Do you prefer pvp or pve? It kinda makes a difference...

I tank in PVP, its a blast but not so good solo. You can survive but cant kill much without a group.

I have 5 piece Black Rose and Endurance 3 piece and I do just fine.

I run Hist Bark on my PvE set to tank.

Just have loads of stamina, all my points are in stamina and I survive and have a blast. I can give you a better breakdown if you like.

I am ORC DK VR16 with about 400 CP.

Autolycus wrote: »

@Toc de Malsvi Are you able to help here? I know you do a lot of pvp as a stam DK. We've had some really length discussions before, and I thought you would have some good insight.

Thanks, I can certainly try.



@fr0stee32

So the first thing you want to identify is what kind of role you are hoping to fulfill as a stamina based DK on the battle field? Do you often play with a guild in PVP, are you more solo?

Secondly you need to kind of focus in on what you are hoping to achieve in that role. There are basically 3 basic frames for pvp: High Sustain, High Damage, Balanced.

A sustain build is going to try to pump up recovery while having just enough defense to not get instantly gibbed, they then will try to draw out the fight and slowly eat at their opponent while waiting for an opportunity to use a strong skill/ultimate combo for the kill.

High Damage is going to try to pressure you up front and burn you before you can respond. This is highly effect for ganking as well as support in group play but loses out heavily if it fails to kill targets.

Balanced builds are generally the weakest and require the best players with an excellent combination of skills in order to both be able to sustain but also be able to kill things. Usually balanced builds can be very strong in the right hands but suffer from not having quite the sustain to dodge roll forever, nor the damage to burst down enemies directly.

...

That aside the DK's strengths are healing passives, Damage over time or "DoT's", and resource return through Ultimate use. DoT's are nice but not as effective in PVP due to purges and the scaling of healing, this does not make them insignificant simply not something to rely on as a primary source of damage. They provide good throughput though if you can sustain them.

Choosing weapons, it is generally best to be using two different weapon types as each type has 1-2 skills that perform very well when paired with other passives or skills. Without Maelstrom Daggers I highly recommend running 2h/S&B for a more tanky build or 2h/Bow for a more dps focused build.

One of the easiest dps armor setups to come by is 5 Marksman 5 Hundings with 1 kena or bloodspawn. This is a fairly balanced setup that doesn't cost a lot, Marksman's double recovery and 5% reduction to all stamina spell costs provides sustain, and Hundings 300 weapon damage + max stam/double crit provides burst. You can swap Kena for Bloodspawn for either more sustain or more burst depending on what you want to do.

If you don't have undaunted passives it won't matter what kind of setup you use provided you go at least 5 into medium armor for the 5 set weapon damage bonus. If you do have the undaunted passives you want to go 5M - 1L - 1H to get the 6% total to max stats. Max stats is generally better from a pvp standpoint but is made even better with DK resource return and imperial race passives.

There isn't really a good set for balance between PVP and PVE, in PVE crit and crit damage have more value then they do in PVP. Also for PVP generally you want to run at least 5 Impen, you don't necessarily need to but it can help boost your survivability and is the consensus #1 armor trait for PVP. Impen however does not contribute towards your dps output, as stamina well fitted is a good second due to dodge rolling and sprinting, but well fitted requires you play a more active role in mitigation to fully maximize it's benefit.

Hundings is more of a PVE set, where as Marksman is a solid PVP set. Likely the best scenario is to work on creating off sets to pair with them. So say you are going to PVE swap your Marksman Jewelry with Agility, or swap your whole set for BriarThorn. Then for PVP you can either keep Hundings or swap it for something like Morkuldin's or Alchemist.

For skills, I won't go into incredible detail but here are a few that can be very useful if not very important.

Rally(Major Brut + big heal as long as you reapply after it has been on you for a few seconds but before it wears off)
Vigor(#1 stamina heal, huge heal over time, AOE effect.)
Spiked Armor(this gives Major Resolve/Ward but more importantly it allows you to make use of the Burning Heart passive which will increase your healing from all sources by 12% so you pretty much always want this up if you are actively fighting someone)
Flames of Oblivion(this provides Major Savagery which isn't all that important, but despite appearances this actually scales with max stats so it hits quite hard, you get 4 ticks 1 initial and 1 every 5 seconds each tic hits for about 3-4k in pvp, its passive so you can have it on your back bar and just activate and swap)
Shuffle(baseline stamina builds defense, more stamina means more dodge rolling, more dodge rolling means the value of a procced dodge from shuffle goes up, you can essentially be unhittable for a moment or two if you are lucky.)
Poison Injection(#1 DoT when it comes to getting kills, it acts as an execute when the target is below 50% health scaling up damage significantly, you can have this on your back bar with the bow for dodge rolling and applying before charging in)
Critical Charge(gap closer, pretty much self explanatory, this is what allows you to keep pressure on someone running away)
Reverse Slash(Execute scales from 50% down, very effective when combined with Poison inject DoT effect and used after some other burst)
Dizzying Swing(This is what is going to set up your burst, after poison inject is applied, using this plus a medium weave combined with Reverse Slash or and ultimate will kill most players)
Venomous Claw(this is actually the strongest single target DoT but it doesn't have the execute effect of Poison Injection, lowest priority more of throughput if you have someone you cant burst, huge in PVE)
Molten Armaments(this is what allows DK's to have the largest heavy attacks but it requires setup and can be very hard to land in PVP)
Igneous Shields(costs a lot of magicka but gives Major Mending and is extremely effective if used in combination with Vigor and Rally(rebuff))
Reflective Scale(great for dealing with ranged snipe builds or overload spam, but costs a lot and can really hurt you on magicka if not utilized well)
Stone Fist vs Petrify(these are your alternate CC, CC is primarily used for either creating space for healing, or setting up a kill window. Stone Fist can cost less morphed or can heal it also knocks the target down so you can get a shot or two in without worrying about setting them free, but is a projectile so it can be reflected, has flight time, and will only hold them down for a short period of time provided they don't break free. Petrify has a uniform cost which is fairly low, it stuns with a small absorb shield applied so they cannot be immediately broken free by low damage, also provided they do not have the stamina to break free petrify will last for several seconds, however direct damage will usually break them free immediately and sometimes that means you miss the chance to hit them.)

Ultimates

There are really 3 that are somewhat important to stam DK's:
Corrosive Armor(#1 defensive ult, will give you 10s or so of somewhat invincibility provided you are not going up against 30+ solo.)
Take Flight(most upfront damage and is an AOE, however costs slightly more than Dawnbreaker and can be easily dodged if not setup by a knockdown or other CC.)
Dawnbreaker(there are really two parts to this, Flawless provides the most passive weapon damage which can be big provided you are trying to run a burst or gank build. Dawnbreaker of Smiting though is an AOE stun and does more damage total. Both cost 100 ult compared to Take Flights 110.)

You want Sharpened on all weapons currently at least until they nerf Sharpened which it appears they have no intention of doing. That is about as good info as I can give without knowing more of what you want to do. PVE is more optimizing skills with gear for numbers, where as PVP you need a combination of your own plan of attack as well as how you plan on countering different builds. Due to diversity you won't be able to perfectly counter everything so which skills and armor setups you use is very dependent upon what you feel you are having the most success with. Also whether you are okay with destroying 70% of the population base while getting wiped on the floor by the other 30%.