Stamina Morphs for Underused Dragonknight Abilities

Vercingetorix

Inhale:
- 1 magicka morph, the current Draw Essence
- 1 stamina morph that leaves a poison DoT effect for a short time on each enemy hit; deals poison damage

Flame Whip:
- 1 magicka morph, the current Flame Lash
- 1 stamina morph that deals poison damage; deals increased damage if target is affected by Poisoned status

Those IMO are the only one that could truly benefit from a morph change since their alternative morph currently is underused. I am of course aware of the fact that not everything needs to have a stamina morph - being able to draw from your magicka reserves to keep your stamina reasonably topped off for damage is important. So, do you feel this would be a welcome change for stamina dks? It is disheartening that stamina dks have hardly any class abilities to work with and it feels like you are playing the "weapon class" - these changes would add some new options at the very least.

BohnT

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Inhale:
- 1 magicka morph, the current Draw Essence
- 1 stamina morph that leaves a poison DoT effect for a short time on each enemy hit; deals poison damage

Flame Whip:
- 1 magicka morph, the current Flame Lash
- 1 stamina morph that deals poison damage; deals increased damage if target is affected by Poisoned status

Those IMO are the only one that could truly benefit from a morph change since their alternative morph currently is underused. I am of course aware of the fact that not everything needs to have a stamina morph - being able to draw from your magicka reserves to keep your stamina reasonably topped off for damage is important. So, do you feel this would be a welcome change for stamina dks? It is disheartening that stamina dks have hardly any class abilities to work with and it feels like you are playing the "weapon class" - these changes would add some new options at the very least.

I Support both of these changes but i would add something to the Inhale change:

Decrease the heal on the first hit but increase the damage on the second hit compared to draw essence.

The synergy with a stamina whip is really cool however we would have to test to prevent it from being overperfoming.


For people who enter the discussion and think about a earthen heart stamina spammable, this can't be introduced due to huge problems with the helping hands passive which would make the cost unreasonably high to prevent people from getting a very cheaper spammable by utilising cost reduction and the helping hands passive.

Vercingetorix

@BohnT Thanks for the feedback. I stayed away from the Earthen Heart abilities for the reason you listed - also, none of the Earthen Heart abilities need a morph change IMO since they all do their job well. The stamina whip could introduce a poisonous rotation similar to the magDK, which would be neat. I'd imagine that the whip damage increase on a poisoned enemy would have to be tested to make sure it wasn't too extreme but perhaps adding a short cooldown on the "powered poison whip" could keep it in check, just like Flame Lash.

klowdy1

I have always thought there was a severe lack of stam morphs for all characters. If we have the ability to play all classes as stam ot mag, why are there so many more mag morphs on class abilities? Why does the templar charge not have a stam morph? It has always seemed like the game is pushing you to be a mag player.

I completely agree with both of those, especially the whip change. It seems strange to not have a stam morph for a melee ability. One stam morph and one mag morph for each class ability seems logical, but very unlikely to ever happen.

I'm not a fan of casters in most games, it's just not my style. I have a magplar alt, but I still play him like a melee character, using the old setup of two swords on the front bar, and using jabs, but I understand that isn't the best way to do things.

BohnT

Vercingetorix wrote: »

@BohnT Thanks for the feedback. I stayed away from the Earthen Heart abilities for the reason you listed - also, none of the Earthen Heart abilities need a morph change IMO since they all do their job well. The stamina whip could introduce a poisonous rotation similar to the magDK, which would be neat. I'd imagine that the whip damage increase on a poisoned enemy would have to be tested to make sure it wasn't too extreme but perhaps adding a short cooldown on the "powered poison whip" could keep it in check, just like Flame Lash.

Maybe the "powered poison whip" could instead of dealing more damage give the caster minor heroism.
This would prevent it from being too powerful as you can't stack minor heroism but at the same time it would increase the damage output and the sustain of Stamdk by giving you more ultimate

Vercingetorix

BohnT wrote: »

Maybe the "powered poison whip" could instead of dealing more damage give the caster minor heroism.This would prevent it from being too powerful as you can't stack minor heroism but at the same time it would increase the damage output and the sustain of Stamdk by giving you more ultimate

@BohnT I don't think Minor Heroism is the answer. Giving a spammable ability Minor Heroism on a class that has a powerful sustain passive tied to ultimates feels like power creep in a bad way - I don't see that being popular with ZoS. Extra damage on the poison powered whip proc is actually a good thing since dks inherently lack burst - that translates into both PvE and PvP as a viable choice in combat.

Qbiken

Molten whip is not an "underused morph", I don´t get where people get this idea from. On a magDK the only thing that comes ahead at the moment is FP (Forcepulse) with an perfected asylum staff, which a huge majority of the playerbase don´t have access or ever will have access to.

PvE:
StamDK is in a good spot. Sure, a stamblade will pull higher DPS, but personally I think stamblade needs to be tuned down a bit in raids. So aside from stamblade, I would say stamDK is on par with the other stamina classes.

From a group-utility perspective I would however like to see noxious breath be given the "Morag tong" debuff (and at the same time rework morag tong set to something else). So enemies affected by noxious breath takes X% more damage from all poison abilities.

I just don´t see what extra a stamwhip would add to stamDK in PvE. Sure it would look cool but is there a reason to other than "I want a spammable because everyone else got a spammable"? And I don´t think that all classes need a spammable ability. All classes doesn´t need to be homogenized to follow the same pattern.

PvP:
I´m no expert at DK in PvP, but for me, stamDK has always been that class that is durable, can survive long in a fight to eventually come out on top if they manage to stay alive long enough. For me this is the class-identity of stamDK. Sadly this identity is performed 10 times (exaggerate but you get my point) better by stamina warden. I think that giving stamDK a spammable will do absolutely zero regarding their position on the "PvP-ladder". I would rather see changes that promotes the "brawler/berserker" playstyle to stamDK.

BohnT

Vercingetorix wrote: »

BohnT wrote: »

Maybe the "powered poison whip" could instead of dealing more damage give the caster minor heroism.This would prevent it from being too powerful as you can't stack minor heroism but at the same time it would increase the damage output and the sustain of Stamdk by giving you more ultimate

@BohnT I don't think Minor Heroism is the answer. Giving a spammable ability Minor Heroism on a class that has a powerful sustain passive tied to ultimates feels like power creep in a bad way - I don't see that being popular with ZoS. Extra damage on the poison powered whip proc is actually a good thing since dks inherently lack burst - that translates into both PvE and PvP as a viable choice in combat.

I had pvp more in mind than pve. Right now most stamdks already have minor heroism all the time as heroic slash is often used as the main spammable.
By giving whip minor heroism you can run puncture to get access to major fracture/breach which results in ~8% damage increase which may also help stamdk.
Ofc this doesn't apply to PvE as you always have both armor debuffs on all enemies

BohnT

Qbiken wrote: »

PvP:
I´m no expert at DK in PvP, but for me, stamDK has always been that class that is durable, can survive long in a fight to eventually come out on top if they manage to stay alive long enough. For me this is the class-identity of stamDK. Sadly this identity is performed 10 times (exaggerate but you get my point) better by stamina warden. I think that giving stamDK a spammable will do absolutely zero regarding their position on the "PvP-ladder". I would rather see changes that promotes the "brawler/berserker" playstyle to stamDK.

The problem is that the other stamspecs are all better for that playstyle.
Stamdk doesn't bring anything to the table that the other classes don't have aswell.
A instant high damage spammable helps DK for the longest part of the fight, the time after you started to attack the enemy and get him into execute/ burst range.
When you play stamdk you notice that you will meet way more people that you simply can't kill no matter how hard you'll try you aren't able to kill them as you have nothing to apply good pressure, the dots are nothing special and bleeds are way stronger, you don't have a good spammable to prevent someone from healing back up neither do you have delayed damage to kill the player in one go.

The changes with inhale and whip would defenitly promote more of a brawler playstyle because you can actually do something in the fight. Without a damage/ burst increase you are cursed to have endless fights until you can kill one player but surviving against 2-3 decent players is almost impossible for stamdk.

And stamwarden is 10 times better than stamdk

Qbiken

BohnT wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

PvP:
I´m no expert at DK in PvP, but for me, stamDK has always been that class that is durable, can survive long in a fight to eventually come out on top if they manage to stay alive long enough. For me this is the class-identity of stamDK. Sadly this identity is performed 10 times (exaggerate but you get my point) better by stamina warden. I think that giving stamDK a spammable will do absolutely zero regarding their position on the "PvP-ladder". I would rather see changes that promotes the "brawler/berserker" playstyle to stamDK.

The problem is that the other stamspecs are all better for that playstyle.
Stamdk doesn't bring anything to the table that the other classes don't have aswell.
A instant high damage spammable helps DK for the longest part of the fight, the time after you started to attack the enemy and get him into execute/ burst range.
When you play stamdk you notice that you will meet way more people that you simply can't kill no matter how hard you'll try you aren't able to kill them as you have nothing to apply good pressure, the dots are nothing special and bleeds are way stronger, you don't have a good spammable to prevent someone from healing back up neither do you have delayed damage to kill the player in one go.

The changes with inhale and whip would defenitly promote more of a brawler playstyle because you can actually do something in the fight. Without a damage/ burst increase you are cursed to have endless fights until you can kill one player but surviving against 2-3 decent players is almost impossible for stamdk.

And stamwarden is 10 times better than stamdk

I see your point, but reworking Molten Whip into stamina comes with the cost of a magDK nerf (PvE) by removing the morph that gives the highest DPS output (Flame-lash is quite inferior compared to Molten Whip after the off-balance changes) after FP with perfected asylum staff. In terms of DPS, using FP with anything but a non-perfected asylum staff will give more DPS than using Flame-lash (at least from my testings). So from a min-max perspective there´ll be no point into FL if Molten gets reworked into a stamina skill.

The change would be more of a loss for magDK, than it would be a win for stamDK in my opinion. If it´s an even trade, I´ll be all for it. But so far I haven´t seen any decent suggestions to compensate magDK for a loss of Molten Whip, and that´s the main reason I´m against it at the moment.

Bigevilpeter

Stamina Dk really need a stamina earthen heart ability for ulti generation

BohnT

Qbiken wrote: »

BohnT wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

PvP:
I´m no expert at DK in PvP, but for me, stamDK has always been that class that is durable, can survive long in a fight to eventually come out on top if they manage to stay alive long enough. For me this is the class-identity of stamDK. Sadly this identity is performed 10 times (exaggerate but you get my point) better by stamina warden. I think that giving stamDK a spammable will do absolutely zero regarding their position on the "PvP-ladder". I would rather see changes that promotes the "brawler/berserker" playstyle to stamDK.

The problem is that the other stamspecs are all better for that playstyle.
Stamdk doesn't bring anything to the table that the other classes don't have aswell.
A instant high damage spammable helps DK for the longest part of the fight, the time after you started to attack the enemy and get him into execute/ burst range.
When you play stamdk you notice that you will meet way more people that you simply can't kill no matter how hard you'll try you aren't able to kill them as you have nothing to apply good pressure, the dots are nothing special and bleeds are way stronger, you don't have a good spammable to prevent someone from healing back up neither do you have delayed damage to kill the player in one go.

The changes with inhale and whip would defenitly promote more of a brawler playstyle because you can actually do something in the fight. Without a damage/ burst increase you are cursed to have endless fights until you can kill one player but surviving against 2-3 decent players is almost impossible for stamdk.

And stamwarden is 10 times better than stamdk

I see your point, but reworking Molten Whip into stamina comes with the cost of a magDK nerf (PvE) by removing the morph that gives the highest DPS output (Flame-lash is quite inferior compared to Molten Whip after the off-balance changes) after FP with perfected asylum staff. In terms of DPS, using FP with anything but a non-perfected asylum staff will give more DPS than using Flame-lash (at least from my testings). So from a min-max perspective there´ll be no point into FL if Molten gets reworked into a stamina skill.

The change would be more of a loss for magDK, than it would be a win for stamDK in my opinion. If it´s an even trade, I´ll be all for it. But so far I haven´t seen any decent suggestions to compensate magDK for a loss of Molten Whip, and that´s the main reason I´m against it at the moment.

Magdk got good buffs for PvE and i've seen more people running flame lash over molten whip as it's not sustainable for the most part.

For stamdk however it makes them finally somewhat viable in pvp again.
Flame lash is even more important for pvp than molten is for pve so you can't change that morph.

An proposal i made in the DK pts section is to make the base ability of a skill with 2 good magicka morphs stamina based to have effectively 3 versions of the skill without hurting anyone