Ugh, this is tough. There are so many playstyles. In some ways it depends on how deep you want to go with NB. Playing the class well is hard.

Up front, I am a magblade main. My preferred build has a lot of utility and not so much damage. I can gank, but I will do exactly what you described. If the target turns out too tanky, I run away or target someone else. That said, I would challenge any single player to kill a decently played Mara + Rallying Cry opponent.

If you want true perma-cloak sustain, like me, your requirements become very specific. Atronach mundus, sustain food, Siphoning Attacks, Barrier ultimate on cloak back bar, no sustain sets other than possibly Seducer / Bright-Throat's Boast, Breton, no vampire, 6x light armor. If you want more details on why this is optimal for perma-cloaking, let me know.

If cloak sustain is not your ultimate goal, or if you can make the fiddly Darloc Brae set work for you, then vamp stage 2 or stage 3 is recommended. In fact it's almost mandatory, e.g. to get rid of the sneaking snare and for the damage (from stealth) and defense boosts. Race, I'd go Khajiit, Dunmer, maybe wood elf.

Mandatory skills:

• Merciless Resolve. The big gun. If you want to be competitive, there's not really any way around this. I would also say the magicka morph is mandatory, since it does more damage.
• Healthy or Shrewd Offering. Too good of a self-heal to ignore.
• Concealed Weapon. +10% extra damage for 5 seconds at a time. I bet most players take this morph over Surprise Attack nowadays. Also useful for the off-balance stun.
• Shadowy Disguise as a ganker and to activate the Concealed buff. You may also use Refreshing Path to activate that buff.
• Incap Strike for the stun and damage, or Soul Tether as a bomber.
• One of the following: Race Against Time, Shadow Image, Mist Form, or wield a bow for the Major Expedition from dodge rolling along with Phantasmal Escape. I would personally not play without root / snare removal. Also the dodge roll cost reduction from Blur is well-regarded.

Recommended skills:

• Siphoning Attacks or Leeching Strikes for sustain and slight healing, as needed.
• Swallow Soul for "meh" damage, but a good HOT in PvPvE, e.g. IC or keep fights.
• Crushing Shock instead. Show those dark-dealing sorcs who's boss . May pair with an Asylum destro staff, Draugrkin and / or Serpent's Disdain sets. This is a pressure playstyle, though, neither ganking nor bombing.
• Power Extraction as a pseudo execute and buff skill, especially on bombing builds. Sap Essence is better for solo IC boss farming, though, and Whirling Blades, Executioner, Killer's Blade or Impale are all alternatives worth considering as an execute.
• Lotus Fan or Ambush (whatever works better for your sustain) in conjunction with Rush of Agony set for a bomber or pseudo bomber group play build. I'm not sure I'd use Vicious Death anymore. I've encountered players combining this with Plaguebreak. If you can get an NPC guard or weak player to explode, you can kill a lot of people.
• Resolving Vigor in addition to Offering. The evergreen heal, esp. if not using Mirage.

When I say NB is hard to play well, the playstyle I'm thinking of is the traditional melee stamblade. Nowadays these tend to be hybrid builds. They can be played with "bog-standard" sets, such as "any damage front bar set", Rallying Cry or Clever Alchemist or Wretched Vitality back bar, mythic of choice (Wild Hunt, Sea Serpent, Markyn), and Balorgh. The best explanation I've seen on how to be competitive with this comes from React. It revolves around the off balance stun, as explained in the following video. It's IMO well worth watching in full:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRmoWuvAy0

If you’re a khajiit back alley gourmand front bar/rallying cry back bar, Markyn, balrogh. If you’re not a khajiit then switch out back alley for rush of agony front bar and slot lotus fan. Soul tether ultimate on both is good. These are magblade builds that can brawl and hit hard.

I have not tested that in a long time, but I believe Mark Target is purgeable. Not every target can purge or will do so in time, especially in Ravenwatch (no Mara).

Gankers fight for like 3 seconds at a time.

When I'm getting out ganked I usually see concealed weapon on the recap. It will give your kit more damage and better qol for delivery of the combo.

Surprise attack, the move, hit's harder though and is way easier to sustain with dual wield and medium armor.

I like big slow mag pool, and small fast restoring dynamic stam pool. It's very fluid and keeps you moving.

You can probably take down bigger or faster targets with concealed weapon, but you will run out of gas very quickly if you're using stam biased gear.

Whether you use either or you should always be opening with a heavy attack from stealth or cloak. Doing that will increase the impact of your ganks more than any itemization or skill decision. In fact, it's probably the real reason they nerfed light and heavy attacks in update 35.

Well, I'm a melee magblade, but don't have ganking damage. In the same boat there. As regards armor, 6 light armor for ultimate cloak sustain, but better a mixture with medium due to the physical squishiness of light. I've been running 3L 3M 1H lately. I'm going to ditch the heavy piece though, since patch notes mentioned something about possible stealth detection in heavy.

Leading with a heavy attack is or certainly has been effective in the past. Dual-wield for the fastest ones. Try it from crouch, if you can, e.g. possibly cloak and crouch. If you hit an enemy from crouch, from out of combat, from behind, there used to be a feature where the heavy attack does insane damage. Patch notes a while back mentioned that this is now limited to PvE, however I am not convinced that it always is. It may still randomly work on players, though I haven't noticed this lately.

On the other hand there is a reason not to lead with a heavy. If you do that, you give yourself away earlier. If your opponent uses Miat's PvP Alerts addon on PC, they will get a sound warning and that will possibly happen a bit earlier with a heavy than if you opened up with Incap, e.g. they become more likely to block or dodge roll your Incap and therefore fail to be stunned. You also give away the guaranted crit to the heavy attack, if you lead with that. Furthemore Incap has a 400ms delay, like all ultimates. If you can make the Incap stick and it's a stun, the next attack (Concealed) is guaranteed, since it's only 600ms later and the target cannot break free yet. I'm not sure you can fit in a light attack between Incap and Concealed, though. It's all swings and roundabouts.

Many people quote their buffed stats, since those are relevant to assessing burst I guess, but unfortunately I have no feel for those. I tend to judge builds on unbuffed stats. I'd sure like to know how you manage to get 20K pen without Balorgh / Breach and an axe, and 6K SD, and 50% crit. The pen value doesn't seem right to me, the other stuff, sure. I guess that's the Divines Shadow mundus and ... ? Heartland Conqueror? Do you have any sustain left?

A Nirn Sword will give you a slightly better Rally heal, but won't do anything for your damage. A Sharpened Maul is the traditional go to weapon for brawler classes, but you claim to already have 20K pen without it, so I'd say forget that. 50% crit is pretty darn decent for PvP too, so I'd say stick with the axe and Accelerate. I would use Race Against Time instead of Channeled, unless possibly you were a bomber.

That said, I don't play pure gankers, so what do I know.

P.S. I’m finding fewer and fewer people in Rallying, which I find strange, especially because that’s such a major offensive and defensive tool on my Templar, I have no idea what I’d even replace that with. I’d probably replace Mara’s next patch (if I play my Templar) with all the extra healing, than Rallying Cry.

Amerises wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

…I'd sure like to know how you manage to get 20K pen without Balorgh / Breach and an axe, and 6K SD, and 50% crit.

I normally wouldn’t post a full build, but since I’ve been given so much help here, and I couldn’t figure out how to PM in this forum…

Thanks!

This is probably really where it's at for ganking:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/631929/true-sworn-and-titanborn-broken-not-working-as-intended

Yeah, for some reason the bow-gank doesn’t feel as fun, although it seems better for sure. I’m liking what I’ve come up with, which is a combination of all of this information. I’m also finding out which skills I’m actually using and which I’m not, which helps with an dusting my bars. I was using Ghastly Eyeball but I felt a little too squishy, and now running Bear Haunch, which seems to be the sweet spot.

This is my first time being a vamp, and 4 hours just seems too short, I realized about an hour into stage 2 that I needed to feed again. So that’s taking getting use to. What makes melee gank tough is people on horses. So frustrating that it difficult to knock people off. Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve played other games where damage de-mounts people. So this is taking getting use to as well.

Yeah, let me know your skill layout. I’ve struggled thinking about Night Mothers. The idea of taking a 5pc for major breach just seems rough. I don’t understand the enormous animation when you mark target on someone from stealth, so that doesn’t make sense using it, plus Mara’s wiping it… I dunno, maybe I should try it before I bash the set, since so many are using it

Do you like the execute? I was considering switching from Killers Blade to the range morph, but it doesn’t even out perform my spammable until about 18% and with heals and armor, sometimes a crit from killers blade is was does the trick, and that out performs spammable at about 32% (again, I haven’t tried range yet).

How do you use shimmering frenzy? That skill really confused me. Can you back bar it? Will it eventually kill you? 400 WD is a lot unbuffed, but what are the downsides?

Amerises wrote: »

Do you like the execute? I was considering switching from Killers Blade to the range morph, but it doesn’t even out perform my spammable until about 18% and with heals and armor, sometimes a crit from killers blade is was does the trick, and that out performs spammable at about 32% (again, I haven’t tried range yet).

How do you use shimmering frenzy? That skill really confused me. Can you back bar it? Will it eventually kill you? 400 WD is a lot unbuffed, but what are the downsides?

I am using the ranged morph (Impale), yeah. Poison injection is more comfortable to use, both on execute range and with the little dot (that can sometimes be the difference..)

Ok, so, shimmering frenzy. You pretty much have to get used to the noise/visual cue to not forget it, that comes with time. You need to activate it a couple seconds before your ambush, but you may not always have the opportunity to get to the full stacks. It starts draining your health.

You then go to the front bar, do your rotation (preferably at full stacks if you can) and then go back to your back bar, DEACTIVATE it (it automatically deactivates if you run out of health, but you don't want to be that low...) and then cast rally or drink a potion to heal back up. You should be able to somewhat sustain it for a bit in stealth using rally as long as you stand still and is able to recover your stamina but the health cost ramps up.

It adds a lot but it's only used for quick ganks, giving you a considerable edge. You might mess up and die sometimes because of it because it multiplies how much of a glass cannon you are. Be very mindful of AOEs (i.e warden/dk skills that surround them), pulls, etc.

Amerises wrote: »

I’m sitting at just under 30k pen. You think that’s too much? I know on with Mara’s and Rallying, my other characters sit at around 28k buffed without being on shield backbar. With the shield I’m at 30k. Aren’t most people basically at that now?

30k pen -might- be too much. Mara's issue isn't high armor - it's constant healing. If you can nuke them in a second it shouldn't matter that much. Rallying's issue isn't high armor - it's high crit resistance that nullifies a large chunk of your damage. Hit them while they're unbuffed, prioritize more crit damage. 30k pen might too much when you consider that unbuffed people in horses or just walking around tend to hang at 20~15k or even less armor. It's a bit pointless to prioritize your ganks on the armored, buffed, 40k armor 30K hp DK that's active and healing because you'd probably need an onslaught/vamp spammable build for that anyway. They're just gonna turn around, leap on you and walk away.

[quote="fred4;c-7848037"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRmoWuvAy0[/quote]

this build proves why youtube is bad and will waste your gold.... the whole purpose of ice staff is for major breach. there is 0 reason to run night mothers if you are using an ice staff. watch the guys "1vx" its obvious no idea what hes talking about. hes also duo'ing or hiding during most of his clips and never fights any good players. very suspect like the rest of youtube. "run night mothers so you can sacrifice all of your kill damage to free up a spot on your bar for a useless spell that wont really help you anyways".. genius.

i have played this game since beta. took a year off came back and wasted a good mil or two on youtube before i figured out what you really want to run:

you want to run trainee chest, rallying cry, markyn ring, either balorgh or roksa (depending on if you want to heavy attack weave or not, and one of the following: war maidens (lower skill curve), back ally gourmands (havent tested yet but heard good things also low skill curve) clever alchemist(higher skill curve but will give you the most kiling damage), or mara's if you want to do laughable damage and directly compete with the bruiser losers(pariah works too with the debuf removal on healing yourself at sub 25% health cp blue tree passive). there are other sets that work but not nearly as well imo. rallying cry back bar the other sets front bar. i suggest just starting with war maidens then transitioning to clever alchemist when you understand the play style better. 600 weapon damage to spectral bow and your spammable is big damage.

you want to run 2 heavy, 1 medium, rest light. if the chest is heavy make it reinforced rest wellfitted or impen as you see fit. run dual wield axes front bar with nirn and shapened, ice staff back bar defending (back bar rallying cry).

skills: concealed blade, power extraction, killers blade, merciless resolve, inner or radiant light (fighters guild decloak is too expensive imo), and incap. back bar defending ice staff with shaowy disguise/race against time (depending on if you want cloak or to hard brawl), elemental susceptibility (and why night mothers is a laughable mistake), resolving vigor, refreshing path, healthy offering, and temporal guard. you can sneak in mass hysteria in there somewhere but not really

kajiht, warrior or shadow mundus depending on if you feel like you need more healing (warrior) or can risk it for the big crits (shadow). in terms of the cp tree honestly you should play around with it and adjust it as you see fit. there isnt a direct right answer.

edit: also you want prismatic defense on every peace of gear.

and in terms of play style its pretty simple and works every time you are not fighting the player you are fighting rallying cry and maras. you want to keep up vigor at all times and feign weak pressure. most bruisers will believe you are a trashblade given they are out pressuring you and will let their vigor fall off. if you get them to about 50-75% hp (usually around 60% is good) without sacificing too much of your hp pool you want to burst them. the way you want to burst them is to preemptively have them set off balance with a flanking concealed blade strike and your power extraction major brutality buff up, then you want to hit them with a not fully charged incap strike (the other morph is better for a skilled player who can manage resources effectively imo) into a medium swing (this will knock the off balance target to the ground) spectral bow animation cancel then spam killers blade until dead. also remember your spectral bow from merciless resolve will heal you greatly.

never burst with fully charged incap strike against any bruiser because this game is old and if you telegraph your damage on a nightblade you will never kill your target and they will instantly pop all their broken tank meta garbage right after you use it. this is the skill cap for nightblade in pvp. you have to hide your damage burst.

and run immovable potions for dks or you will die to how stupidly broken they are.