A few additional thoughts on this:

- One weakness of the build is self healing. The self-healing is not good. I deal with this by using Swarming Scion and Resto ult as my ultimates, and using purge to keep DoTs from overwhelming me. But you could run Chokethorn (or Earthgore) to actually get good pretty good healing when you need it. You’d have to give up a damage monster set to do it, obviously, but it would make a more well-rounded build.

- Alternatively, I imagine Zaan is good on this build. I don’t have Zaan, but I think it’d allow you to blow up even some tankier builds that can survive your burst window. You might think that Zaan wouldn’t work since this is a ranged build. And it *is* a ranged build, but your biggest burst of damage comes after using Toppling Charge to stun and set off balance. Zaan would proc when you do this for even more damage during this window. In order to run this, I’d have to sacrifice Maw of the Infernal—which means a bit less damage on people at range and also gives up the annoying Daedroth in peoples’ LOS. But I suspect it might actually be better, since it’d add significantly to your peak damage window, to help bring down really tanky builds. Also worth noting that the crit bonus on Zaan is better than the magicka bonus on Maw for this build, since crits scale with the set damage and your crit damage is high (Templar + I have been running Race Against Time).

- I think if you are willing to run potions that give major prophecy, then it might make sense to run Radiant Ward on the front bar in place of Inner Light. You lose 5% magicka that way, but your magicka doesn’t increase your damage very much and a spell crit potion would actually affect your back bar and therefore increase your healing. Meanwhile, with Radiant Ward and Spiked Bone Shield, you could actually do a shield stack that would be pretty good (about 10k total shields in No-CP). Shield stacking is particularly good on a level 3 vampire, because you can stack shields while getting a bigger benefit from the Undeath passive than you would if you’d healed instead. I’m not really willing to spend the gold running a potion to get major prophecy, so I won’t be doing this I don’t think, but for someone not averse to that, it’s probably a good plan. When you take into account the Undeath passive and having access to minor protection and potentially also the High Elf spell recharge passive, the effective value of your shields starts to actually be pretty close to that of a magicka-stacking Sorcerer using Hardened Ward and Dampen Magic. But your shields also do damage and are incredibly strong if you use them during vampire ult. So I suspect this would be one way to bypass the subpar healing on this build. Shield stack as your main defense, and use Resto Ult and Swarming Scion to reset fights going badly, and purge to deal with DoTs. Your Rapid Regen and Honor the Dead can supplement that—particularly when you’re low and don’t have ult, since the Templar and resto staff passives will make your heals actually decent in that scenario—but would not need to be the primary defense at all.

Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the optimal version of this probably actually is a shield stacking version with Zaan and a spell crit potion. Zaan would optimize your burst, and shield stacking probably is your best bet for defense. Alternatively, you could ditch the spell crit potion (in favor of spell power pots probably), and just run Radiant Ward on the back bar instead of Race Against Time. That’d work, but you’d give up some mobility and have you bar swap to shield stack.

Destyran wrote: »

Why not use PotL instead of vigor for minor breach and more damage ?? And still use HtD?

PotL is a valid option for another stamina ability to proc Undaunted Unweaver. I prefer Spiked Bone Shield, though. A few reasons for that:

- What you’re really missing is defense/healing. I play a health-based version, so I am hard to burst, but the healing is bad. On the other hand, a health-based damage shield is actually decent on this build, so it’s quite nice for survivability. I also really like how quickly it allows me to go from defense to offense. When I’m on the defensive, I can block cast Spiked Bone Shield and it not only keeps me alive but also covers the UU proc in preparation for me to get back on the offensive.
- It’s a big advantage to be able to proc the sets without a target, so that you can pre-proc them before being able to attack someone. You have Restoring Focus either way, so using PotL as well doesn’t take away the ability to pre-proc, but still it’s a factor to not need LOS when using a UU proc.
- I’m not sure PotL is worth it in terms of damage. As mentioned above, I typically pre-proc the sets, so using PotL would basically mean losing like a second of heavy attack time. I’m not sure the damage of the ability and the minor breach would actually make up for the damage lost there. That said, it would mean extra damage in a longer fight where I’d have to proc UU either way and PotL would be a way to do it with a decent damage ability.

All that said, it’s definitely a perfectly valid option. I definitely do think that there should be at least one other stamina ability besides Restoring Focus—so that you can use that additional stamina ability to get value out of your UU each time instead of just casting Restoring Focus again before its duration is finished. Whether that ability is Spiked Bone Shield, PotL, Vigor, or something else is a matter of preference, but one should definitely have one of them in order to avoid dead GCDs in fights.

As for HtD, I still like to have it even though it is pretty weak on the build. You do need healing abilities—especially with really low health recovery—and I find having Rapid Regen, HtD, and Ritual is at least serviceable for allowing me to recover decently quickly after LOSing someone while low. It’s also kind of necessary if you want to pop out of Elusive Mist briefly to heal since you need a burst heal for that. It’s worth noting that the HtD on this build can actually get pretty decent in certain circumstances. When you’re low, the combination of the resto staff and Templar passives will increase it a lot, and you have access to minor mending, as well as extra spell damage after leaving mist form (which you’ll often be doing in situations where a burst heal is necessary), and I play with a Powered back bar. If you’re at like 25% health, HtD can essentially have a 10-11k tooltip on this build in no-CP. That kind of burst healing potential while low is worth having IMO.

Waffennacht wrote: »

Is the build always in Light Armor?

I think 5 pieces of light armor is the best for this. You have one medium armor set and one light armor set, so in theory you could go for 5 pieces of medium armor instead. Since heavy attacks now use your highest stat, the extra weapon damage from medium armor would affect your heavy attack damage if you did that. But I think it’s a lot less ideal. Your base weapon damage won’t be high, so that 15% increase won’t increase it much (and isn’t much better than the minor sorcery you’d get for spell damage anyways). And, more importantly, weapon damage doesn’t increase the damage from the sets, while light armor’s increased penetration and critical do affect the sets’ damage. That leads to a very significant damage difference. Not to mention that you do do some additional damage, besides heavy attacks, that scale with the light armor bonuses and not the medium armor ones (Solar Barrage damage, Toppling Charge, a damaging monster set like Maw of the Infernal or Zaan). You do have a bit higher resistances in medium armor, but I don’t think it’s worth it. I tried a medium armor version, and the damage loss felt quite significant.

One question I do have about this, though, is it’s unclear to me if the weapon critical from medium armor affects lightning heavy attacks. I know it uses your highest stats when determining damage, but I *think* it still automatically uses spell crit and spell penetration no matter what. Even if the weapon crit bonus affects the lightning heavy attacks, the penetration bonus from light armor massively outweighs the weapon damage bonus from medium armor for this build, so it doesn’t change my conclusion, but I am curious in general about whether “scales with highest stats” means it also scales with highest crit values and penetration. I think not but am not sure.

Joosef_Kivikilpi wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Destyran wrote: »

Why not use PotL instead of vigor for minor breach and more damage ?? And still use HtD?

PotL is a valid option for another stamina ability to proc Undaunted Unweaver. I prefer Spiked Bone Shield, though. A few reasons for that:

- What you’re really missing is defense/healing. I play a health-based version, so I am hard to burst, but the healing is bad. On the other hand, a health-based damage shield is actually decent on this build, so it’s quite nice for survivability. I also really like how quickly it allows me to go from defense to offense. When I’m on the defensive, I can block cast Spiked Bone Shield and it not only keeps me alive but also covers the UU proc in preparation for me to get back on the offensive.
- It’s a big advantage to be able to proc the sets without a target, so that you can pre-proc them before being able to attack someone. You have Restoring Focus either way, so using PotL as well doesn’t take away the ability to pre-proc, but still it’s a factor to not need LOS when using a UU proc.
- I’m not sure PotL is worth it in terms of damage. As mentioned above, I typically pre-proc the sets, so using PotL would basically mean losing like a second of heavy attack time. I’m not sure the damage of the ability and the minor breach would actually make up for the damage lost there. That said, it would mean extra damage in a longer fight where I’d have to proc UU either way and PotL would be a way to do it with a decent damage ability.

All that said, it’s definitely a perfectly valid option. I definitely do think that there should be at least one other stamina ability besides Restoring Focus—so that you can use that additional stamina ability to get value out of your UU each time instead of just casting Restoring Focus again before its duration is finished. Whether that ability is Spiked Bone Shield, PotL, Vigor, or something else is a matter of preference, but one should definitely have one of them in order to avoid dead GCDs in fights.

Inner Beast +5% dmg from you is huge.

I think PotL is pretty strictly superior to Inner Beast for these purposes.

I think the 5% damage increase from Inner Beast isn’t additive with other percent damage bonuses (since it’s not adding to your damage but rather increases their damage taken). So that’s good. But it’s not really better than the minor breach from PotL, and PotL also has the delayed burst and is cheaper. The only argument for Inner Beast on a Templar is that the effect lasts longer, so you can get the damage increase a higher percent of the time. I guess there’s an argument for that, but I still tend to think PotL is going to be better.

That said, Inner Beast is a perfectly reasonable option to use on a DK version of the build and not absurd to use on a Templar. I wouldn’t use it as the *only* stamina ability, since you want a cheaper one that you can pre-cast, but for a second stamina ability that provides value in the middle of fights, it’d be a solid option.

This dude is writing up a god damn essay on his pvp build not even in the pvp forum.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Worth noting that I believe some recent changes in the last few patches make this build even stronger. The most recent version of it I’d been using was a health-based Templar build.

The build has lots of strengths. It gets huge undodgeable AOE damage from heavy attacks (buffed massively by both sets, Empower, off balance, etc.). It has a strong burst window from using Toppling Charge to stun and set off balance, making the heavy attacks do maximum damage while the enemy is stunned. It has basically unlimited sustain since its damage loop actually gains you magicka, and it has over 1k stamina recovery in no-CP along with Restoring Focus. It is very difficult to burst down since it is a health-based build with pretty good armor values and easy access to minor protection.

The biggest weakness of the build was always self-healing. The build does not prioritize magicka or spell damage at all, so you were left with pretty low healing values. That was mitigated a lot by using Spiked Bone Shield (which keys off of health) and using the resto ult as a fight reset when you’re low, as well as having Elusive Mist to escape and Honor the Dead (even with low stats, it’s still good, especially in combination with Elusive Mist and almost never being low on magicka). However, it was always possible to be whittled down by a lot of sustained damage and not be able to keep up enough healing to mitigate it (and would need to hope for resto ult to be up to save you from that scenario). But now the Templar has more health-based heal options. Specifically, Living Dark keys off of health, and so does the heal from Restoring Focus if you’re standing in the rune (though that came with taking away the armor bonus when you do that). So you now have a bunch of defensive/healing options that key off of your health. Restoring Focus is already on this build, but Living Dark would have to be fit in. However, there was always a slot in the back bar that I regarded as a bit of a flex spot. I’d come around to using Race Against Time there, but aside from things like Capture the Relic I never felt it was really necessary or particularly great (you are a ranged attacker who has a gap closer and so much stamina sustain that you can sprint a lot). So you can put Living Dark there instead, and suddenly you have a pretty well-rounded defensive/healing kit. It’s hard to whittle someone down with sustained damage when they’ve got a huge health-based self heal when you attack them with direct damage, and they have a purge to cancel DOTs, as well as a health-based damage shield that they proc a fair bit as part of their damage loop (Spiked Bone Shield procs UU), and more health-based healing over time when they stand their ground.

Fyi all lightning builds will be complete arse next patch, sadly, with the gutting of all the sets used in those builds.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Worth noting that I believe some recent changes in the last few patches make this build even stronger. The most recent version of it I’d been using was a health-based Templar build.

The build has lots of strengths. It gets huge undodgeable AOE damage from heavy attacks (buffed massively by both sets, Empower, off balance, etc.). It has a strong burst window from using Toppling Charge to stun and set off balance, making the heavy attacks do maximum damage while the enemy is stunned. It has basically unlimited sustain since its damage loop actually gains you magicka, and it has over 1k stamina recovery in no-CP along with Restoring Focus. It is very difficult to burst down since it is a health-based build with pretty good armor values and easy access to minor protection.

The biggest weakness of the build was always self-healing. The build does not prioritize magicka or spell damage at all, so you were left with pretty low healing values. That was mitigated a lot by using Spiked Bone Shield (which keys off of health) and using the resto ult as a fight reset when you’re low, as well as having Elusive Mist to escape and Honor the Dead (even with low stats, it’s still good, especially in combination with Elusive Mist and almost never being low on magicka). However, it was always possible to be whittled down by a lot of sustained damage and not be able to keep up enough healing to mitigate it (and would need to hope for resto ult to be up to save you from that scenario). But now the Templar has more health-based heal options. Specifically, Living Dark keys off of health, and so does the heal from Restoring Focus if you’re standing in the rune (though that came with taking away the armor bonus when you do that). So you now have a bunch of defensive/healing options that key off of your health. Restoring Focus is already on this build, but Living Dark would have to be fit in. However, there was always a slot in the back bar that I regarded as a bit of a flex spot. I’d come around to using Race Against Time there, but aside from things like Capture the Relic I never felt it was really necessary or particularly great (you are a ranged attacker who has a gap closer and so much stamina sustain that you can sprint a lot). So you can put Living Dark there instead, and suddenly you have a pretty well-rounded defensive/healing kit. It’s hard to whittle someone down with sustained damage when they’ve got a huge health-based self heal when you attack them with direct damage, and they have a purge to cancel DOTs, as well as a health-based damage shield that they proc a fair bit as part of their damage loop (Spiked Bone Shield procs UU), and more health-based healing over time when they stand their ground.

Fyi all lightning builds will be complete arse next patch, sadly, with the gutting of all the sets used in those builds.

Ugh I missed that in the patch notes. That’ll destroy this build. It was a good run, I guess.

Ya I feel ya. My heavy lightning dk would do 1-2.5m damage a bg but I'd run echoing vigor and radiating regeneration back bar and also do 0.8-1.5m healing as well.

Was really fun, a sort of damage support off healing mid range bruiser.
Traditional mag dks do more damage than me (at least the players I play with/against).

It wasn't out of control, imo. I'd only see 1 or 2 other lightning builds over the course of the last 6 months. Pretty freaking rare.

They could have just reduced the tooltips by 10-20 percent instead of the complete rework and neutering.

Oh well, I have another ranged mag dk build as well as a melee build.