Mag dk after dot nerf

psycoprophet

I dont play mag dk but it seems their main damage type is dot. Are they going to be viable after the dot nerf or will the still be decent. Getting bored of stamblade and was thinking of trying mag dk so was just curious as I'm pretty new and not knowledgeable enough yet to speculate.

Zer0_CooL

As a mag DK i'd suggest you to just make a Templar

Cadbury

If you're on console, I would level one up quickly before next patch hits.

psycoprophet

So are devs not taking dk's reliance on dots as its main dps application when rolling out the high nerf % on dots this patch? Seems like a class like dk would have dps % range higher than that of classes that arnt so reliant on dots. I'm new so maybe that's wrong but makes sense to me lol

Ingel_Riday

psycoprophet wrote: »

So are devs not taking dk's reliance on dots as its main dps application when rolling out the high nerf % on dots this patch? Seems like a class like dk would have dps % range higher than that of classes that arnt so reliant on dots. I'm new so maybe that's wrong but makes sense to me lol

Pretty much. From the sounds of it, we get to be decimated for an update or two until their "combat audit" is done. Then maybe they'll throw us a bone.

As such, I recommend goofing around with one until Update 24 drops and then switching to a different character. Dragonknight damage dealers are going to be in a bad place for a long time.

OG_Kaveman

psycoprophet wrote: »

So are devs not taking dk's reliance on dots as its main dps application when rolling out the high nerf % on dots this patch? Seems like a class like dk would have dps % range higher than that of classes that arnt so reliant on dots. I'm new so maybe that's wrong but makes sense to me lol

the new patch is not out on live yet. this question is not worth asking till they do.

Evanis

If DPS is not the objective, how about DK tanks? Will Dragonhold affect them negatively in this respect?

Starlock

Given the absence of specificity in the opening post, of course they'll be "viable." Everything in this game is, no exceptions. You need to specify what kind of content you are talking about, OP, as well as whether or not you make the proper distinction between "viable" and "best" or "most efficient" or "meta" or whatever.

I mean, right now my dragonknight is a melee-magicka character. Right now, he's perfectly "viable" for all the content I want to do with that character. In spite of being utterly unable to restore magicka with heavy attacks, I can still solo most overland world bosses with him (a feat that is certainly more challenging than it is on some of my other characters, understandably). After this patch hits? Well, I expect it's going to be really bad. I mean, he already dances a razor thin line of being able to work as a magicka-melee character as it stands and this is probably going to tip the equation in a bad way. Soloing world bosses may not be a thing for the character anymore... or it'll be a lot more tedious and challenging to the point I won't bother with it on that character anymore. No big deal. I play mostly for storytelling anyway. Doing 4-person dungeons, world bosses, and all that is just a occasional fun distraction from weaving narratives. But if your gameplay priorities are different, the equation will have a different sum than mine.

OG_Kaveman

Evanis wrote: »

If DPS is not the objective, how about DK tanks? Will Dragonhold affect them negatively in this respect?

The biggest change to DK tanks is engulfing flames percent amp to fire damage scaling with spell damage now. Every 333 spell damage is 1%, up to 10%, meaning you are going to need 3,330 spell damage for the full amount, something only damage dealers are going to even come close. DK Tanks will have 4-5% at best, so yes, that will affect them negatively.

Animus-ESO

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

As a mag DK i'd suggest you to just make a Templar

I wouldn't do that either. Yeah you'll be able to heal but good luck killing anything. Jabs is dropping 500 damage a tick and vamp babe is doing 300 damage a sec

psycoprophet

Sry I didnt specify I was mostly meaning its viability in pvp modes as a damage dealer semi tank

Ingel_Riday

Starlock wrote: »

Given the absence of specificity in the opening post, of course they'll be "viable." Everything in this game is, no exceptions. You need to specify what kind of content you are talking about, OP, as well as whether or not you make the proper distinction between "viable" and "best" or "most efficient" or "meta" or whatever.

I mean, right now my dragonknight is a melee-magicka character. Right now, he's perfectly "viable" for all the content I want to do with that character. In spite of being utterly unable to restore magicka with heavy attacks, I can still solo most overland world bosses with him (a feat that is certainly more challenging than it is on some of my other characters, understandably). After this patch hits? Well, I expect it's going to be really bad. I mean, he already dances a razor thin line of being able to work as a magicka-melee character as it stands and this is probably going to tip the equation in a bad way. Soloing world bosses may not be a thing for the character anymore... or it'll be a lot more tedious and challenging to the point I won't bother with it on that character anymore. No big deal. I play mostly for storytelling anyway. Doing 4-person dungeons, world bosses, and all that is just a occasional fun distraction from weaving narratives. But if your gameplay priorities are different, the equation will have a different sum than mine.

Honestly, I detest this Orwellian marketing angle that's getting bandied about as of late.

Oh, you won't do decent damage anymore, but you'll be VIABLE. You can still DO stuff. You just won't DO anything particularly well. But it's SO viable.

Bleh. Say what I might about World of Warcraft's flaws, damage specs were predominantly decent. Affliction warlocks focused on keeping up dots on targets, hunters focused on ranged physical damage, mages focused on ranged magic damage, rogues kept up sustained damage, warriors had bursty damage, etc.. They all approached the same problem from different angles, but nobody sucked. Just had different "identities" and "play patterns," as it were. More to the point, nobody sucked so badly that the developers had to tell them "hey, I know you suck... but we never said every spec would be OPTIMAL. You are still VIABLE for whacking monsters on the surface and whacking dragons on the shin, you little casual. We don't balance the game for you." You might not have been optimal for a specific raid boss fight pattern, but you were never not optimal for ENTIRE FACETS OF THE GAME nor ALL END GAME CONTENT.

I find it even more galling because I went out of my way to MAKE MY CHARACTER OPTIMAL according to the parameters of the game. I started this guy as an imperial in 5 heavy / 2 light with a melee weapon, and realized I could make this work a little... but it wasn't going to do if I wanted to rock it. Switched to 5 light / 2 heavy to improve my damage and usefulness in groups. Switched to dark elf for the racial bonuses to help such said damage. Switched to a flame staff / lightning staff combo to improve damage again. Reworked my skills around based on Altcast builds and online advice until I was finally posting decent enough numbers for vet dungeons (which I'd do more often if veteran pick-up groups weren't so hit or miss). Learned light weaving to get that extra damage milked out. On and on I worked, to play this class right and optimize my performance. It worked. I did it...

… and now it's going to suck in two months, through no fault of my own. But hey... I'm still VIABLE. Viable to do normal dungeons only and be a gimped second class citizen. Viable to collect dust as I play another character. OPTIMAL to... craft her new 5 piece set and upgrade everything to legendary, because I maxed out all my crafting skills.

That sucks. I need to stop reading these forums for a while, I think. I'm actually getting more irritated the more I type about it, haha.

Ingel_Riday

As an addendum, I know I'm being a bit harsh. Taking a step back from my personal position of "No, my MAIN!!!" and getting a little more objective, I think that Elder Scrolls Online is having a struggle very similar to the one Champions Online had.

With World of Warcraft as of the current expansion's launch day (haven't played since then), every sub-class had a set of skills and stats hand-picked by the development team. In essence, every affliction warlock was the same except in terms of "gear score," which I'm glad you don't have to worry about in this game after CP160. You had the same set of skills, the same play pattern skill rotation, the same health, and the same armor. The most customization you could do outside of appearance was in terms of a few optional "talents" that barely had any statistical impact (flavor options, really).

Mathematically, the above is much easier to manage. You know how much damage you want each sub-class to do with the proper skill rotation, you know how much health and armor you want each sub-class to have, you know the general combat range of each sub-class, and you know the general healing capacity of each sub-class. Defining identity and role is convenient, and if players want a particular niche... they know how to get it.

By comparison, Champions Online was a super hero MMORPG with over a hundred skills for you to grab out of a bag... and balancing was a nightmare. You never knew what bizarre combination the player-base was going to cobble together to break the game with a meta super-build. You never knew how to balance things because you never knew what armor, health, weapons, abilities, and so on a person was bringing to the table. Just too many combinations to deal with at any one time. If you balanced for a general, mathematically-deduced "average" build, half your player-base would flounder. If you balanced for the lowest common denominator builds that had zero skill synergies and no optimizations whatsoever, then the other half of the player-base would find the game too easy on average and grumble to high heaven. What to do, what to do?

Based on my best friend's experience playing Champions Online, every major patch took a giant mallet to the meta build, decimating it. Then the player-base would deduce the next meta build and flock to that one, until it was decimated. The loop went on and on, as Champion Online's developers went for a "it's the tall grass that gets cut" approach to game balance. Eventually his build became the meta, the developers nerfed it into oblivion, and he quit. So it goes. Imagine my cynical amusement with dot-based gameplay became the meta in ESO during Update 23. God darnit. *pout*

Elder Scrolls Online is kind of in the middle. It has six classes that each have 18 class specific abilities and 12 class specific passives, with some of such said abilities tied to damage, some to healing, and some to tanking. Theoretically, it could use these to incentivize certain play patterns... kind of like World of Warcraft.

For example, dragon knight tanks might rely on damage shields with earthen themes while warden tanks rely on group buffs with frost themes while sorcerer tanks rely on dealing higher bust damage with lightning themed skills while templar tanks rely on sun-themed group heals to keep themselves and team-mates up while nightblade tanks rely on siphoning and leeching to sustain themselves (with shadowy smoke themes) and so on. Each might not be OPTIMAL for specific raid fights that require more damage shields or more group buffs, but they might all be made to average out to similar performance levels over-all. They would do the same thing, but differently. Find your preference. They'd all also look aesthetically distinct. If you had a nightblade tank, you'd know.

However, this is an Elder Scrolls game and players don't expect strict class rigidity like World of Warcraft. They expect a very different thing: "character builds." Consequently, this game has more flexibility than my example above lets on. On top of the six classes, there are three different armor categories, and anyone of any build can wear whatever they want. There are also six weapon skills, and anyone of any build can use whatever weapons they want. There are four guilds with their own abilities and passives, two monster trees (vampire and werewolf), a soul tree with a few abilities, and PVP skills. Players can pick their own health allotments and energy allotments, and there are no soft caps to limit min-maxing. How the hell do you balance this? Heck, I'm not even factoring in whether or not a person knows about light weaving yet.

I've seen magicka templars in medium armor using two handed weapons while casting magicka morphs of their main abilities. I've seen sorcerer tanks in five light armor with 18k health saying they are good to go because they have a frost staff and lightning form on their front bar. You can't make these kinds of builds optimal. I HOPE that when Zenimax Online Studios talks about "viable versus optimal," this is what they have in mind regarding "viable." I'm not always certain.

Personally, I have always held out hope for a "carrot-focused" approach to balancing. Maybe have a damage tree, a tanking / mitigation tree, and a healing / utility tree for each class and tweak skill performances so that class-based damage abilities do 5% to 10% more damage than their generic counterparts, class-based mitigation abilities have 5% to 10% improved performance over their generic counterparts, and class-based healing abilities is 5% to 10% more effective than their generic counterparts. Instead of using entropy because it does more damage, a player uses it only when they don't have a class-based way to get major sorcery. Likewise, a player uses hidden blade or rally when they don't have a class-based way to get Major Brutality. A player uses the 5 piece heavy armor ability that grants 5,280 extra armor when they don't have a class-based way to get such said 5,280 armor. But... these generic abilities are 5% to 10% less effective. You only use them when you have to. Also, it would balance out... because we'd all need to use a few of them to fill in gaps. We'd all wind up with a slew of things we did a bit better and a slew of things we did a bit worse.

The carrots would guide people towards using class skills, which would make balancing gradually less awful to do AND would gradually enforce class identity. But... if someone wanted to build a character that only used mage guild, Psijic Order, and destruction staff skills... they could. It might not be as effective (each skill is 5% to 10% lesser than a class-based equivalent), but mathematically you could theoretically pull it off. If a magicka character wanted to wear seven pieces of light armor, 5 pieces of light with one medium and one heavy, or five pieces of light with two heavy, fine. It'd fluctuate performance a bit, but not by a lot. The core of the character, for balancing purposes, would be the emphasis on class skills. Then you'd just be dealing with minor "flavor" choices and relatively insignificant minutia afterwards of "does Ingel put on the +1,096 magicka shoulder or the +2,975 armor shoulder? 100 more spell damage or 3% more damage reduction? What say thee, heathen?"

So yeah, a dps stamina dragonknight would want to use their dots because they'd be more effective than generic dots. Positive incentive towards poison-searing strike and poison-flame breath. They'd want to use eruption or dragon talons because those AOEs would be more effective for them than steel tornado... but if they liked the range and ease of use of steel tornado, fine. It'd be 5% to 10% less damage from the ability overall and maybe not have a synergy attached to it, but okay. It's the generic equivalent. The "pulsar" of dual wield. They don't have a spammable stamina-whip, unfortunately, but the gap filler of flurry makes up for that. It'd be 5% to 10% less effective than the Nightblade's surprise attack or the Necromancer's scythe attack, but blood craze is 5% to 10% less effective than a dragon knight dot and green dragon blood is 5% to 10% more effective than vigor (but nightblades get better siphoning). We all kind of reach a similar point, but we do it differently. Different roads to the tavern. Dragon knight dps are dots with a little earthen tanky flair, nightblades are direct damage attacks with better siphoning for keeping themselves up. We've done it. Overly simplistic example, but I think it'd be nicer than cutting the tall grass every three months.

There. I feel like I've been more constructive and less grumbly. :-P

Ysbriel

I have a MagDk i put Burning Spellweave, spell strategist and grothdar on him with the Maelstrom Staff. My Magplar is now wearing his gear now. The Dk? well at least he looks cool on the character selection screen.

JamuThatsWho

DKs were pitched as an attrition class; wear down the enemy while standing their ground. As such, DoTs were supposed to be the main bulk of their damage, giving them breathing room to sustain.

With the preposed changes in the upcoming patch, that seems to be going completely out of the window, and we'll just have another re-skinned ranged spam class like Wardens and Necros.

Such a shame, I've spent the majority of my time in ESO as a Dunmer MagDK and loved the feel of being a melee battlemage. Now I just log on to collect daily rewards and check my trait research.

JumpmanLane

When in doubt run all damage...

Zer0_CooL

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Zer0_CooL wrote: »

Jabs is dropping 500 damage a tick

It's about f***ing time this skill gets nerfed!

Commancho

I will reroll mine to tank. It's time to clean a dust from Ebon armor and sharp Alkosh's sword. I can't stop to play it as it's my main, but I will focus on PVE until they fix their mess.

ccfeeling

Commancho wrote: »

I will reroll mine to tank. It's time to clean a dust from Ebon armor and sharp Alkosh's sword. I can't stop to play it as it's my main, but I will focus on PVE until they fix their mess.

Lol , I do the same .

MaleAmazon

As an addendum, I know I'm being a bit harsh. Taking a step back from my personal position of "No, my MAIN!!!" and getting a little more objective, I think that Elder Scrolls Online is having a struggle very similar to the one Champions Online had...

...Elder Scrolls Online is kind of in the middle. It has six classes that each have 18 class specific abilities and 12 class specific passives, with some of such said abilities tied to damage, some to healing, and some to tanking. Theoretically, it could use these to incentivize certain play patterns... kind of like World of Warcraft.

I actually think ESO´s problems are quite ESO-specific;

(Disclaimer: I did not really play PvP back in the day and not that much now either, but I think I know enough to make these statements)

At launch, we didn´t even really have stamina morphs of skills. It was not clear how damage scaled, and as many of us found out later, the heavy / light attacks didn´t scale at all as much off of max stats but rather S/W damage, which was of course changed much later. Weapon skillines didn´t have ultimates.

Damage being out of hand led to the battle spirit debuff and that debuff, while it solves insta-death (somewhat), doesn´t solve issues like the player DPS gap - which is one reason why ESO essentially only has PvP for expert / hardcore players, and not newbies nor casuals.

The meta has changed aplenty. I remember when I wanted to wear heavy armor in PvP and was told it was 'useless' by experienced PvPers.

The devs either did not have, or did not keep to, a vision for the game mechanics. Originally, I believe ultimate was supposed to be rewarded for playing well (combos etc), but this was almost completely abandoned into the 'mostly auto-tick' we have now. But things can change - you could reward extra ultimate for using different skills or combinations, and this might be an incentive to use more DoTs. Or it might not. The devs themselves have said they want people to use DoTs, but not use them as spammables. I really cannot argue with that concept, it seems quite fine - they will of course have to get the numbers right.

The game has been band-aided for years, and I think it is fair to say it has been mishandled. Not totally, but this is what happens when you release something and then change it without a clear direction as some kind of years-long afterthought.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pund of cure".

At the moment healing looks too strong; spamming heals and attacking during a small burst window seems to be the 'best' way of playing, and really, I don´t expect this to change, and I don´t care.

But I can still have fun with my glass cannons

Still, there is something to be said for a game which has all classes represented in PvP, for both stamina and magicka. Something should be said for a game that releases something like One Tamriel which made all zones worth visiting at all levels, and broke down a lot of artificial barriers.

And personally, the devs gave me more hope than they have given in years in the video where they explained their ideas for combat. It seems they now have an actual proper direction and long-term plan.

Think of it as a vaccination: it hurts now, but gives long-term benefit to the population as a whole.