Tank Build/Maelstrom Daggers "Cruel Furry"/Crit Questions

MrTarkanian48

I am tossing around the idea of making an Imperial DK sword and board stamina tank build, but using DW daggers on my back bar in certain situations. The thought would be that having a large stamina pool and proccing the cruel flurry enchantment would allow me to contribute decent damage on some boss fights through DoTs with Rapid Strikes/Unstable Flame, Rapid Strikes/Rending Slashes combos. Couple random questions if anyone knows:

1) Regarding the Maelstrom Dagger Cruel Flurry Enchantment. Does the entire animation need to completed in order to proc this enchantment? Or is it possible to block cancel and still get the buff? I plan on buffing armor master on my 1H1S bar prior to swapping, but obviously I don't want to get smoked mid animation.

2) In this situation I would expect my crit to be substantially higher on my DW bar, and very low on my 1H1S. If I were to apply the DoT on my DW and swap back to my 1H1S, does the crit rate stay locked in from the bar that I applied it? Or will it drop to my 1H1S rate?

3) The Defensive Postures ability from 1H1S provides 8% block cost reduction/8% additonal block mitigation for being slotted. Has anyone ever tested whether this passive still applies if you slot it on your bar and do not use 1H1S? Obviously if I had it on my DW bar I wouldn't be able to actually use the skill.

4) @Alcast had an awesome video on Maelstrom daggers, and showed that if you use rapid strikes, apply the dot and let the DoT run out, you would need to use rapid strikes again to re-proc the enchantment. However, I believe he demonstrated that if you reapply the DoT before it runs out, it will continue to tick at the buffed level. Can anyone confirm this? Was that patched? I am on console, and now that we have combat text in my limited testing I have not been able to reproduce this. It seems like the DoT eventually drops down to unbuffed level. I hope I am just doing something wrong, because it would be awesome if I could get the DoT rolling, swap to 1H1S, and then swap back to reapply the DoTs every 9 seconds or so without repeating Rapid Strikes.

I appreciate any insight on these. Thank-you

Alcast

They might have changed the reappy thingy. I will test that as soon as possible again.

I wanna test:
If DoT is reapplied before it runs out will the cruel flurry buff still apply?
Do we need to cast the full animation of Rapid Strikes to get the DoT.

if someone already knows the answer please lemme know

Autolycus

I'm not sure about the cruel flurry buff. I'd be interested in those results as well. I can help to answer these questions though:

2) In this situation I would expect my crit to be substantially higher on my DW bar, and very low on my 1H1S. If I were to apply the DoT on my DW and swap back to my 1H1S, does the crit rate stay locked in from the bar that I applied it? Or will it drop to my 1H1S rate?

In most situations, including this one, the damage will scale off of whichever bar you have active. So, if you switch to your sword&shield, the damage will correspond to the crit you have on your sword&shield bar. It works similarly for Arrow Barrage, just as an example. I have much, much higher weapon damage on my DW bar than my Bow bar for my stam sorc. When I apply arrow barrage and switch to my DW, it does more damage after I swap, because I have higher WD and crit on my DW bar.

3) The Defensive Postures ability from 1H1S provides 8% block cost reduction/8% additonal block mitigation for being slotted. Has anyone ever tested whether this passive still applies if you slot it on your bar and do not use 1H1S? Obviously if I had it on my DW bar I wouldn't be able to actually use the skill.

The passive effects of the skill are only applicable with a sword&shield equipped. You won't be able to reap these benefits on your DW bar.