Level up steel tornado and you too can be a demigod in PVP

tTear wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Dual Wield is viable, and I think Rapid Strikes is a pretty good skill, but you're definitely not going to be effective in the more competitive stuff if you're relying just on that. It's fine as part of your arsenal, but I'd suggest that at a minimum you start using Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind) and a few class skills. In more competitive play you can't just rely on spamming one skill - you need a good rotation, and you need to be willing to switch it up depending on the circumstances.

Ah ok, I do in fact have Steel Tornado up to level 4, never really used other than levelling it just for the sake of having it maxed out. I just felt like it wasn't good, guess I'm wrong. Is it because it can damage multiple enemies(?) Thus putting out a high damage output... Or am I missing the bigger picture?

It is one of the more dangerous abilities in PVP, because it has such a large area and can do massive damage. You want to max your stamina and get your weapon crit as high as possible.

@tTear No, you're not an idiot! DW is an excellent choice for DPSing. As previous posters mentioned, Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind) is godlike for AoE. Definitely pick it up. Don't be tempted by the other morph; as a Redguard, stamina shouldn't be a problem and Tornado's extra range is simply too good to ignore. Rapid Strikes is indeed a good skill, but if that's all you're really using then you're missing out on your full damage-dealing potential. An effective build utilizes more than one skill.

Stamina DKs can put out some nice DPS numbers. Here's a popular DW stam DK build you might look into trying out:

http://deltiasgaming.com/2015/03/08/the-bloody-butcher-dragonknight-dps-build-for-update-six/

Keep going with your build and don't be so quick to drop DW; DW is more than viable endgame for both PvE and PvP, and is arguably one of the most favored weapon choices by DPSs across all classes.

Hope that helps

tTear wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Dual Wield is viable, and I think Rapid Strikes is a pretty good skill, but you're definitely not going to be effective in the more competitive stuff if you're relying just on that. It's fine as part of your arsenal, but I'd suggest that at a minimum you start using Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind) and a few class skills. In more competitive play you can't just rely on spamming one skill - you need a good rotation, and you need to be willing to switch it up depending on the circumstances.

Ah ok, I do in fact have Steel Tornado up to level 4, never really used other than levelling it just for the sake of having it maxed out. I just felt like it wasn't good, guess I'm wrong. Is it because it can damage multiple enemies(?) Thus putting out a high damage output... Or am I missing the bigger picture?

It's because it's amazing (well, for a stamina build with high weapon damage it's amazing, but since you've been going around using Rapid Strikes I'm assuming you are a stamina build with high weapon damage) when you're going up against groups of enemies. That can be really important in PVP, and in group dungeons when you have a lot of adds.

As an example, in veteran Banished Cells there's one boss fight where the boss just keeps spawning waves of adds, and if you can't burn down all of the adds in each wave fast enough, you'll just keep having more and more enemies to fight because the next wave comes on a timer rather than coming after all the adds from the previous wave are dead. I've been in groups that wiped on that boss multiple times because our DPS were good at single-target damage output, but not nearly as good at AOE damage output. I've also been in groups where that boss was an absolute cake walk because the DPS had good AOEs. The easiest I've ever seen that fight was when we had one guy using some crowd control on the adds to hold them in place as soon as they spawned, and 2 guys using Steel Tornado to burn the adds down - worked like a charm.

So yeah, it's a case of it being great in situations like that. It's really important to be willing to use different skills depending on the situation. I like Rapid Strikes in a lot of situations. I also like Steel Tornado in a lot of situations.

tTear wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

tTear wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Dual Wield is viable, and I think Rapid Strikes is a pretty good skill, but you're definitely not going to be effective in the more competitive stuff if you're relying just on that. It's fine as part of your arsenal, but I'd suggest that at a minimum you start using Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind) and a few class skills. In more competitive play you can't just rely on spamming one skill - you need a good rotation, and you need to be willing to switch it up depending on the circumstances.

Ah ok, I do in fact have Steel Tornado up to level 4, never really used other than levelling it just for the sake of having it maxed out. I just felt like it wasn't good, guess I'm wrong. Is it because it can damage multiple enemies(?) Thus putting out a high damage output... Or am I missing the bigger picture?

It's because it's amazing (well, for a stamina build with high weapon damage it's amazing, but since you've been going around using Rapid Strikes I'm assuming you are a stamina build with high weapon damage) when you're going up against groups of enemies. That can be really important in PVP, and in group dungeons when you have a lot of adds.

As an example, in veteran Banished Cells there's one boss fight where the boss just keeps spawning waves of adds, and if you can't burn down all of the adds in each wave fast enough, you'll just keep having more and more enemies to fight because the next wave comes on a timer rather than coming after all the adds from the previous wave are dead. I've been in groups that wiped on that boss multiple times because our DPS were good at single-target damage output, but not nearly as good at AOE damage output. I've also been in groups where that boss was an absolute cake walk because the DPS had good AOEs. The easiest I've ever seen that fight was when we had one guy using some crowd control on the adds to hold them in place as soon as they spawned, and 2 guys using Steel Tornado to burn the adds down - worked like a charm.

So yeah, it's a case of it being great in situations like that. It's really important to be willing to use different skills depending on the situation. I like Rapid Strikes in a lot of situations. I also like Steel Tornado in a lot of situations.

Oh ok, that really clears things up a lot. Thank you! And yes I do have high weapon damage with lots of stamina. I'm without a doubt gonna start implementing steel tornado into my play style.

You won't regret it It's especially good when the enemies within the AOE are already damaged, so if you like to start off a battle with a group of enemies by using Dragon Leap or one of its morphs it'll be a great follow-up to that. Actually, for that matter Dragon Knights have a bunch of AOE abilities, so there are a few good combos - maybe throw down some talons for the crowd control & damage, then immediately launch a Steel Tornado.