I’ve finally devised a way to make this sort of build work with the Necromancer class. It’s a little different than the other versions of the build, in particular because it does not run a restoration staff, and instead runs a flame staff on the back bar.

Basics of Necromancer Version of the Build

The gear and whatnot would be pretty similar to the DK version of the build that I outlined in a later post on the first page of this thread. Basically, do Undaunted Infiltrator/Undaunted Unweaver, along with a defensive monster set of some sort (Bloodspawn is probably best for the Necro), stack spell penetration, and probably run a couple stamina recovery glyphs.

The big difference is you want to run a flame staff on the back bar. This is primarily so that you can have a decent stun, with Flame Clench. But it also is a key to proccing off balance pretty consistently when you want to. This is because you can run a Shock damage glyph with a charged weapon on that back bar, so that if you use Flame Clench and then bar swap and put down a Wall of Elements, it’s extremely likely you’ll set the person off balance (assuming obviously that off balance is off cooldown on that person). Having this on the back bar is important, because it allows you to run a Charged weapon without nerfing your damage by not having sharpened on your lightning staff. You can afford to not run a Restoration Staff as Necro, because Intensive Mender can function like Rapid Regen, while you’ve got Goliath as a fight-reset ult so you don’t need resto ult.

In any event, you’ll proc Undaunted Unweaver with the stamina morph of Blastbones. This is good for a few reasons. First, it provides major defile, so even if the stamina morph won’t do a ton of damage, it still gives you lots of value, particularly on a build like this that isn’t a burst build. Second, it’s super cheap, so you won’t really put a dent in your stamina sustain by using it fairly often. Third, having it on the bar adds to your crit chance in execute.

Necromancer Build Skills

Anyways, I’d see the skills as going something like this:

Front Bar: Lightning Staff

Blighted Blastbones
Deaden Pain
Intensive Mender
Skeletal Arcanist
Elemental Blockade
Colossus (either morph if no-CP, Glacial Colossus if CP)

Back Bar: Flame Staff

Hexproof/Expunge & Modify
Flame Clench
Resistant Flesh
Summoner’s Armor
Elusive Mist/Race Against Time
Ravenous Goliath

Advantages of Necromancer Version of the Build

There are several benefits to the Necro version of this build:

1. Necros will actually probably do the second most sustained damage with their lightning heavy attacks of any class. This is because of their 15% DoT damage boost, as well as their penetration bonus—both of which buff lightning heavy attacks. DKs with Molten Armaments will do more base damage, but Necros should outpace everything else by at least a slight bit. Meanwhile, when you take into account the possibility to constantly or almost constantly have major defile up on the enemy, you realistically outpace everyone else even more, and can even potentially run similarly to the DK. The DK will still shred people who aren’t healing quicker, but if someone is outputting or receiving a good bit of healing (like roughly 3k+ per second after the -50% from Battle Spirit), then a Necro with major defile on the person will actually eat away at their health just as quickly or more quickly.

2. Necros will also have the highest possible damage window of any class with this build. If they time their use of off balance with the 8 seconds of major vulnerability from Colossus, then Necros can output roughly 10% more damage with heavy attacks during that time period than DKs can with Molten Armaments up against an off balance opponent (the exact percent figure depends on the enemy’s resistances, since Necros have extra penetration). That number is likely higher in CP, since Molten Armaments’s damage buff has diminishing returns the more other damage boosts you have, while vulnerability doesn’t have diminishing returns. Of course, this all requires an ultimate, but with the cooldown on off balance and with Deaden Pain, you can potentially line up a Colossus every other off balance and certainly every third one. If you run Bloodspawn, that’d make it not too difficult to get a Colossus every other off-balance proc on someone you’re fighting. Obviously that’s not taking into account using off balance on multiple people in a fight one after the other, but the point still stands that the Colossus damage window isn’t actually that much less frequent than the off balance damage window.

3. The stamina sustain on the Necro version of this build has the potential to be almost at the same level as the stamina sustain on the DK. Necro passives give a lot of stamina recovery, and Blastbones is very cheap. Meanwhile, Expunge & Modify is an option to get tons of extra stamina. Even if you are spamming Blastbones enough to keep Major Defile up, a High Elf in Bloodspawn with this build could have the stamina sustain to be able to break free every 7-8 seconds without your stamina pool going down at all. Meanwhile, you could easily have almost 18k stamina, and snares wouldn’t be an issue. So it would be very hard to catch you without stamina to break cc, even in no-CP. This is a big deal for a magicka build IMO.

4. This version of the build is probably the tankiest one. The resistances aren’t the highest since other classes have resistance bonuses, and there’s no access to minor protection that some other classes could get here. But you’ve got access to major protection, as well as 3% permanent damage mitigation on the front bar. And you’ve got 15% damage reduction on DoTs, and a purge. When the major protection isn’t up, you won’t be the tankiest class with this sort of build, but when it is up, you’ll be by far the tankiest. And it can be up quite a bit, since you’re creating lots of corpses and have no other corpse consumption ability.

MyPrist wrote: »

Just stop steal my builds already and make something of your own.

I play it 2 years ago already.

2? I played HA build 4 year ago and there were people who did that before me. If you dont contribute to the topic do not post.

P.S Finally with this patch molten armaments works again with resto and lit staff.

Did the DK version actually get buffed this patch?

Kesstryl wrote: »

Did the DK version actually get buffed this patch?

In a sense, yes. Molten Armaments didn’t work with lightning heavy attacks before. But obviously off balance got nerfed, so you can only have like 1/3 uptime on off balance, whereas previously it could’ve been 100% uptime.

The upshot is that you used to be able to have a permanent 70% damage boost, whereas now you have a 50% boost 2/3 of the time and a 120% damage boost 1/3 of the time. The end result is very similar sustained damage over time (slightly more or slightly less depending on whether it’s CP with the exploiter passive) but a significantly higher peak DPS. So I think it’s better. But when you don’t have off balance up because of the off balance cooldown, you will actually be doing less damage now than you would’ve before.

One variation I’ve been testing out instead is a Undaunted Infiltrator + Torug’s Pact build on a Warden.

Previously, I didn’t really think Torug’s Pact was a viable alternative, primarily because enchantment damage doesn’t scale up with the the off balance damage boost. But now, with off balance not able to be up all the time, that disadvantage loses a good bit of its significance.

Dropping Undaunted Unweaver for Torug’s Pact allows one to avoid the annoyance, dead GCD’s, and stamina drain that inevitably end up coming with triggering Undaunted Unweaver. And while the max stamina boosts on UU are not actually that bad for PvP IMO, I do think the 2, 3, and 4 piece bonuses on Torug’s Pact are better. Meanwhile, given the off balance cooldown I don’t think the potential overall damage is necessarily far off—at least on single targets—unless on a DK (since obviously Molten Armaments doesn’t boost enchant damage, so UU/UI would do a lot more damage).

I think Warden is the best class for the UI + Torug’s build based on a combination of a few reasons:

1. They have tons of damage boosts that will affect the UI and enchant damage.

You can easily get +16% flat damage boost from the Warden passives and Bird of Prey minor berserk. Fetcher Infection guarantees minor vulnerability. You can go with a Frost Damage enchant, which the Warden has another 10% damage boost for. And with that enchant going off a ton, you will chill people a lot, which will add 10% critical damage when attacking them.

2. They have a lot of heals that are not magicka/spell-damage dependent.

This is important since a UI + Torug’s build can’t get high magicka or spell damage and therefore would normally be left with inferior healing. A Warden’s healing with this build could include all the following things that are not dependent on magicka/spell damage: (1) the Lotus Blossom heals off light and heavy attacks; (2) heals when using animal companion abilities; (3) healing from Arctic Wind; and (4) the minor lifesteal from Leeching Vines, if you use that morph. Only the healing each second on vines and the burst heal off of Living Trellis (if you use that morph) scale off of magicka/spell damage. The result is that I’m fairly sure you can maintain better healing on a Warden than other classes with this sort of build, because other classes are more tethered to heals that are gimped by their stats.

3. Even with a Torug’s Pact build on a patch with an off balance cooldown, heavy attacking with UI does a lot more damage on an off balance opponent, so you want to be able to proc off balance as much as possible. And Wardens have a very easy one-button way to proc off balance, with Screaming Cliff Racer.

4. Beyond the healing, I think the Warden version of this is a bit more tanky than the others.

It’s got easy access to minor protection. It’s got minor toughness—very nice on a build that has a set with a health buff, can easily use tri-stat food, and can take health boosts on its armor/jewelry because most of its damage and healing isn’t stats-dependent. And since its passives boost frost damage and its got easy access to minor vulnerability without a shock enchant, it can be putting out a lot of minor maim that other classes wouldn’t necessarily be able to do.


I’ve tried this out on my Warden and had some good success, despite running it on some pretty gimped gear—my Torug’s gear is blue and CP 150, meaning low-tier CP 150 armor enchants as well, and only a purple frost damage enchant. Ran a BG where I had 21 kills, 16 assists, and 0 deaths with this (and the rest of my team died 16 times in total—with every teammate dying at least 3 times—so it wasn’t just some one-sided stomp).

The skills I’ve been using look like this:

Front Bar:

Screaming Cliff Racer
Fetcher Infection
Living Trellis
Bird of Prey
Bull Netch
Northern Storm

Back Bar:

Arctic Wind
Lotus Blossom
Ice Fortress
Shimmering Shield
Flame Clench
Healing Thicket

This seems like a good skill setup to me, though there are some alternatives.

- I may swap to Leeching Vines over Living Trellis, since I’ve got the Arctic Wind burst heal anyways (and it’s larger) and I think Leeching Vines would be pretty good here. You don’t need the burst heal from Living Trellis and that heal isn’t very strong anyways because it’s based on stats. Not sure if the Minor Lifesteal from Leeching Vines procs the Nature’s Gift and Accelerated Growth passives, but if so, then that’d probably make it definitely better.

- Northern Storm isn’t completely necessary—particularly as the max magicka boost doesn’t change that much for us—so one could use something different, such as the Destro ult, or Ice Comet, perhaps Permafrost. I found Northern Storm to be very good in combination with Arctic Wind at facilitating just running onto a populated flag while zapping AOE damage with heavy attacks, though.

- One could use Reviving Barrier instead of Healing Thicket. I’m not a massive fan of Healing Thicket, but I did find it working well on this build.

- Lotus Blossom isn’t actually as good as you’d think on this build, because you don’t get Lotus Blossom healing off of medium weaves of a lightning attack (meaning no heal if someone dies or goes out of LOS before the final tick of the heavy attack goes off). I still think it’s worth using since the heal does still synergize with the build and Major Prophecy is a really good damage buff for this build. But it might be possible to drop it—perhaps for Corrupting Pollen.

- I think Flame Clench is a nice component of this build. You have other stuns on the build—from Arctic Wind and from heavy attacking people you put off balance—but this provides you with an instant one if you need it. And unlike on most Warden builds, the knockback actually synergizes pretty well, since if they get close it knocks them to a range at which Screaming Cliff Racer can put them off balance. It also procs your back bar enchant (which I just have on weapon damage at the moment—not sure that that’s ideal). That said, I didn’t find myself using it a ton, particularly since the range of it is so limiting and I was getting lots of stuns off without it. That probably is partly just me not being completely acclimated to the build yet and missing opportunities. But it’s possible one could get more mileage out of Elemental Drain instead, or maybe even slotting a Restoration Staff and using Regen and Life Giver.

EDIT: Amusingly, I just realized that the Warden I’d been using this on NEVER had a mundus stone on it. Which is pretty crazy since it’s been easily my best character at soloing world bosses, and I’ve healed vet DLC dungeons on it and it’s been every bit the equal of my Magplar at that. I think I leveled the character long ago before I even knew what mundus stones really were, and then when I went back to play on it, I always just assumed it had The Mage mundus stone on it and never desired to change that since I basically always magicka stacked the Warden with Necropotence. But the upshot is that I had some dominant rounds in BG’s with this build on a Warden that did not even have a mundus stone.

Mindcr0w wrote: »

So looks like these builds are in for more changes again.

More damaging main attack, no more resource regen from it.

This going to kill it, impove it, or be a wash? Too early for speculation?

It’s so hard for me to tell. I think on balance it probably will be better. You’ll do significantly more single target damage with this build. There will also be the opportunity to use Empower to leverage more damage from it too. But not all the damage changes are good. I think the change to off balance damage on lightning heavy attacks is a nerf though I can’t really tell quite what the wording means (the wording makes it sound like it’s a shift and not a nerf, but it doesn’t seem to correctly portray how I think lightning heavies interact with off balance right now). And there’s definitely a nerf to the AOE splash damage. On balance though, I think you’ll shred single targets with this a decent bit more than before.

Another huge buff is being able move normal speed while attacking. This makes you less vulnerable to attacks, and also makes you able to keep up with people running away from you much better. The ability to dodge the final tick of damage—which will now be a huge portion of the overall damage—may more than offset at least that offensive benefit.

The sustain will become more of an issue, whereas the beauty of this build on live is that it doesn’t need to build for sustain at all and yet will have amazing sustain.

That said, I don’t think the sustain will actually be bad. Heavy attacks still don’t cost any magicka. So if you’re spending a lot of your time heavy attacking, then even low recovery will enough to simply pay for the magicka ability or two you use every ten seconds in a fight. It’s also worth noting that this build will still get magicka back off heavy attacks via the destruction staff passive that gives magicka back for kills with your staff. If you get a kill with your heavy attack—which you will—you’ll get 3600 magicka. Still, though, I suspect it’ll probably be necessary to build at least a bit more recovery into the build—maybe an extra jewelry glyph or two—just so that you can consistently keep your heals and buffs up without having to start light attacking for sustain. The good news is losing spell damage on your jewelry glyphs won’t lower the damage from the sets, so building in some sustain won’t be as big a DPS loss as it might be in most builds.

Overall, there’s so many changes that it’s hard to tell how it’ll affect this, but my suspicion is that this will do enough extra single target damage that it’ll feel stronger in PvP, even if it won’t be as good at certain things (pressuring groups, destroying people who roll dodge all the time, basically always having full magicka left if you’ve got to go defensive).

katorga wrote: »

Mindcr0w wrote: »

So looks like these builds are in for more changes again.

More damaging main attack, no more resource regen from it.

This going to kill it, impove it, or be a wash? Too early for speculation?

This build is going to be such a monster it will get nerfed, at least on DK. I bet they nerf the staff damage CP if this goes live as well.

DK with MA and empower is 5500 damage to a heavy. Leaving you free to wear normal sets, or go Infiltrator/Unweaver for another 2300 damage. With a 34% increase to lightning channels and 192% (!) to the last hit, who needs off balance, even though it gets nerfed to 30% from 70%. The percent increases to the base staff damage more than outweigh 50% from the old MA.

Assuming you are light attack weaving while you set them up for the heavy, you might have more sustain. Players will have to get really good at dodging that last hit.

I’m not sure that it’ll be quite as much better as you’re suggesting.

I just did some back of the napkin calculations using the patch notes and a no-CP DK version of this on UESP build editor.

From what I can tell, here’s the results, at least for that build in no-CP (all assuming that Molten Armaments is on):

- If you do not have empower or off balance up, the two builds will do essentially equal damage on their lightning heavy attacks (as in, not even 1% difference).
- If you do have empower up but not off balance, you’re looking at roughly 12% more damage from a lightning heavy attack than on live.
- If you do not have empower up, but you do have off balance up, then you’ll do about 11% less damage than on live.
- if you do have empower and off balance up, then you’ll do about 1.5% more than live.

That’s all to individual targets. Basically, it can do more damage, but it’s not actually way more damage and doing more damage requires having Empower up. And having Empower up requires using an extra GCD on Chains (which does much less damage than heavy attacking)—which is particularly important since you want to pump as much damage as possible in during each Undaunted Unweaver proc time—and spending a bunch of magicka on using Chains often when you don’t actually have easy sustain anymore.

Then consider that the AOE splash damage got nerfed massively. You’ll definitely be putting out significantly less splash damage to nearby targets.

And further consider that the final tick of damage can now be dodged—which is a big deal since that final tick will now constitute around half of the damage. This is partly ameliorated by the fact that you can move at normal speed while heaving attacking (making it harder for someone to kite you), but the backloading of the damage also means that if someone IS successful in kiting you during a heavy attack then your damage will be low as you won’t get the final tick.

So, the more I think about it, the more I feel like in reality this may be a real nerf to this build. It seems like there will only be more damage if you have empower up. But the damage increase with empower up isn’t super high and you’ve got to spend a GCD and magicka every 5 seconds or so to get that empower. Meanwhile, the AOE damage is hugely nerfed, and about half the damage can now be dodged. And your sustain is much less good, so it may be necessary to build in a bit more sustain, further lowering the damage.

That said, there’s a couple significant caveats to what I’m saying:

- First, the PTS version of this build would scale better with CP than the live version does. That’s because the live version is way more dependent on percent damage increases (from Molten Armaments and off balance) as opposed to high base damage, so the percent damage increases from CP would scale better if Molten Armaments were instead a flat damage buff and off balance was only a 33% buff.
- Second, I’m not quite sure what the “Removed the 200ms delay of the attack” part of the PTS patch notes means. If that means that you can do a lightning heavy attack every 2.0 seconds instead of every 2.2 seconds, then that’s a significant damage buff (as in, a 10% buff). But I’m just not sure that that’s what that means, as it doesn’t use the same language as the patch notes on other heavy attacks where they say the cast time was reduced.

I tried that build on PTS and it was not working very well. Did they nerf something?

* DKs only get a buff on the last tick of the heavy attack (lightning), if you are using melee weapons/bow - it only buffs the base damage not counting the sets.

* Managing to keep up empower would work the best for Nightblades due to passives for the matters of damage.

* The easiest to manage it all is templar due to 10 second empower.

* Since Markarth you can also use weapon damage / max stamina for Lightning staff and vice-versa. Even though stacking damage provides minimal actual damage - I personally use weapon damage/stamina for Vigor and to increase dodge roll pool while on a Lightning staff.

* Using Pale Order on empowered Lightning attacks provides an average of 600-1200 heal ticks (single target) and additional if aoes are hit. + 1500-2000 plus 5Kish (final tick) or more if on Resto heavies.

Hello cyrodiil, let the nightmare begin.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

* DKs only get a buff on the last tick of the heavy attack (lightning), if you are using melee weapons/bow - it only buffs the base damage not counting the sets.

* Managing to keep up empower would work the best for Nightblades due to passives for the matters of damage.

* The easiest to manage it all is templar due to 10 second empower.

* Since Markarth you can also use weapon damage / max stamina for Lightning staff and vice-versa. Even though stacking damage provides minimal actual damage - I personally use weapon damage/stamina for Vigor and to increase dodge roll pool while on a Lightning staff.

* Using Pale Order on empowered Lightning attacks provides an average of 600-1200 heal ticks (single target) and additional if aoes are hit. + 1500-2000 plus 5Kish (final tick) or more if on Resto heavies.

Hello cyrodiil, let the nightmare begin.

On the first point, I don’t think it is true that Molten Armaments only buffs the last tick of the lightning heavy attack. That was true several patches ago, but it got changed and last I checked it was working.

That is a good point regarding the Templar empower uptime being really easy to keep up. I’ve always thought that the Magplar version of this build was the easiest to play even if the MagDK was the most powerful on paper. Toppling Charge is extremely good for this build since it’s a really easy source of off balance combined with a stun. Meanwhile, Restoring Focus is a really cheap/good stamina ability to proc Undaunted Unweaver. In contrast, MagDKs need 2-3 global cooldowns to do what Toppling Charge does in one cooldown, and they are stuck either using a really expensive stamina skill or a cheap one that wastes a global cooldown doing nothing useful. Adding the easy empower uptime from Solar Barrage may potentially make the Magplar the best option right now, even if the theoretical damage numbers from the MagDK are higher. To that end, I’m working on a concept for an updated Magplar version of the build.

Regarding using weapon damage and max stamina for lightning staff, it’s an interesting thought but I don’t think it’d be as good. The problem is that this build relies heavily on the sustain that heavy attacks provide. So, while a stamina-based version of the build could pump out as much or more damage, your heavy attacks wouldn’t be giving you the right resource back.

Regarding Pale Order, it’s a good thought and one I’d already been thinking about. I personally don’t have the item but I suspect it’d be really good for this build, assuming that it doesn’t get double hit by Battle Spirit. I typically play PvP in BGs, so I guess it might not be ideal if there were a really good healer on my team, but usually that isn’t the case.

Sonce you decided to use max weapon damage/ stamina for lighting staff, why not usespider cultisr. Provide 600 weapon/spell damage abilties inluding LA & HA.AND ANY other set you would like with it. Also, why not use power of light to proc unweaver instead of retoring rune? It is cheap and reduce target resistance, morph restoring rune bacl to magicka and be on top of your sustain if you need it, win-win.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

universal_wrath wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

* DKs only get a buff on the last tick of the heavy attack (lightning), if you are using melee weapons/bow - it only buffs the base damage not counting the sets.

* Managing to keep up empower would work the best for Nightblades due to passives for the matters of damage.

* The easiest to manage it all is templar due to 10 second empower.

* Since Markarth you can also use weapon damage / max stamina for Lightning staff and vice-versa. Even though stacking damage provides minimal actual damage - I personally use weapon damage/stamina for Vigor and to increase dodge roll pool while on a Lightning staff.

* Using Pale Order on empowered Lightning attacks provides an average of 600-1200 heal ticks (single target) and additional if aoes are hit. + 1500-2000 plus 5Kish (final tick) or more if on Resto heavies.

Hello cyrodiil, let the nightmare begin.

On the first point, I don’t think it is true that Molten Armaments only buffs the last tick of the lightning heavy attack. That was true several patches ago, but it got changed and last I checked it was working.

That is a good point regarding the Templar empower uptime being really easy to keep up. I’ve always thought that the Magplar version of this build was the easiest to play even if the MagDK was the most powerful on paper. Toppling Charge is extremely good for this build since it’s a really easy source of off balance combined with a stun. Meanwhile, Restoring Focus is a really cheap/good stamina ability to proc Undaunted Unweaver. In contrast, MagDKs need 2-3 global cooldowns to do what Toppling Charge does in one cooldown, and they are stuck either using a really expensive stamina skill or a cheap one that wastes a global cooldown doing nothing useful. Adding the easy empower uptime from Solar Barrage may potentially make the Magplar the best option right now, even if the theoretical damage numbers from the MagDK are higher. To that end, I’m working on a concept for an updated Magplar version of the build.

Regarding using weapon damage and max stamina for lightning staff, it’s an interesting thought but I don’t think it’d be as good. The problem is that this build relies heavily on the sustain that heavy attacks provide. So, while a stamina-based version of the build could pump out as much or more damage, your heavy attacks wouldn’t be giving you the right resource back.

Regarding Pale Order, it’s a good thought and one I’d already been thinking about. I personally don’t have the item but I suspect it’d be really good for this build, assuming that it doesn’t get double hit by Battle Spirit. I typically play PvP in BGs, so I guess it might not be ideal if there were a really good healer on my team, but usually that isn’t the case.

Sonce you decided to use max weapon damage/ stamina for lighting staff, why not usespider cultisr. Provide 600 weapon/spell damage abilties inluding LA & HA.AND ANY other set you would like with it. Also, why not use power of light to proc unweaver instead of retoring rune? It is cheap and reduce target resistance, morph restoring rune bacl to magicka and be on top of your sustain if you need it, win-win.

I think you misread what I said. I have determined that using max weapon damage/ stamina for lightning staff is not good. The reason is that building into stamina with a lightning staff makes the sustain you get from lightning heavy attacks not nearly as useful.

Point of it is to use binding javelin for a ranged stun and vigor heals, combined with rapid regen. Having 32k stam and nearly 3k weapon damage heals for a ton, plus you got a pool to roll dodge. 22k magicka provides a decent Heal from Rapids also. I rarely run out of stamina in any of the fights.

Using toppling charge is a death sentence in any forms of pvp unless its a 1v1.

I spent a lot of time in the last couple days running BGs on a Magplar version of this. I tried both a UU/Noble Duelist version and a UU/UI version. I think I still like the UU/UI version better, but Noble Duelist would actually be better for dueling.

This build right now is definitely at its strongest ever. Previously, the strongest this build had ever been was when off balance could be up all the time, so you could get a permanent 70% damage buff to your heavy attacks. But now, the sets got their heavy attack damage increased by like 45%, and the Magplar version gets a 40% heavy attack damage buff from Empower as well while the MagDK version has a working Molten Armaments. The end result is that even without off balance you actually do more damage than you used to do when off balance was up, and you can do that from afar. And if you do actually put someone off balance, you do damage that dwarfs anything that you could do before.

Of course, there’s still some significant downsides to this build. Your lack of mobility while heavy attacking allows people to run away from you and LOS you more easily. The fact that you’re channeling (and slow moving) while doing your damage leaves you vulnerable to counterattack. Self healing can be hard, since you don’t self heal from heavy attacks (though Pale Order can potentially rectify this I’d think) and your stats aren’t high so your healing abilities will be relatively weak. And it’s essentially a light armor build, so it’s not inherently bulky (though you can build in a good bit of health and resistances if you want).

Overall, in the last couple days, I’ve not had a single BG where I felt like it performed badly. There were some BGs where I only got about as many kills as deaths, but those were tough games where the other teams had some really good players and my team was getting rolled, so even doing okay felt like an accomplishment. And in other games I felt quite dominant. For instance, I just had a game where I had almost 2.5x more damage and kills than anyone else in the game. I haven’t built into defense on it virtually at all (I want to, but need transmute crystals and whatnot, and don’t have Pale Order), and so it’s currently a build where you’ll probably die a few times even in a dominant game. But basically, it can really completely melt anyone who is remotely squishy, and zapping into groups from afar can take out whole groups. Some players are tanky enough to survive, but these are the types of players with builds that are just unkillable 1v1, and I’ve been satisfied with how this build has allowed my team to actually get kills on these tanky players if 2 or 3 of us focus them.