MagicDK Variety Extinction. RIP Flame Lash & Molten Armaments

Crom_CCCXVI

I used to tell people the great thing about a Magik DK is there are so many different ways to play it---. Used to.
Everyone know the tanky, slap a bunch of DOT's, BSW.. maybe hit a leap DK, but it is the other now extinct builds that made the class fun. In the past 6 months we have lost 2, and I don't think ZOS even noticed.

The Flame Lash/ Concussion build was the most fun I had in ESO. Light Armor, Uber aggressive, your defense was your heals. You needed a Lightning Staff to put someone off balance, and 2 skills later you could hiy your Flame Lash for good damage and a heal--Sets like Succession and Lambris were actually effective in PvP...many times I'd be down to 3 or 4k health, no running away because if you could just get that stun and Flame Lash it could put you back in the fight. -. Flame Lash wasn't easy to land in PvP either, but you had an opportunity to hit 3 or 4 before you had to start over.
OFF BALANCE IMMUNITY killed this build. When you're in light armor with no real sheilds you need that flame balance heal to be reliable, or you are dead.... now everyone is immune, so you are dead. I really miss that build.

The other was Molten.Armaments. 40% Dmg boost to heavy attacks, dark elf with Deflect and a flame staff- slow, but effective... Now by the time you crank that up you could be hit by multiple Light attacks doing just as much damage.

ZOS, MagikDK variety is going extinct.

IZZEFlameLash

We've been petrified and fossilized by ZOS.

Checkmath

not extinct yet tough

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.
offbalance immunity is only a thing in pve mate, only trial and dungeon bosses know what it means to be immune against offbalance, but this doesnt apply to enemy players. thats why you can set enemies offbalance all few seconds with flame lash on stunned/rooted targets or with shockdamage and lightning blockade. right the effect of offbalance is consumed by powerlash, but can be reapplied very fast (just remember, that powerlash has a 3 second cooldown). therefore the build with lightning blockade looks for me the best for getting off those powerlashes, since atm dks struggle to hit enemies with powerlash after rooting or petrifying (since rooted enemies normally dodge at some point, especially the powerlash proc). so lightning blockade has the best chance to get a powerlash off, since enemies wont dodge it.

but in the end, you are right. i havent seen much different builds on dks lately. mostly they play a shield (-stacking) style or go for the light armor permablock builds...

ak_pvp

I'd say they still have a decent variety. Ofc that build isn't nearly as strong as before, but in terms of overall viable setups DK is quite high in numbers.

Taylor mb still runs the wall build to decent success, but its very different from being able to cap your health through a free spammable every second. The heavy attack nerfs kinda sucked though, heavy just isn't heavy anymore.

NBrookus

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

Checkmath

NBrookus wrote: »

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

you know that stone giant does more than twice the initial damage? i dont need a dot if the enemy is finished with two whips afterwards

NBrookus

Checkmath wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

you know that stone giant does more than twice the initial damage? i dont need a dot if the enemy is finished with two whips afterwards

Twice? More like 30% more for me, but I have nothing other than CP buffing magic damage. Plus with Clench you get the max damage whether they get stunned or not. (Minus a purge.)

OMG, diversity!

Checkmath

my tooltip on stone giant is higher then the one from flame reach. also we got the additional 100% damage when it stuns and i solely use it for that.

IZZEFlameLash

NBrookus wrote: »

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

Except the game doesn't revolve around 1v1 balance. And it's strong 1v1 but that is like really irrelevant in this game. DKs have their identity stripped with all the direct and indirect nerfs on top of useless buffs over the course of few patches. If they only made buffs like Flame Lash buffs every patch, we'd be in good place but passives are still ***, no mobility without Mist Form and etc.

Durham

No one ever mentions the stam DK ... we are struggling hard in this patch, more so then Magicka DKs

NBrookus

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

Except the game doesn't revolve around 1v1 balance. And it's strong 1v1 but that is like really irrelevant in this game. DKs have their identity stripped with all the direct and indirect nerfs on top of useless buffs over the course of few patches. If they only made buffs like Flame Lash buffs every patch, we'd be in good place but passives are still ***, no mobility without Mist Form and etc.

At this point I have no idea what they balance around. The 1v1 comment was more to forestall the inevitable QQ about mag DKs dueling.

reiverx

Checkmath wrote: »

not extinct yet tough

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.
offbalance immunity is only a thing in pve mate, only trial and dungeon bosses know what it means to be immune against offbalance, but this doesnt apply to enemy players. thats why you can set enemies offbalance all few seconds with flame lash on stunned/rooted targets or with shockdamage and lightning blockade. right the effect of offbalance is consumed by powerlash, but can be reapplied very fast (just remember, that powerlash has a 3 second cooldown). therefore the build with lightning blockade looks for me the best for getting off those powerlashes, since atm dks struggle to hit enemies with powerlash after rooting or petrifying (since rooted enemies normally dodge at some point, especially the powerlash proc). so lightning blockade has the best chance to get a powerlash off, since enemies wont dodge it.

but in the end, you are right. i havent seen much different builds on dks lately. mostly they play a shield (-stacking) style or go for the light armor permablock builds...

MagDks shouldn't have to rely on lightning abilities. There's a real disconnect going on with magDks and what they are actually supposed to be. I don't know why anyone would slot lightning blockade in PVP.

Asardes

Flame lash still works but you just have it to time it right. Also lightning glyph has better concussed status effect chance than blockade/unstable wall - that's why I run it on front bar.

I picked up the class recently and I like it. I play LA destro/resto and I run 2 heals (ward and Mutagen) with Light's Champion as ultimate of choice; also Degenerarion but that's more RNG. Which sounds pretty defensive but still retains great sustain and offensive capability. The only real problems are Sload's (hence Mutagen) and sorcs hitting you with Rune Cage from maximum range while closer players pound at you. But those are problems faced by all classes and are related to poorly balanced sets and skills - Rune Cage does the same thing as Fossilize but has -30% the cost and 3.5x the range.

Overall Mag DK is not in a bad spot. On the other hand Stam DK sucks badly. I play the latter for years and it's way behind the former I picked up just a couple of weeks ago.

Checkmath

reiverx wrote: »

Checkmath wrote: »

not extinct yet tough

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.
offbalance immunity is only a thing in pve mate, only trial and dungeon bosses know what it means to be immune against offbalance, but this doesnt apply to enemy players. thats why you can set enemies offbalance all few seconds with flame lash on stunned/rooted targets or with shockdamage and lightning blockade. right the effect of offbalance is consumed by powerlash, but can be reapplied very fast (just remember, that powerlash has a 3 second cooldown). therefore the build with lightning blockade looks for me the best for getting off those powerlashes, since atm dks struggle to hit enemies with powerlash after rooting or petrifying (since rooted enemies normally dodge at some point, especially the powerlash proc). so lightning blockade has the best chance to get a powerlash off, since enemies wont dodge it.

but in the end, you are right. i havent seen much different builds on dks lately. mostly they play a shield (-stacking) style or go for the light armor permablock builds...

MagDks shouldn't have to rely on lightning abilities. There's a real disconnect going on with magDks and what they are actually supposed to be. I don't know why anyone would slot lightning blockade in PVP.

elemental blockade is a very potent skill in pvp, since it either does nice damage to enemies or make them avoid that area. if they are melee, you can stand in your own aoe to put pressure on them. lightning blockade was very famous for magdks for powerlash spam, which procs on offbalanced enemies. only to concuss the enemy with a shick enchant doesnt close the deal, thats why you need blockade, which applies offbalance to the concussed enemies.

brandonv516

reiverx wrote: »

Checkmath wrote: »

not extinct yet tough

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.
offbalance immunity is only a thing in pve mate, only trial and dungeon bosses know what it means to be immune against offbalance, but this doesnt apply to enemy players. thats why you can set enemies offbalance all few seconds with flame lash on stunned/rooted targets or with shockdamage and lightning blockade. right the effect of offbalance is consumed by powerlash, but can be reapplied very fast (just remember, that powerlash has a 3 second cooldown). therefore the build with lightning blockade looks for me the best for getting off those powerlashes, since atm dks struggle to hit enemies with powerlash after rooting or petrifying (since rooted enemies normally dodge at some point, especially the powerlash proc). so lightning blockade has the best chance to get a powerlash off, since enemies wont dodge it.

but in the end, you are right. i havent seen much different builds on dks lately. mostly they play a shield (-stacking) style or go for the light armor permablock builds...

MagDks shouldn't have to rely on lightning abilities. There's a real disconnect going on with magDks and what they are actually supposed to be. I don't know why anyone would slot lightning blockade in PVP.

Works really well in BGs...I've been using it on my magblade build since Homestead.

IZZEFlameLash

NBrookus wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

I think mDK is in the best spot it's been in in a long time. It's just the permadefiles and superiority of ranged magicka that is making mDK relatively weak. 1v1 it's very strong. Stand your ground group v group is dead with a cheap spammable aoe stun, but our toolkit for healing is very weak at range. Both magsorc and magblade are superior with ranged builds.

Checkmath wrote: »

i myself always open a fight with heavy flame staff attack plus stone giant. this mostly rips away half of the enemies health. surely afterwards its a more generic dk playstyle with whip, burning embers and stone giant as the stun.

Try using Clench instead of Stone Giant. It's a hair more expensive, but has a DoT.

Except the game doesn't revolve around 1v1 balance. And it's strong 1v1 but that is like really irrelevant in this game. DKs have their identity stripped with all the direct and indirect nerfs on top of useless buffs over the course of few patches. If they only made buffs like Flame Lash buffs every patch, we'd be in good place but passives are still ***, no mobility without Mist Form and etc.

At this point I have no idea what they balance around. The 1v1 comment was more to forestall the inevitable QQ about mag DKs dueling.

Pretty sure it is balanced around Wrobel's mood and not interpreting their data correctly. All they probably see is numbers and never the reasons behind the numbers as indicated by user feedbacks.