So Im flip flopping between two Melee PVP builds, and was hoping to get some input from you guys.

Both classes will be using 2h/bow, Full Medium Armour, Redgaurd. Essentially Im making a high burst damage, high crit/stamina monster who relies mostly on stuns, very quick & hard hitting light and heavy attacks, with self healing & survivability skills that keep him in the fight.

Dragon Knight 2hander

-Burning Embers (Searing Strike) – Strong Melee Range DOT with a self heal.

-Obsidian Shard (Stonefist) – Powerful PVP knockdown with a 15m range in case they are slippery.

-Rally (Momentum) – Increased weapon damage with a self heal at the end.

-Stampeded (Critical Charge) – Fantastic gap closer with an immobilize

-Wrecking Blow (Uppercut) – Hard hitting and incapacitates the opponent, which is everything in PVP.

-Ultimate; Flawless Dawnbreaker, passively increases weapon damage by 13%

Dragon Knight Bow

-Green Dragon Blood (Dragon Blood) – Great emergency heal and stamina regen is boosted even further as a Redgaurd

-Dragon Fire Scale (Reflective Scale) - Incredible PVP counter move that reflects spells back.

-Razor Armor (Spiked Armor) – Great defensive spell to be used as an Armour boost right before switching back to the 2hander and charging in.

-Lethal Arrow (Snipe) – Long range snipe with a poison arrow

-Venom Arrow (Poison Arrow) – Another poison arrow that can interrupt a caster

-Ultimate: Magma Shell (Molten Armour) – Awesome damage shield that could change the course of any fight.

VS

Night Blade 2hander

-Focused Attacks (haste) – Attack speed + 30% + a stamina recovery, which could be extremely useful when paired with a 2hander, momentum, and a high crit.

-Shadowy disguise (Shadow cloak) – Vanish which is godly for PVP, and it gives a free crit.

-Rally (Momentum) – Increased weapon damage with a self heal at the end.

-Stampeded (Critical Charge) – Fantastic gap closer with an immobilize

-Wrecking Blow (Uppercut) – Hard hitting and incapacitates the opponent, which is everything in PVP.

-Ultimate; Flawless Dawnbreaker, passively increases weapon damage by 13%

Night Blade Bow

-Swallow Soul (Strife) – Life Leeching attack with a 28m range

-Debilitate (cripple) – Speed Leaching attack with a good DOT, 28m range.

-Piercing Mark (Mark Target) -Marks target and Ignores 75% of their armor (and they ignore 75% of yours) with a heal for killing the mark.

-Lethal Arrow (Snipe) – Long range snipe with a poison arrow

-Venom Arrow (Poison Arrow) – Another poison arrow that can interrupt a caster

Ultimate: Soul Siphon

My thoughts are that the Nightblade is going to have better damage, with lesser survivability. The DK seems weaker with the bow, and more reliant on melee, but I would wager it would excel in the 1 v 1 type fights because of the better self healing (all in theory of course). I really think the DK would be nasty to go up against, especially with the reflect and added armor.

I tried both similair set ups and i have to say i found the NB better. Something was just off about the DK build i had.

It really depends on preference, its kind of hard to explain. You gotta just go out and try both of them, some people really hate the way DK works while some people love it; the same goes for nightblade. You gotta try em both and see which one "clicks" for u.

I was leaning towards the DK, but will have to reconsider the NB. Im really liking the Stonefist ability of the DK for the instant CC, something I find the NB lacks.

I never experimented with a shadowy disguise + wrecking blow combo in beta, so if that works fine in pvp then the NB becomes much more viable to me.

I dont recall what skills they are will see if they are in your list. I was doing a 2 hander NB wasnt able to get 15 to use a second weapon. But in pvp i was focused more on hit and run style of attack.

from sneak i would charge the khajit.

wail on him a bit with stam skills, with the 1st 2 hander attack Cleave i think.

hit shadowcloak

followed by the shadow cloak stun attack. ( vieled strike i think )

wail on him a second

shadowcloak and run.

wait for regens. and if the Kat is still hanging around repeat.

If i had a bow at the time probably shoot him from ranged if i didnt kill him from the initial assault.

If you want to be one of those stealth guerilla fighters who come out of nowhere and kill their victim fast, go with Nightblade. NB does have survivability, but less so in long sustained fights compared to Dragonknights. But DKs have less burst capability.

Of course, it largely depends on your own skill and your ability layout.

Your Nightblade melee layout seems to lack cc. Without that you can die pretty fast if your enemy knows what he's doing.

Shadowy Disguise for instance is really not godly. It has it's uses, but you rarely can use it to escape or something. It's either a magicka ability to give +70% crit for one attack or preparation for veiled strike (which works nice).

Nightblades have really good gap closers with integrated stun. Better than stampede in my opinion. Also you don't have an execute ability.

Keep in mind that wrecking blow has a cast time. During the beta I thought it was only useful in situations where your opponent was rooted or busy looking elsewhere.

really good advices

As a dragonknight, i found myself better a bigger fight or sticking with people then picking off target compared to a nightblade. Of course when you meet someone that dont know what he is doing, like at the release of a game, you will wreck people whatever your class. But dragonknight is a god with damage over time compared to a nightblade which excel at bursting. I would focus less on upgrading your damage and pick more CC/finisher. Things like momentum is really not good and work only for your weapon damage or even dawnbreaker is far from being a favorite. Magma armor or even the standard can really make a difference in a fight as dragonknight or Soul tether as a nightblade is pretty op. Because like momentum, it only apply for your weapon damage.

One ability as a dragonknight i would use with the 2hander is Executioner (reverse slash).

Honestly I originally started making my builds without momentum, and received a pile of backlash as a result of it.

I never found it to be all that impressive, but was hearing at lvl 50 it really was a must have if you were rocking a 2hander.

Wrecking blow after Stonefist was working just great for me. Hits like a truck and provided additional CC.

I use 2 CC abilities too, but they are magical based in my pvp abilities set: shadow cloak + surprise attack and prolonged suffering (great for when with didnt went as you planned. And I focus the stamina for the heavy dps

Agreed. I have more experience with NB than the other classes, and Shadowy Disguise comes at a huge opportunity cost for risky pay-off (taking up one of your skill slots). I will probably try to keep it on my bar because I plan on playing more of a support role, so I only need to "escape" long enough for my allies to stun/kill, but from an offensive angle I think I'd rather just take another skill that does damage/stuns.

I am completely newb on DK and have not watched a ton of PvP vids, but is that grappling hook skill not that useful? It seems like in a group setting you can pretty much instant-kill anyone from an opposing group by pulling them in the middle of your group. I am half-debating of creating a DK just to be able to do this.

I think Shadowy Disguise is being undersold here. It breaks the enemies target on you, which is very big in pvp. Time not being hit is time well spent, and just the confusion it creates in general is a good thing.

I tinkered around a little bit and here is what I have for my melee builds.

Night Blade 2hander

-Executioner (Reverse Slash)

-Shadowy disguise (Shadow cloak)

-Concealed Weapon (Veiled Strike)

-Stampeded (Critical Charge)

-Wrecking Blow (Uppercut)

-Ultimate: Soul Siphon

Dragon Knight 2hander

-Burning Embers (Searing Strike)

-Obsidian Shard (Stonefist)

-Executioner (Reverse Slash)

-Stampede (Critical Charge)

-Wrecking Blow (Uppercut)

-Magma Shell (Molten Armour)

Both are great at melee, if you want to fight in groups dk has better survivability in that aspect with things like magma armor, reflective scale, green dragon blood. With a heal bot a dk with do some serious work. If you want to duel or gank you should go nightblade, they have way better sustain than a dk with leeching strikes and will outduel them, nb also has superior burst with vanish combos in melee to remove debuffs and longer stuns, and better ranged burst using mark with bow skills, not to mention heal debuffs and executes on their class skills. Its damn near impossible to outduel a nightblade vampire with evasion skills, dodges everything and if they get low they can vanish+feed to heal to full while the feed animation cannot be broken out of like other cc. I imagine vanish feed and the op leeching strikes will be nerfed in the near future so keep that in mind.

So if youre sneaking around picking off stragglers or fighting in small skirmishes then go nb, if you want to charge through the fallen wall of a keep in large scale battles then go dk.

it can be super awesome as it can be super annoying.

There is a bug that whenever you try to pull something at a different height, it doesnt work, you do damage to it but it stay there. So basically you are rolling the dice everytime you use it. I was fairly succesful with it and the morph for improve range on those shadow cloak NB, you cant go really far in 2.5 sec.

Were not saying its bad, were just saying most of the time your slot is best spent with another tool if you 1v1.

Shadowy disguise dont give you back a backstab, you cant go back to sneak while in it (still considered in combat) and it only last 2.5 seconds which you dont go really far. Most of the nightblades that dissapeared from me to get distance were still in my critical charge/Fiery grip. Once you attack again you are visible to the enemy and most of the time, once you go to stealth, we know you are either gonna retreat for attack again so we just up a defensive cooldown and wait for you or slash around. Once you appear we use a gap closer.

I would say most of the time when the NB did it, he still died

Don't get me wrong, combat breakers are borderline overpowered and very useful tools in any game, but there are limiting factors in TESO. It costs magicka, which is a relatively limited resource, only lasts a few seconds, takes up a skill slot out of an already limited amount, and it needs to be paired with another ability to really justify its use.

Here is the hypothetical example of a duel/small skirmish: You vanish. Enemy backs off for a couple seconds. The 2.5 seconds you are invisible you cannot escape and you cannot attack (enemy backed off). Invisibility wears off and now you are short magicka, still cannot escape, and still don't get the drop/advantage. If you try and chain cast it, it lengthens the time, but it is even riskier because escaping is still a gamble and if/when you do get the drop on an attack, you cannot follow up with magicka-based attacks.

Like I said, I still plan on using it, but more for a support role in group play. Go invis to remove enemy targeting, move to another location on the battlefield, then resume healing. The times I was caught solo and/or small skirmish, it felt rather useless and I wished I had something more reliable on my bar.

Just adding my 2 cents for the limited experience I had with it. If you find it useful, more power to ya. I mean, I plan on playing a NB myself, so it isn't like I want it to be a weak skill, I just didn't find it nearly as useful as combat breakers in other games.

That is too bad. Looks like a ton of fun. I was genuinely shocked the first time I got pulled down from a defensive wall. I mean, I should have expected it but for whatever the reason it didn't click. "Oh I'm safe up here, look at them down there, like shooting ducks in a barrel... oh gahh my eyes! "

Looks good to be honest. The only thing i would change is.... if you got enough mana, i would change Stampede ( Critical Charge ) for Ambush (teleporting strike), its better in everyway.

First stampede got the same problem as fiery grip, sometime terrain elevation can get you stuck (like you deal the damage and apply the immobilize but you didnt travel the distance) which never happen (or at least it didnt to me) with the teleport. Stampede immobilize for 2 seconds but ambush got a 1.5 stun built in (which is better). Damage is fairly similar since ambush base damage is higher but stampede is a crit. Then you have ambush that increase your next damage by 30%. So when the enemies is around 40%, ambush them so they are stun and proceed with an executionner +30% damage.. ouch!

I`ve got concealed weapon on there now, which requires stealth if you want the 4.5 second stun, so thats a good reason to use it. So the way I see it with my new build it goes like this;

Critical Charge-Uppercut-Shadow Cloak-Concealed Weapon and with some regular attacks mixed in hopefully Executioner is ready by that point

to be honest i didnt try concealed weapon so i dont know if you can link them. Because shadow cloak put you invisible, not stealthed. So we would need Nightblade expert (since im more of a dragonknight) to clarify if you can get the stun of veiled strike in shadow cloak. I tried using backstab again with shadowcloak and that doesnt work since to do a backstab, you need to be stealthed, this is where i learned that shadowcloak is not the same, its an invis).

Also it will be a fairly mana heavy combo, be prepare for this

Thanks. I think Im still leaning towards stampede over ambush simply because my melee builds are more stamina focused (3:2), and the the bow builds are magic based (2:3), and ambush is just imbalances that somewhat for me. Im going to be a redguard, so I want to be able to freely dump my stamina.

THat, and im not going to lie, but I just like the idea of charging in all badass like with a big 2hander . Especially out of stealth. Dont think that will get old anytime soon for me.

Yes it works, I tried it myself, and its a fantastic combo.

How exactly is this going to be a mana intense build.... I have 2 magic abilites on that build, and the rest are stamina based, which is what I intended (being a redgaurd and all). My bow builds are more magic focused.

This is the spirit! You have my blessing then play for fun and adjust in case of emergency. I often chose certain ability that might be a bit lesser just because i like how they look/play. Its a game and its meant to be fun.

I wasnt saying the build was too mana intensive, was just saying the combo can be costly on mana (cloak + veiled strike). But yeah, if it work, then its worthwhile!

lol thorn, nb vanish does make you stealth to setup your surprise attack that hits like a truck, stuns for over 4 secs, and pierces armor. Its the bread and butter combo of the class. also you want to use dark cloak not shadowy disguise, it removes 4 debuffs making it the best purge in the game, dk drops his load with dots and debuffs and you just vanish them all off and smash him with surprise attack + heavy heavy + impale, dead dk. Can also toss in piercing mark during the stun to take them to 0 armor or incap strike to debuff any healing. There is no outdueling a good nb, dots dont stick, they have better debuffs and gap closers, better sustain of their resources, and way higher burst. The just lack aoe damage and defensive skills to survive being zerged which is where dks shine.

Yeah the stun works. When I tested it, I wasn't getting the sneak bonus damage from it though. I do not know if this is intended, and no doubt already noted by the nightblade experts (of which, I am not )

It is a fun combo for PvE, but players don't stand there stupidly in PvP. There is a delay between the time your character cloaks, and when you can attack with veiled strike. One could probably work it in with other combos (using the delay when the enemy is already incapacitated), so it is still a valid tactic, but it still uses two skill slots for the one attack.