How bad is stamblade PVE, really?

ImmortalCX

Coming back after 1.5 year absence (quit when Murkmire released), my main was a Redguard stamblade. CP600.

Reading all the complaint threads, its clear that its pretty gimp in PVP, but how does it fare in PVE?

I was not able to find any convincing PVE build guides on Youtube. Alcast hasn't touched the class in a year, it seems.

mikejezz

I'm running alcast rampage spec, and I do fine (cp 316 atm)

sniperfire03

I run 2 NB bosmer and khajiit, the dmg is a little lacking and they have no unique skills anymore since zos redistributed all of those skills to every class in the game, but with that being said I clear all game content on my NB but I have relegated both 2 daily runners and crafters sadly my favorite class and their no longer fun to play or unique

Sriivah

Basically, mediocre. Stamblades have one of if not the most involved stamina rotations and suffer a pretty severe dps drop when you flub it, and played optimally their dps is on the lower end of middling, and with the only real group support being the 6% weapon crit passive that most stam-heavy groups bring a tank for. While you *can* complete all the content in the game, including vSS HM going downstairs, a stamblade will be working harder for it than almost everyone else who isn't a stamden.

MashmalloMan

I'd like to add that Redguards have become pretty pointless for most pve specs. With the racial passive rework and buffs/debuffs of different abilities, a good chunk of a Redguards sustain comes from spamming weapon abilities and rotations are no longer over 50% of these. Stam Blades have access to an in class spammable, execute, burst and ultimate. Even if you opted to use a weapon spammable/execute/ultimate, I'd begin to question why you're a stam blade without using those unique skills.

If you played 1.5+ years ago, you probably had something like this:

• Front Bar: Twin Slashes/Rearming Trap/Killers Blade/Relentless Focus/Surprise Attack - Flawless Dawnbreaker
• Back Bar: Endless Hail/Poison Injection/Razor Caltrops/Leeching Strikes/Flex Spot - Incap

So you only have 3 weapon abilities there.

Today:

• Razor Caltrops is for utility instead of damage
• Endless Hail lasts longer (14s instead of 12) so less casts or Arrow Barrage (10s) which lines up a little better for a NB rotation.
• Twin Slashes is next to pointless to use, it does very comparable damage to just using a spammable. In many pve builds, it's better to just slot a fighters guild ability like camo hunter for Major Savagery/Minor Berserk/3% Weapon Damage.
• Poison Injection is also very weak in comparison to a spammable, however the +100% execute damage may tip the scales better than Twin Slashes. It's still no longer a necessity, before it use to have a higher tooltip and the execute damage was +260% if I'm not mistaken?

Some changes:

• Soul Trap has become viable, it does not do a ton of damage like Twin Slash/PI, but because it costs magicka, you're able to save stamina. 1 Cast of Soul Trap avoids 1.8-2.5k stamina cost you would of spent elsewhere+ half of whatever your sustain/s is. Lets say 1400 as an example, so 700 saved. 1 Cast of Soul Trap is equivillant to saving 2.5-3.2k stamina every 10seconds.
• Dark Shade has become viable as well, same scenario as above, costs magicka, damage is lowish, but lasts double the amount of time at 20s making a cast worth it.
• Relentless Focus lasts 60s up from 20s. No longer provides minor berserk/minor endurance.
• Barbed Trap lasts 18s instead of 12s.
• Reave added to Incap for +100 stamina every light/heavy attack and the nerf to Flawless Dawnbreaker from 8% weapon damage to 3% for slotted, means it's now better to slot Incap on Front Bar. You're basically trading 3% weapon damage for 2% crit and better sustain.

So there really is no reason to use Redguard for NB. Your sustain should be much better and you may only use 1-2 weapon abilities every 10-14s, as well as 2 magicka abilities and 3x the longer duration on Relentless Focus.

Orc is once again, best in slot.

Edit: I wrote this up and decided to check out Alcast's pve setup. Low and behold it's exactly what I thought. 2 Mag abilities, no Twin Slash or PI. 2 Flex spots via vigor and Mirage, Incap Front bar.

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

starlizard70ub17_ESO

As the post above points out, Stamblades aren't terrible, they just take more effort to play well and their combat rotation doesn't change much.

SidraWillowsky

We don't speak of it.

ImmortalCX

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'd like to add that Redguards have become pretty pointless for most pve specs. With the racial passive rework and buffs/debuffs of different abilities, a good chunk of a Redguards sustain comes from spamming weapon abilities and rotations are no longer over 50% of these. Stam Blades have access to an in class spammable, execute, burst and ultimate. Even if you opted to use a weapon spammable/execute/ultimate, I'd begin to question why you're a stam blade without using those unique skills.

If you played 1.5+ years ago, you probably had something like this:

• Front Bar: Twin Slashes/Rearming Trap/Killers Blade/Relentless Focus/Surprise Attack - Flawless Dawnbreaker
• Back Bar: Endless Hail/Poison Injection/Razor Caltrops/Leeching Strikes/Flex Spot - Incap

So you only have 3 weapon abilities there.

Today:

• Razor Caltrops is for utility instead of damage
• Endless Hail lasts longer (14s instead of 12) so less casts or Arrow Barrage (10s) which lines up a little better for a NB rotation.
• Twin Slashes is next to pointless to use, it does very comparable damage to just using a spammable. In many pve builds, it's better to just slot a fighters guild ability like camo hunter for Major Savagery/Minor Berserk/3% Weapon Damage.
• Poison Injection is also very weak in comparison to a spammable, however the +100% execute damage may tip the scales better than Twin Slashes. It's still no longer a necessity, before it use to have a higher tooltip and the execute damage was +260% if I'm not mistaken?

Some changes:

• Soul Trap has become viable, it does not do a ton of damage like Twin Slash/PI, but because it costs magicka, you're able to save stamina. 1 Cast of Soul Trap avoids 1.8-2.5k stamina cost you would of spent elsewhere+ half of whatever your sustain/s is. Lets say 1400 as an example, so 700 saved. 1 Cast of Soul Trap is equivillant to saving 2.5-3.2k stamina every 10seconds.
• Dark Shade has become viable as well, same scenario as above, costs magicka, damage is lowish, but lasts double the amount of time at 20s making a cast worth it.
• Relentless Focus lasts 60s up from 20s. No longer provides minor berserk/minor endurance.
• Barbed Trap lasts 18s instead of 12s.
• Reave added to Incap for +100 stamina every light/heavy attack and the nerf to Flawless Dawnbreaker from 8% weapon damage to 3% for slotted, means it's now better to slot Incap on Front Bar. You're basically trading 3% weapon damage for 2% crit and better sustain.

So there really is no reason to use Redguard for NB. Your sustain should be much better and you may only use 1-2 weapon abilities every 10-14s, as well as 2 magicka abilities and 3x the longer duration on Relentless Focus.

Orc is once again, best in slot.

Edit: I wrote this up and decided to check out Alcast's pve setup. Low and behold it's exactly what I thought. 2 Mag abilities, no Twin Slash or PI. 2 Flex spots via vigor and Mirage, Incap Front bar.

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

Thanks for this information. I'll look it over and test it out.

Logged in, and from casual analysis, it appeared that the only worthless skill on the bar was caltrops. Noticed that the cd for dark shade is the same as the endless hail (14s). Replaced caltrops with dark shade on back bar; don't know if its ideal, but having two DOTs on the same long cd will make the rotation easier.

And the buff from Surprise Attack is gone, replaced with Rapid Strikes. Rapid strikes was always good as it works well with builds that have a %chance to proc. I was using Briarheart and it benefits from a build that is spamming RS. The weapon bonus is almost always up.

MashmalloMan

ImmortalCX wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'd like to add that Redguards have become pretty pointless for most pve specs. With the racial passive rework and buffs/debuffs of different abilities, a good chunk of a Redguards sustain comes from spamming weapon abilities and rotations are no longer over 50% of these. Stam Blades have access to an in class spammable, execute, burst and ultimate. Even if you opted to use a weapon spammable/execute/ultimate, I'd begin to question why you're a stam blade without using those unique skills.

If you played 1.5+ years ago, you probably had something like this:

• Front Bar: Twin Slashes/Rearming Trap/Killers Blade/Relentless Focus/Surprise Attack - Flawless Dawnbreaker
• Back Bar: Endless Hail/Poison Injection/Razor Caltrops/Leeching Strikes/Flex Spot - Incap

So you only have 3 weapon abilities there.

Today:

• Razor Caltrops is for utility instead of damage
• Endless Hail lasts longer (14s instead of 12) so less casts or Arrow Barrage (10s) which lines up a little better for a NB rotation.
• Twin Slashes is next to pointless to use, it does very comparable damage to just using a spammable. In many pve builds, it's better to just slot a fighters guild ability like camo hunter for Major Savagery/Minor Berserk/3% Weapon Damage.
• Poison Injection is also very weak in comparison to a spammable, however the +100% execute damage may tip the scales better than Twin Slashes. It's still no longer a necessity, before it use to have a higher tooltip and the execute damage was +260% if I'm not mistaken?

Some changes:

• Soul Trap has become viable, it does not do a ton of damage like Twin Slash/PI, but because it costs magicka, you're able to save stamina. 1 Cast of Soul Trap avoids 1.8-2.5k stamina cost you would of spent elsewhere+ half of whatever your sustain/s is. Lets say 1400 as an example, so 700 saved. 1 Cast of Soul Trap is equivillant to saving 2.5-3.2k stamina every 10seconds.
• Dark Shade has become viable as well, same scenario as above, costs magicka, damage is lowish, but lasts double the amount of time at 20s making a cast worth it.
• Relentless Focus lasts 60s up from 20s. No longer provides minor berserk/minor endurance.
• Barbed Trap lasts 18s instead of 12s.
• Reave added to Incap for +100 stamina every light/heavy attack and the nerf to Flawless Dawnbreaker from 8% weapon damage to 3% for slotted, means it's now better to slot Incap on Front Bar. You're basically trading 3% weapon damage for 2% crit and better sustain.

So there really is no reason to use Redguard for NB. Your sustain should be much better and you may only use 1-2 weapon abilities every 10-14s, as well as 2 magicka abilities and 3x the longer duration on Relentless Focus.

Orc is once again, best in slot.

Edit: I wrote this up and decided to check out Alcast's pve setup. Low and behold it's exactly what I thought. 2 Mag abilities, no Twin Slash or PI. 2 Flex spots via vigor and Mirage, Incap Front bar.

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

Thanks for this information. I'll look it over and test it out.

Logged in, and from casual analysis, it appeared that the only worthless skill on the bar was caltrops. Noticed that the cd for dark shade is the same as the endless hail (14s). Replaced caltrops with dark shade on back bar; don't know if its ideal, but having two DOTs on the same long cd will make the rotation easier.

And the buff from Surprise Attack is gone, replaced with Rapid Strikes. Rapid strikes was always good as it works well with builds that have a %chance to proc. I was using Briarheart and it benefits from a build that is spamming RS. The weapon bonus is almost always up.

Fair enough, if you like Flurry over Surprise Attack than Redguard gets a little more mileage and becomes a more solid race choice.

It's a shame how little forethought went into the Redguard passives, I complained about it then and it's only gotten worse over time. The longer the game lasts, we can expect more viable class/world/guild skills to be reworked or released making RG as an option carry less weight. This is not an issue for any other race, RG did not need to fill such a specific niche.

Dark Shade may be 14s at base, but it increases to 20s with your passive and rank IV.

macsmooth

The issue I have with Dark Shade on a stamblade is that it does magic damage and on a spec that has it’s CP allocated towards physical damage it just doesn’t benefit for any damage it’s just a support skill

Dark Shade should act like soul trap and choose the damage type that it is based off from the highest offensive stat

All damage skills that choose the highest offensive stat should select its damage at the same time

Vildebill

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'd like to add that Redguards have become pretty pointless for most pve specs. With the racial passive rework and buffs/debuffs of different abilities, a good chunk of a Redguards sustain comes from spamming weapon abilities and rotations are no longer over 50% of these. Stam Blades have access to an in class spammable, execute, burst and ultimate. Even if you opted to use a weapon spammable/execute/ultimate, I'd begin to question why you're a stam blade without using those unique skills.

If you played 1.5+ years ago, you probably had something like this:

• Front Bar: Twin Slashes/Rearming Trap/Killers Blade/Relentless Focus/Surprise Attack - Flawless Dawnbreaker
• Back Bar: Endless Hail/Poison Injection/Razor Caltrops/Leeching Strikes/Flex Spot - Incap

So you only have 3 weapon abilities there.

Today:

• Razor Caltrops is for utility instead of damage
• Endless Hail lasts longer (14s instead of 12) so less casts or Arrow Barrage (10s) which lines up a little better for a NB rotation.
• Twin Slashes is next to pointless to use, it does very comparable damage to just using a spammable. In many pve builds, it's better to just slot a fighters guild ability like camo hunter for Major Savagery/Minor Berserk/3% Weapon Damage.
• Poison Injection is also very weak in comparison to a spammable, however the +100% execute damage may tip the scales better than Twin Slashes. It's still no longer a necessity, before it use to have a higher tooltip and the execute damage was +260% if I'm not mistaken?

Some changes:

• Soul Trap has become viable, it does not do a ton of damage like Twin Slash/PI, but because it costs magicka, you're able to save stamina. 1 Cast of Soul Trap avoids 1.8-2.5k stamina cost you would of spent elsewhere+ half of whatever your sustain/s is. Lets say 1400 as an example, so 700 saved. 1 Cast of Soul Trap is equivillant to saving 2.5-3.2k stamina every 10seconds.
• Dark Shade has become viable as well, same scenario as above, costs magicka, damage is lowish, but lasts double the amount of time at 20s making a cast worth it.
• Relentless Focus lasts 60s up from 20s. No longer provides minor berserk/minor endurance.
• Barbed Trap lasts 18s instead of 12s.
• Reave added to Incap for +100 stamina every light/heavy attack and the nerf to Flawless Dawnbreaker from 8% weapon damage to 3% for slotted, means it's now better to slot Incap on Front Bar. You're basically trading 3% weapon damage for 2% crit and better sustain.

So there really is no reason to use Redguard for NB. Your sustain should be much better and you may only use 1-2 weapon abilities every 10-14s, as well as 2 magicka abilities and 3x the longer duration on Relentless Focus.

Orc is once again, best in slot.

Edit: I wrote this up and decided to check out Alcast's pve setup. Low and behold it's exactly what I thought. 2 Mag abilities, no Twin Slash or PI. 2 Flex spots via vigor and Mirage, Incap Front bar.

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

Thanks for this information. I'll look it over and test it out.

Logged in, and from casual analysis, it appeared that the only worthless skill on the bar was caltrops. Noticed that the cd for dark shade is the same as the endless hail (14s). Replaced caltrops with dark shade on back bar; don't know if its ideal, but having two DOTs on the same long cd will make the rotation easier.

And the buff from Surprise Attack is gone, replaced with Rapid Strikes. Rapid strikes was always good as it works well with builds that have a %chance to proc. I was using Briarheart and it benefits from a build that is spamming RS. The weapon bonus is almost always up.

Fair enough, if you like Flurry over Surprise Attack than Redguard gets a little more mileage and becomes a more solid race choice.

It's a shame how little forethought went into the Redguard passives, I complained about it then and it's only gotten worse over time. The longer the game lasts, we can expect more viable class/world/guild skills to be reworked or released making RG as an option carry less weight. This is not an issue for any other race, RG did not need to fill such a specific niche.

Dark Shade may be 14s at base, but it increases to 20s with your passive and rank IV.

Agree, even though orc is almost always best in PvE for stam, redguards are in a bad place, the only class that might benefit some for it seems to be stamsorc, because they don't have a spamable. And that's a bad reason...

Grianasteri

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Coming back after 1.5 year absence (quit when Murkmire released), my main was a Redguard stamblade. CP600.

Reading all the complaint threads, its clear that its pretty gimp in PVP, but how does it fare in PVE?

I was not able to find any convincing PVE build guides on Youtube. Alcast hasn't touched the class in a year, it seems.

Its neither gimp in pvp or pve. Folk have to understand that these forums are populated by doom merchants and catastrophisers who think the sky is falling in any time there is a change they don't like.

My main pvp char is a stamblade, its great fun and performs well for me. I also have a stamblade for pve and that is also highly enjoyable and wrecks pretty much everything in sight.

If you want to run with the very highest dps end game groups in pvp or pve, sure they wont favour a stamblade, but for 90% of the rest of us & for 90% of the content, its still a perfectly viable and fun class to play.

ImmortalCX

macsmooth wrote: »

The issue I have with Dark Shade on a stamblade is that it does magic damage and on a spec that has it’s CP allocated towards physical damage it just doesn’t benefit for any damage it’s just a support skill

Dark Shade should act like soul trap and choose the damage type that it is based off from the highest offensive stat

All damage skills that choose the highest offensive stat should select its damage at the same time

So what is the replacement for caltrops on a stamblade?

Is there another stamina DOT for the backbar?

macsmooth

ImmortalCX wrote: »

macsmooth wrote: »

The issue I have with Dark Shade on a stamblade is that it does magic damage and on a spec that has it’s CP allocated towards physical damage it just doesn’t benefit for any damage it’s just a support skill

Dark Shade should act like soul trap and choose the damage type that it is based off from the highest offensive stat

All damage skills that choose the highest offensive stat should select its damage at the same time

So what is the replacement for caltrops on a stamblade?

Is there another stamina DOT for the backbar?

That’s the question really it’s not got much options, I don’t like dark shade for the damage it does but it’s still on my back bar for the utility the skill gives plus it’s one of the nightblade identity skills and I just like to keep some identity to my characters

But soul trap can be an option as the split morph is aoe and ticks for 10 seconds plus it will do physical damage if the damage is what you’re after from the skill being used

ShadowKyuubi

Its not that stamblade is necessarily bad, but as mentioned in a few other posts, it isn't what you remember. Just remember, Incap has a cast timer now. It will take a while before you start waiting for Incap to actually cast before barswapping. Hell, I still forget to do it on my magblade from time to time. It really messes with the flow of everything.