Elsewyr Stam DK by Mental

MentalxHammer

Hello all! I'm a small-scale PKer and duelist with 16 years of MMO experience on my back. I love crunching numbers and stirring the pot in different PvP metas. This is the first PvP build that I have released, with more to come. That being said here is my sDK build for Elsewyr. This build is intended for solo play and dueling.

Race: Nord
Mundus: Warrior
Food: Arteum Takeaway Broth
Potion: Weapon Power Potions

Gear: Medium 5/1/1, 7-8 Impen.
Deadly Strike
Essence Thief (back bar dueling) or
Trappings of Invigoration (back bar overland)
Stinging Slashes
Blood Spawn

Jewelery:
3x Weapon damage / 3x protective.

Main Bar:
Dual-Wield (2x Swords, 2x Charged trait, Poison/Shock enchants)
Bloodthirst (Flurry)
Blood Craze
Fragmented Shield
Shuffle
Poison Claw
Flawless Dawnbreaker


Back Bar:
Axe and Shield (Decisive trait, double DoT poisons.)
Resolving Vigor
Reverberating Bash
Heroic Slash
Volatile Armor
Noxious Breath
Corrosive Armor

Poison claw is a flex spot.

The Why:

Why Flurry?

Using data gathered from ESO UESP I have come to the conclusion that flurry is going to be an extremely powerful option next patch. If we do a comparison of base damage values this becomes evident.
Flurry base damage on live:
820 x 7 = 5740
Flurry base damage on PTS (21% buff):
5740 x 1.21 = 6945
Let's compare this to Surprise Attack, the hardest hitting spammable on live.
SA base damage: 6354
6945 / 6354 = 1.093
This tells us that next patch, Flurry will do 9.3% more damage than SA. This is significant. The icing on the cake is that deadly strike buffs the damage of Flurry! This build makes full use of deadly strike by utilizing its buff on our main spammable.

Why trappings of Invig?
This set can be single barred, leaving room for the stinging slashes set. On live this set produces 9000 stamina over 60 seconds with an effective stamina recovery of 300. In Elsewyr this is getting buffed by approximately 66%, producing 11300 stamina every 45 seconds for an effective stamina recovery of 502. These new numbers make trappings a much more attractive option. Due to the bursty nature of the stamina recovery, this allows you to put out massive pressure after a proc, in 1v1 scenarios this will assist in finishing duels.

Why charged weapons?
With both weapons charged, our enchants have a 64% chance to proc the shock and poison status effects for 4 seconds, every 4 seconds. While our target is effected with minor vulnerability, we get greater damage than if we were running a traditional nirn/sharpened setup. The poisoned status effect not only has synergy with deadly strike, but becomes a potent sustain tool through the combustion passive.

I hope you all enjoy the build, I'm happy to answer any questions!

Corpier

Neat idea of running Trappings of Invigoration backbar to run 5/5/2/2. I've run a similar build with the Master axes and Prisoners back bar on stamblade. Might try this, but would probably change the S&B to 2h so I could slot Rally and Carve/Fossalize instead of Reverb and Heroic to fit my playstyle for open world and BGs. And/or might swap out Flurry to run Dawnbreaker/Spin2win since both are also getting buffed next patch.

MentalxHammer

That sounds like a great switch out for group play! I really like carve next patch, the direct damage portion is viable as a spammable option as well.

juhislihis19

Great shout at Trappings! I think it's a set that's really gone under the radar since the buffed it. However, wouldn't Bone Pirate be better? At 4k stamina, it should give little more damage with good recovery as well?

Question 2: Flurry is really buffed by Deadly?! I have honestly never used that skill, not even in PVE. Is it hard to land?


Question 3: Why Shuffle over Cloak? Snare removal? Cloak is shorter in duration yes, but I think it still procs enchants while it's on. If you choose Quick Cloak, you can get little mobility.

What are you using as ultimates? What do you think of Temporal Guard back bar? Myself, I would like to pick Corrosive back bar, but the 12s is still quite a short time when getting CC'd and snared all the time.

Looks like a nice build, definitely welcoming from the perennial 7th and Fury!

Davadin

Shuffle? Why not DW's spinning blades thing which is a better version of Shuffle?

Blood Craze? Why?


I love Carve with my Master Axe in live server. I'm sure it'll be even better in Elswyr, so I'm sticking to my DW+2H medium setup, also with Deadly strike.

Are you not interested in Molten Whip? Seems to be the Mag/StamDK rage in PTS...

And yes, also changing to Flurry.

juhislihis19 wrote: »

Question 2: Flurry is really buffed by Deadly?! I have honestly never used that skill, not even in PVE. Is it hard to land?

it is buffed by Deadly because the game seems to think casting time = "damage over time".

nobody use it coz the damage is too low, but it's quite nice in PvP that u can "set and forget". once it starts casting, u can turn around, runs away, and it'll still register the rest of the hits... EXCEPT there's a bug i heard with the heal morph that it won't give u the last tick or something?

not sure.

but yes, it's buffed by Deadly Strike.

MentalxHammer

juhislihis19 wrote: »

Great shout at Trappings! I think it's a set that's really gone under the radar since the buffed it. However, wouldn't Bone Pirate be better? At 4k stamina, it should give little more damage with good recovery as well?

Question 2: Flurry is really buffed by Deadly?! I have honestly never used that skill, not even in PVE. Is it hard to land?


Question 3: Why Shuffle over Cloak? Snare removal? Cloak is shorter in duration yes, but I think it still procs enchants while it's on. If you choose Quick Cloak, you can get little mobility.

What are you using as ultimates? What do you think of Temporal Guard back bar? Myself, I would like to pick Corrosive back bar, but the 12s is still quite a short time when getting CC'd and snared all the time.

Looks like a nice build, definitely welcoming from the perennial 7th and Fury!

1) Bone pirate may be a slightly stronger sustain tool for medium armor, however bone pirate must be worn on both bars, trappings can be used on the back bar allowing for the use of a 2 piece weapon set (Master Dual wield).

2) Yes! Both flurry and Templar jabs spammable are buffed by Deadly Strike. I have tested it personally.

3) I chose shuffle over blade cloak because of the snare removal. In 1vX scenarios a snare is basically a death sentence unless it is broken, the other consideration for this ability would be race against time for the mobility buff. I decided to go with shuffle because major evasion is extremely potent and to alleviate my magicka sustain.

4) I am using flawless dawnbreaker on my main bar to buff my weapon power, though temporal guard is a good consideration. Back bar I am using corrosive armor. I usually always activate corrosive over any other ulti.

The_Lex

MentalxHammer wrote: »

juhislihis19 wrote: »

Great shout at Trappings! I think it's a set that's really gone under the radar since the buffed it. However, wouldn't Bone Pirate be better? At 4k stamina, it should give little more damage with good recovery as well?

Question 2: Flurry is really buffed by Deadly?! I have honestly never used that skill, not even in PVE. Is it hard to land?


Question 3: Why Shuffle over Cloak? Snare removal? Cloak is shorter in duration yes, but I think it still procs enchants while it's on. If you choose Quick Cloak, you can get little mobility.

What are you using as ultimates? What do you think of Temporal Guard back bar? Myself, I would like to pick Corrosive back bar, but the 12s is still quite a short time when getting CC'd and snared all the time.

Looks like a nice build, definitely welcoming from the perennial 7th and Fury!

2) Yes! Both flurry and Templar jabs spammable are buffed by Deadly Strike. I have tested it personally.

Is true only with vMA daggers or is flurry buffed regardless of the weapon?

MentalxHammer

Davadin wrote: »

Shuffle? Why not DW's spinning blades thing which is a better version of Shuffle?

Blood Craze, why?

Are you not interested in Molten Whip? Seems to be the Mag/StamDK rage in PTS...

1) Saying one skill is better than the other is taboo unless they have exactly the same effects. Shuffle is actually very strong, as major evasion shuts down many builds, including most ultimates. 25% damage mitigation is massively substantial. The real reason I decided to slot the skill is for snare removal, as in 1vX scenarios you are dead if you cant kite.

2) Why blood craze over rending? Because we already have access to a snare through heroic slash, and the HoT from blood craze is quite strong especially when buffed by major mending from fragmented shield.

3) I am interested in molten whip, however the only flex spot is in poison claw. If this was replaced by molten whip I would only have noxious breath to proc stacks, and noxious only fits into my rotation once every eight gcd's.

MentalxHammer

[/quote]

Is true only with vMA daggers or is flurry buffed regardless of the weapon?[/quote]

Deadly strike will buff flurry regardless of the weapons you are using.

The_Lex

Thanks for the info. I was looking at the tool-tips, which I should never really do in a ZOS game. lol

MentalxHammer

And for those who have asked, Flurry is super easy to land, just as easy as any other instant cast spammable. You can turn 360 degrees and the channel will continue. It has 7 meter range which is awesome. Also you can walk through your target and the channel will continue, unlike dizzying swing.

There is one other subtle advantage that flurry possesses that I would like to share with you all.

In top tier 1v1's both players will be animation cancelling their spammable, as most animations in this game are around 1-1.2 seconds. The global cooldown for skills in this game is 1 second, in order cast 1 skill per second while light attack weaving, your skills must be animation cancelled.

This can actually impact your sustain as it is possible to block cancel at the same moment that your global stamina recovery tick comes. Due to this minor drawback sometimes it is not always in your favor to ani cancel.

Flurry has a 0.6 second channel time. It is very easy to light attack weave into a flurry. Due to the short channel, flurry can easily be cast every one second with no animation cancelling required, therefore it does not become a detriment to your sustain if you wish to cast a spammable skill exactly every 1 second.

MentalxHammer

I will be replacing fragmented shield with cauterize as this now scales with our stamina and weapon power.

Davadin

MentalxHammer wrote: »

I will be replacing fragmented shield with cauterize as this now scales with our stamina and weapon power.

wait what what?

MentalxHammer

Davadin wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

I will be replacing fragmented shield with cauterize as this now scales with our stamina and weapon power.

wait what what?

From patch 5.0.0:

Inferno: This ability and its morphs now operate like the Flames of Oblivion morph, where they will scale with your highest offensive stats. Also increased the power of these abilities by 5%.

Davadin

MentalxHammer wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

I will be replacing fragmented shield with cauterize as this now scales with our stamina and weapon power.

wait what what?

From patch 5.0.0:

Inferno: This ability and its morphs now operate like the Flames of Oblivion morph, where they will scale with your highest offensive stats. Also increased the power of these abilities by 5%.

so you'd rather.... heal your allies than shield?

great news with inferno "buff", but im not following ur logic....

MentalxHammer

MentalxHammer wrote: »

This build is intended for solo play and dueling.

Does that make sense now lolz

Davadin

MentalxHammer wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

This build is intended for solo play and dueling.

Does that make sense now lolz

no.... u pick sth to heal others rather than one to shield yourself.

and the build is for solo.

why???

MentalxHammer

It is possible that you are misunderstood regarding the mechanics of how cauterize operates. It will heal the lowest health target in your group including yourself. If you are running solo then it becomes a self heal.

Xvorg

MentalxHammer wrote: »

It is possible that you are misunderstood regarding the mechanics of how cauterize operates. It will heal the lowest health target in your group including yourself. If you are running solo then it becomes a self heal.

Major Prophecy nstead of Savagery is not a very nice move.

MentalxHammer

[/quote]

Major Prophecy nstead of Savagery is not a very nice move.[/quote]

The major savagery buff is already applied through weapon power potions.

MentalxHammer

After a bit of testing I have decided to slot Essence Thief instead of Trappings of Invigoration as my back bar axe and shield for dueling scenarios. I will still use Trappings in open world as kiting is mandatory.