NB bomber, 1 bar without Balorgh or 2 bar with?

Veinblood1965 · February 14

I recently rolled a one bar Nightblade bomber with Rush if Agony and Vicious Death along with Oakensoul. I invis, then set my prox det, leap in, hit soul tether, then spam whirling blades which works fairly well.

II was wondering if Balorgh's might be better with a two bar build so a couple of questions came to mind.

What skill setup should I use for a two bar with Balorghs? I'm assuming I invis, set prox det, leap in, then soul tether which prompts the Balorghs which ups my whirling blades or whichever offensive spells I use? Is that the best skills to use and order of skills to use?

Also what about the back bar? Go more defensive? Switch out to back bar once everything has gone off so i can possibly survive while getting away? Sword and board along with what skills?

I've never ran a bomber before but it is a blast so far. Any advise is appreciated.

WaywardArgonian · February 14

1 bar is always worse than 2 bar if your skill is high enough.

I haven't played bomber in a long while but iirc Malcolm has a pretty good build for it on his website.

fred4 · February 15

I tested Rush of Agony, a while ago, and noted that you can have both Ulfsild's Contingency and Teleport Strike on the Rush of Agony back bar. You bar swap during the teleport to your Vicious Death front bar and all the damage only goes off at the target location. You can obviously pile Proxy Det on top of that. This leaves room for Balorgh plus a mythic and 1x Trainee.

Turned out that I don't have the patience to make bombing builds work myself, e.g. to wait for the right opportunities. I briefly tried the above with Contingency, but without Proxy Det, so as to have a shorter windup time. I found that very underwhelming, but I suppose I didn't give it a chance. You may want Rally on the back bar to gain Major Sorcery / Brutality in advance and while cloaked. In that case you might go for Siphoning Attacks + Shadowy Disguise on that bar as well. The combination of those 3 skills supports prolonged movement in cloak.

Malcolm used Dark Convergence in the last bomber video I watched of him. It seemed like he put some work into it and tried a few things. It is possible that Dark Convergence plays better than Rush of Agony, even if the latter has the reputation for being particularly broken. That said, I'd stick with Rush of Agony for a while.

You may want to fit Race Against Time for escape + the crit buff, Ulfsild's Contingency, Telport Strike, Proxy Det, an AOE spammable, Relentless Focus for extra passive damage, Shadowy Disguise, Rally, Siphoning Attacks. That's 9 skills already. The last skill might be a self heal, Concealed Weapon for attack and the passive speed, or perhaps Shadow Image. Shadow Image has verticality, allowing you to port back to the safety of a bridge or building in IC, or to a keep wall or tower in Cyro.

As regards the AOE spammable, I was trying to make Brawler work, e.g. with the Master's 2H from Dragonstar Arena instead of using a mythic and 1x Trainee. This scales your AOE damage with the number of enemies. With a high number of targets, it can deal more damage than Whirlwind and will do so regardless of their health.

Veinblood1965 · February 17

fred4 wrote: »

I tested Rush of Agony, a while ago, and noted that you can have both Ulfsild's Contingency and Teleport Strike on the Rush of Agony back bar. You bar swap during the teleport to your Vicious Death front bar and all the damage only goes off at the target location. You can obviously pile Proxy Det on top of that. This leaves room for Balorgh plus a mythic and 1x Trainee.

Turned out that I don't have the patience to make bombing builds work myself, e.g. to wait for the right opportunities. I briefly tried the above with Contingency, but without Proxy Det, so as to have a shorter windup time. I found that very underwhelming, but I suppose I didn't give it a chance. You may want Rally on the back bar to gain Major Sorcery / Brutality in advance and while cloaked. In that case you might go for Siphoning Attacks + Shadowy Disguise on that bar as well. The combination of those 3 skills supports prolonged movement in cloak.

Malcolm used Dark Convergence in the last bomber video I watched of him. It seemed like he put some work into it and tried a few things. It is possible that Dark Convergence plays better than Rush of Agony, even if the latter has the reputation for being particularly broken. That said, I'd stick with Rush of Agony for a while.

You may want to fit Race Against Time for escape + the crit buff, Ulfsild's Contingency, Telport Strike, Proxy Det, an AOE spammable, Relentless Focus for extra passive damage, Shadowy Disguise, Rally, Siphoning Attacks. That's 9 skills already. The last skill might be a self heal, Concealed Weapon for attack and the passive speed, or perhaps Shadow Image. Shadow Image has verticality, allowing you to port back to the safety of a bridge or building in IC, or to a keep wall or tower in Cyro.

As regards the AOE spammable, I was trying to make Brawler work, e.g. with the Master's 2H from Dragonstar Arena instead of using a mythic and 1x Trainee. This scales your AOE damage with the number of enemies. With a high number of targets, it can deal more damage than Whirlwind and will do so regardless of their health.

Thanks Fred, I had not thought about setting up target dummies so I set up six of the skeleton ones and did some testing. With Balorghs the damages was higher with any combo of skills that you mentioned above. When I went with any non -balorghs setup it was about 3 to 4k lower DPS. Wayward, you were correct, a two bar build was even more damage, I went with Sword and Board, a mix of defensive and offensive skills on the back along with some of the skills that work when placed on any bar, including Soul Harvest.

End result is a pretty effective bomber build. I'm building it for group play for ball groups in Cryodill and it worked well. I don't have the patience either for solo bomber play.