It depends on what you're going for. I have a DK Magicka Tank and can tell you magicka DK builds are more common; of course, that doesn't mean a stamina build isn't viable. Most DK skills cost and scale with magicka, so if you want to focus your character around the skills in your DK trees, then magicka is the way to go. However, if you don't care for most of the DK skills and would rather slot primarily weapon skills on your bar, you'll want stamina. In addition, most DK skills are close-range, so it's best to go with a melee weapon. Or, if you want to be a caster, you'll just find yourself casting in melee range most of the time.

It's all about play style; any build can work if you put work into it.

Anything Stamina is actually good right now (though a Stamina Sorc would be questionable...). I love my Stamina NB Archer and my Stamina Templar DPS. I disagree that magicka DKs are geared more towards survivability than DPS; Tanks, yes, but a magicka DK DPS can do serious damage. Kill it with fire!

@DamagedInc666 As a Dark Elf, you get passives that up your fire damage, so you should consider going magicka to take advantage of that. Light armor is best for magicka focused builds, while heavy is for health and medium is for stamina. I'd recommend, if you go the magicka route, to take mostly light armor and use either a fire destro staff (if you want to be a melee-range caster) or DW/2h (if you want to go full melee). Dark Elves also make good vampires because they have some fire resistance due to racial passives; going vamp would also benefit your magicka. A DK Fire Mage build (staff or melee) might interest you if you want to be a DPS. I'm considering rolling one myself so I could become a Vampire Pyromancer.

From what I have learnt over a course of time as a DK is, that a DK is very well suited to being a tank. Obviously you do not have to choose that route, but if you do then Stamina and health, plus heavy armour, would be what you would concentrate building your character on. I have found that adding those particular attributes allows me to take more damage and last longer, as well as causing more damage when hitting.

Allyhoo811 wrote: »

predkill29 wrote: »

I'm a imperial dk, do you think a magicka build would still be good?

Currently, none of the imperial racial abilities are really designed to help a magicka build; however, you should still be able to make a successful magicka using dk build.

Unless you are a big min/maxer I wouldn't get to hung up on how your race will impact your build. There are so many ways to overcome less than perfect race/class combinations, and none of us ever know when ZOS will decide to change the racial passives anyway.

Build a character you like and enjoy playing

That's what I was looking for, all the vet 14 dks see are magicka and they say it's better. I really wish I picked dark elf then went vampier. I'll try the magicka build out tomorrow most likely see which I like.

Sandshark95 wrote: »

@DamagedInc666 As a Dark Elf, you get passives that up your fire damage, so you should consider going magicka to take advantage of that. Light armor is best for magicka focused builds, while heavy is for health and medium is for stamina. I'd recommend, if you go the magicka route, to take mostly light armor and use either a fire destro staff (if you want to be a melee-range caster) or DW/2h (if you want to go full melee). Dark Elves also make good vampires because they have some fire resistance due to racial passives; going vamp would also benefit your magicka. A DK Fire Mage build (staff or melee) might interest you if you want to be a DPS. I'm considering rolling one myself so I could become a Vampire Pyromancer.

That's some great advice, thanks!

I am currently DW and have Whirlwind, Searing Strike, Lava Whip, Spiked armour and Green Dragon Blood and Dragon Leap as my Ultimate on my main bar and i'm doing ok with it now i've learnt to block properly! I was having trouble with dying early on but I think a lot of that was due to my lack of blocking, i'm managing to take on elites a couple of levels above me now.

I'll have a look at getting a staff to try out as i'd not really considered using one before.