help with magdk

Lynx7386

I have a CP 318 Magicka dragon knight that I've tried to set up as a traditional mage / mages guild character. Picked up Ice heart as my first Monster set last night and it's great, but I'm working towards ilambris. My gear setup right now is:

Head: ice heart
Shoulders: ice heart
Chest: julianos
Gloves: julianos
Legs: julianos
Boots: julianos
Belt: stendarr
Amulet/rings: stendarr
Lightning staff: julianos
Resto staff: julianos

I was using willpower jewelry and torugs pact 3 piece before I got ice heart, but swapped to stendarr for more magicka and regen. Before, I was building entirely towards spell damage, and was having serious sustain issues, especially when healing. My two ice heart pieces are heavy, the rest is light.

Self buffed with food I lm at:
28,395 magicka
19,992 health
12,928 stamina (tristat food)
1441 magicka recovery
395 health recovery
565 stamina recovery
1417 spell damage (1700 w/ armaments)
51% spell critical
15,113 spell resist
10,007 physical resist

All armor has max magicka enchants except the ice heart set which has health. Jewelry is all arcane/magicka recovery. Lightning staff is charged with shock enchant, resto staff is defending with absorb magicka.

I mostly alternate between dps and healer roles for pledge dungeons.

Healing setup:
Resto bar-
Obsidian shard
Healing springs
Mutagen
Force siphon
Igneous shield
Magma shell

Destro bar-
Burning talons
Elemental blockade
Eruption
Elemental drain
Molten armaments
Elemental rage


Damage setup:
Destro bar-
Flame lash
Elemental blockade
Eruption
Inner light
Molten armaments
Elemental rage

Resto bar-
Fire rune/entropy/burning talons
Engulfing flames
Burning embers
Inner light
Igneous shield
Magma shell


For damage role I pretty much focus on just trying to keep all the dots on the target and use flame lash/light attack weaving where I can for free damage. I usually only use flame lash when enemies are off balance since it costs nothing and heals me.
Using elemental blockade with the charged lightning staff keeps enemies concussed and off balance pretty much 100% of the time, and the lightning staff boosts all my aoe abilities.
Ice heart procs constantly with the 51% crit chance which gives me a fairly reliable free damage shield and aoe frost damage while it lasts. When I get ilambris the idea is for the mix of lightning and fire dots to constantly proc both types of meteor showers.

Any thoughts on what I can do to improve my build?

Narvuntien

I have
Seducer and Burning spellweave (which can be activated on one bar then switched back). Seducer lowers your abilities mana costs. All divines thief stone. Atronach also helps if your mana regen is an issue. Perhaps you have to switch stone when you switch to healer.

llbamras helm and shoulder. Random traits

I have a mix of Health and Magicka enchants on my crafted gear.

54 Mag 10 Health

Sword and shield front and Fire staff backbar.

Clearly I am not trying to heal although I have tanked CoA1 when I was farming BSW.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I am going to try and not shove the meta down your throat, but I will push back on a few things.

For bars, you have most of the right skills, but they are frankly in the wrong spot IMO. If you want to do damage, you really shouldnt use a resto staff unless you are solo. If solo, then go nuts. Embers, Blockade, and Engulfing flames are the bread and butter of DK damage. They all have relatively similar and short durations. Keep them on the same bar (your front bar as you will cast them much more often). Skills like eruption and molten armaments last a long time, and therefore, the back bar is the place for them. All these skills should be cast on cooldown, never before. The basic idea for DK damage is get your dots rolling, then spam whip until one needs reapplied.

Grothdar is better than Llambris on a DK. I would make that your farm effort. Llambris really shines on a sorc.

Again, without knowing what you are using it for its hard to be certain, but I think you are going way overkill on regen. Your damage is going to suffer hard. If you dont have Moondancer or Infal jewelery, my advice is run Willpower. It is a very strong 3 piece. Make sure any destro staff is sharp. Sharp is the only viable trait for damage (unfortunately). Yes there are arguments now for a charged lighting staff for high off balance time, but, you probably dont have the CP to get 75 into thaumaturge to take advantage of it. Decent chance you might have a dead spot (no set piece) on your staff. Until you get moondancer or VMA staffs, its okay.

For group stuff, I would front bar a fire and back bar a lighting staff. For boss fights (particularly trial bosses), most people go double fire. If you want the meta build, here it is:

Gear: 5 BSW, 2 Grothdar, 3-4 moondancer, Front Bar Sharp VMA inferno, back bar sharp Moondancer (inferno or lighting).

Front Bar: Whip, embers, engulfing flames, Blockade, Inner Light, Meteor
Back Bar: Eruption, Trap, Flames of oblivion, Flex, Flex, Standard.

Flexes can be Molten armaments, innerlight, Deep breath, chains, Shield. Just depends on what you are doing.

Edit: Thief is the best mundus for damage. I would not run tri food. I would go blue health magic food. I recommend enchanting everything with magic and spell damage. At lower CP, a magic regen on one piece of jewelry is certainly not the worst idea. Then use your attributes to find a comfortable health level. That way its much cheaper to adjust. Eventually, you will likely go 64 into magic. When learning, I would shoot for 18-19k health.

TheStealthDude

5 piece Juliano's is certainly fine for now, until you get Burning Spell Weave, and will certainly allow you to fulfil your DPS duties in most vet dungeons. I would also echo that Willpower is a great jewelry set to use. You will notice that the set bonuses for Willpower are better than the equivalent bonus types on a 5 piece set.

For monster set, use what you have or use 2 pc Torug's (Helm + Weapon) until you find the monster helm you want. Best monster sets for mDK pve are Grothdar or Valkyn Skoria, with perhaps Illambris taking third, in my opinion (Skoria is not quite as good and is significantly harder to get than Grothdar, as Vet City of Ash II is one of the hardest non-DLC dungeons in the game).

As the previous poster said, use max health + max magicka food, as you will get better stats that way and don't need extra stamina for most pve content as an mDK.

Note: my advice is for DPS mDK.

JinMori

Illambris is a sorcerer set, use grothgarr. You are using whip anyway as a mag dk, so you are in meele range.
Try something like this:
Main bar Destro:
Molten whip
Elemental blockade
Burning embers
Elemental drain (unless someone is already running it)
Inner light
Shooting star

Back bar Destro:
Engulfing flames
Rearming trap beast
Eruption
Ignieous weapons or molten armamants ( Ignieous is better for groups since it provides a much better buff compared to molten, if you have a stam dps in your group)
Flames of oblivion
Standard of might ( best ultimate in the game for pve dps, always use this one, shooting star is just for very big trash pulls where you get back enormous amounts of ultimate, and for the passive 2 % magicka)
If someone in your group is already running elemental drain, just put something else, like impulse or inhale to have a bit more aoe.

Rotation is something like this:
Start on backbar buff up, Eruption>Trap beast>flames of oblivion>engulfing flames>elemental drain ( if it's not already applied by someone else)>Burning embers>blockade of fire>Whip until dots run out, then repeat.
Always thief mundus, all divines.
Gear setup:
5 Julianos or burning spell weave ( when you get it)
2 grothgarr
3 willpower Or if you have it 3 moondancer
main bar mealstrom desto sharpened or moondancer sharpened (always inferno) Of course if you don't have it just use a random inferno staff sharpened.
Back bar random staff sharpened or moondancer sharpened (Also inferno)
Possibly 1/1/5 or 7 light
All into magicka even attribute points. But if you feel like it use a health enchant on your big piece.
If you do this rotation prefectly you should be able to fir 7 global cooldwons before dots expire (for global cooldowns i mean either whips, or reapply a buff, like elemental drain or ingnieous weapons and then 6 whips).
If you want you can put elemental drain on back bar, and put engulfing on front bar, this way the rotation should be like this:
Elemental drain>eruption>trap beast>flames of oblivion>burning embers>engulfing flames>blockade of fire>whips. This rotation is probably even better then the one above. it flows perfectly and basically all of your dots run out at the same time, so you just have to repeat.
With magnus, julianos 1 kena and willpower i can get 30 k + on target dummy solo.