[Help] Nightblade stamina DPS build(solo)

JoShadow

Hi, I'm quite new on ESO and my character just hit level 30. I'm trying a stamina dps build but I feel like I'm pretty weak. I just finished the main story and I noticed that I had some difficult battle along the way even in solo dungeon ( I was killed in 2 shot by some bosses). So maybe a good player can help me make a good build so I can survive and deal a lot of damage while playing solo. For my equipment, I'll wait until I'm level 50 before I start throwing my money on gear I won't use later. So here is what I want :

Race: Dark Elf
Class: Nightblade
Weapon set 1: Dual Daggers(Killer's Blade/ Rapid Strike/ Surprise Attack/ Blood Craze/ Deadly Cloak/ Incapacitating Strike)
Weapon set 2: Bow(Volley/ Swallow Soul/ Drain Essence/ Mark Target/ Mirage/ 'No ult right, still low on bow')
Extra info: I'm a newly born vampire

Skill lvl:
Assassination 39
Shadow 29
Siphoning 9
Dual Wield 44
Bow 13
Medium Armor 40
Vampire 1

All I want is to be pointed in a direction which I hope will be better than what I'm doing.

P.S : Sorry if my English is bad.

ArpamiesFin

looks pretty good, just do some pvp to unlock vigor, its pretty essential for healing

Oreyn_Bearclaw

You are on the right track. At your level, I would focus more on rounding out your skills. You are going to feel pretty weak until you are at least at the CP gear cap (160). I wouldnt spend anything on gear until CP 160. As stated, a little PVP for vigor will definitely help. You also really want Caltrops from PVP as well for the damage.

I will make a few suggestions on your skills. I realize you might not have some of them yet. The entire NB class is really designed around the skill grim focus, which a stam player will morph to relentless focus. This should be on your front bar, and the obvious skill to drop is rapid strikes. Rapid Strikes is redundant with Surprise Attack, no real reason to run both, and SA is better.

Your back bar has a few magic skills, that really wont serve you well once you get to higher levels. As a general rule, you only want to run utility skills that cost magic. Damage skills that cost magic wont scale with your build. Lots of people dont realize this, but as a general rule: If your skill costs magic, it scales of spell damage AND max magic. If your skill costs stamina, it scales off weapon damage AND max stamina. Increasing either of the inputs will make the tool tip value for the skill increase. This is why most players pick one attribte, (stamina or magic) and dump all their points there. You simply hit harder. Increasing your stamina by 10.5 points, is roughly the same as increasing your weapon damage by 1 point.

In other words, as a stamina player, all your damage skills should be stamina based. Your back bar has some redundancies and useless skills. Swallow soul and drain essence dont do much for a stam player (i realize they might be what you need to heal at low level). Mark Target is good for a bow/bow player, or a 2H/bow player, but the real reason you run mark target is for major fracture. Well, surprise attack already gives that to you. Mirage is a utility (defensive) skill. Probably good at low levels, but you will likely find its not needed. Vigor is a better defensive tool.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

JoShadow wrote: »

Thanks a lot for this small guide, it's going to help me a lot!

Haha, sure thing. Also, your other two class Ultimates both have merit. One is essentially an AOE bomb (soul shred), and one is really nice for damage mitigation in those oh crap moments (consuming darkness). You prob wont run them at end game, but no reason not to play with them in the mean time. Pay attention to your fighters guild skill line, you will want Dawnbreaker ultimate (and trap beast) at some point. It levels by killing undead, so it will max out eventually. You can do a zombie or Dolmen grind to power level it. Other than that, your front bar is surprisingly meta for damage.

Colecovision

I see bow is level 13. That makes sense since you are probably killing things with killer blade of on the front bar.

I’m case you don’t know, the weapon and skills that are slotted when you get xp are what the xp applies to. It has nothing to do with actually using the skill. So if you ever do a dolmen xp run, just use the bow. Also switch to bow before turning in quests or crafting writs. Be sure there is a vamp skill in your bar for that stuff as well. You could also leave a vamp skill on the front bar until you unlock the passives and just get that out of the way.

Also, be sure to change the settings so that you you can see all the buffs and damage numbers on screen. Read the passives for each skill line closely. Surprise attack can be an important defensive skill, but you need to pay attention to those descriptions and follow what buffs are up to understand why.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Colecovision wrote: »

I see bow is level 13. That makes sense since you are probably killing things with killer blade of on the front bar.

I’m case you don’t know, the weapon and skills that are slotted when you get xp are what the xp applies to. It has nothing to do with actually using the skill. So if you ever do a dolmen xp run, just use the bow. Also switch to bow before turning in quests or crafting writs. Be sure there is a vamp skill in your bar for that stuff as well. You could also leave a vamp skill on the front bar until you unlock the passives and just get that out of the way.

Also, be sure to change the settings so that you you can see all the buffs and damage numbers on screen. Read the passives for each skill line closely. Surprise attack can be an important defensive skill, but you need to pay attention to those descriptions and follow what buffs are up to understand why.

You dont need a vamp skill slotted to level the vamp line. The Vamp line is leveled purely on experience, which happens on its own really quick. What you said about the bow is true. It doesnt matter if you use the skills or not. When you gain experience, any skill on your active bar will always get XP, as will the resulting skill line (with a few exceptions, Undaunted, Vamp, Mages, fighters guild, Alliance, WW, etc). In fact you dont even need to use a bow to level the bow line. Simply slot a Bow skill on your front bar and earn XP. You wont be able to use the skill, but it will level, as will the associated skill line.

For example, when I have a stam toon that needs something like 1H or Sword/Shield leveled for PVP, I simply run a DW setup. On the front bar I slot steel tornado and as many 1H skills as I have available, then I load my back bar with all the buffs/Dots I need to grind. You can level a skill line to 50 in like an hour.

When I level a new toon, I always keep at least one skill from each class skill line on my bar at all times, until they hit 50. I also keep at least one skill from my back bar weapon (usually a bow or Resto staff), so that those level as well. If you want to take it one step further, make sure you always have at least 1 piece of each armor type so those level. If you really want to go all out, I recommend a turn in bar. basically every time you turn in a quest, you equip a secondary weapon, and stack all the skills/lines you want to level. On PC, its easy to do with an addon.

jlb1705

I would choose one or the other between Rapid Strikes/Bloodthirst and Surprise Attack. I remember relying pretty heavily on Bloodthirst at low levels because of the healing returned. Surprise Attack is the superior skill, but its potential is really unlocked after you've fully invested in the Shadow passives. If you don't have enough skill points to max those out yet, then using Bloodthirst to stay alive might be a better option for the time being. You need to get Grim Focus (morph to Relentless Focus) on your front bar in place of whichever one you take off once you get your Assassination skill up to 42.

You're not far from maxing our your Dual Wield skill. Once you do that, you can slot that ultimate (Lacerate - morph to Rend) - it has a decent healing return with it.

As for the back bar - make sure you're on this bar when you turn in quests or when you're discovering new locations. You'll level those skills a little faster, so you can unlock new options and passives.

I don't see anything wrong with having Mark Target slotted. Mark Target does have the same de-buff as Surprise attack, so you don't necessarily want to use them together. If you use Mark Target well though, it returns a decent chunk of health and can keep you alive. I cut right through a lot of enemies using a combo of Mark Target and Bloodthirsty back when I was at your level.

Don't ditch Swallow Soul yet. You need it slotted at least until you reach 30 in the Siphoning skill line so you can unlock Siphoning Strikes, which will morph to Leeching Strikes. Leeching Strikes is the only useful stamina skill in the Siphoning line, but you have to level it enough to unlock it, which means slotting a Magicka skill for a while. It doesn't hurt to use Swallow Soul as long as you have it slotted though. I used it at low levels because it returned healing provided a ranged attack, and helped with managing resources since it allowed me to attack/heal without exhausting my limited (at the time) stamina pool.

JoShadow

Thanks a lot for this small guide, it's going to help me a lot!

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Colecovision wrote: »

I see bow is level 13. That makes sense since you are probably killing things with killer blade of on the front bar.

I’m case you don’t know, the weapon and skills that are slotted when you get xp are what the xp applies to. It has nothing to do with actually using the skill. So if you ever do a dolmen xp run, just use the bow. Also switch to bow before turning in quests or crafting writs. Be sure there is a vamp skill in your bar for that stuff as well. You could also leave a vamp skill on the front bar until you unlock the passives and just get that out of the way.

Also, be sure to change the settings so that you you can see all the buffs and damage numbers on screen. Read the passives for each skill line closely. Surprise attack can be an important defensive skill, but you need to pay attention to those descriptions and follow what buffs are up to understand why.

You dont need a vamp skill slotted to level the vamp line. The Vamp line is leveled purely on experience, which happens on its own really quick. What you said about the bow is true. It doesnt matter if you use the skills or not. When you gain experience, any skill on your active bar will always get XP, as will the resulting skill line (with a few exceptions, Undaunted, Vamp, Alliance, WW, etc). In fact you dont even need to use a bow to level the bow line. Simply slot a Bow skill on your front bar and earn XP. You wont be able to use the skill, but it will level, as will the associated skill line.

When I level a new toon, I always keep at least one skill from each class skill line on my bar at all times, until they hit 50. I also keep at least one skill from my back bar weapon (usually a bow or Resto staff), so that those level as well. If you want to take it one step further, make sure you always have at least 1 piece of each armor type so those level. If you really want to go all out, I recommend a turn in bar. basically every time you turn in a quest, you equip a secondary weapon in training trait, and stack all the skills/lines you want to level. On PC, its easy to do with an addon.

Colecovision

I didn’t realize that about the vamp line. I leveled it turning in master writs with a skill slotted. I guess it was just the general xp.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Colecovision wrote: »

I didn’t realize that about the vamp line. I leveled it turning in master writs with a skill slotted. I guess it was just the general xp.

Yep it takes a little over a million XP i believe to level it to 10. I usually get a bite from someone at low levels, and I am maxed before I get to level 50.

If memory serves, these are the outliers from the general rule:

-Vampire: Leveled by Genreal XP.
-Werewolf: Getting Kills while in wearwolf form (not sure quite how this one is measured, to be honest, but grinding as a werewolf does the trick).
-Undaunted: Leveled by dungeon achievments
-Mages Guild: leveled by collecting lorebooks
-Fighters Guild: leveled by killing undead, daedra and doing Dolmens
-Assault/Support: leveled by gaining AP
-Soul Magic: leveled by the main quest.

Armor levels simply by gaining XP while wearing that type of armor. I believe that if you slot the unique skill to each armor line, that will boost it as well, but I am actually not 100% sure on that. If you wear 5/1/1 while you level, you will hit level 50 on your main type of armor before level 50, and the rest dont take a lot longer after that.

I think thats it currently for skill lines with acutal skills (not counting things like crafting, dark brotherhood, etc). The rest just level by having a skill slotted. With those unique lines, you still level the actual skills by simply slotting them, but the skill line itself wont increase just by doing that.

SmellyUnlimited

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/411811/instead-of-a-topic-asking-about-your-build-perhaps-look-to-the-plethora-of-guides-available#latest

gref

there is some good info in the responses to this question