Feeling a bit 7th rate (that's worse than 2nd rate) as a NB doing DPS

Hi all!

I tend to like to play support and when I'm in groups I feel like I do pretty well  as a NB healer. I've also played around a bit with tanking and I feel not completely horrible with my current set-up.

DPS is another matter though. As I'm going through quests mostly solo (odd playing times and instancing makes grouping less appealing sometimes) I'm having these epic battles against V1 or V2 NPCs thinking I'm studly when a DK, Sorc, or Temp hops in and just annihilates stuff I've been heroically whacking on for the past minute or two. Telling myself "well I softened them up first" only works so often when that same DK/Sorc/Temp proceeds to the next group and takes them all out just as fast. *sigh*

Ok, so obviously my ability bars that are set up for healing and a bit of tanking aren't ideal for DPS. I tried messing around a little to leave a bar for healing and the second for doing DPS and although I was doing some more DPS I was also dying more than killing. And the DPS I was doing still paled in comparison to what I'm seeing other people do.

Is there a NB DPS build that can come even close to the people that mock me with their godly might and that won't die instantly if sneezed on?

Here's my current build at V2. Decent healing and tanking but sucky DPS build of DOOOOOM

I have points scattered around in other areas as well as I've played around with other ideas. I figure if there's a nice DPS build I can use Wykkyd's outfitter to switch between that DPS build and my current build which works fairly well in groups.

edit: I should state that I'm fine with any DPS method although given the choice between sneaky and non-sneaky I prefer non-sneaky. Cool-down invis and sneaking around just annoys me sometimes.

I'm certainly no expert, but I've got a question for you: if you've got your bar set up for healing and tanking, *should* you expect to kill stuff as easily as a pure DPS character? I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation. In theory your healing/tanking load should make you more difficult to kill, so that's the tradeoff for slower DPS.

However, you've said you want to be able to kill stuff faster, so that's the goal here. I spend a little time over at Tamriel Foundry, and in the Nightblade forum is a very thorough build found at this url: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/kutsuus-vampire-juggernaut/

It uses 1H+Shield/Resto staff already, so it seems at first glance all you'd have to do is shuffle some skills around. Granted, it is a vampire build and (I think) uses bash, both of which were changed recently, but I think it'd certainly be a good starting point for upping your DPS.

Yeah I should have made it more clear that this would be a new build focused on DPS so that I can stop feeling so jealous of everyone around me. Not trying to make my heal/tank-ish build do more DPS. :)

I've been perusing the tamrielfoundry boards for ideas as well. The one thing I've noticed is that many of the builds you find are based on beta players and haven't been updated since, or based on broken mechanics like you said. 

Was just curious if we had any NB in this community that had a DPS focused build they're enjoying. :)

I've heard rumor that NBs do have low DPS issues that are known and being addressed in upcoming patches.  Something about their DPS skills not scaling as well, with increasing levels, as the other classes.

Well, I can't see you build when I click the link, but NBs seem to lack a major damage skill in the class trees.  They just don't have as many 'this is how I beat you up because I am a NB' skills as other classes.  This means you will likely need to look at weapon skills or guild skills for your damage (something many people do anyway.)
What is likely your best bet is to get your focused strikes buff out of assassin, and run with weapon attacks.
Depending on the weapon(s) you use, of course, you will have different results.  One thing I have noticed is you mentioned tanking and healing.  If you split your stat points between all three stats your damage is simply going to be low.  Most of the really high damage people focus on either stamina or magicka, with some health as they feel the need.  Simply put you get more damage out of anything you do the higher your stamina or magicka is (whichever resource is used, or stamina for light/heavy click attacks.)  Even when over the soft caps, building more of the appropriate stat is vital to output, as you still get 40% of the value.  A little extra health to survive doesn't hurt dps much, but points split between magicka and stamina means none of the abilities will hit as hard.
This is applicable to stats on gear as much as the points for 1-50.  If you are looking to run a dps build, make sure your gear is focused on your dps stats.  Running a tank with all stamina gear won't work well in 4 mans... but soloing it should do decent dps.

My experience with early DPS problems on the nightblade/Templar is that one does not take sufficiently into account the influence of the stats on the respective skill/weapon damages. I know that during beta people were promoting the "put everything into health" advice, but it was because they were essentially deriving their experience from being boosted to 50 in Cyrodiil, where allocating stat points was irrelevant due to the boosting.

My personal experience is that my 2-H damage skills basically double between no Stamina and Stamina in the orange zone. I now allocate all possible Stat points into the relevant stat for my skills (2-H and S&B, so Stamina for me) to bring it into the orange zone, sprinkle the remaining into health, load my armor with health-boosting glyphs and eat food to push my Stamina way pass the diminishing return range... and live with whatever Magika the levels give me: On my templar the DPS bar is Critical Charge, Brawler, Executioner with all the 2-H and Heavy armor passives, and then I add 2 healing skills from the templar: Honor the deads and Radiant aura (I tried repentance and while it looks good without magika, it just does not supply the benefit of an aura because of no synergy with the restoring light passives). With that setting in the Lion Den I was taking on 7-8 opponents of the same level solo and the fight last about 5-6 sec. I put Torug Pact on my armor so that I am at 5 pieces, the "increase chance of proc" on the weapon and a fire glyph, and my opponents are constantly on fire. Right now Torug Pact is bugged so that it decreases the internal cooldown on the weapon speed, making the 2-H swing like a dagger :-) but this will be fixed in the next patch.

If you like healing, why not go for full Magika, grab a healing staff for heal and a destruction staff for DPS and go to town? I have played with sorcerers that do scary damage with their destro staff, and this is without any "sorcerer" skills per se, just good passives and lots of Magika - You might not get the top damage as a NB but with racial and staff passives your DPS should be very reasonable, specially after getting that amazing AOE staff skill.

My personal experience has been that the mix/match of Magika and Stamina just does not work well for me. I go either full Stamina with weapons or full Magika with staffs. Good luck,

Skut

Yeah I'm 24 Magicka, 25 health. I might just have to fool around with a destruction staff which I really haven't played with much at all, even in Beta. There's obviously synergy there between healing and destro with a raised Magicka and I outfit myself with cloth.

Assassination is your damage skill tree

Shadow is your survival tree

Siphoning is your control tree

The problem with Nightblade at the moment is the multitude of broken passives that boost Critical hit chance.  Pressure Points (Assassination tree) when maxed out is supposed to give you 3% crit per slotted Assassination skill.  If you are running a build with Haste (Focused Attacks), Mark Target (Reaper's Mark), Assassin's Blade (Killer's Blade) that is 9% critical hit chance you are losing.  Then there is the broken mundus stone of the Thief, the broken dual wielding skill "Twin Blade and Blunt" which doesn't give the critical hit chance for daggers.  THese are just the skills I can recall, there are probably more.

Supposedly ZoS is fixing this in the 1.1 patch, but I can't confirm because I didn't renew my subscription.

Elth posted what I was talking about earlier.

If you're doing OK and like your build in general, just not happy because its not doing as much damage as you'd like, then I'd suggest hanging in there until they announce any of those NB fixes, then see what's what and consider if you want to change your build, then.

  it all depends what you are trying to do as far as dps and what ablities ,  if you are using mostly night blade ablities  for damage , you ned to stack + magik glyphs on your armor , because all night blade ablities are magic based as far as damage goes and scale with magik .

  you might even want to look into magik recovery   items  like  cowl , neck and ring of warlock . 

  then maybe seducer and tempest  set to go along with that .   eat stam food   however it all depends what ablities you are trying to use as night blade .