Nightblade Discussion

[Magic Cake]

I wanted to talk about the Nightblade because I believe this soul has the most potential to shine in PvE content I've seen tons of threads up of "What do you think of my build" but nothing really discussing the finer details of builds or soul mechanics, so I thought I would make a thread to discuss some Nightblade builds why also trying not to be boring with any of that Math stuff for PvE content.
Link to the build

Everything in the build is pretty cookie cut straight and forward, which is the beauty of it. Basically only taking Assassin and Bladedancer for those juicy tier 1 and 3 talents. Physical Talents only needed for improving Primal Death which adds on to your non-physical style of the Nightblade, everything else just being a filler.

in the Nightblade Talents themselves I have found that that everything is pretty straight forward on what it does, my only confusion being Fire and Death Attunement on whether the 3% increase is all attacks or just auto. The only thing some people might not like is the 1/5 in Heat Retention but from what I've seen you really only need one point, but 3/5 might not be bad if you wanted to take Nightstalker down to 1/3 but personally i prefer the increased 30% below 30% for those PvE crunch time moments in downing a boss.

Weapon Choice
So, being a dual wield class some people might be confused on which weapon is going to be best for them endgame, comparing to Rogues from WoW where different builds required different dual wields.

If you look at the Nightblade abilities you'll notice a lot of it has nothing to do with Weapon Damage itself (Only weapon Damage ability being Dusk Blade and that is only 50%) , which leads me to believe that Daggers are the obvious choice. NB's getting most of their damage from all of their non-physical effects and Daggers being a low Top damage, high attackspeed/dps weapon means you will stack your Smoldering Blades faster and Hellfire Blades will proc more often because you are hitting faster with AA.

A Rotation of sorts.
I'm not big on the idea of Rotations because I like to believe you can be usefull if you jumble up your attacks and aren't strick on the buttons you are mashing but I still like to follow a guideline for my abilities.

That guide line being
Dark Malady > Fiery spike {One Stack} > 5p Blazing Strike or Flame Thrust {If at Range} > Ebon Fury > Dusk Strike > Primal Strike > Fiery Spike {If at Range or can't Approach Boss}

Only applying One stack of Fiery spike at the start seems best to me, allowing Lingering Flame to add and refresh stacks (Which also grants you a free combo point). Adding only one stack at the start is also helpful so you do not pull threat off the tank, because as far as I know my only threat dump is to stop attacking or take a dirt nap.

~Please feel free to share your ideas in detail of other builds you like that involve the Nightblade Pve or PvP wise~

I have not give them much thought in PvE because right now I'm addicted to Sabo.

[Niya]

I think if anyone actually needs guide for pve rotation, then he also needs to change class to something else, or even change game. You need to understand the class to play it, not just follow some guide -.-

And pvp rotation wont ever be the same because it depends on so many factors...

And we dont talk about nightblades!

[omgacow]

theres a rule about nightblades...


/thread

[dmv]

I think if anyone actually needs guide for pve rotation, then he also needs to change class to something else, or even change game. You need to understand the class to play it, not just follow some guide -.-

And pvp rotation wont ever be the same because it depends on so many factors...

And we dont talk about nightblades!

That ^ and, are the person who made the aion translator? completely random question, i know.

[Magic Cake]

I think if anyone actually needs guide for pve rotation, then he also needs to change class to something else, or even change game. You need to understand the class to play it, not just follow some guide -.-

And pvp rotation wont ever be the same because it depends on so many factors...

And we dont talk about nightblades!

You would be surprised, the trees in rift are easy to understand for other MMO players but some people generally get a bit confused when they have so many choices, my set up may not be the best so the point of the Thread was a little bit of feedback, while explaining more then just posting "Here is my build. What do you think, derp?"

and if you read the post I said I don't believe in any sort of Rotation i just like to map it out in a "What I need up" kind of fashion while still thinking of how I can not pull threat in the first 20 seconds of a fight.

[Modru]

ok im going to ask a stupid question now.

ive been assuming this entire time (primarily because all the leather that only has rogue stats) that using standard rogue daggers (dexterity etc) is best.

nb abilities don't scale with anything like spell power do they? and on that note, how do they scale, is it with attack power? dex? how does all that work out.

[dmv]

ok im going to ask a stupid question now.

ive been assuming this entire time (primarily because all the leather that only has rogue stats) that using standard rogue daggers (dexterity etc) is best.

nb abilities don't scale with anything like spell power do they? and on that note, how do they scale, is it with attack power? dex? how does all that work out.

It scales to attack, which is dex+str. If you want it in an equation is probably something like.
(Physical attack + bonus elemental damage)x(any multiplier for total, or elemental damage)=Total damage.

[Yarane]

I have a spec I'm considering right now, seemingly very different than yours.

The idea is this.

It's based around generating crits as much as possible to keep all the nice passives from the Sin tree rolling at all times. Instead of using Primal Strike, you'd be using Savage Strike as your filler (they are effectively the same ability but you can give savage strike a better chance to crit with talents).

Opener would be:

DM > DS > FS > SoD > FS > FS > TF > DS > BS

After that you can just go with spamming Savage Strike and using DS every eight second, alternating finishers between SoD and BS.

Use Ebon Fury and Dusk to Dawn on cooldown, of course (note, I haven't tried out Dusk to Dawn yet but I assuming it's DPS efficient to use in PvE, especially considering how quickly it gives combo points.

Second is

[Magic Cake]

ok im going to ask a stupid question now.

ive been assuming this entire time (primarily because all the leather that only has rogue stats) that using standard rogue daggers (dexterity etc) is best.

nb abilities don't scale with anything like spell power do they? and on that note, how do they scale, is it with attack power? dex? how does all that work out.

They scale with Dex and and attack power, I'm not to sure on attack power scale yet because I haven't taken the time to do any math but Nightstalker damage and abilities don't rely heavily on physical damage or weapon damage.

All abilities scale to weapon damage to a degree IE "deals weapon damage plus X to X Physical damage"

With further thought it seems like a somewhat slower heavy top damage weapon like a sword or axe might be better for mainhand and increasing Primal Strike Damage, but a dagger off for more Enchant procs.

[Roxina]

ok im going to ask a stupid question now.

ive been assuming this entire time (primarily because all the leather that only has rogue stats) that using standard rogue daggers (dexterity etc) is best.

nb abilities don't scale with anything like spell power do they? and on that note, how do they scale, is it with attack power? dex? how does all that work out.

Rogue abilities, even bard heals, scale with melee stats. Trion aren't so cruel as to make us seek out that one weird piece in a million that got rolled with caster stats by the random item generator.

And we don't talk about Nightblades, but...

Every attack on my bar pretty much is weapon damage + x amount, from Fiery Spike on up.

Also, with that build you posted... Our 31-point branch ability, Scourge of Darkness, is a freaking gamechanger for both our dpsing ability and our rotation management. You go for the 15% bonus to Dex, which is awesome in general for low gear thresholds, but will no doubt scale poorly with stat DR curves towards the high end. You skip Twilight Force but take Flame Thrust? It's a ranged combo point builder that deals direct damage, which can be spammed during a cooldown and does better damage than Primal Strike. I keep this thing on cooldown, just like Dusk Strike, and you can bet I'm spamming it when I'm stuck at range because of PBAE. And 1/5 heat retention? Even with a 100% proc rate on that, you're still not getting the 30% damage bonus to your finisher every attack cycle. A big part of maintaining your dps is keeping buffs proccing and stacked up- pooch that and you're left with a non-physical, range/melee hybrid with softer-hitting attacks than like...any other rogue soul save bard.

The biggest reason, to me, to go deep BD is Combat Efficiency. Going that deep means losing some key things from Assassin though, so I prefer picking up the Sin crit bonus, dropping the +dex and autoattack bonus from BD, and fleshing out the NB tree more. It's entirely possible that even with all the nonphysical self-buffing we get, the proc rate on Primal Death won't make Primal Strike pull ahead of Backstab for spammed combat point generation between cooldowns- I've yet to give that a go and haven't had time to run the numbers on it.

I'm almost done, I promise.

Personal weapon preference: I go for swords and axes, in general. Daggers are fast, but hit like pillows at equal levels/gear quality, and you lose less than two procs per minute by going with a sword or axe. Even going to a mace, you only lose about 2.2 ppm.

[Roxina]

Also, one of the most in-depth discussions we've had on NB builds and setup so far: Nightblade Guide - Beta 7. Not a tremendous lot has changed for us since then, and a lot of the info in there is still quite good.

But you didn't see that, because we don't talk about Nightblades.

[Yarane]

Still looking for any feedback on whether or not using Savage Strike instead of Primal Strike might be worth it assuming Savage Strike is talented for extra crit.

[Teriza]

You'd still do more w/ a talented primal. And we don't talk about Nightblades.

[Roxina]

Imp. Savage Strike over standard Primal, probably Imp. Savage Strike. Imp. Savage Strike vs Primal w/ Primal Death, Primal. You functionally get an additional 30% crit on Primal Strike with Primal Death (30% chance to hit for 1.5dmg), with the chance for both parts of the hit to crit. (Primal Death can crit independantly of Primal Strike, and is also buffed by your non-physical damage boosters.)

I can post this because I can pretend I'm talking about Assassins and not Nightblades.

[Madmirage]

You people are a disgrace to the Class.. assuming Nightblades even existed, which we all know it doesn't.