Stam Char, mainly PvP

Wump · April 2016

Hey all,

I'm currently sitting on a Stam DK (Vet 11) and a Stam NB (Vet 14) any enjoying my life in Tamriel. As I'm closing in on max lvl it's time to think a bit about the future goals of my chars. Here's the Problem:

Due to RL-Duties (Job, Family, going out with the dog, keeping the house clean and the car fueled, you know this kind of stuff...) I can't spend as much time in Tamriel as i like to. This means I will have a hard time learning and playing all the Vet stages of Maelstrom or completing the new Trial. This kind of hinders me in terms of gearing up, getting this juicy Maelstrom Mainhand and so on.

As I will focus on the Cyro with my Chars (always mainly played pvp in my WoW, GW2 and SwTor-Times), my question ist: can you give me a advice which of my two chars will be able to deal better with these restrictions? Dont' get me wrong: I will no doubt put as much effort as possible in gearing, theory crafting and developing my chars. No way I will be the "blue gear set" guy who runs with 16k HP in Cyro and mourning about being one hitted. But are there any recognizable pros or cons on Stam DK or Stam NB given this background? How does a DK Play without a Maelstrom 2hander or the NB without the Maelstrom Weapons?

And a second question: While levelling I like to play the DK as a Tank. Obviously this is not exactly the most fun in Cyro. Is there a succesful way to play a tanky Stam DK in PvP without being the guy who is simply an nuisance? Any input on this would be much appreciated.

tl;dr: with limited time, advice on stamd dk or stam nb for pvp (especially when playing without Maelstrom weapons)? Any chance to be a tanky stam dk for pvp?

Thank you all, have a good time!

Vangy · April 2016

Wump wrote: »

Hey all,

I'm currently sitting on a Stam DK (Vet 11) and a Stam NB (Vet 14) any enjoying my life in Tamriel. As I'm closing in on max lvl it's time to think a bit about the future goals of my chars. Here's the Problem:

Due to RL-Duties (Job, Family, going out with the dog, keeping the house clean and the car fueled, you know this kind of stuff...) I can't spend as much time in Tamriel as i like to. This means I will have a hard time learning and playing all the Vet stages of Maelstrom or completing the new Trial. This kind of hinders me in terms of gearing up, getting this juicy Maelstrom Mainhand and so on.

As I will focus on the Cyro with my Chars (always mainly played pvp in my WoW, GW2 and SwTor-Times), my question ist: can you give me a advice which of my two chars will be able to deal better with these restrictions? Dont' get me wrong: I will no doubt put as much effort as possible in gearing, theory crafting and developing my chars. No way I will be the "blue gear set" guy who runs with 16k HP in Cyro and mourning about being one hitted. But are there any recognizable pros or cons on Stam DK or Stam NB given this background? How does a DK Play without a Maelstrom 2hander or the NB without the Maelstrom Weapons?

And a second question: While levelling I like to play the DK as a Tank. Obviously this is not exactly the most fun in Cyro. Is there a succesful way to play a tanky Stam DK in PvP without being the guy who is simply an nuisance? Any input on this would be much appreciated.

tl;dr: with limited time, advice on stamd dk or stam nb for pvp (especially when playing without Maelstrom weapons)? Any chance to be a tanky stam dk for pvp?

Thank you all, have a good time!

My main is a stam DK without maelstrom weps. Ive done maelstrom a grand total of 2 times. Once on sorc, once on DK. Dont enjoy it. Didnt come to ESO for solo rpg. So not going to put myself through the torture again.

Back to your questions, stam dk and stam nbs do fine even without maelstrom weapons. Thyre badass and awesome but they are in no way mandatory. I pull 22-25k dps single target as a PVE pure dps-er. For PvP, i run with a tanky set up focused on small scale/solo.

You could try this build;

5 morkuldin (impen) , 2 engin guardian (whatever traits u are able to get) , 3 agility robust, 2 nights silence (SnB). (sharpened for weapon and impen for shield). --> 5H/1M/1L. I run hakeijo on big pieces and stam enchants on the rest.

SnB bar: shield assault/ransack/wings/igneous/vigor --> ult: corrosive armor
2h: unstable flame/wb/exec/shuffle or burning breath/rally --> ult: leap/flawless dawn breaker

You could replace wings with talons if you want. The idea is to lock someone down with dots + morkuldin proc and finish them with corrosive/leap when thyre out of resources. You can also be mighty annoying with talons against other groups.

Stats --> 24.5k (in cyro) / 36k stam / 14k magicka
recovery --> 1400 mag / 800 health / 1500 stam
weapon stats --> 2.9k weapon damage / 27% crit (unimportant for this build which is focused on attrition)
crit resist --> 2200~

Tanky and effective for small scale and solo. Also works in group play if u slot caltrops talons and standard. You would take on the role of a front line tanky battlefield controller for your group to come bomb with proxy/bombard/meteor etc.

Johngo0036 · April 2016

I have 5 VR16 characters of which none have maelstrom weapons... I do JUST fine without them..

Google Sypher he is a pvp'er and one of the best i know without Maelstrom weapons..

Wump · April 2016

Thank you for your Input!

Vangy wrote: »

You could try this build;

5 morkuldin (impen) , 2 engin guardian (whatever traits u are able to get) , 3 agility robust, 2 nights silence (SnB). (sharpened for weapon and impen for shield). --> 5H/1M/1L. I run hakeijo on big pieces and stam enchants on the rest.

SnB bar: shield assault/ransack/wings/igneous/vigor --> ult: corrosive armor
2h: unstable flame/wb/exec/shuffle or burning breath/rally --> ult: leap/flawless dawn breaker

You could replace wings with talons if you want. The idea is to lock someone down with dots + morkuldin proc and finish them with corrosive/leap when thyre out of resources. You can also be mighty annoying with talons against other groups.

Stats --> 24.5k (in cyro) / 36k stam / 14k magicka
recovery --> 1400 mag / 800 health / 1500 stam
weapon stats --> 2.9k weapon damage / 27% crit (unimportant for this build which is focused on attrition)
crit resist --> 2200~

Tanky and effective for small scale and solo. Also works in group play if u slot caltrops talons and standard. You would take on the role of a front line tanky battlefield controller for your group to come bomb with proxy/bombard/meteor etc.

This sounds promising. Where do you invest your CP? Guess in red you go for hardy/elemental Defender, in green warlord/mooncalf and in blue mighty? Do you advise to set a few points in block expert as well?

Johngo0036 wrote: »

Google Sypher he is a pvp'er and one of the best i know without Maelstrom weapons..

Yeah, I know his Vids... to be honest: don't like that. Granted, he is propably a very good PvP'er, but I am not in for this kind of fotm-jumping. I play a Char cause I want to play THIS char, I have no desire to chase the new fotm every patch. But to each his own, thank you none the less!

Vangy · April 2016

Wump wrote: »

Thank you for your Input!

Vangy wrote: »

You could try this build;

5 morkuldin (impen) , 2 engin guardian (whatever traits u are able to get) , 3 agility robust, 2 nights silence (SnB). (sharpened for weapon and impen for shield). --> 5H/1M/1L. I run hakeijo on big pieces and stam enchants on the rest.

SnB bar: shield assault/ransack/wings/igneous/vigor --> ult: corrosive armor
2h: unstable flame/wb/exec/shuffle or burning breath/rally --> ult: leap/flawless dawn breaker

You could replace wings with talons if you want. The idea is to lock someone down with dots + morkuldin proc and finish them with corrosive/leap when thyre out of resources. You can also be mighty annoying with talons against other groups.

Stats --> 24.5k (in cyro) / 36k stam / 14k magicka
recovery --> 1400 mag / 800 health / 1500 stam
weapon stats --> 2.9k weapon damage / 27% crit (unimportant for this build which is focused on attrition)
crit resist --> 2200~

Tanky and effective for small scale and solo. Also works in group play if u slot caltrops talons and standard. You would take on the role of a front line tanky battlefield controller for your group to come bomb with proxy/bombard/meteor etc.

This sounds promising. Where do you invest your CP? Guess in red you go for hardy/elemental Defender, in green warlord/mooncalf and in blue mighty? Do you advise to set a few points in block expert as well?

Johngo0036 wrote: »

Google Sypher he is a pvp'er and one of the best i know without Maelstrom weapons..

Yeah, I know his Vids... to be honest: don't like that. Granted, he is propably a very good PvP'er, but I am not in for this kind of fotm-jumping. I play a Char cause I want to play THIS char, I have no desire to chase the new fotm every patch. But to each his own, thank you none the less!

For pvp, off the top of my head (since I'm not at my PC now)

Red: crit resist ~ 20
Block redux~10
Quick recovery~10
About 120 split into ele and Phy defender for the unchained

Green: 10 into tumbling and rest into warlord and mooncalf.

Blue: Max mighty and 10 into light/heavy Attack damage with rest into Tham.

As you pointed out, this isnt your typical build. Not too many people running something like this from what ive seen. It took me a lot of practice to get going. Bear in mind, this build cannot dodge roll too much and dosent excel in mobility. A big part of being successful with this build for me is proper positioning and knowing when I can take the damage and choosing what I want to dodge/evade.

This build particularly excels when you have 1 or 2 friends who are built as pure slippery glass cannons. I typically play small scale PvP with my little brother and he plays a magBlade who hits like a nuke. I draw fire and lock down groups with talons/caltrops while he goes in and out of stealth while being annoying while doing *** tons of damage. People in this game still dont realise you shouldnt target the dude running 2000+ crit resist and 5 heavy lol.

As solo, you can most likely hold your own against multiple opponents running the common burst builds. Against how many depends on how good the opponents are and how good you are as well. The key to doing well solo with this build is timing your corrosive armor well. You want to pop this when both your unstable flame, burning breath and your morkuldin swords are on the opponent. Hit corrosive then and go for a CC followed by a heavy attack + ransack bash cancel and you will remove most shields while ur sword + unstable flames tick for insane numbers cos corrosive negates all armor. If your opponent is running purge (its easy to tell cos it has a very telegraphed animation), you want to keep dotting them until they stop purging (cos purge costs a *** ton of magicka) and then do the corrosive armor combo. Using it too early will just waste it cos most people will just immediately purge it and this build dosent run enough burst to take down most shield spammers easily without the dots.

Additional tips is to pay attention to ur little engin guardian dwemer bot. All 3 resources are useful. Heavy armor is pretty trashy at the moment so our sustain isnt too fantastic without proper management.

1. If health procs from dwemer bot; you can afford to drop block more and this is a prime time to pop igenous cos it boosts the heal from the dwemer bot.
2. If mag procs, go crazy with talons and igneous and start burning your opponents stam.
3. if stam procs, go crazy with ransack bash spam and block away to glory.

In fact, I think this build probably wouldnt work without the engin guardian set. Thats how bad heavy armor is for resource management in the current meta =(

Wump · April 2016

Thank you for the time to write this, much appreciated!