trying to stay alive as a sta dk in pve

jeffmiller506b16_ESO · December 2018

Hey all I have been playing mag dk since forever, I decided to follow alcasts pve sta dps build for dks. I am having a very hard time staying alive, normally I can solo the original games world bosses no problem with mag dk, now I am working so hard to stay alive I run out of resources before I can kill. I am using Vigor and the dragon blood for heals. Am I doing something wrong? I am just a casual player have almost 600cp.

Using alcast's venom build except with vigor and dragon blood for heals, any advice? Thanks

Royaji · December 2018

You've picked one of the most difficult self-sustain setups and are trying to solo with it. First you need to understand that a trials/dungeon build does not work for soloing (well, it can work but you need to be experienced). You want to run something closer to a vMA build.

GDB is not going to help you. Switch it out for Fragmented Shield for Major Mending and stronger Vigor heals. Change Rending to Blood Craze. Use Rend instead of Dawnbreaker for big survivability boost. Use your dodge roll and do not stand in stupid. You do not have shileds that help you face-tank mistakes on stam.

Swomp23 · December 2018

I haven't played my stamDK in PVE for a long while, but my 1st advice would be to swap dragon blood for frag shield. Everytime you cast vigor, cast frag shield right after, it will boost your healing by a lot (major mending for 4 seconds), give you 1k stam back and give you minor brutality for 20 secs. Keep your ultis for when you're low on ressources. Use a couple of havy attacks.

But when I was playing my stamDK as a pve dps, I remember having some survivability problems too. I rolled a stam sorc right after ad it was much easier. Then I rolled a magblade and it was a faceroll.

Joxer61 · December 2018

cant go wrong with this!!
https://www.xynodegaming.com/murder-of-fire

El_Borracho · December 2018

I see you are going with Venom. I play a Stam DK based off of that alcast build, too. Are you using Relequen and AY? If so, swap one out for VO for the sustain. Stormfist will also help.

The rotation he uses with those sets eats stamina fast. I use this rotation:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/373570/claw-of-the-mad-god-stamina-dk-pve-dd-build-50k-selfbuffed-murkmire-pts/p1

kylewwefan · December 2018

Vigor, Rally and brawler is OP. Not a lot of damage, but you get to swing a giant 2H around add pick up an execute and a decent little damage shield. Throw in a masters 2H for fun.

GDB is good for tanks. That’s about it. It heals a lot based on your missing health. On a DD, you’ll probably be dead before GDB is a decent heal.

Heavy attack For sustain.

Alcast · December 2018

Vigor for healing, Heavy Attack for sustaining. Or you can also use Venomous Claws as spammable for infinite sustain like shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAo5yNzVzMk

I do usually not include healing abilities on my builds because they are meant for 4 man dungeons/group play. But if you play solo just slot Vigor.

https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/venomous-claw
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/resolving-vigor

Ragnarock41 · December 2018

stamDK isn't really ideal for solo pve'ing stuff that are meant for groups, or even vMA. I can do vMA with my eyes closed but on a stamina Dk things do actually hurt because I do not slot spikes due to bar space issues. a stamsorc for example can get its resistances and heals from crit surge+hurricane(not saying its perfect, but both of these abilities do two jobs at once, which is good design and very friendly for solo play) a magblade will get heals for just attacking, meanwhile you will have to slot spikes, vigor, and possibly wings to get the same effect. Which isn't a huge deal for casual play or things meant for solo builds like vMA, but it matters when you go for more difficult stuff like soloing vet dungeons or some of the harder bosses that might instakill you.

Its a part of the class design as stamina Dk is meant to be a tank originally, and most of the class tools that increase your survivability costs a lot of magicka and does not benefit your dps, which again is because stamina DK is not really a well designed DPS class compared to magicka Dk or some other stamina classes like stamblade or stamsorc.

Kanar · December 2018

On stamDK you really gotta be on point with your dodges. If you're taking a pummeling, hit vigor then dodge roll.

Rule number one for solo play is NEVER bottom out your stamina. If you find that happening, either change your build or heavy attack more. Use venomous claw as a spammable it works great.

Learn target prioritization. Some mobs hit hard (usually ranged ones), take them out asap. In some cases wings is pretty great (like frozen rink in vMA).

Use standard of might when you get swamped, it adds good mitigation.

jeffmiller506b16_ESO · December 2018

thanks for the info guys, big change was dragon blood. All I was having trouble with was soloing the world bosses, I will try tonight with the frag shield then vigor and blood craze.

How would be the dps be with this setup above compared to alcasts mag dk the one I used to play?

I for gear I have two fanged and, bezerking warrior.

Schattenfluegel · December 2018

Alcastbuilds were made for Trials with good Groupsupport or Vmsa, not for Soloing PvE. You can even do solo with crafted sets, too.

Swomp23 · December 2018

jeffmiller506b16_ESO wrote: »

thanks for the info guys, big change was dragon blood. All I was having trouble with was soloing the world bosses, I will try tonight with the frag shield then vigor and blood craze.

How would be the dps be with this setup above compared to alcasts mag dk the one I used to play?

I for gear I have two fanged and, bezerking warrior.

Try vigor then frag shield. Vigor heals for 5 secs and frag shield gives major mending for 4 seconds. By casting frag shield after, all 4 seconds of major mending are useful. If you cast it before, you only get 3 secs of buffed healing, and 2 seconds of normal vigor.

I never played magDK, so sorry, I can't help with that. But dps on stamDK is pretty good. I think all stamina classes are pretty comparable right now, dps-wise.

El_Borracho · December 2018

@jeffmiller506b16_ESO

I would go with TFS and VO. The reason for VO is the sustain can not be replicated by anything else for solo play.

(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical

(3 items) Gain Minor Slayer at all times, increasing your damage done to Dungeon and Trial Monsters by 5%.

(4 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical

(5 items) Reduces the cost of your Stamina abilities by 8%. When you kill an enemy, you restore 2150 Stamina and gain Major Expedition for 8 seconds, increasing your Movement Speed by 30%.

(5 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage

Essentially, you are trading the 5th piece crit damage from Berserking Warrior (aka AY) for the 5th piece sustain of VO. While the 3rd piece bonus is useless for overland content, everything else mirrors AY's buffs.

AY is great, but only if you can sustain. If you don't want to use VO, and want to keep trying to make AY work, the combination of Dubious Camoran Throne (drink) and Stormfist monster set can help. Its not VO, but its more than nothing.

A couple more radical suggestions might be going with AY weapons with VO body. You will lose out on the penetration and max stamina buffs from TFS but you would keep the crit damage from AY. Or go crazy and run AY body with VO weapons/jewelry. AY is a heavy set, so you would get the resistance. You might have to respec to heavy armor for the health buffs. Almost like a DD tank build. But at the same time, you get the stamina sustain of VO. Your DPS would suffer, but your survivability would increase. You're not playing with a group, so you don't have to worry about keeping up with the joneses in the constant "my DPS is bigger than yours" arms race.

Kanar · December 2018

El_Borracho wrote: »

@jeffmiller506b16_ESO

I would go with TFS and VO. The reason for VO is the sustain can not be replicated by anything else for solo play.

(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical

(3 items) Gain Minor Slayer at all times, increasing your damage done to Dungeon and Trial Monsters by 5%.

(4 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical

(5 items) Reduces the cost of your Stamina abilities by 8%. When you kill an enemy, you restore 2150 Stamina and gain Major Expedition for 8 seconds, increasing your Movement Speed by 30%.

(5 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage

Essentially, you are trading the 5th piece crit damage from Berserking Warrior (aka AY) for the 5th piece sustain of VO. While the 3rd piece bonus is useless for overland content, everything else mirrors AY's buffs.

AY is great, but only if you can sustain. If you don't want to use VO, and want to keep trying to make AY work, the combination of Dubious Camoran Throne (drink) and Stormfist monster set can help. Its not VO, but its more than nothing.

A couple more radical suggestions might be going with AY weapons with VO body. You will lose out on the penetration and max stamina buffs from TFS but you would keep the crit damage from AY. Or go crazy and run AY body with VO weapons/jewelry. AY is a heavy set, so you would get the resistance. You might have to respec to heavy armor for the health buffs. Almost like a DD tank build. But at the same time, you get the stamina sustain of VO. Your DPS would suffer, but your survivability would increase. You're not playing with a group, so you don't have to worry about keeping up with the joneses in the constant "my DPS is bigger than yours" arms race.

Many adds summoned by bosses don't give xp, and therefore don't proc the 5pc bonus of VO. For example, it's useless against vFL thurvokun.

Relequen + AY is defacto best for sheer DPS, which is what you'd want against most world bosses. Maybe replace AY with TFS since the bosses res won't be debuffed, or with briarheart since it will be hard to keep AY stacks up while rolling and healing. It can be sustained with stam absorb glyph, blue food and a venomous claw rotation.

El_Borracho · December 2018

@Kanar true, but the 8% reduction in cost is always up. I thought he was having problems keeping sustain while soloing. I remember when I switched over from the VO/TFS build to the Relequen/AY setup, I had similar issues, but that was more because of getting used to the rotation. I don't know if its his rotation or stamina sustain that's causing the deaths.

I like the suggestion of AY/TFS. I would probably still run the old TFS/VO combo as it wasn't that long ago in my mind. And it still kills in vMA.

AverageJo3Gam3r · December 2018

Funny, StamDK is the only class I have flawless conqueror on. Run blade cloak, wings, and vigor. Slot mighty chudan alongside whatever damage sets you want. Unless you’re going for a 600k vma leaderboard score you don’t need leet skillz 70k dps for solo content.

Ragnarock41 · December 2018

AverageJo3Gam3r wrote: »

Funny, StamDK is the only class I have flawless conqueror on. Run blade cloak, wings, and vigor. Slot mighty chudan alongside whatever damage sets you want. Unless you’re going for a 600k vma leaderboard score you don’t need leet skillz 70k dps for solo content.

Personally think wings+corrosive armor is more than enough for vMA, since most of the time in vMA , if you die, its an either an instakill by a special attack or sometimes RNG screwing you over. For the ice level wings are enough and for the final 2 stages corrosive armor keeps me alive though you might prefer standart which would work better with chudan. Im basically glass cannon so corrosive helps.

It just requires some investing into magicka regen to guarantee not running out of juice.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · December 2018

kylewwefan wrote: »

Vigor, Rally and brawler is OP. Not a lot of damage

You don't even need vigor with brawler and rally. You trade relatively little damage (like 4-8%) for massive survivability, I run 2 hander on all my Stam classes now because, as you said, is op. @jeffmiller506b16_ESO try out 2 hander.

vesselwiththepestle · December 2018

I prefer solo Dubious Camoran Throne, except I am wearing VO (like in VMA).

What I really like about Stam DK is, that I can easily adapt to different situations with wings, Corrosive armor, shield... Add 2H and some monster sets and you have a huge variety of skills/builds you can easily switch into. You don't do every fight with the same setup (except the fights are easy enough so you don't care).

2H is very strong in terms of survivability, Corrosive armor can help a lot, maybe go for Valkyn Skoria for more health, bosses with ranged attacks should get the dragonscale treatment...

I don't like Berserrking Warrior while soloing, because I tend to be much longer on the back bar (vigor, wings) + I need to roll dodge more. Briarheart might be worth a try.