One thing everyone seems to agree on is that stamina builds are under-performing. If you have both 2hander and 1HS you are too heavily invested in a stamina build and I don't recommend it. However, the right DK class skills, coupled with the right one hand and shield (1HS) skills, performs incredible against OP bosses.

First, please put 49 attribute points in health. Next, level up light (L) and heavy (H) armor and plan to get all the passives in both skill trees. Depending on the situation, you will want either five light / two heavy (5L/2H) or two light and five heavy (2L/5H) pieces of armor. When you wear 2H, go with Helm and Chest for the most armor per piece. You'll want health enchants on the heavy armor and magic enchants on the light armor. 5L/2H is when you need more DPS in short trash mobs fights, and 2L/5H is when you need more sustain against solo quest bosses.

For your alternate weapon set, a DK can't go wrong with the fire staff (FS). There are a lot of synergies with fire damage and FS has a lot of utility. It has a knock-back with a morph that stuns, a ranged single target attack with an interrupt, and two great point blank area of effects (pbAOEs). I can solo any single boss that isn't immune to knock-backs with nothing more than light attacks and that damn knock-back-stun. Frankly, it can trivialize some encounters, but without the knock-back-stun, I could never survive alone. All of these skills cost magic and the damage also scales based on max magic.

Note that a lot of players are finding a fully leveled resto staff (RS) with the 10% damage bonus to be good in coordinated groups where an actual healer keeps them at 100% health the whole time. But you can look for other posts that describe that build.

Looking back at the 1HS bar for a moment. With 1HS you will have access to one of the real hidden gems in this game. I'm talking about the morph of Defensive Posture that stuns the caster. This is another skill that can trivialize those OP boss fights. I'd say using it requires slightly more skill than using the stun from the staff knock-back, but the good part is that this skill costs stamina, and you may find that the reflected attack is your highest source of damage on certain fights. It's particularly effective against summoner type bosses, protecting you from the bosses spell attacks while you kill the adds.

If reflecting spells from the boss aren't your highest source of damage, your damage will be coming from taking the two +damage morphs of the class skills Searing Strike and Fiery Breath. Both are close range attacks, but you need to get close to bash interrupt anyways. In order to best mitigate melee damage, you will always want to slot one of the spiked armor morphs and keep the buff up during fights.

Since the DK doesn't have any actual ranged DPS skills, your options are limited. You can go after the Mage's Guild skill tree and get the Scalding Rune morph of Fire Rune, and you will have Force Shock (and it's morphs) on the FS. Force Shock works especially good against undead and daedra when coupled with the buff from the Fighter's Guild skill Expert Hunter.

The one thing missing in this combination of weapons is an execution type skill. For this reason, it might be good to look into leveling dual wield (DW) in order to get Whirlwind. I'm not sure how great it is since I've not tried it, but some people seem to like it. I imagine you would run FS / DW for speed clearing trash mobs, and only switch to 1HS for the longer boss fights.

Best of luck and happy bashing!!

robertlive2014 wrote: »

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that stamina builds are under-performing. If you have both 2hander and 1HS you are too heavily invested in a stamina build and I don't recommend it. However, the right DK class skills, coupled with the right one hand and shield (1HS) skills, performs incredible against OP bosses.

First, please put 49 attribute points in health. Next, level up light (L) and heavy (H) armor and plan to get all the passives in both skill trees. Depending on the situation, you will want either five light / two heavy (5L/2H) or two light and five heavy (2L/5H) pieces of armor. When you wear 2H, go with Helm and Chest for the most armor per piece. You'll want health enchants on the heavy armor and magic enchants on the light armor. 5L/2H is when you need more DPS in short trash mobs fights, and 2L/5H is when you need more sustain against solo quest bosses.

For your alternate weapon set, a DK can't go wrong with the fire staff (FS). There are a lot of synergies with fire damage and FS has a lot of utility. It has a knock-back with a morph that stuns, a ranged single target attack with an interrupt, and two great point blank area of effects (pbAOEs). I can solo any single boss that isn't immune to knock-backs with nothing more than light attacks and that damn knock-back-stun. Frankly, it can trivialize some encounters, but without the knock-back-stun, I could never survive alone. All of these skills cost magic and the damage also scales based on max magic.

Note that a lot of players are finding a fully leveled resto staff (RS) with the 10% damage bonus to be good in coordinated groups where an actual healer keeps them at 100% health the whole time. But you can look for other posts that describe that build.

Looking back at the 1HS bar for a moment. With 1HS you will have access to one of the real hidden gems in this game. I'm talking about the morph of Defensive Posture that stuns the caster. This is another skill that can trivialize those OP boss fights. I'd say using it requires slightly more skill than using the stun from the staff knock-back, but the good part is that this skill costs stamina, and you may find that the reflected attack is your highest source of damage on certain fights. It's particularly effective against summoner type bosses, protecting you from the bosses spell attacks while you kill the adds.

If reflecting spells from the boss aren't your highest source of damage, your damage will be coming from taking the two +damage morphs of the class skills Searing Strike and Fiery Breath. Both are close range attacks, but you need to get close to bash interrupt anyways. In order to best mitigate melee damage, you will always want to slot one of the spiked armor morphs and keep the buff up during fights.

Since the DK doesn't have any actual ranged DPS skills, your options are limited. You can go after the Mage's Guild skill tree and get the Scalding Rune morph of Fire Rune, and you will have Force Shock (and it's morphs) on the FS. Force Shock works especially good against undead and daedra when coupled with the buff from the Fighter's Guild skill Expert Hunter.

The one thing missing in this combination of weapons is an execution type skill. For this reason, it might be good to look into leveling dual wield (DW) in order to get Whirlwind. I'm not sure how great it is since I've not tried it, but some people seem to like it. I imagine you would run FS / DW for speed clearing trash mobs, and only switch to 1HS for the longer boss fights.

Best of luck and happy bashing!!

\

Thanks for the in depth guide mate.....
I guess its destro staff untill they balance out magicka vs stamina build.

I looked at the calculator there is only resto staff vs destro staff, what differentiate if its a fire or other type of staff ?