As a general rule, unless you're an unbelievable player you're going to get killed when 3+ are bearing down on you. When I watch someone like Sypher play, he knows all the stops...when to roll, block, duck, where to kill them...I'll never be that good. Three or more is run away time. But in the meantime, my strategy w my stam nightblade:

- 2 pieces of heavy. I don't love giving up the buffs from the 2 meds I lose, but the armor bonuses are huge. For the best setup, make two large pieces heavy. Per set piece buffs don't care, but the overall armor rating is better on larges.

- the crit strike in PVP was what was doing me in. I invested in the champion line that reduces crit damage to me.

- however, I think a lot of people make the mistake of investing too heavily in champion point lines after they hit diminishing returns. I like to spread mine around to at least get ten points into pertinent passives (I'm also at 300). For example, I see a lot of people who put, say, 50 in mighty and 50 in precise strikes (the ritual). Those are good buffs, but if you reduced that to 45/45 you'd be giving up 0.5% crit damage and 0.5% physical damage; you'd then have ten points to invest in piercing, which would ignore 4% of your opponents armor. Bottom line - because of the diminishing returns, passing up lines completely to stack into one or two passives makes you specialized, but weaker overall.

- champions - the reds are really weak for NBs. You could invest heavily in the steed, and med armor, then make your escape bar a 1h and shield. That's whacky for a nightblade, but you'd almost double the armor of the shield...get another big piece to enchant...another set piece buff...