Vokul's DK PVE Magicka DPS build *UPDATED*

wrathofrraath

Gear - 7/7 light armor
Head: Legendary V14 Skoria (infused)
Shoulders: Legendary V14 Skoria (divines)
Chest: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (infused)
Gloves: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (infused)
Sash: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (infused)
Breeches: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (infused)
Boots: Legendary V14 Torug's Pact (divines)

Neck: Epic V12 Necklace of the Sun (spell dmg enchant)
Rings: Epic V14 Rings of Cyro Light (spell dmg enchant)

Staff: Legendary V14 Inferno Staff of Torug's Pact (fire dmg enchant)
-Precise or nirnhoned, depends on situations you encounter where your more exposed to damage, your enemy's resistance such as mobs vs bosses and if you use spells from the destro tree

Mundas: The Mage or the Atronach,
-Depends if you want to burst or sustain

Race: Dunmer
-High elf is the best race for a magicka user, no dunmer wants to admit it, but they benefit from having the elemental passive that increase fire effects like burning,
the dunmer flame talent only increases the damage of fire spells.

Bar 1
1. Molten Whip
2. Burning Embers for single target Fire Ring for AOE,
3. Engulfing Flames
4. Structured Entropy
5. Sea of Flames
6. Shooting Star

Bar 2
1. Molten Armaments
2. Scalding Rune
3. Eruption
4. Structured Entropy
5. Sea of Flames
6. Standard of Might


CS:
Mainly focus on elemental dmg before branching out to staff dmg with 1 point in critical dmg, and spell pen.
32 points in Cost reduction then work on magicka recovery. Slotting mages guild abilities balances this decision.
Whatever keeps you alive, I went 1% in a few with a focus on spell shield and elemental defender

Notes:
Make sure you keep all your DoTs up to proc Skoria, keep them refreshed and med weave/ molten whip in between.
-Scalding rune will let you have 2 mages guild abilities on both bars while having Sea of Flames, and give you might of the guild
-Ranged AOE is gnarly^.
-Keep molten arms up all the time.
-When the boss is at 20% health increase the amount of time you charge your med weave before you whip.
-Slay your enemies with a fully charged heavy attack as your last move and reap their magicka.

May you keep the deeps strong while I am away.

-Vokul Lovaas, Deadlands Adept

wrathofrraath

UPDATE

Just wanted to share the things that have changed by means of time and influence since I posted this build in April.

This build is designed for SO and hogh resistant enemies, as it allows to you gain the highest level of spell pen without the use of the champion system as well as retaining the max possible value of magicka you can achieve with this level of spell pen. You may see a decrease in your damage if you use this build in any other place beside these two realms, it is designed purely slay daedra and elemental atronachs and deal the most possible damage you can against foes with resistances similar to these two types of enemies.

Once I max out elemental defender, staff expert and the butcher passive will allow this build to use molten arms again as in the 1st version. The build will change yet again when I am able to distribute points into Spell Erosion and be able to switch my mundus stone to The Mage, as well as possibly being able to use a precise staff depending on how strong max spell erosion is.

Head: Legendary V14 Skoria (heavy divines)
Shoulders: Legendary V14 Skoria (medium divines)
Chest: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (light infused)
Gloves: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (light infused)
Sash: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (light infused)
Breeches: Legendary V12 Silks of the Sun (light infused)
Boots: Legendary V14 Torug's Pact (light divines)

Neck: Epic V12 Necklace of the Sun (spell damage enchant)
Rings: Epic V14 Rings of Cyro Light (spell damage enchant)

Staff: Two Legendary Nirnhoned V14 Inferno Staff of Torug's Pact (fire damage enchant)
Mundus: Apprentice

All attribute points into magicka

Bar 1
1. Molten Whip
2. Burning Embers
3. Engulfing Flames
4. Flames of Oblivion
5. Inner Light
6. Shooting Star

Bar 2
1. Fire Ring
2. Scalding Rune
3. Eruption
4. Flames of Oblivion
5. Inner Light
6. Standard of Might

Use spell power pots, if your poor like me you can swap scalding rune out for degeneration to still have an even amount of magicka on both bars since you only really have it there for the passives and to might of the guild banner when you use it. You can also use it as a initial burst attack if you place it on the ground in front of your enemy and have them walk onto it while you simultaneously hit them with a full heavy attack, but it only works well in a rotation if you know how to weapon swap cancel it.

Always cast flames of oblivion off of the bar with molten whip on it and always cast it when you are buffed at your highest spell power.
Now that we have more champion points and food was buffed, structured entropy may be replaced with inner light.

CS: 1 in erosion 1 in elfborn 1 in staff expert the rest in elemental expert. put all your green points into magician and 1 point into arcanist. for red i split your points evenly between hardy and elemental defender. I also like having 1 point in tenacity. You can put 1 point in whatever else you want but focus on these areas.

I do a specific weave that I can't explain, maybe I'll make a video one day.

*BaronChb's poison enchant is extreamly valid and recommended to go on your main staff, Daveheart brought to my attention the power of flames of oblivion vs sea of flames, the legendary Swaggasm is the reason I switched to 1 heavy 1 medium, as well as replace molten arms with fire ring - his DK DPS can not be contested, the mighty Gilliam's testing of the CS influences many of my decisions amongst the CS.

Scalding rune 4 lyfe

Long live the deeps.

Cuyler

Great stuff this is very close to @tehmagnus DEVO DK build originally posted here in April as well.

I might make some suggestions however:

1. switch to Silk of the Sun's Boots instead of Chest. Craft a Heavy Torug's chest w/nirnhoned for increased physical and spell resist with no trade off. This would require you to go with a light Valkyn shoulder.

2. Use Panacea of Detection. The Panacea of Spell power is actually bugged atm and will not allow the use while an animation is active. In addition the increase to spell crit is useless and doesn't stack with IL and SOF. Detection gives everything you need and can be used during an animation. Thereby not slowing your rotation.

3. Is there a reason behind not using Molten armaments/IW? Most high dps parses I see get 60%+ of the deeps from molten Arm Heavy attacks and the whip.

4. Fire enchants cancel the burning proc from molten whip (they don't stack). Try using a poison enchant on your staff (whip bar) to alleviate this and add an additional DoT for a better chance to proc Valkyn.

Cuyler

deleted. dbl post

wrathofrraath

@Cuyler pretty sure that build was a martial knowledge build until May when it was changed to Sun Set. molten arms / igneous adds a bit of damage, but i feel you get more damage from having an extra dot and you don't have to spend time resources casting it although i can flip my staff while casting it pretty quick. Until the butcher passive is aquired i don't see it being as powerful as another dot that crits as much as the damage that gets added. General "spell pot", what ever adds spell damage i use the detection pots because of the broken cooldown on spell pots, but I use whatever I can when I need to it's not really a game changer. Sometimes ill replace fire ring with the staff buff and use a nirnhoned torug greatsword for the extra spell damage since there is no weaving on the back bar and you get way more spell damage for your scalding, eruption, and banner. Not sure what works the best sword of staff. The boots give more spell pen because of the divines, no need for a heavy chest piece. Harvens extended stats is wrong and scales of physical resistance so that nirn piece might make it look like you have more pen, but go out and test it and you'll see it doesn't. Poison dot could work though.

Cuyler

"wrathofrraath wrote: »

molten arms / igneous adds a bit of damage, but i feel you get more damage from having an extra dot and you don't have to spend time resources casting it although i can flip my staff while casting it pretty quick. Until the butcher passive is aquired i don't see it being as powerful as another dot that crits as much as the damage that gets added.

I have the butcher passive so maybe that's why I see it more beneficial. I can get 40k from a single HA crit and have tried scalding rune with a dps loss. I have stuck with MA ever since.

"wrathofrraath wrote: »

Sometimes ill replace fire ring with the staff buff and use a nirnhoned torug greatsword for the extra spell damage since there is no weaving on the back bar and you get way more spell damage for your scalding, eruption, and banner. Not sure what works the best sword of staff.

Again because I get real high crits from MA and HAs, the SD increase from switching to a 2h/DW is marginal at best. I usually see a loss. Inferno staff on both bars seems to be the best for me.

"wrathofrraath wrote: »

The boots give more spell pen because of the divines, no need for a heavy chest piece. Harvens extended stats is wrong and scales of physical resistance so that nirn piece might make it look like you have more pen, but go out and test it and you'll see it doesn't.

The chest with nirnhoned I suggested to increase spell resistances by 24% while increasing armor. Has nothing to do with spell pen (did you mean resist?). This allows me to ignore the spell shield passive in the CS and put more CPs into elemental expert which during my tests appears to have a greater effect than the increase pen from a single divines piece. All while making me more resistant.

Globally very few mobs/bosses have enough resistances to warrant the marginal increase to pen from the single divines piece IMO, whereas +24% spell resistance and + elemental expert will help you in every fight. The benefit here really depends on how many and where the warrior CPs are distributed.

Thanks again tho....any variations of this build is going to rock

wrathofrraath

I remember telling everyone to use the sun when people still thought martial was better and many people called me wrong for it. If you can find a sun set build posted before april then you can call this a "variation"

When everyone maxes out elemental wreckoning and staff expert things will be sure, right now there is a huge gap in CP, thats cool you have the butcher passive and your HA hit hard. At this point in time I have 233 CP and we just shredded SO apart on NA, check the boards so something is working out for me. I can't wait to catch up to you guys in the CP game though, it will be pretty gnarly.

Long. Live. The. Deeps.

Cuyler

Gratz on your SO run! That's awesome

Addihul

Vokul laying down the hurt!

Would love to see your weave in detail.

wrathofrraath

delete

Gilliamtherogue

wrathofrraath wrote: »

Race: Dunmer
-High elf is the best race for a magicka user, no dunmer wants to admit it, but they benefit from having the elemental passive that increase fire effects like burning,
the dunmer flame talent only increases the damage of fire spells.

Have you tested this since the 1.6.3 build where the stealth change of 7% spell damage amp broke into 7% flat flame damage increase? After doing some testing with @Attorneyatlawl , he figured out that the Dunmer passive that once only increased your spell damage had suddenly changed into 7% flat increase of damage on fire attacks.

The bonus magicka HE has over DE is still something to consider, as well as the boost to the regen, but that 3% damage discrepancy is a hard void to fill for min maxers like ourselves.

wrathofrraath

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

wrathofrraath wrote: »

Race: Dunmer
-High elf is the best race for a magicka user, no dunmer wants to admit it, but they benefit from having the elemental passive that increase fire effects like burning,
the dunmer flame talent only increases the damage of fire spells.

Have you tested this since the 1.6.3 build where the stealth change of 7% spell damage amp broke into 7% flat flame damage increase? After doing some testing with @Attorneyatlawl , he figured out that the Dunmer passive that once only increased your spell damage had suddenly changed into 7% flat increase of damage on fire attacks.

The bonus magicka HE has over DE is still something to consider, as well as the boost to the regen, but that 3% damage discrepancy is a hard void to fill for min maxers like ourselves.

Yeah I think Dunmer passive is applied to all fire damage now, that was written way back in April before 1.6 changed it.

wrathofrraath

Some interesting data I collected on my mammoths:

MK
Burning: 579 874*
Staff: 14,795 22,340*
Firey Weapon: 593 896*
Skoria: 8688 13,119*
Molten Whip: 7316 11,047*

Sun
Burning: 626 945*
Staff: 14,086 21,270*
Firey Weapon: 614 928*
Skoria: 8996 13,584*
Molten Whip: 7303 11,027*

Sun increases burning damage, fiery weapon enchant and skoria while MK increases staff attacks and slightly increases spells. Where are my DK theory crafters at ?