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Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my Nightblade guide designed for the dark brotherhood patch. In the past, nightblades has really never had what it takes to be able to properly compete with other classes, however this patch is very interesting for nightblades, easily one of the best classes to dps with. My build will be covering all the trials, and how to use it overall for dungeons etc. I might add in a vMoL section later, but for now im not good when it comes to it, sadly. A little background about me, I’ve been playing with Hodor for roughly a year now (?) I was in the core team that took all the trial leaderboards pre thieves guild, and I have two praetorians nightblade so I feel I have enough knowledge to define myself as an expert when it comes to Nightblades.

Changelog

[spoiler]

2.0 – Updated build for Orsinium/Wrothgar.

3.0 – Build updated for the Thieves Guild.

3.1 – Build updated with champion points from @Asayre

4.0 – Build updated for Darkbrotherhood patch!

4.1 – Removed rotations section as I felt it didn’t serve any purpose.

[/spoiler]

Core 

*PICTURES TO BE ADDED LATER*

Alright, so. Let’s start talking about the health, I find it a very interesting subject in a matter of fact. You can, by all means do completely fine with lets say 16k ~ from personal experience, but it requires good movement, and it requires you to be aware of your surroundings. If you want to stay abit more safe, you can change attributes and pump it up to roughly 18k and you should be fine. If you still die from there, then you’re not aware enough about your surroundings, or your tank or your healer is doing something very bad :P.

I use blue magicka and health food, and I usually spam spell power potions regardless of where I go, but you only really need it in single target fights, where you won’t be using sap essence that actively.

Gear

Decent setup

Alright, lets jump into what I consider to be the decent setup, I feel this is something every DPS player should have available to them, you could by all means switch to Nerien’eth but it will be a DPS loss, so for now im gonna roll with Molag Kena. If you don’t have any monster sets, you could always run 3x torug’s pact so torug’s pact head and shoulders that is including staves. Now, if you already have Julianos that works too, but twice born star is the slightly better than Julianos so we’ll be using this in this setup. Sharpened staves this patch as they changed it to a flat number instead of a percentage, if you have the money swap between a fire enchanted staff and a daedric enchanted staff for offbar if you don’t have a vMA staff.

Alright, lets talk about scathing mage. Got a change in the thieves guild patch, increasing the proc chance from 10% to 20% which makes it really interesting, and competitive to TBS and Julianos. There is a few factors that determines whetever this set is better or not than TBS and Julianos, and one of them being is obviously uptime on scathing mage. Twisting path DoT still procs scathing mage, making it have an insanely high uptime combined with for example Force Pulse.

Mundu Stones

1. The Thief

The thief got buffed in 1.7 to 12% critchance, so alongside with scathing mage and divines stacking, this will be insane. The way to go if you have the ideal gear.

2. The Shadow

The Shadow is an interesting choise. I need to test this further to say something about it though, but I can say for a fact it doesn’t beat the thief with the ideal gear setup.

Skills

Mainbar

- Crippling Grasp

A really good stick on DoT, grants us major expedition aswell which will come very handy in for the Maw of Lorkhaj trial. Keep this up 247.

- Funnel Health

The bread and butter for our DPS, this is our single target spammable. Doesn’t hit too hard, but it does the job. *Might be changed to force pulse

- Elemental Blockade

I honestly have no clue what went through Zenimax’s minds when they buffed this skill. A MUST for every magicka DD. Keep this up 247, also triggers the maelstrom destruction staff enchantment which helps us quite alot.

- Inner Light

Grants you max magicka and spell critical, overall solid DPS boost.

- Merciless Resolve

Grants us minor berserk, so we don’t rely on standing in the healers combat prayer, also the proc hits like a truck. Keep the proc up 247.

- Soul Harvest

Prioritizing soul harvest on mainbar for more crit instead of the increased max magicka. Tested abit and feels ever the slightly so better. Use this during execution phase.

Offbar

- Twisting Path

Overall solid AoE DoT, procs scathing mage on the ticks which helps us abit, otherwise than that nothing amazing with this skill to be honest. Could do with an ever so slight damage buff, but it is what it is.

- Sap Essence

Our main AoE spammable, hits decent, grants us major sorcery which is nice, and it heals! Helps out quite alot in SO trashpacks for instance. Swap out for trap beast for boss fights.

- Siphoning Attacks

As of late I’ve felt magicka as in the resource itself has been an absolute nightmare to sustain, and this goes for everything. So siphoning attacks will make your life alot easier! Just apply this whenever you see your magicka pool going below 30% to help you sustain.

- Inner Light

Grants you max magicka and spell critical, overall solid DPS boost.

- Impale

Our execute spammable, spam this on bosses from 25% and downwards whilst keeping TWISTING PATH up, and spamming soul harvest whenever you have it available.

Champion Points

*These champion points are subject to changes*

The Mage 

– 26 in Elfborn

– 100 in Elemental Expert

– 29 in Spell Erosion

– 12 in Thaumaturge

The Thief

– 100 in Magician

– 67 in Arcanist

The Warrior

– 100 in Elemental Expert

– 67 in Hardy

I change these around all the time, use whatever you want for the warrior.

Thanks to @Asayre for these CP’s, they are based on precise staves, scathing, and kena.

Races

1 – Dunmer

We have alot of fire damage, and with the champion point changes then this is even more appealing. Your meteor, wall of elements and light attacks will all be boosted by the increased fire damage passive. Also provides 9% max magicka which isn’t far off from the 10%.

2 – Highelves

They’re pretty good too, provides more regeneration than dunmers does, elemental damage and 10% max magicka. Overall solid choise.

Screenshots

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Last Words

Most of my parses that can be seen above is mostly outdated, I will update them on the fly every now and then.

If you like my work, and would like to contribute into me putting more time into testing, and more time in general into this guide, then please feel free to send me a donation on the EU mega server to @IWM, but please do not feel forced to.

I’d like to give credit to the entire Hodor core group, who has shaped me into who I am today and ofcourse, nobody else but the amazing @Hjelmi and @EgoRush for keeping me alive ;*

– @IWM.

• This topic was modified 7 hours, 35 minutes ago by  Mashinate.