Not really specific to the dk (although dk is part of the problem), but something really needs to be done about major resolve pigeonholing tanks into running Frost Warden. It effects build diversity pretty heavily in 4 man content. IMO major resolve buffs should all be aoe and frost cloak provide something additional like say additional chance to provide apply brittle, some resource bonus, or even a long cool down application of major brittle (not really any other sources other than nunatak).

I feel like the idea behind this whole thing is to make try to make sure that no class has something shiny that other classes do not have, but leaving AOE exclusive to Warden is a big one from a tank perspective.

Shadesofkin wrote: »

The more I test, the more I’m convinced that Seething Fury needs to be more than just a whip mechanic, and that flame lash needs to process off Burning Status effects.

There needs to be a consistent temp class buff that affects all skills, seething fury would do it

Flame Lash using Burning rather than Off-Balance is a legitimately amazing idea!

GloatingSwine wrote: »

Brossin wrote: »

Not really specific to the dk (although dk is part of the problem), but something really needs to be done about major resolve pigeonholing tanks into running Frost Warden. It effects build diversity pretty heavily in 4 man content. IMO major resolve buffs should all be aoe and frost cloak provide something additional like say additional chance to provide apply brittle, some resource bonus, or even a long cool down application of major brittle (not really any other sources other than nunatak).

I feel like the idea behind this whole thing is to make try to make sure that no class has something shiny that other classes do not have, but leaving AOE exclusive to Warden is a big one from a tank perspective.

It's more than Major Resolve doing that. It's Chilled as well.

Winter's Embrace/Frost Staff means you can pretty reliably apply Chilled in an area to stuff like trial flagbearer enemies that are beefy enough to not fall over instantly but come in enough numbers that tapping them all with both a taunt and ele sus is irritating with Blockade/Boneyard which also does Minor Vulnerability.

Yeah, I was more meaning leaning into it a bit more as a bonus in addition to current functionality (in lieu of AOE MR) on the class skill itself. Regardless of what is left on it, they stripped Major Resolve from every dps build and made everyone hit harder, but get hit harder. So in addition to bringing most of the buffs for the group, I now have to design all of my builds to include Warden, but having a requirement to have Winter's Embrace in every content is really restricting for building. That being said, the Winter's Embrace is a very stout subclass. At least when it comes to the chilled aspect being in your group comp, that's just good optimization typically rather than a hard group requirement for most groups that i've encountered.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Tariq9898 wrote: »

I see the Standard of Might change as a huge talking point with this update, and rightly so. The changes for Standard of Might I feel should be reconsidered. Or at the very least, the flame DOT needs to return in some form whilst keeping the new group buff changes. This can be done without altering Shifting.

Beyond my feedback, I’ve seen other players suggest returning the flame damage by having more DK abilities slotted or DK skill lines. If this is ever implemented, Might would return to its former glory but at the cost of having to remain as a pure class, which is still behind subclassing anyways. Exclusivity to one class should come with meaningful advantages.

This change would achieve all of the following:

1) Keeping Shifting the same.
2) Having it depend on being a pure DK, thereby increasing pure class incentive. Something you stated as your design goal.
3) Enhancing the DK class identity by bringing back a staple of the play style since Day 1.

This is where class identity matters. It allows players to consciously weigh tradeoffs and opens up clearer, more intentional choices and alternatives for different types of content. This is a controlled return of a core mechanic that rewards class commitment while remaining balanced within the current system.

ZOS, please consider this approach. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_Erin

You cannot have Standard of Might both dealing insane damage AND insane group-buffing. That should be obvious for reasons that I do not even have to explain.

Beyond my feedback, I’ve seen other players suggest returning the flame damage by having more DK abilities slotted or DK skill lines. If this is ever implemented, Might would return to its former glory but at the cost of having to remain as a pure class, which is still behind subclassing anyways. Exclusivity to one class should come with meaningful advantages.

This change would achieve all of the following:

1) Keeping Shifting the same.
2) Having it depend on being a pure DK, thereby increasing pure class incentive. Something you stated as your design goal.
3) Enhancing the DK class identity by bringing back a staple of the play style since Day 1.

This is where class identity matters. It allows players to consciously weigh tradeoffs and opens up clearer, more intentional choices and alternatives for different types of content. This is a controlled return of a core mechanic that rewards class commitment while remaining balanced within the current system.

ZOS, please consider this approach. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_Erin [/quote]

You cannot have Standard of Might both dealing insane damage AND insane group-buffing. That should be obvious for reasons that I do not even have to explain.[/quote]

An alternative idea I’ve seen could be to add 12% damage buff and reduction on Shifting which is similar to what we have with Might right now. I’ve also seen a suggestion that Might could have a 100% uptime on empowered whip. Personally, I hope at least one of the Standard morph returns to a DPS ult that is similar to what we have right now. You talked about class expression, this is a big part of it for me and it’s a big part of my class identity. I know this sounds ridiculous. But, it meant a lot to me and I pray that it comes back someday 🙏

Edit: the formatting is completely messed up. Not sure why it quoted what I said earlier… Anyways, my new response is italicized.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Is 150k not high enough?
Dragonknight is doing extremely well.

I don’t see why you’re suggesting that it needs more… keep in mind, all of our reworks are going to need to meet DK, and the crazier the class gets, the crazier every other class will need to be.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm looking at varied viability. A player who doesn't want to spam a breath is doing significantly less overall dps. All I want is to see a class that can balance multiple builds. I just want some tweaks to make sure we have options that aren't focused on "Huff and puff and blow your house down"

The animations and audio updates to the DK skills are extreme and definitely need to be hard dialed back. When Kinras was meta in 12 man content, the AOE visual was annoying and many complained about it. This is so much worse. I can imagine this is going to make it a lot harder to see animation and to hear audio cues in trials.

This screenshot is 11 DKs casting class skills at the same time on a trial du
mmy...it's uhhh...intense

NierielSootica wrote: »

The animations and audio updates to the DK skills are extreme and definitely need to be hard dialed back. When Kinras was meta in 12 man content, the AOE visual was annoying and many complained about it. This is so much worse. I can imagine this is going to make it a lot harder to see animation and to hear audio cues in trials.

This screenshot is 11 DKs casting class skills at the same time on a trial du
mmy...it's uhhh...intense

Yeah that is pretty wild, but in all actuality, how many people will be playing DK in 12-man after these refreshes are done?

Assuming everything is balanced to DK, we should have a lot more class representation and everything won’t be orange at least.

I am also a huge fan of the setting to reduce friendly animations.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Yeah that is pretty wild, but in all actuality, how many people will be playing DK in 12-man after these refreshes are done?

And the truth comes out.

What truth is that? That you should see at least one of each class instead of 12 of one?

I've just installed the pts for the first time since I started playing ESO in 2022 because I couldn't wait till March to try out the new DK.

I just want to say I love what I'm seeing! Zos has clearly been cooking. I absolutely love the new Engulfing Dragonfire and really hope it makes it to live in a similar state to what it is now. I also like all the new visuals, though there's now lots of ring of fire effects and it can be hard to tell what people are using.

One minor feedback: Take Flight and it's interaction with Dragonfire is super bursty and awesome, but it would be better if it was changed to knocking up in the air like the base skill. Otherwise tanks will hate us and I'd have to restrict usage to bosses with not a lot of adds

I do have a DK on live but I haven't played much with it. I'm going to dust it off preparing for U49 and I really hope we get a similar DK on live.

Thanks ZOS!

Hi, I'm really excited about the DK refresh as DK is my favourite class. Here's a bit of background context for my feedback.

I've played since Beta and loved the Dragonknight from the start. I did fill in the class feedback survey and it felt good to be asked, I primarily play PvE only doing PvP when necessary or for transmute crystals. While I usually just do solo content I do occasionally get into veteran trails and dungeons. I prefer to approach the game from a RPing perspective rather than parsing, numbers, and PvP. I have four DK's all with their own identities an flavour: A pure magDK where everything is fire, a black argonian vampireDK with her theme being Fire and Blood, a StamDK with a necro skill line he is poison and death, and finally a fiery khajiitDK with dawns wrath for extra fire.


Do the refreshed abilities correctly portray the mechanics of the ability?
• Absolutely. I really enjoyed the flavour text descriptions of each new skill and passive.

Are there any key DK changes that you enjoyed?
• Channelled Engulfing Dragonfire is really fun, and is a nice addition to the DK kit. It certainly rivals the arcanist beam.
• I absolutely love the change to how Burning Embers heals. I've always wanted (since beta) a fire skill that heals as it does damage, and now in multi-target fights I can heal more from more targets rather than getting on heal at the end. This skill will now make staying alive while destroying crystals in Cloudrest portals much easier and more fun.
• I love the changes to Molten Weapons (and morphs) the extra fire damage on heavy and light attacks feels great and it's very satisfying to pair with the Pyrebrand (extra damage on light attacks). I also love that it meshes well with both light attacks and heavy attack builds. However while the visuals are very cool they do not feel fiery, earthy, or draconic.

Are there any key DK changes that did not feel great?
• Core of Flame (and morphs) Sound design is really underwhelming compared to old sound design. I cannot hear the new sound effects in the middle of a fight when there are so many other sounds going on. I really prefer the old sound design as the inhale thunderclap and roar exhale was a good audio cue to understand the pace of the skill. It helped me time what else I was doing in a fight. The new one has better visuals but the sound is really throwing my timings off.
• Earthspike Mantle (and morphs) looks really cool and much more high-res than the old version, but why is it so small. Old version was bigger and covered the back, shoulders and arms, it visually looked more like armour. The new one covers such a tiny surface area it visually feels underwhelming.
• Dragon Leap (and Take Flight morph). I still don't like that they knock enemies away. The majority of content favours grouping enemies close together. Especially as a DK you want all the enemies close to you to get caught in your abilities. You'd want the knockback to either knock enemies out of melee range, or to keep them close to you for maximum damage. These skills currently do neither. I'd prefer the skill to knock enemies down rather than away.
• I'd prefer Incinerate (Inferno morph) if instead of increasing the damage it increased tick frequency but overall damage was lower. It doesn't always feel worth it to activate it for only 3 waves of fire, but 5 waves would feel better even if the damage was lower.
• I'd like it if Seething Fury (from Molten Whip) had a visual representation on my character of how many stacks it's at. The old version gave glowing eyes, but I'd be happy if a number fireballs equal to number of stacks appeared around you (can reuse old Inferno visuals). It would be cooler if you gained dragon horns that got increasingly badass/longer the more stacks of Seething fury you have. The visuals are important so that during a fight I can see that I'm building them up before I use the full power Molten Whip, or I can just try to maintain stacks for the extra 300 weapon/spell damage at all times.

Is there anything else you would like to share about the DK changes?
• Fan the Flames passive is a good passive, but I wish that instead of burning just doing more damage , you could stack the burning status effect. Logically however 'on fire' something is it's always possible for it to be more 'on fire', burning isn't a binary on/off it's a spectrum. It would feel way more exciting, from a roleplaying perspective, to have all these skills that cause the burning status effect knowing that the enemy isn't just 'on fire' they are being incinerated by multiple causes of burning.
• Wing Buffet (and morphs) animation doesn't work properly with the wings appearing to the left of my character, and sideways. As opposed to attached to her back (which I assume is the intention)

Also wanted to add that I really prefer the class structure of not having a skill line be a specific role. So I am relieved to see you didn't change the DK to have Ardent flame as damage, Earthen Heart as Tanking and Draconic power as healing. While I understand it makes the game more accessible for newer players I personally find that it flattens the class design, it's very easy to think "I'm not making as tank so I won't pay as much attention to those skills" it's nice to have something from every skill line be applicable to every role, and it means that Subclassing will be more of a difficult choice. For example at the moment if you have a warden but you're not playing a healer it's very straightforward to just get rid of Green Balance skills and swap them for more damage, but having a mixture of utility across skill lines makes that choice less of a no-brainer. It has more weight to it.


Overall though I am really happy with the new Dragonknight, cannot wait for 9th March when I can intergrate all the new changes into my DK characters. I think everyone who's worked on this has done an amazing job of listening and implimenting community feedback. I'm excited to see what is done for future class changes.

Yeah so Take Flight will need to have the knock back changed.

The breath meta, which I suspect will be semi-popular among many players due to ease of use and likeable power fantasy, seems to revolve around high ult gen to keep the buff up as long as possible.

This means there will be lots of leaps going out.

This is going to be unbelievably annoying for tanks in randoms. The constant knockback and hard CC spam will make it harder to control adds and make DK a net negative despite reasonable DPS and Cleave.

Solution? Make Take Flight either root, or some kind of "stagger" that doesn't proc CC immunity like the ancient versions of Biting Jabs. It won't cause the same problem Jabs did as it's an ultimate and can't be cast every second.

In terms of the Leap knockback changes…

The feeling seems to be that Take Flight is the damage-oriented morph since that one buffs other skills, while Ferocious Leap is the one that shields you.

As such, Take Flight needs to be the one that doesn’t ruin stacking. The idea is that DPS will use that one most while doing a breath rotation, so it’s best to keep enemies there. Honestly, I’d even swap the knockback to a knockdown instead.

Ferocious Leap, with a shield, kind of already implies you want space. As such, that one should get the radial knockback we’re used to (and yes, that smashing feeling is great).

I’d put the knock up on the base morph, a knockdown on Take Flight, and knock back on Ferocious Leap.

(Incidentally, “Ferocious Leap” sounds a lot more like a skill that will do damage and empower you, so should the morphs be swapped based on the names in the first place?)

HalfDragoness wrote: »

Hi, I'm really excited about the DK refresh as DK is my favourite class. Here's a bit of background context for my feedback.

I've played since Beta and loved the Dragonknight from the start. I did fill in the class feedback survey and it felt good to be asked, I primarily play PvE only doing PvP when necessary or for transmute crystals. While I usually just do solo content I do occasionally get into veteran trails and dungeons. I prefer to approach the game from a RPing perspective rather than parsing, numbers, and PvP. I have four DK's all with their own identities an flavour: A pure magDK where everything is fire, a black argonian vampireDK with her theme being Fire and Blood, a StamDK with a necro skill line he is poison and death, and finally a fiery khajiitDK with dawns wrath for extra fire.


Do the refreshed abilities correctly portray the mechanics of the ability?
• Absolutely. I really enjoyed the flavour text descriptions of each new skill and passive.

Are there any key DK changes that you enjoyed?
• Channelled Engulfing Dragonfire is really fun, and is a nice addition to the DK kit. It certainly rivals the arcanist beam.
• I absolutely love the change to how Burning Embers heals. I've always wanted (since beta) a fire skill that heals as it does damage, and now in multi-target fights I can heal more from more targets rather than getting on heal at the end. This skill will now make staying alive while destroying crystals in Cloudrest portals much easier and more fun.
• I love the changes to Molten Weapons (and morphs) the extra fire damage on heavy and light attacks feels great and it's very satisfying to pair with the Pyrebrand (extra damage on light attacks). I also love that it meshes well with both light attacks and heavy attack builds. However while the visuals are very cool they do not feel fiery, earthy, or draconic.

Are there any key DK changes that did not feel great?
• Core of Flame (and morphs) Sound design is really underwhelming compared to old sound design. I cannot hear the new sound effects in the middle of a fight when there are so many other sounds going on. I really prefer the old sound design as the inhale thunderclap and roar exhale was a good audio cue to understand the pace of the skill. It helped me time what else I was doing in a fight. The new one has better visuals but the sound is really throwing my timings off.
• Earthspike Mantle (and morphs) looks really cool and much more high-res than the old version, but why is it so small. Old version was bigger and covered the back, shoulders and arms, it visually looked more like armour. The new one covers such a tiny surface area it visually feels underwhelming.
• Dragon Leap (and Take Flight morph). I still don't like that they knock enemies away. The majority of content favours grouping enemies close together. Especially as a DK you want all the enemies close to you to get caught in your abilities. You'd want the knockback to either knock enemies out of melee range, or to keep them close to you for maximum damage. These skills currently do neither. I'd prefer the skill to knock enemies down rather than away.
• I'd prefer Incinerate (Inferno morph) if instead of increasing the damage it increased tick frequency but overall damage was lower. It doesn't always feel worth it to activate it for only 3 waves of fire, but 5 waves would feel better even if the damage was lower.
• I'd like it if Seething Fury (from Molten Whip) had a visual representation on my character of how many stacks it's at. The old version gave glowing eyes, but I'd be happy if a number fireballs equal to number of stacks appeared around you (can reuse old Inferno visuals). It would be cooler if you gained dragon horns that got increasingly badass/longer the more stacks of Seething fury you have. The visuals are important so that during a fight I can see that I'm building them up before I use the full power Molten Whip, or I can just try to maintain stacks for the extra 300 weapon/spell damage at all times.

Is there anything else you would like to share about the DK changes?
• Fan the Flames passive is a good passive, but I wish that instead of burning just doing more damage , you could stack the burning status effect. Logically however 'on fire' something is it's always possible for it to be more 'on fire', burning isn't a binary on/off it's a spectrum. It would feel way more exciting, from a roleplaying perspective, to have all these skills that cause the burning status effect knowing that the enemy isn't just 'on fire' they are being incinerated by multiple causes of burning.
• Wing Buffet (and morphs) animation doesn't work properly with the wings appearing to the left of my character, and sideways. As opposed to attached to her back (which I assume is the intention)

Also wanted to add that I really prefer the class structure of not having a skill line be a specific role. So I am relieved to see you didn't change the DK to have Ardent flame as damage, Earthen Heart as Tanking and Draconic power as healing. While I understand it makes the game more accessible for newer players I personally find that it flattens the class design, it's very easy to think "I'm not making as tank so I won't pay as much attention to those skills" it's nice to have something from every skill line be applicable to every role, and it means that Subclassing will be more of a difficult choice. For example at the moment if you have a warden but you're not playing a healer it's very straightforward to just get rid of Green Balance skills and swap them for more damage, but having a mixture of utility across skill lines makes that choice less of a no-brainer. It has more weight to it.


Overall though I am really happy with the new Dragonknight, cannot wait for 9th March when I can intergrate all the new changes into my DK characters. I think everyone who's worked on this has done an amazing job of listening and implimenting community feedback. I'm excited to see what is done for future class changes.

This is the exact opposite of my opinion.

If you make class lines more modular they will be easier to balance for both sublcassing and full class, having dps skills dragon fire breath and leap, placed randomly in draconic power what is mostly a skill line for cc and support makes no sense to me, in order to get the full ardent flame experience, I now have to slot both draconic and ardent. they should move cinder storm and dk standard to draconic power where the would synergize with chains and talons and move breath with leap to ardent flame, call ardent flame draconic fury or what ever, that way I get fracture in the dps skill line again like warden does.

what are the going to do with warden move sub assault and deep fissure in to green balance or winters embrace?

Its making subclassing redundant rather than optional. this is a scrolls game we should be able to play as we want like a scrolls game, if every class had a dedicated dps line healing line/tanking line cc skill line or what ever it would open up subclassing by adding more attractive skill lines than just, the current restoring light/aedric spear/ animal companions/assassination meta. just buff the lines that are under performing templar fucntions just fine without subclassing use that as a model for the others.

I don't want a future where we have spec bow in shadow or siphoning, jabs in restoring light or dawns wrath, or hurricane in deadric summoning or dark magic, just to nerf subclass.

To me this thinking is backwards.

Do the refreshed abilities correctly portray the mechanics of the ability?

More or less.

Are there any key DK changes that you enjoyed?

• Changes to whip and engulfing are interesting. For the most part I appreciate the new animations.
  

Are there any key DK changes that did not feel great?

• I don't like the change to the Standard of Might or Eruption. Those were bread and butter DK skills for 10 years. I would have preferred them not getting touched.
  
• The DoT's in general feel a bit too weak. DK for me is the DoT class, and part of the fun of playing DK (pre-subclassing) was you would be rewarded with your DoT uptime with greater DPS. With the removal of Eruption as a DoT it feels like we are losing something.
  
• I would have liked the old Flames of Oblivion skill with the floating balls of fire worked into the new skill. I like what the new skill does, but I liked the old animation better.
  
• The single target Whip needs to do more DPS. It seems to be lagging behind engulfing and that is odd to me that a channeled AoE is doing more single target damage than a single target skill. I would want to have Engulfing be the skill of choice for multi target fights and whip be the clear choice for single target.
  
• I don't like that the new molten arms skill changes the motif of my weapon.
  
• Animation for Magma Fist should be faster and heat shock should be more powerful.
  

Is there anything else you would like to share about the DK changes?

I think the team went too far with all the skill and passive renaming. Its not the end of the world, but I don't think it added very much value either.

I really don't like "Wing Buffet" or "Hearth and Home" neither feels like epic fantasy magic. One feels like a menu option at Buffalo Wild Wings and the other feels like a magazine old ladies buy at the grocery store.

I would also recommend that the developers rethink the passives for DK. A lot of them feel very "meh" and if this is supposed to be an exciting revamp then I would like to see something more compelling.

Shadesofkin wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Is 150k not high enough?
Dragonknight is doing extremely well.

I don’t see why you’re suggesting that it needs more… keep in mind, all of our reworks are going to need to meet DK, and the crazier the class gets, the crazier every other class will need to be.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm looking at varied viability. A player who doesn't want to spam a breath is doing significantly less overall dps. All I want is to see a class that can balance multiple builds. I just want some tweaks to make sure we have options that aren't focused on "Huff and puff and blow your house down"

It might also be nice to enhance the Standard of Might’s DPS by having it tie exclusively to Whip empowerment. This change might be enough to bring whip builds up to engulfing flames and to bring back Might as a viable DPS ult for pure DKs. Anyone who’s parsing close to 150k on a pure DK is doing it with flame beam. We both want to see other viable options that aren’t beam. I enjoy using the whip as a spammable and now even more so because the new animations look sick.