Sylphie wrote: »

I’ve been getting a lot of questions on what I’ve been running in duels and open world lately so I thought now would be a good time to make a build post on my current MagDK setup.

Disclaimer: Playing this build may result in receiving comments such as “crutch more on proc sets”, “hold block more noob” and “magdk is an easy mode class”.


Just remember that at the end of the day it's just a game and you should play it however you want. I really enjoy my current build and despite what people say I'll keep running it.

Background
I haven’t been playing MagDK for long. I made the character at the start of one tamriel but ended up going back and forth between magicka and stamina for a while until settling with stamina. I have only recently switched back to magicka roughly 2 months ago and I’ve been having a lot of run with the playstyle.
After switching back to magicka, I decided to run the basic setup of 2p Skoria, 5p Shacklebreaker and 5p Burning Spellweave. While the damage was great, I felt like stacking spell damage was not the way to go with my playstyle and sought to find another setup to compliment how I played my MagDK, by applying constant pressure and damage over time.

Build

Race: Dark elf is the first preference, followed by high elf then Breton.

Gear
5 light, 2 heavy.

- 2 piece Skoria
- 5 piece Shacklebreaker
- 5 piece Overwhelming surge.

Armor traits: 4 sturdy, 4 impen. Add more impen if you don’t need the block cost reduction.
Weapon traits: Frontbar nirn with weapon damage glyph, backbar defending with absorb magicka glyph or poisons.

Jewellery traits: 2 magicka recovery, 1 spell damage.

Atronach mundus for the magicka recovery.

Consumables
Witch mothers brew or tri food, depending on how well you can sustain. I personally stopped using witch and opted for tri food.
Bar setup

Skill setup

Open world:


Duels:



Q/A.

1. Why skoria? What can I replace it with?
Because it procs off your dots and does good single target damage. I tend to switch it out for bloodspawn if I’m running in a 4-6man group in openworld since I won’t need the single target damage if I’m fighting groups of 8+.

2. Why shacklebreaker? What can I replace it with?

Shacklebreaker because it gives you a bit of everything you need on a MagDK, max stats, magicka+stamina regen and spell damage. It also lets you run witch mothers potent brew if you need the extra regen. It’s also easy to get since it’s a crafted set.

I plan on switching out shackle for burning spellweave once the next patch hits since I have a defending 1h I would like to trait change. Sets that you could replace shackle with would be seducer, desert rose or alteration mastery if you want more sustain, sun or julianos if you want more damage.

3. Why overwhelming surge?
I feel like surge is an overlooked set on PC NA at the moment, having only met one other MagDK running it. At first glance the 5 piece bonus seems low, having only a 2k tooltip which is then cut in half with battle spirit. However if you take into consideration the amount of pressure a MagDK outputs with their dots and CCs, adding overwhelming surge on top of that lets you put insane single target pressure onto your opponents. The 5 piece bonus also counts as a dot, therefore it can proc your skoria. Finally, the surge proc has a chance of inflicting minor vulnerability, increasing damage taken by 8% for 4 seconds.

Feel free to leave any comments and feedback.