Returning player: How is Magicka Nightblade right now?

Vanchatron · July 2023

I've returning to the game after a couple of years away and currently have a Magicka Nightblade DPS, using this build - https://alcasthq.com/eso-magicka-nightblade-build-pve

How is it in game at the moment for trials, dungeons and general endgame content? I'm not sure whether to respec to a melee Nightblade or not, but if the build above is still decent then I may as well stick with it.

Thanks guys.

PrinceShroob · July 2023

Nightblade has been hit pretty hard by the cap on Critical Damage. It's particularly bad if you're a Khajiit, since you have an extra 12% Critical Damage on top of Nightblade's 10% Critical Damage bonus, and you'll probably be going over the 125% cap with no way to drop down.

Alcast's builds are not the most up-to-date--all DPS are in medium armor now. Whorl of the Depths and Pillar of Nirn are good, you'd just do Pillar of Nirn on body and Whorl of the Depths on weapons, though the usual single target DPS combination is Arms of Relequen on body and Pillar of Nirn on weapons.

Critical Damage is capped at 125% and you'd have:

50% base;
10% from Minor Force;
20% from Major Force;
10% from Hemorrhage;
10% (2% times 5 pieces of Medium Armor) from Dexterity.

That's 100%. If you're parsing on the Iron Atronach, don't bother using Harpooner's Wading Kilt since the dummy has Elemental Catalyst (15%) and Minor Brittle (10%). You don't see Elemental Catalyst or high Minor Brittle uptimes outside of trials (unless there's a Warden in the group), so outside of trials, you could run Harpooner's Wading Kilt. If you're too close to the Critical Damage cap (say, from being Khajiit), run a Maelstrom inferno staff on backbar.

Typically people are using daggers frontbar nowadays, which means you'd be using Concealed Weapon as spammable over Swallow Soul. I think it's good to have a ranged build ready, but in practice, you should get used to playing in melee.

As for Nightblade's performance... it's not great. They're not only hampered by the Critical Damage cap, they also are heavily single target-focused and suffer on cleave. Nightblade, unfortunately, has gone from a class that's difficult to play but has great rewards to a class that's difficult to play and you have to be perfect to still be worse than everyone else's Dragonknight.

I still think it's a good class for solo content like arenas, since it has such strong passive healing. But myself and my friends have created additional builds for their Nightblades so they can run as healers, since they have strong Ultimate generation.

Vanchatron · July 2023

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Nightblade has been hit pretty hard by the cap on Critical Damage. It's particularly bad if you're a Khajiit, since you have an extra 12% Critical Damage on top of Nightblade's 10% Critical Damage bonus, and you'll probably be going over the 125% cap with no way to drop down.

Alcast's builds are not the most up-to-date--all DPS are in medium armor now. Whorl of the Depths and Pillar of Nirn are good, you'd just do Pillar of Nirn on body and Whorl of the Depths on weapons, though the usual single target DPS combination is Arms of Relequen on body and Pillar of Nirn on weapons.

Critical Damage is capped at 125% and you'd have:
50% base;

10% from Minor Force;

20% from Major Force;

10% from Hemorrhage;

10% (2% times 5 pieces of Medium Armor) from Dexterity.

That's 100%. If you're parsing on the Iron Atronach, don't bother using Harpooner's Wading Kilt since the dummy has Elemental Catalyst (15%) and Minor Brittle (10%). You don't see Elemental Catalyst or high Minor Brittle uptimes outside of trials (unless there's a Warden in the group), so outside of trials, you could run Harpooner's Wading Kilt. If you're too close to the Critical Damage cap (say, from being Khajiit), run a Maelstrom inferno staff on backbar.

Typically people are using daggers frontbar nowadays, which means you'd be using Concealed Weapon as spammable over Swallow Soul. I think it's good to have a ranged build ready, but in practice, you should get used to playing in melee.

As for Nightblade's performance... it's not great. They're not only hampered by the Critical Damage cap, they also are heavily single target-focused and suffer on cleave. Nightblade, unfortunately, has gone from a class that's difficult to play but has great rewards to a class that's difficult to play and you have to be perfect to still be worse than everyone else's Dragonknight.

I still think it's a good class for solo content like arenas, since it has such strong passive healing. But myself and my friends have created additional builds for their Nightblades so they can run as healers, since they have strong Ultimate generation.

Appreciate the input, thank you. I always used to use AlcastHQ as my go to meta build site, so is there a better alternative now? Would appreciate knowing.

Twig_Garlicshine · July 2023

Skinnycheeks