With that change the sky’s the limit, julianos and mothers sorrow is a nasty one

All offence like that requires more luck, in pve it’s a brute but in pvp your massively increased damage will rely on a decent healer in the group, you’ll be all teeth an no trousers as it were. I should qualify the original statement by saying I mostly pve, in pvp in just Zerg serving long enough to get a couple of key skills then I bail out, so I’m looking for seat of the pants survivability and maximum killing power. On the rare occasion I do anything more my own nightblade uses julianos with plague doctor for a beefy setup. With a magic nightblade massive potential for healing it can make you a real pest

Because of the great changes to shade and allowing you to just throw it anytime without a target I find it too hard to resist not running Necro on any form of magNB.

I am running Necro + Shackle + Valkyn on my destro/restro build but I’m not going to lie because of our inherent pressure with destro and dots I will test out Sloads for my lil 3man NB group for research purposes only...

I am currently running Necro + War Maiden + Zaan for my duel wield spec but that is because I haven’t been farming Caluurian so I will probably swap out War Maiden once collected.

Shackle/war maiden/valkyn is what I plan to run. I may swap out shackle for sloads just to see what all the hype is about.

Before Summerset I ran riposte/shackle/1grothdar and it did well in nonCP. I was able to get my first 1vX with that setup, all impen magicka/spell power glyphs. Of course poisons, and immov potions. This was more for survivability, and your damage was based off of merciless resolve.

I am going to experiment with more poisons that have CC in them, which I think will do well in small scale pvp. With ranged, in my opinion, CC is an advantage over players. I run sloads/spider cultist/x2willpower and that's good for me. I die less than I kill, but im running with at least 2 other friendlies. I think I am more support damage, but I can probably play a little better.

Caluurions+ wyrd tree+ bloodspawn (or whatevs) is what I intend so very soon. Gonna want that purify and resto ulti. Massive burst, a defense against sloads+ and higher mitigation. Mage or atronauch mundus. Cloak will be fine.

Im running 2pc grothdar, 5pc frontbar of riposte, and 5 pc backbar of lich with 2pc willpower rings.

Im a fan of frontbar and backbar sets even in this patch because you can now run 2 willpower on jewelries. Lich and riposte are perfectly fine 1 barred.

well im a 2h magblade, but the idea is basically the same with the set bonus changes. I've front barred a willpower's greatsword for the extra max magicka and damage since summerset dropped, while having 2 5 piece sets(one only active on the back bar like lich or wizard's riposte). and a monster set. I think that makes the most out of the amount of set pieces you can have.

I’m switching around atm but I’ve found a theme that really works for the no CP BGs. It’s Skoria with Amber Plasm on the body (necklace, legs, shoes, gloves and sash), vMA Resto on the backbar and variable front bar sets (rings,chest, inferno staff).

That allows you to front bar heavy sets that have arcane rings without transmuting jewellery (for those without Summerset) while still playing in 5-1-1 light. The heals, damage and sustain on this build are immense. I run Refreshing Path, Rapid Regen, Funnel and Resto Ult and I put out easily 300k-400k group heals per BG while also usually being top in dmg.

I have immense AoE (since I also run Fire Blockade) pressure for group fights, as well as single target pressure with Cripple and Merciless, like any MagBlade. Amber and vMA Rapids keep me nicely topped up with tri-food and two regen enchants in jewellery.

Now the frontbar sets I interchange are Rattlecage, Spinners and Duroks. Each has its own merit.

For soloing I prefer Rattle because freeing me from Entropy means I can use both Fear and Cloak. Or Cloak and Shadow Image. In a premade I don’t really need Cloak, especially with all the Sloads around preventing you from cloaking anyway. So I’ll drop that for Entropy and slot Durok if the group is missing it, or Spinner for even more dmg.

Bars on Rattlecage look like this...
Front: Fire Blockade, Funnel, Merciless, Refreshing Path, Cloak. Incap ulti.
Back: Heal Ward, Cripple, Rapid Regen, Dampen Magic, Fear. Resto ulti

In premades you can also drop Incap for Eye of Flame if you want, especially if you or your group has Duroks already since defile is the main benefit of Incap.

The only skill I feel like I’m missing from time to time on my solo Rattlecage build is Shadow Image.

Cal has been on my mind. Liking wyrd + B.S. looks interesting.

Unique approach with good perspective. Thx dude!

Duroks and sload is what I will try. I'm a huge fan of Duroks. Definitely agree running efficient purge too. Ran it last night and it was insanely effective for survival and getting back into cloak. Can't believe I didn't run that skill sooner

Juli/BSW/Valkyn

What I run is 5 war maiden 5 lich 2 engine guardian. The skill bars are

front bar: merciless resolve, shadowy disguise, elemental drain, swallow soul, crippling grasp, soul harvest.

Back bar: healing ward, dampen, fear, shade, leeching strikes, soul tether.

I run a spell damage enchant on the destro staff and double drain health poisons on the back bar, with all spell damage glyphs on the jewelry.

The playstyle is very kite oriented you can even kite around the sphere in small fights. The damage is insanely high soul harvest has almost a 19k tooltip and merciless is about 25k. The reason I'm using soul harvest over incap is soul harvest hits a lot harder. The stun from incap is usually superior, but what I was finding was most experienced players will break free of incap and dodge roll right after my success rate on landing that combo was low so I figured I would go for the extra damage from soul harvest. I use fear for mag dks it's basically the only way to cc them because of wings.

The weaknesses of the build is that it has pretty low health I sit at about 23k so you will have to be careful to not get flat out one shot. Mag dks are a flat out counter no getting around that wardens are also a pain don't get caught up on trying to kill a low health warden in turtle mode. Ignore him and move on to another target. Mark target is annoying if you get marked it's best to start disengaging if there is a thought that the nightblade might have reinforcements. The skill celling on a build like this is very high, but the skill floor is incredibly low meaning you can kill everyone, but at the same time it's so unforgiving that it could feel not viable if you aren't very familiar with the class. For the most part heavy armor is a lot easier to play and if you are new to magblade that's usually the route to start with.