Nightblade class skills - To light armor or medium (crit / spell crit?)

swoop.romerb16_ESO

Im a nightblade dual wielding and i have fallen in love using class skills a lot. I used to use almost only weapon skills, aka stamina, but class skills seems to do SO much more damage.

Medium armor is stamina focused, light armor is magicka focused. Should i really use light armor for the passives instead of medium armor for the magicka regen, spell crit?
I was thinking of using 2 heavy armor (for extra armor and some heavy armor passives for health and extra armor), and 5 light armor.

Which brings me to the next question. Is my class skills as nightblade (teleport strike, veiled strike etc) affected by a) weapon damage or b) spell power/damage or both?? Also what about weapon crit or spell crit??

This is so unclear.

HEEELP :-)

Sihnfahl

Okay, a NB would use light armor if you're heavy in mana-consuming abilities.

Otherwise, focus solely on medium. Stamina regen and weapon crit.

Rule of thumb? If it uses mana, it's probably modified with spell-boosting passives...

Tamanous

Nightblade class skills are a mix of melee and magic. If the skill is melee range it likely works off of melee mechanics (i.e. mitigated by armor or spell resist). I am not sure of all the specifics until I test more but there was a vid showing a guy using armor and spell resist debuffs on different class abilities and proved that some melee ranged abilities work against melee stats while some ranged worked against magic based stats.

I've heard that sorc lacks melee style class skills and may be mostly or all spell style scaling through magicka and works against spell defenses. Damage scaling doesn't matter as you can soft cap magicka and stam easily.

You should be free to choose only the melee style powers to ensure they scale with a stamina build. If you wish to use a variety of NB skills then mix light and medium armor together. As you get better gear in later levels you can easily soft cap most stats even with a mix of armor types.

Most high level players that have made posts from beta play typically say everyone uses some sort of armor mix and full sets of one type is rare. Even if you chose to build a melee specialist I would imagine you would find having 1-2 pieces of light armor is always worth it simply to activate those passives.

swoop.romerb16_ESO

Thx Tamanous that was very helpful! Cheers mate!

love ;-)

Teloran

Nightblades have a difficult choice to make in terms of armour type. Light armour lets you use more abilities but most of your skills won't benefit from the spell crit and penetration.

Medium gives you crit, but means that you'll be casting less spells.

I'm afraid the best mix will depend greatly on your build, in particular what skills you use and how fast you run out of resources.

PapaOscar90

All class abilities use magika and magic damage modifications. All weapon skills minus resto and destro staffs use stamina and weapon damage. So it comes down to what ability you want to spam. But also remember, you will be even more glass cannon in light armor. Anybody with CC will be able to stop you if light armor. While medium you have a bit more of a fighting chance.

Tai

At the moment i use 5 medium and 2 light pieces. My build is quite heavy on magika but flurry casting time buys me time, so after that i have enough resources to use cloak and surprise attack again.
My two cents

feniks31_ESO

Teloran wrote: »

Nightblades have a difficult choice to make in terms of armour type. Light armour lets you use more abilities but most of your skills won't benefit from the spell crit and penetration.

Wrong. All class skills benefit from max magic, spell dmg, spell crit and spell penetration. All skills that use magica benefit from it.

Teloran wrote: »

Medium gives you crit, but means that you'll be casting less spells.

It gives crit ONLY for weapon skills and weapon autoattacks.

Again, if you want to focus on using class skills no matter range or melee, you should go for max magica, spell dmg and spell crit.

Mythotical

Very informative post, I was looking for this to help me level out my NB so I could focus on fast killing and moving on to the next target instead of concentrating on dodging to avoid dying.

n0x

I play a NB Assassin, im wearing mostly medium armor for the weapon crit. I pump most of my attributes into magicka and am very heavy in the assassin skills. True with medium armour we don't have the magicka pool that a pure light armour does, and that's fine.

The extra stamina I have I use on Blocking, Dodging, and Running. We kill things/people in 3-4 hits anyways. So it doesn't warrant a HUGE mana pool imo. Although nice, I don't find it a requirement. Between marked for death and the other healing attack upon kill we have, I rarely die.

Mobius0

I'd never consider wearing anything but medium armor, myself. But that's because I rely so much on stealth.

For magicka, just use enchants, mundus stones, food, etc., and you should have no trouble hitting magicka caps, even with medium armor.

Yelgis

feniks31_ESO wrote: »

Teloran wrote: »

Nightblades have a difficult choice to make in terms of armour type. Light armour lets you use more abilities but most of your skills won't benefit from the spell crit and penetration.

Wrong. All class skills benefit from max magic, spell dmg, spell crit and spell penetration. All skills that use magica benefit from it.

Teloran wrote: »

Medium gives you crit, but means that you'll be casting less spells.

It gives crit ONLY for weapon skills and weapon autoattacks.

Again, if you want to focus on using class skills no matter range or melee, you should go for max magica, spell dmg and spell crit.

You are partially wrong. Yes all class skills use magicka and yes they all scale of spell power and max magicka for their damage. Where you are wrong is in your assertion that they all use spell crit and spell penetration.

If a class skill is "melee" (ie less than 8m range) and single target (so no pboae) it crits like a weapon ability. Skills that fit in this group are: Teleport Strike and the Ambush morph, Vieled strike and all its morphs, Killer's Blade (the ranged morph makes it stop using melee crit), Stone Fist, Searing Strike, Lava Lash, Piercing Strikes, Templar Ardent Spear charge, and some others.

If a class skills does magical damage it uses spell penetration and the enemies spell resist to determine damage. If the skill lists physical dmg like Stone Fist does it uses armor penetration and enemy armor to determine final damage done.

feniks31_ESO

Yelgis wrote: »

feniks31_ESO wrote: »

Teloran wrote: »

Nightblades have a difficult choice to make in terms of armour type. Light armour lets you use more abilities but most of your skills won't benefit from the spell crit and penetration.

Wrong. All class skills benefit from max magic, spell dmg, spell crit and spell penetration. All skills that use magica benefit from it.

Teloran wrote: »

Medium gives you crit, but means that you'll be casting less spells.

It gives crit ONLY for weapon skills and weapon autoattacks.

Again, if you want to focus on using class skills no matter range or melee, you should go for max magica, spell dmg and spell crit.

You are partially wrong. Yes all class skills use magicka and yes they all scale of spell power and max magicka for their damage. Where you are wrong is in your assertion that they all use spell crit and spell penetration.

If a class skill is "melee" (ie less than 8m range) and single target (so no pboae) it crits like a weapon ability. Skills that fit in this group are: Teleport Strike and the Ambush morph, Vieled strike and all its morphs, Killer's Blade (the ranged morph makes it stop using melee crit), Stone Fist, Searing Strike, Lava Lash, Piercing Strikes, Templar Ardent Spear charge, and some others.

If a class skills does magical damage it uses spell penetration and the enemies spell resist to determine damage. If the skill lists physical dmg like Stone Fist does it uses armor penetration and enemy armor to determine final damage done.

You can easily test it for yourself. The fact is game has only SPELL crit and WEPON crit. So spell crit only affects spells that use magica and WEAPON crit affects spells that use stamina. Same with spell/weapon dmg.

Try for example wear medium armor with passives to weapon crit (in tooltip they named as physical attacks crit but in character sheet it counts as weapon crit) and use Veiled Strike. You will clearly understand how rarely you will get crits with this spell even when you have 30% weapon crit chance.

And again, if you prefer using skills that use magica - you go for max magic, spell crit, spell penetration, spell power.

meglon978ub17_ESO

Heavy.

limeli8

LOl maybe i'm wrong and they fixed this but i'll share a secret with you guys .... NB skills are semi broken and a lot of them actually use weapon crit to crit and not spell crit even though they are magica based. Now i didnt bother testing this after launch but skills like surprise atack and other kinda melee like class skills used to crit with weapon crit. Skills from syphoning tree i'm not sure about though

feniks31_ESO

I can confirm that for now Veiled Strike morphed to Surprise Attack which place debuff Reduces enemy Armor by 40% for 12 seconds. deals more dmg with second hit which means that Armor affects its damage. Don't know if bug or not.

I suppose I can confirm that Veiled Strike also affected by weapon crit. Just tested
1.
Spell crit 21% and Weapon crit 13%
Times used: 26
Crits: 6
Crit chance: 23.08%

2.
Spell crit 9% and Weapon crit 34%
Times used: 25
Crits: 9
Crit chance: 36.00%

Gonna test how max magick and max stamina affect it
upd

I can confirm now that Veiled Strike affected by max magicka only.
1. Naked
max magicka 1320
max stamina 1270
Veiled Strike stealth attack: 1451
Veiled Strike normal hit: 315

2. Stamina gear
max magicka 1320
max stamina 1501
Veiled Strike stealth attack: 1451
Veiled Strike normal hit: 315

3. Magicka gear
max magicka 1580
max stamina 1270
Veiled Strike stealth attack: 1571
Veiled Strike normal hit: 341

Teloran

feniks31_ESO wrote: »

Teloran wrote: »

Nightblades have a difficult choice to make in terms of armour type. Light armour lets you use more abilities but most of your skills won't benefit from the spell crit and penetration.

Wrong. All class skills benefit from max magic, spell dmg, spell crit and spell penetration. All skills that use magica benefit from it.

Teloran wrote: »

Medium gives you crit, but means that you'll be casting less spells.

It gives crit ONLY for weapon skills and weapon autoattacks.

Again, if you want to focus on using class skills no matter range or melee, you should go for max magica, spell dmg and spell crit.

I'm afraid you're wrong. Most offensive Nightblade class skills use melee crit and are mitigated by armour. Same with other classes melee spells like searing strike and biting jabs.

Edit: for proof look th Mystborn's ESO unravelled videos on YouTube. I'd post a link but I'm on my phone atm.

Edit 2: As for damage scaling, abilities scale with:

-The resource they use.

-Weapon damage if they are from a weapon tree. Spell power otherwise.

Same source as the crit stuff. Seriously, do yourself a favour and watch his videos, they're great.

tommipalub16_ESO

i cannot agree with the video. he seems right. but if i reduce my spellpenetration via taking off lightarmor my ambush, killer's blade and suprirse attack does less dmg. it does more when putting lightarmor on......
thats fact as those things shown in video...

Samadhi

I'm in a full 7 piece medium armour set. I'm debating going 5 Light and 2 Medium to swap some physical crit for spell crit and spell penetration for Siphoning skills.
I really like the mobility associated with medium armour though.

Yelgis wrote: »

... Killer's Blade (the ranged morph makes it stop using melee crit) ...

Testing with 69% Weapon Crit and 43% Spell Crit I could not get the ranged Impale morph to crit at all.
I did a /bug form for it.

limeli8 wrote: »

...Skills from syphoning tree i'm not sure about though

When I tested, the on-hit damage from Swallow Soul (Strife morph) crit based on spell crit; this was also true of the on-hit damage of Crippling Grasp (Cripple morph).

tommipalub16_ESO

I had a long conversation with support about this.
First of all, i really appreciate their answers and they really worked into the stuff i asked!

@swoop.romerb16_ESO‌

I think u trying to play quite a similar way i do.
My melee Set is based on these skills:
1. Ambush
2. Suprise Attacks
3. Killer's Blade
4. Magelight
5. Siphoning Attacks

Now Magelight wont be needed anymore due to the fact tha the crit of the abillitie i use is ONLY based on Weaponcrit (if this makes sense is another debate).
But it is based on Spelldmg, Max Magicka , Spellpenetration. This DOES NOT mean that its not affected by Armorpenetration (i did not test this)

Now when it comes to choosing armor u have to keep in mind.
Light Armor means : More Spellpenetration (= more DMG) , more Manareg less Manacosts which means u can spam ur abilities. I never(!!!) go OOM due to bossfights. I use pots and gain Mana by Siphoning Attacks.
Medium Armor means: More Crit. None of the other Bonuses has any effect on your dmg done by Magicka Abillities. The Stamina stuff and jeah sneak nice..but no gain for ur DPS.

After now knowing that the crit is based on weapon instead of Spell choosing armor becomes much more difficult.

I have 2096 Max Magicka and 98 Spelldmg on Vet6:
Now with the Setup u'll have 19% Weaponcrit.
6% from 2 Assasination Abillities.
6% from 2 Medium pieces
4% 2 Green Daggers
Dont ask me where the other 3% come from.

1 Piece of Light Armor gives me : 3% less Manacost, 4% manareg, 6% spellpenetration. The 6% Spellpen give me +dmg to EVERY Spell i make
Effect:
-5 pieces = 40% spellpenetration (dont know why) -> Suprise Attack 401 DMG noncrit on vet6 spider.
-4 pieces = 32% -> 381 DMG same mob
This aint that few!!!

But 4 Pieces liegt means 3 pieces medium, which means 22% crit.

Its all about balancing.
I can tell u that im at about 380dps on Gargoyl Boss in Spindleclutch vet with 5Light/2Medium. I dont know if it would be less or more with 4Light/3 Medium.

I have to add:
After being pissed at first on the fact that the crit is based on weaponcrit instead of Spellcrit i now have to say that the burst of NB would be Way overpowered if i had 44% spellcrit which work on my skills.

EDIT:

Spellpenetration does not affect the DMG!!!!! so i guess its go for medium as long as ur able to manage magicka. I missed the magicka enchantment on the armor piece i took off o.o

Kyubi_3002b16_ESO

Funny I run Heavy and light on my bloodmage (5 light 2 heavy) and full heavy on my blademaster (7 heavy) I didn't bother considering medium because it offer no elemental resistance at all (hey im a vampire) If I ever want to be a melee glass cannon ill run medium.

GreasedLizard

MageLight is fine on one loadout. The one with Swallow Soul, Crippling Grasp, Volcanic Rune, etc.

PE doesn't seem to ever crit, although it would be another spell crit ability

tommipalub16_ESO

im not quite sure about spellpenetration currently. firts i thought it was affecting ther dmg heavily. now i got other results, where it affected nothing. I though it could maybe depend on the mob (does it halve spellresistence???)
I'm still figuring out.
sorry wrong tab, wrong discussion :D:D:D