Thaumaturge vs Master-at-Arms vs Deadly Aim

Tariq9898

Hi, so I'm currently stuck on the dreaded part of deciding which CP to slot for Warfare. This is a hybrid DK that focuses on solo endgame content with a bit of thematic flare and roleplay. The goal is Vet Vateshran (Spirit Slayer), Maelstrom, even soloing some Vet DLC group dungeons. It's NOT intended for vet trial content.

You can check out the build here (NO food buffs):
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=650843

Here quick rundown of my skills:

Backbar: Maelstrom 2h flame staff
- Noxious breath
- Elemental blockade
- Resolving Vigor/Warding Contingency (flex)
- Igneous weapons
- Volatile armor
- ⭐Standard of Might

Frontbar: Order's Wrath 2h greatsword
- Barbed trap
- Carve
- Flames of oblivion
- Molten whip
- Venomous claw
- ⭐Flawless Dawnbreaker

The build utilizes Order's Wrath, Runecarver, Pale Order Ring, and Slimecraw.
Order's Wrath is on front bar.
Runecarver is always active with 3 light armor pieces and a Ring and Necklace.
I tried to make the build DOT heavy.

So far, my Blue CPs are: Deadly Aim, Force of Nature, Fighting Finesse, and Thaumaturge.

Force of Nature is a must because I'm solo and I need the extra penetration. However, between Thaumaturge and Master--at-Arms, which would yield more DPS increase??? Thaum buffs DOT whereas MaA buffs direct damage... so it's hard for me to decide. Seeing as many of my skills do DOTs and direct damage.

cheemers

Difficult to say. I'm on console, so what I'd do is two separate dummy parses, one with Thaum and one with MaA, and see which one is higher.

BasP

I replicated your build on my Khajiit DK on ESO's PTS and did some quick parses on a 3M dummy, comparing both CPs. The difference in DPS seems to be quite small, but overall Thaumaturge seemed to be marginally better for me (though the % of critical hits was more of a deciding factor in which setup yielded the best results).

You could consider switching from the Lover to the Thief Mundus and using a Charged Maul instead of a Precise Greatsword, along with an Absorb Stamina glyph on the Maelstrom staff. That setup netted me 7% more DPS (at the loss of a good bit of Weapon/ Spell Damage though, which isn't great).

loosej

As cheemers said, only way to be sure is by doing dummy parses. Personally I'd boost dots over direct damage, but more for the interaction with Pale Order. Dots give you a constant stream of small heals, which (in my opinion) helps more in solo content. Most arena/dungeon fights are more about mechanics than about raw dps, and I like the extra breathing room I get to properly execute them by getting that continuous passive healing.

That being said, I would also replace one of your skills with Coag Blood. Vigor + Pale Order will get you pretty far, but having an on-demand burst heal still doesn't hurt. I'd put it on the back bar instead of noxious breath, move that to the front bar so it benefits from Order's Wrath bonuses, and ditch barbed trap.

Blockade of fire is a ground dot, so when you change to the front bar it gains crit bonus from order's wrath as well. But noxious breath is a sticky dot, those have fixed dmg/crit/... modifiers for their entire duration. And the direct dmg from noxious breath is pretty good as well, making it a decent aoe spammable, so that's another reason to want it on your front bar.

Tariq9898

BasP wrote: »

I replicated your build on my Khajiit DK on ESO's PTS and did some quick parses on a 3M dummy, comparing both CPs. The difference in DPS seems to be quite small, but overall Thaumaturge seemed to be marginally better for me (though the % of critical hits was more of a deciding factor in which setup yielded the best results).

You could consider switching from the Lover to the Thief Mundus and using a Charged Maul instead of a Precise Greatsword, along with an Absorb Stamina glyph on the Maelstrom staff. That setup netted me 7% more DPS (at the loss of a good bit of Weapon/ Spell Damage though, which isn't great).

Thanks for testing it out!! 40k+ on a 3 mill dummy doesn't seem bad for a solo build. By the way what food did you use?

BasP

Tariq9898 wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

I replicated your build on my Khajiit DK on ESO's PTS and did some quick parses on a 3M dummy, comparing both CPs. The difference in DPS seems to be quite small, but overall Thaumaturge seemed to be marginally better for me (though the % of critical hits was more of a deciding factor in which setup yielded the best results).

You could consider switching from the Lover to the Thief Mundus and using a Charged Maul instead of a Precise Greatsword, along with an Absorb Stamina glyph on the Maelstrom staff. That setup netted me 7% more DPS (at the loss of a good bit of Weapon/ Spell Damage though, which isn't great).

Thanks for testing it out!! 40k+ on a 3 mill dummy doesn't seem bad for a solo build. By the way what food did you use?

I used Braised Rabbits with Spring Vegetables (Max Health and Stamina) and tri-stat potions. Considering you mentioned Spirit Slayer in your opening post - 40K DPS should be enough to ignore the shade ring mechanic in vVH's last battle and just focus on that boss instead, which is nice.

I personally try to aim for a bit more than 40K though, so I was messing around some more with your setup. You could consider changing the back bar glyph to a Shock Enchant so that you apply Minor Vulnerability to the enemies, a debuff that you'd otherwise be missing. With that enchant and a Charged weapon on the front bar I had a 96% uptime on Minor Vul, and I ended up with 47K DPS (please note that I'm far from great at parsing btw).

That'd look like this:

Zodiarkslayer

Even with the Charged Maul frontbar, it might be still better to drop force of nature and use wrathful strikes.
At the same time one can use a scribed skill with flame damage and minor breach instead of Carve (only 1.6K dps). That would fill the hole left by force of nature.

BasP

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Even with the Charged Maul frontbar, it might be still better to drop force of nature and use wrathful strikes.
At the same time one can use a scribed skill with flame damage and minor breach instead of Carve (only 1.6K dps). That would fill the hole left by force of nature.

Good point. With one extra piece of Light Armor I had 17839 Penetration without Force of Nature, which is pretty close to the cap. I tried both Fiery Contingency and Fiery Burst and overall I had slightly better results with Fiery Burst myself (around 46K vs. 47K on the 3M dummy). So that's about the same DPS as I had with my last Force of Nature setup, but it could be more consistent in content I suppose.

Without Carve I'd personally be tempted to switch to a DW front bar and use Deadly Cloak or Traveling Knife for more DPS though (or something like this when more defense is needed).

And just in case you're interested, OP:

2H with Soul Burst (Flame Damage + Lingering Torment + Minor Breach)

DW with Traveling Knife (Bleed Damage + Assassin's Misery + Minor Berserk)

I should've switched back to the Medium shoulder piece, though.

Tariq9898

BasP wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Even with the Charged Maul frontbar, it might be still better to drop force of nature and use wrathful strikes.
At the same time one can use a scribed skill with flame damage and minor breach instead of Carve (only 1.6K dps). That would fill the hole left by force of nature.

Good point. With one extra piece of Light Armor I had 17839 Penetration without Force of Nature, which is pretty close to the cap. I tried both Fiery Contingency and Fiery Burst and overall I had slightly better results with Fiery Burst myself (around 46K vs. 47K on the 3M dummy). So that's about the same DPS as I had with my last Force of Nature setup, but it could be more consistent in content I suppose.

Without Carve I'd personally be tempted to switch to a DW front bar and use Deadly Cloak or Traveling Knife for more DPS though (or something like this when more defense is needed).

And just in case you're interested, OP:

2H with Soul Burst (Flame Damage + Lingering Torment + Minor Breach)

DW with Traveling Knife (Bleed Damage + Assassin's Misery + Minor Berserk)

I should've switched back to the Medium shoulder piece, though.

Thank you so much!! Definitely gonna try this out! I just got back into the game and haven’t unlocked scribing yet. Gonna start tonight.

As for penetration, I’m guessing it’s a gradual increase to DPS rather than being black and white where if you hit cap, you deal all the damage and none if you don’t??

Because 17,839 covers 98% of the 18200. And I’m curious what the equation is for that gradual increase in damage with penetration.

Tariq9898

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Even with the Charged Maul frontbar, it might be still better to drop force of nature and use wrathful strikes.
At the same time one can use a scribed skill with flame damage and minor breach instead of Carve (only 1.6K dps). That would fill the hole left by force of nature.

I’m still learning as I go. And I just realized that Wrathful Strikes buffs ALL damage. Whereas something like Master-at-Arms only buff Direct. MaA grants a greater DPS increase than Wrathful when it comes to direct hits. But Wrathful will buff even DOTS, something MaA doesn’t do. And for a DOT heavy build, Wrathful may outpace MaA.

This is quite interesting.