BattleAxe wrote: »

My personal take whip could use a buff to its damage to bring it on bar to dragon beam. I’d also say leave standard as is. I think once dragon leap visuals are fixed and change it from knock back to knock down leap will be in a good spot and it is very iconic in my mind to a dragon knight. I’ve always wanted to use leap over standard for pve dps and with the changes it’s perfect for dk ultimate. I’d also ask the healing taken passive should get an addition of increase all flame dmg x% based on number of dk skills slotted I think 3% per dk skill should be decent.


Furthermore all dk dots should tik every second of their duration.

Standard applying buffs to Whip could bring it back from the dead for pure DK DPS ult. Plus, it would also be quite niche to whip builds. I firmly believe both Leap and Standard can be changed so that way both ults are viable for DPS for different scenarios. Further highlighting its identity and uniqueness. It doesn’t have to be black and white, nor should it be. I say this because I personally enjoy the Standard of Might’s playstyle and I don’t want it taken away from me.

LtClungeX wrote: »

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.

I definitely understand you value the modular way of organising skills, and it makes sense before subclassing was introduced. However, I believe, subclassing changes everything for two main reasons:

1. I have a necro healer I'm choosing to subclass with. If I want to pick another skill line for additional healing I have to choose whether to swap out the tank skill line or the dps skill line. I could, of course, swap out the healing skill line but since I want to have a necromancer healer, what would be the point of that thematically? So if I want to heal and stay alive I should swap out the dps skill line to take another healing one. I now have two healing skill lines and a tank skill line. This is great for veteran trials where I really do just need to focus on healing and staying alive. However it makes solo play and questing so dull because it now takes foever to kill anything. If I swap out the tank line so I have two healing skill lines and a dps line This is good for solo content but not so great for veteran trials/dungeons. I could switch between the two for different playstyles but I personally find it a lot of mental effort as it changes how the character plays and feels, I'd rather keep my characters identity than constantly change it. I don't really like how swapping out one skill line leaves you devoid of

2. I think subclassing should have drawbacks. It shouldn't be an easy choice, you should be giving something up in order choose any other skill line. It should be more like, yes you can reconfigure your character to be extremely powerful or exactly the way you want.. but you have to give something up in order to do that. I know that in singleplayer Elder Scrolls games classes don't exist but that's been part of the core of the online version since it began. I guess if you wanted to shake iot up completely you wouldn't even pick a class and you could just have all the current class skill lines be learnable the same way weapon skill lines are but you can only access three at a time, but even if that were the case I'd prefer each skill line to be a mix of things not solely dps/heal/tank.

But that's just my preference.

Location, Location, Location (and some order)
The biggest problem with the new change to the DragonKnight is that even after changing and moving skills around it still has the same problem that it does now. The skills and passives in each skill line are nowhere comparable to the grouping of other classes. Each DragonKnight skill line is a mixture of DPS, Tank, and Healer abilities, making it not worth using over any other skill line that has 4-5 skills specific to each role. The dev team is always talking about a build’s “kit” and while the individual tools in this kit look useful, it looks like it was packed at random. Even if using all 3 skill lines offers multiple choices, it will not compare to a Hybrid build that uses 3 distinct skill lines for their role. It would be fine for every skill line to offer something for DPS, Tanking, and Healing if every other class was organized the same way. But, until they are, the DragonKnight will underperform when compared to these other classes and hybridizations.

Let’s compare the DragonKnight to the golden child, the Arcanist, using just the DPS role as an example. And this is not to say that Arcanist is too OP or the only class that does this, but if this is going to be the last class to get updated then this is what all other classes will be competing against. This also is not even about the values of these skills, but merely what you get in each class line. I also won’t be comparing synergies, because those require others to activate which is no use in solo content, and unreliable in randomized group play where no one is communicating.

The Arcanist DPS line is clearly Herald of the Tome
Skills
• The Unblinking Eye – Deals damage, Morph options for increased damage or tracking damage
• Runeblades – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added AOE damage
• Fatecarver – AOE Channel damage, Morph options for added duration or add survivability
• Abyssal Impact – AOE semi-spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
•Tome-bearer’s Inspiration – Utility skill that increases damage, Morph option for increased damage (notice a theme yet?) or added sustainability
• The Imperfect Ring – DOT skill, Morph options for added AOE damage or crowd control

Passives
• Fated Fortune - Increased Critical Damage and healing by - buffs damage from all sources, and all healing done
• Harnessed Quintessence – Adds Weapon and Spell Damage – buffs damage from all sources and healing done
• Psychic Lesion – Adds status effect chance and damage - buff all status effects damage
•Splintered Secrets – Increased Penetration – buffs all damage done.

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 12 of them do or increase damage – 12/12
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 4 of them buff all sources of damage – 8/8
And here we come to the main problem. Which is the DPS line for the DragonKnight
Every skill does damage, with an morph to augment the damage, and every passive increases all damage from any class/skill.

Let’s compare Ardent Flame because it used to be the more damage focused line.
Skills
• DragonKnight Standard – Utility skill to increase damage output and reduce damage input, Morph options for increased values or alternative damage source
• Lava Whip – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
• Searing Strike – Single target DOT, Morph options for increased damage or add survivability that scales from Tanking stats
• *Core of Flame – Utility skill for sustainability with minimal damage, Morph options for an interrupt with increase in damage or added survivability
• Hearthfire – HOT skill, Morph options for increased healing when putting yourself in danger and Healing now scaling from Tanking stats
• Inferno – AOE/”DOT” skill, Morph options for increased damage and heals instead of damage

Passives
• Combustion – Restores resources
• Traumatic Burns – Target takes extra Flame damage and moves slower – Increased Flame damage from all sources
• *Fan the Flames - Adds Burning status effect chance and damage - buff Burning status effects damage
• Soul Ablaze - Increased Healing Taken

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 6 of them deal damage and scale from DPS stats (6/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 2 of them buff damage, and 0 of them buff all sources of damage – 2/8
3 of the skill morphs don't do any damage, 1 of the damage morphs adds a heal, but it scales of health not damage stats. and Core of Flame is just rough (see below for more on this skill)

Rather than compare the next 2 lines, since this was probably the most DPS related, let’s look at a much more appealing grouping for skills and passives that can be solved by just moving the skills around into different skill lines and some differ orders. I only tweaked 3 skills and 2 passives to make them synergize better.

Ardent Flame (DPS line)
• *Dragon Leap - Modify both morphs to increase damage in some way.
• Lava whip
• *Dragonfire Breath – Lower base damage if it’s too high, but modify the Flamethrower Morph to proc the burning status effect with each tick. This will synergize with the class passives and give it something to make it unique to the other class beam skills
• Molten Weapons
• Dark Talons
• Seating Strike
• Passives
o Fan the Flames (increases Burning proc chance and Damage)
o Avalanche (increases damage up to 10%)
o World in ruin (increases damage done with AOE and DOT 7%) – why was this in the tank line with only 2 AOE/DOT skills?
o *Traumatic Burns (increase flame damage taken by 5% and reduce movement speed) – Modify this skill to increase all damage by 5% while target is burning. This synergizes with the skills procing burning and other passives effecting burring. 5% is roughly equivalent to damage increased from 3000 penetration, 12% crit damage or 6% crit chance that other classed offer. If there are concerns about this being too high in group content, make it 1% from all sources and an additional 4% from the caster, but in solo or 4 man dungeons with only 2 DPS, there is not enough fire damage to make this skill comparable. It also does nothing to buff damage if you want to play with a lighting or frost staff or any physical attacks.

Draconic Power (Tank/PVP line)
• Magma Armor
• Chains of Flame (A tank needs to pull and taunt things)
• Earthspike Mantle (A tank needs armor before unlocking its final skill)
• Dragon Blood
• Wing Buffet
• Petrify
•Passives
o Heart of Stone (2974 Armor)
o Burnished Scales (increases block 10%)
o Storm Voice (Restores resources when using ultimate)
o Combustion (Restores resources when procing burning)

Earthen Heart (Healer/Support line)
• DragonKnight Standard
• Superheated Ward
• *Core of Flame– This skill is trying to do too many things that it doesn’t do anything well. There are multiple ways to fix this, but here are 2
o Option 1: Modify the skill cost to scale off your highest resource, then increase the amount it returns, but only have it return your lowest resource. It could also have a longer duration rather than increase the amount per tick
o Option 2: Revert the skill back to the previous version, but make one morph deal interrupting followed by a damage explosion and the other morph absorbing resources and exploding with an AOE heal that scales based on the number of enemies hit with the initial resource absorption (this option fits better with the DragonKnight having multiple healing skills that encourage it to stand with the DPS near the damage)
• Hearthfire
• Obsidian Shield
• Inferno
• Passives
o Blessing at the Peak (generates Ultimate)
o Ender Dragon (Adds Minor Brutality and health recovery) heath recovery is no good in PVP
o Mountain Giant (Heavy Attacks set off balance and restore Stamina)
o *Soul Ablaze (Increases Healing Taken by 8%) – Modify to increase Shield size by 8% or healing done and shield size by 4% each. This will make it a much stronger support line.

New Rankings
Arden Flame (DPS Line)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them deal significant damage and scale from DPS stats (9/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 3 of them buff all sources of damage – 7/8

Draconic Power (Tank/DPS)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them offer survivability, crowd control or CC resistance (10/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 offer survivability and sustain, and all 4 are needed for PVP and at least 2 would be needed for Tanking (even if you had a good healer) – 7/8

Earthen Heart
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 11 of them either heal/buff your party members or debuff the enemy (11/12)
o There’s been a lot of talk about the Draconic Standard, and which morph should buff vs cause damage but I chose to put it here because Dragon leap increases the damage and the flame thrower, Magma shell is one of the best tank ultimates and Corrosive Armor is really only useful in PVP, while the Standard now buffs other team members.
• Of the 4 Passives, 3 of them directly supports other players, and at least 2 of the 4 will compliment any rule – 5/8

This makes the DragonKnight much more comparable to other classes when looking at their roles. It matches the passives with the skills they are using and offers enticing options for someone to choose a DragonKnight skill line to add to their own. If you want to run as a pure DK you still have that option but can also hybridize into other classes without losing over half the skills and passives you need for your role. This class is so close to being good. Let's just make it make more sense.

GuardianV wrote: »

Location, Location, Location (and some order)
The biggest problem with the new change to the DragonKnight is that even after changing and moving skills around it still has the same problem that it does now. The skills and passives in each skill line are nowhere comparable to the grouping of other classes. Each DragonKnight skill line is a mixture of DPS, Tank, and Healer abilities, making it not worth using over any other skill line that has 4-5 skills specific to each role. The dev team is always talking about a build’s “kit” and while the individual tools in this kit look useful, it looks like it was packed at random. Even if using all 3 skill lines offers multiple choices, it will not compare to a Hybrid build that uses 3 distinct skill lines for their role. It would be fine for every skill line to offer something for DPS, Tanking, and Healing if every other class was organized the same way. But, until they are, the DragonKnight will underperform when compared to these other classes and hybridizations.

This is the point though.

As each class gets their refresh, they're planning to break this up. They want each Class line to have options for each role, and to not allow for this system of "one line per role."

See the article:

In light of subclassing, we’ve decided to look at skill line ability and passive distribution more closely than we have before. There are currently two distinct models of building skill lines for classes; a role-centric model (Necromancer, Arcanist, most of Warden), and one that focuses on theme or identity (the original 4 classes, with some exceptions such as the Nightblades’ Assassination).

Prior to subclassing, there was a strong internal sentiment that the newer class model of role-specific skill lines was a more successful system for newer players, building more digestible experiences, and building more modular buckets that could be more easily compared and balanced to one another.

With subclassing, however, this model introduced a slew of challenges and imbalances where now the ideal way to play would involve picking a role-specific line from every class. This created a sense that it was largely ineffective to stay true to your class, and that the power difference between those who do and do not was larger than any other build permutations before.

This also hurt and exasperated an already existing problem space of class identity feeling like it took a back seat to gameplay. As such, we’ll be adjusting skill lines to follow a more theme- and identity-focused model as we work on each class, where we blend a healthy mix of tools and effects for every role in each.

It is our hope that every skill line will offer something you can use regardless of your role, while simultaneously spreading out the power that makes a class come to life and drive home the sensation that staying true to your class is also a much more viable and distinct option.

It does mean that the earlier Classes will have a more difficult time until they get to NB or Arcanist, but it is going in that direction.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

GuardianV wrote: »

Location, Location, Location (and some order)
The biggest problem with the new change to the DragonKnight is that even after changing and moving skills around it still has the same problem that it does now. The skills and passives in each skill line are nowhere comparable to the grouping of other classes. Each DragonKnight skill line is a mixture of DPS, Tank, and Healer abilities, making it not worth using over any other skill line that has 4-5 skills specific to each role. The dev team is always talking about a build’s “kit” and while the individual tools in this kit look useful, it looks like it was packed at random. Even if using all 3 skill lines offers multiple choices, it will not compare to a Hybrid build that uses 3 distinct skill lines for their role. It would be fine for every skill line to offer something for DPS, Tanking, and Healing if every other class was organized the same way. But, until they are, the DragonKnight will underperform when compared to these other classes and hybridizations.

This is the point though.

It may be the point, but the point will be making the game less good. Consolidated skill lines are cool.

GuardianV wrote: »

Location, Location, Location (and some order)
The biggest problem with the new change to the DragonKnight is that even after changing and moving skills around it still has the same problem that it does now. The skills and passives in each skill line are nowhere comparable to the grouping of other classes. Each DragonKnight skill line is a mixture of DPS, Tank, and Healer abilities, making it not worth using over any other skill line that has 4-5 skills specific to each role. The dev team is always talking about a build’s “kit” and while the individual tools in this kit look useful, it looks like it was packed at random. Even if using all 3 skill lines offers multiple choices, it will not compare to a Hybrid build that uses 3 distinct skill lines for their role. It would be fine for every skill line to offer something for DPS, Tanking, and Healing if every other class was organized the same way. But, until they are, the DragonKnight will underperform when compared to these other classes and hybridizations.

Let’s compare the DragonKnight to the golden child, the Arcanist, using just the DPS role as an example. And this is not to say that Arcanist is too OP or the only class that does this, but if this is going to be the last class to get updated then this is what all other classes will be competing against. This also is not even about the values of these skills, but merely what you get in each class line. I also won’t be comparing synergies, because those require others to activate which is no use in solo content, and unreliable in randomized group play where no one is communicating.

The Arcanist DPS line is clearly Herald of the Tome
Skills
• The Unblinking Eye – Deals damage, Morph options for increased damage or tracking damage
• Runeblades – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added AOE damage
• Fatecarver – AOE Channel damage, Morph options for added duration or add survivability
• Abyssal Impact – AOE semi-spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
•Tome-bearer’s Inspiration – Utility skill that increases damage, Morph option for increased damage (notice a theme yet?) or added sustainability
• The Imperfect Ring – DOT skill, Morph options for added AOE damage or crowd control

Passives
• Fated Fortune - Increased Critical Damage and healing by - buffs damage from all sources, and all healing done
• Harnessed Quintessence – Adds Weapon and Spell Damage – buffs damage from all sources and healing done
• Psychic Lesion – Adds status effect chance and damage - buff all status effects damage
•Splintered Secrets – Increased Penetration – buffs all damage done.

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 12 of them do or increase damage – 12/12
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 4 of them buff all sources of damage – 8/8
And here we come to the main problem. Which is the DPS line for the DragonKnight
Every skill does damage, with an morph to augment the damage, and every passive increases all damage from any class/skill.

Let’s compare Ardent Flame because it used to be the more damage focused line.
Skills
• DragonKnight Standard – Utility skill to increase damage output and reduce damage input, Morph options for increased values or alternative damage source
• Lava Whip – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
• Searing Strike – Single target DOT, Morph options for increased damage or add survivability that scales from Tanking stats
• *Core of Flame – Utility skill for sustainability with minimal damage, Morph options for an interrupt with increase in damage or added survivability
• Hearthfire – HOT skill, Morph options for increased healing when putting yourself in danger and Healing now scaling from Tanking stats
• Inferno – AOE/”DOT” skill, Morph options for increased damage and heals instead of damage

Passives
• Combustion – Restores resources
• Traumatic Burns – Target takes extra Flame damage and moves slower – Increased Flame damage from all sources
• *Fan the Flames - Adds Burning status effect chance and damage - buff Burning status effects damage
• Soul Ablaze - Increased Healing Taken

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 6 of them deal damage and scale from DPS stats (6/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 2 of them buff damage, and 0 of them buff all sources of damage – 2/8
3 of the skill morphs don't do any damage, 1 of the damage morphs adds a heal, but it scales of health not damage stats. and Core of Flame is just rough (see below for more on this skill)

Rather than compare the next 2 lines, since this was probably the most DPS related, let’s look at a much more appealing grouping for skills and passives that can be solved by just moving the skills around into different skill lines and some differ orders. I only tweaked 3 skills and 2 passives to make them synergize better.

Ardent Flame (DPS line)
• *Dragon Leap - Modify both morphs to increase damage in some way.
• Lava whip
• *Dragonfire Breath – Lower base damage if it’s too high, but modify the Flamethrower Morph to proc the burning status effect with each tick. This will synergize with the class passives and give it something to make it unique to the other class beam skills
• Molten Weapons
• Dark Talons
• Seating Strike
• Passives
o Fan the Flames (increases Burning proc chance and Damage)
o Avalanche (increases damage up to 10%)
o World in ruin (increases damage done with AOE and DOT 7%) – why was this in the tank line with only 2 AOE/DOT skills?
o *Traumatic Burns (increase flame damage taken by 5% and reduce movement speed) – Modify this skill to increase all damage by 5% while target is burning. This synergizes with the skills procing burning and other passives effecting burring. 5% is roughly equivalent to damage increased from 3000 penetration, 12% crit damage or 6% crit chance that other classed offer. If there are concerns about this being too high in group content, make it 1% from all sources and an additional 4% from the caster, but in solo or 4 man dungeons with only 2 DPS, there is not enough fire damage to make this skill comparable. It also does nothing to buff damage if you want to play with a lighting or frost staff or any physical attacks.

Draconic Power (Tank/PVP line)
• Magma Armor
• Chains of Flame (A tank needs to pull and taunt things)
• Earthspike Mantle (A tank needs armor before unlocking its final skill)
• Dragon Blood
• Wing Buffet
• Petrify
•Passives
o Heart of Stone (2974 Armor)
o Burnished Scales (increases block 10%)
o Storm Voice (Restores resources when using ultimate)
o Combustion (Restores resources when procing burning)

Earthen Heart (Healer/Support line)
• DragonKnight Standard
• Superheated Ward
• *Core of Flame– This skill is trying to do too many things that it doesn’t do anything well. There are multiple ways to fix this, but here are 2
o Option 1: Modify the skill cost to scale off your highest resource, then increase the amount it returns, but only have it return your lowest resource. It could also have a longer duration rather than increase the amount per tick
o Option 2: Revert the skill back to the previous version, but make one morph deal interrupting followed by a damage explosion and the other morph absorbing resources and exploding with an AOE heal that scales based on the number of enemies hit with the initial resource absorption (this option fits better with the DragonKnight having multiple healing skills that encourage it to stand with the DPS near the damage)
• Hearthfire
• Obsidian Shield
• Inferno
• Passives
o Blessing at the Peak (generates Ultimate)
o Ender Dragon (Adds Minor Brutality and health recovery) heath recovery is no good in PVP
o Mountain Giant (Heavy Attacks set off balance and restore Stamina)
o *Soul Ablaze (Increases Healing Taken by 8%) – Modify to increase Shield size by 8% or healing done and shield size by 4% each. This will make it a much stronger support line.

New Rankings
Arden Flame (DPS Line)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them deal significant damage and scale from DPS stats (9/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 3 of them buff all sources of damage – 7/8

Draconic Power (Tank/DPS)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them offer survivability, crowd control or CC resistance (10/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 offer survivability and sustain, and all 4 are needed for PVP and at least 2 would be needed for Tanking (even if you had a good healer) – 7/8

Earthen Heart
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 11 of them either heal/buff your party members or debuff the enemy (11/12)
o There’s been a lot of talk about the Draconic Standard, and which morph should buff vs cause damage but I chose to put it here because Dragon leap increases the damage and the flame thrower, Magma shell is one of the best tank ultimates and Corrosive Armor is really only useful in PVP, while the Standard now buffs other team members.
• Of the 4 Passives, 3 of them directly supports other players, and at least 2 of the 4 will compliment any rule – 5/8

This makes the DragonKnight much more comparable to other classes when looking at their roles. It matches the passives with the skills they are using and offers enticing options for someone to choose a DragonKnight skill line to add to their own. If you want to run as a pure DK you still have that option but can also hybridize into other classes without losing over half the skills and passives you need for your role. This class is so close to being good. Let's just make it make more sense.

The primary goal is to make one hesitate to give up skill lines to subclass. The secondary reason the lines have something for each role is to not make it so easy to subclass. Your right dragonknight is the first class but not only class being reworked. Not to mention dk took the longest due to the major overhaul dk took after warden and sorc it’s a safe bet the last 4 Templar, Nightblade, Necromancer, Arcanist will likely be 2 at a time if not all 4 at once since they will likely need the least amount of work.

Summary: biggest goal of reworking every class is to make pure classes a competitive option to current subclassing. Which after every class rework comes and goes subclassing will likely have lost most appeal aside from very niche situations example a pure summoner/conjuration class

BattleAxe wrote: »

GuardianV wrote: »

Location, Location, Location (and some order)
The biggest problem with the new change to the DragonKnight is that even after changing and moving skills around it still has the same problem that it does now. The skills and passives in each skill line are nowhere comparable to the grouping of other classes. Each DragonKnight skill line is a mixture of DPS, Tank, and Healer abilities, making it not worth using over any other skill line that has 4-5 skills specific to each role. The dev team is always talking about a build’s “kit” and while the individual tools in this kit look useful, it looks like it was packed at random. Even if using all 3 skill lines offers multiple choices, it will not compare to a Hybrid build that uses 3 distinct skill lines for their role. It would be fine for every skill line to offer something for DPS, Tanking, and Healing if every other class was organized the same way. But, until they are, the DragonKnight will underperform when compared to these other classes and hybridizations.

Let’s compare the DragonKnight to the golden child, the Arcanist, using just the DPS role as an example. And this is not to say that Arcanist is too OP or the only class that does this, but if this is going to be the last class to get updated then this is what all other classes will be competing against. This also is not even about the values of these skills, but merely what you get in each class line. I also won’t be comparing synergies, because those require others to activate which is no use in solo content, and unreliable in randomized group play where no one is communicating.

The Arcanist DPS line is clearly Herald of the Tome
Skills
• The Unblinking Eye – Deals damage, Morph options for increased damage or tracking damage
• Runeblades – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added AOE damage
• Fatecarver – AOE Channel damage, Morph options for added duration or add survivability
• Abyssal Impact – AOE semi-spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
•Tome-bearer’s Inspiration – Utility skill that increases damage, Morph option for increased damage (notice a theme yet?) or added sustainability
• The Imperfect Ring – DOT skill, Morph options for added AOE damage or crowd control

Passives
• Fated Fortune - Increased Critical Damage and healing by - buffs damage from all sources, and all healing done
• Harnessed Quintessence – Adds Weapon and Spell Damage – buffs damage from all sources and healing done
• Psychic Lesion – Adds status effect chance and damage - buff all status effects damage
•Splintered Secrets – Increased Penetration – buffs all damage done.

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 12 of them do or increase damage – 12/12
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 4 of them buff all sources of damage – 8/8
And here we come to the main problem. Which is the DPS line for the DragonKnight
Every skill does damage, with an morph to augment the damage, and every passive increases all damage from any class/skill.

Let’s compare Ardent Flame because it used to be the more damage focused line.
Skills
• DragonKnight Standard – Utility skill to increase damage output and reduce damage input, Morph options for increased values or alternative damage source
• Lava Whip – Mostly single target spamable, Morph options for increased damage or added survivability
• Searing Strike – Single target DOT, Morph options for increased damage or add survivability that scales from Tanking stats
• *Core of Flame – Utility skill for sustainability with minimal damage, Morph options for an interrupt with increase in damage or added survivability
• Hearthfire – HOT skill, Morph options for increased healing when putting yourself in danger and Healing now scaling from Tanking stats
• Inferno – AOE/”DOT” skill, Morph options for increased damage and heals instead of damage

Passives
• Combustion – Restores resources
• Traumatic Burns – Target takes extra Flame damage and moves slower – Increased Flame damage from all sources
• *Fan the Flames - Adds Burning status effect chance and damage - buff Burning status effects damage
• Soul Ablaze - Increased Healing Taken

Ranking
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 6 of them deal damage and scale from DPS stats (6/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 2 of them buff damage, and 0 of them buff all sources of damage – 2/8
3 of the skill morphs don't do any damage, 1 of the damage morphs adds a heal, but it scales of health not damage stats. and Core of Flame is just rough (see below for more on this skill)

Rather than compare the next 2 lines, since this was probably the most DPS related, let’s look at a much more appealing grouping for skills and passives that can be solved by just moving the skills around into different skill lines and some differ orders. I only tweaked 3 skills and 2 passives to make them synergize better.

Ardent Flame (DPS line)
• *Dragon Leap - Modify both morphs to increase damage in some way.
• Lava whip
• *Dragonfire Breath – Lower base damage if it’s too high, but modify the Flamethrower Morph to proc the burning status effect with each tick. This will synergize with the class passives and give it something to make it unique to the other class beam skills
• Molten Weapons
• Dark Talons
• Seating Strike
• Passives
o Fan the Flames (increases Burning proc chance and Damage)
o Avalanche (increases damage up to 10%)
o World in ruin (increases damage done with AOE and DOT 7%) – why was this in the tank line with only 2 AOE/DOT skills?
o *Traumatic Burns (increase flame damage taken by 5% and reduce movement speed) – Modify this skill to increase all damage by 5% while target is burning. This synergizes with the skills procing burning and other passives effecting burring. 5% is roughly equivalent to damage increased from 3000 penetration, 12% crit damage or 6% crit chance that other classed offer. If there are concerns about this being too high in group content, make it 1% from all sources and an additional 4% from the caster, but in solo or 4 man dungeons with only 2 DPS, there is not enough fire damage to make this skill comparable. It also does nothing to buff damage if you want to play with a lighting or frost staff or any physical attacks.

Draconic Power (Tank/PVP line)
• Magma Armor
• Chains of Flame (A tank needs to pull and taunt things)
• Earthspike Mantle (A tank needs armor before unlocking its final skill)
• Dragon Blood
• Wing Buffet
• Petrify
•Passives
o Heart of Stone (2974 Armor)
o Burnished Scales (increases block 10%)
o Storm Voice (Restores resources when using ultimate)
o Combustion (Restores resources when procing burning)

Earthen Heart (Healer/Support line)
• DragonKnight Standard
• Superheated Ward
• *Core of Flame– This skill is trying to do too many things that it doesn’t do anything well. There are multiple ways to fix this, but here are 2
o Option 1: Modify the skill cost to scale off your highest resource, then increase the amount it returns, but only have it return your lowest resource. It could also have a longer duration rather than increase the amount per tick
o Option 2: Revert the skill back to the previous version, but make one morph deal interrupting followed by a damage explosion and the other morph absorbing resources and exploding with an AOE heal that scales based on the number of enemies hit with the initial resource absorption (this option fits better with the DragonKnight having multiple healing skills that encourage it to stand with the DPS near the damage)
• Hearthfire
• Obsidian Shield
• Inferno
• Passives
o Blessing at the Peak (generates Ultimate)
o Ender Dragon (Adds Minor Brutality and health recovery) heath recovery is no good in PVP
o Mountain Giant (Heavy Attacks set off balance and restore Stamina)
o *Soul Ablaze (Increases Healing Taken by 8%) – Modify to increase Shield size by 8% or healing done and shield size by 4% each. This will make it a much stronger support line.

New Rankings
Arden Flame (DPS Line)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them deal significant damage and scale from DPS stats (9/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 of them buff damage, and 3 of them buff all sources of damage – 7/8

Draconic Power (Tank/DPS)
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 10 of them offer survivability, crowd control or CC resistance (10/12)
• Of the 4 Passives, 4 offer survivability and sustain, and all 4 are needed for PVP and at least 2 would be needed for Tanking (even if you had a good healer) – 7/8

Earthen Heart
• Of the 12 skill Morph options, 11 of them either heal/buff your party members or debuff the enemy (11/12)
o There’s been a lot of talk about the Draconic Standard, and which morph should buff vs cause damage but I chose to put it here because Dragon leap increases the damage and the flame thrower, Magma shell is one of the best tank ultimates and Corrosive Armor is really only useful in PVP, while the Standard now buffs other team members.
• Of the 4 Passives, 3 of them directly supports other players, and at least 2 of the 4 will compliment any rule – 5/8

This makes the DragonKnight much more comparable to other classes when looking at their roles. It matches the passives with the skills they are using and offers enticing options for someone to choose a DragonKnight skill line to add to their own. If you want to run as a pure DK you still have that option but can also hybridize into other classes without losing over half the skills and passives you need for your role. This class is so close to being good. Let's just make it make more sense.

The primary goal is to make one hesitate to give up skill lines to subclass. The secondary reason the lines have something for each role is to not make it so easy to subclass. Your right dragonknight is the first class but not only class being reworked. Not to mention dk took the longest due to the major overhaul dk took after warden and sorc it’s a safe bet the last 4 Templar, Nightblade, Necromancer, Arcanist will likely be 2 at a time if not all 4 at once since they will likely need the least amount of work.

Summary: biggest goal of reworking every class is to make pure classes a competitive option to current subclassing. Which after every class rework comes and goes subclassing will likely have lost most appeal aside from very niche situations example a pure summoner/conjuration class

There is this hesitation you mention until the meta is redecided in about 2 weeks post-update. I don't really think all of the changes are worth it and that is especially because they are killing core ways that I've enjoyed playing for year.

What makes these changes sick and twisted is how left behind and nerfed dragon knight has been. Designers could have came out with a bang and buffed the class. There are some dyanmics of it that are being further nerfed and that's downright evil given the classes history.

And what is exactly the point of all of this? To make pure-classes stronger? So they are making a change that invalidates how people have been enjoying the identity of their class so that the sub-classing update can become invalidated so that players can once again enjoy what their class originally had to offer except that they cant because of the large and sweeping changes? These goings ons are all backwards and make zero sense when following them to their logical conclusion.

Hi all,
So I really wanted to do a deep analysis onto the entire kit, so I've spent most of the week playing around with this on PTS to get feelings on every skill in all lines.

I'll caveat that I'm not a numbers person; I tank in high-end and really just dabble otherwise. However, I'm really into character building and the look and feel of everything. I also main a DK and I really try to keep him pureclass as much as possible since that was the theme I made him around. As such, I'm not that good a judge of DPS numbers or parses, but I'm making this analysis on how the skills look and feel to play with.

A general thing is that I do think some of the skills are a bit too saturated - the newer fire effects are very saturated and tend to the redder end of the spectrum, whereas the fire effects we have in the basegame are not as intends and trend a bit more yellowish. I do think that trying to match some of the flames across the game would be better, and there is a lot of visual overstimulation so I do prefer the more realistic flames of the basegame to the saturated effects we have on some of the skills now.

---

As for the kit, I've broken it down by skill line below:

   ARDENT FLAME

Dragonknight Standard: The new version of this skill is quite interesting. I do miss the damage from the old Standard of Might, but I can see that we still have that option in the other morph. I think one of the main things people are annoyed about is the fact that Shifting was never used in PvE because it was objectively weaker than Might. The other issue is that, if it is designed that DDs move to using Dragon Leap as an ultimate, that severely lessens the desire to take Ardent Flame as a Subclass.
What I would like to see here is giving a bit of power back to Shifting, but not overwhelmingly. It does feel like Might would be a good skill for support-DDs (like the standard Z’enkosh), but Shifting still has its place in PvP with the Defile and the ability to move it. I would do the following:

• Have the DoT from shifting standard ramp up by a percentage each tick while an enemy is in the area. That would reward PvE a bit where the boss is not moving as the DPS would go up over time, but still allow it to be moved in the case of a moving boss, e.g. Z’maja porting around.
• Add a visual effect to show the ground DoT. Currently both morphs of standard look the same, so a ground effect would show which is the morph that does damage over time.
• The name “Shifting Standard” is a bit underwhelming compared to “Standard of Might.” I would change the name of the morph to something like “Warlord’s Domination” to really drive home the idea of razing the battlefield.

Lava Whip: I don’t have too many issues here. The two different ‘final hit’ animations proc differently, and the little AoE splash from the Flame Lash morph synergizes very well with Earthen Heart’s passives to make it good for pureclasses, while still enabling that for players in groups who can proc Off Balance too.

Searing Strike: These both work, but they are very same-y. I wonder if it would be better to change the effects of the base morph and the Burning Ember morph to be a single slash instead of three claw swipes to match the icon? I do love the new animations though, especially the fact that you get one swipe with each hand. There’s only one major change I would make here:

• The Searing Claw icon is green, which no longer fits. This would be better in red/orange like this quick mock job:
  
  Come to think of it, maybe the other icons should also be claws instead of swords to match the effects.

Core of Flame: The loss of Deep Breath is a bit sad - that skill did only have niche uses, but it did come in very handy in certain locations. The delayed interrupt and severely delayed burst do hinder its ability to be used. Having said that, the new version does wonders for sustain, and is excellent in PvP to give DK a delayed damage burst.
On the other hand, there is also significant overlap with this skill in terms of the visuals and damage with Inferno, so something to differentiate the two skills would be great. See the gifs below showing the burst of both Core of Flame (this is the Heart of Flame morph) and Inferno (Incinerate morph)

I particularly like the effects on Live where enemies are tethered while you absorb their essence and release it in a burst later, and would like to see that return along with the use cases of Live's Deep Breath.
I would change the skills thusly:

• Base morph (Core of Flame): as it is on PTS, but also including a heal as the Heart of Flame morph does. That heal may need to be toned down slightly though.
• Soul of Flame morph: increases the damage of the final explosion as in the PTS Soul of Flame Morph
• New morph (might need a cooler name than "Deep Breath"): Similar to Deep Breath is on live - instantly interrupts enemies that are casting and heals you for X per enemy hit. After 2.5 seconds, you burst and do 100-150% of the healing done as flame damage to enemies around you. (Requires an enemy to be hit to heal and damage as on Live)
  The effects should also be as they are on Live, with the tethers pulling from enemies with the inhale.
  
• Swap the icons of the morphs around. The two morphed abilities use similar icons which could be used for the base morph and the Soul of Flame morph. The current base morph icon looks very different and would fit better as the icon for the Deep Breath morph.

Hearthfire: Both of these morphs are also very similar to each other, and the loss of the damaging morph in Eruption was a bit sad to see go. I’d prefer merging the two current morphs and then bringing eruption back.
In addition, these are ground HoTs with a cost-per-second. The only other skills in the game that have a cost-per-second are channelled abilities, and those work because you can cancel them at will. There’s no way to cancel a ground effect, so having these have incremental costs is inconsistent with every other ground effect in the game. Having said that, this does leave these having oppressively high costs due to the length of the effect, but I will note that the Restoration Staff’s Illustrious Healing morph is also an 8m, 15sec ability with a comparable heal and a cost of 3510 (i.e. 234/sec), so the cost could be similar to that.
I would do the following:

• Change the cost of all morphs to an upfront cost, higher than Illustrious Healing but less than the full cost of them on PTS
• Base morph (Hearthfire): as it is on PTS, but add the increased healing if you’re standing in the area from the current Fire Keeper morph. Maybe not 50% though, that might be too much.
• Fire Keeper morph: add in the Protection from the Hearth and Home morph and reduce the cost as the ability ranks up.
• Eruption morph: keep the PTS animation with the dropping fireball, but revert the effect to the Live Eruption morph - Deal some flame damage immediately as the fireball lands, and then do a flame DoT with a snare. Decrease the radius of the effect to 6m. It also will need a ground effect to show the danger zone instead of just a fire ring.

Inferno: The morph ideas are good, but there is no effect for Cauterize showing that it is healing anyone. The skill does not burst out radially at all, so the only way to tell it’s healing is to have combat numbers turned on. In the image below, the skill is active and you can see the healing numbers, but there is no effect coming from my character to the other and really no way to tell that the other character is receiving healing other than having those numbers enabled.

• Cauterize needs to have a burst effect (preferably something that looks a bit different from Inferno’s explosion, so like sparkly golden embers or something) to show that it’s doing something.

Passives: Nothing major. The tooltip for Fan the Flames doesn’t explain how the number of slotted DK skills affects the chance of applying burning or its damage done, so that would be nice to have in there.

   DRACONIC POWER

Dragon Leap: These are fun and I do love the idea of making one of the morphs able to empower subsequent attacks. However, the logic of the knockback is mixed up.
As Take Flight does more damage and is increasing damage done and empowering Dragonfire as well, it implies that this morph is designed for damage dealers. That means this morph should not be affecting grouping. The Ferocious Leap morph includes a shield and implies you want space, so it should have the knockback. I would change them as follows:

• The base morph (Dragon Leap) should have the knock up function to avoid messing up grouping.
• The Take Flight morph should change the knockback into a knock down so it does not affect the grouping of enemies in PvE.
• The Ferocious Leap morph should be given the 4m knockback from the other morph to retain that feeling of power as you crash down, and also allow you to have a breather with the shield and getting enemies away.
• The morph names may not be appropriate to their functionality. I would switch them so that Ferocious is the morph that empowers attacks and Take Flight is the one that gives space and shields.

Dragonfire Breath: I do enjoy the new channelled version of breath. My main concern here is the new animations - the Live version does make the character’s mouth a bit more open, while the PTS (both morphs) have the character with a relatively neutral face and just a slack jaw and not properly griping their weapon. I'd really like just a minor modification to the face so they really open their mouth and screw up their face in anger, but it'd be cool to grip the weapon properly too.

Apart from this, the only change I’d make would be:

• Engulfing Dragonfire should have a cost-per-second instead of an upfront cost like other similar channelled abilities.

Dark Talons: These skills are fine, but the effect of the ring of fire on activation may be unnecessary. We know enemies are affected if they get the claw animation, so the ring effect does not really tell anything and just adds to visual clutter.

Dragon Blood: These are good, the only issue is the effects.

• Please consider removing the floating heart effect, and extending the chest x-ray effect for the full timer of the Fortitude/Courage buff.

Wing Buffet: Fine, but please check the wording of the tooltip for Fleetstep Wings. That is currently a nonsensical word salad.


Chains of Flame: Fine. The loss of Expedition hurts a bit since I use it all the time, but it makes sense and I'll deal with it.

Passives: Considering the whole rework of classes and the hybridization that already exists in the game, is it appropriate for Elder Dragon to only give minor Brutality instead of Brutality and Sorcery?
The Storm Voice (Battle Roar was actually a really cool name and I would prefer that to be honest) also is restoring resources based on abilities slotted on the active bar. Would it be better to reduce the resources per skill but count skills on both bars? In that way, you won’t end up with a case where one bar’s ultimate does very little.

   EARTHEN HEART

Magma Armor: The change to Magma Armor to make the radius larger is an excellent change. The problems with this skill are that Corrosive seems to still be a bit too strong if all attacks are ignoring armor and the DoT is much heavier than it is on Live. It probably needs to have a severely reduced damage limit to balance it for PvP encounters. Also, the restriction on ultimate generation while active are more pronounced on PTS with the base and Magma Shell morphs since it’s 150% as long as it is on Live. I propose the following:

• Allow the base morph and the Magma Shell morphs to generate Ultimate while active. In order to prevent edge cases like the “perma-magma” strategies in the Archive, the skill itself could have a cooldown of 30+ seconds to prevent living in a semi-invulnerable state
• Rebalance the Corrosive Armor morph to do less AoE damage or to severely reduce or eliminate the damage limit.
• Recolor the icon for Corrosive Armor from green to red. Looking at UESP, I'm seeing that the icon was changed in U10 to the green one, so it could go back to the pre-U10 version shown below.
  
  Honestly, the better solution would probably be to make the recolored icon for Corrosive Armor into the base skill icon and give the current base skill icon (which looks like flame extending out, shown below) to the Corrosive morph as it seems to fit more logically with Corrosive as a dot radiating outwards, while the base morph is strictly a damage mitigation armor.
  
  Also, with the lack of poison damage, “Corrosive” may no longer be an appropriate name, and something to the effect of “Melting” may be better.

Superheated Ward: The skill is fine, but the animation is odd. On Live, Stone Giant currently has different animations where each stone orb is thrown with an alternating hand. It may be nice to see the rock toss of Magma Fist with alternating hands like that.

As for the base and Volcanic Ward morphs, it still uses a pull-and-throw animation when it applies a shield to yourself, which makes no sense logically. Is there a different motion that could be used that doesn’t look like throwing something when it applies to yourself?
Finally, Volcanic Ward seems to invariably favor putting the shield on yourself unless an ally is hurt, making it more difficult to apply the shield and buff to a character proactively.

Molten Weapons: It’s fine. I was hoping it would apply an effect over the weapons like Arcanist’s Inspiration does instead of replacing the weapons completely. It would be cool to get an overlay instead of a replacer (and then you could just give those already-completed magma weapon models to your cosmetics team for a future Crown Store/Tamriel Tomes purchase…)

Obsidian Shield: No issues here

Petrify: Fine, but this skill is still very difficult to use in PvE. Adding the Minor Vuln to the Fossilize morph does look like an attempt to do that, but this skill is crippled by the melee range. Compared to Warden’s Swarm and Arcanist’s Rune of Eldritch Horror, there’s no reason to use Fossilize.

• Increase the range for the Fossilize morph to 15m or even 28m. The immobilize after the stun may not be needed if that is too strong.

Earthspike Mantle: No issues here, save the armor visual that is already discussed elsewhere.

Passives: There is a bit of naming weirdness here. The name “Heart of Stone” makes little sense considering it’s an armor passive. “Stoneskin” may be more appropriate. “Avalanche,” while technically correct, does call to mind an ice theme, and “Rockslide” or “Landslide” may fit with the theme better.

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Ok, that was a wall of text.

Thanks for all of the work with this. I am kind of excited to see how these Class refreshes will make all of the other Classes feel. It does seem like it'll be a bit difficult for a while as some of the reasons for Subclassing being overpowered are not being touched until at least Summer 2027, but the plans to make the Class lines less strictly delineated by role does sound like a step in the right direction.

Hyper has now uploaded his feedback video. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

https://youtu.be/eiajn4Ydk20?si=xl54gmBz0V0jUtjR

Edit: It’s really interesting to hear that Tzogvin might be making a comeback due to choosing more DK abilities over barbed trap.

I personally dislike that the skill trees are now mixed up.

I very much prefer the old split between damage, tank, healing / support skill lines. It is just so much easier to create builds around clearly separated skill lines if you´re not creating a pure MagDK with only class skills.

The point that annoys me the most is with the Ardent Flame skill tree from a StamDK perspective.

You changed two passives to now require either an Ardent Flame ability slotted or to do damage with it (Combustion & Traumatic Burns) but you moved the skill that is probably still the one most used by StamdDKs into another skill line (Draconic Power).

Noxious Breath must get back into Ardent Flame skill tree or change the passives in a way that they don´t rely on Ardent Flame abilities, please.

Some more thoughts on active abilities after around a week of playing:

Shifting Standard:

Personally, I generally don't use this morph on live because I find that Standard of Might packs significantly more of a punch in the short term and many of the fights I am in don't last to the long term. It might be beneficial to make the morph a little bit better if it's going to be the only morph for the ability that does damage directly.

Standard of Might:

It seems like it is an effective ability but, it doesn't necessarily feel that impressive.

Molten Whip:

It feels like this is the DK ability you are supposed to pick from an optimized perspective. It does a ton of damage once you've met the prerequisites and boosts your damage with other abilities. Not really all that exciting compared to Flame Lash but, it's probably more functional.

Flame Lash:

This feels like the fun morph that lets you do lots of the fancy jump attacks that heal and do AOE damage once you get something off-balanced and do a regular Flame Lash. The problem this morph hits is that in the Beam era doing lots of AOE damage just isn't that special. Engulfing Dragonfire does comparable damage to Power Lash at a comparable cost without needing anything proc'd and without downtime. I think it might be beneficial to transfer some of the power on the ability from healing to damage so that it at least feels like it with the proc beats Engulfing Dragonfire without Take Flight. If you are using lots of Power Lashes in a row you are probably going to be overhealing yourself anyways.

Searing Claw:

This feels like this is what you are supposed to pick as the optimized DPS selection option. It doesn't necessarily seem that impressive as the burning and the + % damage per tick makes it hard to tell how much damage it actually is doing compared to other things. It might be beneficial to tell how much damage the status proc is going to actually do on abilities that guarantee it or put that number somewhere in the advanced stats.

Burning Embers:

If you are on a DPS build, the healing is pretty meh. You can get more burst healing from Blood of the Green Dragon on a tank and more healing per second from Hearth and Home on a tank. Heart of Flame is also another DK ability that can potentially offer tanks a bunch of healing. The way I see it, the main perk of the ability is that for it's price it does a ton of stuff but, when you've got the massive potential resource restoration of Heart of Flame I'm not sure that it's that great of a selling point when you consider that it needs a target to heal you unless you are playing on a solo build.

Heart of Flame:

This offers a massive amount of restoration if you have a big pool and are running low on resources. If that isn't the case all it offers is a bit of delayed damage. The ability might do too much in situations where people have large pools of resources.

Soul of Flame:

I'm not sure the appeal of the ability is high enough to justify having two morphs that are this similar. I think it might be better for this morph to lose the recovery and do more damage.

Fire Keeper:

I'm not sure I love the whole sit in the area bit as I generally viewed that as more of a Templar thing but, the area is big enough I suppose it doesn't matter that much. This version of the ability is far easier to heal other players with than the version on live and the buffs are definitely nice.

Hearth and Home:

It's a really nice heal/buff setup for a health stacked character. I'm not sure if it will see widespread usage ever because I don't think most tanks lean that far into health or care that much about healing other people but, it is nice.

Incinerate:

It's still functional but, it feels a bit less unique.

Cauterize:

It's still functional but, it feels a bit less unique.

Take Flight:

The damage boost and the fire change more than even out the increased cost and reduced range on most builds. It makes Engulfing Dragonfire work really well.

Ferocious Leap:

It's a good damage shield but, it really doesn't feel like a great choice when compared to Take Flight. Further, the DK has another defensive ultimate and three other abilities that provide damage shields making it feel a little bit redundant without providing something more. Looking at it from a DPS perspective, it feels a little unfair that it doesn't provide a boost to Engulfing Dragonfire. From a tanking perspective, I feel like the Ultimate adds to the feeling that Draconic Power isn't worth slotting.

Disintegrating Dragonfire:

The loss of duration for Major Breach reduces the value of the morph from a debuffing perspective. From an offensive perspective it looks really bad compared to Engulfing Dragonfire.

Engulfing Dragonfire:

It manages to be incredibly cheap, does a ton of damage, and does AOE damage. If the skill didn't take longer to level to the morphing point than other abilities you could probably get away with morphing to it at like level 5 and just spend the entire rest of the leveling process spamming it and doing nothing else.

Burning Talons:

I don't think the functionality really changed.

Choking Talons:

It's nice the maim is longer but, I'm not sure I'd actually use it.

Blood of the Green Dragon:

The ability feels more reliable now but, I'm not sure if I was subclassing it would be the heal I'd be choosing to use. Odds are quite good I'd be running Winter's Embrace for Frost Cloak which gives me access to Polar Wind which will generally provide more healing. It's true that Blood of the Green Dragon provides better recovery but, unless I'm on a build that specifically cares about recovery stats I'd probably just use Heart of Flame or something else to help with recovery.

Blood of the Eldar Dragon:

I think this morph runs into the issue that Scribing exists. I can scribe an ability that generally heals others more than this does, that offers a heal over time that will do more than the Major Fortitude will for peoples recovery, and that exactly matches the minor courage. In a world without Scribing it'd probably be fine but, since scribing exists...

Fleetstep Wings:

I can see this being effective in PvP both from a knockback standpoint (Ex: Bridge in Huntsman Fortress) and from a buffing perspective. I don't think I'd really enjoy playing against it as a ranged character as not only does a user get damage reduction vs range and cc resistance they also get movement speed and a stun. I'm not sure this would see much PvE usage.

Protect the Brood:

I don't love the fact it could mean ranged attacks against Groups could end up doing 25% less damage. The minor protection isn't that great of a buff. This might work in some PvE situations.

Chains of Domination:

You lose the improved movement but, you get a buff that reduces enemy damage/healing.


Chains of Devastation:

Not sure if it's a damage loss to use in a rotation but, it does combo well as a gap closer followed up with Engulfing Dragonfire. The speed lost might matter a bit if you had intended to keep moving rather than stopping to engage what you pull to but, overall is probably a decent trade as you are getting major evasion out of it.

Magmashell

This ability did have issues before when it came to providing shields to allies that weren't close and the longer duration and bigger shields is nice but, I don't totally love the loss of damage. If I'm solo, this morph is only really reducing the damage I take.

Corrosive:

With the changes, Corrosive will do absolutely massive damage in PvP and do a bit better in PvE but, the change of damage reduction will likely have a slight impact in PvE and probably make the skill a bit worse when you are in a bad situation in PvP because more damage will get through.

Volcanic Ward:

This ability feels kinda pointless from the standpoint that you can scribe something to provide a single target shield with other features that better align with your personal preferences.

Magma Fist:

It's easier to use than the old way but, it's also less effective at buffing damage.

Molten Armaments and Igneous Weapons:

The extra damage on light/heavy attacks is a nice little boost but, I really don't love the overwritten and bright visuals.

Igneous Shield and Fragmented Shield:

Both still run into the issue that scribing abilities do it better.

Fossilize and Shattering Rocks:

Both appear like they will be a bit worse against better players in PvP. Both appear like they will be slightly less bad/less situational in PvE.


Earthshield Mantle:

You lose the damage you'd be getting with the previous version when someone hit you in melee but, gain 100 additional damage done on your own hits. I don't know if that would be a win or a loss on tanky builds.

Shatterspike Mantle:

If you want to use Avalanche and get stacks less slowly you probably need to run this morph plus it's a nice DOT.

So reading PTS notes, this thread and watching a bunch of streamers trial this one thing is clear -regular players are going to need some hand holding to understand what's happened to the class.

Maybe as part of the current excellent communication, Zos can have a go at explaining the changes to players in their media?

merevie wrote: »

So reading PTS notes, this thread and watching a bunch of streamers trial this one thing is clear -regular players are going to need some hand holding to understand what's happened to the class.

Maybe as part of the current excellent communication, Zos can have a go at explaining the changes to players in their media?

This is a good point, when it comes to the casual players I do think we need to have more explanation of the changes the closer we get to final release of u49.

Okay, buckle up.
#1 thing right at the top: There is too much stamina magic here. If it costs stamina, make the the animation include a physical action. This refresh is your chance to finally end the era of "green magicka", I beg you to do so. This feels especially important for DK, as the class is supposed to be using something akin to martial arts. Some examples of ways to make stamina abilities feel like stamina abilities without changing their function:

Disintegrating Dragonfire: You draw your weapon in front of your mouth and breathe fire on it before smashing it down to create a wave of fire in a cone along the ground.

Magma Fist: Like before, you stomp to kick up a flaming rock, then as one motion you punch it to hurl it at the enemy.

Now on to a breakdown of my thoughts on each of the abilities.

DK Standard:
Function - I am disappointed about Standard of Might loosing its damage. I understand the need to bring the ability more in line, but I wish it could have been done without splitting what was DK's primary ult in half.
Form - Looks Good.

Lava Whip:
Function - Little different then before. Trying to base anything on Off Balance right now just doesn't make sense with how unreliable it is. Off Balance needs to be reworked for me to ever consider using Flame Lash.
Form - The spinning hit looks okay, but the primary whip animation looked better before imo. The update to the model of the whip itself looks good though. I don't like that the badass vfx for Seething Fury were removed and replaced with a glowing hand.

Searing Strike:
Function - The short duration is awful. How about, since it has two alternating animations, make it so you can recast it to stack the duration like carve? I also don't like that the healing from burning embers has been relegated to being for tanks for some reason. Can't it scale off the highest of health/mag/stam so anyone can get the full benefit? This is also one of the weird and uncomfortable situations where we are going to have magicka characters forced to take a stamina ability because its indisputably stronger.
Form - The new animation is cool. I like that it has multiple animations that alternate, hopefully we'll see more of that in the future (though its disappointing that your weapon vanishes into thin air).

Core of Flame:
Function - Might be interesting for builds with otherwise low sustain, but I didn't test this much.
Form - Looks good.

Hearthfire:
Function - Unacceptable. You've removed a signature DK damage ability (which was already co-opted as a healing ability in a previous patch) for no reason at all. Tanks already have Dragon Blood, if you need to give them something in Ardent Flame then you should change Core of Flame. Now DKs, a class that is supposed to be about aoe and dots, doesn't have a ground dot anymore. How does that make sense? Please give back Eruption as a burning ash cloud.

Form - Meh at best.

Inferno:
Function - Its fine if you're melee, but ranged DKs are outa luck now, which kid of sucks.

Form - ???...??????????! Why am I wearing flaming pool floaties? Can you move those things off my arms and base it from the chest instead? It might look slightly less silly.

Dragon Leap:
Function - I'm definitely happy that Take Flight has been made into an actually feasible ultimate. This is one of the best changes to the class imo.

Form - Looks awesome as ever (excluding the obvious bug with the wings right now).

Dragonfire Breath:
Function - The short duration is awful. The base morph should be magicka and Disintegrating should be visually modified as stated above to remove the stamina casting issue. Engulfing Dragonfire is an interesting idea, though I do hope that the plan going forward isn't just "Fatecarver for everyone!", and we instead see a few different takes on rotation simplifying abilities.

Form - The spiral of flame on your face feels a little out of place to me, but overall the ability doesn't look too bad other than making zero sense as a stamina ability.

Dark Talons:
Function - Still not present. For tanks its okay, but Burning Talons is still completely useless unless someone uses the synergy, and even then its meh.

Form - Still Eww. I was really hoping this one would get a full overhaul.

Dragon Blood:
Function - Seems good. Having a non-scribing ability that gives minor courage is a good idea.

Form - What? Why is there a physical heart floating over my head? And why is there nothing to indicate that the ability is active for the remaining duration?

Wing Buffet:
Function - Nothing for me here, but there wasn't before so its not a huge deal. Might have been kind of cool if one morph had been an aoe spammable though.

Form - Bugged now, will probably look good when fixed though.

Chains of Flame:
Function - The pull on the base morph and Chains of Domination continues to work as it should. The major berserk on chains of domination should be 10 seconds, especially since you guys keep touting 10 seconds as the duration for everything. It also feels odd having two charge abilities in the same skill line, personally I'd like to see the devastation morph changed into a snare and 10% increase in damage to just the target instead.

Form - Not sure what this has to do with dragons, it would have made a lot more sense in Earthen Heart. I hate the blur effect that got added on Chains of Devastation. That is NOT something I want blurring out my entire screen every few seconds, especially when I'm not actually even moving 98% of the time. I'd prefer it to be removed entirely, but can you at least make it conditional on moving a minimum of 5m?

Magma Armor:
Function - I'm glad one morph at least is being made more viable for PvE.

Form - Not loving the random, lumpy chunks of rock stuck to and floating above my armor. Defiantly not a winner in the vfx department. Not sure why Corrosive Armor is still called that now that it deals fire damage.

Superheated Ward:
Function - Base morph and Volcanic Ward seem like decent shield healing abilities. Functionally, Magma Fist is a pretty basic ranged magicka spammable... that for some reason costs stamina. The damage increasing function is cool, but that was already there.

Form - Base morph and Volcanic Ward look okay, though I wish they had some kind of persistent visual effect while active. The ending seems a little abrupt. Magma fist is the most blatantly magical effect I've ever seen. You don't even touch anything! Please please please please please rework the visual in some way as suggested above to make it actually feel like anything resembling a stamina ability.

Molten Weapons:
Function - I like the idea of the ability adding some damage, but can we please remove the silly 2s timer and cut the damage in half to make it tick reliably? Another cool idea would have been if the ability changed the base damage of your light and heavy attacks to fire damage, regardless of your weapon type.

Form - I love it and I hate it. The models do look really cool (if a little chunky on some of them), but what if I like the weapon I'm using? Wasn't this the reason Bound Armor's visuals were originally taken away? I think it would be good to include a skill style that doesn't replace your weapon.

Petrify:
Function - Ability is still useless in PvE.

Form - Looks okay I guess, but that doesn't matter if its never made functional.

Earthspike Mantle:
Function - Cool to see abilities with a flat buff to all damage, its an interesting mechanic.

Form - Not awful, but not great. I know feedback on the spikes has already been addressed, but the baseplates really do look odd as well.

Passives:
For the most part I do like that the passives seem to be more balanced out, however I think Avalanche is the elephant in the room here. You guys really talked up this passive, like it was going to be central to what makes a DK a DK, but its really not good at all. It takes almost a full minute to get up to speed, then falls off pretty much as soon as a boss has a phase where you aren't dealing damage. I think something with a faster charge up and less falloff would be better, even if the % goes down a little.

Conclusion:
Some good, some bad. As far as skill line balance, DK is in a much better place (at least comparing the skill lines internally to one another). The stamina casting is a blight on all that is good and proper, and needs to be eradicated. The 10 second dot timers are too low, I'd rather not have to simply start referring to DK as "The Elfbane Class". The loss of Eruption is not acceptable. Dragon Leap finally being useful for DPS is an amazing change. Overall I'd give the refresh a 7/10, mostly because it did achieve the goal of balancing the skill lines better, but there are some serious pain points above that I'd like to see addressed.

I would like to echo what some others have already suggested about tying Flame Lash to the Burning status effect existing on an enemy than to Off Balance.

That change supports the existing mechanics of the class and is much more thematically appropriate.