[Magicka NB] Discussion/Advice

LegacyDM · May 2015

Your problem is you are a wood elf trying to play as an altmer. Wood elf racial bonuses excel at sneak, stamina regen, and sneak attack bonuses. Yet you are playing as a ranged destro staff magicka user. My advice, either reroll as an altmer or switch to sneaky sneaky stabby stabby play style.

LegacyDM · May 2015

I'll give u the secret to playing a stabby stabby magicka NB as a wood elf. 5 Stygian, 3 nightshade, 2 seducer or 2 martial. 2 spell damage rings (imperium ring set). Vampire with conceal weapon. Weave shadow cloak in combat before hitting with concealment. Invest in magicia reduction, regeneration, and critical damage champion points. Max points in legerdemain sneak passive.

You can thank me later. Good luck!

Whyn Aurum · May 2015

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

I'll give u the secret to playing a stabby stabby magicka NB as a wood elf. 5 Stygian, 3 nightshade, 2 seducer or 2 martial. 2 spell damage rings (imperium ring set). Vampire with conceal weapon. Weave shadow cloak in combat before hitting with concealment. Invest in magicia reduction, regeneration, and critical damage champion points. Max points in legerdemain sneak passive.

You can thank me later. Good luck!

My build has changed alot since the initial post. Im actually leaning more towards a close combat build. I keep fire reach for initial burst down, then go in with teleport strike and start weaving concealed weapon. Been working out quite nice so far

Dositheus · May 2015

Jagoblade rocked my world with his magika NB the other night at the dueling area. They're definitely viable.

TheElementalPlatypus · May 2015

Dositheus wrote: »

Jagoblade rocked my world with his magika NB the other night at the dueling area. They're definitely viable.

Woah my friend. There is a HUGE difference between DUELS and OPEN WORLD. Having something work in duels does NOT mean it works open world. Just wanted to get that straight, anyone can make just about anything viable in duels, but it takes thought to make something viable open world.

Whyn Aurum · May 2015

TheElementalPlatypus wrote: »

Dositheus wrote: »

Jagoblade rocked my world with his magika NB the other night at the dueling area. They're definitely viable.

Woah my friend. There is a HUGE difference between DUELS and OPEN WORLD. Having something work in duels does NOT mean it works open world. Just wanted to get that straight, anyone can make just about anything viable in duels, but it takes thought to make something viable open world.

Agree, it's the 1vXing that's challenging, not the duels.

Erondil · May 2015

Here is my magicka melee nb build (for duels and 1vX)

septvestige · May 2015

I'm not an expert only veteran 3 and not really into pvp but I would like to share my experience with the magicka nb build. share my views and experience from lots of other mmmo's. I am 35 years old played a lot mmo's. But what I want to share is just a contibution to the discussion not a guide.

So It turned out that the sneaky builds have to go close and that's not very wise as a light armor wearing build. As a magicka user light armor is the obvious choice.

- Best feature: We have a spammable skill wich grants us invisibility and critical on next attack. It's gold!!! We don't need crit chance stuff in the future. As a mag nb we have the amount of mag to spam this and not run out of fuel too soon.

- Resource Management: As a mag nb we focusing on mag that's not simply allow us to use more skills before running out of fuel but it buffs our spells. We want to hit hard than we have to get our max mag as high as possible. That gives us a big disadvantage -> we have low stamina so we can dodge/block less.
In according to this huge disadvantage in my oppinion sword and shield and up close are not viable playstyle for us. Without block and dodges we just die a lot if we are close.
We can't focus on blocking attacks or roll dodging in and out. In addition to this we can't use effectively weapon skills. Only the staff line wich uses mag as a resource. (I use bow but only becouse i feel like the staffs attacks are slower and the passives are less usable than the bow passives) We must focus on class skills and mag guild skills/pvp skills.

- Playstyle: if we want to use our best ability that we can crit anytime we want we must get the Purge from the pvp skill line. It's a must! There is no build without cleanse. It can be painful to aquire it for a pve oriented player but as I said if we want to use our best feature that's the way to do it becouse dots are killers in this game. Not really in pve right now but that could change in the future and we don't want to throw our build out just becouse we didn't get ready for the obvious.

- Weakness: We will be very weak against weapon attacks. We can try to compensate this but to be honest theres no way we can get enough physical resistance wich will be enough to worth something. Something would be at least 30% at least.
We have spells that give us protection: the fighters guild shield spell or comsuming darkness ultimate and the shadow skillline passive gives us protection for 4 sec (as a light armor user)
Even if we get all of them it won't be enough. The ultimate is nice but it force us to stay in a small circle while we can't dodge and block. We can get sturdy traits and run only in purple or gold armor still our physical protection won't be enough.
So our only solution to survival is concentrating on spell resist keeping distance and try to outheal the rest.

-Heal: We have another huge pro: we have lifestealing abilities! Damaging our enemy and healing ourselves in the same time is a big advantage. This is the only viable way to stay alive as a mag nb. Healing dot won't save your life only if you can escape but who want's to play with a build where you have to constantly run from your enemies? And if you have a boss fight and cloack out for a few secs the boss will reset. Sometimes only 2-3 sec enough and it resets!
The other heal we "can" get is from pvp skill line but it's nearly impossible now to get. You need to constantly pvp for months if you want to get it and in the mean time you could burn out and stop playing especially if you not really enjoy pvp-ing.
All the people out their who have that skill were here from the beginning and there were huge balance issues in pvp. Bugs, exploits etc. I'm not saying that they are all cheaters but it was way easier to get it.
There is the daggers skill heal but it's stamina based and you have to go close. For heals you have to have a spammable skill and you can't spam stamina skills.
There is siphoning strikes but it weakens your attacks almost 30%. That means if 1/3 your attacks are a miss and why would we concentrate on are super ability that we can crit anytime or bother maximum mag if we weaken our damage output at the same time? It makes no sence for me.
Theres heals from gearsets but they have a proc chance or you need ultimate or you need to kill your enemies to be able to use that. Not reliable. Heals have to be spammable.
Potions have cooldowns and the heal dot stays for a short time but heal dots as I said before will not save you.
There are skill sinergies where if you kill an enemy you get heal. The problem with this is that you constantly plan your fights and it won't be enjoyable and most times if you can kill an enemy you don't really need the heal to finish the rest. Drink a potion for that. Most times you need heal between the fights and not when it is finished.

So that leave us strife and sap essence (drain power morph). One is for single target, the other is for multi target and bigger heals if there are more enemy. You can keep both on your bar and use sap essence as a buff before you spam strife. Sap essence have a buff feature on it.

- Skillbars: - For now we can put Purge to the second bar. What we need to put in the first bar is the shield from the light armor skill line as somebody suggested in this thread already. That way we can never run out of spell resistance.
Strife/Sap essence or both on first bar.

We don't have a gap closer as most of them use stamina Ambush is great but it's stamina based now. And remember what I said about getting close? We must kill them in a quick burst as stamina nb do or if we can and close in we need to find a way to back out. Some kind of cc will do or dark shades teleport but it's unreliable. It's great dot too for a long time intervallum and not requires the mob to stay in a circle. The other morph gives us even more dot damage but the shades won't aggro the mobs and it will attack you and most of the time the shades just running after the mob wich running after you and barely hit it. So the archer shade is better imo because it always hits.

So we can't burst down quickly our opponents and can't stay close to them that means we have to kite. Aoe circles won't help you if you kite that kills refreshing or twisting path. You can't stun you enemy with yoncealed weapon because you have to go close to do that and even if you do that you can"t burst down the helpless enemy so it's useless.

You have to kite. Use only range skills and light attacks from your weapon! You won't have time for heavy only if you can cc them. That would buy you time for 1. That's not much so the destruction staff lines heavy attack bonus not really helpful. The knock back on fire staffs is nice but still not good enough to worth a heavy attack and a chance to get cought.

- Damage: If we kite and can't burst we need something wich is ranged and hits hard. there is impale (assassins blade morph) it hits hard especially when it crits and remember we can crit anytime ;-) but its a finisher

we cant spam it effectivley and most of the times you can use this only for buy some time against more opponents and to get some mag back with the assassin line passive.
We can spam strife but we need to face our opponent to be able to do that and we still need something wich hurts them really badly. fortunatelly we have something for that. As a mag user our soul stike ultimate hits extremly hard. The snare is huge bonus. As a kiter we love every source of snaring enemy and quicken ourselves.

- Speed: Kiting needs you to keep distance. Knockback on heavy hits with fire staff takes too much time. The archer skill is stamina based but could work. There is cripple wich snares and quickens at the same time but you need to face your opponent. at least it last long enough. The morphs can regain mag from kill or a small damage on impact. It's good we need something like this. But we have little space on our bar.
What I can't leave out is my second best skill after shadowy disguise is double take (morph of blur) it gives us dodge chance it's ok it's not much unless we use the medium armor skill too but we use light anyway.
So the priceless in this skill is the 4 sec speed buff. It's not much time but you can spam it as a mag nb. It's really my second favourite. Try it and you'll see!

That was my contribution. My research, my experince. It's not complete but mabey hepful for some fellows or at least material to further discuss.

Erondil · May 2015

TommyGoodgone wrote: »

I'm not an expert only veteran 3 and not really into pvp but I would like to share my experience with the magicka nb build. share my views and experience from lots of other mmmo's. I am 35 years old played a lot mmo's. But what I want to share is just a contibution to the discussion not a guide.

So It turned out that the sneaky builds have to go close and that's not very wise as a light armor wearing build. As a magicka user light armor is the obvious choice.

- Best feature: We have a spammable skill wich grants us invisibility and critical on next attack. It's gold we don't need crit chance stuff in the future. As a mag nb we have the amount of mag to spam this and not run out of fuel too soon.

- Resource Management: As a mag nb we focusing on mag that's not simply allow us to use more skills before running out of fuel but it buffs our spells. We want to hit hard than we have to get our max mag as high as possible. That gives us a big disadvantage we have low stamina so we can dodge/block less.
In according to this huge disadvantage in my oppinion. Sword and shield and up close are not viable playstyle for us.
We can't focus on blocking attacks or roll dodging in and out. In addition to this we can't use effectively weapon skills. Only the staff line wich uses mag as a resource. (I use bow but only becouse i feel like the staffs attacks are slower and the passives are less usable than the bow passives) We must focus on class skills and mag guild skills/pvp skills.

- Playstyle: if we want to use our best ability that we can crit anytime we want we must get the Purge from the pvp skill line. It's a must! There is no build without cleanse. It can be painful to aquire it for a pve oriented player but as I said if we want to use our best feature that's the way to do it becouse dots are killers in this game. Not really in pve right now but that could change in the future and we don't want to throw our build out just becouse we didn't get ready for the obvious.

- Weakness: We will be very weak against weapon attacks. We can try to compensate this but to be honest theres no way we can get enough physical resistance wich will be enough to worth something. Something would be at least 30% at least.
We have spells that give us protection: the fighters guild shield spell or comsuming darkness ultimate and the shadow skillline passive gives us protection for 4 sec (as a light armor user)
Even we get all of them it won't be enough. The ultimate is nice but it force us to stay in a small circlewhile we can't dodge and block. We can get sturdy traits and run only in purple or gold armor still our physical protection won't be enough.
So our only solution to survival is concentrating on spell resist and try to outheal the rest.

-Heal: We have another huge pro: we have lifestealing abilities! Damaging our enemy and healing ourselves in the same time is a big advantage. This is the only viable way to stay alive as a mag nb. Healing dot won't save your life only if you can escape but who want's to play with a build where you have to constantly run from your enemies? And if you have a boss fight and cloack out for a few secs the boss will reset. Sometimes only 2-3 sec enough and it resets!
the other heal we "can" get is from pvp skill line but it's nearly impossible now to get. You need to constantly pvp for months if you want to get it and in the mean time you could burn out and stop playing especially if you not really enjoy pvp-ing.
All the people out their who have that skill were here from the beginning and there were huge balance issues in pvp. Bugs, exploits etc. I'm not saying that they are all cheaters but it was way easier to get it.
There is the daggers skill heal but it1s stamina based and you have to go close. For helas you have to have a spammable skill and you can't spam stamina skills.
There is siphoning strikes but it weakens your attacks almost 30%. That means if 1/3 your attacks are a miss and why would we concentrate on are super ability that we can crit anytime if we weaken our damage output at the same time? It makes no sence for me.
Theres heals from gearsets but they have a proc chance or you need ultimate or you need to kill your enemies to be able to use that. Not reliable. Heals havet to be spammable.
Potions have cooldowns and the heal dot stays for a short time but heal dots as I said before will not save you.
There are skill sinergies where if you kill an enemy you get heal. The problem with this is that you constantly plan your fights and it won't be enjoyable and most times if you can kill an enemy you don't really need the heal to finish the rest. Drink a potion for that. Most times you need heal between the fights and not when it is finished.

So that leave us strife and sap essence (drain power morph). One is for single target, the other is for multi target and bigger heals if there are more enemy. You can keep both on your bar and use sap essence as a buff before you spam strife.

- Skillbars: - For now we can put Purge to the second bar. What we need to put in the first bar is the shield from the light armor skill line as somebody suggested in this thread already. That way we can never run out of spell resistance.
Strife/Sap essence or both on first bar.

We don't have a gap closer as most of them use stamina Ambush is great but it's stamina based now. And remember what I said about getting close? We must kill them in a quick burst as stamina nb do or if we can and close in we need to find a way to back out. Some kind of cc will do or dark shades teleport but it's unreliable. It's great dot too for a long time intervallum and not requires the mob to stay in a circle. The other morph gives us even more dot damage but the shades won1t aggro the mobs and it will attack you and most of the time the shades just running after the mob wich running after you and barely hit it. So the archer shade is better imo because it always hits.

So we can't burst down quickly our opponents and can't stay close to them that means we have to kite. Aoe circles won't help you if you kite that kills refreshing or twisting path. You can't stun you enemy with yoncealed weapon because you have to go close to do that and even if you do that you can"t burst down the helpless enemy so it's useless.

You have to kite. Use only range skills and light attacks from your weapon! You won't have time for heavy only if you can cc them. That would buy you time for 1. That's not much so the destruction staff lines heavy attack bonus not really helpful. The knock back on fire staffs is nice but still not good enough to worth a heavy attack and a chance to get cought.

- Damage: If we kite and can't burst we need something wich is ranged and hits hard. there is impale (assassins blade morph) it hits hard especially when it crits and remember we can crit anytime ;-) but its a finisher we cant spam it effectivley and most of the times you can use this only for buy some time against more opponents and to get some mag back with the assassin line passive.
We can spam strife but we need to face our opponent to be able to do that and we still need something wich hurts them really badly. fortunatelly we have something for that. As a mag user our soul stike ultimate hits extremly hard. The snare is huge bonus. As a kiter we love every source of snaring enemy and quicken ourselves.

- Speed: Kiting needs you to keep distance. Knockback on heavy hits with fire staff takes too much time. The archer skill is stamina based but could work. There is cripple wich snares and quickens at the same time but you need to face your opponent. at least it last long enough. The morphs can regain mag from kill or a small damage on impact. It's good we need something like this. But we have little space on our bar.
What I can't leave out is my second best skill after shadowy disguise is double take (morph of blur) it gives us dodge chance it's ok it's not much unless we use the medium armor skill too but we use light anyway.
So the priceless in this skill is the 4 sec speed buff. It's not much time but you can spam it as a mag nb. It's really my second favourite. Try it and you'll see!

That was my contribution. My research, my experince. It's not complete but mabey hepful for some fellows or at least material to further discuss.

Its pretty much that I think except some points :
cloak : I prefer by far darkcloak because it removes dots. With that you dont need purge, except maybe if you have a slot and annoyed by piercing mark. At vr14 with cp and nb passives its quite easy to reach 30-40+ spell crit without any focus on it which is better than a 100% crit on one spell which need to waste a GCD.
I disagree when you say we have to be ranged, melee for burst works very well but need to be fast and use cloak/shields a lot.

septvestige · May 2015

Dark cloak is great and I started with it too than I realized the other morph is to powerful not to use.

VR14 and cp are for those who started their build at the begining. For the rest like me it's months even a full year to reach that. Who knows what happens in a year. Mabey we won't play this game anymore. We can't plan our build this way. I want my build functionable now or at least a close future.

So what is your fast burst skill as a mag nb? How do you back out from fight? Cloak alone won't help you becouse aoe's cc's. Going in close is ok but we can't stay close long without blocks and dodges. We have some but if we burn our stamina down too fast we are dead.

Whyn Aurum · May 2015

TommyGoodgone wrote: »

Dark cloak is great and I started with it too than I realized the other morph is to powerful not to use.

VR14 and cp are for those who started their build at the begining. For the rest like me it's months even a full year to reach that. Who knows what happens in a year. Mabey we won't play this game anymore. We can't plan our build this way. I want my build functionable now or at least a close future.

So what is your fast burst skill as a mag nb? How do you back out from fight? Cloak alone won't help you becouse aoe's cc's. Going in close is ok but we can't stay close long without blocks and dodges. We have some but if we burn our stamina down too fast we are dead.

Use cloak with dodgerolling and breaking the line of sight to escape sticky situations.

Erondil · May 2015

TommyGoodgone wrote: »

Dark cloak is great and I started with it too than I realized the other morph is to powerful not to use.

VR14 and cp are for those who started their build at the begining. For the rest like me it's months even a full year to reach that. Who knows what happens in a year. Mabey we won't play this game anymore. We can't plan our build this way. I want my build functionable now or at least a close future.

So what is your fast burst skill as a mag nb? How do you back out from fight? Cloak alone won't help you becouse aoe's cc's. Going in close is ok but we can't stay close long without blocks and dodges. We have some but if we burn our stamina down too fast we are dead.

Teleport strike, concelead weapon and impale are your burst skills. TS s gap closer CW as main burst skil and Impale as finisher (at vr3 I guess you ack a bit of spell damages so you should need it). Make sure to always have a maor sorcellery buff running and soulharvest helps a ot too if you still lack of burst.
I back out from fight using shadow image. Port to shadow image + cloak will work most of the time. If your shadow image dissapears or you forget to place it,try to los if possible or rolldodge+cloak (eventhough you have not a lot of stamina recovery, you can roll time to time). Our passive that grants 30% stamina regen+ pots should be enough to break cc every 6 seconds + some rolldodges (but don't block except when you see some wrecking blows or crystal shards coming) .
Btw if you don't only pvp it should not takes long to reach VR14, and the amount of cp I'm talking about (90) either.

septvestige · May 2015

I tried out flame staff and it seems i was wrong about it. Theres a skill in the destruction skillbar wich worth a place on 1st bar.
I taught only heavy attack does knockback instead u just need a skill and use it with an inferno staff plus theres a morph where you not only knock back your enemy but stun it too. So it's a ranged cc wich works with our squishyness.

This brings up a problem not enough space on 1st bar. Not even on 2nd. I need all my current skills. I already dumped teleport stike, concealed weapon, impale. The next could be swallow soul (strife) but i don't know if sap essence alone could be enough to heal or not. Sap Essence is a must cos it has buff on it and my only aoe.

Ara_Valleria · May 2015

Whyn Aurum wrote: »

EDIT: Edited the topic, since this has spun off to a general magicka NB discussion...

Hello, I recently (since subscription drop) have started playing ESO on the EU servers.

I got my character up to vr14 couple of day ago. I'm currently into PvP although I am facing some difficulties with the Magicka Nightblade and was hoping that some of you experienced magicka NBs could chip in on advice.

I could just switch over to Stamina which seems to be more fun, valiable, easy(?) build to play, but several people have been telling me that every build can be made to work well, so lets try...

I'm using destro+healing staff and 7xlight armor.
The gear sets I'm using are 4x legendary martial knowledge vr14, 5x Warlock pieces (vr12, rings are vr1). 3x legendary torugs pact vr14 (destro, healing and chest). Yes these are the armor sets suggested by Sypher in his build vid.
I am a wood elf.
Im at about 50ish champion points.

I find several Issues with this magicka nightblade:

1. A major lack of burst damage, compared to stamina builds, it's riddiculous when compared.
2. Quite a squishy build, getting sniped very often without even a chance of reaction (Im sitting at 26k Magicka, 20k Health, 12k Stamina
3. The only kills I am able to "solo" are underleveld players, taken by surprise, newbies which don't give me any satisfaction at all.
4. Cloak is a great escape although I find that if I get marked the chances of me getting out alive is close to none.
5. Confusing priorities in zergs, the ranged abilities have again, too low damage to be even considered threatening.
6. Healing capabilities of healing ward seem limited as it targets the lowest player around and not yourself which is fine for groups, though I am into solo playing/small group fights)

The Pro's I find with this build are:

1. Able to maintain cloak for long duration
2. Usage of concealed weapon which hits through dodgeroll (although the damage is (around 5k max?) too low to be a major plus).
3. Able to use Fear (though so can stamina NBs)
4. Flame Reach is great for range CC. (though does nothing vs dodgerollers...)

I do understand that 50 hours into PvP doesn't make me a pro and I want do acknowledge the fact that I'm still learning and there are large gaps in my playstyle and skill... but still I would like to see if there are any improvements I can do to make Magicka NB PvP enjoyable, because so far I'm just getting frustrated.

Here is the current skill setup I am using:

Destro staff:

1. Flame Reach
2. Force Shock
3. Concealed Weapon
4. Crippling Grasp
5. Dark Cloak
6. Dawnbreaker (I find meteor too easy to dodge and it bring too much attention into my playstyle, I like to keep fights small-sized)

Healing staff:

1. Killer's Blade (my execute) (Had harness magicka before, still debating on this change)
2. Mass Hysteria
3. Double Take
4. Healing Ward
5. Shadow Image
6. Soul Tether

I think this is it, I'm sorry for the wall of text but I hope this will help me improve my PvP

Thanks,

Hmm... well, I am a Magica NB too and I can do the 20k+ burst dps that stam NBs do now a days. But yeah magica NB life is difficult since there are people roaming around stacking nirnhoned.

I think its difficult building a mag NB if you are a bosmer since your race doesn't really complement a magica build

You need 30k magica and a decent amount of magica regen to be able to pull it off.

Destro restro is good. You dont need harness magica since your build isn't for tanking but isolating people and picking them off one by one.

Get rid of killers blade and use impale since you are a magica NB.

Armethius · May 2015

TommyGoodgone wrote: »

I'm not an expert only veteran 3 and not really into pvp but I would like to share my experience with the magicka nb build. share my views and experience from lots of other mmmo's. I am 35 years old played a lot mmo's. But what I want to share is just a contibution to the discussion not a guide...

...
That was my contribution. My research, my experince. It's not complete but mabey hepful for some fellows or at least material to further discuss.

Tommy, and All,

I am now a vr6 and have been playing in cyro for about 1 month. I run a siphon/shadow NB build that might lend a hand to other NBs. It is similar to Tommys.

Here is my setup with explanation... also I am not geared up because I am still only vr6.

BOW SLOT
1. Cripple
2. Funnel Health
3. Bombard (BOW Line AOE IMMOBILIZE)
4. Degeneration (Entropy Morph)
5. Siphoning Attacks
ULtimate: Soul Assault

This bow line is my damage dealing line. I lead with Degeneration, sometimes i will hit multiple enemies because i think the heals stack. Then I'll hit cripple (bombard if its a zerg blob), and then I will spam funnel health mixed with light attacks and I'm pretty much able to stay at 50%+ resources for minutes at a time. It is a really great build for staying in the battle for days on end, because you are faster than everyone with cripple, constantly regenerating all resources and you have most of your stamina to use you dodge rolls (which combined with my medium armor passive means i get even faster run speed). If I need to take someone down quickly i pop the inexpensive Soul Assault. I can also catch mages spamming streak by just using cripple every 8 seconds.

ONE HAND/ SHEILD
1. Dark Cloak
2. Shadow IMage
3. Absorb Magic (can't decide if defensive stance is better)
4. Mass Hysteria (amazing)
5. Siphoning Attacks
Ultimate: Bolstering Darkness

This is my defensive and zerg buster line. My favorite move is to hit shadow image, run in (hopefully i have speed boost already from cripple before switching weapons), then i hit fear and maybe sheild bash a few times before hitting teleport right back to my shadow image. No one can kill me and i just broke them up with my fear. Dark Cloak is necessary for getting away, I just spam it 4 times or so and i'm invisible for 10 seconds. And then bolstering darkness is 60% damage reduction in the circle, so I pretty much cannot die if i remain in there. This is extremely useful in keep rushing, defending zergs, or alessia bridge type play.

I run all medium, but am considering going 5 medium 2 light. I put all my attributes in health, but I assume as I approach max level I will be putting more in magicka.

I hope this helps other NBs. Happy hunting. Go AD.

septvestige · May 2015

So another thing I can add and could be helpful:

Many of us choose Dark cloak over shadowy disguise+purge. I have another reason not to.

So I wrote about our main weakness the weakness to physical resistance and lack of armor wearing light armor. I wrote about how we can deal with it. Fighting with the kiting or teleport in/cloak out (mabey teleport out with shadow image as others suggested here). One thing we have to face if want to do this: snare.

We have some very useful magicka based spammable speedbuff skills (cripling grasp, double take, some use refreshing or twisting path) but with dark cloak we can't remove snare. If we are snared we can't kite. They will catch us and because the lack of stamina and resistance to physical attacks the deafeat is inevitable.

So with shadowy disguise and purge we can remove snares and dots too!
I just don't have enough space for the utilities like teleport in shadow image out tactic + if we use this we need another skill to burst down and cc the enemy usually concealed weapon. That's 3 skills and we still don't have a heal or a shield. It can only help you with much lower level targets or total noobs without gear. Stamina nb's can do it with Ambush and it's damage buff but we will have a difficult time with this. Stamina nb's can also use medium or even heavy armor to fight close range we can't because we need the light armor passives for our magicka skills.
So I use the other option: kite. I put shadowy disguise (cloak) to 2nd bar because my main damage skill is swallow soul (strife) and it doesn't work well with cloak because if you want to use it effectively (I mean you want to deal damage) you need to use it constantly without breaks. You only have time to an occasional shield or cc when you close to full health. I returned to it because its true you only deal mediocre damage with it but it also heals you and it's very very cheap so you can spam it without worrying about your magicka. Of yourse you can never defeat your enemy if you don't have something heavy hitter on your bar. That is soul strike (any morph). It's a channeling ability but at least it has a good snare coming with it. Luckyly siphoning abilities (our main in this build is: swallow soul) helps you build ultimate with the siphoning passive+swallow soul builds ultimate by dealing damage and by healing too.

Shadowy disguise (cloak) can work together with Double take on second bar to skip monsters in dungeons or run away undetected and do some heavy damage with the critical anytime abilty. The best to utilize this power to put some aoe next to them and this bar can be our farming bar against more than one target. Are you satisfied criting your target? Imagine you do it ten times at the same time! You will never score 10 critical at the same time if you don't have Shadowy disguise. If you have it you can do it any time.

With double take on the second bar we need a speed buff on 1st bar too.
So first bar is for 1v1 for me and Cripling Grasp is to good for this to not use (speed buff+snare enemy+dmg enemy+dot enemy).

Edits: grammar, my english sux

kaithuzar · May 2015

tldr; i'll go back & read it later b/c i am interested but i'm too tired at the moment.
I figured I would post what's been working for me.
4 storm knight, 4 elf bane, 2 torugs (duel wield), 2 cyrodiil's light. - master resto off bar
food, not drink
champion pts into thaumaturge, there are others i'll post if requested - have around 175ish
skill bar:
cloak, ambush (unmorphed), mass hysteria, concealed weapon, inevitable det - ult soul tether
cloak, double take, sap essence, healing ward, retreating maneuvers/cripple/prolonged suffering - ult veil

sometimes i swap ults around & use incapacitating strike with soul tether on back bar, just trying veil at the moment.

health w/buffs & food is around 27k, magic is around 27k, sp dmg 2.3k, sp resist 18k, armor 17k
2 glyph's reduce magic cost & 1 inc armor
Not everything is gold only 2 pieces so I can inc armor & maybe a little extra stats there.
The only problem is no recovery, but I love lighting people up with inev det + fear & concealed is awesome

It fits my play-style, try it out & see if it fits yours.
-kai

Whyn Aurum · May 2015

kaithuzar wrote: »

tldr; i'll go back & read it later b/c i am interested but i'm too tired at the moment.
I figured I would post what's been working for me.
4 storm knight, 4 elf bane, 2 torugs (duel wield), 2 cyrodiil's light. - master resto off bar
food, not drink
champion pts into thaumaturge, there are others i'll post if requested - have around 175ish
skill bar:
cloak, ambush (unmorphed), mass hysteria, concealed weapon, inevitable det - ult soul tether
cloak, double take, sap essence, healing ward, retreating maneuvers/cripple/prolonged suffering - ult veil

sometimes i swap ults around & use incapacitating strike with soul tether on back bar, just trying veil at the moment.

health w/buffs & food is around 27k, magic is around 27k, sp dmg 2.3k, sp resist 18k, armor 17k
2 glyph's reduce magic cost & 1 inc armor
Not everything is gold only 2 pieces so I can inc armor & maybe a little extra stats there.
The only problem is no recovery, but I love lighting people up with inev det + fear & concealed is awesome

It fits my play-style, try it out & see if it fits yours.
-kai

this high health and magicka? what race are you. let me gues imperial?

Also what enchantments do you use on your armor sets?

kaithuzar · May 2015

I'm a high elf, dark elf, breton, or imperial would all work as good

I use +magic enchants on armor

kaithuzar · May 2015

You can go the shadow cloak + efficient purge method, but for myself it's not really my playstyle (there's nothing like a shining light engulfing you to give them a beacon of where you last were whenever you're trying to get away & hide) but it's viable
I could also replace retreating with impale, or shades.. shades are good
Soul Assault is awesome, i love exploding near death; it's free dmg
I made this build before I tried a build similar to @Erondil 's nirnhoned magnus build, it was ok imo, but lacked survivability against hardcore stam-blades.
Which is what made me switch back to my damn near 20k armor build listed above
Sustain is fairly non-existent but can be maintained from resto heavy attacking in a fight to get magic back
NB's are made for ganking imo, I mean you can use this build in any situation, zerg dive sap tanking, ranged inevit det spamming, ambushing sorc's down, even 1vx w/soul tether stunning them while you finish them one at a time

Whyn Aurum · May 2015

kaithuzar wrote: »

You can go the shadow cloak + efficient purge method, but for myself it's not really my playstyle (there's nothing like a shining light engulfing you to give them a beacon of where you last were whenever you're trying to get away & hide) but it's viable
I could also replace retreating with impale, or shades.. shades are good
Soul Assault is awesome, i love exploding near death; it's free dmg
I made this build before I tried a build similar to @Erondil 's nirnhoned magnus build, it was ok imo, but lacked survivability against hardcore stam-blades.
Which is what made me switch back to my damn near 20k armor build listed above
Sustain is fairly non-existent but can be maintained from resto heavy attacking in a fight to get magic back
NB's are made for ganking imo, I mean you can use this build in any situation, zerg dive sap tanking, ranged inevit det spamming, ambushing sorc's down, even 1vx w/soul tether stunning them while you finish them one at a time

You can easily fix your resource issues by sacrificing some spell damage and getting siphoning attacks with caltrops which pretty much creates a never ending pool of resources in 1vX

Also I would use funnel health (or its other morth if you solo alot) instead of concealed weapon as you already have a major cc which is fear so you basically dont need the concealed weapon stun.
The speed buff when using concealed can also be forgiven as you can get easily away by spamming double take with cloak.
With funnel health you are getting a nice bonus to your max magicka from the passive tree, you are getting health back each hit, you can hit escaping targets (it has insane range), you dont have to chase around laggy/feared targets with your concealed which pretty much means you have to stack upon your enemy (which somethimes is a real pain).

The only downside to ditching concealed would be the inability to injure permarolling stamina builds which I guess is a major downside. All in all it comes down to individual playstyle.

I do like you build though. I've really only played a light armored NB so I am surely giving your build a shot although I am lacking a major component which is magicka detonation.

By the way, how much damage are you taking on average from crystal frags/ wrecking blows with this armor build?

EDIT: I did try your build and the magicka sustain is absolutely non existent. It really is just a hit and run build, dont understand why put so much defences onto it if I cant even sustain long enough to utilize my armor.