BohnT wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno , @ZOS_Wrobel
Here are the reasons why Stamdk is weak in PvP:

Stamdk has huge problems in PvP:
1. They are the spec which takes the most damage in open world pvp. Stamdk has the least ways to avoid damage while having the worst effective healing on top of that.
Nightblades can avoid all damage as long as their cloak doesn't break and they can also remove all further pressure from skills with shadow image by using it wisely and hindering your enemy totally to attack you. They might have weak healing but overall they have great survivability from not taking damage in the first place.
Templars Templars feature the same crappy mobility as DKs. However they can completely remove the full damage of dots and Skoria aswell as other debuffs making their healing better as they don't face defiles like other classes have to. They can't get away however limiting their lifespan to the point where the next zerg tries to kill you.
Sorcs With shields sorcs have a set amount of burst "heal" they can utilise whenever they please and in PvP Burst > Dots/Hots. Aswell as the ability to negate all magicka based ranged damage aswell as the ability to create a gap between you and your enemy that he physically can't close which sets their damage to the dots they applied to you before you escaped.
Wardenhave a burst heal as often as they needed along with a great defensive ult that can reach a uptime of almost 100% which makes you invulnerable against atleast 2 enemies. Along with great mobility due to snare reduction and 100% majorexpedition uptime they can reduce the incoming damage from all meele classes ,which don't have access to major expedition by a lot. As their skills won't connect due to you being out of range. And they can negate 100% of all magicka based ranged damage as long as they want with shimmering shield

Stamdk are forced to eat all meele, dot & most magicka based ranged damage. Wings only reflect a small portion of all skills while being too expensive to be kept up 100% of the time. As an result dk has to rely on dither dodge rolls which is too expensive and too bad with the amount of undodgeable skills in the game or block. Block reduces all direct damage but most dots go through it aswell as shalks, curse and PotL+ can be countered by 3 classes with CCs.
As DK has no mobility by itself they are locked into using Forward Momentum and Vigor as healing which gets increased by 25% with major mending and 12% by Passives. This sounds great but with defiles one player can reduce that with no point into befoul to 7%.
This sets a limit for DKs how much damage they can take before they will die after a set amount of time.
With the lack of mobility their live ends as soon as an enemy zerg is attacking them or is trying to get to them.

On an average day of PvP my deaths through the classes look something like this:
NB: 0-5 Deaths (depending how often i get marked or soultrapped)
Sorc: 0-10 Death (depending on shieldbreaker usage and personal fails)
Warden: 3-10 (few times where zergs actually catch me)
Templar: 10-25 (depending how often zergs try to kill me -5 as this is how often I normally can still get away)
DK: X>15 (equals the amount I fight multiple decent people or a zerg attacks me)

2. They are also the class which relies the most on your enemy to be bad.
As a DK your burst is very weak and completely build around Leap or Dawnbreaker with another skill.
Leap is really unreliable in open world as it can be dodged (thanks for saying it can't be Wrobel, I encounter it 10 times a day when using leap) and the damage of leap might be great but it can be blocked and it is never enough to one shot anyone so you need another skill.

Heroic Slash doesn't deal enough damage to finish more tanky players
Dizzying Swing has great damage but the cast time and the fact that can be dodged, blocked or removed by walking through the caster makes it too slow and too easy, to avoid for good players which won't die to one leap.
As you can't kill your enemies fast enough other people will arrive and at one time you reach the point where they simply kill you and there is nothing you can do, you can't escape, you can't tank them you can only think where to respawn


3. The main sustain stamdk has gets counteracted by the way pvp is played.
Battle roar completely relies on how often you use your ults but ults are not ment to be used mindelessly they are either used to burst down enemies or to survive the pressure when you have to go to defend yourself.

This all comes together making stamdk a bad choice for pvp overall as every class has at least one aspect where they truly outshine stamdk.
I'm not saying you can't do well on a DK but you will be much more effective on any other class

And here are the ideas to make Stamdk a viable class again:

1. Change 1 of the following skills to be a high damage, instant, dodgeable & blockable, meele single target Stamina based spamamble:
Molten Whip or Noxious Breath ( i. t. f. reffered to as NB):
Reasoning and Implementation:
Both skills aren't used by most dks, SG isn't used by any DK, the damage is weak, the buff it grants is lackluster and it's magicka based while magdks already have a great CC and spammable. Noxious Breath is used in PvE but only as another Dot for DPS.
If you choose Molten Whip to be a spammabel: Make it that you get a power whip on poisoned enemies that deals more damage
If you Chose NB: The damage should be equal to suprise attack but poison based. The Major fracture debuff should be changed with minor savagery + minor endurance for 4 seconds

If These changes happen you have to look at the Performance in PvE meaning, you have to test how much DPS the new Spammable contributes in a perfectly optimized Rotation and how much damage the main spammable and in case of NB the dot contributed.
Equal this difference in dps by nerfing Venemous claws a bit (this should be 1% damage nerf max to Venemous claws)


2. Change Reflective Plate to remove all snares and granting you 2 seconds of immunity + 0.75 seconds per reflected projectile during the Duration.
3. Deep Breath took a huge nerf with the changes to Interrupts. As Stamdk lacks burst a delayed burst ability like Deep Breath works perfectly and doesn't affect PvE much as Drain Essence is the better Morph there (excpet for vMol twins)
Make it Stamina based, reduce the damage and healing of the first hit by 40% but increase the damage of the second hit by 25% and remove the Interrupt effect of the ability and poison all enemies that get hit by it this creates a nice synergy with the new poison whip

These changes would give stamdk more burst, better survivability and more class identity but they wouldn't make stamdk viable enough.

There are several useless passives which are a joke compared to the passives of Warden, Nightblades or Sorcs.

Elder Dragon: Get rid of the Health Regeneration and Change it to grant you 35 mag and stam everytime you are hit with a .5 second cooldown this will result in a 140 mag and stam Regeneration if you are actually fighting

Mountain's Blessing: DKs are the class which build their sustain around ultimates although they have the worst ultimate Regeneration in the game. Increase the amount of ultimate granted from 3 to 5 seconds to help Overall sustain and viability.

These changes will help stamdk being a viable class in PvP with a true identity and not being left as an empty Shell which tries to Keep the memories of better times alive

• Block was nerfed heavily, and whilst its decent occasionally, it is incredibly unsustainable. Its also not a class defense.
• Class defense passives way too situational. 1 tied to block. 1 tied to spell only. Ends up worse than minor protection.
• Wings, the iconic active class defense, comparable to being way too bad for the cost. Incredibly high cost. 4 projectiles are little. The snare removal is useless.

• Changing the base and plate morph to only a deflect.
• Making the base morph 3 reflects for 4 seconds, however function on a per person basis as to not be instantly overwhelmed, this is in comparison to cloak, which has no limits on players/cloaked attacks.
• Making the snare removal morph useful as a pseudo escape by increasing it to 3/4s, currently mist outperforms by a lot, since wings only lasts for 1 tick, not functional against DKs or on ground AoEs. FM would still outperform it. And it fits the DKs unstoppable but slow theme.
• Keep the dragon fire scale as a reflect, so it becomes the damage morph, whilst the other loses that functionality in favor of more defense.

Xvorg wrote: »

Ok, any DK suffers from 2 big issues that have not been updated until since 2014

1- Passives: most DK passives are bad, and some of them are nearly useless. Things like World in ruin or Searing heat are too situational and favor only one playing style: HA S/B DK. There were some good passives that got a nerf hammer without a clear reason, like helping hands and Battle Roar and which are quite meh nowadays. But there's one passive above all of them that is clearly an insult to all DKs in ESO: Elder Dragon. It's a health recovery passive in a class that needs to go Vamp to get extra movility. I mean, seriously? Extra health recovery for sloting tanking skills? C'mon. You can pass from that passive, saving 2 skill points and nothing, really nothing is gonna change. You will still be a vampire with reduced health recovery. So please, have a look at that.

2- The second problem has to do with the dmg oriented line, Ardent Flame: Ardent flame is the worst dmg line in the game. Only has 2 viable skills (Whip and SS) and none of them benefits from the only passive that increases dmg (WiR). Ok, Searing heat increases Searing strike dmg... a 3%. When you compare that number to the amount of dmg any sorc gets for any physical or lightning dmg, you feel you have been fooled. And that dmg increase does not affect your main spammable (which has a morph that increases the dmg of your ardent flame skills in 100 spell/wpn dmg, which is nothing). That was ok before One Tamriel when Dks had access to a set like old Silks of the Sun, which increased your flame dmg a 5%. On top of that, half of the passives only work with skills in the line, so no chance to increase extra dmg with other skills.

I really believe that having a look to those two points could improve DKs in general.