Dark elves are very popular for magic DKs. However...honestly...their racial passives were always designed to make them more flexible than most, and they still make good Stam DKs. They certainly aren't anytning like races like Altmer or Khajiit...where swapping to the other resource is a massive handicap.

So feel free to play him as a stam DK. If you ever became a maxxer, looking to get every singe point of dps possible, other races might be better. But you can get within 98% of the other races, so don't sweat it. For me, I like stam characters because I like the weapon skill lines. A stam DK gets awesome attacks from these, and powerful buffs from their class skills.

Gear

One mistake that's common is people thinking "I'm a DK, therefore I need heavy armor." You're already inherently tanky...what a new DK lacks is DPS. So feel free to migrate to medium armor. There are better dps sets here, and the passives really boost damage. (My stam DK does both roles...he just carries multiple gear sets).

Sets of interest are the standard best-in-the-game dps boosters. Hundings rage and night mothers from the easy to obtain crafted sets. Spriggans for a drop set. Alchemist maybe. I like briarheart better than alchemist, honestly.

Abilities

I think you have a lot of flexibility here. DW or 2h can serve as an attack bar, and bow or 2h can serve as a back bar. A lot depends on content, and play style. Here are some thoughts:

- Rally (2h) vs igneous weapons: a common mistake is running both, but major brutality can't stack. Use one or the other, or use rally plus molten arms for a boost to heavy attacks.

- flames of oblivion is one skill still very suited to your Dunmer. He gets the flame damage buff, it scales off your weapon damage, and it's a magic dump for him. And slotting it gives major savagery...that's worth a ten percent boost to your crit rating (which is equivalent to about a 5-8% boost to dps).

- the caltrops changes could be huge for stam dks. Stacking this and claw might be amazing. If you haven't earned it, pvp a bit toward it. 180k total AP to unlock...that's 18 keep captures then all three resources, not so bad.

- there are better ultimates, but I always rely on flawless dawnbreaker on my attack bar on my DK. I just can't give up the dps.

- dragon fire scales: there are a lot of projectiles in pvp. I hate when DKs smack me with my own snipes, lol.

- take flight and critical rush: in pvp it's essential for enemies to keep you away from them. These can get you in their face and turn a fight upside down.

Potions

DKs get a lot of buffs from their resident abilities. When making potions for yourself, for pvp or pve, think through what buffs those potions provide. If you're slotting flames of oblivion, you can't stack major savagery a second time, so don't make this a feature of your potions...find a different buff.

Poisons

It can/should take a long time to grind down a DK in pvp. If you poison someone and deplete their stamina/magic, it's truly irritating.

Food

Sustain might be a problem for you in update 14, fair warning. Everyone has been running max resource food. You might need to switch over to something with resource regen. Dubious Cameron Throne is a recipe from the jesters fest that gives max health plus stam and magic regen. This might become standard.

CPs

Update 14 is going to really mix things up. It's going to take some time formguides to catch up, but as a general rule you're going to spread points out into more lines...they've frontloaded the buffs (for example, the first 50 CPs in mighty offer 75% of the total buffs from that line). Watch the expert build guides (Alcast) and expect the ideal CP comfigs to change several times over the next two months as we all adjust to live in update 14.


These are all general tips more than a complete build, but there are lots of builds out there (alcasthq.com). I thought these tips might be more useful.

Pvp is a different game altogether, and it's about to go through a big shift. But pvp is about learning to kill human players who have specifically gears to kill you...so it's a challenge. It took me a long, long time to get to a point where I could kill and somewhat survive. If you die over and over don't get discouraged, that's part of the learning process.

Update 14 seeks to fix some of what's frustrating you. Resources have become virtually unlimited. This allows players to spam their best abilities. Sorcs are running with 2-3 shields up constantly. You have to deal ~15k damage before their health is hit at all...then as soon as their health is affected they put up refreshed shields, and they can spam block between. Morrowind should fix this to some extent...but I'm not expecting massive changes. Regardless, it'll be a good time for you to jump into pvp. People will be learning the update, learning Wardens, there might be a lot of new players.

But here are some pvp-specific tips to get you started:

Gear

Now that you're in max level gear, you really do need separate sets for pve and pvp. Crit hits are insane, so pvp requires impen trait gear to stay alive, especially for in-your-face DKs, who can expect to take a lot of damage. A lot of builds use heavy armor (but I advise waiting for someone like Alcast to post Morrowind pvp builds before you invest...they should be coming soon...heavy is getting big changes, and I'm not sure what will work best for stam DKs after the patch).

Gear quality becomes more important. You need purple at a minimum...it's worth the cost. Gold provides a marginal boost as you upgrade each piece, but it's spendy (~$100k per piece, ouch). Wait to go gold until you're really comfortable with your build and gear choice. The exception is weapons...gold weapons provide a big boost, increasing damage 8-15%. This is the first place to spend those gold tempers once you've got a setup you like.

My strategy when I was newer and poorer was to start by slowly upgrading a base set to gold that I could use in both pvp and pve. For example, I made my hundings rage swords and three armor pieces in divines gold...then experimented with drop sets in purple impen before spending on gold for that.

CPs

You're going to be handicapped w the lower champion points. There's not much you can do about that...just keep earning them. And watch the guides for the new ideal configs. Right now the best strategy is piling them into the one best line, but that'll change a bit.

Run in a small group

As a pvp newbie, solo is tough. Consider running in a group (put out an LFG zone chat). Lots of cool people pvp...and they tend to babble, lol. You'll learn a lot about pvp, but also the whole game. You don't have to Zerg...even running w a dps and healer would open up a ton of possibilities for you - you annoy, they heal, debuff and kill.

Consider ranged at first

Turn on your combat text so you get an idea how hard your hits are landing, and how much damage it takes to kill someone. Then maybe start with a ranged bow build. No, it's not ideal for a stam DK and it's not a long term setup, but you can survive up on a wall during a keep defense way better. This'll give you play experience to learn how to boost your damage with buffs, how other players react when they take damage, how sneak/cloak works for them, etc. As you get more comfortable you can move over to melee and open terrain combat.

Get stealing

Often overlooked is the legerdemain passive that reduces sneak stam cost by up to 40%. This unlocks fully at legerdemain 16...it's a vital buff in pvp. The grind isn't bad if you do it right. Every once in a while, free up 100ish inventory slots then go steal a bunch of crap. Fence it, selling garbage and laundering cheap/useful stuff. When rolling a new toon I usually spend 1 point to increase interactions to 220/day, but that's optional. I go to the inn complex in orsinium. Another good location if you don't have wrothgar is the ships docked in daggerfall. You can get 100-200 items per trip without much npc interference. You'll get legerdemain up in 10-20 trips.