doing a 12 petsorc trial. Funny stuff.

Turelus

@Kalgert do you play on PC EU? If you do I could invite you to The Unholy Legacy.

They're a really relaxed and fun guild who have weekly trials aimed at various levels of skill and are good at helping teach one another mechanics to get people up to higher levels of play.

Lord_Ninka

My advice is first of all not to just copy some other build someone linked you, but try variations of your build and decide for yourself what works better.

Other than that, get yourself a second set (or monster mask and agility), and remember to eat food. If you get a set like spriggan (which is just an overland set) in just blue and for instance move most of your attribute points to stamina and eat health + stamina food then I'd say you can expect well above a 30% increase to your damage with no extra effort or changes to your build.

danno8

In addition to the great advice here, you also don't mention if you are using gold level weapons. Gold over purple will net you around 200 more weapon damage.

Sparr0w

Just get a 5/4/3 setup of hundings, nightmothers & agility for now.

Change attributes to all be in stam & swap out a couple skills for ones you find on builds e.g. alcast

Try to light/heavy attack weave (as soon as you start to attack cast a skill) between all skills, its really easier than it sounds & will add a good 4-5k to your dps.

Then just play as normal trying to keep your eye on buffs and rotation it will come naturally as you find what does and doesnt work together.

Then within a couple of weeks you'll see your dps fly up without the endless beating on dummys and mental trauma of constant counting.

E.g. after swapping whatever picked up gear i found for a planned set(s) and rejigging some skills my dps went up by at least 10k by the end of the week, thats with a sloppy rotation and plenty of downtime

Just don't try to take everything in at once, most people have had years of practice on this so you cant expect top tier results right away.

Final suggestion is to hop in a friendly gear, thats the best place for tips, training and practice on this stuff!

EDIT FOR NOTIFICATION @Kalgert

Psyonico

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

On a side note... im wondering if 4 x pet sorc would work.. I mean with so many pets to take aggro you would think it could work.
And storm attronach was buffed.

Must try

Kalgert

Turelus wrote: »

@Kalgert do you play on PC EU? If you do I could invite you to The Unholy Legacy.

They're a really relaxed and fun guild who have weekly trials aimed at various levels of skill and are good at helping teach one another mechanics to get people up to higher levels of play.

I will take the guild in to consideration. Also I should let you know I have no interest in Trials/Raids (Assuming you are talking about that kind of trial), only Veteran Dungeoneering is my strange goal that I wish to get in to.

Turelus

Kalgert wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Kalgert do you play on PC EU? If you do I could invite you to The Unholy Legacy.

They're a really relaxed and fun guild who have weekly trials aimed at various levels of skill and are good at helping teach one another mechanics to get people up to higher levels of play.

I will take the guild in to consideration. Also I should let you know I have no interest in Trials/Raids (Assuming you are talking about that kind of trial), only Veteran Dungeoneering is my strange goal that I wish to get in to.

Okay no problem. Vet dungeons have a little lower bar as well so you should be fine with just brushing up on some basics and practising a little muscle memory for rotations.

Kalgert

As long as I am not screamed at to learn how to 100% animation cancelization for maximum damage, then I will be happy.

I have posted anotger thread on the LFG page to see if any guilds will hit me up, just so I have more choices.

felicityslaughter

@Kalgert I know you posted this months ago but I run a Dungeon guild, and if you still need a healthy nontoxic environment to learn in I can send you an invite. If you're interested you can message me here or ingame @felicityslaughter

DanteYoda

Anotherone773 wrote: »

https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/#content4

That should help

No good its full of pvp skills that no one wants to get.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Psyonico wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

On a side note... im wondering if 4 x pet sorc would work.. I mean with so many pets to take aggro you would think it could work.
And storm attronach was buffed.

Must try

I do a five pet sorc, I run both maw and mad tinkerer, plus the sorc pets. Get 30k+ easy and it is a lot of fun.

witchdoctor

DanteYoda wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/#content4

That should help

No good its full of pvp skills that no one wants to get.

If by full, you mean '2;' and by no one, you mean 'you.'

Vigor and Caltrops do not not take much longer than a casual weekend foray into Cyro.

Vahrokh

I love reading the repeated suggestions: "put all points into stamina for max DPS".

But if a mag sorc asks the same question they tell you: "put some points into health and place some health enchants, you have to make sacrifices"-

Itoq

I think most put points into their main damage attribute as it makes things more simple/adjustable - for pve (and pvp) most still have some health (or tri) enchants, health from the Valkyn Skoria set and/or health from of food or drink.

The main discourse about sorcs adding health is for PVP after the next update. The majority of other PVP dps builds have already done this.

Either way, most players dump all their points into their damage attribute and adjust the other attributes by other means.