Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
You would need to be fighting lowbies and LA players w/o nirnhoned in order to be doing 4-9k, and even then, we don't know what move you are using to hit 4-9k. If you are doing molten armament heavy attacks - its an execute. Blocking as a Light Armor user breaks our best form of survivability - CC break. You have petrify and lava whip which ignores dodge too. The only reason my 4k concealed weapon crits (2k spell damage & 33k magicka w/ max spell pen) beat medium armor dodgers is because it has a CC attached - just like petrify. If i'm unlucky and do not get enough crits in time to kill them through the momentum HoT and Vigor ticks or before a CC break its just retreating until I can try again. - Dragon Leap is considered physical damage meaning its mitigated by armor and not spell resist no matter which stat is stacked higher.

-I would like to see a 9k spell hit me as much as you say you can do, because Shooting Stars can only hit me for 5k-7k crits with 54k spell resist and the highest overload crit to hit me was on a 0 sustain 3k+ spell damage glass cannon crit me for barely over 9k - an ultimate and arguably the strongest one. As far as I can tell, you're a troll.

I'm not fighting lowbies, I only bother recording vr14 players. I can tell you exactly what I'm using to hit players that hard, it's called flame lash. If you doubt me I'll have my magicka video up next week. Generally I'll do prox detonation, invasion, deep breath then flame lash, it's pretty substantial burst, if you are a vampire I'll just flame whip your face off. Medium armor users are flat out the best target for me and there is zero reason why they wouldn't be for you as well. I also don't use dragon leap I use clouding swarm and shooting star.

Change the speed bonus from the Steed Mundus Stone to Stamina Regeneration. Problem solved.

ToRelax wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

[b]MASTERS WEAPONS[/b]

2h, Bow, DW all increase weapon damage significantly.
Destro, Resto do not increase spell damage at all.

Masters daggers don't increase your weapon damage at all. In fact they are worse than crafted non set daggers.

Yeah idk who told you this, but you're wrong.

If I recall correctly, @Soulac said it's bugged and doesn't provide any weapon damage...
But if so, it's a bug and has no place in this discussion, needs to be fixed of course.

OK so heres the deal, you can not stack two masters daggers, you only get benefits from one even if otherwise identical. Not hearsay, I tested it. At which point btw if you are dedicated to daggers morag tong is the better option...

And so what? We have mundus stone "Increased Spell Penetration". Where is mundus with armor penetration? And we not have analogue imba-nirnhoned for weapons... Weapon Damage - last hope for stamina-builds.

BlackBacon wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

So you have to slot 3 abilities to increase your magicka by 11% and one of them is a toggle ability and terrible in PvP.
That doesn't make much of an argument at all. There are a ton of easily available weapon damage increase modifiers.
When you have 4,000 Weapon damage getting a weapon damage increasing buff like Major Brutality becomes far more powerful than your "Magicka" stacking scenario using Entropy for Major Sorcery. There are far more weapon/spell power increasing buffs that stack with the Warrior than there are Magicka increasing buffs that stack with Mages guild.

1st of all 4,000 Weapon Damage base is unattainable. Are you arguing you can stack Weapon Damage past 4,000*(1+.2+.08+.12) = 5,600?

Also I think you're underestimating Inner Light as a viable PvP skill.

With 2k Spell Damage, 30k Magicka, & 50% Crit, Inner Light provides a constant 8.3% DPS increase. (Slightly more than Major Sorcery) Giving up 2 slots for it is rough, but you don't need to recast it like every other buff. Sorcerers with 3 bars should find giving up 3 slots even easier.

Base: (30,000+2,000*10.49)*(1+.5*.5)=63,725
Inner Light: (32,100+2,000*10.49)*(1+.6*.5)=69,004
Major Sorcery: (30,000+2,400*10.49)*(1+.5*.5)= 68,970

Ezareth wrote: »

Also when you're stacking weapon damage of 3K+ a 12% increase of weapon damage will provide just as much of a damage increase as 7.4 mitigation piercing and if you're even higher it is even better.

Let's do the calculations then shall we?

Let's assume an unattainable base of 4k Weapon Damage & 30k Stamina vs 10k Armor.
Damage: (Stat + Weapon or Spell Damage*10.46)×Coefficient
Mitigation at VR14: ~(Armor/640)

Base Damage: (30,000 + 4,000*10.46)*(1-(10,000/640)/100)=60,615
+12% Weapon Damage: (30000 + 4,480*10.46)*(1-(10,000/640)/100) 64,851
7.4% Mitigation Piercing: (30,000 + 4,000*10.46)*(1-(5,264/640)/100)=65,931

The +12% Weapon Damage equates to +7% DPS
The 7.4% Mitigation Piercing equates to +8.8% DPS

Most targets will have more than 10k armor and the highest attainable base weapon damage is less than 3.5k. The more armor the target has the higher this disparity becomes.

Ezareth wrote: »

How about the fact that physical damage has a single Champion ability to increase all your physical damage while magic damage is split between elemental and magic/poison/disease champion points?

You act like all Stamina skills use the physical damage Champion passive. Look at almost every stamina morph and the bow skill line.

@BlackBacon

I ran with Inner light in 1.5 and swore by it then. That was when it provided 20% crit and revealed stealth. Now it just doesn't doesn't have enough potential to be useful in anything other than a glass cannon build which is the worst build a magick user has right now compared to more balanced builds.

For starters you just don't see magicka users running around with 50% Crit but I'll let that slide since it doesn't really change the equation.

Second for major sorcery if you're using Entropy as I suggested you forgot to add in the 2% Magicka bonus for slotting a mages guild ability to Entropy yet you added it to Inner Light.

The calculation would be Major Sorcery: (30,600+2400*10.49)*(1+.5*.5)= 69,720 and Entropy only needs to be slotted on one bar to be effective plus it provides a heal.

When I say 4K Weapon damage I'm talking about pre-% increasing modifier adjusted base. This includes any procs or set bonus procs that most people rely upon and those procs are increased further by Brutality. 4K may be slightly above the peak attainable but I know someone who can hit 5K Weapon damage for short periods and I know that isn't even the theoretical max.

Secondly the reason 12% weapon damage far exceeds 7.4% Piercing is because damage shields have zero mitigation and 70-80% of the damage you're doing in Cyrodiil is either hitting a damage shield or is hitting someone through their damage shield which bleeds directly into their health at an unmitigated level.

Thirdly you can over-pierce your target (more piercing than mitigation) but you can't over DPS your target with weapon damage except on the killing blow.

Finally, the sheer abundance of Spell resistance versus Physical resistance even without Nirnhoned completely mitigates that piercing bonus for light armor. When you are a physical damage dealer in cyrodiil unless you're attacking people in heavy armor it is easy to almost completely pierce your targets armor especially (Even when not hitting damage shields). You can focus on the light armor targets to do this. As a magick user everyone is running around with 20K+ Spell ress.

I think in practice 12% Weapon Damage is far more useful than 7.4% mitigation piercing. Thanks for the math and the rational discussion though, it is rare to find others in the game who understand it.

Zsymon wrote: »

Weapon damage may be easier to raise, but it is much easier to raise magicka. I've seen Sorcs with over 40K magicka with Necropotence gear, and he wasn't even using Inner Light for yet another 5%. The most I seen a viable stamina build have is about 20-25K stamina. That more than evens out the discrepancy of the damages. Magicka adds a ton of resources as well as damage, as well as stronger shields, stronger pet damage, while weapon damage adds only damage. Magicka is far superior to weapon damage.

You can stack stamina a lot higher than your suggested 20-25K, people just stack weapon damage instead. But yes, it is easier to stack magicka than stamina through the use of certain skills most players stay away from. I don't really see the problem in that, so I wouldn't mind if you could increase your stamina by 29% with using 3 toggles, a damage buff, a specific ultimate and a 5 pc set...

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
One last thing before I close my case about nirnhoned.
BEHOLD!



46k spell resist - I'm running 5 light 2 heavy. Normally such damage from a Crystal Fragment would say the damage is around 10k w/ proc on the tooltip, but in the above picture I only take 2.4k damage. Balanced? I say not. 2.8k Velocious Curse CRITICAL - Balanced? I say not. I do not block in this photo as I was CC'd and out of stamina.

BEHOLD! once again.



A 4k Shooting Star (The Fire Morph) and I am also a vampire (40% more fire damage). Balanced? I say not. We can also see several Steel Tornados hitting harder than Shooting Star, and no Steel Tornado's execute does not start at 10k health for me - as I only have 19k health according to the tooltip. Why should Steel Tornado hit harder than Shooting Star - an ultimate at that - especially on a vampire beats me. Why should there be two huge ways for Magicka/spell damage builds to be negated? - Dampen Magicka and Nirnhoned (in which any armor can be used in its place)? There is only 1 way stamina/weapon damage builds can be negated and that is 5/7 or 7/7 Heavy Armor - Balanced? I do not mind hard counters like Stamina Vs. Magicka, but in the scenario Magicka is in at this moment there is no counters as to what magicka can do against a stamina build. You may argue that I have Concealed Weapon to go through dodge, but i'm not just thinking about me, i'm thinking about ALL the other players running magicka builds. When half their spells can't go through dodge and the times their spells hit these permadodgers and hit say a 3k crystal fragments and the stam build can just follows up with a 7k uppercut non-crit then there is little balance. #NerfNirnhonedNow

Your screenshots don't really show anything because we don't know if you were blocking or not, we also don't know if that shooting star was the actual shooting star or you standing in its dot. Maybe if you had actual video of either of these fights we'd have something. either way I play a magicka dk and I don't have the trouble you have, so maybe it's just you.

@Xsorus
Please look at the video in this thread: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/168466/2v2-pvp-tournament-final-resut/p1

Feel free to watch the whole video if you have not to see the flaws on Nirnhoned.
Or -
Skip to 3:30.
Watch Sypher as he ambushes into 5 Daedric Mines - each with a base tooltip of atleast 4500 when magicka builds - according to Arcane Karstyll, "My mine tooltip unbuffed hit 4240 for each mine, buffed 4658 damage." And only drops to 32% from 79% (16k health). He is running full Nirnhoned. Watch as he eats mines for only 2.9k crits and 1.5k non-crits. This is a video of Nirnhoned at its finest. He later describes that he is using full Nirnhoned (w/ the exception of engine guardian) with Whitestrake's BUT get this, his suprise attacks crit for 8k - a GREAT example of how well weapon damage improves without very much or even little amounts of weapon damage sets can affect total output. - No intentions at calling anyone out on this issue.
I of course love that my critical hits hit for less than my tool tip and I am positive every other magicka build feels the same. I feel the urge to say that no build deserves to have their damage reduced by 2/3rds without blocking and should've been fixed when this issue was announced during the 1.6 PTS. Should I find more clips and point out the flaws of Nirnhoned for you Xsorus?

My level 27 templar is wearing level 18-20 gear and has a significantly higher tooltip value on skills in vet cyrodiil than my vet 12 templar in vet 12 gear. I have verified that the skill tooltip is commensurate with actual damage. Same campaign.

My level 27 templar's health, magicka, stamina, spell power and weapon power are capped at 30k/17.8k/17.8k/1198/1198, even if I take off all my gear and change stat allocations. Skill tooltip values do not change. Damage using the skills does not change. Spell and weapon critical values appear to be the same as in PvE although the addon reports 120% spell critical and 300% weapon critical.

On the other hand, champion points DO affect stat values AND tooltip values. I have not played around to see what affects what, but reallocating all my points into thaumaturge lowered magicka and stamina. I lost DPS, ostensibly because I spec'd out of erosion.

My assumption is that ZoS either did not apply scaling to champion improvements or did so incorrectly. Who knows what else is affecting scaling.

Bottom line, we aren't comparing apples to apples. Further, if someone argues on a sub-vet level basis, and understands the scaling difference, well, that would be disingenuous, at best.

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
I take about as much damage as Sypher did in his video. You are not spell capped at 30k spell resist. You are being penetrated through passives and the inherent Nirnhoned (through weapons) or sharpened. Want to see a video of me having to use an ult every time to kill someone through prox on lowbies and players with 0 nirnhoned plus the 20% damage bonus and 20% spell damage bonus through entropy - instead just watch Sypher's video - I am not calling you Sypher, just pointing out the obvious as I have ran this build since the 1.6 PTS. The current standard for Nirnhoned, almost everyone is running 33k+ spell resist - only those that know and abuse this. I can say I do 15k proximities on level 15s and call it balanced if I want - the fact is Nirnhoned stacks too well and you do not attempt to realize this. - To your last remark about Sorcs being stupid OP without Nirnhoned; guess what dampen magic can do? Guess what magicka builds can't do to a Nirnhoned stacked dampen magicka user? You fail to see the bigger picture in these arguments. I do not know why you are complaining about Sorcs when you have reflective scales - if you say Conjured Ward or dampen magicka then its obvious you do not have enough damage.

Sure any magicka build can run a 20k+ spell pen build, but what happens when they are above 40k - like me? Almost all of your damage is still being mitigated. Post your video so I may point out the flaws to your build and why you take that much damage. The "bloody cap" for spell resist is, yes 32k, but when you stack over 32k you start to ignore Light Armor pen, Nirnhoned (on weapons) pen, and Champion Points pen. Players are still able to completely ignore magic damage through stacking full spell resist even when players hit the 20k+ spell pen mark.

Teargrants wrote: »

This amount of spell resist ignores all spell penetration and this is why Nirnhoned should be nerfed. There is 0 counter to this and many players - that I know - run with 40k+ spell resist. Nirnhoned is completely negating half the population - or was negating due to the mass respec into stamina.

Please post the video, if you are NA, please whisper me - Rochelle Bantien (EP) for a duel/damage test - I can hop onto a DC NB with the same exact build if you are EP. I wish to allow you to kill me so I may post the results/death recap on the forums for all to see. I will put on two different sets - one with 9k spell resist and one with 46k spell resist so you can see how much damage is being mitigated. imo I will not be fighting back so it is, of course, not a true test of combat/survivability through Nirnhoned this will just be a damage test between low and overcapped spell resist.

I don't think you quite understand that you will not be running into people with 52k spell resist that often, which is what it bloody requires before you actually get to mitigate damage by a reasonable amount since you can ignore almost 30k of it with ease. The builds you are whining about the most are stamina dodge users with nirnhoned, only more often then not they won't be hitting 52k spell resist. Pretty much every single medium armor build out there is going to be running either ravager or dreugh king, that's automatically two pieces of armor that won't be nirnhoned, next you pretty much will run engine guardian if ya got it, that's another two pieces you won't have nirn on, if ya don't have nirn you use blood spawn 1 piece for sure simply because weapon damage builds are generally stamina starved unless you are bosmer nightblade and even then you'll run it. So that leaves on average 3 to 4 pieces of nirnhoned which is around 32k spell resist for most dodge users.
this is of course if you decide to run skirmisher which is the set Sypher was running in his videos, that's 5 pieces of armor right there with no nirnhoned right there.

The people you generally see sporting 53k spell resist are you guessed it, magicka users.. Like for example the sorc in heavy armor you posted in your screen shot. You might see a dk do it but they have sun set, and elf bane that are contenders which don't have nirnhoned. So other then Sypher running a very specific setup to counter two sorc teams in duals or certain magicka builds you won't see it a whole, now with that said

Did you just suggest dampen magicka is helping a spell resist stacked player? You know spell resist is taken into account after the shield right? Meaning if you take 2.6k damage from my nuke when you normally take 5k damage cause of spell resist you throwing up that shield will result in it absorbing 5k damage hits and not 2.6k damage hits. So you could have zero spell resist and dampen magicka would work the same. Not that doesn't mean dampen isn't nice to have but whatever point you were trying to make with it fails horribly.

@Xsorus
You seem to be cherry picking through the arguments stated. In your closing argument you stated that spell resist is not taken into account through Dampen Magic - which is true I give you that. But the part you fail to announce is that damage shields are uncritable - for example my sorc has a 15k dampen magic (11.5k + 42%) more or less. If this shield were to be taken down the magicka build will be back to doing sloppy, low damage due to Nirnhoned, but sadly this spell's cost is cheap and thus spammable. Dampen plus Nirnhoned stacked is an extreme hard counter to any magicka build and thus creates the dreaded "super sorc" that takes 0 damage - which was complained about since 1.6. My point was, was what I stated several times already: there is too many ways to counter magicka/spell damage builds, and the only way to counter stamina builds is if they do not run Nirnhoned (hardly ever see anyone not running Nirnhoned) or if they are fighting another stamina build.

In the video stated, Sypher admitted to using full Nirnhoned besides the engine guardian pieces - 1.5k per Daedric mines. Are you blind to see the numbers? Even Sypher can admit that Nirnhoned is overpowered as he did in his thread. He also stated that if Nirnhoned could be regulated during the duels then he would have done that too, why? It's obvious because he thinks that it is OP - same as the general population of Magicka users.

You stated that the players that run the high spell resistance numbers are generally magicka - you're assuming this to be true due to a picture of Teargrants. Yes, it is true magicka can run these numbers, because if they can't hard counter Stamina they may as well hard counter magicka. A 5 piece craftable medium armor set can easily achieve the capped spell resistance, why? Because Medium Armor grants 3/4ths the spell resistance of heavy armor. If it only takes 2 heavy, 3 light, and 2 dw/1 staff or even S&B to get spell capped then there is hardly any balance. Several people do run Ravager, I cannot deny this, but you neglected to say that Nirnhoned increases TOTAL resistance, thus by wearing Ravager you can still easily go over the cap. You state these sets like every stamina build is running them and no the general population do not run these sets. If you run Nirnhoned then use a spell resistance spell such as Volatile Armor then you can see how easy it is to multiply your spell resistance than what it was before.

What is trying to be stated is that Light Armor should have a fair advantage over Medium Armor. In the scenario we're in, Medium Armor has 3/4ths the spell resistance of Heavy which can easily be multiplied through Nirnhoned (Increases total spell resistance by 22.5% when purpled (which is also what the general population do as far as tempering). If I could bold out total even more I would, it cannot be emphasized enough. You failed to acknowledge the part where I asked if you were NA or EU so you may test your damage on me, so I may post the results on the forums to end this endless babbling. @Higler.

Thanks.

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
Please post the video, if you are NA, please whisper me - Rochelle Bantien (EP) for a duel/damage test - I can hop onto a DC NB with the same exact build if you are EP. I wish to allow you to kill me so I may post the results/death recap on the forums for all to see. I will put on two different sets - one with 9k spell resist and one with 46k spell resist so you can see how much damage is being mitigated. imo I will not be fighting back so it is, of course, not a true test of combat/survivability through Nirnhoned this will just be a damage test between low and overcapped spell resist.

Edit: Left one vital part of the opening argument unbolded and emphasized.

@Xsorus
I did not say Dampen Magicka was overpowered for Stamina builds - in now way did I say that. Stop cherry picking several details. Dampen Magikca is a hard counter as I said for Light Armor builds - 0 hard counters for stamina builds stacking Nirnhoned. You keep bringing up several undodgeable attacks that do miniscual damage due to Nirnhoned - the fact you keep ignoring. I am in no way complaining about dodging, this argument is completely and has been completely about Nirnhoned. You're the one that brought up dodging and is not part of this thread.

Have you ever had a soul assault tick 1k crits on you? That skill is undodgeable. I am talking about Nirnhoned.

How about this damage?

I have yet to see any magicka build hit harder than this. The highest I have seen is someone do half as much damage as jabs. I am looking forward to tomorrow.

Amateurs @ ZOS......I mean how else do you explain all the goofy shiz that's been going on in this game since beta?

@Xsorus
The damage done from biting jabs is 1 go, but sure my 2k concealed weapons don't even hurt him and I have fought him on several occasions after this just to come up with the same results as 2k concealed weapons and 8k proximity crits. These fights can be repeated with the same results as can many other magicka tank Stamina builds. I'll bite on to the Pixysticks reference - his glass cannon build - 49k magicka 3k spell damage will hit hard against some builds due to him stacking that much damage and magicka while also stacking spell penetration and 0 sustain. If a player stacks as much spell resistance as I do then I can tank these glass cannons all day long. There is also the part where he is forced into dual wield to go even more glass (more spell damage but loses his ult regen through light and heavy attacks unless he uses block for it) - and the argument that was stated before in one of my earlier posts in this thread that Magicka is forced into glass cannon builds without sustain in order to be competitive - he only runs 17k health and 1k magicka regeneration =/= glass cannon.
-Magicka builds should not be pigeonholed into glass cannons in order to be viable to combat Nirnhoned players. Even then when the player stacks too much spell resistance, all spell penetration is negated.

Pixysticks wrote: »

3.4% damage increase for increasing max magicka by 2321 (8%).

So for me, 682 magicka is a 1% damage increase, and 61 spell damage is also a 1% damage increase.

682 magicka = 61 spell damage, or think of it as a 10:1 damage ratio if that makes it easier (it's close enough).

Only 1.1k magicka regeneration.

How about why Pixysticks quit?:

Pixysticks wrote: »

Yeah, I stopped playing the game a few days ago-- just letting friends play on my account until they fix nirn, I don't feel like farming a ton of gold just to make all nirn gear and go stam for it to be nerfed whenever they decide to fix it. I'll come back when it's nerfed and see how everything is, hopefully they change hp to 1.5x value when they fix nirn or something else to raise TTK as well.

-Bolded some vital parts in this quote.

You can't really bring up Pixysticks because he quit due to Nirnhoned/spell resist stacking. He is tired of it, and almost all magicka builds are tired of it too. He is like me, I do not want to go stamina in order to be competitive and neither do the majority of magicka players, but at this rate magicka builds are a dying breed. I lurk the forums way too much and can find and understand both sides to the argument. Fighting on the side of Nirnhoned is a battle that will be surely lost - and it is already lost as ZoS is nerfing Nirnhoned, but the nerf is not happening soon enough.

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
The damage done from biting jabs is 1 go, but sure my 2k concealed weapons don't even hurt him and I have fought him on several occasions after this just to come up with the same results as 2k concealed weapons and 8k proximity crits. These fights can be repeated with the same results as can many other magicka tank Stamina builds. I'll bite on to the Pixysticks reference - his glass cannon build - 49k magicka 3k spell damage will hit hard against some builds due to him stacking that much damage and magicka while also stacking spell penetration and 0 sustain. If a player stacks as much spell resistance as I do then I can tank these glass cannons all day long. There is also the part where he is forced into dual wield to go even more glass (more spell damage but loses his ult regen through light and heavy attacks unless he uses block for it) - and the argument that was stated before in one of my earlier posts in this thread that Magicka is forced into glass cannon builds without sustain in order to be competitive - he only runs 17k health and 1k magicka regeneration =/= glass cannon.
-Magicka builds should not be pigeonholed into glass cannons in order to be viable to combat Nirnhoned players. Even then when the player stacks too much spell resistance, all spell penetration is negated.

Pixysticks wrote: »

3.4% damage increase for increasing max magicka by 2321 (8%).

So for me, 682 magicka is a 1% damage increase, and 61 spell damage is also a 1% damage increase.

682 magicka = 61 spell damage, or think of it as a 10:1 damage ratio if that makes it easier (it's close enough).

Only 1.1k magicka regeneration.

How about why Pixysticks quit?:

Pixysticks wrote: »

Yeah, I stopped playing the game a few days ago-- just letting friends play on my account until they fix nirn, I don't feel like farming a ton of gold just to make all nirn gear and go stam for it to be nerfed whenever they decide to fix it. I'll come back when it's nerfed and see how everything is, hopefully they change hp to 1.5x value when they fix nirn or something else to raise TTK as well.

-Bolded some vital parts in this quote.

You can't really bring up Pixysticks because he quit due to Nirnhoned/spell resist stacking. He is tired of it, and almost all magicka builds are tired of it too. He is like me, I do not want to go stamina in order to be competitive and neither do the majority of magicka players, but at this rate magicka builds are a dying breed. I lurk the forums way too much and can find and understand both sides to the argument. Fighting on the side of Nirnhoned is a battle that will be surely lost - and it is already lost as ZoS is nerfing Nirnhoned, but the nerf is not happening soon enough.

Most high damage glass cannon builds don't have sustain, for example you bring up pixy sticks 1k magicka regen, I have around 900 stamina regen when I ran 2 handed stamina dk, I sure as hell didn't have anywhere near 39k stamina like pixy does with magicka.
He also gets ult from you just damaging his absorb shield, so he really doesn't need to light attack, dual wield works really well for sorcs for that reason.
If the argument is that magicka builds are forced into glass cannon to reamain competitive you hold even less ground because virtually every stamina build is forced into glass cannon setups, you don't see to many stamina DKs running those new stam dots now do you, because if you don't have these burst extreme damage builds you will not compete against absorb shields.
Also saying he quit because of nirnhoned is disingenuous, since he was bloody hitting for 20k on crystal frags, even cutting that in half would still yields 10k crystal frags... That's bloody insane when ya think about it.

Also Sypher switched back to magicka build... And I switched from stamina dk which I've ran since the beginning of the game to magicka build, despite your nirnhoned complaints. It may be because I realize that not hitting anyone at all because they are dodging is worse then hitting them for 5k damage when they have 20k at most hp.