Stamblade is a headache to play in pve? Meant for pvp only?

Nyseto · January 19

1548 CP. Decided to give Khajit pure stamblade a shot in vet content using my arcanist’s all purpose gear. Wearing all golded perfected ansuul’s, tide-born, perfected maelstrom 2h, velothi, slimecraw mask. Nirn/charged on daggers w/ flame+poison, weapon damage enchant w/ infused on backbar 2h. Running braised rabbit food with essence of health granting resistance. Champion points are master at arms, deadly aim, fighting finesse, wrathful strikes.

Front bar: surprise attack, killer’s blade, barbed trap, relentless focus, camo hunter, flawless dawn breaker

Back bar: power extraction, dark shade, siphoning attacks, stampede, shadowy disguise, incapacitating strike

Pretty good single target dps, terrible cleave, low survivability, not the best sustain. It’s a lot of work with the weaving to fire off relentless, maintaining buffs, then killer’s blade…all while standing right next to each enemy.

Am I doing something wrong or is stamblade just mostly for pvp instead?

Soarora · January 19

Please note that I've never been a nightblade main and I've made a whole 2 nightblade builds ever so I'm not claiming to be an expert.

Nightblade is not going to have the cleave of Arcanist. It's a very single-target class. I believe for cleave you'd be using "spin2win" AKA Whirling Blades.

For sustain problems, make sure you have relevant CP (the recovery red CP and gain stamina on enemy kill red CP), swap your health potion to either a tri potion or weapon damage potion, and use max health + max stam + stam recovery food.

Drop velothi. Nightblade is the weaving class, you might as well get damage out of your weaving. Especially since you're running barbed trap anyways. Huntsman's war mask is a mythic I've seen people use lately, you may want to do that + slimecraw shoulder.

Drop dawn breaker and put incap on your front bar. Arcanists have been using soul harvest in content, something to consider. Backbar a higher cost damaging ultimate (if you're pure class then I think your only bet would be ice comet?) or double bar incap (if I recall correctly back when nightblade DPS existed, I saw double incap be a thing).

For some extra healing, you can use the CP that heals you on direct attacks (blue). I'd check your critical damage, you probably don't need fighting finesse and can replace that one.

I don't think shadowy disguise is used in PvE at current, if you need more healing you can add vigor.

You already have the buff from camo hunter on relentless. If you're needing even more sustain, you could use leeching strikes or siphoning attacks. That said, you are missing deadly cloak on frontbar and that will help you with survivability (lessens AoE damage on you).

Technically you're not supposed to run power extraction but I do too because I don't want to use weap/spell power potions.

If you hate being melee, you could go bow frontbar and swap to the mag version of bow proc and the execute.

MincMincMinc · January 19

I cant speak to pve, but a big problem I noticed over the years was that zos entirely made stamblade rely on merciless resolve. The whole rest of the kit needs to get redistributed. No reason Merciless should be hitting harder than every ultimate in the game, when it is on a 5s cooldown(or shot twice in a row every 10s). While also giving buffs and slottable bonus passives, and a heal.

Id be more pissed if I was a stamblade personally. Old stamblade was super fun being in melee rolling and cloak surprise attacking people from behind. Now it feels more like a proc set gimmick. Boring afk waiting for timers to line up while stalling.

Renato90085 · January 20

warden and nightblade is weakest pve dps role class in last 4 year(but t0 pvp )
they have 0 aoe dmg and now not best single dps and need high cpm do good dps
This is the build I usually use,if you want aoe ,you can run jerensi bladestorm,and swap surprise attack to Whirling Blades

there is my trash build,main did high aoe for mobs combat

also,charge/charge daggers is good for st dps build

El_Borracho · January 20

Just to add onto what @Soarora said:

You can increase survivability by swapping Surprise Attack for Swallow Soul. You are running Stampede, which gives you the Sundered status effect already.

Merciless is always better than Relentless. Don't know why they are different. Its also nice to have the Magicka pool available on a Stamina build so you can take full advantage of that attack.

You don't have a heal like Vigor or Healing Soul. While you can run a NB without a heal, you have to be very consistent with your rotation, and in group content you will need a good healer when hit with high damage attacks.

Shadowy Disguise/Cloak are better suited for PVP. Lose it. Deadly Cloak/Quick Cloak are better for mitigating damage and causing damage.

Some like running the banner. But if you are having sustain issues, avoid it. Someone else in group will likely run it anyway.

Ambush/Lotus Fan are nice damage and Minor Vulnerability sources.

Twisting Path was always a staple NB skill that aids the group.

I have been playing around with Reaper's Mark and found that I like it again. Its not what it used to be, and Major Breach should be redundant in group content, but Major Berserk for 10 seconds in PVE is nice if there is not another source for it. If there is another source for the group, its utility is zero.

You should put Incap on your front bar and Dawnbreaker on the back bar so you get the most out of the Pressure Points passive. You should also not cast Incap unless you have 120 or more Ultimate as the 12 second damage buff is a major source of damage, especially in execute phase.

NB has great sustain and survivability once you hone your rotation and figure out the playstyle. Its not an Arcanist or Templar style where you mash buttons. Managing the timers on the buffs and DOTs is much more difficult than the other classes and is necessary to achieve higher damage. But sadly, and predictably, what once was a very powerful DPS class has been surpassed by the Arcanist and today's subclass builds.

This is how I would set mine up:

Front bar: Swallow Soul (Spammable), Merciless Resolve, Killer's Blade, Barbed Trap, [FLEX] Deadly Cloak/Quick Cloak/Twisting Path/Ambush/Lotus Fan/Reaper's Mark/Banner, Incap

Back bar: Stampede, Power Extraction, Dark Shade, Leeching Strikes, Vigor/Healing Soul, Dawnbreaker