Stamina Nightblade Build PvE DPS for Elder Scrolls Online

“Rampage”

Elsweyr Chapter

• Introduction
• Changes from the previous version
• Resource Management
• Trials & Dungeons Setup
  • Gear
  • Skills
  • Champion Points (810, 600, 300)
  • Important Info (Food, Mundus, Race, Potions, Passives, Attributes)
• Rotation & Target Dummy
• Blackrose Prison Arena
• Maelstrom Arena
• Update Log

Introduction

Welcome to the Stamina Nightblade Build PvE “Rampage” for Elder Scrolls Online. Make sure to bookmark the link as I will keep updating the build for each new Update of ESO. The Rampage build is a stamina focused damage dealer build. It is made for endgame content like Trials, Dungeons, Blackrose Prison Arena and Maelstrom Arena.

If you are new to the game I can also highly recommend checking out the Stamina Nightblade Beginner Guide.

Stamina Nightblades have insane burst and overall really good Single Target Damage. With our combination of Perfect Arms of Relequen and Perfected Tooth of Lokkestiiz we can reach a very high Major Slayer uptime. Those two sets make Nightblades very strong. We are using a full light attack build in combination with Leeching Strikes. Keep in mind, I list up various gear options, as there is always situtations where you want to swap out some sets.

• Insane Burst Damage
• Insane high Single Target damage
• Group Support
• Good AoE Damage
• Good Sustain
• Dualwield & Bow Setup
• Trials & Dungeon
• Blackrose & Maelstrom Arena

Changes from the previous version

There were a lot of changes to the Nightblade with the Elsweyr Chapter. I will first give some comments to the changes and below you can see the patchnotes text.

Death Stroke:

• This ability and the Incapacitating Strike morph will no longer apply Major Defile to the target.
• Incapacitating Strike (morph): This morph now Silences the target for 3 seconds when cast with 120 or more Ultimate. Additionally, while slotted, it now grants Reave, which restores up to 100 Magicka and Stamina when dealing damage with a Light or Heavy Attack on a target with a negative effect active on them.

Grim Focus:

• Removed the Minor Berserk buff from this ability and its morphs.
• This ability and its morphs will now reduce your damage taken by 3% for each Light or Heavy Attack you use, up to 5 times. Note that this bonus will persist even if the Grim Focus buff fades from you, as it is tethered to the amount of stacks you had while the buff was active. This effect will be consumed when you use your stacks by firing the spectral bow or when you leave combat.
• The spectral bow now heals for 33% of the damage dealt if you are within 7 meters of the target when firing it.
• Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs would continue to persist after logging off.
  • Merciless Resolve (morph): Now increases healing done to 50%.
  • Relentless Focus: Increased the duration to 30 seconds from 20 seconds. Additionally, this morph no longer grants Minor Endurance.

Summon Shade:

• This ability now scales with the caster’s Max Magicka and Spell Damage, or Stamina and Weapon Damage.
• The shades will now attack every 2 seconds, rather than every 1.5 seconds.
• Renamed the attacks the shades deal with each morph to help improve clarity.
• Fixed an issue where these abilities did not increase in damage as they ranked up.
  • Dark Shade (morph): This ability now deals 50% more damage as a part of its morph functionality. The AoE attack it casts can happen 5% more frequently than before, and deals 20% more damage than the default attack.

Surprise Attack:

• This ability no longer applies Major Fracture. Instead, if you use the ability on the flank of an enemy (behind or at their sides), you reduce their Physical Resistance by 5%. This effect cannot stack, but will always prioritize the highest value.

Resource Management

Nightblades can sustain their rotation easier then other classes, just make sure to keep up Leeching Strikes in your rotation. You also want to make sure that Spears or Orbs are used by your healers to activate the synergy for resources. You can also use Stormfist as a main Monster Set to gain another Stamina Recovery bonus or Vicious Serpent set that gives cost reduction and extra stamina on trash fights.

If you manage to keep up Leeching Strikes in your rotation you will have good sustain. However, most of the times players forget to re-activate Leeching Strikes for a while which means you will loose a lot of sustain over time, so make sure to notice when it finished so you can immediately reapply it. Technically, you could also reapply it before it runs out and you will still get a part of the resources back.

Incapacitating Strike now also gives you resources for just slotting it. That is why we always want to either run it on the backbar or the frontbar. That way we benefit from the extra sustain.

• Leeching Strikes
• Orbs or Spears from Healers
• Heavy Attacks resource return (optional)
• Incapacitating Strike
• Potions
• Vicious Serpent Set (optional)
• Redguard (if available)

Trials & Dungeons Setup

5x Lokkestiiz, 5x Relequen, 2x Velidreth, Orc with Artaeum Food

• Unbuffed: Out of Combat
• Buffed: Raid Dummy buffs, Potion and Weapon Damage Enchantment were active

Gear

You will find 3 different setups here. Setup 1 is the preferred setup. For people that do not have all the gear yet can use the Setup 2 which is easier to obtain and beginners can use Setup 3.

• Setup 1 is with Trial Gear
• Setup 2 is without Trial Gear
• Setup 3 is for Beginners

There are a lot of good Stamina Sets available, you can find more viable stamina dps sets in this Stamina DPS Sets Article. I also elaborate on specific sets that are often used in this article to give you a bit more insight as to why they are used.

Gear Setup 1

• War Machine: War Machine is also always a good option for a Stamina Nightblade.
• Lokkestiiz vs AY: Perfected Tooth of Lokkestiiz is better if you have a lot of Synergies when you compare it to Berserking Warrior. However, if you lack Synergies you are better off with Berserking Warrior.

Gear Setup 2

This setup is for those that did not have the chances yet to step into a trial.

• Briarheart Dagger: There is an unique Dagger “Materre’s Bodkin” that you can get fairly easy, instead of buying it expensive in the store.

Gear Setup 3 Beginner

This setup is dedicated to people that have not had the chance to farm the necessary gear for the maximum damage potential. All the gear here is either craftable or cheap to get in a guildstore. Make sure to ask a friend to craft Hunding’s Rage and Night Mother’s Gaze. Agility jewelry can be obtained in the Guildstores. I do recommend having around 18k health (with buff-food). You can buy cheap Agility jewelry with healthy trait to reach this value if you want.

Where can I get the gear?

Tooth of Lokkestiiz: Sunspire veteran
Berserking Warrior: Hel Ra Citadel
Perfect Arms of Relequen: Cloudrest
Arms of Relequen: Cloudrest
Selene: Selene’s Web
War Machine: Halls of Fabrication
Vicious Serpent: Hel Ra Citadel, Aetherian Archive, Sanctum Ophidia
Hunding's Rage: Craftable
Night Mother's Gaze: Craftable
Agility: Guildstore
Briarheart: Wrothgar, Guildstore
Velidreth: Cradle of Shadows
Maelstrom Bow: Maelstrom Arena

Skills

The rotation on a Nightblade is a bit more tricky then usual, as you should make sure to use a dynamic rotation. This is mostly the case because you have abilities like Relentless Focus, Leeching Strikes, Dark Shades and Incapacitating Strike that do not really fit into the rotation.

Make sure to activate Relentless Focus and Leeching Strikes before the fight begins.

> Endless Hail > LA > Razor Caltrops > LA > Poison Injection > Weapon Swap
> LA > Rearming Trap > LA > Rending Slashes > 4x Surprise Attack (with Light Attacks) > Weapon Swap
> Restart

• Activate the Spectral Bow whenever it is ready, if you do so just do 3x Surpise Attack instead of 4x.
• Reapply Dark Shade every 2nd rotation.
• Activate Incapacitating Strike when you are about to swap to the front bar, that way you will get increased damage on the Surprise Attack casts.
• Refresh Leeching Strikes after it ran out.
• Execute Phase: Do not refresh Rending Slashes anymore and use Killers Blade instead of Surprise Attacks.

LA= Light Attack

Before you weapon swap make sure to do a Light Attack, then weapon swap and go directly into casting Endless Hail, this is done because the animation carries over to your backbar and you will not have any delay casting Endless Hail.

Target Skeleton

This video is from LIKO’S Youtube Channel, he does a full 21 million Target Dummy Parse on the Raid Dummy. This video is a fully optimized Target Dummy Setup, so it might slightly differ from the build here!

ESO – Stamina Nightblade – DW/Bow Rotation – See Description – Elsweyr PTS 5.0.2

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Blackrose Prison Arena

This section of the build is dedicated to the Blackrose Prison Arena, it is a bit different compared to the usual Trial and Dungeon setup due to how the Arena works and because you fight such a huge amount of enemies each wave.

• Optimial Gear Setup
• Alternative Gear Setups
• Skill Setup

Optimal Gear Setup

• Vicious Serpent is the perfect set to increase your sustain by a lot and allows us to easily run blue max Health and max Stamina food.
• Twice-Fanged-Serpent is needed because the tank can not debuff all monsters all the time so the extra penetration from that set really helps to increase the overall damage.
• Stormfist Monster Set is a very good choice in Blackrose Prison Arena as it increases your sustain and deals really nice AoE and Single Target damage.
• We run full Robust jewelry to help with the overall sustain in the arena. If you want you can run Infused but it will make sustain tougher.

Gear	Set	Weight	Trait	Enchantment
Chest	Twice-Fanged Serpent	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Belt	Twice-Fanged Serpent	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Shoes	Twice-Fanged Serpent	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Pants	Twice-Fanged Serpent	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Hands	Twice-Fanged Serpent	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Head	Stormfist	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Shoulder	Stormfist	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Necklace	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Robust	Weapon Damage
Ring	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Robust	Weapon Damage
Ring	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Robust	Weapon Damage
Weapon 1 DW	Vicious Serpent	Dagger	Nirnhoned	Poison Damage Enchant
Weapon 1 DW	Vicious Serpent	Dagger	Sharpened	Absorb Stamina Enchant
Weapon 2	The Maelstrom's Bow	Bow	Infused	Weapon Damage Enchant

Alternative Gear Setups

• 5x Berserking Warrior, 5x Vicious Serpent, 2x Stormfist
• 5x Hunding's Rage, 5x Briarheart, 2x Stormfist
• 5x Vicious Serpent, 5x Hunding's Rage, 2x Stormfist

As Bow Backbar Weapon you should optimally choose the The Maelstrom's Bow, if you do not have access to it I can also recommend the Caustic Arrow.

A lot of good combos that work elsewhere also work in the Blackrose Prison Arena, most important is that you have enough sustain to kill off all those trash pack waves that get thrown at you.

Skills

Because of the huge amount of trash monsters that gets thrown at you, you need to make sure to have a AoE damage Setup. Therefore Whirling Blades is your best friend. You can also use  Reaper's Mark and apply it to a enemy with low health, upon monster death you will get a 25% damage boost for a short duration.

Like in the rotation before, make sure to keep up your back bar DoTs, especially Endless Hail and Razor Caltrops.

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Maelstrom Arena

Gear

We use two robust instead of infused here to boost our overall stamina to make resource management easier. You could use two infused or two bloodthirsty if you want.

Gear	Set	Weight	Trait	Enchantment
Chest	Hunding's Rage	Heavy	Divine	Stamina
Belt	Hunding's Rage	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Shoes	Hunding's Rage	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Pants	Hunding's Rage	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Hands	Hunding's Rage	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Head	Velidreth	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Shoulder	Velidreth	Medium	Divine	Stamina
Necklace	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Robust	Weapon Damage
Ring	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Robust	Weapon Damage
Ring	Vicious Serpent	Jewelry	Bloodthirsty	Weapon Damage
Weapon 1 DW	Vicious Serpent	Dagger	Nirnhoned	Poison Damage Enchant
Weapon 1 DW	Vicious Serpent	Dagger	Sharpened	Absorb Stamina Enchant
Weapon 2	The Maelstrom's Bow	Bow	Infused	Weapon Damage Enchant

Skills

• Ballista: This ultimate is very strong on Bosses in Maelstrom Arena, it burns them down in no time.
• Killers Blade: Try to kill enemies with that ability as it gives you health back!

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Update Log

Update Log Stamina Nightblade Build Rampage

17.05.2019 Updated Rampage Build for the Elsweyr Chapter. Stamina Nightblade Build PvE.