And you've tested this? Because I have :^)

dual wield enchants are halved. so even if you could get 97%+ with deadly cloak, like you can with endless, which you cant, you will still only get ~325 weapon damage. no amount of testing will change that. not sure what else to say here.

Firstly, OP is concerned about pve dps. That translates to majority single target. Rending slashes and carve do more damage with their dot to any single target than caltrops and hail do (hail can compete towards the end of a maelstrom bow effect).

while i agree that dps in pve is mostly single target, maybe if you read more of the thread, you have seen the other post the op has in the thread, yea know where they said this-

2H and DW have AoE spells with DoT-components, but except DW with Blade Cloak they have no ability like Volley/Caltrops with

and this-

It's not about wanting to run the latest meta build either, but if the combat expects you to have several DoTs/AoE DoTs up all the time to get a fast clear speed/good dps it's illogical and somewhat insulting to give those tools only to specific weapon lines.

is a pretty clear explanation to your response to me here-

Second; If he's worried about aoe for trash, he can slot two hand for (as you mention later) reverse slice, or throw on steel tornado or whirling blades (I still prefer tornado, area is better). Once the boss fight starts, you'll want rending more than you'll want Caltrops. Both is obviously ideal.

Why the sudden hostility, friend? I never said the op wasn't using these abilities, I said he could pick those classes to get an aoe dot. Misrepresenting my argument isn't polite.

lol polite. lol hostility. you just come off like you have no idea what you are talking about. is it really my fault if you do?

Genuinely curious, how would you fix the issue of everyone using hail and caltrops? Keep in mind that any abilities you add can just be thrown onto a bar alongside caltrops and hail.

you can get 30k+ dps without either of those skills, which is fine for everything in the game, you can need to know your class and how the game works. if @daedalusAI would tell us what class they main, or hell just give me a class, i could give you bars that would be at least 30k dps. it is just it will be harder then using those skill and has a much lower ceiling but it can be done in the game right now.

but if you asking what i would change in the game to make it more viable, i would start by having blade cloak tick every 1 second, then adjust the damage so that it is the same over the 15 secs. i would then make on of the crit rush a single target dot, much like twin slashes, with either no gap closer or keeping the gap closer, since ZOS just made the skill have no range, then i would change carve to be a conal ticking dot, more damage then deadly then cloak but only in the front of you. no idea how to justify that in "lore terms" but does it make sense to you how blades spin around you with blade cloak? the new crave and blade cloak would time every second and you would be able to back bar them, leading to be able to choose which bar you want to back bar, they both would have pluses for front bar, like higher weapon damage for DW or a better single target execute for 2h and such.

also then there would 3 skills (for stam) that would be able to proc poisons from the back bar, which is better then DW halved enchants these days.

Is that 30k supposed to be single-target, AoE or a combined parse?

whenever people say a single number like that, it mean single target, no one cares about aoe.

I reckon it depends on the toolkit of a class offering enough AoE tools on its own, e.g. a Stamblade offers close to nothing in terms of AoE

they just changed Dark Shade to scale with whatever stat is highest, so you get a good dot there and it does aoe and provides minor maim, i get more dps with it then Relentless Focus on my stam blade, but i can only really mange 3 bow casts per 30 seconds, i am bad at weaving. and since Relentless Focus doesn't give minor berserk anymore, it is an easy change for me.

@daedalusAI Stamina necro, without using Bow or Caltrops, with the restriction of not having to rely on the best available items to counter the obviously missing only 2 persistent stamina AoE abilities

stam necero is the easiest class to do it on, they have the most damage morphs and the Death Knell passive is really amzing, really great fun to be hitting 50k+ reverse slice time after time.

front bar, infused weapon damage enchant greatsword-

Carve, Reverse Slice, Detonating Siphon, Blighted Blast Bones, Venom Skull, ulti flawless dawnbreaker

back bar, if using enchant, dual infused absorb stamina/poison, if not, nirn main hand nirn off sharp or whatever and use double dot poisons, then dual dagger or axes, doesn't really matter but if you proc ax bleed from the back bar, that damage will carry over, so whatever you got.


trap, Blood Craze, Deadly Cloak, Skeletal Archer, Mortal Coil, ulti Pestilent Colossus

basically using Deadly Cloak and blood craze instead of endless hail and poison injection. mortal coil is for stamina support and some heals. this setup will get you more then 30k dps, especially if you have master daggers/axes.

pots for your major buffs, savagery and brutality.

as for set, just use spriggan/hundings with whatever monster you want.

in an aoe situation, just make sure detonating syphon and blade cloak are up, then bang out a carve and then spam reverse slice in between blighted blast bones, watch mobs "melt".

in practice though, you might need more heals then mortal coil/blood craze, so i would prolly drop carve for rally. would still get good dps, though getting 30k would be harder and depend more on your weaving.


i have tried a similar set up on my stamplar, with kraghs/VO/front bar leviathan/back bar master dagger/axe with just infused enchants, got 30k on the 6 million dummy no problem.



30k dps is not really that high these days, i get it with every class dps i run(which is all but stamdk, magden and stamcer) and i am bad at weaving. but 30k is high enough to make most dungeons and almost everything up to vet trails easy.

I reckon it depends on the toolkit of a class offering enough AoE tools on its own, e.g. a Stamblade offers close to nothing in terms of AoE

for fun-

same front bar, infused weapon damage enchant greatsword-

Carve, Power Extraction, Relentless Focus, Killer's Blade , Surprise Attack, ulti flawless dawnbreaker

same back bar, if using enchant, dual infused absorb stamina/poison, if not, nirn main hand nirn off sharp or whatever and use double dot poisons, then dual dagger or axes, doesn't really matter but if you proc ax bleed from the back bar, that damage will carry over, so whatever you got.

trap, Blood Craze, Deadly Cloak, Dark Shade, Leeching Strikes , ulti Soul Harvest


seems like a good build.