Need help pushing my MagDK dps to 100k

Sleeping_OwI

Hi everyone. I'm getting consistent 97k-98k on my Magicka Dragonknight and I really want to push it to 100k, but I'm already doing everything as best as I can and don't know how to improve upon it. This is my detailed setup, hoping someone can hint at something I'm missing or something I should do differently.

Dark Elf race, Thief Mundus, Ghastly eye bowl food, potion for mag recovery and Major Prophecy. Blue CP slottables are: Direct, DOT, Single target, and Backstabber.

Front bar: Kinras gold jewelry + Nirn poison dagger on main hand and Charged fire dagger on off hand. Backbar: Infused Maelstrom inferno with weapon/spell damage enchant. Gold Siroria on body, Maw of the Infernal moster set, 1 light and 1 medium piece, all divine.

Front bar abilities: Inner light with full mage guild passives, Molten Whip, Engulfing Flames, Burning Embers, Barbed Trap and Flawless Dawnbreaker with full Fighters guild passives

Back bar abilities: Eruption, Unstable Wall of flame, Flames of Oblivion, Scalding Rune, Degeneration, Dragonknight Standard ultimate

More notes: I don't have Blackwood so I don't have Bahsei and the Kilt. I use Dragonknight standard as main ultimate during parse, I only use Dawnbreaker close to the end when I don't have enough time to reach 250 ulti.

My light attack weaving isn't 100% perfect but it's pretty good, I'd say 95% or so. I also keep decent uptimes on my DOTs.

I tried using Mystic Orb instead of Degeneration but sustain got really difficult and uptime wasn't great due to the lower duration, so dps remained the same. I also cast Molten Armaments and Acceleration before starting the parse so I have all the buffs from the very start.

Now, is there anything I can change or improve to push my dps by a bit so I can reach 100k? My 98k parse was as close to perfect as I could get, so I'm all out of ideas.

Thank you for reading all this and any advice is appreciated

Lenny_linguine

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Hi everyone. I'm getting consistent 97k-98k on my Magicka Dragonknight and I really want to push it to 100k, but I'm already doing everything as best as I can and don't know how to improve upon it. This is my detailed setup, hoping someone can hint at something I'm missing or something I should do differently.

Dark Elf race, Thief Mundus, Ghastly eye bowl food, potion for mag recovery and Major Prophecy. Blue CP slottables are: Direct, DOT, Single target, and Backstabber.

Front bar: Kinras gold jewelry + Nirn poison dagger on main hand and Charged fire dagger on off hand. Backbar: Infused Maelstrom inferno with weapon/spell damage enchant. Gold Siroria on body, Maw of the Infernal moster set, 1 light and 1 medium piece, all divine.

Front bar abilities: Inner light with full mage guild passives, Molten Whip, Engulfing Flames, Burning Embers, Barbed Trap and Flawless Dawnbreaker with full Fighters guild passives

Back bar abilities: Eruption, Unstable Wall of flame, Flames of Oblivion, Scalding Rune, Degeneration, Dragonknight Standard ultimate

More notes: I don't have Blackwood so I don't have Bahsei and the Kilt. I use Dragonknight standard as main ultimate during parse, I only use Dawnbreaker close to the end when I don't have enough time to reach 250 ulti.

My light attack weaving isn't 100% perfect but it's pretty good, I'd say 95% or so. I also keep decent uptimes on my DOTs.

I tried using Mystic Orb instead of Degeneration but sustain got really difficult and uptime wasn't great due to the lower duration, so dps remained the same. I also cast Molten Armaments and Acceleration before starting the parse so I have all the buffs from the very start.

Now, is there anything I can change or improve to push my dps by a bit so I can reach 100k? My 98k parse was as close to perfect as I could get, so I'm all out of ideas.

Thank you for reading all this and any advice is appreciated

Have you tried mage light back bar, flames front. will give extra oomph to the whip. ? may be more benefit than mage guild passives. I parse 96K on my dk with basi zens, all else is similar set up to you except I use a flame staff and two purple infused jewellery, also a dark elf. I have mage light on back oblivion on front.

Lenny_linguine

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

Everest_Lionheart

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Sleeping_OwI

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Thank you. Tbf I'm fairly good at keeping up the unstable wall, so I'm hesitant to remorph it to the longer weaker version, tho I guess it won't hurt to try it.

Everest_Lionheart

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Thank you. Tbf I'm fairly good at keeping up the unstable wall, so I'm hesitant to remorph it to the longer weaker version, tho I guess it won't hurt to try it.

This is where math comes into play. Yes the shorter version of wall does have a higher ceiling however it can disrupt the rotation with so much extra bar swapping. The spamming of the extra whips is where DK really makes an impact damage wise and the duration of the dots allows DK to get more spamabale casts than they other classes.

In the case of 14 second wall versus 10 second wall it’s all about the extra GCD you gain allowing you to close the gap lost by not having the unstable wall explosion. If you did two rotations side by side using each morph and refreshing each on cooldown the wall casts would line up ap proximately every 70 skills. 7 casts of unstable versus 5 casts of blockade.

Now calculate how many whips fit into a 10 second block versus how many you fit into a 15 second block. I got 7 whips into 14 seconds where I was able to fit 3 or 5 whips into a 10 second block depending on what other dots needed refreshing. 3 whips when refreshing rune and trap, 5 when both dots were already cast. Average of 4 per 10 seconds.

Now I don’t have CMX (hooray console…) so I can take one from Skinny’s guide a few months ago. Avg whip DPS in his was ~48K, average exploding wall damage was ~31K.

7 whips X 5 rotations = 35 whips total:
1.68 Million Damage in 70 seconds

4 whips X 7 rotations (+1 off) = 29 whips
1.39 Million damage plus damage unstable:
7 X 41 = 217K damage
1.61 Million Damage in 70 seconds.

Now if manage to stretch the exploding wall rotation to 5 full whips you will gain the extra benefit of 217K damage over 70 seconds however the caveat of that is making sure that your other dots don’t fall off for more than a second at a time. At some point over the course of your rotation you may have to play catch up and sacrifice a whip here and there to keep your dots going.

But in all honesty you are doing well to hit 98K on ant rotation. It could simply be a matter of more work instead of switching up rotation. The whole idea behind this or any rotation is to stay smooth because smooth = fast = not DPS. One GCD (LA+skill) is not really as fast as it seems. People freak out a bit and make it fast because they put too much pressure on themselves to perform. I’ve worked with several people in my guilds to teach them to smooth out their rotations as opposed to speeding them up and it made a world of difference.

Once you break that 100K milestone and the pressure goes away you will notice the difference. I just went over 100K on my 8th toon (Magden) yesterday and it took about 30 minutes of practicing to do it. All the rotations and timers are the same for the most part with a couple tweaks depending on you class. Once you get that you will get them all. Good luck and congrats in advance on 100k 😉

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Minor point, but what is your source of major sorcery (your potions dont mention it)? Then again, if you are trying to squeeze out 2k, it probably is a minor point? Sure you can get Sorcery from Molten Armaments or Degen, but I am guessing the uptime is not 100%. Potions are the easiest way to achieve that. If your major sorcery is really 100% than ignore that, but I am guessing its not if you are relaying on skills to get it.

Otherwise, I would want to see a CMX recap that showed pace and missed # of LAs. That is probably the difference.

Lenny_linguine

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Thank you. Tbf I'm fairly good at keeping up the unstable wall, so I'm hesitant to remorph it to the longer weaker version, tho I guess it won't hurt to try it.

I also use the longer wall duration because it lines up with other dots better and lets you get more whips in.

Sleeping_OwI

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Thank you. Tbf I'm fairly good at keeping up the unstable wall, so I'm hesitant to remorph it to the longer weaker version, tho I guess it won't hurt to try it.

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Lenny_linguine wrote: »

Kilt and 1 medium slime may be better than infernal too consider crit is kinda low on both kinra and sororia but im not sure there.

You can still break 100 in Kinra + Siroria and even get close to it in Siroria + Zen. I’m at 103 Zen’s with Bahsei and 108 with Bahsei and Kinras (kilt and Slimecraw on both.)

Check out Skinny Cheeks guide here: https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/magicka-dragonknight-dps

I am doing easy static rotation with the 14 second version of wall which makes the rotation quite simple. I also run trap on the back instead of the front. See parse here: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/chef-ref-77/video/151929383

OP doesn’t have Bahsei or Kilt though so it won’t help him much with all the mag dumping, but you can see the rhythm of it. I do miss a couple scalding runes in there because the skill gets wonky like that sometimes. If I switched Siroria in place of Bahsei I would lose maybe 3-4% off that number. Just have to work at it and get comfortable doing your rotation.

Thank you. Tbf I'm fairly good at keeping up the unstable wall, so I'm hesitant to remorph it to the longer weaker version, tho I guess it won't hurt to try it.

This is where math comes into play. Yes the shorter version of wall does have a higher ceiling however it can disrupt the rotation with so much extra bar swapping. The spamming of the extra whips is where DK really makes an impact damage wise and the duration of the dots allows DK to get more spamabale casts than they other classes.

In the case of 14 second wall versus 10 second wall it’s all about the extra GCD you gain allowing you to close the gap lost by not having the unstable wall explosion. If you did two rotations side by side using each morph and refreshing each on cooldown the wall casts would line up ap proximately every 70 skills. 7 casts of unstable versus 5 casts of blockade.

Now calculate how many whips fit into a 10 second block versus how many you fit into a 15 second block. I got 7 whips into 14 seconds where I was able to fit 3 or 5 whips into a 10 second block depending on what other dots needed refreshing. 3 whips when refreshing rune and trap, 5 when both dots were already cast. Average of 4 per 10 seconds.

Now I don’t have CMX (hooray console…) so I can take one from Skinny’s guide a few months ago. Avg whip DPS in his was ~48K, average exploding wall damage was ~31K.

7 whips X 5 rotations = 35 whips total:
1.68 Million Damage in 70 seconds

4 whips X 7 rotations (+1 off) = 29 whips
1.39 Million damage plus damage unstable:
7 X 41 = 217K damage
1.61 Million Damage in 70 seconds.

Now if manage to stretch the exploding wall rotation to 5 full whips you will gain the extra benefit of 217K damage over 70 seconds however the caveat of that is making sure that your other dots don’t fall off for more than a second at a time. At some point over the course of your rotation you may have to play catch up and sacrifice a whip here and there to keep your dots going.

But in all honesty you are doing well to hit 98K on ant rotation. It could simply be a matter of more work instead of switching up rotation. The whole idea behind this or any rotation is to stay smooth because smooth = fast = not DPS. One GCD (LA+skill) is not really as fast as it seems. People freak out a bit and make it fast because they put too much pressure on themselves to perform. I’ve worked with several people in my guilds to teach them to smooth out their rotations as opposed to speeding them up and it made a world of difference.

Once you break that 100K milestone and the pressure goes away you will notice the difference. I just went over 100K on my 8th toon (Magden) yesterday and it took about 30 minutes of practicing to do it. All the rotations and timers are the same for the most part with a couple tweaks depending on you class. Once you get that you will get them all. Good luck and congrats in advance on 100k 😉

That's a lot of good math haha, thanks for the in-length explanation mate, much appreciated. You definitely sold me on the wall remorph xD

Sleeping_OwI

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Minor point, but what is your source of major sorcery (your potions dont mention it)? Then again, if you are trying to squeeze out 2k, it probably is a minor point? Sure you can get Sorcery from Molten Armaments or Degen, but I am guessing the uptime is not 100%. Potions are the easiest way to achieve that. If your major sorcery is really 100% than ignore that, but I am guessing its not if you are relaying on skills to get it.

Otherwise, I would want to see a CMX recap that showed pace and missed # of LAs. That is probably the difference.

Degeneration itself lasts 12 seconds but each cast gives Major Sorcery for 24 seconds, so it is basically 100% uptime.

RaptorRodeoGod

Try Stormfist maybe? I heard it can parse higher than Maw, but I've not tested it.