Storymaster wrote: »I am trying to figure out which I should go with? My Bosmer has to be a nightblade and I'm finding that no build comes anywhere close to StamSorc when it comes to PVE overland mow-through. I didn't expect a Nightblade build to equate to StamSorc, but to not even be in the same league is mind-blowing. Am I doing something wrong or is Nightblade just a lost cause?
Honestly, the stun from Veiled Strike and guaranteed crit from Shadowy are only good for PvP. You don't really gank NPCs, except maybe for fun. Doing this in a prolonged fight would be a DPS loss for sure.Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »In overland pve you need to play to the strength of the NB. Steath. Slot shadowy disguise and suprise attack, suprise attack stuns for four seconds and shadow disguise is a guaranteed crit.
Honestly, the stun from Veiled Strike and guaranteed crit from Shadowy are only good for PvP. You don't really gank NPCs, except maybe for fun. Doing this in a prolonged fight would be a DPS loss for sure.Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »In overland pve you need to play to the strength of the NB. Steath. Slot shadowy disguise and suprise attack, suprise attack stuns for four seconds and shadow disguise is a guaranteed crit.
If you're fighting Daedra or Undead, I recommend an Infused weapon with Prismatic enchant for single targets. Hits every 2 seconds, and crits will do something like 14K. My weapon of choice for Imperial City bosses, and because of the many vampires in PvP, who it will hit for up to around 5K.
A thing to note about Shadowy Disguise is that it makes all your heals crit, all of them, not just the first one, while it's active. On the other hand the guaranteed crit for attacks is hard to access. If you have any DOTs (damage over time) running on an enemy, a DOT tick is very likely to consume the guaranteed crit frm Shadowy, not the hard-hitting Suprise Attack, Death Stroke or Spectral Bow you want to crit.
In overland content, Cloak is simply useful, if you want to bypass fights. For example you might cloak through an entire delve, fetch the skyshard, and get out again undetected. That's how you do it when you have multiple characters and gotten bored with the overland stuff. The magicka morph, Concealed Weapon, will also increase your running speed.
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »@jrk just a couple of things, as a NB, you don't need to use anything but brawler from two hander, stamblades have a better execute then reverse slice, killers blade and better AOE then it too, power extraction, you also get major brutality from power extraction too, so you don't need rally, if you don't use pots.
Also I am 100% sure steel torando procs axe bleeds.
Stam sucks, no love for stamina by ZOS
all weapon abilities got nerfed, you are not competitive
so choose a magblade and dance through all and everything
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »@jrk just a couple of things, as a NB, you don't need to use anything but brawler from two hander, stamblades have a better execute then reverse slice, killers blade and better AOE then it too, power extraction, you also get major brutality from power extraction too, so you don't need rally, if you don't use pots.
Also I am 100% sure steel torando procs axe bleeds.
K...Killer's Blade is nice as it adds a flat 300% at 25%, but you're getting about the same at that point with Reverse slice, or correct me if I'm wrong. That and being usable at 50% vs 25%. I'm just not seeing how killers blade, besides being cheaper, is better than Reverse Slice.
I do use pots explicitly, Major Brutality, Endurance & Savagery; all in one & off the skillbar. Power Extraction, Hidden Blade & Rally lose their edges with that in mind.
The point I was trying to make is some skills/item combos have multipliers that let them do insane damage in certain scenarios; +300% for the add being under 50% HP is the first that comes to mind. These combos for stamblades are mainly limited to single target dots. Maelstrom Bow is BiS because it changes the mechanic of the adaptive ground AOE DoT.
But for AOE direct damage, the only stam skills I know that have a multiplier to it is Whirlwind & Reverse Slash when morphed.
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Edit: Titanic Cleave converts the Direct Damage portion of Cleave; optimized with 6 adds in range being hit. On a solo boss it's meh. With one or two adds it starts to add up. The scaling is relative to density proximity vs current target's HP. Both weapons compared, on a single target you'll get +1500 to cleave about every 10 seconds (refresh dot) & with Disciplined slash you don't start noticing ult gen until the execute damage starts kicking in; 50%. On most fights that have adds, both weapons are useful. Slash can focus fire adds (the single add you're executing is getting hit much harder than a titanic cleave; and in turn you generate ult while the boss is at 95% ) with splash damage on the boss & adds that's stronger than a non-titanic cleave. Titanic lets you boost cleave damage, increasing direct aoe on the boss and adds.
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Whirlwind doesn't really take full effect until under 50% health, and it's merely a x2 at most. As you're focusing a group of 5, it's multiplier isn't doing much on the whole group minus the one add being focused & at lower health. With 2handed, you cleave to get dots out & whittle the initial group, but once the 1st add is at 50% (even without major beserk from mark) your Reverse Slash is going to hit the group A LOT harder than Brawler or Power Extraction. Test it yourself.
Also I know for a fact Steel Tornado does not proc axe bleeds. I'm not going to trace the initial testing posts I found (we all can do the legwork), but I tested myself to confirm. It goes from this: "Each axe gives your melee attacks a 8% chance to bleed enemies" When Whirlwind is not morphed or whirling blades, your attack radius is 5 meters. The max range for melee attacks is 7 meters. Steel Tornado is 9 meters. Test it.
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Going off the edit, it really comes down to how important ult generation & skill costs are. Slash costs 2160 (1620 w/ passives & 5 medium) Cleave costs 3240 (2430). An 810 difference, not ground breaking.
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »@jrk I did test it, when I was testing power extraction vs steel tornado, they both proced the axe bleed, I did this like a month ago. Distance has nothing to do with it.
did some more testing and here are the results.
ignore that light attack, it did not proc the bleed and if you don't believe me, i would be more then willing to do another for you.
I did some dungeons with that setup and I understand you completely now. Killer's is too valuable for static buffs to your rotation. I.E. the crit & the minor maim proc chance you mentioned, not to mention the magicka/health regen on kills. I still feel Slash is a stronger, cheaper, wider-hitting AOE direct damager than a non-titanic cleave, but it doesn't really have a place until the add is well under 40% for the splash to shine.The reason to run killers blade over reverse slice is that you get the full bonus damage right away at 24%, you get an extra 2% crit for having it slotted, you get an extra 10% crit hit damage for having it slotted, with reverse slice, the damage scales linearly, ie you get 3% bonus damage at 49% health, 150% at 25% and you only get the full 300% bonus damage at 1% health. The splash Damage can't crit, like with power extraction, which you get 2 ulti for casting, every 4 seconds. Power extraction also procs weapon enchants and bleeds from axes. The skill Also can proc the disease status effect, so free dps there. Power extraction is a very underrated skill.
No one would use carve over brawler either, the ulti gen is nothing compared to the survaibiltiy a up to 19k shield gives you.
Lol, that was really a former dual wield end game dream, converted to 2handed, and that was before they changed maelstrom & master weapons; when you could get results with only 1 dagger. The reason for zerker over leviathan was a few reasons. For starters, it had slightly more crit & a 129 damage bonus vs the 1096 stamina. Second & more importantly it was a procced buff that retained when bar swapping. For single target DoTs (minus the dynamic changes to poison injection) they go off the damage, armor pen & stamina of your bar you're on when it hits. If there is a delay between the cast & the actual hit, then bar swapping is viable.Looking at your "end game dream", you don't have leeching strikes, you simply will need this skill to sustain. Blur/mirage has no place in endgame pve and Mark target is only good for trash pull, most bosses don't die fast enough or have enough adds for the five seconds of Major berzerk to matter. you ought to have Soul Harvest in pve more then incap too, on your front bar, the ulti gen is more then worth the loss in damage, 10 ulti everytime you kill something is incredible. maybe switch around for dawndraker on bosses but even with Soul Harvest on your from bar, that is another 2% crit. you also have advancing yokeda for some reason. that is a junk set, you lose so much stam from the jewelry from it being heavy armor and you only get 9.13% crit from it fully buffed, you might as well use http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Leviathan, it gives the almost same amount, 2000(9.13%) vs 1924(8.78%) but it is always there and you don't need to build up to it and you get another 3% crit from the 2 pieces of medium you get to wearing stead of heavy.
If you're being an actual archer, standing far away, this works great for bar swapping. However, with it being instant cast & you using it at melee range, the window to bar swap that was available from the cast time is gone. I could forego the proc & just utilize the buff, but that disease damage is too much to pass up on.Grim Focus: The Assassin’s Will and Assassin’s Scourge procs from this ability and its morphs no longer have a 100ms cast time, but the speed of the projectile has been reduced by approximately 10%.
I'm new to the game, but not new to these type of games. The terminology may seem like French (does a rose smell as sweet by any other name?), but I'm touching on concepts that carry over from WoW, Diablo, etc. The multipliers being the passive or procced buffs that synergize to greatly increase your damage. I've always found larger round multiplicative modifiers (Thaumaturge) to have more effect than one or two additive modifiers, unless the additive buffs are able to add up to a full multiplier, rather than a portion of a percentage increase; +300% vs +35%. If a skill or passive can have it scale beyond a x1.5 bonus of itself, then it's damage boosting ability scales better than a bunch of 15%-ers proving individually along the way. In this game, you crit damage stat is your one multiplicative modifier that at it's base rests at x1.5. Imagine if you could get it to 2.5. In D3 you essentially took a +300% item buff * +1400% set bonus buff * +900% crit damage * +125% combined additive damage buffs to boost whirlwind. But even then you were factoring in hundreds of small crits that would proc splash crits that could trigger bleeds, versus the flat damage of the hit of WW itself. On that note, I would like to thank you in helping me further understand the unspoken mechanics of ESO. It's tricky as not everything is black and white.The way you phrase things is also very strange, talking about multipliers and stuff, I simply have to think that English is not your native language.