What is the best equipment to use for a Flame Staff Dragon Knight?

Madrajin · July 2016

At the moment I'm using 5 pieces of Julianos, 5 pieces of Elegance and a random shoulder piece that gives a health set bonus for wearing just a single piece. I'm stacking as much fire damage bonuses and increases to heavy attacks as I can and using heavy attacks for my DPS.

Is there a better way of doing sustained damage? Unfortunately the PS4 version of the game doesn't really give enough information to verify damage output.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · July 2016

The current Meta is something like this for straight DPS in PVE:

5 Julianos (or Twice Born Star), 2 Skoria (or Kena), 3 willpower (or Infallible Aether), VMA Destro Staffs.

-The Julianos/TBS debate boils down to your warhorn uptime. If you have a proper raid with 4 warhorns in rotation, TBS is better. Otherwise Julianos is a bit more damage. It's pretty close, so if you are only going to make one set, I would go TBS. The extra stats are really nice.

-Whether Skoria or Kena is better depends on the player. I personally dont like Kena on my DK. My old fingers dont do a good job of going back and forth from a light weave to a medium weave. If you arent keeping Kena up close to 65-70% of the time, Skoria is better. The reality is that very few players are able to do this consistently.

-As for willpower vs infallible jewelry, I think it is really close right now on a boss fight. On trash Willpower is certainly better. On any boss with a bunch of adds, again, willpower is probably better. Willpower is also much easier to get, so its a good place to start. You want all magic if possible, but one healthy piece is not the end of the world.

If you dont have VMA staves, another solid option is to make them in Torugs P act as well as your head (or shoulder) and also run 1 piece kena for some extra damage. Otherwise, typical rules apply. For PVE, go all magic in terms of attributes and enchants, and spell damage on the Jewelry. Sharpened is your best weapon trait unless in a proper raid, then precise seems to be a touch better. I would make sharpened if you are crafting. Lastly, you want everything in divines, especially if going Twice Born Star. Theif is the mundus, again unless using TBS, in which case you go Thief and Shadow.

Another very solid approach that I have been messing with is the build below:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/269507/noss-mixed-staff-dk-build-dark-brotherhood-updated#latest

It is a little outside the box and requires some gear that is not easy to get, but I am loving this in VSO and VMOL. It is very easy to play, and the AoE damage is insane.

Foxic · July 2016

5 twice born star, 2 kena or valkyn, 3 arcane willpower with spell damage, nonset sharpened or precise inferno staff with spell damage enchant and maelstrom inferno staff(2 nonset staves if you don't have a maelstrom staff)

Madrajin · July 2016

I've currently only got 3 items with 9 traits researched. Is Twice Born Star really that good? Which Mundus Stones do you use? Apprentice and Mage?

What about the new traits now that they have changed? Old posts seem to suggest that the best damage traits used to be Nirnhoned > Sharpened > Precise.

Presumably with that set up the basic heavy attack is lower damage. So what rotation of spells is used? The advantage of heavy attacks is never running out of magicka and keeping instant Ardent Flame spells up that increase damage.

There is so much out of date information on the web.

Foxic · July 2016

Madrajin wrote: »

I've currently only got 3 items with 9 traits researched. Is Twice Born Star really that good? Which Mundus Stones do you use? Apprentice and Mage?

What about the new traits now that they have changed? Old posts seem to suggest that the best damage traits used to be Nirnhoned > Sharpened > Precise.

Presumably with that set up the basic heavy attack is lower damage. So what rotation of spells is used? The advantage of heavy attacks is never running out of magicka and keeping instant Ardent Flame spells up that increase damage.

There is so much out of date information on the web.

Yes twice born is that good, you want to run the thief and shadow stone with all divines armor.

Nirn was reworked and as far as um concerned is useless. I've seen some of the big math guys say sharpened is better than precise but in actual testing I have always got better results with precise.

I don't know much about heavy attack builds but if you want to see a meta magicka dk build check out the rotation herehttp://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pve-2-3-x-kindling-power-the-salty-version-of-a-magicka-dk/

code65536 · July 2016

Julianos is better than TBS for most content you do. You need a good war horn rotation from your tanks/healers for TBS to outperform Julianos, and even then, the difference is rather modest. There's really no need for you to go out and replace your Julianos.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · July 2016

Sorry for Double Post, but I thought I would also chime in on your rotation. Magic DKs are what we call DoT (damage over time) builds. They are great once you get the hang of them. On PS4 it could be a little tricky because you dont have addons to help track your buffs.

Essentially, the point of a DoT build is to apply multiple DoTs to the same target. DoTs stack with one another, but not with themselves. In other words, casting burning embers twice in a row doesnt really do anything extra. The second DoT will override the first. But you can stack, burning embers and engulfing flames for example. Both will tick at the same time. The Best DKS are juggling about 7-8 DoTs, including their ultimate. The idea is to get all your DoTs ticking, and then medium attack weave your spam skill (molten whip on a DK) until one of them needs reapplied.

The biggest problem people get into is over casting their DoTs. It takes the same amount of time to apply a DOT or cast your whip. The DoT is only better if it does more total damage than whip. This is only true with most DOTS if they run their full course. Recasting DoTs too early is a DPS loss. Ideally, you recast them just as they expire, but better to wait too long than go too early.

As for bars, the DK front bar has not changed in a while. It is about as Meta as it gets:

-Molten Whip, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Elemental Blockade, Inner Light, Meteor.

This works out really well for managing your rotation. Blockade is a touch shorter than the other two, but I think you can get away with casting them all in order when learning. I always cast Engulfing Flames and Burning Embers back to back, but will reapply Blockade a little more often. So a very simply rotation would be Medium Attack (MA)>Blockade>MA>engulfing Flames>MA>burning embers> (MA>whip)x5-6. I would start practicing there. As you get better, you can add in your back bar DoTS. These are usually a little longer in duration, so you should be able to do your front bar rotation a couple times. Your back bar is also your AoE bar, so it will change from time to time depending on what you are doing. I haven't changed my front bar in PVE in months.

Back Bars:
-AOE- Elemental Ring, Rearming Trap (stam skill but crit buff is good), Eruption, Deep Breath, Innerlight, Standard of Might.

-Single Target - Flames of Oblivion, Rearming Trap , Eruption, Flex (Destructive Clench for more damage, Harness Magic for a shield, deep breath for interrupt and heal), Innerlight, Standard of Might.

A lot of the new content calls for DKs to run chains and interupt. Deep Breath is a wonderful AOE interupt. You might get a little more damage out of Flames of Oblivion, but I like Deep Breath a lot. If I need chains, I usually will drop Trap.

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What is the best equipment to use for a Flame Staff Dragon Knight?

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