Best ESO Nightblade PVP Build – Stamina NB Stealth

Table of Contents

• Cyrodiil Setup
  • Gear
  • Skills
  • Scribing Skills
  • Champion Points
  • Important Info (Food, Mundus, Race, Potions, Passives, Attributes)
• Resource Management
• Battlegrounds Setup
• How to Play (Healing, Defense, Offense)
• Gameplay
• Nightblade Subclassing
• Outfit Style Showcase
• Update Log

Welcome to the Stamina Nightblade Build PvP “Assassin” for ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). Make sure to bookmark the link as I will keep updating the build for each new Update of ESO.

If you prefer ranged, you can also check out the ESO Nightblade Bow Gank Build. If you are new to the game I can also highly recommend checking out the Stamina Nightblade Beginner Guide along with a lot of other beginner guides.

This ESO Nightblade PVP Build is designed to be a stealth silent killer. Your main focus is to kill weak targets, always prioritize low-health light or medium armor targets over heavy armor targets. For our Cyrodiil setup, we are using Eternal Hunt, Spriggan’s Thorns, Balorgh, and Caustic Arrow.

Eternal Hunt is a very nice set that deals a decent amount of damage and makes it almost impossible to catch you if you are on the run because the rune roots people on the ground for a short time. You could use another set if you want more offense, but I am a huge fan of the set, once you get used to it you will also be able to use it more effectively.

• Cyrodiil & Battlegrounds Build
• Medium Armor 2H/Bow
• High Burst Damage
• Stealthy
• Fast-paced combat

You can find more Nightblade builds in the Nightblade category.

Cyrodiil Setup ESO Stamblade PVP Build

Now let’s take a look at the whole ESO Stamblade PVP setup in this section of the guide. You can always adjust the builds to your needs. Experimenting around with ESO Builds is important because it is such a big game.

5x Eternal Hunt, 5x Spriggan, 2x Balorgh, 1x Caustic Arrow on a Wood Elf with Artaeum Takeaway Broth buff-food.

• Unbuffed: Out of combat, buff food active
• Buffed: In combat, buff food, Tri-Stat Potion, Rally, Balorgh, Weapon Damage Enchantment active

Gear Stamina Nightblade PVP Build

This setup has a very burst-heavy focus, therefore we max out damage as much as possible with the below sets.

Where can I get the gear?

Balorgh: vMarch of Sacrifices, Undaunted Enclave
Eternal Hunt: Craftable
Spriggan’s Thorns: Guildstore, Bangkorai
Caustic Arrow: Dragonstar Arena
Perfected Caustic Arrow: vDragonstar Arena

Skills Stamblade PVP Build

Skills Explanation:

• Rally: Applies Major Brutality and Minor Endurance and also heals you when the effect ends.
• Relentless Focus: High Damage ability that is used in combo with Surprise Attack.
• Surprise Attack: Your main spammable attack, deals high damage and applies the Sunderes status effect. Also is a guaranteed Critical hit every 3 seconds.
• Ambush: This is our gap closer, deals minor damage but applies Minor Vulnerability to the enemy and gives us Minor Berserk.
• Piercing Mark: Applies Major Breach to the enemy. When the enemy dies you restore max health. Also allows to track invisible targets. (Can also use the other morph for more damage)
• Incapacitating Strike: Hard-hitting ultimate. Enemies also take 20% more damage for a short duration and get stunned.
• Leeching Strike: Always keep this active, it continuously restore stamina and magicka and also heals you.
• Shuffle: Defensive skill that applies Major Evasion, reducing our damage taken from AoE attacks. Also removes snares and immobilizations.
• Poison Injection: Strong damage over time effect that gets stronger with lower enemy health. Also activates the Caustic Arrow set effect, increasing our weapon damage.
• Shadowy Disguise: Gives us invisibility and our next attack will crit. Also gives Major Savagery on both bars.
• Resolving Vigor: Our main heal over time effect. Always keep this active.
• Temporal Guard: This ultimate is only slotted for the Minor Protection, giving us extra damage mitigation. It can also be used to teleport away from enemies if you need to escape.

Scribing Skills

The ESO Scribing System offers plenty of adjustable skills to add to our build. You can test out the skills below and see if they work for you. They are mostly here to annoy the enemy by stunning or immobilizing them.

Important: Please read here how to get Grimoires, Focus Scripts, Signature Scripts and Affix Scripts for the ESO Scribing system.

Base Scribing Skill useful to our build:

• Two Handed: Smash (Repelling Smash)
• World: Soul Burst (Leashing Burst)

Repelling Smash

Smash turns into Repelling Smash scribing skill, knocks enemies back and stuns them. Additionally, it also immobilizes them and interrupts their casting. Especially the stun and immobilization combo is super annoying to deal with. You get stunned, then you have to break free and you are still stuck in place.

• Focus Script
  • Knockback
• Signature Script
  • Immobilizing Strike
• Affix Script
  • Interrupt

Leashing Burst

Wield Soul turns into Leashing Burst. After 2 seconds, this pulls enemies to you within 8 meters. Also applies Oblivion damage to any enemy hit and interrupts their casting. You can change Interrupt to something else if you want. The main appeal of the skill is to pull enemies in after 2 seconds and then hit them and attack them with our combo.

• Focus Script
  • Pull
• Signature Script
  • Anchorite’s Cruelty
• Affix Script
  • Interrupt

Champion Points ESO Stamblade PVP Build

Below you can find the recommended slottable Champion Points setup for this ESO Stamina Nightblade PVP Build. Prioritize the slottable perks and get as many passive perks as possible.

Warfare Tree Points Allocation

• Deadly Aim (50) (Slottable)
• Master-at-Arms (50) (Slottable)
• Wrathful Strikes (50) (Slottable)
• Duelist’s Rebuff (50) (Slottable)

Fitness Tree Points Allocation

• Boundless Vitality (50) (Slottable)
• Sustained by Suffering (50) (Slottable)
• Pain’s Refuge (50) (Slottable)
• Slippery (50) (Slottable)

Craft Tree Points Allocation

• Steed’s Blessing (50) (Slottable)
• Rationer (30)
• Liquid Efficiency (75)
• Treasure Hunter (50)

Important Info for Stamina Nightblade Build PvP

Buff-food

Artaeum Takeaway Broth or Dubious Camoran Throne must be used with this setup. Dubious can be bought for a very cheap price in the guildstores, Artaeum does cost a lot more for a tiny bit extra stats increase. You can click on the two different buff foods to see price feed data.

Artaeum Takeaway Broth
(Max Stamina, Max Health, Stamina Recovery, Health Recovery)

Dubious Camoran Throne
(Max Stamina, Max Health, Stamina Recovery, Health Recovery)

Mundus Stone

The Warrior Mundus Stone will increase our weapon damage, which will boost our overall damage tremendously. You can learn more about all the other Mundus Stones on the Mundus Stone Overview Page.

The Warrior Mundus Stone (Increased Weapon Damage)

Race

All stamina-based races work with this setup. More about each race can be found on the racial overview page.

Wood Elf
Khajiit
Redguard
Orc
Nord
Imperial
Dark Elf
High Elf

Potions

Tri-Stat Potion
(Health, Stamina, Magicka)
(Bugloss, Columbine, Dragonthorn)

Poisons

Drain Health Poisons
(Drain Health, Restore Health, Poison Damage)
(Butterfly Wing, Columbine, Scrib Jelly)

Passives

• Assassination: Master Assassin, Executioner, Pressure Points, Hemorrhage
• Shadow: Refreshing Shadows, Shadow Barrier, Dark Vigor, Dark Veil
• Siphoning: Catalyst
• Two-Handed: Forceful, Heavy Weapons, Balanced Blade, Follow Up, Battle Rush
• Bow: Long Shots, Accuracy, Ranger, Hawk Eye, Hasty Retreat
• Medium Armor: Dexterity, Wind Walker, Improved Sneak, Agility, Athletics
• Fighters Guild: Banish the Wicked, Skilled Tracker, Slayer, Intimidating Presence
• Psijic Order: Clairvoyance, Spell Orb, Concentrated Barrier, Deliberation
• Undaunted: Undaunted Command, Undaunted Mettle
• Assault: Continuous Attack, Reach, Combat Frenzy
• Support: Magicka Aid, Combat Medic, Battle Resurrection
• Alchemy: Medicinal Use
• Racial: All

Attributes

44 Stamina, 20 Health, 0 Magicka

Resource Management Stamina Nightblade PVP Build for ESO

Leeching Strikes is our main active sustain tool, always keep it up. This is important for out Stamina Nightblade PVP Build.

Heavy Attacks also restore resources, if you drop low, make sure to weave in some Heavy Attacks.

Potions refill a huge amount of resources and use them whenever the right moment comes, for example when you drop low health you can drink a potion to get out of execute range!

We have built-in sustain through the Artaeum Takeaway Broth (or Dubious Camoran Throne) drink in addition to 1 Stamina Recovery glyph. Being a Woodelf also boosts our Stamina Recovery by another 258!

We have a 4-piece Well-Fitted trait on our armor, which helps reduce the dodge roll cost by a lot, that is important because we dodge roll a lot to activate our Eternal Hunt set and to avoid damage from the enemy.

• Leeching Strikes
• Heavy Attacks
• Potions
• Artaeum buff food

if you still lack sustain, you can always add more Stamina Recovery glyphs to your jewelry.

Battleground Setup ESO Stamblade PVP Build

The build has to be slightly adjusted for the Battlegrounds because Champion Points are deactivated and therefore sustaining is overall more difficult. Mostly the Monster Set and the buff food that we use changed.

Add one extra Stamina Cost Reduction glyph to the jewelry, to make sustain easier.

How to Play Stamblade PVP Build

Healing

Rally and Resolving Vigor are your heals. You want to always keep up Rally and whenever you go defense mode you need to keep Vigor up. I recommend using Vigor before you dodge roll. That way you can heal up and the enemy can barely hit you.

The potions that we are using also contain health, when your health drops low you can activate your potion to get a burst heal.

Defense

Your main defense is dodge roll, dodge rolling in the right moment you can avoid basically all incoming damage and it gives you room to breathe.

You can use dodge roll in combination with Shadowy Disguise, with a bit of practice it will be impossible for the enemy to follow or kill you. Dodge rolling too much in succession is not recommended, because it applies fatigue to you that increases the cost of dodge roll. Therefore Shadowy Disguise is nice to use while the fatigue wears off.

Relentless Focus, if you have several stacks active you also gain damage mitigation, which is really nice in specific situations.

Shuffle needs to be active all the time, it gives you so much AoE damage mitigation and also prevents you from getting rooted or snared for a short duration, making escape even easier.

Offense

Burst damage on a Nightblade is very effective, the first rule you have to learn is how you should pick your target.

• Target 1: 30k health, heavy armor
• Target 2: 22k health, light armor
• Target 3: 22k health, light armor but constantly shielded

Obviously, you pick target 2, but I hope you understood what I tried to teach you here, pick the easy targets. Sure you can kill heavy armor targets, but it will be way more difficult, especially because they usually have more health.

Now there are a few ways you can push out insane burst damage, always approach your enemy in stealth.

1. Heavy Attack > Incapacitating Strike > Surprise attack
2. Surprise Attack > Incapacitating Strike > Surprise attack

Both options are viable, if you start your combo with a Surprise attack, the enemy will get stunned because of the Surprise Attack skill. Like you can see here in the example, I am in stealth and then I use Surprise Attack to stun him into an Incapacitating Strike which he can not block due to the stun and it basically finishes him off.

Another example of my Nightblade using Incapacitating Strike > Surprise Attack (7k damage, enemy gets stunned) and I activate my Spectral Bow (Relentless Focus) which crits for 10k and kills the enemy.

You also have the option to use the Piercing Mark skill, but you would have to replace Shuffle which will make you take more damage, therefore you have to decide whether you want more damage or more defense. The skill is great for enemies that try to get away from you with stealth.

If you apply the mark on the enemy you can see them even if they are in stealth. After I applied the mark on the enemy I used Ambush to get the extra 5% damage to boost my Incapacitating Strike into a Surprise Attack and the enemy is dead.

Now please remember, you NEED TO use Light Attacks between each skill, Light attacks can deal more damage than the actual skill.

ESO Nightblade Subclassing Build Options

ESO’s Subclassing offers a lot of variety, allowing you to swap, mix, and match different skill lines of various classes all on one character. Read our How does Subclassing work in ESO guide to get an understanding of how the subclass system works. We also have plenty of ESO Builds optimized for Subclassing.

Take a look at our ESO Nightblade Subclassing Build if you are interested in what you can all mix and match on a Nightblade build!

Outfit Style Showcase of the ESO Stamblade PvP Build

Let’s take a look at the outfit style of the Stamina Nightblade Melee Stealth Gank PvP Build for ESO. You can find a close-up shot, an image from the back and an image of the outfit editor dye station below.

Update Log for the Stamina Nightblade PVP Build

10.08.2019 Added Stamina Nightblade PvP Build with a complete redesign
21.02.2020 Updated the Build for the HARROWSTORM DLC.
19.05.2020 Updated the Build for the GREYMOOR CHAPTER.
18.08.2020 Updated the Build for the STONETHORN DLC, Greymoor Chapter.
26.10.2020 Updated the Build for the MARKARTH DLC, Greymoor Chapter.
06.03.2021 Updated the Build for the FLAMES OF AMBITION DLC, Blackwood Chapter.
28.05.2021 Updated the Build for the BLACKWOOD CHAPTER.
18.08.2021 Updated the Build for the WAKING FLAMES DLC, Blackwood Chapter.
26.10.2021 Updated the Build for the DEADLANDS DLC, Blackwood Chapter.
09.03.2022 Updated the Build for the ASCENDING TIDE DLC, High Isle Chapter.
14.05.2022 Updated the Build for the HIGH ISLE CHAPTER.
09.08.2022 Updated the Build for the LOST DEPTHS DLC, High Isle Chapter.
28.10.2022 Updated the Build for the FIRESONG DLC, High Isle Chapter.
08.03.2023 Updated the Build for the SCRIBES OF FATE DLC, Necrom Chapter
25.05.2023 Updated the Build for the NECROM CHAPTER.
25.10.2023 Updated the Build for Necrom Update 40.
06.03.2024 Updated the Build for the Scions of Ithelia DLC U41, Gold Road Chapter
24.05.2024 Updated the Build for the Gold Road Chapter U42.
20.08.2024 Updated the Build for Update 43, Gold Road Chapter.
04.11.2024 Updated the Build for Update 44, Gold Road Chapter.
11.03.2025 Updated the Build for Update 45, Fallen Banners.
30.05.2025 Updated the Build for Update 46, Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 1.

Tags: Stamina Nightblade PvP Build, Stamblade PvP Build, Assassin Nightblade Build, Stealth Nightblade Build PvP

Related Guides

• ESO PVP Tier List
• Cyrodiil Guide
• Imperial City Guide
• Battlegrounds Guide
• How to unlock Alliance War Skill Lines and Vigor