Nightblade, Medium armor, 1h+shield tank?

Lynx7386

I've been playing a khajiit nightblade as my main for a while now, at level 22 currently. I started out with 2handers, then swapped to dual wield, then back to two handers, using a bow as my secondary weapon for ranged situations. For some reason I just cant pick a weapon type I like.

I started using 1h/shield the other day, and I'm loving it so far even with it being at a low skill level compared to my dual wield/2handed skills. Since I've mained a tank type character in every past MMO i've played, I figured "hey, why not try turning my nightblade damage dealer into a tank at this point, since i'm loving the shield so much?"

Issue is that I'm specced into medium armor, and using all medium armor. I compared armor rating with a level 23 player, however, who was wearing all heavy armor at the time. My base armor rating is around 520~ish, his was around 710 (but he was orange, overcharged, softcapped, whatever you want to call it). Using puncture/ransack, I go up to about 740 and I'm into the softcap as well, and since I can keep that up constantly it seems like I can keep my armor up there with a heavy armor user just fine.
I also get a massive bonus (about +400 right now) to armor and spell resistance for 4 seconds when coming out of stealth or invisibility, and as a nightblade i can use invisibility pretty often during combat, so there's an additional boost.


Doing elden hollow earlier tonight, the healer kept commenting on how much damage I was taking and how 'squishy' I was for a tank. Being that I've got armor equivalent to a heavy armor wearer using those abilities, why would this be? I dont think the passives for heavy armor would really make that much of a difference, especially at this level where you probably only have a couple of them invested in.


So is running this kind of setup possible, and is it viable for endgame pve? I assume I'll do a bit better once I can use siphoning strikes, since that will give me some self healing (I hear it's bugged right now and not giving the listed amount, but hopefully that will be fixed soon).

Delte

You may have the same armour rating as a heavy armour user but it would be the heavy armour passives that count.

Look at their mitigation and health regen along with spell resistances on heavy armour then look at the medium armour passives. They make a big difference.

You could wear a mix match of armour types though say a heavy breast plate and legs along with some passives. Or with their being 7 armour slots in total go half and half. This would make you less squishy and give you the benefits of both armour types with critical strikes, stam regen from the medium along with some mitigation from the heavy.

As for a nightblade tanking it is very possible to do with a nice usage of the Shadow skills which have some nice bonuses for taking damage.
Also don't forget the teleport strike to open up from stealth this can cause a huge damage to the target.

For a chain pull effect to fetch mobs off the healer morph the fighters guild silver bolt skill to the silver leash. It only works on undead and daedra though.