Differences: Dragonknight & Nightblade

xDrac

Hey, I am new to ESO and am curious what are the fundamental differences between a Dragonknight and a Nightblade and which do you figure (if any) would have an edge in PvP or are they on equal footing or dependent on how you play them?

Enslaved

Dragonknight is a class that uses fire or poison damage, depending do you play it as magicka or stamina.
It is best tanking class.
Damage dealers that play DK are pretty much all melee.
Dragonknights can also be healers, but perform rather poor in this role and cannot compete with templars and wardens.

Nightblades are more of a ganking stealth oriented class. Be it magicka or stamina, rogue style suits them best.
They can tank and be solid in that role as well, but not as good as DK.
Damage dealers can be both melee and ranged, no matter what resource you use to fuel your attacks.
As healers, nightblades are slightly better than DKs, but still not very good at this role, imho.

When it comes down to PvP, both classes have their ups and downs.
Magicka DK is fire breathing monster that can hold its ground and use ton of dots to beat their enemies. It has dragon wings that reflect enemy projectiles, fire whips that are also healing you if conditions are met, leap that will grant you huge damage shield while knocking down enemies and dealing massive fire damage to them. mDK has a lot of stuns and snares and it is very satisfying to play for some ppl. What DK do not have is execute and it is the thing entire class lacks the most. Also, it has rather clunky gap closer and overall it is pretty slow.

Stamind DK is brawler type PvP class. It uses weapon skills to deal with enemies with just a few class skills. It is not as impressive as some other stamina classes and I would say that atm it is very near if not the very bottom of PvP stamina classes.

magicka Nightblades can be played in several ways in PvP. From single target gankers to very good mass bombers. It has great gap closer, teleport abilities that include shades and also ability to go into stealth at will using skill. It also have ranged execute that might not be best in game but still is very nice. A lot of self healing skills, some self harming ones that if used smart provide significant boost to healing over time. Used by smart and skillful players, mNB is very dangerous in PvP.

stamina NB is one of 2 best stamina classes for PvP, hand in hand with stamina Warden. 99.99% of sNBs are gankers, relying on stealth attacks and BiS class spammable in ESO when it comes down to stamina skills - surprise attack. It can alsoe be played as brawler that do not rely completely on stealth and some of hardest hitting NBs I met play it that way.

If you plan to farm APs fast, I would say go nightblade. It is a class that is more rewarding than Dragonknight atm, and also has higher ceiling if you dedicate your time to become very good using it. I main a sDK and also have spent a lot of time playing sNB and must say sNB is simply better for PvP. I did not play mNB too much compared to mDK, but bombing is quite rewarding if you figure it out and will bring you more APs in less time.

Asardes

Stam NB > Mag NB > Mag DK > Stam DK.

I play mainly a Stamina DK and it's really painful sometimes. I struggle to kill people and only come on top many Deathmatch BGs due to the very high number of assists from DoTs, but NB's and Sorcerer always steal the killing blows. 1v1 I really have troubles bursting people down, even with defile & stun from Reverberating Bash, stacking 3-4 DoTs and Take Flight. That is odd considering that I have 4.6K weapon damage and 31.5% weapon critical, 32K stamina and 1.6K recovery (no-CP). Besides lacking burst, the class lacks mobility. I try to compensate by running medium armor, full damage build, but I get destroyed easily when facing 3 sorcerers or other ranged builds, since Reflective Plate is so expensive (at least they are buffing it somewhat by also adding short time snare immunity) - somehow I get pitted against such team in BGs in the majority of matches. I'm a fairly experienced player and I still feel like punching a brick wall with my bare fists sometimes. The same observations stand for Cyrodiil and IC.

Magicka DK is less difficult to play, and much stronger especially 1v1. The class is also about DoTs but has much better survival than the stamina version. I play Light Armor and have no trouble surviving and killing people fast. If you run restoration staff back bar, keep Burning Ember & Mutagen ticking and cast Healing Ward from time to time and have a Draconic Power ability up (increased resistance & healing received passive) you should be quite hard to kill. Flame Lash hits hard people, especially if you have already hit them with Engulfing Flames and set them off-balance (shock glyph is really strong for this). For me it's quite pleasant to play, compared to the stamina DK, although this character is fairly new, and regardless of setting.

Stamina NB is by far the strongest IMO. The burst you have is insane. Most times you don't even need to use Incapacitating Strike to kill people, if you fear them or even quickly stealth and hit them with Surprise Attack while invisible and stab them with Killer's Blade they drop dead there. If they are tankier you need to use the ultimate, but since it's so cheap, it's basically refunded in 5 seconds if you kill the target and pop a potion on top so you can kill again, and again. Cloak is really strong since it also makes you immune to DoTs for the duration. I've had quite a bit of trouble bursting NBs on my Stamina DK due to this. Magicka has it easier, since you can hit them at CC immunity cooldown with Fossilize and they're also immobilized after that. Unfortunately the skill is very expensive so only magicka DK can really use it that often.

I haven't gotten to play Magicka NB but they're also very strong due to the stealth abilities. One way of playing this class is to ambush large numbers of people and "bomb" them with a set called Vicious Death, that makes killed people explode in a chain reaction. This way you can make loads of AP, and if you're in IC, also grab their Tel Var stones in the process. For BGs bombing is not effective, but they can play ranged, just like sorcerer, and since they have such a strong execute, they can steal kills easily and not be that exposed to damage.

So if you're just starting, just play NB and you should be fine.

xDrac

Wow thank you for these amazing and thorough responses, that helped me so much, once again thank you!

mojomood

xDrac wrote: »

Hey, I am new to ESO and am curious what are the fundamental differences between a Dragonknight and a Nightblade and which do you figure (if any) would have an edge in PvP or are they on equal footing or dependent on how you play them?

For PvP:
Stamblade is easiest to start, but playing in groups is much easier while learning PvP. Vet players will focus you down very quickly. Be ready to die some, but also get kills. Mobility is key, really look at Medium armor skill Shuffle or 2H skill Forward Momentum. If you get locked down, you're dead. Even if not, you'll still die a lot unless you go for the tanky bleed style.
MagDK is very versatile. You can build for tankiness or burst or heals. Lots of fun to play since some recent buffs.
Magblade is much harder to learn than stamblade in PvP but has a very high ceiling as well. Not many out there, but the ones that are can destroy entire groups. Magblade is much easier in PvE due to self heals and shields.
StamDK maybe the funnest of these since they have some pretty cool skills, but don't expect an edge in CP. In no CP, StamDKs are really good.

Bonus: for all of these, Argonian is a top race choice. The sustain from their potion passive means you can pull off builds in PvP that others just can't sustain. For PvE, Argonians are the best tanks and adequate for all but speed run level builds.