Stamina DKs are not at the peak of their glory in PvE currently, because they do not contribute anything worthwhile to groups that you cannot get otherwise and suffer from sustain issues. This Build solves that issue through a very easy alteration to the stamina dk rotation based on the venomous claw skill. In Murkmire, Stam DKs got a range increase to melee attacks and a strong sustain buff on poison abilities, and thus also to venomous claw which costs 700 stamina on the PTS.



Redguard is best, but my Stam DK is Imperial. Woodelf, Orc, Khajiit, all is fine and works, you just need to heavy attack every once in a while.



Lover. In vMA i use Warrior because it buffs healing too and healing is needed on a stamina DK. Since MNG and Sunderflame were nerfed to the ground (meh!) it is necessary to use the lover to be able to reach the pen cap.











In solo play, switch Relequen for Vicious Ophidian (RIP 20 second major expedition..)



Weave in a light attack prior to every skill in here:

Prebuff with FoO > Trap > Swap > Hail > Caltrops > Injection > Acid Spray > Swap > Noxious Breath > Rearming Trap > Rending Slashes > 3x Venoumous Claw > FoO > Swap > Repeat from Endless Hail.

Basically just go counterclockwise and use claw until you have to barswap again.

https://youtu.be/eIcC3rT7gdQ



Venomous claw costs 700 stamina. But the main reason is that you get the first dot tick after 0.5 seconds:



So when you use this as a spammable, you always get the first DoT tick after 0.5 seconds, even when using it consecutively. Comparing it to Crushing weapon I get the following numbers of crit and non-crits:



So the difference between their damage when spammed is 2.6%, but the claw costs 1/3 of what crushing weapon costs. In effective stamina per second that yields me a drain reduction of 200 stamina per second: just compare my parse to likos parse from the pts: i have 1335 drain/s and he has 1526. This enables us to run acid spray on the abck bar to get us another 1.5k dps from it, yielding the same damage as a spammable, but with less sustain issues.









If you want to compare this to likos parse from the PTS you have to add orbs+ blue food (3k stamina difference), minor savagery, minor berserk and 25% additional major fracture, getting the build to roughly the same dps.



https://youtu.be/Tq-N4QpvAQo


If you have questions, go ahead! Hope you like the build.