Love Bites AKA Lady LaLa’s MagNightblade’s StamSorc Partner in Crime (and pets)
It’s Build Thursday! And as a happy b-day to a friend of mine, here’s one of his favorite builds to run along with my MagNightblade in PvP edited to take advantage of the new Weapon Ultimates.
ESO Skill Factory Skill Calculator
So, that group of gankers is accompanied by some pets, heralding a Sorcerer in the group and you think you know which it is. One problem, tho: Between their own buffs and their pets, they’re buying themself enough time for their buddies to wipe your team and focus on you. That’s why I love running with this guy on my side. The bars are a little limited, tho, since two slots are taken up by pet skills on both bars; that way swapping doesn’t affect your ability to use your pets. Disclaimer: The name was his idea
Boon: The Thief
Weapons: Main mace and/or sword dual wield, whichever you prefer. Backup bow. Try to get the Deadly Strike set for your dual weapons and an Eagle Eye bow. Deadly Strike will add to your dual wield’s weapon critical and health, Eagle Eye keeps that critical while increasing your bow range.
Jewelry: One piece from Deadly Strike, two from Eagle Eye to round out your weapon sets.
Armor: Your heavy and light pieces should be the Pirate Skeleton set, increasing your damage resistance and giving you a chance to get a bonus 30% damage resistance when you’re attacked. The rest should be Hunt Leader, which may be hard to get (grind grind grind) but is worth it for the stamina, weapon damage, and special bonus with your pets.
Overall Equipment: So, to say some of this stuff isn’t easy to get is an understatement. Your weapon sets can be found in Cyrodiil, Pirate Skeleton can be found in Blackheart Haven and Gilirion’s Undaunted Chest, and Hunt Leader can be found in the Maelstrom Arena. If you don’t feel like grinding for all of them, at LEAST get Hunt Leader. You’ll have your pets up all the time, ideally, and the bonus health and stamina you’ll get will be an immense help to your survivability.
Race: I went with Orc, but Redguard, Khajiit, Bosmer, Imperial, and (least optimally) Dunmer can be substituted.
Skill Bars
“You Are Too Close” bar (dual wield)
Whirlwind with Whirling Blades morph: “Spin to Win” is the name of the game for this one; the morph gives you additional stamina recovery and you deal extra damage based on your enemies’ health. There’s nothing not to love.
Summon Unstable Familiar with Summon Unstable Clanfear morph: The first of your pets, gives you a little extra health recovery in a pinch and provides one more source of damage. You can use the other morph if you want one extra source of CC, but I prefer the health and damage the Clanfear offers.
Summon Winged Twilight with Summon Winged Tormentor morph: Your second pet, does more damage than the Familiar or Clanfear, and the morph lets it deal extra damage against high health targets. If you use the Unstable Familiar morph, however, you can use the Twilight Matriarch morph to still get some healing.
Bound Armor with Bound Aegis morph: Getting focused? Pop this beauty and get bonus physical resistance and spell resistance with the morph.
Encase with Restraining Prison morph: Immobilizes enemies and then keeps them slowed once they’re freed. They won’t be coming after you for at least a few moments, giving you some time to either kill them or run.
Lacerate with Rend morph: One of the more potent new DOTs, the morph increases the duration, AND it’s a self heal. I love this one.
This bar is for when you’re in the middle of enemies, where you really shouldn’t be. It’s all “Oh shit” skills. You’ll want to go Bound Armor, Winged Tormentor special, Encase, Rend, Spin to Win until your enemies are gone, activating the Unstable Clanfear special if need be. That should buy you time for your group to help you or to kill whoever got close enough for you to hit this bar.
“Boo suckers!” bar (bow)
Poison Arrow with Poison Injection morph: This one REALLY sucks when you’re low on health. It’s poison first off, but it gets worse as you get lower on health. Better have someone with a purify quick.
Summon Unstable Familiar with Summon Unstable Clanfear morph: See above; if you’ve read this far, you should know this already.
Summon Winged Twilight with Summon Winged Tormentor morph: ^Look up
Lightning Form with Hurricane morph: Gives a bonus to your defense and damages enemies that get too close. The morph makes it scale off of stamina, gives you movement speed when you have it active, and increases the damage and radius over the 15 seconds it’s active
Snipe with Lethal Arrow morph: This will be your opening move, if you catch your enemy by surprise, this thing hurts and with the morph, also deals poison and reduces healing received. If you see a player you know is a healer, this is a good way to bring them down quickly; they’ll have to think fast, which gives you precious moments to wipe them out.
Rapid Fire with Toxic Barrage morph: Another very cool weapon ult and again poisons the target. 4 seconds of high damage, plus 8 more seconds of poison damage at the end.
This one is what you’ll have up when you’re jumping out of stealth to gank with your group. With your passives, your attacks should go Heavy > Snipe > Poison Arrow > Lightning Form > Light > Rapid Fire > continue as needed.
This one takes around 120 points to do and is flexible. If you don’t like one of the Ultimates, Lacerate can be traded for Dawnbreaker and Rapid Fire can be swapped for Summon Storm Atronach. This build is fun for when you’re with a group; you sitting in the back while your friends draw your enemies’ focus, and bodies dropping one by one. With the Hunt Leader armor, you’re most effective with your pets up, so keep an eye on that, but that’s honestly not hard to do.
COMING NEXT: The 3rd member of the gank squad, our CC DK! Stay tuned
