CLASS: NIGHTBLADE
Every Class has a theme in ESO and Nightblade is the shifty, sneaky rogue like class in ESO. It specializes in executes, using sinister magical effects and attacks, and abilities that have you sacrifice a little of yourself to get the benefits. We are going to be focusing on those executes and magical attacks with this build because of the nature of our most common damage type, magic damage.

RACE: BRETON
Breton is a great race for this build due to their Magicka Mastery racial passive, that decreases the cost of Magicka skills by 7%. Other options for this build include Magicka based races like High Elf and Dark Elf, that will push the DPS a little, and also Khajiit for their Magicka regeneration and critical damage. If you want an in depth look at all the racial passives, you can check our race guide. Personally race is up to you, I just love using Bretons on beginner classes because it allows you to have less frequent sustain issues.

​BUFF FOOD: LONG FIN PASTY WITH MELON SAUCE
This food is easy to attain and will add to all three pools, giving you increased Magicka, health and stamina for battle. The ingredients are Fish, Melon, Greens and Frost Mirriam, but if you cannot make it yourself, it is fairly cheap on guild traders.

POTIONS:
I usually just use tri-stat potions because the gem crates you get from ZOS and the daily rewards give millions of them.

ATTRIBUTE POINTS:
We have 64 points into Magicka here giving us a whopping 41k Magicka. We have around 16k max stamina and 22k max health. Our Magicka Recovery is 1775, spell damage is 2.3k and spell critical is around 67 percent. These numbers are unbuffed out of combat for the most part. So some of these will go up. You should never run out of Magicka with this build.

MUNDUS STONE: The thief mundus stone for increased crit rating. This can be switched to shadow as well, it’s really your preference.

You want to aim for these skills, but the order you slot them is totally a personal preference. All the skills we are using are really easy to get to, and some of them we are slotting it just to make use of their passives.

Sap Essence: Drain Power morph: Class Section – Siphoning Skill Line. This is a massive aoe spammable. This does a ton of magic damage and heals you and your allies. The heal is stronger per enemy hit. This also gives major brutality and sorcery which increasing your weapon and spell damage by 20 percent. Spam this in AOE mob Fights.

Swallow Soul: Strife Morph: Class Section – Siphoning Skill Line. This is a great single target spammable and your main one against bosses. This does magic damage and heals you as well.

Inner Light: Mage light morph; Guild Section – Mages Guild. This is a skill you never activate you only have it on the bar to give you a 5 percent increase in max Magicka and major prophecy increasing your spell critical rating by 2629.

Impale: Assassin’s blade morph: Class Section – Assassination Skill Line. This is your single target execute spammable. When the target is below 25 percent health you use this. This does insane damage and is ranged as well.

Twisting Path: Path of Darkness Morph: Class Section – Shadow Skill Line. This is an aoe damage effect that does loads of damage. You lay this down in every fight. It also gives major expedition to you and your teammates making you fast. It is a little hard to see the effect so it takes practice using this.

Soul Harvest (Ultimate) – Death Stroke morph: Class Section – Assassination Skill Line. This is your main ultimate that has super low cost. I use this morph because I like the slotted effect of any time you kill an enemy you gain ultimate. This is fantastic. But essentially you want to use this whenever it is up and before you do your main damaging and spammable attacks because it increases the damage against the enemies by 20 percent for 6 seconds.

Unstable Wall of Elements: Wall of Elements morph. Weapon section, Destruction Staff tree. This will give more overall damage output, cast it whenever it is off cooldown.

Siphoning Attacks: Siphoning Strikes Morph. Class Section – Siphoning. This skill is going to give you Magicka a health back when you light and heavy attack. This is a crucial part of your sustain as a Nightblade. As long as you are light attacking you will keep getting resources back.

Merciless Resolve: Grim Focus Morph. Class Section – Assassination. This skill is going to again be a buff that you pop and leave up for 40 seconds. This will increase your critical damage and healing by up to 10 percent after 5 light attacks or a combination of light and heavy attacks. This is a mvp skills you should always have up. We are running thief mundus because we have this skill on our bar. You can fire the bow if you would like to but it isn’t necessary.

Dark Shade: Summon Shade Morph. Class Section – Shadow. This is another pop the skill and let it do it’s thing. This will make a clone of you that will do magic damage, and occasionally do aoe magic damage. This will also inflict minor maim, reducing the enemy’s damage done by 5 percent for 4 seconds.

Destructive Reach: Destructive Touch Morph. Weapon Section – Destruction staff line. This will do some massive flame damage and inflict the enemy with a burning status effect. This can be switched out for other skills but I like using it.

Soul Tether (Ultimate): Soul Shred Morph: Class Section, Siphoning Tree. This does a ton of damage, and heals you as well. Allies can activate the synergy and get some damage and healing as well. I love this for when you are in a big mob of enemies and you pop this and get all your health back and do solid damage as well.

Alternative Skills:  

This build again is a template and you can use what you like from it. But some alternate skills that you can use is you can switch out swallow soul with force pulse from the destruction staff line. This will be good in aoe fights, and it has way more range that sap essence does. You can switch out the soul harvest ultimate for the mages guild ultimate shooting star or the destruction staff ultimate elemental rage, but that is your preference.

Weapon: All Destruction Staff Passives

Armor: All Light Armor Passives

Guild: Magicka Controller Passives, Both Undaunted Passives.

Class: All Class Passives

Craft: Medicinal Use from the Alchemy Tree

Racial: All Racial Passives

Racial: All Racial Passives

You all know I love my proc sets but with this one we are only using Illambris. This monster set hits nicely and has a really cool effect but the catalyst of this build is war maiden. War maiden is going to give us an insane boost to our magic damage. Almost all of our damaging skills as a Nightblade are magic damage. This synergizes well with the Nightblade. These item sets can be switched out for things of your choosing so that is up to you. The sets are extremely easy to get and are all in the base game.

Illambris – Vet Crypt of hearts 1
Mother’s Sorrow – Overland in Deshaan
War Maiden – Overland in Vvardenfell
Master Inferno staff – Dragonstar Arena

• Precision
• Eldritch Insight
• Tireless Discipline
• Piercing
• Flawless Ritual
• War Mage
• Fighting Finesse (slot)
• Deadly Aim (slot)
• Biting Aura (slot)
• Thaumaturge (slot)
  (you can put other points into other non-slottable cp stars)

• Sustained By Suffering (Slot)
• Rejuvenation (Slot)
• Survival Instinct (Slot)
• Siphoning Spells (Slot)

The rest of the points put into what you want in the red tree and the ones you need to get the slottables.

This tree is kind of open to anything, just pick what you like, it doesn’t matter for combat. If you want suggestions, I would say Liquid Efficiency, Rationer and Treasure Hunter are always a good choice.

The rotation is really easy and simple with this build using a lot of pre attack buffs that last forever and then a few skills to spam

Merciless resolve > Siphoning Attacks > Shade > Wall of elements > Touch > Switch Bar

IN AN AOE SETTING

Path of Darkness > Spam Sap ESSENCE OR FORCE PULSE > Switch Bar when wall of elements is done > Switch bar repeat

Repeat this rotation and reapply wall of elements and touch every rotation, reapply siphoning attacks and shade every 2 rotations, reapply Merciless Resolve every 3 rotations

IN A BOSS SETTING

Path of Darkness > Sap Essence > Spam Swallow Soul until wall of elements is done > Switch Bar repeat

IN a Boss Setting in EXECUTE (under 25 percent health)

Path of Darkness > Sap Essence > Spam Impale

Make sure to light attack or try to light attack between every skill. Practice this to get better at it. (it will increase overall dps)