DK two handed build, help?

hardcore_gmr

Vangy wrote: »

You seem to have way too much magicka focused skills for a stamina build. To put things into perspective at v16 most likely a standard stamina build has ard 10k magicka. Obsidian shield costs 3k+ and cinder storm costs 3k+. You won't be able to effectively use scales, hardened armor, cinderstorm and obsidian shield. I'd lose the hardened armor and cinderstorm. Obsidian shield and scales u can keep. Also u seem to lack Aoe. Put rally on ur first bar and change ur 2nd bar to bow or DW. You can shift burning breath to ur 2nd bar and use it as a Aoe bar.

I would say that you can run this build though you will run out of magic a lot....like a lot! Since you will never have more than one maybe two of this skills active at a time and even with base regen it is doable, that said I have to agree with @Vangy (to a point) there are maybe one too many magic skills to make this work. To me Hardened armor is the outlier here because it gives an increase to spell and armor resistance, which does the same thing as Reflective Scales and Obisdian Shield (morph this to igneous ASAP). Perhaps Cleave (brawler) might work here instead. Its decision like this that keep me from using the same weapon on both bars. I think you can be single target focused for questing open world and be fine, delves too, but for some group content, especially late stage Dragonstar or trials, you are gonna want something that can kill a mob fast. I might take @vangy on his suggestion and look at Bow or DW as both of these have some great AOE.

As for magic use, you can have a whole bar of magic skills but do not gimp your damage by seeking more magic, use magic to set up good uses of stamina. Cinderstorm will lock enemies in place to apply burning breathe to a group. (then you can AOE them) Obisidan/Igneous Shield is my primary damage mitigation and heal buff (I spam this the most out of all my magic skills because it regens stam, gives more healing, blocks damage, and give a minor savagery buff) all from casting this one skill. Reflective is my "oh ishh" block, I use this against powerful mages who like to cast high damage projectiles at you while you are trying to melee their friends.

in my original suggestion in another thread I made mention of liking magic for defense, and I see that that has carried over here but too much defense and not enough offense can stall you out. the key to having magic as defense is to use it sparingly to achieve a certain effect. Cinderstorm for AoE snare (CC), Reflective scales for "this mage keeps one shotting me before I can kill him", and igneous for everything. Once you get champion points and you have some good stamina regen and low cost on your stamina skills you can throw some points into magician and your magic skills won't cost as much as @ vangy described (those are the base cost values though, so keep that in mind) All my magic skills cost less than 3k but then again I only will use one maybe two magic skills the whole fight, then switch back to my DPS bar. You don't need a ton of AoE skills...but its good utility to have one to spam on a large mob to kill or do some good damage then switch to your DPS bar and finish them off.

I switch weapons often as a lot of my utility skills are on my second bar (BOW) and find that its a good idea to start off most fights with my utility bar then switch to DPS once I've thinned the herd. I will open some ninety percent of my engagements with cinderstorm to lock enemies where they are then kill them quickly as they will likely be grouped pretty good at that point. I will then pop rally for ass kicking time, and once I 've started taking damage pop igneous to reduce falling into low health, regen a little stamina, have a few ticks of rally refill my health and since I am in combat I get the minor savagery bonus so now I'm doing more damage right around the time I need executioner. You'll find what will work for you but you never need to put anything into magic until you get to later levels and you need a few points there to make using a 2.5k magic skill semi spammable.

Vangy

@Acsvf : like @hardcore_gmr mentioned u can make magicka work for u by adjusting your build. With cp/gear/enchants and ur own personal play style would make a huge difference to how u set ur bars up and how your build functions overall. So the best way to figure out what u want and are comfortable with is to just play around with different set ups n figure out what kind of a player you are.