Introduction:
To begin, I'd like to say that I've been playing a stamina nightblade in PvP since the launch on PC, and transferred to console when it was released. I'm currently at 682 champion points, and have achieved the rank of August Palatine. I may not be the best Stamblade in the world, but I have a very good understanding of the class and way to play. The build I currently use is 2h and bow. My intention with this guide is to give an in-depth view of how to play and build a stamina Nightblade, and hopefully, aide in the improvement of your skills with one.



Table of Contents:
I. Races
II. Champion Points
III.Gear + Consumables
IV. Combat + Skills
V. Situational



I. Races
The first race I would pick for a nightblade in PvP is an Imperial. The reason I would pick this is because you gain 10% maximum stamina (more than any other race), 12% maximum health (very good for survivability), and restore health on melee attacks. While the last one may not seem that appealing, it can be very helpful to make you last a couple more seconds in a fight. The second race I would recommend would be a Wood Elf. There are a number of reasons why I think this is an amazing race option. The first would be the size. Wood elves are the smallest race in the game and when applied with shuffle, they can be very hard to aim at and hit if not locked onto. This helps while facing the vast majority of scrubs and wrecking blow/dizzying swing spammers. Finally, they recieve disease and poison resistance! This is very helpful for fighting other stam players right now. Second, the passives are built for a nightblade. You get 10% damage in stealth, 3% max stamina, 3m reduced detection, and a whopping 21% stamina recovery. Alongside the cheap costs of many nightblade abilities and a few champion points into warlord, you can spam abilities without having to worry about your resource in a 1v1 fairly easily. Third would be Khajiits. The nimble feline race has a decreased stealth radius and damage done while in stealth, 20% health recovery, 10% stamina recovery, and a 8% critical strike chance increase. While these passives might seem better, the crit is slightly less appealing because of impen. If you plan on doing PvE, Khajiit is the best choice for a nightblade, but since this is a PvP guide, it has earned the bronze medal.


II. Champion Points
This set up is for 501 cp, and if you don't have that just scale it down to where you're at.
Steed:
-15
-27
Lady:
-60 Hardy
-48 Elemental Defender
-17 Tick Skinned

Atronach:
-15 Shattering Blows (optional)
Ritual:
-84 Mighty
-34 Piercing
-34 Precise Strikes (these can be 68 and none in piercing because it increases your chance of crit heals or placed in blessed)

Tower:
-15 Magician
-15 Warlord
Lover:
-75 Mooncalf
Shadow:
-39 tumbling
-13 Befoul

That is my set up for Champion points feel free to adjust to your playstyle.


III. Gear + Consumables
-Gear
The most basic setup is 5 Hunding's Rage/3 Night Mother's Gaze. This is perfectly fine. Easy to craft, and takes no time to get.
If you have monster pieces, you can use 5 Hunding's and 2 pieces of Blood Spawn(regen+resistance) or Molag Kena(high dmg). Or, you can use 1 piece of Blood Spawn and one piece of Molag Kena (regen+dmg). Other monster pieces that work are Engine Guardian (+great regen -bashable/easily detected), Spawn of Mephala, and Malubeth if you really have trouble staying alive (can crit heal you up to 40k). You can also use one monster piece of your choice and a PvP set like Leki for the 2pc damage.
You can run the undaunted passives with 1 heavy one light and 5 medium for the best possible stats and damage, but 7 medium or 2 heavy and 5 medium works fine.
For weapons, I recommend sharpened maul and bow, but you can use nirnhoned greatsword or sharpened. I think the penetration actually does more dps than nirn so mauls are the best.
Other gear options include TBS, Shield Breaker, Morag Tong, Morkuldin, and Marksman.
-Consumables
For food, there are a couple options. You can use max tristat, the wrothgar max health and regen, and magicka and stam regen drink. While bistat would give you good numbers and nice damage output, the lack of magicka is brutal. Cloak is too important to be out of magicka. My favorite choice is the wrothgar food, but tristat works very well also.
Potions can be a multitude of things. You must keep many on you at all times, and each has their purpose. Basic stam potions you pick up are going to be what you use the most. In general combat, you can pop these when you get low. If you're struggling, Tripots(columbine, bugloss, mountain flower) are the best (but expensive). Another potion that is ridiculously fun are essences of speed (dragonthorn, blessed thistle, wormwood). They can get out out of a sticky situation without wasting stamina sprinting or dodge rolling. Potions of weapon crit and brutality are also fine (DT, BT, NR), and they are great for making your burst have a higher chance of instant killing. Along with those you should keep a healthy stock of regular health potions to use for building ultimate and magicka potions for when you're sneaking for longer than you are able to without more magicka.
Poisons can be used to increase stamina costs and damage health (flesh flies, stink horn, emetic russula). I find this most effective because you have CC as a nightblade and it makes them unable to break free as easily while this is active.


IV. Combat + Skills
The skills you want on your front bar are surprise attack (resistance buff for you and debuff for enemy), executioner (more dmg and regen with kills), Rally (burst heals, nice HoT, brutality buff), ambush (empower+gap closer), and finally mass hysteria (hard CC fear). On your back bar you want vigor (heal), shadowy disguise (always crit and stealth), poison injection (ranged execute strong DoT), Relentless focus/piercing mark/shadow image, Shuffle (dodge chance, removes snares). For ultimates, the best option for single target is Incap Strikes. It stuns, debuffs healing, does massive damage, and has a fun animation. The secondary ultimate can be a couple things. Flawless dawnbreaker is a good choice. It increases your weapon damage on your bar which makes your injection hit harder and it cannot be dodged or blocked. Pure damage. Another option is shooting star.
-Vampire and WW are optional to your preferences.
For fighting, you want to utilize your class and try to initiate combat not be the one whose getting initiated onto. Use crouch and stealth to maximize damage. Open your attacks with a heavy/light attack followed directly by a poison injection. Immediately after, switch to your 2h bar to deal an extra 1-3k damage from the 2h passive which is recognized from the time an arrow takes to travel and registers as a 2h attack instead. Ambush onto your enemy and surprise attack, execute. In you're within melee distance, open with a heavy attack, surprise attack, and execute. If you're animation cancelling, they shouldn't have time to respond if you have the jump on them. If you're jumped by someone, always try and turn the fight around by stealthing and applying immense pressure with your high damage and burst. If you're overwhelmed, pop mass hysteria for a bit of relief. Fleeing is always a viable option to regain your composure and become the initiator. If you have shooting star, you can open up with that ability with a potion right after, and by the time you abush onto them, your incap should be up to execute them.




V. Situational
-While fighting templars, try to dodge roll through them and stealth to avoid being pulled out from sweeps. Stealthing also cancels out radiants. If you can't stealth it try to bash them to interrupt it and get a chance to return the execute.
-While fighting other nightblades, try your best to mark them, if you can't try to fear before they can get far in stealth. Dodge rolling when the animation begins for death stroke and it's morphs can save your life and cut a large chunk of burst out of a combo against you.
-Against sorcerers, try to stealth their frags to make them miss and apply pressure to them. Time your fear with their shields running out (10 seconds) to give yourself an opening to melt them.
-Avoid using poison injection with a DK reflect up. Try not to get up in their face for too long or you risk being taloned infinitely. Against a stam DK, holding block while casting can save you from a knock back from DS or a hard hitting WB.

Thank you for taking the time to read my guide, and I hope it helps. Please give me some feedback and feel free to ask any questions.