Nightblade Physical DPS Will Not Scale Well

Shreptob14_ESO

It didn't take me long to make the switch out of Nightblade melee, there exists a very glaring problem within their class skills. The problem is quite simple, many of their spells' damage scales off magicka, but they are physical moves that also do damaged based on enemy armor and weapon crit.

Because of this, you're really at a toss up as to which armor you should use. Medium armor is nice for stamina because of the bonus to regen, while light armor favors magicka via reduced spell cost and increased mana regen.

Then there exists the problem that if you were going physical dps your weapon skills scale off a completely different resource than your class skills. While soft caps do exist and aren't hard to reach, you still increase your damage by gaining magicka or stamina, but spreading it over two resources means lower damage for each tree, stam/magic.

This will be a serious issue later on when we see better gear with higher vr levels and HOPEFULLY harder to reach soft caps.

Chirru

Good points.
there are several posts on this topic,,, starting in Beta and ever since. NB is an unfinished and very unbalanced class that does nothing really well with the exception of hitting single targets really hard.

fact is that a dual wield Master Assassin Night Blade needs two hits to kill a NPC half its level. Do not laugh... I tried it out several times. Yes, 1/10 or 2/10 one gets a critical hit and one-shots, but that is so seldom it makes not difference

the class starts out very well until about level 10...then it looses its power somehow. No idea why this is? If I can at level 4 kill a level 4 NPC with one hit...why can I not do this at level 20, or 50 with at least two hits? Well, I can with the ultima-skill...but that fills up so slow that it is more often unavailable as it is available.

still, we will see how the class goes in a few months from now. Anyhow...ardent NB players will not stop shouting until we get a well finished and balanced class.

Which of course means that every other class player will scream Nighblades are OVERPOWERED.

Kypho

vet2 and you can get 2343 concealed weapon damage from hide to a mob

Creslian7

Vet 7 and I've never gotten more than 1700 on a Concealed weapon to a mob. Even with OC magica

DTGothic

noob question, are you saying that magica/sta are part of the dmg multiplier or are you saying the more magica and magica regen you have the more you can spam abilities?

Samadhi

DTGothic wrote: »

noob question, are you saying that magica/sta are part of the dmg multiplier or are you saying the more magica and magica regen you have the more you can spam abilities?

Magicka impacts class ability damage, and with more magicka regen a person can spam more abilities.
Stamina impacts weapon damage on left-click attacks as well as weapon skill line damage (and Fighter's Guild, since it is Stamina based), with more stamina regen a person can spam more abilities.

Sypherioth

At 45 I am 1 hitting some npcs otherwise its 2hits. You sure you do it right?

khele23eb17_ESO

1-50 you can 2 shot mobs by doing a double take

patrykplawskib16_ESO

All of u guys truly haven't seen the depression with this class and where it starts to do very very very!! poorly. As a VR10 a fuqing VR10 the only 2 ability's u can rely on are shadow-cloak and surprise attack after that your on your own, especially on pvp i mean there was one way to help you in pvp and that was mist form but not anymore longer due to recent nerf. Wait till u get to vr1-10 zones oh boy will u have fun! u struggle so much on just 2 mobs with 2k health as well as 3k in higher zones and the only way to do good is light amour and warlocks set witch not allot of people want to do and waste time respecing and re-leveling and trying to get this set. As for passives pftt hahaah zos could care less about fixing those until there done with there obsession to finishing craglorn witch i fear for me and my brothers and sisters who run knight blades once they try to do trials and 4 man groups in this end-game content since i mean u cant take out 2 trash mobs in vr zones. The thing i don't get is this supposed to be a single target dps class but a DK doss more damage single dps and so does a sorc quit unimpressive and just stupid for eso not to get there asses on this problem i mean this is one of the main featured content in the game that's important

Jaxom

Reaper's Mark, Concealed Weapon from stealth will take 95% of the mobs hp and killer's blow will finish them off (that's in VR3 zone). The big problem is groups of 3+. I try to target the mender first (if there is one). Reaper's Mark will also heal you for roughly 1600 HP on death so if you use it right before the target dies, you gain the healing benefit without the debuff on yourself for the fight.

Anything beyond a group of 3, forget it. If I pull a group of 3 without getting the jump, it's pretty difficult to tip the scales in your favor unless you get a bit of luck. I'll usually use shadowy disguise to try and reset them, or Volcanic rune to knock them back first then go into stealth.

Shreptob14_ESO

A lot of you totally missed the point I was trying to make. You didn't barely missed it... it flew over your head way out into left field. A good build for a caster is an all magicka bar because magicka increases spell damage. A good build for a melee would involve moves that scale off stamina, however NB class abilities scale off magicka. This is why it sucks to be a physical dps in this game.

I play a NB caster using Scalding Rune, Cripple, Twisted Path, Entropy, and Magelight on one bar, and magelight, impale, piercing mark on the other. All these moves scale off magicka which means I hit harder per spell than a physical dps nightblade who has to balance magicka and stamina.

Shreptob14_ESO

And NONE of this applies to mobs out in the open world, we're talking about real PVE boss fights, not this questing junk.

shiva7663

I cannot think of questing foes as junk. Pre-endgame matters to me, and I hope it does to a lot of people.

a11051605

physical dps is irrelevant in the term you are thinking off. Raw stamina affects you melee auto attacks and stam abilities only... so that means its useless to most ambush melee type NB. Max magic and go for medium armour and weapon crit and then face roll mobs... who cares about stamina? If you have to auto attack you did it wrong.

plaxy186

Hmm so we should build with what we know we know we get crits off physical so Medium Armor. we know Magica increases are base damage so add Magica to enchants on our armor. and in a warlock 3 piece jewelry set with some Magica reduction. High Damage-High Crit insta kill with few abilities. Shouldn't need to spam. Possibly use a Food Buff that Increases our Magica and Health too. to make sure both are over soft cap. You'll still be squishy with this set up but that is normally the cost of going for an all out DPS build. Dodge rolling and escape use %of total stam to use so unless your using abilities doesn't quite matter how much stamina you have, Recovery which medium armor does will help better for that situation.

Samadhi

Shreptob14_ESO wrote: »

...
I play a NB caster using Scalding Rune, Cripple, Twisted Path, Entropy, and Magelight on one bar, and magelight, impale, piercing mark on the other. All these moves scale off magicka which means I hit harder per spell than a physical dps nightblade who has to balance magicka and stamina.

It also means that you have half the resources available for skill casts because you are entirely Magicka based instead of utilizing skills that draw off of both resource pools.

Each build has benefits and drawbacks.

kitsinni

I have found the most viable NB builds work of class abilities and heavy Magika. Weapon attacks using light attacks seem to be best for using Siphoning Attacks to restore resources. The only real exception I have found is in AE with a combination of Volcanic rune, Power Extraction and Whirlwind. This uses some Magika also but blows through a lot of Stamina even with Siphoning Attacks on.

For people having trouble with packs of three in VR content I have two suggestions. Sneak in and try to open with Veiled Strike and make use of your AE fear. Use Dark Shade you can send them in from Sneak and attack the one the shades are not attacking with sneak - Veiled Strike and walk back and in to sneak again. Usually the others in the group won't even look at you.