Which one?

xGhost91x · June 2019

Hey guys. I'm coming back from a LONG break and am needing some help. I'm going to be getting back into PvP and I was wondering which class would be better between magblade and stamblade. Any advice?

Stigant · June 2019

Roll Dunmer, which is solid choice for both, and try out yourself 😉

xGhost91x · June 2019

Not a bad idea lol. My only experience with Nightblade is mag dps. I'd like to try it in PvP and see if it's any good. Also, are Necromancers any good? I had no idea they would ever add that class to the game.

fred4 · June 2019

Necros are a badly designed buggy mess right now. I do not recommend.

Stamblades have received some changes to bias them away from ganking playstyles and more towards tankier brawling ones. They are still highly rated for open world and ganking is still viable. Nightblades, in general, have less of an advantage in battlegrounds, at least if you go for the stealth gameplay. Many people say that stamblades outperform magblades in PvP overall.

I play a cloaking melee magicka nightblade in PvP. The advantage of that playstyle is that you can build for very high movement speed in cloak, while a proc set (Caluurion) allows for up-front burst. You are extremely squishy though. Unlike a stamblade you have almost zero dodge roll sustain and I recommend speed and shields for defense, weak though the shields are on this type of build. It's a fairly niche way to play magicka NB. For what it's worth:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=154786

I'm no expert on all ways of playing NB, so I hope others will suggest different types of build. In particular, if you can work Grim Focus into the build, this now makes you tankier. One thing about nightblades: There is a lot of build variety.

fred4 · June 2019

You might get more responses, if you changed the title to "Magblade or stamblade?".

Iskiab · June 2019

I didn’t like Stamblades, I think their strength is in CP pvp where you can reduce the cost of dodge rolling and you have higher sustain. Outside of that they aren’t great imo.

Magblades I found more fun. Lots of diversity in the class which is great, get enough skill points and you can use the same character in multiple roles.

Right now I’d say they’re top tier pvp healers, okayish at ranged dps, good at ganking, good skirmishers, and good brawlers if you have a healer if not self healing is an issue.

Summary of the class: invisibility, good mitigation, best self utility buffs, poor group utility, poor self healing, amazing speed, good outward healing, okayish burst, amazing versatility

Very good choice for a main because by playing with your spec you can do well in 1vX, BGs and Cyrodiil large groups. Poor choice for an alt because of the learning curve.

Heimpai · June 2019

For me stamblade got stale and boring so i went magblade and found it a lot more fun

I agree with going Dunmer, can swap between mag/stam

Personally i‘d go stamden or magplar (i know that’s not what you asked)

Morgul667 · June 2019

I'd go with stamblade

fred4 · June 2019

I'd actually question the poor group utility comment. This is something that everyone says, because NB DDs don't have Funnel off-heals anymore, they don't usually offer synergies, they don't buff or heal the group nor do they debuff or negate the enemy. Furthermore, if you're using Cloak and/or the shade, you tend to be squishy (because you can be) and you won't alleviate someone else's pain by taking aggro.

On the other hand you can keep watch at keep entrances, while your group takes it. You can scout undetected. You can aid your group by placing and destroying forward camps as well as enemy siege. You can distract the enemy by ganking people inside keeps, because you survived while your group was forced back to sieging outside. You can resurrect people inside a keep and take it from the inside, because you waited out the enemy in cloak.

When playing small-scale, if you play with people who can take of themselves, e.g. who are able to LoS and survive, a nightblade is absolutely devastating for killing tankier players as you coordinate your burst.

Of course I am talking about a stealthy nightblade. There are other builds. Dark Cloak is basically a magicka Vigor and Grim Focus, unlike every other form of mitigation, is additive. This means in a build that has, say, 50% mitigation from other sources - armor, Minor Main, Minor Protection and so on - Grim Focus is as a strong as Major Protection. Indeed I come across tanky nightblades these days and it hasn't seemed to me that their damage is hugely compromised. The reason I am personally sticking with a squishy build is that I prefer different compromises, e.g. I build for speed and high (cloak) sustain.

BaByDontHurtMe · June 2019

magNB is very fun and tanky atm (can only speak about cp pvp)

with changes to passives and skills and we’re in pirate skeleton meta, look towards variations of old Sypher sap tank builds with notes of Kena’s insight to build around passives and mechanics

it’s not 100% back but sap tank is almost back

remember we have major protection ulti and you can get free 5k heal as your group kills target in small group play (imo max 6 people should be 4 but military thinks the perfect size is 6 so I’ll allow it)

Dunmer is like the shackle breaker race, let’s you go whichever direction you want

Lokey0024 · July 2019

Stamblade all the way. Either or are deadly with incap/Scourgeshot combo and have good spamable. Requires skill.

Iskiab · July 2019

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Stamblade all the way. Either or are deadly with incap/Scourgeshot combo and have good spamable. Requires skill.

Probably true for magblade as well. I don’t know if magblade requires a lot of ‘skill’ per say, but it definitely requires a lot of experience.

Those who say magblades suck in pvp are probably playing it as an alt, it’s not an easy class to use as an alt because it can be unforgiving and light attack weaving is required... but those who main it love it.