Forward

I made this guide for two reasons. The primary reason is I keep hearing that I've made a poor choice by choosing to play a Night Blade healer and that I should play a Templar or Warden. I feel I'm constantly having to defend my choice despite having tested a Templar and verifying the strength of the Nightblade healer class. Testing and gearing multiple characters takes time, so not knowing is understandable, spewing your incorrect views and trying to impose your views on others is not. In essence I want to shut them up. The second reason is I've only been playing the game for four months, there are likely some things I've missed and tweaks I can make to be even stronger. Other players who pick up the playstyle will help to strengthen the class, what I've realized is almost all the discussion about morphs, mundus stones, etc.. in pvp has been what's best for other healing classes, nightblades require different choices.

Why Nightblade?

I don't have a max level Warden so all my views on the NB class come from comparing the NB to the Templar. Here are the Nightblade healer's strengths:

1. Cloak. Pretty simple, cloak is the best mitigation ability in game.
2. Burst healing. NB is the best single target burst healer in the game by a lot.
3. Sustain. Using health plus magicka as healing resources means that you rarely if ever run out of magicka.
4. Versatility. Battlegrounds and a lot of the Cyrodiil campaigns do not use Champion points. That means that if you have a max level magblade you can switch to healing very easily. The only annoying thing is you'll need refreshing path as a NB healer, one of the big reasons why so many nightblade healers stopped playing the class after the last patch. I play a magblade in trials and have to remorph to refreshing path when I heal, other than that though all it takes is a lot of skill points.

Skills

PvP healing doesn't have a rotation, instead here's a write up of NB skills and their strengths and weaknesses:

Core Abilities:

Shrewd Offering – this is your primary heal, it is the largest single target heal in the game and is spamable, for those who have a Templar healer imagine if Breath of Life could be used without running out of magicka, and instead after using it 4-6 times in a row you had to go back to using combat prayer or healing springs to regen your health. The downside is it cannot heal yourself, so if you're focused you have to rely on your mitigation and cloak away. Since you use your health pool to heal you have to be careful, and I try to avoid hitting 6 stacks of the dot you apply on yourself after using it. I used to run healthy offering instead of shrewd and that's still an option, but I believe Shrewd is better. Missing the minor mending from healthy offering hurts, but I find with shrewd you can use it more than four times in a row safely in pvp. Whenever someone's less than three quarters health this is skill I use. Be careful though, one annoying thing about this skill is the health drain associated with using the ability is tied to the size of your heal, that means as you add more magicka and spell power it increases the size of the heal but also increases dot on yourself as well, the health drain also ignores mitigation and continues ticking while invisible. This is one of the main reasons to buff health, if you go solely magicka you'll have a stronger Shrewd Offering but be able to use it as often because you'll be spending more time building your health.

Refreshing Path – This is your second best heal and should always be running. It's not just the heal that you're providing to yourself and whoever's in front of you (I'd say the group but the area is so small you'll rarely hit your entire group in a BG), you also receive major resolve and ward when you use it because of the shadow passives, always have this ability up.

Combat Prayer – Great ability, your third best heal and buffs the group with resistances and a damage buff. I always keep the buff up and use this as my spamable heal in a sense, where if no one's being focused I'll hit this to help recover from shrewd and buff yourself and the group.

Healing Springs – a requirement for all healers in ESO. There isn't a lot to say about it, except you'll find in BGs you won't use it a lot unless your team is stacked, in cyrodiil you'll use it a lot more so sustain is an issue.

Cloak – always on one of your hot bars, if you don't use cloak I don't really see the point of playing a nightblade.

Borrowed Time (Time Stop) – I don't view healing as only healing health bars, your role is to support your group. If your group is chasing down a couple players this can come in really handy, it's also the healing negation you want so you need to use the one with a cast time.

Retreating Maneuver – Group break free and speed buff? Too good to pass up.

Other Good Abilities:

Cleanse – the expensive morph of purge. Good ability, high magicka cost but since NB's sustain is great because of using two resources to heal you can afford it in battlegrounds. The other morph efficient purge morph is not worth a cast, it's the secondary effect of cleanse you want where it heals the group for 15% of their health and adds a resistance to debuffs. Has the added effect of 10% extra magicka regen because of the support passives.

Concealed weapon – the extra invisibility speed this ability gives is why I use this. I find without it you'll get runned down in cloak, I almost always have it on my back bar along with cloak.

Siphoning attacks – hit it as a buff before engaging so if you get into a heavy healing situation the magicka return will hit mid battle. I'm considering dropping it and have yet to test out sustain without it. I don't light attack while healing even though I maybe should, I have too many other things to focus on and don't want to have to aim at a target.

Elemental Blockade (ice) – I like this ability, throw it down on enemy players to prevent them from kiting to help your team mates. The damage is irrelevant, it's the snare you want plus possible secondary effect from ice that inflicts minor maim for 15% less damage.

Manifestation of Terror – Great ability in cyrodiil, in battlegrounds not so much. Area is small and people run right by the trap a lot. Takes two seconds to arm so useless for peeling or cc on the fly, needs to be setup beforehand.

Shadow Image – Not too bad... provides minor maim, but I prefer snaring with Ice elemental blockade, damage is meh. Port I don't like, there's an animation and travel time, that means while traveling you can still take damage. I've hit the ability when low health (maybe 25%) and when I ended my port I've been dead from dots and whatnot multiple times. If you're skilled in using it I'd continue, every time I read the description I imagine the possibilities and potential, it might just be me and not enough practice to execute the ability well.

Mutagen/Ward Ally – I would love to be able to use these abilities, unfortunately they just don't fit on my main bar. You could run double resto in pvp instead and use these abilities which would be a another strong option.

Abilities you should not use:

Funnel Health/Swallow Soul – absolute garbage. The heal these abilities provide is tied to how much damage you do, as a healer the answer is not a lot. People run heavy armour, block, and are never fully debuffed so the healing amount is terrible, plus it can be reflected. Last time I tried it in pvp it was ticking for ~500 health. People associated the ability with NB so much that the weakness of the ability makes people think the class is weak. This ability, either morph, is a dps magblade ability and not a healing ability.

Sap Essence – every time I try to use this ability I die. I had a hunch it was reflectable but it's not, it's just that when you're in range of multiple opponents and would use this ability you should be getting out of there, not trying to do damage for a small heal. Not worth a skill slot in pvp, great in pve.

Ultimates

Soul Siphon – Good ability, group wide heal and will get you out of a bind when everyone's spread and low health. The annoying thing about the ability is the animation – when you hit the ability nothing will happen for a second or so while the animation is going off. This means it's useless for helping focused targets and you need to rely on shrewd offering. It's also another Siphoning skill for the passive extra healing.

Bolstering Darkness – This is my go to ultimate in cyrodiil. The ESOwiki listing is outdated, what it actually does is place a ground effect. Anyone who runs through the ground effect is given major protection (30% reduced damage) for the duration (18 seconds or so). Great for pushes/charges. It also has a great healing synergy that provides stealth and speed but I have yet to see someone use it, most pvpers don't use synergies enough.

Reviving Barrer – Great ability in Cyrodiil .... for other healers. Issue is Nightblade ultimate gain, if your pvp guild runs a barrier rotation the speed at which Nightblades gain ultimate is the issue, you'll have to take the place of two other healers. This is why I use bolstering darkness instead, combining bolstering darkness with reviving barrier is stronger than more barriers in my opinion. At the end of the day if you're in a pvp guild and you're asked to run this you have no choice and just do it. If you're in a group that's lacking healers then use this ability, Barrier is stronger than bolstering darkness so if I had to choose one I'd choose barrier, it's just the effect of barrier and bolstering darkness stack so it's better to have both.

Elemental Rage (Ice) – the main reason I run an ice staff on my back bar, dumping this one tight knit groups wrecks them.

Typical Skill Loadouts

Battlegrounds:
Resto staff: 1 – Healthy Offering, 2 – Healing Springs, 3 – Combat Prayer, 4 – Refreshing Path, 5 – Cleanse (flexible) – U: Soul Siphon
Ice Staff: 1 – Concealed Weapon (flexible), 2 – Elemental Blockade (flexible), 3 – Time Stop (flexible), 4 – Retreating Maneouver, 5 – Cloak – U: Elemental Rage

Playstyle:
You're a full healer; healthy offering spam focused targets, healing springs when people are close together, keep combat prayer and refreshing path up at all times. Careful with healthy offering spam, if 4 people are focusing a squishy team mate and you *** spam to try to keep them up they'll likely die anyways, then you're next with lots of ticking dots on you. If someone's a BG tank you can keep them up with a full group or more on them. Cleanse, elemental blockade, and time stop as the situation warrants. Cloak if you get in trouble. Think of health as a healing resource like magicka and not only what you need to stay alive. This is why a high health pool is important, but remember some executes start at 50% health, the last half of your health will go faster than the first 50% health as people switch to low health targets. Be ready to get out of there with cloak. I find the magic number is 4, if there are less than 4 people on someone you can save them by spamming healthy offering depending on their spec.

Cyrodiil:
Resto staff: 1. Healthy Offering, 2 – Healing Springs, 3 – Combat Prayer, 4 – Refreshing Path, 5 – Time Stop – U: Bolstering Darkness (Barrier)
Ice Staff: 1. Siphoning Attacks (flexible), 2 – Manifestation of Terror (flexible), 3 – Concealed Blade, 4 – Retreating Maneouver, 5 – Cloak – U: Elemental Rage


Playstyle:
Might just be my playstyle, but what I do is burst heal focused targets with healthy offering and time stop spam, otherwise play just like any other healer. While time stopping isn't helping to heal your team, people panic when cc'd. You're stopping groups from damaging your team plus negating enemy healing. I'm pretty sure I'm negating more damage than I could ever heal while also helping to kill the other team. Cloak also allows you to be more aggressive than you can on a Templar and be a front line healer and get in good vantage points for time stop, Cloak early if you get in trouble. You can also save people who're focused a lot more easily in Cyrodiil than you can Bgs because you have the help of other other healers and lag. I've spammed *** up to 10x before to keep someone up who was focused with the help of other healers who was being attacked by a large group. I've heard multiple people saved in this way talk about how their their spec is amazing and gives them great survivability... sure.... you'll never get credit for saving someone this way but you'll help your team win.


Gear

Nightblades are dissimilar to other classes in that their gear choices are limited. Every Nightblade healer – MUST – MUST – MUST – use heavy armor and Fortified Brass. This part of playing a NB healer is mandatory because of the lack of self healing, without the mitigation you're going to die too much in pvp to be anything but a hindrance to your team, a funny look from an opponent will be enough to kill you. A healer who can't keep themselves up in pvp helps no one. In addition, since you're using health to heal others a high health pool is required.

Here's my go to set for battleground pvp:

W1 – Powered Transmutation Restoration Staff, glyph doesn't matter too much
W2 – (doesn't matter too much) Transmutation Ice Staff, mana drain glyph
Head – Heavy Infused Chokethorn, tri stat or health glyph
Shoulders – Medium impenetrable Chokethorn, magicka glyph
Chest – Heavy Infused Fortified Brass, tri stat glyph
Legs – Heavy Infused Fortified Brass, tri stat glyph
Belt – Light impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Hands – Heavy impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Feet – Heavy impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Necklade – Transmutation spell power glyph
Rings (both) – Transmutation magicka regen glyph
Drink: Witchmothers potent brew
Mundus: Ritual (increased healing)
Pot: Immunity, health and magicka
Ability Points: All magicka

5 heavy, 1 light, 1 medium. If you don't want to invest in tri stat use two health and maybe a stamina rune instead. Make sure you have 20k health outside Bgs/Cyrodiil.

I found transmutation a strong set for battlegrounds, everyone can use crit resistance in non-CP making this my go to set. There's a lot of magicka regen on the set, so I put a spell power rune on my necklace for more healing oomph since I don't need the magicka regen. I like chokethorn for battlegrounds because I see it proc a lot and it helps with self healing, earthgore is another really strong set. There are other options to transmutation but using heavy fortified brass is mandatory:

Gossamer: Better in Cyrodiil than BGs I've found. Not bad but I prefer others.
Combat Physician: A strong BG set, transmutation won out for me though.
Bright Throat: My go to set for cyrodiil. Strong regen and magicka means stronger healing. Transmutation isn't helpful in Cyrodiil because you need to apply a hot for the effect to take hold, refreshing path's area is too small to apply a hot on more than one or two people outside a bottle neck or ball group.