Well there are two routes you can go for a burst Nightblade.

The first would be Magicka based, attacking from stealth with Ambush followed by death stroke or surprise attack and those are your main damage sources. The downside is you rely on melee range for your burst. The upside is you are a magicka build, so you can use resto staff as your swap and be a great healer, you have better survival, and deal decent damage from range with swallow soul.

The second would be a stamina build, usually using Bow as main weapon and either dual wield or one hand/shield on swap. This build focuses on long range sniping, and high sustained damage weaving light attacks with venom arrow. The advantage to this build is incredibly high burst damage from a safe distance. The downside is that as a stamina build, you have barely any healing, and a small magicka pool to cast class skills from.

Some things that might help you choose: Build #2 is easy to play if all you plan on doing is sniping and stealthing away. Build #1 is easier to play in sustained combat scenarios, due to magicka builds being much easier to play in general than stamina builds. Build #2 requires much better resource management. Build #1 is much more versatile, being able to handle lots of pvp scenarios better. Build #1 survives based on healing, build #2 survives based on proper use of dodge, stealth, and block.

Personally, I enjoy playing the second build, because I just like being a ranger type character, and I am getting used to the small magicka pool, and conserving my shadow cloak usage. I like being able to burst from a great distance, and my melee damage is still very high.

Stx wrote: »

The first would be Magicka based, attacking from stealth with Ambush followed by death stroke or surprise attack and those are your main damage sources. The downside is you rely on melee range for your burst. The upside is you are a magicka build, so you can use resto staff as your swap and be a great healer, you have better survival, and deal decent damage from range with swallow soul.

...and a ton of magic and spell cost reduction to spam your cloak escape. This is currently my fave build right now for Nightblade, it can do a little of everything (range, melee and heal) and is a killer with a decent opener.

I'm V8, so not yet VR14, but I am with you about how I'd like my nightblade to play and have had the same thoughts about how to build my character. My benchmark is not a squishy Red or Blue, but the big boys in Blue on Chillrend.

I've played with the setup you are suggesting - magicka and light armor - in pvp and I felt squishy. Those arrows you use hurt, a lot.

As you're moving away from the bow, I'm gravitating more toward it. To kill quickly, my thought is that I have to get to Impale as soon as possible. In pvp, I think I've performed better by starting with the bow (focused aim, venom arrow, and light attacks) and then use ambush and impale as a finishing combo instead of an opener. This allows me to keep a distance and jump in close when I've done enough damage that I feel confident in finishing the job. I'm starting with ambush and impale if i'm helping someone who's already got half the job done.

Maybe this is a learn to play issue, but I've thought many times I could get 1500-1600 from ambush and then kill with 2-3 more attacks only to suffer from the reality of finding myself caught up in the talons, standard, and flaming lash trifecta.

I've never seen ZOS clarify whether magicka based class skill damage from melee style attacks (ambush, concealed weapon, impale) scale from spell damage or weapon damage.

I'm a believer in 0-49-0 for the simple reason that it, along with food, gets health out of the way and allows me the flexibility to adjust magicka/stamina.

I'm very interested to hear how you've done focusing on spell damage.

Nicko_Lps wrote: »

Nightblades are fine,they are as supposed to be.

When attacking from stealth i see no point an enemy have a chance agaist them because....when you get them out of stealth they dont have a chance themselves.

So thats it,it sould be like that and dont complain about their damage burst from stealth.Without it theres no nightblade

What a joke, nightblades have good out of stealth damage but so do sorcs, sorcs actually have better out of stealth damage than NBs with stamina based weapons and a little less magicka based but sorcs have ranged instead of melee. NBs are extremely strong out of stealth if you dont build your character around hitting the guy 5 times and either getting the kill or dying trying to get away.

Stx wrote: »

The first would be Magicka based, attacking from stealth with Ambush followed by death stroke or surprise attack and those are your main damage sources. The downside is you rely on melee range for your burst. The upside is you are a magicka build, so you can use resto staff as your swap and be a great healer, you have better survival, and deal decent damage from range with swallow soul.



Some things that might help you choose: Build #2 is easy to play if all you plan on doing is sniping and stealthing away. Build #1 is easier to play in sustained combat scenarios, due to magicka builds being much easier to play in general than stamina builds. Build #2 requires much better resource management. Build #1 is much more versatile, being able to handle lots of pvp scenarios better. Build #1 survives based on healing, build #2 survives based on proper use of dodge, stealth, and block.

I use the first build as a VR6, and still do pretty good, though I'm not using resto on second bar, may need to consider that. I don't find that it provides enough punch to kill good DK's and templars in 1v1, but as a support role its fantastic.

The main key is you MUST flank your opponents and be stealthed to get the intitial burst of damage. If you ambush from the front you'll do little more than ding them.

On a related note, since there seem to be very knowledgeble NB's here:

I read somehwhere that Veiled Strike and it's morphs are mitigated by armor, not spell resist. Can anyone confirm this? What about Ambush and Impale?

I want to go more of a light armor build for the magicka bonuses, but if these spells are mitigated by armor, it kind of makes the spell resist ignore armor passive useless for this build.

It is confirmed that the "melee" class skills including Veiled strike, ambush, and impale all scale off of spell power and magicka, but also scale off of weapon crit and armor penetration.

Which is actually beneficial, because all the spell resist from light armor users wont help them, and you can get 50% armor ignore from weapons and surprise attack.

What abilities are you using/planning to use exactly?