Madae wrote: »

Well, for one, focus on one particular set of skills. Either dual wield or bow. Since I don't do bow that often, I will throw in my 2 cents for dual wield;

Go medium armor for PvE and pick up Haste. Drop Ambush/Shadowy Disguise - great for burst and killing players, but a waste for sustained DPS cause they just don't do enough damage (Ambush) or they require two abilities in succession (Shadowy Disguise + Surprise Attack) to get anything out of it. That's basically one mana ability wasted since you can probably do two Surprise Attacks by themselves and do slightly more damage than a stealth + crit.

Since you'll be using medium armor, grab Haste. I don't care how awesome you think you are; you can't do crap when you're out of magicka and stamina, and sometimes you need stamina for getaways (like dodging insta-kill attacks). Using Haste and auto-attacking while you wait for stamina/magicka refill is your sustain.

If you put most of your stat points into magicka, you might be hurting in the long run, since stamina increases your weapon damage and magicka damage abilities for NB are rather lackluster in PvE (though Surprise Attack is great for the damage and debuff).

Anyway, that's my suggestion.

since the best abilities scale with magicka and not with stamina and most of the dual wield skills aren't that good except for the passives, i tought i go with these attributes since mainly i use magicka for my attacks. On bosses you mostly dont hit with normal attacks anyway. You either go skill, skill, skill OR skill, hit, skill, hit skill. Ill loose a lot of crit coming from the light armor and also a lot of magicka buffs too. My first build was 90% stamina on Mid armor and the dmg output was even less.

Also haste seems better for a stamina skill line instead of magicka cause on magicka you don't really hit much with light and heavy attacks.

will throw off the disguise and and charge. sounds reasonable.

dabossarwb17_ESO wrote: »

Will be watching this thread as im building a duel weld/bow PvE. (Solo)

My thinking (at level 17) is..
hit at range with the bow (heavy shot+long shot bonus) then poison arrow as the target closes,
Knock down (using Stone fist) when target is close.
This gives me time to change to my blades, and finish off with twin slashes (to bleed) then flurry.

But im unsure whats a good crowd control skill when swarmed. I started with whirlwind but it didnt seem to do much damage, so went back to spiked armor.

Im using Heavy armor and adding Stamina/Health enchantments (50/50) while raising Stamina and Health attributes at 2 to1. (Stamina for attack, Health to survive)

Unsure if i should invest in extra magic, stone fist is my favorite (would like a knock down Stamina) and Spiked needs Magic too.

Have made the armor set with force back at 35% health (2x Blades + 1 item) might get me time for a potion? And the one witch gains 40% health when hidden (bow + 2 items).

I also have Magma armor as my Ultimate.

Tips/ideas?

This is ment for Pve in Veteran Dungeons, crowd control as far as i played was totally useless.

trash will be done entirely by nuking from all players except the healer and then bosses will be made.

Im unsure if this thread will be helpful at your level, just a tip, for leveling use Shadowy Disguise to sneak through groups you cannot match alone.

at veteran level i mostly level by going into a dungeon walk past everything, get the skyshard, hit the endboss and get tons of exp. fast, exp, win.


also we are talking about NIGHTBLADE, sure you aren't a Dragonknight? ^^"

dabossarwb17_ESO wrote: »

ouch sorry i spoke... following to see how players build a Bow/Duel weld, sorry if that upsets you..

No one was upset, but you're also a Dragon Knight, and this thread was about Nightblade builds.

I am also trying to figure out a DPS NB dungeon group build. Yours looks pretty solid except the light armor which I am very unsure of. There are some very contradictory stories about what actual type of crit we need for our class melee skills.

For my solo build I am using Shadowy disguise/surprise attack/Impale/Elude/Leaching Strikes. with 7 pieces of medium armor with mainly mana enchants . I have 3% spell crit and 24% weapon crit. I open from SD with Surprise attack I do around 1600 damage if I get it right .(note this is with leaching active and the crit damage mundus ) . For any trash that survived a strong attack knocks them down and Impale finishes them. The rest of the fight consist of going in and out of shadows and using Surprise attacks and just simple hits for the leach.

I have used this build it in groups in the harder public dungeons and ts pretty affective since I can take out healers or mages pretty much as the fight begins and I am still not very squishy. One thing I noticed is that even when I am not using Surprise Attack from Shadow it crits and it crits often so I tend to think that it is governed by my physical crit, impale on the other hand never seems to crit. (but who needs that?). I haven't tested with killer's blade though. I think impale gives a lot more flexibility when fighting bosses since I can retreat and take the last 25% of a boss really fast from far away.

I have used ambush for a long time but I am beginning to find it kind of useless and I would suggest trying to get something that either gives you more survivability or acts as a OH CRAP button.

Anyway if you can test that light armor build please tell us how it works.

Eam wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

I am also trying to figure out a DPS NB dungeon group build. Yours looks pretty solid except the light armor which I am very unsure of. There are some very contradictory stories about what actual type of crit we need for our class melee skills.

For my solo build I am using Shadowy disguise/surprise attack/Impale/Elude/Leaching Strikes. with 7 pieces of medium armor with mainly mana enchants . I have 3% spell crit and 24% weapon crit. I open from SD with Surprise attack I do around 1600 damage if I get it right .(note this is with leaching active and the crit damage mundus ) . For any trash that survived a strong attack knocks them down and Impale finishes them. The rest of the fight consist of going in and out of shadows and using Surprise attacks and just simple hits for the leach.

I have used this build it in groups in the harder public dungeons and ts pretty affective since I can take out healers or mages pretty much as the fight begins and I am still not very squishy. One thing I noticed is that even when I am not using Surprise Attack from Shadow it crits and it crits often so I tend to think that it is governed by my physical crit, impale on the other hand never seems to crit. (but who needs that?). I haven't tested with killer's blade though. I think impale gives a lot more flexibility when fighting bosses since I can retreat and take the last 25% of a boss really fast from far away.

I have used ambush for a long time but I am beginning to find it kind of useless and I would suggest trying to get something that either gives you more survivability or acts as a OH CRAP button.

Anyway if you can test that light armor build please tell us how it works.

Thing is that your class skills get to be stronger with mana while your weapon skills scale with stamina, also light armor gives you not only better regeneration per piece wich comes in handy when you run out of mana and continue on a bit with stamina based attacks but also a boost for magic attack crit is granted by a set of 5. Since you mainly use class abilities wich are magic attacks light armor in a set of 5 seemed to be best.

I just enchanted Armor, Legs and Helmet with Health and you eat Food for health and your not dying in veteran dungeons.

Groups can be difficult though, but thats not a problem most of the time.

Just make your Armor and Leg gear Leather and you look like a fine Assassin, love the cowl

That's the thing It is not sure. If you search on this and other ESO forums some people think that for the melee NB attack skills (veild strike/assassin's blade/teleport strike ) the crit is given by the physical crit not the spell crit while the ranged and aoe NB attacks have spell crit. I tend to believe that this is the case considering how often my Veild Strike/Surprise attack crit with only 3% spell crit chance. In this case going medium armor is the clear route for an Assassination NB. I must do some more testing though. There are more then a few wrong skill descriptions in this game so I would not be surprised if they messed this up to.

Eam wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

That's the thing It is not sure. If you search on this and other ESO forums some people think that for the melee NB attack skills (veild strike/assassin's blade/teleport strike ) the crit is given by the physical crit not the spell crit while the ranged and aoe NB attacks have spell crit. I tend to believe that this is the case considering how often my Veild Strike/Surprise attack crit with only 3% spell crit chance. In this case going medium armor is the clear route for an Assassination NB. I must do some more testing though. There are more then a few wrong skill descriptions in this game so I would not be surprised if they messed this up to.

As long as this is not confirmed and class skill use magicka instead of stamina im pretty sure im right and even if this is like you stated and they fix it sooner or later it still be magicka based otherwise class and weapon based skills loose their meaning entirely.

I have made some tests and I am now pretty much sure that is the case.

For my test I used T's Combat Stats. This records your hits and does the statistics. Since the crit depends if you are in stealth I went and just spammed Surprise attack and Ambush directly in the face of a couple of dozen monsters.I was using two axes with no crit on them and had 24% Physical crit an d 3% spell crit using full medium with mana enchants.

Character Sheet first test.

Surprise Attack Stats


~23%crit which is in accordance with my physical crit.
Ambush Stats

~26%Crit . The slightly higher number may be due to me opening directly with ambush,

After this I went and took two daggers each with 3 crit repeated the test. I made the mistake of crafting some new armor pieces and destroying what I had on before so I had to do the test with out a big chunk of mana from enchants. This however doesn't influence crit chance just damage.

Character Sheet Second test.


There seems to be a problem with the crit on the sheet since I should have had 24+6+1.5(DWpassive) .

Surprise Attack Stats Second.

~31% crit (Seems to be what my actual crit should be on the sheet.)

Ambush Stats Second .

~Well I don't know how that happened but it's certainly not because of the 8% spell crit chance.

I would try with all light armor to see what happens but at the moment I don't have any points nor enough money to respec.

From what I see it is pretty clear to me that melee NB skills critchance =physical critchance for ranged NB skills is spell crit . The damage is determined purely by the mana. Light armor doesn't give you more mana just regen while medium armor gives you 21% physical crit with 7 pieces.

Also this test were done by just frontal attack with no shadow . The number of crits would be higher If I would go in and out of the shadows during the battle. Plus it is pretty great to have one in three of your strong and simple attacks to crit and also have decent bow crit chance.

Eam wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Eam wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

That's the thing It is not sure. If you search on this and other ESO forums some people think that for the melee NB attack skills (veild strike/assassin's blade/teleport strike ) the crit is given by the physical crit not the spell crit while the ranged and aoe NB attacks have spell crit. I tend to believe that this is the case considering how often my Veild Strike/Surprise attack crit with only 3% spell crit chance. In this case going medium armor is the clear route for an Assassination NB. I must do some more testing though. There are more then a few wrong skill descriptions in this game so I would not be surprised if they messed this up to.

As long as this is not confirmed and class skill use magicka instead of stamina im pretty sure im right and even if this is like you stated and they fix it sooner or later it still be magicka based otherwise class and weapon based skills loose their meaning entirely.

I have made some tests and I am now pretty much sure that is the case.

For my test I used T's Combat Stats. This records your hits and does the statistics. Since the crit depends if you are in stealth I went and just spammed Surprise attack and Ambush directly in the face of a couple of dozen monsters.I was using two axes with no crit on them and had 24% Physical crit an d 3% spell crit using full medium with mana enchants.

Character Sheet first test.

Surprise Attack Stats


~23%crit which is in accordance with my physical crit.
Ambush Stats

~26%Crit . The slightly higher number may be due to me opening directly with ambush,

After this I went and took two daggers each with 3 crit repeated the test. I made the mistake of crafting some new armor pieces and destroying what I had on before so I had to do the test with out a big chunk of mana from enchants. This however doesn't influence crit chance just damage.

Character Sheet Second test.


There seems to be a problem with the crit on the sheet since I should have had 24+6+1.5(DWpassive) .

Surprise Attack Stats Second.

~31% crit (Seems to be what my actual crit should be on the sheet.)

Ambush Stats Second .

~Well I don't know how that happened but it's certainly not because of the 8% spell crit chance.

I would try with all light armor to see what happens but at the moment I don't have any points nor enough money to respec.

From what I see it is pretty clear to me that melee NB skills critchance =physical critchance for ranged NB skills is spell crit . The damage is determined purely by the mana. Light armor doesn't give you more mana just regen while medium armor gives you 21% physical crit with 7 pieces.

Also this test were done by just frontal attack with no shadow . The number of crits would be higher If I would go in and out of the shadows during the battle. Plus it is pretty great to have one in three of your strong and simple attacks to crit and also have decent bow crit chance.

This is very helpful but entirely confuses me about how and what i should skill and what is good for bosses and what not.

Would you mind suggesting?

all i understand now is that i basicly need to wear full Leather and only use class skills that arent ranged attacks and for bow i just keep the siphoning one to compare the other fails in the bow tree, also what should my main focus now be? magicka? stamina?

No. I am not trying to say that. What I am saying that if you build around NB melee attacks it appears that phys crit chance + magicka maximizes our DPS. I think it is possible to soft cap the magicka with enchants on medium armor and add quite a bit of Health and dex also. This allows us not to be squishy and and mix melee class and weapon skills. I think it makes sense since assassination/shadow NB should be somewhat of a traditional rogue type character in medium armor. Also most of our other class skills do not benefit too much from crit since they are mostly, DOTs,snares,stuns,heals and other nifty tricks. All of them remain useful in many situations even if they don't crit often and should do reasonable good damage due to magicka stacking.

This is not to say the only viable build . I have seen a lot of people saying that heavy armor NB tanks are great. I have also used a destro staff light/heavy armor NB mix for a long time and could probably work quite well in a dungeon.

Just to throw in my two cents, I'm not expert but here's what I run at 42. I dual wield daggers, not using alt weapon or alt slots at the moment. I don't run in structured groups so I need to be able to save my own skin at a moments notice while still being DPS useful.

My Gear - I have the three piece nightblade set that gives 40% extra life regen when in stealth (two daggers and legs) and five piece vampire kiss set that gives 50% extra HP regen for eight seconds when you kill an enemy. This is medium armor gear.

Killber's Blade - I have all of these Assassination passives maxed out, so I always ensure I kill targets with this ability. I get the magika recovery and healing, and extra extra healing from set bonus'

Shadowy Disguise - Currently enemy AI is bad - if you have huge group of mob's targeting you go invis and they stay focused on you and do nothing for 2.5 seconds (or more if you have shadow passive). This is great to give your team some time to regroup if they need to res or get heals up. It's like a pseudo-tank. You can also use this ability to cause bosses and enemy AI to disengage targeted AoE abilities. When they loss focus of their single target they stop the ability, which is good if you want to prevent someone from taking an AoE hit if they're close to death. And with my 40% extra hp regen I get some decent healing on my own. I also have the shadow barrier passive maxed out so I get roughly 2k magic / physical armor bonus for 4 seconds after coming out of invis. I can handle large mobs after coming out of invis, then I go back invis to continue healing and let my team continue to regroup if necessary.

Rapid Strikes - Purely for the dmg

Blood Craze - Bleed target and get more healing.

Focused Attacks for boss / Steel Tornado for mob packs - I like the stamina sustain against a time-consuming boss so I can spam rapid strikes and blood craze on minion summons. Steel Tornado for helping casters deal AoE dmg to everything in the area.

Soul Harvest - Reduce healing received on target, deal large damage (and accumulate ultimate points very fast). I can spam this quite often and it does a nice chunk of damage.

Anyways, that's just how I play - I don't think it's a superior DPS build but if you are finding yourself in random groups often and you die quick maybe consider investing in stronger armor (med / heavy) or getting more abilities that self-sustain you. I never find myself running out of both stamina AND magika at the same time, I can regen one bar max while I use the other, then switch over and regen the other. Good luck!

PBpsy wrote: »

Eam wrote: »

well thanks for the help, but i kinda choose to go on crit since every snare, blood effect or dot in general doesnt work on bosses wich makes them totally useless. First skill of dual wield would be so hardcore for overall dmg but 74 and the rest of it poofs on bosses makes it miserable.

Yes I agree the DW skill line does seem to be a somewhat lacking in active skills when reaching VR. I would have loved Flurry/Rapid strikes but the animation is so damn long and stupid looking that I find using it unbearable.It also seems to fail if the target moves away from you.. The wirldwind doesn't do enough dps to be very effective against group compared with skills that takes targets one by one fast, The other two skills appear to be more about PVP. Finally the main perk of the line which is increased damage on low target health can be taken care by our assassins blade morphs which are way more effective.

I still use flurry morphed as the only stamina move for dual wield so i have atleast one skill i can use to grind down some stamina otherwise when i ran out of mana i have nothing to use.

Eam wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Eam wrote: »

well thanks for the help, but i kinda choose to go on crit since every snare, blood effect or dot in general doesnt work on bosses wich makes them totally useless. First skill of dual wield would be so hardcore for overall dmg but 74 and the rest of it poofs on bosses makes it miserable.

Yes I agree the DW skill line does seem to be a somewhat lacking in active skills when reaching VR. I would have loved Flurry/Rapid strikes but the animation is so damn long and stupid looking that I find using it unbearable.It also seems to fail if the target moves away from you.. The wirldwind doesn't do enough dps to be very effective against group compared with skills that takes targets one by one fast, The other two skills appear to be more about PVP. Finally the main perk of the line which is increased damage on low target health can be taken care by our assassins blade morphs which are way more effective.

I still use flurry morphed as the only stamina move for dual wield so i have atleast one skill i can use to grind down some stamina otherwise when i ran out of mana i have nothing to use.

Yes. I do that sometimes but recently I prefer going with an armor active skill or something from fighters guild. They have some pretty cool utility stamina skills.

WilliamTee wrote: »

killers blade, steel tornado, surprise attack, shadowy disguise, leaching strikes.

I, as others have also mentioned, tend to stick to a 'shadow dance' build of hopping in and out shadowy disguise to make use of the big crit boosts. I think it works well, but without better addons I don't know for sure i guess...

The difficulty is the reduction caused by leeching strikes. Certainly I would recommend 'opening' without it turned on, and then switching it on. I think 'next level' play would involve switching it smoothly off and on through a fight... however with all the bugs in NB at the minute, little goes very smoothly at times.

Killers blade gives spammable 'low health' high dps, and against mobs some nice self heals.

Alternate is a bow build, but i see it very much as a secondary set. HoTs and DoTs, more stamina based abilities than magicka so can allow for recharge ahead of diving in again with some shadow 'dancing'...

I tried going with with a switch on switch off approach on LS didn't see much difference though. Probably someone with better skill could pull it off but I doubt the increase in dps would be huge.

Just gonna drop this ruleset here since it seems relevant.

-Damage and Healing scale with the stat used to cast them (Magicka orStamina).

-All skills that scale with Stamina use Physical Crit.

-Melee Range (8m or less) Magicka based skills use Physical Crit. Magicka based AoE and DoTs do not count as melee.

-All other Magicka based skills scale with Spell Crit.


This has gone through extensive testing and should prove correct for anyone that care to try it out. Would explain why impale don't crit with weapon crit and killer's blade does.

Additionally it should be mentioned that spelldamage boosts magicka abilities and weapon damage boosts weapon abilities with no exception even for NB's, and the level of the spell used affects it as well. Obvious I know, but seems that a lot that should be obvious is quite the oposite in ESO.