MadDK build / set up

kickons

Returning player from a year ago or so, looking at rebuilding my magdk alt though unsure where to start at the moment...

Looking for some build ideas, including;
- gear & jewel sets
- Weapons
- Traits
- Bars

Mainly for Bgs and non-Cp cyro / imp city.

If you’re running a nice fun and competitive build, drop your build in the thread, would love to see what everyone’s running these days.

Look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

Somewhere

Useful gear:

• Burning Spellweave: They removed the proc chance from the set, so now it procs whenever you deal any fire damage at all. This means you could reliably run BSW on your backbar via an ice staff, snb, or restoration staff and get the spell damage from just a single tick from a flame dot.
• Elf Bane: They increased the bonus from this to 5 second duration extension, from 2 seconds back at the beginning of this year. If you combine it with grothdarr you get a 10 second duration with a 10 second cooldown. Magma shell extends to an 18 second duration. Burning talons benefits a lot too. While technically its damage doesn't go up, the duration extends to 9 seconds which makes it easier to maintain on an opponent and mitigates sustain hits.
• Wyrd Tree's Blessing / Curse Eater / Stendarr's Embrace: you can run one of these sets on your backbar to purge off negative effects which is valuable given how prevalent negative effects are and how expensive purge is. I would recommend those sets in the order listed.
• Stuhn's Favor: Provides a lot of penetration when you damage an off balance target, a simple task for a magdk.
• Innate Axiom: If you're not running anything but your class skills this could be worthwhile now that the 2-4 pc bonuses are all useful.
• Crest of Cyrodiil: Good to put on your backbar with a s&b. Decent heal, especially when used with Cauterize + Dragon's Blood. You can go to full health in a single GCD basically.
• Crimson Twilight: Heavy armor set that drops from the new dungeon. Provides a bit of damage and a decent heal that scales linearly with the number of targets hit just like Deep Breath which can be useful for sure.
• Mark of the Pariah / Buffer of the Swift: Run pariah if you want a tankier set and are willing to run heavy armor or have the space for it with weapons / jewelry. If not you can try Buffer of the Swift and run it on your body pieces so you still get the light armor passives.
• Rose of Cyrodiil: most effective for a blocking build, say with snb, especially heavy armor.
• Overwhelming Surge: Combine this with Malacath's Band and Grothdarr and you turn into a mini storm with about 4k+ damage/sec just swirling around you passively.
• Soulshine: If you decide to use mist form you can put this on your backbar to proc the 369 spell damage. Combine that with the 300 spell damage passive coming out of mist/stealth/invis from the vampire passive and you can instantly grant yourself 669 + % modifer spell damage. If you do this, consider Mother Ciannait monster helmet, as the damage shield can be proc'd from mist form as well. I have a guild mate who runs a set-ups like this to great success.
• Hist Sap: Also works well for backbar, especially for battlegrounds. Snares, immobilizations, and stuns are so common in a BG that you can effectively keep that heal going forever. 2000 hp/sec before battle spirit may not sound like much, but that's a similar heal to Regeneration from the restoration staff tree, so it's worth considering.
• Malacath's Band of Brutality: If you're running this ring I see a few runs that it's run: a) 5-pc set, 2-pc set, Malacath's Band, and a 3-pc or an incomplete 5-pc that provides the stats you want, Stuhn's is a common set. b) 5-pc set active on frontbar, 5-pc set active on backbar, 2-pc set, Malacath's Band. I prefer the 2nd configuration tbh since it lets you have a defensive/healing set active on your backbar and an offensive proc on your front. This buffs proc damage as you may know, so it works great with any offensive proc.

For weapon traits a lot of us have moved to using the Charged trait on a destro staff on frontbar. This increases your chance to apply burning by 320% which can really help with sustain, and the burning status condition does hit pretty hard too. An enchantment has an 80%~ chance to apply burning with charged, and lava whip itself applies it 40% iirc. Think of it like cost reduction.

For weapons combinations there's a lot of viable ones:
Destro / snb
Destro / resto
Snb / resto

For destro / resto I highly recommend trying an ice staff but remove the tri focus passive. This lets you block with the strength of snb, but using stamina instead of magicka. Blocking using magicka sounds good in theory but magdk sustain is too poor to support it IMO.

For bars I would suggest giving the newly buffed Deep Breath a shot. The initial hit is still weak, but the explosion hits for about the damage your Lava Whip hits for, and while that doesn't sound like a lot consider the following burst combo:

Deep Breath > Fossilize > Dragon Leap (or any other attack you have if no ulti).

Your opponent will immediately break free, which triggers the 4k~ damage from fossilize and simultaneously you have deep breath exploding and whatever other attack you're doing at the same time. Properly timed with dragon leap and the tooltip damage from this combo can easily exceed 20k. If you're running Molten Whip and have that fully charged when Deep Breath goes off I hear that you delete your opponent's character from the server.

Hotdog_23

Very nice write-up.

kickons

Somewhere wrote: »

Useful gear:

• Burning Spellweave: They removed the proc chance from the set, so now it procs whenever you deal any fire damage at all. This means you could reliably run BSW on your backbar via an ice staff, snb, or restoration staff and get the spell damage from just a single tick from a flame dot.
• Elf Bane: They increased the bonus from this to 5 second duration extension, from 2 seconds back at the beginning of this year. If you combine it with grothdarr you get a 10 second duration with a 10 second cooldown. Magma shell extends to an 18 second duration. Burning talons benefits a lot too. While technically its damage doesn't go up, the duration extends to 9 seconds which makes it easier to maintain on an opponent and mitigates sustain hits.
• Wyrd Tree's Blessing / Curse Eater / Stendarr's Embrace: you can run one of these sets on your backbar to purge off negative effects which is valuable given how prevalent negative effects are and how expensive purge is. I would recommend those sets in the order listed.
• Stuhn's Favor: Provides a lot of penetration when you damage an off balance target, a simple task for a magdk.
• Innate Axiom: If you're not running anything but your class skills this could be worthwhile now that the 2-4 pc bonuses are all useful.
• Crest of Cyrodiil: Good to put on your backbar with a s&b. Decent heal, especially when used with Cauterize + Dragon's Blood. You can go to full health in a single GCD basically.
• Crimson Twilight: Heavy armor set that drops from the new dungeon. Provides a bit of damage and a decent heal that scales linearly with the number of targets hit just like Deep Breath which can be useful for sure.
• Mark of the Pariah / Buffer of the Swift: Run pariah if you want a tankier set and are willing to run heavy armor or have the space for it with weapons / jewelry. If not you can try Buffer of the Swift and run it on your body pieces so you still get the light armor passives.
• Rose of Cyrodiil: most effective for a blocking build, say with snb, especially heavy armor.
• Overwhelming Surge: Combine this with Malacath's Band and Grothdarr and you turn into a mini storm with about 4k+ damage/sec just swirling around you passively.
• Soulshine: If you decide to use mist form you can put this on your backbar to proc the 369 spell damage. Combine that with the 300 spell damage passive coming out of mist/stealth/invis from the vampire passive and you can instantly grant yourself 669 + % modifer spell damage. If you do this, consider Mother Ciannait monster helmet, as the damage shield can be proc'd from mist form as well. I have a guild mate who runs a set-ups like this to great success.
• Hist Sap: Also works well for backbar, especially for battlegrounds. Snares, immobilizations, and stuns are so common in a BG that you can effectively keep that heal going forever. 2000 hp/sec before battle spirit may not sound like much, but that's a similar heal to Regeneration from the restoration staff tree, so it's worth considering.
• Malacath's Band of Brutality: If you're running this ring I see a few runs that it's run: a) 5-pc set, 2-pc set, Malacath's Band, and a 3-pc or an incomplete 5-pc that provides the stats you want, Stuhn's is a common set. b) 5-pc set active on frontbar, 5-pc set active on backbar, 2-pc set, Malacath's Band. I prefer the 2nd configuration tbh since it lets you have a defensive/healing set active on your backbar and an offensive proc on your front. This buffs proc damage as you may know, so it works great with any offensive proc.

For weapon traits a lot of us have moved to using the Charged trait on a destro staff on frontbar. This increases your chance to apply burning by 320% which can really help with sustain, and the burning status condition does hit pretty hard too. An enchantment has an 80%~ chance to apply burning with charged, and lava whip itself applies it 40% iirc. Think of it like cost reduction.

For weapons combinations there's a lot of viable ones:
Destro / snb
Destro / resto
Snb / resto

For destro / resto I highly recommend trying an ice staff but remove the tri focus passive. This lets you block with the strength of snb, but using stamina instead of magicka. Blocking using magicka sounds good in theory but magdk sustain is too poor to support it IMO.

For bars I would suggest giving the newly buffed Deep Breath a shot. The initial hit is still weak, but the explosion hits for about the damage your Lava Whip hits for, and while that doesn't sound like a lot consider the following burst combo:

Deep Breath > Fossilize > Dragon Leap (or any other attack you have if no ulti).

Your opponent will immediately break free, which triggers the 4k~ damage from fossilize and simultaneously you have deep breath exploding and whatever other attack you're doing at the same time. Properly timed with dragon leap and the tooltip damage from this combo can easily exceed 20k. If you're running Molten Whip and have that fully charged when Deep Breath goes off I hear that you delete your opponent's character from the server.

Thank you, I'd say this sums it up beautifully.

kickons

Somewhere wrote: »

Your opponent will immediately break free, which triggers the 4k~ damage from fossilize and simultaneously you have deep breath exploding and whatever other attack you're doing at the same time. Properly timed with dragon leap and the tooltip damage from this combo can easily exceed 20k. If you're running Molten Whip and have that fully charged when Deep Breath goes off I hear that you delete your opponent's character from the server.

lmao at this paragraph

EtTuBrutus

If you're into block casting, bloodthorn got a really nice buff

Canned_Apples

100% of magdks are running malacath overwhelming and grothdarr ever since the p2w jewelry was released.