Forward
Renaming the guide to just NB healing guide, other Nightblades posted a lot of tips and have made the build a lot stronger. I never hear garbage about how Nightblades can't heal well anymore, I think those people got stomped enough times to get the message that Nightblades can heal. I can't edit posts and the other thread is out of date.
Why Nightblade?
I don't have a max level Warden so all my views on the NB class come from comparing the NB to the Templar. Here are the Nightblade healer's strengths:
1. Cloak. Pretty simple, cloaking away while being focused will save you many times.
2. Burst healing. NB is the best single target burst healer in the game by a lot.
3. Sustain. Using health plus magicka as healing resources means that you rarely if ever run out of magicka unless you're cleansing a lot.
4. Versatility. Battlegrounds and a lot of the Cyrodiil campaigns do not use Champion points. That means that if you have a max level magblade you can switch to healing very easily. The only annoying thing is you'll need refreshing path as a NB healer.
Skills
PvP healing doesn't have a rotation, instead here's a write up of NB skills and their strengths and weaknesses:
Core/Required Abilities:
Shrewd Offering – this is your primary heal, use it often. It is the largest single target heal in the game and is spamable, for those who have a Templar healer imagine if Breath of Life could be used without running out of magicka, and instead after using it 4-6 times in a row you had to go back to using combat prayer or healing springs to regen your health. The downside is it cannot heal yourself, so if you're focused you have to rely on your mitigation and cloak away.
Combat Prayer – Decent frontal heal, provides extra mitigation and a damage buff to those you use it on. Enough classes don't have minor berserk in their class toolkits to make this mandatory. It's also your 2nd or 3rd best self heal.
Cloak combined with concealed blade – always on one of your hot bars, if you don't use cloak I don't really see the point of playing a nightblade. Cloak also doesn't work well without combining it with concealed blade for the extra invisibility speed, they need to go together. One option is no concealed blade and use the steed mundus. This frees up a back bar slot for more abilities.
Elemental Blockade (Ice) – Really powerful ability, added snare effect with the chance to proc minor maim for 15% less damage. Using this ability I'll hit ~150k damage in a long battleground, and elemental blockade, light and heavy attacks are my only offensive attacks. Also pops nightblades out of stealth if you hit them on cast.
Mass Hysteria – PBAOE fear, great ability. I use it as a peel for people who're being focused and to escape being focused myself. Templars with puncturing sweeps or Dks who stun lock you can be annoying to escape from, manifestation of terror > dodge roll > cloak will save you running back from the respawn.
Cleanse – the expensive morph of purge. Good ability, high magicka cost but since NB's sustain is great because of using two resources to heal you can afford it. The other morph efficient purge morph is not worth a cast, it's the secondary effect of cleanse you want where it heals the group for 15% of their health and halves the duration of all existing and future debuffs for 6 seconds. Has the added effect of 10% extra magicka regen because of the support passives.
Double Take - aoes are everywhere, 25% aoe damage reduction? Yes please. Lasts a decent amount of time.
Other Good Abilities:
Piercing Mark – really nice ability, gives you a bit of stealth detection (but not for long enough to use useful). Main purpose is to debuff magicka resistances (stamina already debuff physical resistances themselves) and if the target dies with the debuff up you heal for 50% of your health.
Healing Springs – you won't use it a lot unless your team is stacked or you need to heal yourself, but it is the best or second best self heal per cast.
Mutagen/Rapid Regeneration – I find the hot too weak to be effective, it ends up being nothing but noise with the burst in pvp. The best use of it is to have it rolling on someone before they take damage so you have reaction time before using shrewd offering.
Borrowed Time (Time Stop) – I don't view healing as only healing health bars, your role is to support your group. I find the ability better in cyrodiil then battlegrounds, in battleground there are better choices.
Refreshing Path – Really strong heal, but only if people stand in the small area. I mainly use it because if I get cc'd it'll tick away, plus casting a shadow ability gives you major resolve and major ward. I hit this ability no matter what whenever I need the mitigation buff. If you use shadow image then I probably wouldn't use refreshing path, it's the bonus from using a shadow ability that's the main benefit.
Shadow Image – Not too bad... provides minor maim, but I prefer snaring with Ice elemental blockade, damage is meh. Port I don't like, there's an animation and travel time, that means while traveling you can still take damage. I've hit the ability when low health (maybe 25%) and when I ended my port I've been dead from dots and whatnot multiple times. If you're skilled in using it I'd continue, every time I read the description I imagine the possibilities and potential, it might just be me but I can't make it work.
Ward Ally – Shields are always good, just doesn't fit on my hotbar. There are better options.
Structured Entropy – I haven't been using this but think I'm going to try to find a way to fit it on my hotbar. I use the cheap pots in battlegrounds (I'm thrifty) or immovability pots and need a way to get major sorcery.
Crushing Shock – Useful in capture the relic battlegrounds to interrupt people trying to grab a relic.
Abilities you should not use:
Funnel Health/Swallow Soul – absolute garbage. The heal these abilities provide is tied to how much damage you do, as a healer the answer is not a lot. People run heavy armour, block, and are never fully debuffed so the healing amount is terrible, plus it can be reflected. Last time I tried it in pvp it was ticking for ~500 health. People associated the ability with NB so much that the weakness of the ability makes people think the class is weak. This ability, either morph, is a dps magblade ability and not a healing ability. Stay away. Funnel health is literally the same healing amount or less than mutagen, with half the duration and no secondary cleanse effect... but you also need a target and will do maybe 2k damage? You'd be better off doing nothing for that second to regen some magicka.
Sap Essence – every time I try to use this ability I die. I had a hunch it was reflectable but it's not, it's just that when you're in range of multiple opponents and would use this ability you should be getting out of there, not trying to do damage for a small heal. Not worth a skill slot in pvp, great in pve.
Ultimates
Soul Siphon – Best healing ultimate in battlegrounds hands down. Good range, strong effect. It's essentially a full heal for your team. Only problem is the effect doesn't hit for a second or so after using the ability, so it's useless when someone's being focused. Best use for the ability is when your team is all low health and you have a couple dps on you. I'll cloak away and then switch to my front bar and hit the ultimate – bam - team's full health.
Temporal Guard – I use this ultimate on my back defense/escape bar. I never use it though, it's purely for the passives. Soul Siphon is so strong it's the only ultimate I use. Slotting this ultimate will reduce the damage you take by 8% plus give you a free damage shield while blocking.
Typical Skill Loadouts
I'll tell you what I use in battlegrounds, there are different setups that work. I've noticed most pvp videos/builds make sure they have all the buffs in each build, this is one of the weaknesses I see right now because I'm missing some key buffs. There are many ways to skin a cat so there are options, the only thing I believe is mandatory is heavy fortified brass. Buffer of the swift might be decent post-patch, it's slightly more mitigation than light fortified brass. As an aside I've been meaning to try out healer's habit instead of bright throat but don't have the set yet. Since the build's missing minor mending I'm pretty sure it's superior to bright throat.
W1 – Powered Bright Throat Restoration Staff, glyph doesn't matter too much
W2 – (Trait doesn't matter too much) Bright Throat Ice Staff, mana drain glyph
Head – Heavy Infused Bogdan the Nightflame, tri stat glyph
Shoulders – Medium impenetrable Bogdan the Nightflame, magicka glyph
Chest – Heavy Infused Fortified Brass, tri stat glyph
Legs – Heavy Infused Fortified Brass, tri stat glyph
Belt – Light impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Hands – Heavy impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Feet – Heavy impenetrable Fortified Brass, magicka glyph
Necklade – Bright Throat magicka regen glyph
Rings (both) – Bright Throat magicka regen glyph
5 heavy, 1 light, 1 medium.
Race: High elf
Drink: Witchmothers potent brew
Mundus: Ritual (increased healing) or the Steed if you want to drop concealed blade on your back bar
Ability Points: All magicka
Resto staff: 1 – Shrewd offering, 2 – Healing Springs, 3 – Combat Prayer, 4 – Refreshing Path, 5 – Cleanse – U: Soul Siphon
Ice Staff: 1 – Mass Hysteria, 2 – Blockade of Frost, 3 – Concealed Weapon, 4 – Double Take, 5 – Shadowy Disguide – U: Soul Siphon
Playstyle:
You're a full healer/tank, for those who're new to pvp healing all healers are tanks. Expect to be the primary target of skilled opponents, so without mitigation you won't be able to contribute much to your team. Use your front bar for healing others, switch to your back bar when you're being focused to escape. Ice staff is for two reasons; first when you block with an ice staff it consumes magicka instead of stamina, if you're out of stamina from constantly being cc'd blocking with an ice staff will give you time for your stamina to regen. You also get a free damage shield every 10 seconds from having a psijic skill slotted. The other reason is elemental blockade, the ice variant is the best variant in pvp. Blockade of frost can also knock Nightblades out of stealth if you hit them on the initial cast. So basicly you heal and support the group with blockade and piercing mark in times when you don't need to heal.
Class Combinations for Battlegrounds:
Pvp is a lot rock/paper/scissors and the styles of who you're grouped with will matter a lot. This is a general guideline about how you should adapt to who you're playing with, and of course the person always matters more than the class so results will vary.
Dragonknights – easily the best class to be grouped with in battlegrounds. DKs have a lot of survivability, damage and cc and with the healing you provide you become a powerhouse. I've done some battlegrounds where I was teamed up with 2 newer players and an experienced dragonknight. The DK ended up going 30-1 in the battleground and we dominated. The combination is that powerful.
Templars – amazing class to be grouped with, especially hybrid magplars. Every time you shrewd offering you put a dot on yourself consuming some of your health, a templar throwing some heals every once in a while will increase your survivability a ton.
Wardens – good class, nothing overpowered. A good class to see in Bgs and I'd rate them as average.
Sorcerers – not the best class to combine with the build. They will usually go full defensive when they're attacked, so in a battleground that's a majority of the time. I find they're good at keeping themselves alive but do little to contribute to the group. If you're in a group of 4 and get attacked by a group of 4, expect the sorcerers to scatter and play defensively, that allows the other group can go full offence and pick you off one at a time without having to worry about their own survivability. They're a lot stronger with a front line person taking the brunt of the other team's attacks.
Nightblades – Tend to go off from the group, you can make it work but with a lot of nightblades you're moreso a tank than a healer. You have to be in the front line to take the brunt of enemy attacks for the group. As a healer this'll happen a lot anyways, but don't focus on chasing them around when you're the enemy's main target.
Bow dps – with a lot of bow dps you're tanking, healing them is secondary. To be effective they need to either go off themselves and attack from a hidden position or they need someone to be a front line person to take the brunt of the other team's attacks, otherwise they'll do nothing but kite until they get caught and die and contribute nothing. Also tend to kite right over you, I'm not sure if it's from incompetence or inexperience, but it's really annoying. In a group with 3 bow dps go full tank to absorb the other team's attacks so they can do their thing from range. Since they like standing behind you, they're very difficult to heal. Adapt by instead of chasing them to try to heal, play like a full tank to shield your team so they can do their pew pew thing. I'd also switch out cleanse for mutagen so you can heal people who're spread out and behind you, they lack the survivability to play in front of you and otherwise none of your heals will hit them. Most bow dps haven't gotten the memo about how ESO works, and that healing is targeted just like damage so if you're behind a healer you will get no healing.
