Stam DK PVP Questions

Saint314Louis1985

I am a vet 9 stam DK (maybe 60-70 CP) on XBONE na server and looking for suggestions about how to optimize my char for PVP.

My play style is a somewhat "stealthy" warrior but not afraid to get into the mix. Use primarily 2H unless the situation calls for me to fall back and attack at distance w/ bow. Although I would truly love to be able to solo PK without having to worry about completly getting wrecked by 2 or 3 people. I can tolerate losing a fight but Id atleast like to make a decent stand. Overall I do really well in PVP 1v1 situations but 1vsX i get completely owned (CC destroys me).

I currently run the same armor set and skills for both PVP and PVE. Seem to have no problems in PVE but in PVP i seem to have several flaws and am curious how to correct them.

My setup is as follows:

Use ravagers jewelry, legs and gaunts and the rest is medium armor hundings rage for damage increase + a purple 2H sword with flame glyph.

My armor is enchanted with a mixture of health and stam glyphs with weapon dmg glyphs on jewelry and have critical defense bonus or divines traits (adding to warrior stone).

My base stats are somewhere around 22k health and 22k stam, 2k+ weapon dam base, 800 stam regen, 26% crit hit 12k magic resist and 10k physical resist. That includes the stat bonuses from purple food.


Skills - Bar One (2H) = Executioner, Stampede (for snare), Wrecking blow, Rally, GDB, Dragon Leap
Bar Two (bow) = Snipe, Poison arrow, Volatile Armor, Wings, GDB, Dragon Leap

My questions are:

1) Would I be better off switching to a heavy armor set for more resist and less weapon damage? Or would it be better to enchant all armor to health glyphs and slightly lowering my stam pool? Or switching to stam glyphs for max damage and more stam pool?

2) Any suggestions on different skills to have slotted in case of 1vX PVP encounters?

3) Would nirhorned traits be a huge improvement once i get them for my armor? (waiting for v14 to do so due to the crazy cost of the gear)

4) Is it just a L2P issue or am I seeing the limitations of my build?

5) If i start putting points into Health attribute, would i lose alot in damage? and how much would i have to put into health to make my player noticeably "tankier"?

Any degree of help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Xael

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

I am a vet 9 stam DK (maybe 60-70 CP) on XBONE na server and looking for suggestions about how to optimize my char for PVP.

My play style is a somewhat "stealthy" warrior but not afraid to get into the mix. Use primarily 2H unless the situation calls for me to fall back and attack at distance w/ bow. Although I would truly love to be able to solo PK without having to worry about completly getting wrecked by 2 or 3 people. I can tolerate losing a fight but Id atleast like to make a decent stand. Overall I do really well in PVP 1v1 situations but 1vsX i get completely owned (CC destroys me).

I currently run the same armor set and skills for both PVP and PVE. Seem to have no problems in PVE but in PVP i seem to have several flaws and am curious how to correct them.

My setup is as follows:

Use ravagers jewelry, legs and gaunts and the rest is medium armor hundings rage for damage increase + a purple 2H sword with flame glyph.

My armor is enchanted with a mixture of health and stam glyphs with weapon dmg glyphs on jewelry and have critical defense bonus or divines traits (adding to warrior stone).

My base stats are somewhere around 22k health and 22k stam, 2k+ weapon dam base, 800 stam regen, 26% crit hit 12k magic resist and 10k physical resist. That includes the stat bonuses from purple food.


Skills - Bar One (2H) = Executioner, Stampede (for snare), Wrecking blow, Rally, GDB, Dragon Leap
Bar Two (bow) = Snipe, Poison arrow, Volatile Armor, Wings, GDB, Dragon Leap

My questions are:

1) Would I be better off switching to a heavy armor set for more resist and less weapon damage? Or would it be better to enchant all armor to health glyphs and slightly lowering my stam pool? Or switching to stam glyphs for max damage and more stam pool?

2) Any suggestions on different skills to have slotted in case of 1vX PVP encounters?

3) Would nirhorned traits be a huge improvement once i get them for my armor? (waiting for v14 to do so due to the crazy cost of the gear)

4) Is it just a L2P issue or am I seeing the limitations of my build?

5) If i start putting points into Health attribute, would i lose alot in damage? and how much would i have to put into health to make my player noticeably "tankier"?

Any degree of help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

1. the latter
2. yes see below
3. considering the patch is a few weeks away, i would say no, save your gold
4. both
5. How much Health do you have without points or enchants? Mind you, you get a small amount from putting points into the "red" in your champ points. It's small and diminishing, but it's some. Are you Imperial? You technically don't need more than 23k, but if you want to get higher up toward 30, by all means. I recommend you check out Lefty Lucy. He is one of the most tanky DKs I have fought and I have mad respect for his build/playstyle. My build however is more of a bursty smash face type of thing that switches to tank in a 1vX or "oh ***" situation.

If you want a solo 1vX build that is based around Stam 2h, I have a build for you.
Bar 1 (2h) Charge (w/e morph), Wrecking, fossilize (for block spammers), rally, executioner - Leap (w/e morph)
Bar 2 (1hs) Green Dragon Blood, Shuffle, Defensive Stance, Igneous Shield, Reverb Bash (or Unstable Flame/chains/spike armor/Vigor) - Corrosive Armor ult or Werewolf and a werewolf skill set.

I personally don't care for using a bow on a DK. I would much rather have a tank bar.


For gear you don't need anything elaborate or expensive. DKs are very robust so you can get by with basic stuff like Way of the Air / night silence for your regen, 2pc monster set, shadow walker rings etc. If you don't have access to Engine Guardian, you can always add another set that will either give you regen or weapon damage or even Whitestrakes (I recommend Whitestrakes). Also go 2h Mace w/Sharpened Trait until they nerf it.. Personally I wouldn't spend too much gold until the patch drops. You will be leveling to v16 and new sets will be available. Also damage and playstyle will change.

Saint314Louis1985

Thanks for the help!

Not sure about my base health but all my attributes are in stam so im sure its really low. My char is a nord. Wish I had known that was a poor choice! Think I am going to give the sword and shield route a try instead of bow.

Thecapeo

I've put no points into health on my stam DK, 3 health glyphs on armor and I'm just about at 24k health with food at VR9 right now. I don't know if that's the most efficient way to go but it's working for me so far.

Question for Xael, is there any other weapon skill line that offers comparable damage to 2H right now? My first bar is exactly as you describe above and, honestly, I'm just getting a little bored with the WB, WB, WB till I can execute style. It's effective, don't get me wrong, but I've been running it since I started to PvP a couple months back and I'd like to maybe try something different. Is the coming patch possibly making other stam DK builds more viable?

Xael

Thecapeo wrote: »

I've put no points into health on my stam DK, 3 health glyphs on armor and I'm just about at 24k health with food at VR9 right now. I don't know if that's the most efficient way to go but it's working for me so far.

Question for Xael, is there any other weapon skill line that offers comparable damage to 2H right now? My first bar is exactly as you describe above and, honestly, I'm just getting a little bored with the WB, WB, WB till I can execute style. It's effective, don't get me wrong, but I've been running it since I started to PvP a couple months back and I'd like to maybe try something different. Is the coming patch possibly making other stam DK builds more viable?

I would check out Lefty Lucy or his videos (if he has any current ones up). He is pretty much the man right now.
@Lefty_Lucy you have been summoned


You are going to see a lot of nonsense on the forum, particularly PTS bozos who keep whining about NBs being the kings of the Imperial City and DKs are dead, yada yada. Most often they say something really dumb like "I could stand in front of a DK, spamming vigor and rally while he was spamming whips, while I was draining his stamina so easily, dragon blood is now useless, even inhale is better." I mean this is pretty bad and very telling that the DK was kinda bad and not a good measuring stick. No good DK, particularly Stamina is going to stand there spamming Whip... lol.

Honestly, I am a good pvper so I do ok with just about anything I put my mind to, however im still a noob on my DK compared to people like Lefty, so check him out before you get any advice from me he is leaps and bounds better than I am as a DK. Leaps and bounds. Also I don't have any Stam DK experience on PTS yet, I did Magicka to test something.

Xael

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

Thanks for the help!

Not sure about my base health but all my attributes are in stam so im sure its really low. My char is a nord. Wish I had known that was a poor choice! Think I am going to give the sword and shield route a try instead of bow.

Nord is fine man. They are getting more Health in the patch and still have the damage resist. Nothing wrong with a manly race like Nord

Planchard

When 1.6 came out, I dropped my templar and made my DK my main at that time. From lvl 15-VR14, almost all my leveling was in Cyrodiil. Up until about VR7, I used this setup:

Bar 1- Bow- 1. Bombard/Snipe (Depends on if I was running solo or with friends) 2. Reflective Scales, 3. Rapid maneuvers 4. GDB 5. Poison Injection Ult- Ferocious Leap

Bar 2- 2h 1. Rally 2. Igneous Shields 3. Executioner 4. Wrecking Blow 5. Crit Rush Ult- Devouring Swarm

When I hit VR7, I swapped out bow for dual wield and ran a pretty similar setup except I used Flying Blades instead of snipe/bombard and Steel Tornado instead of poison injection. I basically use my dual wield bar for when I want to ult bomb a group and I'll use 2h for single targets.

Since I've hit VR14 awhile ago, I've tried out different abilities and now I currently use the same setup as above but instead of Flying Blade on DW bar, I use Shuffle and instead of GDB I use Vigor.

I'm by no means the best player but I feel I can handle my own in almost every situation with this setup. Here are some suggestions I'd recommend you try out:

On your 2h bar, since you already have GDB on your bow bar, try swapping this out for Igneous Shields. If you're lvl 50 in Earthern Heart tree, you'll get 5% stam every time you cast this plus you'll get a 30% healing bonus for 6 secs on top of a 6k damage shield. This will allow your Rally and GDB to heal for more. Also, since you're using leap on both bars as well, I'd recommend getting rid of one and putting maybe Flawless Dawnbreaker on your most offensive bar you use to give you more weapon damage.

Other than that, it looks like you're good to go till VR14. If you do struggle with your resources though, I'd suggest trying out the blue drink that gives you magicka and stamina regen. When I hit VR14, I switched to drink and I noticed a huge difference on my sustain. When I was a lower VR lvl I used food and I would always die due to running out of stamina so I wanted to try out drink when I hit VR14 and got the gear I wanted to use.

I forgot to mention it also depends on your type of play style. I like to just rush in and kill as many people as I can even if I'm out numbered. I die a lot due to this but I don't like sitting in stealth waiting to gank someone. If you're wanting to try a more defensive build, I'd suggest using 1h and shield instead of bow/dual wield. Ransack will decrease your targets armor by 8k and give you an extra x amount of armor(not too sure how much you actually get)

Lefty_Lucy

Thecapeo wrote: »

I've put no points into health on my stam DK, 3 health glyphs on armor and I'm just about at 24k health with food at VR9 right now. I don't know if that's the most efficient way to go but it's working for me so far.

. . . is there any other weapon skill line that offers comparable damage to 2H right now? . . . Is the coming patch possibly making other stam DK builds more viable?

There are actually a lot of viable stam DK builds out there, people just don't really realize it right now. The upcoming 1.7 patch will not make a huge impact to stam DKs specifically. That being said, stamina builds across the board will get hit a little hard by the block and dodge roll changes - but these can be absorbed with play-style adjustments.

I use 2H on my DK, but my 2H bar is actually my buff bar, and my DPS bar is my sword and shield bar. You would be surprised how much DPS you can get with the Puncture ability. I highly recommend giving it a shot.

You can also do impressive DPS with Bow and Dual Wield. Dual Wield's Flying Blade skill got a very nice buff with the 1.7 patch which provides the Major Brutality buff to your character, so I expect that Dual Wield stam DKs will be a lot more popular here soon. I actually plan to give it a shot myself!

Keep in mind, DKs in general do not have the most impressive burst DPS capabilities. Their class skills really aren't set up for burst DPS. DKs are more set up for sustained DPS with Damage over Time (DoT) abilities. Taking advantage of this by using as many DoTs as you can find will prove to be very successful (hint: Poison Injection hits like a truck!).

Thanks for the summon and kind words @Xael !

Thecapeo

Thanks for the advice, Lefty. I actually watched some of your videos last night and really liked the ideas you put together. I'm actually leveling S&B now after watching some of your stuff. I already have bow and DW fully leveled. Right now my second bar is bow. I'm reticent to give it up because of how many easy kills you get when fighting off big groups. My go to is Lethal>Injection>Light Attack which all land basically simultaneously and is pretty brutal but then I always find myself Crit Rushing in and fighting groups simply because I enjoy it more. Right now I'm medium armor and am pretty dependent on dodge rolls when the going gets tough. Seeing the nerf that's coming I'm thinking going heavy and trying to leverage more of DKs natural sustain, plus dot pressure and CC along the lines of some of your videos.

Saint314Louis1985

Been using sword n shield the past couple of days and it seems to be helping considerably. Havent noticed a huge drop off in damage after switching from 2H. I appreciate the advice everyone has given. Thanks again!