HatchetHaro's "Virulent Scourge" Stamina DK PvE DPS

HatchetHaro

A Stamina DK PvE DPS Guide by HatchetHaro

Yes I stole that name off of Warframe.

There are many guides being thrown around for stamina DKs, and they're all pretty much the same stuff with slight variations between each one. Here's my take on the "meta" stam DK build and rotations.

Please keep in mind that these are all simply what I personally use and are my own recommendations on my preferred stam DK build. There are many alternatives to the build that other people may prefer, and I will talk about them as well.

The main inspiration of this build is Nos's "Poison Knight" build.
This guide is also available on Tamriel Foundry.


STATS

RACE
I'm personally not a fan of racial passives; most people are pretty much forced to pick an "optimal race" in order to be able to min-max. Still, here are some raw stats on races that have something to do with stam DKs, ranked from best to worst (personal opinion).

Redguard - +10% stamina, +9% stamina recovery, 3% stamina restored on melee attacks every 5 seconds, -90 meta points
Khajiit - +8% weapon crit chance, +10% stamina recovery, +100% furry tail
Orc - +6% stamina, +4% melee weapon attack damage, +25% muscle mass
Bosmer - +6% stamina, +21% stamina recovery, +50% cannibalism
Imperial - +10% stamina, +94% useless Red Diamond passive
Argonian - LIZARDS **** YEAH! +1 erect spine (oh, and 4620 stamina restored on potion use - effective about +23% stamina recovery)
Dunmer - +6% stamina, +7% flame damage, +100 non-magDK points
Nord - +6% stamina, +50% mead tolerance
Altmer - +4% flame damage, +100 non-magicka points
Breton - jack

General rule of thumb is that a higher stamina pool is going to grant you more damage with your abilities, and a higher stamina recovery is going to allow you to sustain quick rotations for much longer.

On a stamina DK, this may mean that you might want to prioritize a higher stamina pool. That +10% stamina buff on Redguards and Imperials can net you about 10% more damage compared to, say, Argonians. That ~3k stamina difference can mean a damage difference of 1k+ per DoT, and in a full rotation it can add up.

And yes, this means I'm handicapping myself somewhat by playing an Argonian; **** yeah lizards.

27805 stamina - Poison Injection tooltip: 4258 instant and 8720 DoT = 12978 dmg; Endless Hail: 1097 x 20 = 21940 dmg
32839 stamina - Poison Injection tooltip: 4659 instant and 9540 DoT = 14199 dmg; Endless Hail: 1200 x 20 = 24000 dmg
33974 stamina - Poison Injection tooltip: 4749 instant and 9725 DoT = 14474 dmg; Endless Hail: 1224 x 20 = 24480 dmg

Keep in mind that criticals aren't factored in; those will net even more of a damage difference.

Based on these, you should try out and pick between varying rotations, because depending on your racial choice and your stats, you may need to heavy attack more to sustain your rotation, and based on the rotations you pick you'll also find that certain gear sets work better than others.

Vampire it up. It looks ugly, but it'll give you 10% more stamina recovery. Just pop on a skin or wear some full armor.
Or just use a Dwemeri Tonal Attenuator / Executioner's Hood and Nordic Bather's Towel to hide your ugly mug but embrace your beautiful skin.

Health bonuses

A minor thing to keep in mind is your racial health bonuses. Remember: a dead DD deals 0 dps, so a 17k+ health pool is desirable in veteran trials, perhaps even more. In this case, you may find yourself assigning several points into health or using health enchantments, which will take out from your stamina pool. Naturally, the more health you have, the less of a hit your stamina pool will take. Here are the races with racial passives with something to do with survivability, ranked from best to worst (also personal opinion). Keep in mind that I've decided to ignore the resistance bonuses; I find that they matter little, and it's just better to have a good health pool.

Imperial - +12% max health, 10% chance to restore 6% of max health on melee attacks
Nord - +9% max health, +6% damage reduction
Argonian - +9% max health, +5% healing done, +5% healing received
Orc - +6% max health

ATTRIBUTES
All into stamina. You can always get extra health from enchants.


MUNDUS
The Thief


FOOD
Health + Stamina.

You don't need the Dubious Camoran Throne for the stamina recovery. The reasoning behind this is that stam DKs can simply just rely on heavy attacks and not lose out on damage due to their extra heavy attack damage from Molten Armaments. The stamina sustain is enough even with only 1-2 heavy attacks in your rotations, and your passives make sure you get a lot of resources back from casting your ultimates.

Also, using the Dubious Camoran Throne decreases your health and stamina pool, and if you use health enchants to get your survivability back up, your stamina pool will take more hits. Remember: ability damage scales off your stamina pool as well.


CHAMPION POINTS
Taken pretty much directly from Nos's "Poison Knight" CP allocations. I personally didn't test my CP; I'll just trust Nos on this. Yeah, I'm lazy that way.

RED TREE
Dependent on Trial

BLUE TREE
Master at Arms - 28
Mighty - 56
Precise Strikes - 56
Thaumaturge - 56
Piercing - 14

GREEN TREE
Regen - 100
Tenacity - 100
WhateverTheHeckElse - 10



GEAR
Armor / Jewellery
2pc Kra'gh's
5pc TFS (Twice-Fanged Serpent)
3pc VO (Vicious Serpent)

All armor - Divines - Stamina enchantment
All jewellery - Robust - Weapon Damage enchantment

Weapons
VO Axe - Infused - Poison enchantment
VO Dagger - Sharpened - Weapon Damage enchantment
vMA Bow - Sharpened

Alt Gear
Kra'gh's - Velidreth; Spawn of Mephala; Stormfist
VO - Hunding's Rage; Night Mother's Gaze
TFS - Spriggans; Night Mother's Gaze
vMA bow - any of the above 5pc sets

The reason I'm using Kra'gh's is that the damage from its proc is the best among the monster sets. Overpenetration isn't too much of a big deal especially with that proc. Velidreth is close behind in terms of damage. I've heard great things about Selene's as well, but from my own personal testing, it procs way too little for stam DKs, and is extremely sub-par.

Spawn of Mephala, in the current patch, is a little underwhelming when compared to Kra'gh's and Velidreth due to its 1pc health bonus; however, the damage proc from it is only slightly lower compared to Velidreth, and with the coming Horns of the Reach update, it'll become a viable monster set to run if you don't have Kra'gh's or Velidreth.

Stormfist is pretty much on the same level as Spawn of Mephala. A different thing here, though, is that its stamina recovery 1pc can actually help you in trials situations where your stamina pool gets depleted more quickly than normal. The sustain difference is pretty noticeable, actually, especially with this rotation.

There have been tests showing that Hunding's Rage sometimes performs better than VO for stam DKs. However, this damage difference is, in my opinion, negligible, and I prefer the stamina cost reduction from having 5pc VO. In actual trials situations, with the rotations I use, stamina will always be slowly depleted, and the 8% stamina cost reduction is very useful for sustaining fights longer without having to chow down on orbs and shards.

However, depending on your rotations, the more heavy attacks you use, the better Hunding's Rage is compared to VO due to the decreasing usefulness of the VO stamina cost reduction. My personal recommendation is VO if you're using 1-2 heavy attacks per rotation and Hunding's Rage if you're using 3-5 heavy attacks per rotation.

Oh, also, make sure you use the Poisoned enchantment on your infused weapon. The DoT from it is stronger than Rearming Trap.

Untested-but-promising Alt Gear

Morag Tong
Sunderflame
Alkosh

I personally haven't tested these yet.

I've heard great things about Sunderflame, and I think could work with our current rotation with a few tweaks. Would be great for a support set.

Alkosh may be further into the meta the upcoming update, and I could see stam DK damage-dealers wearing these in place of VO; the 5pc synergy proc on it could function as a decent DoT as well as the debuff, and I can see that being worked into rotations as long as there's a steady stream of synergies.

Morag Tong increases the poison damage the enemy takes. It's very niche, but I can see it being a very fun set to run for groups with multiple (or all) stamina DKs.

SKILLS


DW bar:
Venomous Claw - one of your main DK DoTs; best to heavy weave into due to its low cast time
Rending Slashes - a good DoT; also great to heavy weave into due to the low cast time
Rearming Trap - mainly for the Minor Force; also good damage
Razor / Anti-Cavalry Caltrops - one of your main DoTs; high cost but high damage
Deadly Cloak - amazing defensive skill, and also deals quite a bit of damage
Flawless Dawnbreaker - slotted for +5% weapon damage, but also a good low-cost ulti in a pinch

Bow bar:
Molten Armaments - empowers your heavy attacks by 40%, so good to have
Poison Injection - one of your main DoTs; also your only source of execute damage
Endless Hail - your highest source of damage; your highest source of damage on crack with vMA bow
Noxious Breath - your weakest DoT; pretty good for AOE fights though; provides Major Fracture for solo parsing
Flames of Oblivion - good DoT, slot for Major Savagery, but you probably should be using potions for that anyways
Standard of Might - your main ultimate; drop it and watch your dps soar

Important flex abilities:
Steel Tornado - replace Rending Slashes for AoE spammable
Resolving Vigor - best heal for stamina players, which really isn't saying a lot, but hey, it might save your team
Unrelenting Grip - chains, for chaining stuff in; mainly for vMoL adds in the Twins fight

Unimportant flex abilities:
Igneous Shield - weak shield, but good to have; empowers your Vigor, too
Green Dragon Blood - great burst heal, but mainly for the healing received buff and stamina recovery
Shuffle - pretty much a 15% damage mitigation, except powered by RNG
Deep Breath - AoE interrupt, pretty much only useful in vMoL Twins fight
Inner Beast/Rage - taunt, for taunting; useful for pretending to be a tank in dungeons


Flex spots, in order from most disposable to least, are: Molten Armaments, Noxious Breath, Flames of Oblivion, Rending Slashes. Keep in mind, though, that you may be increasing your rotation length if you replace Molten Armaments with an ability that you use a lot. My recommendation is to replace Noxious Breath if you need to since you can easily work the flex skills into your rotations, or simply skip over it in case you don't need it.

Another thing to keep in mind is the choice between Razor Caltrops and Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Rotations are covered below. If your rotations take less than 13 seconds, Razor Caltrops will deal more damage. However, if your rotations take more than 13 seconds, Anti-Cavalry Caltrops will be better. The damage difference between them, however, is only about 3000 damage per rotation (about 200 dps), so it shouldn't matter that much.

One more thing is the choice between Rearming Trap and Lightweight Beast Trap. While Lightweight Beast Trap deals more damage on its own, Rearming Trap provides more Minor Force uptime and results in a higher overall dps. However, the dps difference between the two are relatively negligible, and you may want to pick Lightweight Trap over Rearming due to its convenient ranged nature.


ROTATIONS
Keep in mind that these are the rotations that I use and find work well for me. Rotations are going to stay relatively similar; changes are just going to be the number of heavy attacks you use.

("-" no weave; ">" light attack; ">>" heavy attack; "|" barswap)

DW:
>> Venomous Claw >> Rending Slashes > Rearming Trap > Razor Caltrops > Deadly Cloak |

Bow:
> Endless Hail > Poison Injection > Noxious Breath > Flames of Oblivion (> Molten Armaments) (> Standard of Might) |

Starting rotation:
Flames of Oblivion - Molten Armaments - Rearming Trap | Endless Hail > Poison Injection > Noxious Breath | > Venomous Claw > Rending Slashes > Rearming Trap > Razor Caltrops > Deadly Cloak |

This rotation length is 12 seconds per rotation, which is the length of Razor Caltrops. Of course, this is where the heavy attacks come in. If you choose to only heavy attack once in the rotation, the rotation will take 11 seconds. Heavy attacking four times will lengthen the rotation to 14 seconds. Remember: heavy attack on your dual wield bar; it's much faster and deals more damage than heavy attacking with a bow.

One cool thing about stamina DKs is that their rotations are extremely flexible; you can swap skills and abilities around and change the order of your rotations in order to suit your playstyle. Seriously, this setup is pretty much "throw everything you have at them and toss in a few heavy attacks".


PARSE
This is a solo 3m skeleton parse done with infused Kra'gh's arm cops and a sharpened VO sword; so, not the ideal gear, but still definitely good.

HORNS OF THE REACH
Just switch to the Lover or Shadow stone (depending on what gear your tank is wearing), and swap out your sharpened weapons for precise.