Try a heavy attack build.

Edit: or one bar build

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

I can tell you're using both bars as offensive options instead of mostly your front bar. You have Rapid Strikes hitting 465 times (117 casts) which implies it's your spammable and thus your front bar, but then you have 208 hits of Reverse Slice and 124 hits of Brawler. These are WAY higher than your main spammable. While doing a more dynamic rotation like this is viable, it's probably reducing your DPS, causing sustain issues, and making it more complicated than it needs to be especially if you're not the best parser yet.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

• Consuming Soul Trap? You don't appear to be using Burning Embers, if you need a slot this is the first place it should go. It provides insane heal/s with really great damage. Cast it on multiple enemies for exponential healing which double dips with pale order.
• If you need an extra dot like Soul Trap, you should be using Structured Entropy from mages guild. This deals the same damage per second, but lasts 24s instead of 20s which lines up with Breath/Claw for DK AND heals while it's active. Could use Blood Craze from DW for similar heal/s, but a bit more dps too.
• If you need survivability, swap Rapid Strikes to Bloodthirst. Minimal dps loss for a lot more heals.
• Swap Brawler to Carve since it's on your back bar, this will improve your dps where you lose it on Rapid Strikes. With Bloodthirst, Burning Embers, Structured Entropy, and Pale Order you'll have much better heal/s so you shouldn't have to spam Brawler.
• Consider using Whirling Blades as an execute on front bar instead of Reverse Slice on back bar. It costs more, but doesn't deal a lot less, it has much better aoe as well.
• I found using Silver Shards from Fighters guild as a single target AND aoe spammable worked pretty well back when I was being overwhelmed by ads. Could also use Stone Giant which deals aoe every 4 casts and will bump up all your dot damage ticks.
• Consider slotting Ash Cloud, it's really easy to sustain. Has really great aoe. 18s long, which lines up perfectly with Maelstrom 2H or Maelstrom Destro. Procs Mountain's Blessing for ult gen and your minor brutality buff which you probably have low uptime on unless you're spamming Obsidian Shield or Petrify, which I doubt given it's pve.
• Burning/Poisoned should be way higher on your parse. This tells me you're not using Charged weapons which is practically a must imo for DK. You get a massive sustain and damage increase from proccing those as much as possible.
• I also don't see Flames of Oblivion on your parse, I would also expect it to be pretty high up.
• Little tip if you're not aware, you can back bar Flames of Oblivion AND Molten Whip to get their passive bonuses. Molten Whip gives 300 weapon/spell damage you never need to cast. it will count Ardent Flame casts from front OR back bar.

Maelstrom 2H is best used on multi hit skills like Flurry, but it's also not super great for DK to begin with as most of their kit is dot damage, not direct damage. If you can eventually, I'd swap my back bar ability weapon to Maelstrom Destro (Fire blockade has nice DK synergy), BRP DW (defense + offense), or Maelstrom bow. Since I'm suggesting you move away from Brawler/Reverse Slice, you no longer need to rely on 2H and can really use any weapon you want. I also see you're already liking Quick Cloak, so if you had it on your back bar, you wouldn't need it on your front bar.

As an example of a potential bar layout modifying your setup with 2h/dw, but reducing backbar time:

• Front = Burning Embers, Noxious Breath, Quick Cloak, Bloodthirst, Whirling Blades - Dawnbreaker (3% weapon damage and 3 ult gen on kill)
• Back = Stampede, Ash Cloud, Flames of Oblivion, Carve, Molten Whip - Standard of Might

Again.. Simplify things, so with this. Your back bar can become a static rotation because almost all those skills are 15-18s long. You can just do a 15s rotation. Stampede -> Ash Cloud -> Flames of Oblivion -> Carve every 2nd rotation (lasts 32s at 3 stacks). Don't ever cast Molten Whip.

On your front bar, cast things as they run out or when you need them. Maybe swap Quick Cloak to Deadly Cloak, but not a must. Maybe you like the Expedition, although I prefer getting that from red CP.

Use Weapon Damage pots for your Major Brutality. If you don't want to use Major Brutality pots, remove Carve and add Igneous Weapons for a cheap, long duration option on back bar.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Also also, I get what people are saying to you about DPS not being the determining factor of success here. That you can beat it with much less DPS which is 100% true, you can take your time... However, your parse shows 16 minutes!

This leaves a lot of room for improvement. I'm on your side, I think the DPS is the issue here. The longer you take, the harder it is to sustain, the harder it is on your sanity when you lose, the harder it is to do constant light attack weaving and not mess up your rotations, the worse your healing is because you're relying on Pale Order. If you improve your DPS, you improve your survivability and you won't mess up to mechanics as much. I'm guessing you're being overwhelmed by ads too.

I'm not a mechanic genius on this arena, but I'm pretty sure any time you go down to any of the 3 portals, the main boss spends that time healing up. So you want to basically beat these things as quick as possible. I don't know if it's meta, but I save my ult for when I go down there to make those portals quick AF.

In your case as DK, Standard of Might is very expensive so maybe this is a bit harder to time. Flawless Dawnbreaker as I suggested for the passive boosts on front bar would be my "oh sheet" button when I go into those portals to speed them up if I didn't have enough for Standard. You could also try Mages Guild Shooting Star for the ult return so you can spend them down there, but get closer to your next ult for the next phases quicker. Similar burst/aoe damage, less passive damage but not much.

I focus max dps on the main boss instead of bothering with turtling up, any time you hit one of her HP thresholds, the ads she has despawn so you never have to spend time killing them. Even in the last phase, if you DPS her quick enough, you don't need to deal with the ring.

I highly recommend spending the extra time for the secret bonuses to increase your Max HP and Stamina leading up to her fight. As well, watch a video or 2 on some pro's run Vat and you'll see some strategies you didn't even think of.

i personally liked to save my ult for after those miniboss portals, even though the boss heals up, i knew it was virtually guaranteed there was going to be a ring mechanic as soon as you return to the main arena, and when you are working on a tankier lower dps build, you need the ult to help burn down the ring add

i also agree with what you say in that if you want the boss to have less hp healed up, then burn the mini boss faster, if you dont need your ult to get through the ring mechanic (on my warden the ult was almost exclusively for the ring mechanic lol)

MashmalloMan wrote: »

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

I can tell you're using both bars as offensive options instead of mostly your front bar. You have Rapid Strikes hitting 465 times (117 casts) which implies it's your spammable and thus your front bar, but then you have 208 hits of Reverse Slice and 124 hits of Brawler. These are WAY higher than your main spammable. While doing a more dynamic rotation like this is viable, it's probably reducing your DPS, causing sustain issues, and making it more complicated than it needs to be especially if you're not the best parser yet.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

(...)

Use Weapon Damage pots for your Major Brutality. If you don't want to use Major Brutality pots, remove Carve and add Igneous Weapons for a cheap, long duration option on back bar.

Thank you SO much for your advice and effort to write this. This is very much appreciated.
I tried to incorporate this now into my build and now I manage to pass phase 3 without to much difficulty but still fail all the time in phase 4 due to mechanics. It is very often the lightning that kill me when I am struggling to kill that darn chain ghost and which restricts more and more my movement capability while there is that shadow collosus constantly pushing me. And of course the flame mage is out of reach. And this flame mage is basically always up. Even if I kill it. 2seconds later it is up again.

BTW one of my daggers is charged, the other nirnhoned. The Malstrohm bow is infused.

Here my current build:
I wear

• Slime (headpiece only)
• 5 Nirn
• 5 Order's Wrath
• Malstrom bow on backbar
• Pale Order ring

my front bar:


my backbar


From the blue tree I have slotted:
battle finesse
thaumaturg
weapon master (increase of direct damage)
deadly aim

From the red one:
boundless vigor
bloody renewal
bastion
enforced (additional armor)

All attributes are in stamina and I use thieves mundus stone.
I use either weapon power or crit potion. For food I use the braised rabbit. I could use take away broth as well but I am not sure if this helps me survive better.
I have picked up two each of the buffs from red and green arena, I did not find three in neither.
But actually I don't have ressource issues, I have health issues due to overwhelm in adds during phase 4. I have zero idea what to do about it.

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Here my current build:

If you press the info tab in combat metrics you can send all of this, along with some extra nice info to have. It is an "i", on the left side of the addon.
Info will be in german, but better than none. It will provide more thorough info on traits, enchants, etc.

Considering that you're going solo, and likely medium armor, maybe the lover can be a nice fix instead of the thief. It's not good for group content, but it can be useful in solo. Other options could be running 1 piece Valkyn Skoria instead of Slimecraw, and using Force of Nature blue CP, to boost your pen a bit higher.

On the skills: Soul trap is garbage, so is backbar fighter's crossbow. Whip is a nice spammable, use it at least as slottable. On things like flurry, not sure how good they are. It got buffed, but idk how it stands atm.
Run hardened armor for 6k armor and extra shield. It can help in solo content when you're not that experienced avoiding damage.
Also, use eruption, it is a hard hitting aoe with low cost. Give to caltrops a go instead of breath (10 second morph, gives also major breach). It's not better, but it can make your fight easier for different reasons.
Talons also hits like a truck, but as a stamdk idk if you'll be able to mantain it. If you have several adds around, maybe spamming FoO a bit can yield better results than any other thing, but same mag sustain in stamdk etc. You may want to consider using tristat pots, but the weap dmg pots are cheap so I understand the appeal

Mind that regardless of this, the higher your damage, the easier the fight:
After boss summons portals, she heals gradually. The longer you take killing the miniboss, the longer she'll heal, and the longer it'll take her to summon the next portal. Save ults to burn portals quick.
Spectral looking adds (such as fire mage or archer) will remain in portals. So if you don't kill em while in portal, you'll have to face them when boss is up.
Colossus don't count towards that, ignore them if you will. They aggro every 20%, or if damaged directly, they respawn after each portal. They don't deal a lot of dmg, but it can ramp up.

And don't use things like vampire/ww to get it. Single player arenas give you the chance to learn a lot from your mistakes. You could also run perma magma build, but I assure you that the improvement you'll see clearing it that way is none. Learn, it'll be better later, and you'll feel better when achieving your goals.

Bunch more of other stuff, but that is a couple pinpoints that may help you

I try now a different approach doing minotaur first, then fire platform and then the easy side boss.

Still I sometimes have the impression that I suffer from some stutters or other connection issues because I have small irks in the movements from time to time or my toon seems to stick for 2 ms unable to move.

well you want to keep dmg on the boss, but if its only dots and cleave while your hitting everything else, it will not burn her too quickly if your not trying to push her phase (when she explodes the platform)

aoe definitely is the best to deal dmg to both the boss and the adds, i did not find most of the adds to be too difficult as they seemed to die relatively quickly between the dots and aoes (one of the reasons my mag dk used the blackrose destro as it adds a decent dot to impulse, which also includes minor mangle reducing those adds max hp by 10% too)

edit: you can trigger the colossus that are part of the initial spawn early and just avoid pushing the boss at all during the first phase with no extra mechanics, by just going around and attacking all of them immediately

whenever the portal put me out near a colossus i would just kill the colossus asap if it got aggro'd

I wonder if I should invest either in potions that increase ult gain or in sets to have a faster ult generation. It really helps to throw the standart of might. What are your thoughts on that?

the secret bosses do helps significantly if your still learning it or having trouble, as it can give up to a max of +10k max resources (depending on order of portals you do, its different what max stats you have)