Sorry I forgot to mention my skill set up.

Front bar: S&B. Rapid maneuver, reflective plate, heroic slash, volatile armor, resolving vigor. Utilmate: Spell wall

Back bar: 2H. Venomous claws, critical rush, forward momentum, dizzying swing, executioner. Ultimate: Take flight.

Vapirko wrote: »

I don’t have time to go through everything right now, but a few points. Your gear should be all impen and in CP campaigns you should have 3k crit resist in heavy and 3.5-4.5k in medium depending on sets and comfort level. On a Stam DK 42k stamina is really high, and probably unnecessary. I would likely trade a bit of that stamina for weapon damage (maybe an infused jewelry piece with gold physical damage enchant), I might also go with bone pirates instead of hulking for more sustain when starting out. I think it’s a good idea to aim for about 3-3.5k weapon damage unbuffed. If in medium you’ll need to run shuffle for your snare removal with rally fro your burst heal, and in heavy you’ll run forward momentum for snare removal and heal over time. Both sets ups should hbe vigor going on cooldpwn throughout fights (more or less). You’ll need to get some help on CP distribution. That’s a general overview, beyond getting into more specifics PvP is not particularly easy to be good at. It’s why a lot of people opt for giant groups. You’re going to spend a lot of time being frustrated before you begin to understand what to do and how to do it effectively. A combination of playing with small to medium sized groups, dueling with friends (so you can discuss and avoid cheese duelers), and then running solo and trying to figure out what went wrong is the best way to progress. I also recommend practicing simply out healing your opponent. Get a friend to go all out on you while yo just focus on healing, blocking appropriate attacks, dodge rolling an healing. Once you can fend them off for a good amount of time or indefinitely, start to work in attacks.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will re-trait the gears to impen. Right now some of my gears are infuse.

About weapon damage and stamina, the reason I want very high stamina is because I think that skill damage also scale with maximum stamina. My weapon damage is pretty low, about 2.2k with forward momentum, but I thought the maximum stamina can kind of compensate it, while having more stamina can help with sustain.

And do you mean I should spam vigor in battle constantly? I only cast it when my health drops low, perhaps that's a problem.

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

I don’t have time to go through everything right now, but a few points. Your gear should be all impen and in CP campaigns you should have 3k crit resist in heavy and 3.5-4.5k in medium depending on sets and comfort level. On a Stam DK 42k stamina is really high, and probably unnecessary. I would likely trade a bit of that stamina for weapon damage (maybe an infused jewelry piece with gold physical damage enchant), I might also go with bone pirates instead of hulking for more sustain when starting out. I think it’s a good idea to aim for about 3-3.5k weapon damage unbuffed. If in medium you’ll need to run shuffle for your snare removal with rally fro your burst heal, and in heavy you’ll run forward momentum for snare removal and heal over time. Both sets ups should hbe vigor going on cooldpwn throughout fights (more or less). You’ll need to get some help on CP distribution. That’s a general overview, beyond getting into more specifics PvP is not particularly easy to be good at. It’s why a lot of people opt for giant groups. You’re going to spend a lot of time being frustrated before you begin to understand what to do and how to do it effectively. A combination of playing with small to medium sized groups, dueling with friends (so you can discuss and avoid cheese duelers), and then running solo and trying to figure out what went wrong is the best way to progress. I also recommend practicing simply out healing your opponent. Get a friend to go all out on you while yo just focus on healing, blocking appropriate attacks, dodge rolling an healing. Once you can fend them off for a good amount of time or indefinitely, start to work in attacks.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will re-trait the gears to impen. Right now some of my gears are infuse.

About weapon damage and stamina, the reason I want very high stamina is because I think that skill damage also scale with maximum stamina. My weapon damage is pretty low, about 2.2k with forward momentum, but I thought the maximum stamina can kind of compensate it, while having more stamina can help with sustain.

And do you mean I should spam vigor in battle constantly? I only cast it when my health drops low, perhaps that's a problem.

Yes some skills do scale with stamina, but heals scale much better off of weapon damage and most players are out there running around with somewhere between 33k and 38k stamina in CP. For DKs higher weapon damage will benefit you more than that much stamina. 2.2k wpn damage buffed will get you nowhere.

Koensol wrote: »

Remove rapid maneuvers. You don't need it unless traveling. Slot igneous shield in stead for the major mending. It will help your heals a lot.

Make your weapons gold. Make your 2 hander nirnhoned, and have your SnB weapon infused with a berserk enchant to proc weapon dmg buff. Or make 2 hander infused with berserk enchant. Both work. Enchant jewels with gold weapon damage enchants. Maybe make one or 2 infused traits since you already have high stamina. Mix and match with this so you are still comfortable with sustain.

This should give you a lot higher weapon damage and you will notice a big increase in damage output.

As far as mitigating. Don't just eat all the damage. Use dodge/block appropriately for the heavy hits and heal through pressure with vigor and igneous. And when you have more than 1 guy on you, find line of sight and kite a bit so you can isolate people and kill them more easily.

Thanks for the advice. Yes I only use rapid maneuvers for traveling through Cyrodiil, and I am just too lazy to swap it with something else before combat lol.

Right now I do have berserk enchant on S&B bar, but I hardly have the buff up in real combat because I can't switch bar fast enough. Perhaps make the berserk enchant on 2H bar as you suggest?

As for gold weapon, I just want to make sure my set is OK before I use gold mats. Both my weapons are Shacklebreaker. I don't need BiS, just don't want them nerfed to the ground after I spend huge amount of gold on them, like my previous set after the latest update...

Sparr0w wrote: »

Hard to get used to but you won't be able to kill an experienced pvp player just by going through a standard rotation as they will out heal or block any single shots you throw at them.

Killing in PvP is about getting your burst right and ideally stunning the enemy so they cant block your heavy hits. Example StamBlade will incap, surprise, bow proc or execute so you're stunned and taking enough damage that you wont be able to heal before the execute hits.

Also you're not running pierce or breath for major fracture which will really help with tankier opponents, you'd want to debuff, leap then immediately dizzying & executioner so you can kill them before they recover from the stun.

Regarding Vigor you want to have it up all of the time so you dont have to drop pressure to turtle up as you will eventually die if you have to do this. If you keep vigor up and pressure on the opponent they will have to stop attacking you to heal themselves and block your attacks, probably similar to what you're doing now, meaning minimal damage being dealt to the opponent who's using you as a target dummy

Ah about stun and CC...That's another big question that haunts me. In PvP I always see players immune to stun/CC. I once slotted petrify, which I think is a powerful CC skill. But then I ran some battlegrounds and found that 9 times out of 10 I couldn't cast the skill, i.e. the target is immune. So I just dropped the skill after that. Even when I actually stun/root/knock back someone, they can almost instantly break free and dodge before I can hit hard on them, and as a melee build I can hardly catch up.

On the other hand I constantly get stunned/rooted by others and cannot break free fast enough no matter how hard I try. Does it have something to do with the lag? Because I always have to spend more than 2 seconds to break free and if no one is healing me or attracting aggro I am guaranteed to die.

Syy101 wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Hard to get used to but you won't be able to kill an experienced pvp player just by going through a standard rotation as they will out heal or block any single shots you throw at them.

Killing in PvP is about getting your burst right and ideally stunning the enemy so they cant block your heavy hits. Example StamBlade will incap, surprise, bow proc or execute so you're stunned and taking enough damage that you wont be able to heal before the execute hits.

Also you're not running pierce or breath for major fracture which will really help with tankier opponents, you'd want to debuff, leap then immediately dizzying & executioner so you can kill them before they recover from the stun.

Regarding Vigor you want to have it up all of the time so you dont have to drop pressure to turtle up as you will eventually die if you have to do this. If you keep vigor up and pressure on the opponent they will have to stop attacking you to heal themselves and block your attacks, probably similar to what you're doing now, meaning minimal damage being dealt to the opponent who's using you as a target dummy

Ah about stun and CC...That's another big question that haunts me. In PvP I always see players immune to stun/CC. I once slotted petrify, which I think is a powerful CC skill. But then I ran some battlegrounds and found that 9 times out of 10 I couldn't cast the skill, i.e. the target is immune. So I just dropped the skill after that. Even when I actually stun/root/knock back someone, they can almost instantly break free and dodge before I can hit hard on them, and as a melee build I can hardly catch up.

On the other hand I constantly get stunned/rooted by others and cannot break free fast enough no matter how hard I try. Does it have something to do with the lag? Because I always have to spend more than 2 seconds to break free and if no one is healing me or attracting aggro I am guaranteed to die.

You can tell if a target is cc immune by a swirling animation at the bottom of their feet. People that are more experienced in pvp cc break faster due to that experience. The same can be said about blocking or dodging big hits. Fossilize is an excellent cc, as it is unblockable.

As far as your wd, you can run the warrior mundus stone. I think shackle and hulking are fine, but not the best. They are both highly efficient but are only stat sticks. They do allow you to use infused jewels.

For the people that started you should have 3k wd unbuffed, I believe that is only easy to obtain in medium armor but not heavy. Infused jewels with wd enchants, a wd bonus on armor, gold nirnhoned 2H, and warrior mundus will put you just over 3k wd. That's not easy in heavy but medium has a percentage increase for wd. That medium passive is why people stack wd instead of stamina.

Your bars are kinda wonky. There doesnt seem to be any combo there for your. If you want to use SnB for dps, utilize light attack, ransack/heroic slash, bath combo. For 2H dps, use cc, wrecking blow, execute when in range. Or you can use dizzy for spam and cc.

Either way, you should have an armor buff (volatile/hardened armor for healing passive), momentum for HoT and brutality, a cc, vigor, fragmented shield (mending works best with HoTs) a spammable, and execute. Other bar space is up to you.

General combat should look like this. Keep up armor buff, rally, and vigor. Place dots, cc, combo, execute if in range. Your combo is based on your playstyle, weapons, and class.

Vigor won't save you when low health unless you can LoS or stop the opponent from damaging you in another way. It will effectively give you higher hp throughout the fight. This, imo, is the hardest thing about stamina specs with no burst heal.

Keep at it. I main mDK and it took me a while to be any kind of decent but my first 1v2 had me giddy. Dusting off my stam DK. The adjustment in playstyle is rough but still fun. Fight, die, fight again, die again, push your limits, rek fools. You got this.

BlackMadara wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Hard to get used to but you won't be able to kill an experienced pvp player just by going through a standard rotation as they will out heal or block any single shots you throw at them.

Killing in PvP is about getting your burst right and ideally stunning the enemy so they cant block your heavy hits. Example StamBlade will incap, surprise, bow proc or execute so you're stunned and taking enough damage that you wont be able to heal before the execute hits.

Also you're not running pierce or breath for major fracture which will really help with tankier opponents, you'd want to debuff, leap then immediately dizzying & executioner so you can kill them before they recover from the stun.

Regarding Vigor you want to have it up all of the time so you dont have to drop pressure to turtle up as you will eventually die if you have to do this. If you keep vigor up and pressure on the opponent they will have to stop attacking you to heal themselves and block your attacks, probably similar to what you're doing now, meaning minimal damage being dealt to the opponent who's using you as a target dummy

Ah about stun and CC...That's another big question that haunts me. In PvP I always see players immune to stun/CC. I once slotted petrify, which I think is a powerful CC skill. But then I ran some battlegrounds and found that 9 times out of 10 I couldn't cast the skill, i.e. the target is immune. So I just dropped the skill after that. Even when I actually stun/root/knock back someone, they can almost instantly break free and dodge before I can hit hard on them, and as a melee build I can hardly catch up.

On the other hand I constantly get stunned/rooted by others and cannot break free fast enough no matter how hard I try. Does it have something to do with the lag? Because I always have to spend more than 2 seconds to break free and if no one is healing me or attracting aggro I am guaranteed to die.

You can tell if a target is cc immune by a swirling animation at the bottom of their feet. People that are more experienced in pvp cc break faster due to that experience. The same can be said about blocking or dodging big hits. Fossilize is an excellent cc, as it is unblockable.

As far as your wd, you can run the warrior mundus stone. I think shackle and hulking are fine, but not the best. They are both highly efficient but are only stat sticks. They do allow you to use infused jewels.

For the people that started you should have 3k wd unbuffed, I believe that is only easy to obtain in medium armor but not heavy. Infused jewels with wd enchants, a wd bonus on armor, gold nirnhoned 2H, and warrior mundus will put you just over 3k wd. That's not easy in heavy but medium has a percentage increase for wd. That medium passive is why people stack wd instead of stamina.

Your bars are kinda wonky. There doesnt seem to be any combo there for your. If you want to use SnB for dps, utilize light attack, ransack/heroic slash, bath combo. For 2H dps, use cc, wrecking blow, execute when in range. Or you can use dizzy for spam and cc.

Either way, you should have an armor buff (volatile/hardened armor for healing passive), momentum for HoT and brutality, a cc, vigor, fragmented shield (mending works best with HoTs) a spammable, and execute. Other bar space is up to you.

General combat should look like this. Keep up armor buff, rally, and vigor. Place dots, cc, combo, execute if in range. Your combo is based on your playstyle, weapons, and class.

Vigor won't save you when low health unless you can LoS or stop the opponent from damaging you in another way. It will effectively give you higher hp throughout the fight. This, imo, is the hardest thing about stamina specs with no burst heal.

Keep at it. I main mDK and it took me a while to be any kind of decent but my first 1v2 had me giddy. Dusting off my stam DK. The adjustment in playstyle is rough but still fun. Fight, die, fight again, die again, push your limits, rek fools. You got this.

Thanks for all the detailed explanation!

3k unbuffed WD seems viable, at least on my skill simulator. Just need to transmute some gears. I've thought about using medium, but since I die fast already in heavy, I don't think I will stand a chance in medium lol.

My bars aren't well thought, I admit. I just browse around other's stamina PVP build and copy the most used skills. My idea is to deal damage on 2H bar and self-buff on S&B bar. I want to use dizzying swing as spam but I find it too hard to hit others because of the long animation delay. I also find critical rush useless in close combat but I need it as a gap closer.

Syy101 wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Hard to get used to but you won't be able to kill an experienced pvp player just by going through a standard rotation as they will out heal or block any single shots you throw at them.

Killing in PvP is about getting your burst right and ideally stunning the enemy so they cant block your heavy hits. Example StamBlade will incap, surprise, bow proc or execute so you're stunned and taking enough damage that you wont be able to heal before the execute hits.

Also you're not running pierce or breath for major fracture which will really help with tankier opponents, you'd want to debuff, leap then immediately dizzying & executioner so you can kill them before they recover from the stun.

Regarding Vigor you want to have it up all of the time so you dont have to drop pressure to turtle up as you will eventually die if you have to do this. If you keep vigor up and pressure on the opponent they will have to stop attacking you to heal themselves and block your attacks, probably similar to what you're doing now, meaning minimal damage being dealt to the opponent who's using you as a target dummy

Ah about stun and CC...That's another big question that haunts me. In PvP I always see players immune to stun/CC. I once slotted petrify, which I think is a powerful CC skill. But then I ran some battlegrounds and found that 9 times out of 10 I couldn't cast the skill, i.e. the target is immune. So I just dropped the skill after that. Even when I actually stun/root/knock back someone, they can almost instantly break free and dodge before I can hit hard on them, and as a melee build I can hardly catch up.

On the other hand I constantly get stunned/rooted by others and cannot break free fast enough no matter how hard I try. Does it have something to do with the lag? Because I always have to spend more than 2 seconds to break free and if no one is healing me or attracting aggro I am guaranteed to die.

You can tell if a target is cc immune by a swirling animation at the bottom of their feet. People that are more experienced in pvp cc break faster due to that experience. The same can be said about blocking or dodging big hits. Fossilize is an excellent cc, as it is unblockable.

As far as your wd, you can run the warrior mundus stone. I think shackle and hulking are fine, but not the best. They are both highly efficient but are only stat sticks. They do allow you to use infused jewels.

For the people that started you should have 3k wd unbuffed, I believe that is only easy to obtain in medium armor but not heavy. Infused jewels with wd enchants, a wd bonus on armor, gold nirnhoned 2H, and warrior mundus will put you just over 3k wd. That's not easy in heavy but medium has a percentage increase for wd. That medium passive is why people stack wd instead of stamina.

Your bars are kinda wonky. There doesnt seem to be any combo there for your. If you want to use SnB for dps, utilize light attack, ransack/heroic slash, bath combo. For 2H dps, use cc, wrecking blow, execute when in range. Or you can use dizzy for spam and cc.

Either way, you should have an armor buff (volatile/hardened armor for healing passive), momentum for HoT and brutality, a cc, vigor, fragmented shield (mending works best with HoTs) a spammable, and execute. Other bar space is up to you.

General combat should look like this. Keep up armor buff, rally, and vigor. Place dots, cc, combo, execute if in range. Your combo is based on your playstyle, weapons, and class.

Vigor won't save you when low health unless you can LoS or stop the opponent from damaging you in another way. It will effectively give you higher hp throughout the fight. This, imo, is the hardest thing about stamina specs with no burst heal.

Keep at it. I main mDK and it took me a while to be any kind of decent but my first 1v2 had me giddy. Dusting off my stam DK. The adjustment in playstyle is rough but still fun. Fight, die, fight again, die again, push your limits, rek fools. You got this.

Thanks for all the detailed explanation!

3k unbuffed WD seems viable, at least on my skill simulator. Just need to transmute some gears. I've thought about using medium, but since I die fast already in heavy, I don't think I will stand a chance in medium lol.

My bars aren't well thought, I admit. I just browse around other's stamina PVP build and copy the most used skills. My idea is to deal damage on 2H bar and self-buff on S&B bar. I want to use dizzying swing as spam but I find it too hard to hit others because of the long animation delay. I also find critical rush useless in close combat but I need it as a gap closer.

You could use fossilize and wrecking blow instead. It depends on what other mag spells you want to use though.

For 2h and SnB I'd go

2H: Fossilize, Wrecking Blow, Stampede, FM, Venom Claws

SnB: Heroic Slash, Fragmented Shield, Vigor, Hardened Armor, Fill

I think minor heroism is important and heroic adds main to the target. You could drop fossilize and use dizzy as cc. If that's the case, I'd use wings for snare removal and use really instead of FM. Experiment with different Ccs and utility skills. I'm still trying to figure out my stam DK but I'm doing something funky.

evoniee wrote: »

im fine with 23k health 20k resist 2800 crit resist troll king sNB no gold gear.
it has something to do with your playstyle.

you dont have major fracture, minor brutality, please remove rapid manuver ffs, swap take flight with DB.
use DB for finishing when enemy below 50% hp, dont use it for opening.
if you use 1h/s, spend some cp in bash and start waeving LA + skill + bash. only weave bash when enemy already pressurised and low cause bash eat your stam.
bone > hulking.
use reverb, most potato cant handle dots pressure with major defile.
learn to react with your heal as dk is strong class to heal and tank damage.
utilize your backbar enhancement, dont make it as a dead slot for buff and heal only.

Thank you. Reverb bash seems a powerful tool, I'll look into it. And it seems many has suggested me to run bone pirate, I'll start to farm it.

But may I ask why I should use bash? By bash do you mean reverb bash or just the normal LMB + RMB bash? If it's the latter what's special about it? I never really look into bash besides interrupt PVE bosses.

I

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

I don’t have time to go through everything right now, but a few points. Your gear should be all impen and in CP campaigns you should have 3k crit resist in heavy and 3.5-4.5k in medium depending on sets and comfort level. On a Stam DK 42k stamina is really high, and probably unnecessary. I would likely trade a bit of that stamina for weapon damage (maybe an infused jewelry piece with gold physical damage enchant), I might also go with bone pirates instead of hulking for more sustain when starting out. I think it’s a good idea to aim for about 3-3.5k weapon damage unbuffed. If in medium you’ll need to run shuffle for your snare removal with rally fro your burst heal, and in heavy you’ll run forward momentum for snare removal and heal over time. Both sets ups should hbe vigor going on cooldpwn throughout fights (more or less). You’ll need to get some help on CP distribution. That’s a general overview, beyond getting into more specifics PvP is not particularly easy to be good at. It’s why a lot of people opt for giant groups. You’re going to spend a lot of time being frustrated before you begin to understand what to do and how to do it effectively. A combination of playing with small to medium sized groups, dueling with friends (so you can discuss and avoid cheese duelers), and then running solo and trying to figure out what went wrong is the best way to progress. I also recommend practicing simply out healing your opponent. Get a friend to go all out on you while yo just focus on healing, blocking appropriate attacks, dodge rolling an healing. Once you can fend them off for a good amount of time or indefinitely, start to work in attacks.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will re-trait the gears to impen. Right now some of my gears are infuse.

About weapon damage and stamina, the reason I want very high stamina is because I think that skill damage also scale with maximum stamina. My weapon damage is pretty low, about 2.2k with forward momentum, but I thought the maximum stamina can kind of compensate it, while having more stamina can help with sustain.

And do you mean I should spam vigor in battle constantly? I only cast it when my health drops low, perhaps that's a problem.

Yes some skills do scale with stamina, but heals scale much better off of weapon damage and most players are out there running around with somewhere between 33k and 38k stamina in CP. For DKs higher weapon damage will benefit you more than that much stamina. 2.2k wpn damage buffed will get you nowhere.

Ok I think I'll make the jewel infuse. But that will only get me about 300 more wpn damage (I already have wpn damage enchant on jewels now, but with robust traits). That's still far from 3000 wpn damage unbuffed. Any advice how I can further improve? Should I switch to other sets?

You’ll want your main hand damage weapon to be nirnhoned and eventually gold quality. Also I think that bone pirate tatters and warrior Mundus is better than hulking and serpent Mundus on a DK. Just my personal preference. Use gold quality weapon damage enchants on jewelry. See if you’re in heavy armor you usually go with a damage set like fury, 7th, maybe alchemist. If you’re in medium you can get away with a defensive and sustain set becuaee you naturally have higher weapon damage and crit chance. I would also slot an earthen heart ability like obsidian shield to get major mending and minor brutality which are two very helpful buffs. There’s a lot to learn about PvP, it’s gonna take a lot of trial and error. I think you’re smart in holding off on gold gear. Do your weapon if you can, otherwise try a couple different setups keeping some basic stats in mind like 3k unbuffed weapon damage, at least 24k health, at least 33k stamina, 3-4.5k crit resist depending on armor type and skill level, 1400-2000+ stamina regen depending on skill level and play style. Then look up some good YouTube builds for CP distribution. Then just try and figure out what’s lacking for you and try to adjust your build in that respect.

Thank you so much! That's a lot to think about. I'll try to improve over my current set now, see if I can get to those values without overhauling the whole build.

One last question if you don't mind. Do I need to pay attention to crit chance and penetration? Right now my crit chance is only 22%, almost the same as nothing. Not sure about penetration but I don't think it will be very high because I only invest about 20 CP on it.

I generally don’t worry about my crit rating too much. People stack crit resist through Impen and CP so it tends to be one of the less effective stats to build towards. It’s useful but generally people don’t sacrifice other things like sustain, defenses or weapon damage in favor of crit chance. I think if your crit rating is between 30-40 that’s considered high for PvP especially if you’re using 2h or SB, and you’re not a khajit. My DK I think has a crit rating that’s similar to yours. For penetration it varies, I typically get about 3k penetration from CP but this just depends on personal preference. If you have access to major fracture through a skill then you probably don’t need more. Other people like to use mauls amen forgo CP penetration points in favor of other damage types. Wardens have the ability to deliver major fracture with sub assault. Anyway I think about 3k penetration via CP is an okay place to start providing you have the CP to spend. You might check out Alcasthq.com he’s one of the most well known theory crafters. I wouldn’t say he’s an avid PvPer, more of a PvE guy, but he has a ton of builds for both and is good when it comes to CP distribution and the technical stuff.

Syy101 wrote: »

Thank you. Reverb bash seems a powerful tool, I'll look into it. And it seems many has suggested me to run bone pirate, I'll start to farm it.

But may I ask why I should use bash? By bash do you mean reverb bash or just the normal LMB + RMB bash? If it's the latter what's special about it? I never really look into bash besides interrupt PVE bosses.

bash the same button as cc break. it is really good for shield user. most time i got up to 20% damage by bash from stamsorc 1h/s.

as non shield user i weave bash in finishing attempt to add more pressure, but not overuse as i dont use shield for more damage and no cp in bashing cause i spend on dodge.

Don't



best advice on current pvp status

Last week I made a similar post, but asking for a general gameplay guide. I was sent to Joy's midyear mayhem guide, which helped me A TON. You can see my thread here, there are a couple of good links :
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/444779/lf-pvp-guide-for-potatoes#latest

Make some coffe and read through all of them, it's really worth it.

As for more specific advice, here is what I learned from 1 week of hardcore pvping.

- As other people said, fragmented shield is a MUST for major mending. Always spam shield + vigor as soon as your hp reaches 70%.

- I swapped Bloodspawn for Troll King. I lost a bit of offense and sustain, but I gained A TON of survivability. Definitely use this monster set until you can survive better. I plan on going back to Bloodspawn when I survive better, but for now, it's a game changer.

- Don't be afraid to use cheese build to flatten the learning curve. You will still get wrecked by really good players, just like you should, but will beat players with similar skills to yours. Will make the whole learning process way more fun. I personnally run Torugs + Viper on XBox, since enchants aren't fixed here yet. Monday I finished my 2nd build, (currently on stamSorc, will swap it to DK when enchants are fixed) which consist in 7th legion + Sloads. It wrecks on my stamSorn in BGs.

- Generally, sDK are known to be very well-rounded, but lack an edge. Personally, I found that proc sets make a very good edge, hence their presence in my builds. I originally planned on doing 7th legion + shacklebreaker, but someone commented that sloads might be better than shackle. I did the math, and only lose 1k mag and stam and 129 recovery, to gain a super strong proc. Did not regret it. Have no shame! Love the cheese!

- Make Prismatic Defense gold glyphs. At least for your big pieces, if you're low on gold. With 2 prismatic glyph, you get about the same health and stam than if you did 1 health glyph + 1 stam glyph, but get free magicka. Magicka is very precious to spam shield, fossilize and armor. I also run tri-pots.

- Speaking of fossilize, this is probably the MVP of my build. By far the strongest cc in the game, given you are already in melee range. Use it on cooldown (as soon as cc immunity drops, which lasts 6 seconds). Of course, good players tend to break free very fast, but it's kinda expensive. This is how you will win most of your magicka encounters. For stam players, I apply a lot of pressure through DoTs, and when they reach 50% hp, I burst fossilize + DBoS (so they can't block DBoS), then execute them with wathever spammable I have.

- I don't like SnB play, so I run 2H backbar and DW front bar. Quick cloak is very good to mitigate AoE damage (most ultis are AoE) and the speed boost is nice to stay in people's face. Twin slash is another very good way to apply pressure and for now Flying dagger is my spammable. Very fun offensive build, not as bursty as others, but still pretty tanky. Additionnally, this allows me to run 2 enchants on my front bar. I use disease damage, which has a chance to proc major defile, and absorb stamina, which allows my to skip on a sustain set like bone pirate if I use a couple of heavy attacks.

Have fun!

Vapirko wrote: »

I

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

I don’t have time to go through everything right now, but a few points. Your gear should be all impen and in CP campaigns you should have 3k crit resist in heavy and 3.5-4.5k in medium depending on sets and comfort level. On a Stam DK 42k stamina is really high, and probably unnecessary. I would likely trade a bit of that stamina for weapon damage (maybe an infused jewelry piece with gold physical damage enchant), I might also go with bone pirates instead of hulking for more sustain when starting out. I think it’s a good idea to aim for about 3-3.5k weapon damage unbuffed. If in medium you’ll need to run shuffle for your snare removal with rally fro your burst heal, and in heavy you’ll run forward momentum for snare removal and heal over time. Both sets ups should hbe vigor going on cooldpwn throughout fights (more or less). You’ll need to get some help on CP distribution. That’s a general overview, beyond getting into more specifics PvP is not particularly easy to be good at. It’s why a lot of people opt for giant groups. You’re going to spend a lot of time being frustrated before you begin to understand what to do and how to do it effectively. A combination of playing with small to medium sized groups, dueling with friends (so you can discuss and avoid cheese duelers), and then running solo and trying to figure out what went wrong is the best way to progress. I also recommend practicing simply out healing your opponent. Get a friend to go all out on you while yo just focus on healing, blocking appropriate attacks, dodge rolling an healing. Once you can fend them off for a good amount of time or indefinitely, start to work in attacks.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will re-trait the gears to impen. Right now some of my gears are infuse.

About weapon damage and stamina, the reason I want very high stamina is because I think that skill damage also scale with maximum stamina. My weapon damage is pretty low, about 2.2k with forward momentum, but I thought the maximum stamina can kind of compensate it, while having more stamina can help with sustain.

And do you mean I should spam vigor in battle constantly? I only cast it when my health drops low, perhaps that's a problem.

Yes some skills do scale with stamina, but heals scale much better off of weapon damage and most players are out there running around with somewhere between 33k and 38k stamina in CP. For DKs higher weapon damage will benefit you more than that much stamina. 2.2k wpn damage buffed will get you nowhere.

Ok I think I'll make the jewel infuse. But that will only get me about 300 more wpn damage (I already have wpn damage enchant on jewels now, but with robust traits). That's still far from 3000 wpn damage unbuffed. Any advice how I can further improve? Should I switch to other sets?

You’ll want your main hand damage weapon to be nirnhoned and eventually gold quality. Also I think that bone pirate tatters and warrior Mundus is better than hulking and serpent Mundus on a DK. Just my personal preference. Use gold quality weapon damage enchants on jewelry. See if you’re in heavy armor you usually go with a damage set like fury, 7th, maybe alchemist. If you’re in medium you can get away with a defensive and sustain set becuaee you naturally have higher weapon damage and crit chance. I would also slot an earthen heart ability like obsidian shield to get major mending and minor brutality which are two very helpful buffs. There’s a lot to learn about PvP, it’s gonna take a lot of trial and error. I think you’re smart in holding off on gold gear. Do your weapon if you can, otherwise try a couple different setups keeping some basic stats in mind like 3k unbuffed weapon damage, at least 24k health, at least 33k stamina, 3-4.5k crit resist depending on armor type and skill level, 1400-2000+ stamina regen depending on skill level and play style. Then look up some good YouTube builds for CP distribution. Then just try and figure out what’s lacking for you and try to adjust your build in that respect.

Thank you so much! That's a lot to think about. I'll try to improve over my current set now, see if I can get to those values without overhauling the whole build.

One last question if you don't mind. Do I need to pay attention to crit chance and penetration? Right now my crit chance is only 22%, almost the same as nothing. Not sure about penetration but I don't think it will be very high because I only invest about 20 CP on it.

I generally don’t worry about my crit rating too much. People stack crit resist through Impen and CP so it tends to be one of the less effective stats to build towards. It’s useful but generally people don’t sacrifice other things like sustain, defenses or weapon damage in favor of crit chance. I think if your crit rating is between 30-40 that’s considered high for PvP especially if you’re using 2h or SB, and you’re not a khajit. My DK I think has a crit rating that’s similar to yours. For penetration it varies, I typically get about 3k penetration from CP but this just depends on personal preference. If you have access to major fracture through a skill then you probably don’t need more. Other people like to use mauls amen forgo CP penetration points in favor of other damage types. Wardens have the ability to deliver major fracture with sub assault. Anyway I think about 3k penetration via CP is an okay place to start providing you have the CP to spend. You might check out Alcasthq.com he’s one of the most well known theory crafters. I wouldn’t say he’s an avid PvPer, more of a PvE guy, but he has a ton of builds for both and is good when it comes to CP distribution and the technical stuff.

OK thanks, good that I don't need to worry about crit chance and penetration. Already too much to worry about lol.

I've been following Alcast build for long time. And the set up I post in this thread is one of his PVP build actually. Not very effective it seems

BlackMadara wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Syy101 wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Hard to get used to but you won't be able to kill an experienced pvp player just by going through a standard rotation as they will out heal or block any single shots you throw at them.

Killing in PvP is about getting your burst right and ideally stunning the enemy so they cant block your heavy hits. Example StamBlade will incap, surprise, bow proc or execute so you're stunned and taking enough damage that you wont be able to heal before the execute hits.

Also you're not running pierce or breath for major fracture which will really help with tankier opponents, you'd want to debuff, leap then immediately dizzying & executioner so you can kill them before they recover from the stun.

Regarding Vigor you want to have it up all of the time so you dont have to drop pressure to turtle up as you will eventually die if you have to do this. If you keep vigor up and pressure on the opponent they will have to stop attacking you to heal themselves and block your attacks, probably similar to what you're doing now, meaning minimal damage being dealt to the opponent who's using you as a target dummy

Ah about stun and CC...That's another big question that haunts me. In PvP I always see players immune to stun/CC. I once slotted petrify, which I think is a powerful CC skill. But then I ran some battlegrounds and found that 9 times out of 10 I couldn't cast the skill, i.e. the target is immune. So I just dropped the skill after that. Even when I actually stun/root/knock back someone, they can almost instantly break free and dodge before I can hit hard on them, and as a melee build I can hardly catch up.

On the other hand I constantly get stunned/rooted by others and cannot break free fast enough no matter how hard I try. Does it have something to do with the lag? Because I always have to spend more than 2 seconds to break free and if no one is healing me or attracting aggro I am guaranteed to die.

You can tell if a target is cc immune by a swirling animation at the bottom of their feet. People that are more experienced in pvp cc break faster due to that experience. The same can be said about blocking or dodging big hits. Fossilize is an excellent cc, as it is unblockable.

As far as your wd, you can run the warrior mundus stone. I think shackle and hulking are fine, but not the best. They are both highly efficient but are only stat sticks. They do allow you to use infused jewels.

For the people that started you should have 3k wd unbuffed, I believe that is only easy to obtain in medium armor but not heavy. Infused jewels with wd enchants, a wd bonus on armor, gold nirnhoned 2H, and warrior mundus will put you just over 3k wd. That's not easy in heavy but medium has a percentage increase for wd. That medium passive is why people stack wd instead of stamina.

Your bars are kinda wonky. There doesnt seem to be any combo there for your. If you want to use SnB for dps, utilize light attack, ransack/heroic slash, bath combo. For 2H dps, use cc, wrecking blow, execute when in range. Or you can use dizzy for spam and cc.

Either way, you should have an armor buff (volatile/hardened armor for healing passive), momentum for HoT and brutality, a cc, vigor, fragmented shield (mending works best with HoTs) a spammable, and execute. Other bar space is up to you.

General combat should look like this. Keep up armor buff, rally, and vigor. Place dots, cc, combo, execute if in range. Your combo is based on your playstyle, weapons, and class.

Vigor won't save you when low health unless you can LoS or stop the opponent from damaging you in another way. It will effectively give you higher hp throughout the fight. This, imo, is the hardest thing about stamina specs with no burst heal.

Keep at it. I main mDK and it took me a while to be any kind of decent but my first 1v2 had me giddy. Dusting off my stam DK. The adjustment in playstyle is rough but still fun. Fight, die, fight again, die again, push your limits, rek fools. You got this.

Thanks for all the detailed explanation!

3k unbuffed WD seems viable, at least on my skill simulator. Just need to transmute some gears. I've thought about using medium, but since I die fast already in heavy, I don't think I will stand a chance in medium lol.

My bars aren't well thought, I admit. I just browse around other's stamina PVP build and copy the most used skills. My idea is to deal damage on 2H bar and self-buff on S&B bar. I want to use dizzying swing as spam but I find it too hard to hit others because of the long animation delay. I also find critical rush useless in close combat but I need it as a gap closer.

You could use fossilize and wrecking blow instead. It depends on what other mag spells you want to use though.

For 2h and SnB I'd go

2H: Fossilize, Wrecking Blow, Stampede, FM, Venom Claws

SnB: Heroic Slash, Fragmented Shield, Vigor, Hardened Armor, Fill

I think minor heroism is important and heroic adds main to the target. You could drop fossilize and use dizzy as cc. If that's the case, I'd use wings for snare removal and use really instead of FM. Experiment with different Ccs and utility skills. I'm still trying to figure out my stam DK but I'm doing something funky.

I see you and many others only use wings for snare removal, but I thought wings are mainly for reflecting projectiles and nobody seems to care about this functionality. Why? If wings are only good for snare removal I will just drop it and use FM as you said.

Wrecking blow/dizzying swing is hard for me to hit players, and with my lag I always stuck in the animation for seconds before I land the blow. How about I use breath for fracture then spam LA on SnB bar then execute on 2H bar?

And sorry I am not sure what Fill means

Fill means skill of your choice.

Once you have an idea on your build and playstyle, you need to "git gud". Learn your offensive combos and defensive mechanics.

Offense - as a DK, apply venom claws and any other dot you may run. With snb, use la - skill - bash to pressure, apply reverb bash on cd for cc and heal debuff. That playstyle revolves around constant pressure until execute range.

Defense - Heavy armor relies on block, but can't block forever. Use line of sight breaks to realize pressure on yourself. Have high uptime of vigor, and use frag shield, vigor, dodge roll in "oh ***" situations

Sustain - Heavy armor, battle roar, tri pots and the occasional heavy attack should keep your stamina up. It takes some getting used to though. Avoid using high cost combos or abilities when you don't need to.

OK, I think I have some basic idea about how I should play now. I'll find my friend and practice a bit later. Really appreciate!