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Plan for DK core of flame?

  • acanca
    acanca
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    Wuuffyy wrote: »
    “Yea you do lose tankiness and access to better sets. DK, WW, and Sorc on PTS do not need to crutch on Essence Thief, Wretched Vitality, or Roksa because they have nigh-unlimited sustain. This enables them to maximize damage by running Oak Father, gain superior healing + damage with Order's Wrath, or spec for full tankiness with Mara's Balm.”

    I wonder why DK, WW, and a class mastery for a non-reworked class do this. Or the progenitor dark deal which also nets you… minor berserk and major force. Probably a mystery.

    I wonder what their goal is… I hope I don’t need to show what Monomyth Reforged and Rallying Cry do (they’re both ‘tank sets’ that give you damage… doesn’t stop there either)…

    Or that hurricane is a damage move that gives your armor buff. For everything you mentioned ‘but I give up —-‘ I can give you a set/skill/etc. that efficiently gives you 2 or more lanes by itself.

    Real trade offs haven’t been a thing for a while. The only thing you’ll truly trade off is stam, or stam for health to be truly tanky (to the point where you’re more difficult to burst because of said health). Block is 50% mitigation with SO many free reduction increases and dodge roll is 100% immunity from any ST. If you are building correctly, regardless of whether you win a sustain war or not- your opponent is one good rotation from having their hairline removed by your burst.

    Running stam netch and essence thief alone net you the ability to block against one person nearly at will+ spam heals to infinitely stalemate.

    essence thief is a troll for anything but duels as you well know because of its tendency to spawn inside places you cannot reach and trying to argue that core of flame/coe is the same as just running roksa is probably the biggest undersell of the month, the sustain provided is nowhere near the same and you know it.

    Also nothing you said so far actually lets people block forever unlike core of flame (not adding CoE into this because neither does CoE in all honesty but its still beyond busted by the sheer dint of sustain + heal it provides).

    Just to add a slight correction, you said core of flames doesnt allow for infinite streaks, this is slightly incorrect as core of flames does indeed let you keep a 10 stack streak forever on a magsorc with 45kish max magicka, thats only around 4k magicka sustain per second though, no big deal since core of flame can do much more than that by also healing you for 45% (frankly way more with crits and healing modifiers) and also letting you restore stamina at the same time so you can keep roll dodging with your 10 stack streak.

    Also i agree with you that if all classes had access to sustain on the same level as dk and sorc it would all be fine and i even made posts asking for buffs to other classes sustain class masteries and yet we are -1 total sustain passive on that front with another only healing for 125 magicka and stamina in 2 seconds.

    You seem to have a lot of optimisim and trust in zos to give all classes infinite sustain but i dont agree, not all classes will be this privileged and i doubt zos designs the game with sustain in mind. Its only ever an issue in pve if its particularly bad and otherwise its basically only a pvp issue since sustain is a load bearing pillar when it comes to pvp build creation.

    And lastly i just wanna say that i know you are the ww guy but i disagree that ww has similar sustain to dk and sorc. From when i tried them mag sustain was horrendous and i dont expect wws to be as durable as other top tier builds in content simply because things need to be going right for them to survive. Unlike lash builds i'm pretty sure that your heal doesnt come through if some one dodges your spammable, you run out of magicka in no time with a pretty mid 5k cost max hp heal. The core combat stuff costing less will probably make up for the difference some though
    hoangdz wrote: »
    Luneca wrote: »
    Wuuffyy wrote: »

    Running stam netch and essence thief alone net you the ability to block against one person nearly at will+ spam heals to infinitely stalemate.

    Hold up. You're talking about that set you have to run and collect the buff/sustain and trying to claim it's equivalent to a skill that you can press at any time, get more than it cost near instantly, and heal + gain magicka + gain stamina? Essence theif's built in opportunity cost is that you can be stopped from obtaining that buff (unless they changed it).

    That most players don't immobilize in addition to CC to pressure users of that set is a playstyle issue, not a general balance one. General player behavior does not make Essence Thief OP. What does is when something is already out of line and player building can further that to unimaginable extents.

    Again, unlike all the other sustain skills in the game Core of Flame doesn't have a real limit (except being bound by resources that can be stacked extremely high and improve the performance of the skills to ridiculous levels), all other sustain skills have a concrete limit to what they provide. Their skill trees they appear in are also limited. Do they heal and do they do it anywhere near as much?

    This is not the case for DK's core of Flame. Who, that isn't an NB is going to take Siphoning Strikes over Core of Flame? That's before looking at the damage component.

    You might not run any hybrid builds, but on my hybrids the skill is even more powerful than anyone can imagine. I simply refuse to use it because I know it will be due for a nerf. And I also just fire siege 99% of the time anyway.

    Lastly, let's talk about a skill v. a 5 piece set. You know, back in the day a set called Senchal Defender used to heal in addition to give stam and mag back when you heavy attacked? ZOS cut the healing on that set because giving all three was too powerful. A 5 piece was determined to be OP because it allowed you to heal and gain stam and mag back when you heavy attacked, and that was only significant when it was fully stacked.

    Yet here we are defending a single skill that requires no real investment or build decisions to make v. a 5 piece set with lackluster bonuses otherwise? And that skill also does damage?


    This is why balance is bad in the game. There's no consistency, and people defend whatever it is that allows them to gain an advantage. Eventually we'll see the words "fun" "identity" or whatever can be used to avoid looking at the issue objectively.

    Yea it's hilarious seeing Essence Thief brought up because as someone who has been using that set for 2+ years in Cyrodiil and BGs, I can't count how many times the set procs in random locations I can't get to. Like, I could be kiting on the 2nd floor of a tower and the set decides to proc on the ground outside the tower instead, or when I'm kiting a zerg and the set procs behind me lol.

    I'm so glad they buffed sustain to the point that I don't need that set anymore, but at the same time, they really gotta find a balance point. I'm actually perfectly ok with HoF giving that much sustain, but it has to be strictly a sustain skill, not a 4-in-1 one with so much power that you'd be in a massive disadvantage for not using it. Either remove the delayed burst damage component from HoF and keep the sustain, or remove the sustain from HoF and buff other sustain passives in DK's toolkit (Battle Roar for example). Another way to balance it is by having 1 morph deal damage but only restore 5% missing resources (no healing), while the other morph restores 15% resources + health but doesn't do damage.

    Another solution might be giving the sustain part a 10 seconds cd and leaving rest as is. I feel like that might be an ok way to go about it. Not like its not unheard of with lash behaving differently on a cd and same with skills like cloak on the new cyro thingy. The problem atm is how many problems the one skill solves with basically no downside, best in slot sustain, one of the best max hp heals in the game (that still feels like a joke they gave it that buff), and a decent aoe delayed burst

    Been setting up my templar for next patch recently and equipping backbar wretched vit felt like a joke, same with how much bar space you lose to relics like camo if you dont go for jabs. It honestly feels like sorc and dk are playing a different game than the rest of the classes atm.
  • Wuuffyy
    Wuuffyy
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    Anyone here that struggles to get Essence thief proc consistently also complains about light attack weaving, there’s just no way- I refuse to believe. The means simply far exceed the ends.

    @hoangdz it not doing 4 in 1 in PvP I feel would be appropriate. Just know that they likely do that as a sustain move that doesn’t deal damage and needs to be frequently casted typically isn’t used in PvE (dark deal as a historical example) as it hurts damage in a rotation more than building a little sustain.

    Hence why it probably looks that way in the first place.
    Edited by Wuuffyy on May 22, 2026 1:13PM
    Wuuffyy,
    WEREWOLF FINALLY GOT A REWORK AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (sorry I mean... NERF WW, one-bar BAD, DESTROY one-bar builds)
    ESO player since 2014 (Xbox and PC for PTS)
    -new players, feel free to DM for guidance!
  • The Uninvited
    The Uninvited
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    hoangdz wrote: »
    I'm so glad they buffed sustain to the point that I don't need that set anymore, but at the same time, they really gotta find a balance point. I'm actually perfectly ok with HoF giving that much sustain, but it has to be strictly a sustain skill, not a 4-in-1 one with so much power that you'd be in a massive disadvantage for not using it. Either remove the delayed burst damage component from HoF and keep the sustain, or remove the sustain from HoF and buff other sustain passives in DK's toolkit (Battle Roar for example). Another way to balance it is by having 1 morph deal damage but only restore 5% missing resources (no healing), while the other morph restores 15% resources + health but doesn't do damage.

    I don't agree with you often, but this is a compromise I'm willing to take.
    Pandora's Promise (rip) | LND | Wabbajack (rip) | Pactriotic | IKnowWhatUDidLastWinter's | The Uninvited |

    Ride the paranoia | All life is pain | Only the grave is real
  • hoangdz
    hoangdz
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    Wuuffyy wrote: »
    Anyone here that struggles to get Essence thief proc consistently also complains about light attack weaving, there’s just no way- I refuse to believe. The means simply far exceed the ends.

    @hoangdz it not doing 4 in 1 in PvP I feel would be appropriate. Just know that they likely do that as a sustain move that doesn’t deal damage and needs to be frequently casted typically isn’t used in PvE (dark deal as a historical example) as it hurts damage in a rotation more than building a little sustain.

    Hence why it probably looks that way in the first place.

    That's an easy fix. Have the Soul of Flame morph deal increased damage as usual but only restore 5% missing resources and doesn't heal, while Heart of Flame heals and restores 15% of missing resources, but doesn't do damage. One morph is strictly for sustain and healing, while the other is used for damage with some minor sustain. 5% of missing resources means that with 30k max mag and missing 20k mag, you'd be gaining 1k mag per proc. That's still very decent sustain, but it will definitely require building extra sustain from other sources, which indirectly reduces tankiness and/or damage potential from DK.
    Edited by hoangdz on May 22, 2026 1:52PM
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