PLEASE HELP MAGBLADE!

DomiNate4NB

The only time I get excited that I have a chance to kill someone is when they are a MagBlade themselves. I've never been a fan of cannibalism....

kaithuzar

Try reading one of the magblade form threads for ideas of builds. I know I’ve posted what I’m using.

DomiNate4NB

Running war maiden, shackle, TK (2H/Resto)
Citrus Filet
Steed Mundus
Concealed, cripple, FM, shadow disguise, merciless, soul harvest
Double take, mutagen, syphoning attack, fear, harness magic, Resto ult

Anything you see that sticks out?

DomiNate4NB

2H mobility is my preferred playstyle. I know stamblade is miles better but don't have time to respec as I've been playing mag since launch and dropped all my Stam sets

Xvorg

DomiNate4NB wrote: »

Running war maiden, shackle, TK (2H/Resto)
Citrus Filet
Steed Mundus
Concealed, cripple, FM, shadow disguise, merciless, soul harvest
Double take, mutagen, syphoning attack, fear, harness magic, Resto ult

Anything you see that sticks out?

too squishy, besides 2H front is not helping you a bit.

Maybe destro front, 2H back bar or destro + resto can help. Not using that extra penetration and not being able to proc merc consistently only gives you problems.

WM is not a great set. It seems it is good but really doesn't help much. It doesn't increases your healing, doesn't help your crits and doesn't protect you. If you play as a melee NB you MUST use a mitigation set and Shack is too good to drop it.

Sets that could help you include Impregnable (you can have it in light or heavy), Riposte (not as great as it used to be), Buffer of the swift (10% reduced dmg on cyro), or heavy sets taht increase your dmg like rattlecage. Vampire claok is also an option, but you have natural minor protection in Dark Cloak, so Swift is a great great option (18% reduced dmg taken and some nice spell and dmg resistance)

ScruffyWhiskers

That looks like a very good set up and gear. If you don't take somebody down after the initial burst you just have to reset and either find another target or wait for the right opportunity again. It seems like everybody is packing over 25k hp nowadays. The struggle is real.

Knootewoot

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

That looks like a very good set up and gear. If you don't take somebody down after the initial burst you just have to reset and either find another target or wait for the right opportunity again. It seems like everybody is packing over 25k hp nowadays. The struggle is real.

I just engaged guys with 36-40k health. It was fun but you just can't burst anyone down these days. I died btw.

Anyway, i think after 5 years with my main magblade it is time for me to try something else. I am levelling a stam DK and even at lvl 21 he has with blue armor a longer lifetime in a fight. Can't wait until he hits lvl 50 and full geared.

DomiNate4NB

@Xvorg - I do appreciate the feedback. Quite candidly, defense isn't so much of a problem. Most of it comes from cloak, FM + mutagen and a ton of health Regen from TK+citrus+steed. Resto ult when I'm being focused. It's that I am using war maiden shackle and when I line up burst (cripple, fear, harvest, merciless, conceal spam) by the time I'm spamming and weaving conceal I can't bring anyone down.

DomiNate4NB

@ScruffyWhiskers - so real! Hate when I'm feverishly spamming concealed and they just pop a couple defensive skills at a trolly pace and their health goes right back up

Xvorg

DomiNate4NB wrote: »

@Xvorg - I do appreciate the feedback. Quite candidly, defense isn't so much of a problem. Most of it comes from cloak, FM + mutagen and a ton of health Regen from TK+citrus+steed. Resto ult when I'm being focused. It's that I am using war maiden shackle and when I line up burst (cripple, fear, harvest, merciless, conceal spam) by the time I'm spamming and weaving conceal I can't bring anyone down.

What about spinner's? If you say there's no problem with mitigation, then it could be a great option

ScruffyWhiskers

Burst without a coordinated CC is pretty futile. You need to get that concealed weapon stun or a flame reach knock back and then unload. Don't be surprised if you get them into execute range and they break cc and then either dodge roll away or burst heal/shield up. Even with impale on the front bar it's so clunky and the 25% window so tight that the finisher often doesn't come through. I look at the whole thing as a challenge. A stam nb can escape in most situations where I am just toast. But that's the whole fun of it. I don't even run kill count anymore. If you want to enjoy magicaka nb pvp just go out there and fight in a zen mindset and be the ball. That's my advice at any rate. That and $4 bucks will get you a coffee.

DomiNate4NB

Is spinner better now that healing Ward is a waste of space? Is it more damage than WM overall?

DomiNate4NB

@ScruffyWhiskers - I do burst out of CC. Predominantly from fear as I like to proc the spell damage enchant on the Resto. Concealed is leveraged as well, hence my frustration. If they are out of Stam, life is good. But that is mostly not the case.

Feeling like a whiner now but came into this thinking I was playing on an uneven playing field lol!

Im thinking I might L2P myself right about now

Iskiab

When I was a magblade I didn’t bother trying to mitigate damage. It’s a losing game because soul siphon can be reflected and refreshing path sucks in pvp. Your mitigation or damage is going to suck, take your pick.

I boosted my regen really high by back barring 5 lich, used Asylum front bar, 5 spinners/bright throat. For monster I went with Iceheart and used crushing shock as my spammable. If someone even looked at me I’d cloak and use it to avoid damage.

Was okay, but the class needs some work in pvp. I’ve been wanting to try something like it again.

Front flame - 5 bright, 3 lich, iceheart, Asylum staff
Back flame - 5 bright, 5 lich, iceheart
5 light, 1 med, 1 heavy

Front bar: Merciless - crippling - ele - crushing shock - shadowy disguise - U: undo

Back: Siphoning - concealed - race against time/double take - impale - shadowy disguise - U: whatever

Wasn’t very good against sorcs or DKs, but I’d hunt bow dps and taking them out is easy and it was okay against templars. Was also good for kill stealing with impale. Cloaked speed with concealed and major expedition was really fun.

I just tried to boost crushing as much as possible. Iceheart would proc like crazy because crushing hits 3x and the Asylum staff meant they’d have burning, off balance and the ice thing up at all times; so two dots, -15% damage and 8% additional damage.

Ended up going pvp healer instead. Problem was no self healing. I didn’t see a way to solve the issue so gave up on the class.

DomiNate4NB

I've tried all the flavors of magblade..2H is preferred. That said, in a game of rock/paper/scissors...when I'm rock, it's paper..when I'm paper, it's scissors..when I'm scissors, it's rock.

Help @ZOS_Gilliam. Not saying we need to bring full-blown sap tank back (still use baharahs sometimes in honor) but if you could make it so we don't feel like a wet paper bag, swinging a wet noodle, it would be greatly appreciated. Good start on the racial passives btw.

Much Love,
Mr. (Not even) Al Dente

Lucky28

Iskiab wrote: »

When I was a magblade I didn’t bother trying to mitigate damage. It’s a losing game because soul siphon can be reflected and refreshing path sucks in pvp. Your mitigation or damage is going to suck, take your pick.

I boosted my regen really high by back barring 5 lich, used Asylum front bar, 5 spinners/bright throat. For monster I went with Iceheart and used crushing shock as my spammable. If someone even looked at me I’d cloak and use it to avoid damage.

Was okay, but the class needs some work in pvp. I’ve been wanting to try something like it again.

Front flame - 5 bright, 3 lich, iceheart, Asylum staff
Back flame - 5 bright, 5 lich, iceheart
5 light, 1 med, 1 heavy

Front bar: Merciless - crippling - ele - crushing shock - shadowy disguise - U: undo

Back: Siphoning - concealed - race against time/double take - impale - shadowy disguise - U: whatever

Wasn’t very good against sorcs or DKs, but I’d hunt bow dps and taking them out is easy and it was okay against templars. Was also good for kill stealing with impale. Cloaked speed with concealed and major expedition was really fun.

I just tried to boost crushing as much as possible. Iceheart would proc like crazy because crushing hits 3x and the Asylum staff meant they’d have burning, off balance and the ice thing up at all times; so two dots, -15% damage and 8% additional damage.

Ended up going pvp healer instead. Problem was no self healing. I didn’t see a way to solve the issue so gave up on the class.

yeah. magblade self heals are really bad right now. only good one is reaper's mark 15K heal in PvP for me. but to take advantage of it, you basically have to 1vX healing is rough in 1v1's.

Iskiab

Yea, the best magblades I’ve seen did one of two things. Either boosted their health ridiculously high and used dark cloak, like a magblade tank.

The other one played like a ganker - he’d cloak behind while I was healing to try to gank me. He never actually got me, but he forced me to cloak away so a team mate would die. Came fairly close at times but his/her contribution wouldn’t show on the scoreboard.

The necessity of light armour for the pen plus lack of consistent self healing is what’s making magblade weak. They might have a time - just not right now. Groups ball up and magblades self healing can’t keep up. Magblades need a source of healing that isn’t tied to a target, wardens and DKs have abilities that can absorb/reflect, and anyone who wears 5 heavy can absorb projectiles.

Unless you attack from a stealth position away from the group you’ll get cc’d and knocked out of cloak. You’re leaving your team to fight short handed.

Seenoevil

Valkyn skoria
5 light armour master(3 body ice staff back bar)
5 bright throat boast( 2 protective jewellry 1 infused spell dam
Masters nirnhoned inferno front bar

Back bar
Refreshing path/harness magic/siphoning attack/cloak/shadow image, soultether ulti

Front bar
Destructive reach, merciless resolve, cripple, swallow soul,inner light, incap

LordTareq

After becoming increasingly frustrated trying to play a heavy armour stamina nightblade in battlegrounds, I'm experimenting with a very weird magebuild build atm for no-CP, using 5 piece Fortified Brass, 5 Piece War Maiden. Willpower rings. No monster sets as I hate them all. Front bar one handed + shield using alchemical poison, backbar destruction staff with disease. Steed mundus stone.
Resists are around 22k for frontbar, 19k for backbar. Coupled with 28k health & harness magicka and the cloak on steroids it makes me quite tanky while still having the 5 piece light bonuses.

But the best part is, is so incredibly flexible as you can still dish out respectable damage from the safety of range + cripple the hell out of foes that threaten teammembers/try to get away. Anything dangerous heading your way, cloak and relocate with superspeed.
Then on the sword and shield bar you have respectable burst from incap & conceiled weapon & the execute, plus the tools to reliably get away. Because in the ideal situation you get +25% speed from conceiled, + 10% from the steed mundus, and +30% from cripple. I literally zip around the battlefield with constant higher than sprint speeds while cloaked, absolutely fantastic. Even when snared (which is a weakness, no snare removal) movement speed is generally still at least equal to normal speed.

So far (4 matches) it has worked satisfyingly well. Mid to high contribution scores, between 3 and 7 kills but lots of assists, and the best of all, all matches so far I only had 1 death.

fred4

Are you fishing for a build that actually works ? You want to be a 2H / resto ganker? I play one in CP open world. Couple of things:

(1) Healing sucks. I still use Dampen + Healing Ward for lack of something better, but don't expect too much from it, nor from Swallow Soul, nor from anything else the resto has to offer outside of the ultimate. Personally, while I love a vMA resto on other classes, I don't like that Mutagen / Rapid Regen exposes me as a magblade, so that's not for me either. I use a Willpower resto for the slightly bigger shield.

(2) Forget about tankiness. Don't think you can tank players, even with 2 shields. A single stamblade can tear through those and kill you. OK, let me clarify. You could build for big shields with Necro or higher tankiness with Protective jewelry and, say, Armor Master, but you sacrifice too much damage as a melee magblade when you do that. You and I probably love Forward Momentum and the ability to take on DKs with this playstyle, however 2H light attacks are incredibly weak, Concealed Weapon is weak, and you're stuck with a stamina ult (Incap Strike), because you want the stun from that.

(3) This leaves Cloak, the shade and speed for your defense. The faster you are, the more effective Cloak becomes. Options include the Steed mundus, Swift jewelry, Concealed Weapon (of course) and the Skooma Smuggler set. Perhaps Cripple.

(4) You need Caluurion, plain and simple. That set is the only thing that saves 2H melee magblade from extinction, IMO. Ideally you need a Caluurion 2H sword, so you can avail of Forward Momentum and you can control the proc.

(5) You need Zaan as well. I ran Troll King for the longest time. Caluurion without Zaan is still quite weak. The combination of Caluurion + Zaan + the speed to keep up with dodge rolling opponents is what kills them, especially when Zaan procs.

(6) Options for the final set include Skooma Smuggler, Spinner and Auroran's Thunder.

(7) Be a Breton so you can sustain this setup. I run 2x cost reduction + 1x mag regen from Skooma Smuggler + Ghastly Eye Bowl. I also use Meditate, so I can cloak around a corner and get stamina back, otherwise I'd recommend Amber Plasm or Shacklebreaker as the final set.

Just to preempt something, in case you're opposed to proc set cheese. Melee magblade is weak without these sets. The shield changes and Healing Ward nerf hit it hard. You're wearing light armor. There is an insta-ganking stamblade setup going around, which simply involves casting Snipe into Incap at point-blank range. I have been hit for a 10.5K crit Incap + 9.3K non-crit Snipe + 13.7K crit Killer's Blade, killing me outright despite having the Dampen shield up and the shade standing next to me. By contrast my Incap will typically hit a medium armor stamblade for 3K non-crit, as will Concealed Weapon. Surprise Attack gives penetration. Incap is a stamina ultimate. 2H light attacks are stamina-based. A stamblade can kill me within 2 GCDs with ZERO counterplay, if they can pull off that combo. The very best that I have managed with the magblade is killing a stamblade within 3 GCDs and that involved a Zaan proc. In the more typical scenario you will not kill even a squishy, but full CP, medium armor target outright, but you will need to run after them as they dodge roll.

TL;DR: Melee magblades are incredibly weak, compared to stamblades, but ZOS threw them a bone with Caluurion. To achieve full parity with stamblade gank potential, you probably have to wear Zaan + Caluurion + Auroran's Thunder.

PS: I used to think melee magblades have an ease of use advantage over stamblades. High cloak sustain and the speed from Concealed can be incredibly convenient, while shields were quite a hard counter against damage in the past. This has changed. Shields have become wimpy, at least with a 33K mag light armor build, such as mine. This has left the Shade, Cloak and speed as the only real defenses. If you are caught, you are toast, because the shield will often only protect you for the 1 second it took to cast it. A stamblade has a few dodge rolls in them. A magblade typically does not.

PPS: My experience pertains to CP open-world, primarily solo play / ganking. Proc sets tend to work even better in no CP. As for BGs, from what little I've seen, I think AOE and ranged playstyles currently dominate, so I'm not sure my setup would work there.

fred4

DomiNate4NB wrote: »

Running war maiden, shackle, TK (2H/Resto)
Citrus Filet
Steed Mundus
Concealed, cripple, FM, shadow disguise, merciless, soul harvest
Double take, mutagen, syphoning attack, fear, harness magic, Resto ult

Anything you see that sticks out?

(1) Concealed with a 2H weapon is just not competitive, because light attacks make up a significant portion of the damage these days and 2H is a stamina weapon. Solution: Compensate with Caluurion, if you want to use this playstyle.

(2) While I love Troll King + Forward Momentum on many other builds, I feel I cannot afford it on melee magblade. Switching to Zaan made a big difference, especially for tankier targets. Of course, this means your healing will be compromised. The solution that works best, for me, is to stack heavily into speed along with judicious use of the shade. I also still use Healing Ward, at least for now.

(3) I prefer Incap, because the stun is easier to apply than the Concealed stun. The most common ganking opener is Lotus Fan -> Incap. Caluurion is a guaranteed proc from Lotus Fan and coincides with the Incap.

(4) I prefer Dampen over Harness. Shields are so bad, you need the biggest you can get, certainly when you don't have Troll King. A combination I have not yet tried is TK + Caluurion + Auroran's Thunder.

For what it's worth, my current bar layout is:

Concealed, Forward Momentum, Siphoning Attacks, Lotus Fan, Shadowy Disguise, Incap Strike
Swallow Soul, Healing Ward, Deep Thoughts, Shadow Image, Dampen Magic, Light's Champion

I use Swallow Soul for a heal and for farming bosses in IC. My resto staff is Infused with a Prismatic enchant. Sometimes this works to finish players trying to run a way, especially vampires, but on the whole I find it better to not bar swap and spam Concealed. I can understand why you have Cripple on the front bar. I currently use Skooma Smuggler instead, along with an Immovable + Detection potion prior to the gank. I do feel that the speed from Skooma Smuggler + 3x gold Swift jewelry seals the deal in some fights when you have a player on the defensive.

Metemsycosis

Out of my chest, actually making decent ap off these set ups in OW cyrodiil.

Heavy armor set up:
5 dragonguard, 5 lich or transmutation, 2 earthgore.

Trick is to run the vampire drain skill, shade, blessing of restoration, elusive mist, teleport shade, resto ulti for crazy survivability. Kite like crazy with cripple spam. Watch out for Templars as they have one too many snares in their arsenal.

Light armor:
Spinner/ caluu / (2h/ganking)

Spinner/vd/groth (Dw or destro/ult dumper)

Caluu/lich/skoria (destro/solo)

Everything is shade, cloak, speed. Without shade you are a sitting duck.

The caluu /lich set up is best with an ice staff, for wall of elements and clench, which make landing caluu at range easier and worthwhile but semi ganking sometimes works too, using an inferno staff and flame reach into soul assault.

DomiNate4NB

This is a lot of good information! I don't PVE very much so would need help with getting Zaan and Caul. I've avoided PVE sets because stuff gets nerfed and I've wasted (what are very limited) resources upgrading gear that got nerfed into Oblivion.

Someone want to drag me through the dungeons?

XBox gamertag: DomiNate4

When did 2H become completely Stam based? I thought ults and LA scaled with your highest damage and resource stats?

I do agree with the speed approach. Replaced fear with shade and I feel almost untouchable. That is 99% due to FM so I'd like to not lose that but it seems I'm losing some damage.

Could someone clarify the LA update with 2H and associated Stam ults?

brandonv516

DomiNate4NB wrote: »

This is a lot of good information! I don't PVE very much so would need help with getting Zaan and Caul. I've avoided PVE sets because stuff gets nerfed and I've wasted (what are very limited) resources upgrading gear that got nerfed into Oblivion.

Someone want to drag me through the dungeons?

XBox gamertag: DomiNate4

When did 2H become completely Stam based? I thought ults and LA scaled with your highest damage and resource stats?

I do agree with the speed approach. Replaced fear with shade and I feel almost untouchable. That is 99% due to FM so I'd like to not lose that but it seems I'm losing some damage.

Could someone clarify the LA update with 2H and associated Stam ults?

I know that name, I used to see you in BGs all the time.

Caluurions is easy because you can farm the dungeon on normal for the pieces and even upgrade the jewelry now.

Ultimates do scale with the highest of your spell damage/magicka or weapon damage/stamina. That's why Magblade can still effectively use Incap.

I believe light attacks for destro and resto scale off spell damage and magicka while everything else scales off weapon damage and stamina.

Iskiab

That’s right. Light/heavy attacks scale off magicka and sp for staves and stamina & weapon damage for everything else. All ultimates scale off your highest pool.

Melee weapons light attacks will be weak on a magblade, but they are more fluid. I’ve found light attack weaving a lot easier with them.

fred4

To elaborate: While ultis scale off your highest stats and the tooltip between a stamina and magicka build may be almost identical, there is still a big difference in how they perform. My magblade tested the difference between Incap and Soul Harvest on a target skeleton once. Soul Harvest did about 40% more damage. The reasons are:

(1) CP. A magicka build gets spell crit %, spell crit damage, spell penetration and enhanced magicka damage from CP, boosting Soul Harvest, but not Incap.

(2) Spell crit and penetration from light armor boosts Soul Harvest, but not Incap.

(3) Using proc sets, such as Caluurion and Zaan, or the magicka pen set (Spinner), leaves you at a disadvantage over stamina NBs, who are more likely to put everything into stats, not procs. I believe the meta is Spriggan + Bone Pirate. Bone Pirate being a sustain set leaves them room for 1 or 2 more damage glyphs than you. This lets them boost Incap beyond what a magblade can achieve.

(4) A stamina nightblade "automatically" gets physical pen from Surprise Attack. While magicka builds can arguably have more pen, due to that light armor passive, in ganking setups they more likely have parity, since magicka setups do not have a way to apply Major Breach as easily as Stamblades can apply Major Fracture.

In addition the builds you are facing either have equal physical and spell resistance or they have more spell resistance than physical. Bretons, templars, DKs and light armor users all get spell resistance. A Breton templar in light armor typically has (off the top of my head) 7K more spell resist than physical. I can't think of a build where the opposite would be true. This is neither here nor there, veering off into rock / paper / scissors discussion, but just a thought.

In terms of light attacks, while a stamblade has hit me for 3K crit light attacks, my 2H light attacks are sitting at weapon crit as low as 10% (in no CP). Stamina players have greater physical resistance and I have no physical pen, typically resulting in light attacks in the hundreds. A stamblade can easily hit me for 8K, in CP, with a light attack + Suprise Attack in one second. I will only hit them for 4K to 5K with a 2H light attack + Concealed Weapon.

Yes, I am framing this mostly as an encounter between my specific build and a meta stamina nightblade. I think this is partly because, when you have choice, they tend to be your priority targets. As ever your mileage may vary, rock / paper / scissors, yada, yada, yada. I just find it useful to highlight the damage disparity I've gleaned from looking at combat logs, if only for my own sanity. I have no compunction for wearing Caluurion as a result.

Zaan is hard to get, if you don't have a reasonably good group. Caluurion is easy to farm on normal, but getting the drop of your ideal weapon could take time. In my build, the 2H sword makes it so I can build ulti with the resto staff until I am ready to jump back in with Cloak, Lotus Fan and Incap, which guarantees the Caluu proc at point blank range. In a duelling situation this is quite predictable. People have 1 second to dodge roll and they avoid both the Incap and Caluu proc. Even a magsorc has enough stamina to consistently do that. You have to mix it up with Concealed Weapon from cloak.

Neither of these sets are in common use on PC EU CP open world, which is what I play. Zaan, on it's own, is not that powerful when wielded by a noob, and it is not in the rotation that the Golden vendor sells, thus somewhat hard to get. People made YouTube videos about Caluurion being OP, when that set was released, but I'm not often attacked with it myself. The projectile is slow and reflectable. It's best suited to melee magblades, who can control the proc and surprise people at point blank range with it. The set has been out, unchanged, for some time. My only fear is that some combination, e.g. the full proc set combo with Auroran's Thunder, turns out OP - or is perceived that way - and everything will be nerfed. In duels Caluurion is easily dodgeable and reflectable, which counts against it. Many DKs just aren't sufficiently clued in to keep wings up when facing a Caluurion magblade.

fred4

DomiNate4NB wrote: »

Could someone clarify the LA update with 2H ...?

See all the other posts, including mine. I forgot to say that light attacks were buffed in Summerset. They have become more important to your overall damage. As a result, magicka characters have a stronger bias to use staves, because those synergise with their crit and penetration passives. Call it an indirect nerf to 2H, even though 2H may give you higher ability tooltips. Actually ... a fire staff gives you 8% to single target skills, which means tooltips are probably about the same.

kaithuzar

@fred4
I’m trying to take different stance on similar playstyle & see how I do; I’ll post back after a few days.

I’ve race changed to Breton & am not vamp.

Trying to use the following:
Head: troll king light nirn
Shoulder: troll king light nirn
Chest: impreg heavy reinforced
Legs: impreg heavy reinforced
Gloves: willows path light nirn
Sash: willows path light nirn
Shoes: willows path light nirn

Neck: impreg infused recovery
Ring1: impreg infused sp dmg
Ring2: impreg infused sp dmg

Weapon1: 2h sword willows path sharp - increase weapon & spell dmg enchant

Weapon2: resto staff willows path defending - shock enchant

Using lover mundus so my spell pen hits 15k (including the 5k from cp for 78 points)

My damage may be a little low but I was trying not to die so quickly to bleed builds, thus the troll king & lingering health pots & willows path also gives 15% health recovery.
If damage is too low, I’ll swap troll king for molag kena.

Using refreshing path, blessing of restoration, & forward momentum for the hots.

Iskiab

Please do, I’d guess you wouldn’t be able to do enough damage to kill anyone but I’ve never tried it. Magblades seem a lot squishier than sorcs, health recovery won’t help if while cc’d you die in 2 GCDs.

As an aside, there was talk of a new weapon skill line - orbs - and someone posted a picture from ZOS of someone with a 1 handed weapon and an off hand orb. It screamed melee magblade to me. If melee magblade’s your thing there is hope coming.

SpiderCultist

If you combine TK with Hist Sap, they become quite tanky

LordTareq

The changes to Altmer actually prompted me to invest time and energy in trying to make the magblade work. The idea was basically to create some sort of battlemage using mainly a big sword and lots of magic to support this. I've tried sword & shield + resto staff, two-handed sword & resto staff, two-handed sword and flame staff. And various skill setups. Most worked fairly well. Biggest weakness being resource recovery, and a lack of escape tools when you get caught with snares. Another thing I found annoying, is that the flame staff is so effective at doing ranged damage, that it becomes the primary weapon, while the greatsword becomes more of a backup. Which is not how I want to play my magblade. Downside of using a resto staff is that the enemy team makes you a primary target, and my deaths while using a resto staff were actually much higher than any other staff despite the heals.

Today I tried a charged frost staff with front enchant for the first time. My god, what an eye-opener. The frost staff is simply made for magblades. Excellent in duels, helps with escape, (my first battleground in a long time with 0 deaths), and the utility for the team is just amazing (slowing/rooting the entire enemy team to let the relic carrier score is lovely).

Using Blockade liberally for obvious reasons, the ability to cloak to a good position and then drop blockade in the middle of a group is not to be underestimated. For long range standoffs its obviously not as effective as a flame/lightning staff.
Crippling grasp functions similar to Clench but is better (more overall damage, less cost, less obvious projectile, snare major expedition and extra magicka), Swallow Soul is the main ranged nuke, cloak is an auto-include of course, and I'm using the soul assault ultimate to have a ranged option to finish people off (other ultimate to consider would be meteor, but most people know well how to deal with it these days and I feel soul assault is usually more effective). Though 90% of the time I actually use the main bar's ultimate which is obviously Incapacitating Strike. I'm also using Meditate for resource recovery on the frost staff bar for resource management and to recover health.
Main bar is two-handed sword (dual wield would be an excellent alternative, but I prefer the looks of the greatsword) with the standard skill setup (impale, conceiled strike, cloak, lotus fan and harness magicka (though I think damped magic would actually be the better morph))

So far I really love it, as the combination of ice staff / melee magblade compensates for one of the biggest weaknesses of the spec, no snare immunity. By having the best snare in the game, this evens the playing field or even tops it to the magblade's advantage. And even though I really hate to be on the receiving end of snares, I must say it has been absolutely a joy to play so far. Note that my experiences are only relevant to no-CP battlegrounds.

For the sets I'm still using Fortified Brass and War Maiden. Fortified Brass is still an experiment on my part. it basically boosts my resistances in purple gear to just over 18k physical/20k spell. With the shadow passive 23k/25k. I feel these kinds of resistances are simply needed to survive as melee, but I have also noticed that if I pick the right targets killing them fast enough means I don't really take much damage. So I'm still in two minds whether another light set would be better for the playstyle. On the other hand, my current sets do seem to work just fine, so why fix what isn't broken.