Magicka Dragonknight vMA farmbuild - making your leftclick deadly!

Masel

Many ESO-Players deem Magicka DK to be one of the toughest class-spec combination to beat veteran maelstrom arena. I strongly disagree. I get my highest scores on this toon (550k+). This is a build for first clears, farming the arena and getting a safe and fast weekly on your DK toons.

This build has a lot of advantages over other DK builds: No sustain issues due to heavy attack return and destro staff kills (3600 back on every kill), amazing AoE damage and an easy playstyle that let's you progress fast in the arena.

You can really focus on mechanics and enemies that kill you without having to perform a complex rotation at the same time.

Race:

Altmer gets the most out of it, but breton and dunmer work great too. But to be honest, you can do it with every race, it's just going to be a little more challenging.

Gear:

vMA Setup:

This might seem like a weird setup, but it is in fact really powerful in solo play, you can actually shieldtank vet dungeons with this.

The vMA Lightning staff and the undaunted infiltrator buff every tick of a channeled Lightning heavy attack by 5k after cps. Infallible aether applies the 8% debuff on the first tick of heavy Lightning attacks and buffs the last tick of it with another flat damage buff, and gives you permanent minor slayer. So this a flat 13% damage increase, plus spell damage and another two crit bonuses, so hell yes!

Undaunted infiltrator seems like a weird set to use, and I get that. But I've seen a lot of people saying "I won't use a set that is obviously trash and gives me stamina on a magicka toon." Go on, reject it, but you will regret it for sure when you die a lot in vMA and run out of stamina. Now that sergeants mail got nerfed, this is the best set to use with Lightning staff heavy attacks, period.

Viable replacements for infallible aether are spider cultist & elegance. Why? They buff your heavy attacks too, and spider cultist buffs elemental blockade and thunderous rage as well. Except for eruption and burning embers, I only use those three damage sources. So as a tradeoff for a little heavy attack damage, you get lots of damage on Blockade and thunderous rage.

As it is very unlikely that you have a vMA lightning staff when going for your first clear, I'll add three alternative setups that work too, in descending order of power:

1.
5 aether, 1 heavy molag kena and 1 medium undaunted infiltrator on the body.
3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry.
Sharpened lightning and restoration staff of undaunted infiltrator with spell damage enchants. Everything else as above. Restoration staff can be of any set though.
2.
4 aether, 2 undaunted infiltrator and 1 light kena on the body.
3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry.
Sharpened infallible aether lightning and restoration staffs with spell damage enchants. Everything else as above.
3.
5 & 5 aether and undaunted infiltrator with 3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry. Any crafted sharpened staffs with spell damage enchants.

Bars

Main Bar (vMA Lightning Staff): Dampen Magic (FLEX SPOT), Coagulating Blood/Burning Embers, Elemental Blockade, Dragonscales/Elemental Susceptibility/Destructive Reach, Inner Light, Shooting Star/Thunderous Rage

Back Bar (vMA Restoration Staff): Healing Ward, Molten Armaments, Rapid Regeneration, Eruption, Inner Light, Shooting Star[/spoiler]

The strategy is very simple:
1. Put down eruption and blockade under an enemy that you want to focus (hence, casters that you can't kite). If the enemy has less than 20k health, use only heavy attacks, if it has between 30k&50k, only use blockade and heavy attacks. Use eruption only in between rounds otherwise.
2. Heavy attack it to death.
3. Keep Dampen magic and rapid regen up. Due to the strong heavy attacks, you can actually resto staff heavy attack your health back to full.
4. Use thunderous rage on difficult rounds and bosses/minibosses. That thing melts stuff.
5. Dragonscales are a lifesaver on rounds 5, 7 & 8, so remember to use them there against mages and archers.
6. Put elemental susceptibility on bosses with high armor rating, such as 4, 6, 7 & 8.

Use the alphagear addon and assign the numbers from 1 to 9 to setups for different scenarios. You can change skill setups in one click with it and that helps a.lot in there.


To erase all doubts, here's a full flawless run with the old version of this Build, but it works exactly as in the video with the above setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQPiA5XENk

I improved my runs a lot by now, I get the 8th boss down in one go and nuke the 6th boss without even caring about adds to it.

Looking forward to answering your questions/remarks. I wanna see clears on this!

I copied some of it from my original HA DK guide, if you're interested in that, check it out:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/309550/elemental-fury-pve-heavy-attack-dk-build-homestead-ready-vmol-approved/p1?new=1

PS: This build is awesome and cancerous in duels against basically everyone. I'm at a KD ratio of around 10 with 0 impen and the abovementioned setup. Just replace eruption with fossilise and melt people!

Lukums1

Always nice to see things like this +1 to you.

casparian

The vMA Lightning staff and the undaunted infiltrator buff every tick of a channeled Lightning heavy attack by 5k after cps.

From the Homestead patch notes:

Fixed an issue where some item set procs that were meant to fire off of fully-charged Heavy Attacks (such as Sunderflame or Wise Mage) were firing on every tick of a Lightning or Restoration Staff Heavy Attack.

Does this change not affect the sets you're using? If it doesn't, what makes using these sets different from taking advantage of ZOS' failure to fix a bug? (I'm not saying you're bad for taking advantage of an "issue", but some players would prefer to know whether the mechanics they're using are intended by ZOS or not.)

Masel

casparian wrote: »

The vMA Lightning staff and the undaunted infiltrator buff every tick of a channeled Lightning heavy attack by 5k after cps.

From the Homestead patch notes:

Fixed an issue where some item set procs that were meant to fire off of fully-charged Heavy Attacks (such as Sunderflame or Wise Mage) were firing on every tick of a Lightning or Restoration Staff Heavy Attack.

Does this change not affect the sets you're using? If it doesn't, what makes using these sets different from taking advantage of ZOS' failure to fix a bug? (I'm not saying you're bad for taking advantage of an "issue", but some players would prefer to know whether the mechanics they're using are intended by ZOS or not.)

Aether got changed to buff the last tick only with damage, but the debuff still applies on every tick.

The tooltip from the vma staff and undaunted infiltrator are different from the tooltip of the sets that were changed, as they do not include the term "fully charged". In the end, if you'd be using weaving, every light attack would get buffed by the amount and . So if ZoS ment those sets to work differently from what they are doing now, they would've changed it with the other sets that got changed. They changed Sunderflame, Wise mage, Sergeants mail and infallible aether to only apply their damage buffs on the last tick. So everything that I use now is working as intended

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Well, just did some Arx Grinding. Never thought I would say that. If this is half as good as the sorc build, it was worth it. Will give it a go here shortly.

Edit: Arx Grinding = Queuing on your tank as nobody in their right minds will voluntarily do that. haha

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Bro, I love the sorc build and applaud the outside the box thinking, but will not be doing that again i dont think. I dont know if I was missing something, but my single target DPS was not good. I could barely break 20k with it. I was seeing mechanics I hadnt seen in over a year on some of the boss fights.

Silver lining, after like 1.5 hours and 237 deaths, got sharp inferno number 2. haha.

Edit: Was doing some testing, and I just cant get the DPS up. My sorc can do 35k with a slight variation on your heavy attack build, the DK struggles to break 20k.

Masel

casparian wrote: »

The vMA Lightning staff and the undaunted infiltrator buff every tick of a channeled Lightning heavy attack by 5k after cps.

From the Homestead patch notes:

Fixed an issue where some item set procs that were meant to fire off of fully-charged Heavy Attacks (such as Sunderflame or Wise Mage) were firing on every tick of a Lightning or Restoration Staff Heavy Attack.

Does this change not affect the sets you're using? If it doesn't, what makes using these sets different from taking advantage of ZOS' failure to fix a bug? (I'm not saying you're bad for taking advantage of an "issue", but some players would prefer to know whether the mechanics they're using are intended by ZOS or not.)

Aether got changed to buff the last tick only with damage, but the debuff still applies on every tick.

The tooltip from the vma staff and undaunted infiltrator are different from the tooltip of the sets that were changed, as they do not include the term "fully charged". In the end, if you'd be using weaving, every light attack would get buffed by the amount. So of ZoS mentioned those sets to work differently from what they are doing now, they would've changed it with the other sets that got changed. They changed Sunderflame, Wise mage, Sergeants mail and infallible aether to only apply their damage buffs on the last tick.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Bro, I love the sorc build and applaud the outside the box thinking, but will not be doing that again. I dont know if I was missing something, but my single target DPS was TERRIBLE. I could barely break 20k with it. I was seeing maechanics I hadnt seen in over a year on some of the boss fights.

Silver lining, after like 1.5 hours and 237 deaths, got sharp inferno number 2. haha.

Well I get through the arena in about 45 minutes now and usually am at around 545-550k score. It's a matter of practice and after a few runs it gets really easy.

It's not as easy as the sorc build (well nothing is), but it's very easy for a mag dk in there.

Cybercore_Death

This is a nice build. I've been looking to get into vMA for a while now but kept putting it off as the first time i did a nMA run i was so under powered it was an awful struggle and quite off putting.

Do you have a Morrowind / HoTR ready setup for this?

Qbiken

Still prefer your old "Off-balance" build with Spinner and charged lightning staff on frontbar for my magDK in vMA. Only difference I do is to slot Grothdarr since I think my dmg output becomes slightly higher with it

What I use atm:
5 Spinner (body)
4 IA (jewels + charged lightning frontbar with shockenchant)
1 Lightning vMA backbar (infused, will probably have to swap it out for another trait next patch since vMA staff becomes a set-bonus)
2 Grothdarr


So far my best score is 560k-ish (#7 on the vMA leaderboards with that atm). Having some issues to push the time below 40 minutes with this build. Still trying to find ways to do that .

Edit: Why did I throw away those undaunted pieces......*sigh*

Not going to bother farming them tbh xD

Cybercore_Death

Its all well and good suggesting vMA weapons as BiS for running vMA but for first time offenders who dont have the weapons what would you suggest in place?

I currently have a 5-5-1 setup (Sun, Julianos, 1 piece Iceheart) and have a 5-1-1 for weight.

I'm using flame staff for front bar and lightning staff for back bar.

Problem is i'm geared more towards general PvE and not Vet endgame content.

What would you suggest for someone like myself to help get through vMA for the first few runs to try and get the weapons?

reiverx

I would recommend taking a look at the Elemental Fury build

All my runs have been without a VMA staff. I only just got a defending lighting staff so will probably re-trait it next update.

5 Julianos with 4 Martial Knowledge and 2 Skoria/Ilambris is a killer combo.

Lexifer452

I've been lazily tempting to make UI work for both my sorc and my dk but I can't seem to get the hang of it just yet. I love that idea though. I did go and farm all the necessary UI pieces and have IA knocking around somewhere. I do want to make this build work for me though so i'll keep at it. Have only been able to clear vet maelstrom on my magsorc so far and would love to be able to run it on my dk without getting a massive headache each attempt. Lol.

Kudos for the out of the box build man. About six months ago I remember always trashing every undaunted infiltrator piece I found because it looked like trash. Lol.

Cybercore_Death

reiverx wrote: »

I would recommend taking a look at the Elemental Fury build

All my runs have been without a VMA staff. I only just got a defending lighting staff so will probably re-trait it next update.

5 Julianos with 4 Martial Knowledge and 2 Skoria/Ilambris is a killer combo.

Might have to give this a go and see how i get on.

I'm using 5 Julianos, 5 Sun and 1 Iceheart (head) atm. All divines with Spell damage on jewelry and Max Mag on armor. Flame staff front and Lightning back.

Looking at what you've suggested it might prove a better option that what i have overall. Just need to wait for next update to retrait my light Skoria head...

Jawasa

I'll def give this a try. Just need some undaunted infiltraitor. GOnna be nice with 2 spots on dk leaderborads a week.

Masel

Guys, this is an old build... The elemental fury DK guide is a lot better in damage and more effective

Jawasa

XD haha should have looked at the date.