Assassination

Assassination is the first skill line of the Nightblade class in Elder Scrolls Online. The name of the tree tells everything for itself. All abilities have one clear goal - to kill enemy fast. That’s why all enemies are afraid of Nightblade class. The Assassination tree is for melee fighters and will not help ranged assassins.

• Death Stroke is an ultimate ability that damages the target and reduces efficiency of all incoming healing applied to the target. Very good ability that allows to confuse opponent and make him nervous.
• Assassin’s Blade is a strike that damages the target. The spell works great against targets with low health dealing them increased damage. Perfect way to kill weak enemy.
• Teleport Strike allows to decrease distance between you and enemy fast. The ability teleports Nightblade to the enemy, deals damage and stuns the target. It is a great attacking spell that can be used for different purposes.
• Blur increases Nightblade’s chance to avoid attack. Enemies don’t miss all attacks, but their chances to miss increase.
• Mark Target allows to chose a single target and deal extra damage when attacking it. When the target is killed you receive Health.
• Haste makes Nightblade’s weapon attacks faster. It is a great ability for increasing DPS. Haste + Blur is a very good combination for PvP.

The school has 4 passive abilities that restore Magicka energy, increase critical strike damage, critical strike rating and increase damage while invisible. The full description of each passive can be found in the table.

As you can see all abilities of the Assassination line are for melee combat. There are spells that will help you to kill escaping target or perform sudden attack, kill target with low health, increase your attack speed and increase your evasion. A character who specializes in Assassination is a killing machine. Does it mean that all Nightblades with Assassination specialization are gods at the battlefield? No. The general minus of such build is that there is only one protective ability there. Moreover, this ability does not protect character fully; it only increases chances to evade. The build is absolutely playable but the survivability of such specialization is low. Assassination specialization is for those who prefer hardcore melee fights and is not afraid of being killed.

If you don’t like the idea of low survivability nothing stops you from creating your own build. You can mix Assassination spells with other schools to create the combination you like. That’s how class system in ESO works.

Do not forget that all class spells require Magicka energy. Maybe it looks a little bit strange when we speak about Nightblade but that is how it works. If you are going to use Assassination skills make sure you have enough Magicka energy. You should sometimes invest points into increasing the size of your Magicka pool.