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Need help with my DPS

kampori
kampori
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Hello all.

As title, I need help with my DPS. I've played since day 1, and do fine with casual solo stuff. I did fine in the early days of dungeons and veterans, even when I was a Khajiit magDK.

However, I took a long break from the game, and came back a few months ago. With changes to poison damage, and DKs etc, I thought I was in the perfect place to change my Khajiiti DK to stam, remorph everything to the poison equivalent, get myself some new medium armour, and I'd be good to go.

However, my DPS sucks.. I just can't get above 15k DPS in veterans. Solo, I can just about manage to sustain 10k DPS on the target skeleton.

Can anyone give me some tips to get better, or what I am doing wrong, bad gear, bad skills, using abilities wrong, etc etc?

Following is a list of all my details:

-Khajiit, DK, 437 champion points
-55 points in stamina, 10 in health
-weapon damage: 2059, crit 77.9%
-armour: 5/5 Hundig, 2/5 Night Mother, 2/2 spawn of mephala (shoulders are good, helm is bad traits etc). don't have undaunted passive, so all gear except helm is medium. all gear is purple, 160.
-decent but nothing special jewelry (gem of madness, heem-jas, sithis. 2 purple rings 1 blue neck)
-have all passives for medium armour, duel wield, all my DK trees.
-all of my abilities are morphed and max level.
-champion points: 100 mooncalf, 20 tenacity, 26 warlord. 100 mighty, 45 thaumaturge. 73 in hardy and elemental defender
-skills I use:
rending slashes, rapid strikes, steel tornado, venemous claw, flames of oblivion on front bar (duel swords) ultimate: duel wield one
acid spray, poison injection, noxious breath, burning talons (rarely use so should maybe change), igneous weapons on the back bar (bow) ultimate : standard of might

During fight, I apply all my DoTs, with a light attack in between each, and by time I'm on front bar, I have time for a few rapid strikes and light attacks before I reapply all the DoTs. Ultimate when need to. Only thing unmorphed is duel wield ultimate, as I only just got it. Not sure how good it is compared to SoM etc.

The only thing I can think of to affect me is my latency, which is usually around 200-300. 150-200 on a good day. So switching bars can be a bit laborious sometimes. And during some boss fights, with a more-than-necessary athletic tank, I find myself out of range which makes me lose out on some DoTs.
My steel tornado seems to be very weak as well. I remember I used to be able to use talons and spam that to wipe out trash packs, but now I'm out of stamina before they're even nearly dead.

I feel so bad about my poor damage that I never use him any more. I made a healer, and use her exclusively now. If I can't do damage, at least I can help those that do with her lol. Done all the veterans and some trials on her, so I know I'm a decent player. and back when I was magDK, I could pull some really good numbers. but now I'm the perfect mix of stamina, Khajiit, DK, all poisons.. and I suck.

Some guidance would be great.

Thanks!
This Is Not Here
  • Voxicity
    Voxicity
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    One thing you're definitely missing is Endless Hail on your bow bar.

    No need to have acid spray since you already have steel tornado for AoE, so I'd swap that our for EH.
  • HatchetHaro
    HatchetHaro
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    Ah, right down my alley.

    Make sure you have the Thief mundus stone on, along with medium divines armor and sharpened weapons.

    Put all points into stamina; it raises your weapon damage and you get more stamina for more sustained damage output. Don't worry about survivability; usually it's on the healer to do that anyway.

    If you're still struggling with health issues, feel free to replace your Hunding's Rage armor with Twice Born Star and grab the Shadow mundus stone as well. I've done some testing and even when solo on a target skeleton, TBS still does more damage, but Hunding's Rage and Night Mother's Gaze come in at a very close second. (EDIT: More testing shows that NMG does more damage than TBS, but the results are pretty all over the place with the 3mil target skeleton. Lets just say that their differences are negligible.)

    For the monster set, you might want at least 1pc Kra'gh's. It gives physical penetration just from the 1pc and it's still the BiS monster set for stam users as far as I can tell. The second piece, you can go with another piece of Kra'gh's, Velidreth, or Molag Kena. Again, medium divines.

    Put max stamina enchantments on all your armor pieces.

    Your jewellery is a bit all over the place, to be honest. The BiS choice for jewellery would be 3pc VO (Vicious Serpent) jewellery; they drop from Craglorn trials. However, those are quite hard to farm; the second choice would be to go for 3pc Agility, since they grant a nice boost to weapon damage. Make sure they're robust, and put weapon damage enchantments on them. If you find yourself struggling with health, you can go with healthy Agility pieces as well; those traits actually give you quite a nice boost to your health pool at 924 health per piece.

    As for your weapons, you can use any 1h weapon type you want, though I would recommend either dual daggers or a dagger-axe combo. Sharpened, one with the crusher enchantment, the other with weapon damage. Your bow should also be sharpened with a weapon damage enchantment as well.

    If you can do vMA, get to farming for that Maelstrom bow, at least; it's so good and will make your Endless Hail your main and best DoT. For dual wield, get the Maelstrom dagger and Maelstrom axe. Again, all sharpened.

    For CP, you can do anything with your points in the red tree, though people would recommend splitting it between Hardy and Elemental Defender. In the green tree, put all points into stamina cost reduction, and the rest into stamina recovery. In the blue tree, all into Mighty, and split the rest between Thaumaturge and Precise Strikes; split that any way you want, though you should want at least 50 in Thaumaturge.

    Onto skills, the part which matters the most.
    I'll just post what I have.

    Frontbar:
    Venomous Claw, Rending Slashes, Rearming Trap, Bloodthirst, Camo Hunter, Flawless Dawnbreaker.
    Backbar:
    Igneous Weapons, Poison Injection, Endless Hail, Noxious Breath, Flames of Oblivion, Standard of Might.

    Skills for flexibility: Razer Caltrops, Unrelenting Grip, Green Dragon Blood, Dragon Fire Scale, Igneous Shield, Steel Tornado, Acid Spray.

    That is my target skeleton parsing skill line up. I can parse 36.5k solo on target skeletons on my Argonian stam DK (1pc Kra'gh's, 1pc Veli, 5pc TBS, 3pc VO/Agility, and Maelstrom nirn dagger, sharp axe, sharp bow, all golded out, with weapon damage/crit/stam potions).

    In a dungeon where the healer is less-than-elite, I swap out Flames of Oblivion with Resolving Vigor. I also sometimes replace Noxious Breath with Razor Caltrops. Igneous Weapons is also another flex spot; if you have a DK tank in your group putting that buff up along with the Mountain's Blessing passive regularly, you can swap that out with more survivability or more damage skills. In trash pulls, you can just swap out Rending Slashes with Steel Tornado.

    Also, I'm using Bloodthirst instead of Rapid Strikes. Rapid Strikes may be more dps, but Bloodthirst's sustain is insanely useful, and is pretty much a must-have if you're even considering vMA. Stick with Rapid Strikes for now if you're going to stick with dungeons. I'll just call both Flurry from now on just to avoid confusion.

    In any typical DPS rotation, lay down all the DoTs you have available and use your spammable while you no longer have DoTs to cast while they're ticking. Always refresh DoTs at the end of their cycle. Your spammable would be your Flurry.

    One thing good about a stam DK is that their DoTs always tick for ~10 seconds, so that makes for a very stable rotation.

    One more thing; only ever use your Standard of Might ulti, unless the boss does not have enough health for you to gain ulti for another Standard of Might, in which case, just burn your Flawless Dawnbreaker.

    Non-vMA-weps rotation: Poison Injection, Noxious Breath, Endless Hail, Venomous Claw, Rending Slashes, Rearming Trap, Flurry x3-5 (depending on when your first DoTs finish), then back to the beginning. Start off with Igenous Weapons and Flames of Oblivion. Drop Standard right after your first rotation. Refresh Igneous and Flames every second rotation, alternating; you can ignore Igneous if your tank is giving you the Mountain's Blessing passive and you are running weapon power potions. Since you're at high ping, I don't recommend that you weave in light attacks too much; maybe just between your Flurry spams.

    vMA-weps rotation: Endless Hail, Noxious Breath, Flames of Oblivion, Flurry, Venomous Claw, Flurry, Rending Slashes, Flurry, Rearming Trap, Poison Injection, then back to the beginning. Start off with Igenous Weapons and Flames of Oblivion. Drop Standard right after your first rotation. Alternate between Igneous Weapons and Flames of Oblivion with each rotation; again, you can ignore Igneous if your tank is giving you the Mountain's Blessing passive and you are running weapon power potions.

    This is, by all means, the meta stam DK cookie cutter build. I highly suggest you analyze this build and discover what makes this build tick, and I encourage that you do some testing on your own and change things around to fit your playstyle.
    Edited by HatchetHaro on March 18, 2017 3:17PM
    Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it

    20 Argonians

    6x IR, 7x GH, 7x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained
  • Iselin
    Iselin
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    Good detailed advice above.

    But even before you get the harder to farm stuff, the easiest thing to do is use proc sets. You can easily triple proc on your DW bar and double proc on your bow bar, Viper from FG and Red Mountain from Stonefalls are both very easy to farm. Combine that with Kra'gh and your DPS will go up by 7-10K.

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