potions and poisons?

moo_2021

What are the most commonly used potions and poisons? or safest options?

I made weapon damage potions and speed potions, both are okay but not irreplaceable. Would immovability or stealth detection be more useful, even with low uptime?

What about immovability or resource draining poisons? I tried both but can't seem to tell the difference and CC from poison only fires occasionally (seems more funny/annoying than practical).

baselesschart

Major brutality potions are a complete waste of materials imo because you should already have major brutality from rally or something else from your kit. Speed potions are okay I suppose but I wouldn't find a use for them really outside of trying to escape on a glass cannon gank build. The most useful potions in most situations are going to be immovability potions and tri stat potions. I would always recommend keeping detect potions on hand too for nightblades that exclusively use stealth and die as soon as its taken away. As far as poisons, escapists or double dots imo.

ResidentContrarian

Any potion is a good choice...alternatively you can be like me and never use them.

Then when you do, the game turns extremely easy

fred4

Poisons ... the double DOT poisons you can make or from the daily login rewards are popular. The ones that give something like 6.4 second + 3.5 second poison DOTs.

Escapist poisons can be useful to help you manage your stamina statistically, as you will gain CC immunity from time to time. I've heard of magsorcs running those and I run them on my Master's 2H Brawler stamsorc. On that kind of build you are quite dependent on the shield from swinging Brawler every second. Automatically getting CC immunity now and again helps. If you combine 3 ingredients, these poisons last for 4.4 seconds. If you wear Assassin's Guile you can extend that to 8.4 seconds, but like you say, the effect is subtle and it doesn't feel as great as it sounds. The Zoal monster helm counter CC effect offers much more palpable protection.

Like another poster said, you should never have reason to run Brutality / Crit / Stamina potions, because not running 2H / Rally or your class Major Brutality skill in PvP is ... well ... not very meta, let's just put it that way. If you are not wearing Malacath and, let's say you're on a stamsorc (Crit Surge) or stamplar (Crit damage passive) you might very well run a Crit / Health / Stamina potion to save yourself slotting Camou Hunter. However on most classes, including stamblades, it's hard to get away from tri-stat pots. A stamsorc thrives on Dark Deal, a stamplar wants to use Extended Ritual and a stamblade Shadow Image and Cloak. However I find that, for example, a stam DK can be built with no or very minimal mag requirements. For that class I prefer the Physical Resistance / Health / Stamina potion. This adds 5K physical resistance, lasts the full duration and stacks with other resistance buffs.

I am a speed addict, but I would never use speed potions ever again. Overnerfed. Too short. You could make the short-duration-effect potions work on a "thirsty Argonian" build, but otherwise I wouldn't use them, except for Detection and Immovability. A thirsty Argonian build invests into (infused) potion cooldown reduction glyphs. You can get the cooldown down to something like 21 seconds at which point you can have two overlapping potions active and those short duration potions become much more attractive. That is, however, a big sacrifice, only really makes sense on an Argonian, and quaffing all those potions is expensive. I've never tried it.

On magicka classes, spell damage / crit / magicka potions can be viable, even necessary on a magblade. A cloaking magblade has no way to get Major Sorcery prior to opening the fight with a gank. A potion is basically the only option. I prefer to get my crit from Magelight, however, and am using a Major Sorcery / Detection / Magicka potion as my default one. Detection potions are far and away the best way to counter cloaking nightblades, so you should always have them available as an alternate potion, even on your stam characters. Probably Immovability / Detection / Magicka on a stam class, because that's what you can get. AFAIK you can't make one of those with stamina.

Immovability (Detection / Magicka) used to be my bread and butter. As a nightblade they offer a guarantee that your gank will stick and you don't get stunned during it. Funnily enough I've always had the impression that they also inhibit flag guard NPCs attempting any CC whatsoever. I don't think they've ever even thrown a Negate on me, when I had an Immovability potion up. If you want to melee gank someone standing on a flag with NPC guards around, they're the thing to use. They are also a way of just managing your stamina on magicka classes. However other potions compete with these and the introduction of Slippery CC and the counter-stun from Zoal (if you're wearing that) along with a historically shortened duration have made Immovability potions much less of a staple than they used to be. Instead of lowering the potion cooldown, you can also play around with, say, 1x potion duration extension enchant, which will increase Immovability fro 10.4 to 15s and Detection to 20s. That is actually not bad, but I wouldn't go the whole hog.