Dragonknight build for all purposes

MerguezMan

Hi,

Been playing ESO on xbox since 2018, mainly with DK. At this point, the character has cleared all base-game content, and most of the DLCs.
I'm not much into dungeons, so I have limited feedback on those. I took a dark elf, as I always do in Elder scrolls games since Morrowind.

At first, I took the tank build. Soon struggled on sustain and damage, unable to go through Veteran Maelstrom Arena, I changed to go stamina damage dealer.
Then, I started doing battlegrounds and changed my build again into more hybrid kind, to keep damage while having more self-healing and sustain.
I went through all weapon types, maxed all skill lines, and collected all available skyshards (still miss a few pvp skillpoints, but that's a lot of AP gathering).

I'm always looking for ways to improve, and would like your suggestions.

Please keep in mind, that I want:
- minimum gear swap (I won't gold out 1 armor set for each activity, but I agree on having different weapon types of same set)
- minimum skill swap (to keep a consistent playstyle - some skills have indeed more use in pvp or pve cases)


This is my current build :

- Valkyn Skoria monster set (good dot synergy, nice aoe)
- Shacklebreaker and New Moon Acolyte armor sets (AFAIK the best stamina & magicka combo)
- Medium armor 5/1/1 - 4 impenetrable, 2 infused, 1 reinforced (heavy)
- Jewelry = infused magicka regen, bloodthirsty stamina regen, infused weapon damage
- 32 points each in stamina and magicka
- tri-stat food and potions

Main bar = Nirn great sword (good burst damage)
- Noxious breath (aoe major fracture, dot)
- Race against time (cc breaker, minor force)
- Flames of Oblivion (major savagery, nice fireball)
- Stampede (dash, dot)
- Executioner (finisher)
- Take flight (aoe, cheap and hits hard)

Off bar = Powered restoration staff (heavy attack counts as dot )
- Molten armaments (major and minor brutality and major sorcery, heavy attack buff)
- Volatile armor (major resolve, 360° dot)
- Radiating regeneration (heals better than Vigor)
- Venomous claw (cheap dot)
- Molten whip (pve - synergize well with claw) / Fossilize (pvp - cc)
- Reviving barrier (30s of not caring what hits you, extra 10% magicka regen)

Spartabunny08

Looks pretty good. Interesting setup, would be interested to hear how it performs. Personally I'd rather go magma or corrosive instead of the shield but just preference.

JumpmanLane

Uhhhh no. You’re gimping yourself running that. Pick MagDk or StamDK. 64 into mag or Stam.

None of that is gonna hit hard as it could otherwise...

Davadin

Hybrid build?

No. I'm sorry, but you won't be able to perform decently. Hybrid needs TONS of top grade material and complex rotation JUST to make it decent.

Pick one. Stam or Mag.


My "one build" is an AoE stamDK PvP. NMA and Shackle is OK, but make the head, chest, and legs Infused with gold tri-stat glyph. the rest are Impenetrable with Stamina glyph.

2H Axe and 1H+shield. Axe is Nirn, its great coz it bleeds. 1H+S is DK's bread n butter. it just synergized with our class too damn well. You can go for Bow, but that has tendency to go into glass-cannon build with medium.
Jewelries are 3 infused. 1 regen, 2 wep damage. (or 2+1, reverse it).

Main bar is your damage bar. 2H skills, major brutality, DoT, then Leap as ulti.
Second bar is your "SHIELDS UP" bar. Heal, HoT, Vol armor, etc., then shield ulti.


This will easily allows you to clear some world bosses, public dungeons, PvP in Cyro and BG, and normal group dungeons.

vet dungeons, MAYBE. you'll get carried, so group with a nice strong DPS.... or swap the shield with a bow, and load up on DoTs plus buff on that second bar.

Kurat

This build is fine for overland stuff but if you decide to do dungeons then be ready to get insulted or kicked or both.

MerguezMan

Thanks for feedback, you guys seem to have very defined ideas of what can or should be, so I 'll clarify a few things:

1) I play on xbox, so have no access to mods or plug-ins you guys might have on PC.

2) I often read that "hybrids don't do well", and believed so, until I tried myself.
- it takes 2-3 seconds to kill pve overland trash mobs, enemy alone or a small pack, I don't feel a significant difference in current build, and I used to wear Relequens and Spriggans before I swapped this way.
- having 32 or 64 points in stamina does not make such a huge difference in no-CP environment, that's basically a 5%, 200 hit-points per light attack difference, easily balanced with magicka-scaling attacks

3) for most other classes, indeed, going full stamina or magicka is better (I wouldn't consider going hybrid on Sorcerer class, for instance), but specifically for DK, there are great skills you get the best out only from magicka:
- Flames of Oblivion do scale with highest stat, but the projectile remains FIRE
- Volatile armor spikes, and returns magic damage to enemies, which scales with magic (ridiculous in pure stamina setup, decent in hybrid or magicka setup)
- Molten whip increases weapon and spell damage, but scales with magicka (10k-ish hit at step 3, comes cheap thanks to Claw)
I do sacrifice a bit of weapon damage, but I get actual magic damage in return, so that's not a real loss (and that's nothing complex to reapply every 10-15s).

4) I don't do so much dungeons with this toon, but it never seemed to be an issue. I don't pretend to be a healer, I list as dd.
- I can solo most normal dungeons (except ofc those with group mechanics), and even some basic vet dungeons, without trouble
- in random groups, sometimes the "healer" is not really one (yes, you know, those "healers" with dual daggers and a bow...), and when that happens I may carry the group
IMO, last game updates broke a lot of user-defined guidelines. I keep "a good damage dealer is an alive one".

5) Let's say I use bow on back-bar, 64 points in stam:
- gain 300 damage hit points on light attack, lose healing and major mending on heavy attack
- gain 10k-ish dot as Arrow barrage, lose 10k-ish Whip burst
- use Echoing vigor instead of Regeneration (because Resolving is selfish), lose 50% of self-healing capacity
- still have 12k+ total cost of magicka skills, lose 30% heavy attack regen, block regen, have crappy magicka self-sustain
... Not sure that is full benefit.

6) I used to have sword and board, and I don't agree on a "synergy":
- DK passives do increase blocked damage and weapon damage further. They do with any weapon, and never to a point you would feel "overpowered". When Dragon scales did reflect projectiles, we could stand still, but that's not a thing anymore.
- most buffs and debuffs in S&B skill line are also accessed in DK skills, being Fracture, Maim, Stun. None of S&B skills align in poison or fire, thus not having benefit of Combustion or World in ruin.
You can find synergies with bow or fire destro staff, but not really S&B. You do have synergies in Heavy armor, though.


Please don't judge too kickly or give advice without real comparison. I expect small changes, not a revolution.

BNOC

MerguezMan wrote: »

Thanks for feedback, you guys seem to have very defined ideas of what can or should be, so I 'll clarify a few things:

1) I play on xbox, so have no access to mods or plug-ins you guys might have on PC.

2) I often read that "hybrids don't do well", and believed so, until I tried myself.
- it takes 2-3 seconds to kill pve overland trash mobs, enemy alone or a small pack, I don't feel a significant difference in current build, and I used to wear Relequens and Spriggans before I swapped this way.
- having 32 or 64 points in stamina does not make such a huge difference in no-CP environment, that's basically a 5%, 200 hit-points per light attack difference, easily balanced with magicka-scaling attacks

3) for most other classes, indeed, going full stamina or magicka is better (I wouldn't consider going hybrid on Sorcerer class, for instance), but specifically for DK, there are great skills you get the best out only from magicka:
- Flames of Oblivion do scale with highest stat, but the projectile remains FIRE
- Volatile armor spikes, and returns magic damage to enemies, which scales with magic (ridiculous in pure stamina setup, decent in hybrid or magicka setup)
- Molten whip increases weapon and spell damage, but scales with magicka (10k-ish hit at step 3, comes cheap thanks to Claw)
I do sacrifice a bit of weapon damage, but I get actual magic damage in return, so that's not a real loss (and that's nothing complex to reapply every 10-15s).

4) I don't do so much dungeons with this toon, but it never seemed to be an issue. I don't pretend to be a healer, I list as dd.
- I can solo most normal dungeons (except ofc those with group mechanics), and even some basic vet dungeons, without trouble
- in random groups, sometimes the "healer" is not really one (yes, you know, those "healers" with dual daggers and a bow...), and when that happens I may carry the group
IMO, last game updates broke a lot of user-defined guidelines. I keep "a good damage dealer is an alive one".

5) Let's say I use bow on back-bar, 64 points in stam:
- gain 300 damage hit points on light attack, lose healing and major mending on heavy attack
- gain 10k-ish dot as Arrow barrage, lose 10k-ish Whip burst
- use Echoing vigor instead of Regeneration (because Resolving is selfish), lose 50% of self-healing capacity
- still have 12k+ total cost of magicka skills, lose 30% heavy attack regen, block regen, have crappy magicka self-sustain
... Not sure that is full benefit.

6) I used to have sword and board, and I don't agree on a "synergy":
- DK passives do increase blocked damage and weapon damage further. They do with any weapon, and never to a point you would feel "overpowered". When Dragon scales did reflect projectiles, we could stand still, but that's not a thing anymore.
- most buffs and debuffs in S&B skill line are also accessed in DK skills, being Fracture, Maim, Stun. None of S&B skills align in poison or fire, thus not having benefit of Combustion or World in ruin.
You can find synergies with bow or fire destro staff, but not really S&B. You do have synergies in Heavy armor, though.


Please don't judge too kickly or give advice without real comparison. I expect small changes, not a revolution.

1. You don't need addons because nobody else has them on console
2.

• It would take 1-2 with a proper build if that's the case, try testing it on something with 500k health and you'll notice the glaring difference.
• Having an extra 32 points is a big deal, as is 200 damage per light attack (although all of your damage scales on those extra 32 points, so you're missing out on much more than 200 damage). Consider weaving over 1 minute, that's 10k~ damage on your numbers alone, now imagine 5 minutes.. and then imagine your entire remaining playtime. That's a lot of lost damage.
• It is in no way balanced with magicka attacks - Classes have passives and you use abilities to scale your primary stat higher, even in no-CP, you lose out on any modifiers to those 32 points.

3.

• Abilities that scale on highest stat won't be hard hiting at all if you don't really have a highest stat (i know one is higher, but you catch the drift)
• You are 100% not doing the same damage with magicka abilities that you would be with stam.

4. Judging yourself based on group finder standards is not a good way to progress, you're comparing yourself to the wrong players.
5.

• 300 Damage on LA's and then extra damage on all other abilities - That's after modifiers to your primary stat have pushed it even higher, so now you're talking about even more damage lost.
• Arrow barrage dealing 10k AOE damage is better for you than a single target 10k whip that needs to be procced.
• Your choice on heal
• You only lose 30% regen on magicka restore, that shouldn't be that important to you, the rate at which you use magicka abilities should be minor to the point your natural sustain covers it.

6. You're thinking too much into synergy and trying to be too creative imo. It's been tried and tested before and it's not even close.


The guys above can tell you more about skills but I wouldn't run Valkyn, also even if you stick to this Hybrid attempt, Grothdarr would have been better and if you go Mag then Grothdarr for sure.

Gl

MerguezMan

BNOC wrote: »

2.

• It would take 1-2 with a proper build if that's the case, try testing it on something with 500k health and you'll notice the glaring difference.
• Having an extra 32 points is a big deal, as is 200 damage per light attack (although all of your damage scales on those extra 32 points, so you're missing out on much more than 200 damage). Consider weaving over 1 minute, that's 10k~ damage on your numbers alone, now imagine 5 minutes.. and then imagine your entire remaining playtime. That's a lot of lost damage.
• It is in no way balanced with magicka attacks - Classes have passives and you use abilities to scale your primary stat higher, even in no-CP, you lose out on any modifiers to those 32 points.

So you do confirm, that Bosses aside, there is actual little difference.
Which makes no difference at all if you're not able to manage solo a true 500k+ health monster actively attacking you (because you would probably die without proper sustain and healing, which would never happen to a practice dummy),
But DO make a significant difference in a premade organized group (because you can rely on teammates).

BNOC wrote: »

3.

• Abilities that scale on highest stat won't be hard hiting at all if you don't really have a highest stat (i know one is higher, but you catch the drift)
• You are 100% not doing the same damage with magicka abilities that you would be with stam.

I am adjusting these for best sustain balance, 43 in stamina seems a good spot (that's a 30k stam pool).
True, damage is not the same, but I would use Volatile armor and Flames of Oblivion anyway. Add Molten armaments and Race against time in rotation, and you're out of fuel in less than a minute in pure stamina setup and without extra magicka regen (add Dragon scales and/or Fragmented shield, and get even more in trouble)... Unless you heavy attack every 2s, which would ruin the "1-2s per trash mob" you talked about above.

BNOC wrote: »

4. Judging yourself based on group finder standards is not a good way to progress, you're comparing yourself to the wrong players.

Indeed, in premade full-organized group, that would be available 100% of my playtime (and up for the same activity), I wouldn't have to bother a solo-able build. Unfortunately, I don't have such group in my contacts ; the group-finder standards being what they are, I adapt. Would you really blame me for that ?


[Edit] Sorry if my answer seems rude, english is not my native language.

I don't focus on target dummy testing, IMO that's a good way to practice rotation, but a rather bad training, as you never have to shield or heal yourself. I don't theorycraft, I test directly solo on normal dungeons (Wayrest sewers I or Fungal Grotto I, usually) or open world bosses (Sharpfang in Deshaan).

As I said in the opening post, I have been through full-tank setup, full-stam damage setup. I am completely aware this current setup won't deal BEST damage. I did sacrifice a bit of damage for survivability and sustain, in solo-play and no-cp pvp perspective, and I can guarantee it is viable (otherwise I would have asked "help, I can't kill ..." or "help, I keep dying to...").

I'm looking for some kind of optimal balance in this way.

That being said, I'm not against group play. I've had great games with other players.