Should I stay Magicka DK or go Stam DK?

Emothic

Currently using a 2 year old build, since I stopped playing the game for almost 2 years. And I'm noticing that playing offensively I can't compete and die too easily, though I'm fine defensively. This is for Consoles (Xbox specifically)

Current build: Magicka DK, Dunmer, 600 CP

Resources: (With food & Campaign health mechanic added)
Magicka: 38,092 Recovery: 1,119
Health: 24,847 Recovery: 225
Stanima: 17,283 Recover: 707

Damages and Resistances: (Unbuffed)
Spell damage: 2244 Weapon Damage: 1672
Spell Critical: 35.9% Weapon Critical: 25.9%
Spell Resistance: 18968 Physical resistance: 13853 Critical Resistance: 2738

Gear: 2 piece heavy, rest light armor
Monster Set: Bloodspawn, Heavy, Inpen
5 piece Silks of the Sun, Including jewlery, Light armor
5 piece Armor of the Suducer, light armor, inpen, including Swords and shields (both bars) Sharpen and Defending.

Skills:
Defensive bar:
Harden Armor, Coagulating Blood, Dampen Magic, Ingenous Weapons, Choking Talons, Ultimate: Standard of Might
Offesnive bar:
Draw Essenses, Flames of Oblivion, Engulfing Flame, Burning Embers, Molten Whip, Ultimate: Dawnbreaker of Smiting.

Overview:
I pretty much always run with an organized guiled of skilled and veteran players. Defensively I can sustain agianst a decent number of players (5 - 15 players) on my own for quite some time (between 10 - 30 seconds). This is the only good part of my build, but I can't attack while in defense. Against and unorganized Zerg, with my standard of might and while working with my guild, it preforms very well. But only if everything goes right defensively. Offensively I do I guess average damage. But I can't take hits at all. I can't be agressive and I have to play more of a second line support. But all of my skills require me to be on the frontline. Doing so means that I'm usually always the first one dead in my group.

Help?:
I've heard that Stam builds are far more powerful then magicka builds. And I can't keep running with light armor anymore. So should I switch to a Stam build? If I should switch what Skills, and gear should I go with? (I can craft basically everything, and get monster sets. But dungeon sets are not possible as I don't have time to grind them out.). What should I do?

oXI_Viper_IXo

If you go stamina, you might consider switching to a Nord in order to boost your survivability since you aren't max CP.

There are several good craftable sets you could craft in either heavy or medium: Hunding's Rage, Shacklebreaker, Fortified Brass, New Moon Acolyte. What you choose depends on if you want to lean more towards damage or survivability/sustain.

You could definitely use some more health and health recovery.

Keep Bloodspawn, go all impen on your gear.

I personally enjoy playing on a stamDK more, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're stronger than magDK.

NBrookus

For organized group play, I'd say mDK is quite a bit stronger. Stam DK can't afford talons every 3 seconds and the Ignite synergy is juicy. For a small man resource group, stamDK is probably stronger but magDK isn't bad at all. Depends on your group's style. And before you change anything, you and your group need to decide together what they want you to bring to the table. Your bar set up looks like what someone might run to solo. For sure I'd drop vamp.

Getting out in front is never a comfortable place for squishy DDs, but that's where having solid support and heals backing you up makes all the difference.

Sun, Burning Spellweave, New Moon Acolyte, Elemental Succession and Spinners are all excellent damage sets for mDK. Vicious Death is also a contender if you get a lot of killing blows in your group.

Shifting Standard is better than Std of Might for group play by a LOT because it can be re-synergized over and over and shackle with 3 harmony hurts.

Emothic

NBrookus wrote: »

For organized group play, I'd say mDK is quite a bit stronger. Stam DK can't afford talons every 3 seconds and the Ignite synergy is juicy. For a small man resource group, stamDK is probably stronger but magDK isn't bad at all. Depends on your group's style. And before you change anything, you and your group need to decide together what they want you to bring to the table. Your bar set up looks like what someone might run to solo. For sure I'd drop vamp.

Getting out in front is never a comfortable place for squishy DDs, but that's where having solid support and heals backing you up makes all the difference.

Sun, Burning Spellweave, New Moon Acolyte, Elemental Succession and Spinners are all excellent damage sets for mDK. Vicious Death is also a contender if you get a lot of killing blows in your group.

Shifting Standard is better than Std of Might for group play by a LOT because it can be re-synergized over and over and shackle with 3 harmony hurts.

There is no specific playstyle with the group. We hit large zergs, we hit organized gorups, small groups. Whever there is a fight we fight. With speed and movement. With that being siad, they don't care what I bring into the fight as long as I'm on crown, doing what crown says, and fighting in that fight. And I also don't have the luxuray to change specs all the time. Just switching to a stam build could take me days/weeks. My bar is set up just to be able to do damage, which still isn't enough.

This isn't a solo build by any means because MagDKs just don't do alot of damage, at least with flame abilities. The reason my my Max Mag is up so high is just becuase the shere amount of times I have to rotate through skills just to be able to put up average damage at best.

No idea what you mean by "drop vamp". I should have vampire or shouldn't have vampire? I already do have Vampire.

Even with heals from support it's just not enough when I go offensive. Becuase on average we are fighting 3 to 1 odds. And since every class can self sustain, we have to be more heavy on dps then healing. Even as it is, I'm barely doing DPS when I go full offensive. But I spend half of my time running back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, just so I don't die so quickly, so I'm already halving my DPS as it is.


The Meta has changed so much in the past 2 years, that I don't even understand builds anymore. I no longer really have time to even work on a build anymore. Hell just altering my current build can take me much longer then the average player. All I know is that I can't keep playing the way it is now because it's obviously not working.

NBrookus

I'd disagree that mDK doesn't have damage. If you don't want to reinvent the wheel, I suggest you look up Nirnstorm and ScarrX's build videos on YouTube for something prebuilt. They are 1vX style builds and have plenty of damage and sustain.

I meant cure vamp. You aren't using any of the skills but you are taking the extra damage and loss of health regen. With the new Sugar Skulls foods, my health regen is over 1k, which has felt lovely.

Freakin_Hytte

He means that you shouldn't be vampire. The reason you can't go offensive is because you don't have a reliable defensive set. Sure bloodspawn is a good set when it proccs, but it being only 6% chance doesn't make it the most reliable. You can keep silk of the sun, but I would go either armor master (crafted) or pariah (wrothgar overland set) with it and switch out bloodspawn for something else, it could be either for sustain or you could go for a more damage focused one.

You can always try to switch flames of oblivion to the other morph cauterize. I personally like it more, because it's a good reliable heal.

One thing you really need is more mag recovery, 1100 is very low especially for a magdk since our skills have taken quite a cost increase over the last few patches. I would try to boost it up to at least 1500 without a buff, 1700 preferably.

MerguezMan

Being vampire may be an issue in pvp, you are more vulnerable.

Going stam means you have to change your gear and skills, align with stamina/poison/medium armor.
Though it won't make you more tanky, nor would that give you more self-heals.

Have you tried resto staff instead of sword and shield ?
That way you can add heal-over-time, passive self-healing in your attacks.

Check other defensive sets - though without dungeons sets you have limited choice...
- Iceheart ?
- Orgnum scales ?
- Withered hand ?
- Trinimac's valor ?
- Wizard's riposte ?
- ...

MartiniDaniels

MerguezMan wrote: »

Being vampire may be an issue in pvp, you are more vulnerable.

Going stam means you have to change your gear and skills, align with stamina/poison/medium armor.
Though it won't make you more tanky, nor would that give you more self-heals.

Have you tried resto staff instead of sword and shield ?
That way you can add heal-over-time, passive self-healing in your attacks.

Check other defensive sets - though without dungeons sets you have limited choice...
- Iceheart ?
- Orgnum scales ?
- Withered hand ?
- Trinimac's valor ?
- Wizard's riposte ?
- ...

What? you will be more vulnerable exclusively to magDK. Against everything else being vampire is huge benefit. After I switched to vampire it feels like PVP became much easier.

Freakin_Hytte

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MerguezMan wrote: »

Being vampire may be an issue in pvp, you are more vulnerable.

Going stam means you have to change your gear and skills, align with stamina/poison/medium armor.
Though it won't make you more tanky, nor would that give you more self-heals.

Have you tried resto staff instead of sword and shield ?
That way you can add heal-over-time, passive self-healing in your attacks.

Check other defensive sets - though without dungeons sets you have limited choice...
- Iceheart ?
- Orgnum scales ?
- Withered hand ?
- Trinimac's valor ?
- Wizard's riposte ?
- ...

What? you will be more vulnerable exclusively to magDK. Against everything else being vampire is huge benefit. After I switched to vampire it feels like PVP became much easier.

Lol fire damage is one of the most common mag damage types in PvP.

Ragnarock41

For solo play stamDk because its a stamina class with better mobility. For literally any kind of group play magDK is far superior.

MartiniDaniels

Freakin_Hytte wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MerguezMan wrote: »

Being vampire may be an issue in pvp, you are more vulnerable.

Going stam means you have to change your gear and skills, align with stamina/poison/medium armor.
Though it won't make you more tanky, nor would that give you more self-heals.

Have you tried resto staff instead of sword and shield ?
That way you can add heal-over-time, passive self-healing in your attacks.

Check other defensive sets - though without dungeons sets you have limited choice...
- Iceheart ?
- Orgnum scales ?
- Withered hand ?
- Trinimac's valor ?
- Wizard's riposte ?
- ...

What? you will be more vulnerable exclusively to magDK. Against everything else being vampire is huge benefit. After I switched to vampire it feels like PVP became much easier.

Lol fire damage is one of the most common mag damage types in PvP.

Skoria, Zaan, Maw? All of that is telegraphed and can be avoided by movement/LOS/dodge. Meteor combo is literally cancelled by going to Mist. Inferno light attacks? So far I see most magclasses perform resto or lightning light attacks because they have immediate travel time. +5-8% to force pulse damage at 50%+ HP? Buggy bones? Sieges? All that is hardly a problem for solo player or for the group. And if you need to pass flame oil aoe, mistform will do it better then major evasion.

Stage4 should be avoided of course (unless you are gankblade) and Mist is imo most powerful part of the vampire, so I found that best option is rotation of stages 1-3 with immediate drop to stage 1 by 2 Bloody Maras when you are close to stage 4. In practice I need to eat once per hour at average and that's hardly an issue.