Dragonknight Ability Updates for PTS Week 4

SneaK · February 6

s3dulo wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Also feels like we’re trying to balance against other base classes, in no way shape or form does it seem the kits for DK in U49 are going to be optimal without subclassing.

I think you're right. I don't think ZOS's goal was ever to get pure DK competitive.. I think they just wanted to do the best they could in a couple of weeks. I had hoped we'd see a big increase in pure DK running around in because it was just so good but I doubt that will happen now. I think a lot more builds will be running one DK line but we will soon find it's just better subclassed.

I maintain there should be an escalating bonus for each DK skill line being run. I also think they should have leaned toward a little too OP and then dialed it back if it proved too much. DK had it's moment, it's in a better place, but subclassing is still king.

Hopefully I'm wrong about that.

There’s no world currently where Storm Calling wouldn’t be a more optimal choice than one of these skill lines.

Honestly, my number one gripe is the crit thing, it goes against the theme of an attrition warrior. It also means that crit dmg sets still reign supreme on a class that isn’t supposed to be about that. It’d be nice if they understood how something as little as a 5% modifier affected the greater scenario. There are a ton of sets outmatched simply cause they aren’t crit sets and don’t stack well with crit passives. This was an opportunity to at least expand the meta to include weapon/spell power stacking rather than more crit garbo.

Earthern Heart all of a sudden doesn’t seem unique.

RedKynAbyss · February 6

AdmiralDigby wrote: »

It's a mistake to let Molten Whip buff flat damage to monsters for ALL skills. I forsee it mainly being used to buff Fatecarver.

100% this is what it’s going to be used for. They need to qualify that damage buff to be for ONLY flame damage skills (since outside of the destruction tree, DK is the only real source of flame damage) or ONLY Dragonknight skills. They took the power off Engulfing so Fatecarver is back to being the single most powerful skill in the game, and they’re inadvertently buffing Fatecarver even more with this morph.

Radiate77 · February 6

RedKynAbyss wrote: »

AdmiralDigby wrote: »

It's a mistake to let Molten Whip buff flat damage to monsters for ALL skills. I forsee it mainly being used to buff Fatecarver.

100% this is what it’s going to be used for. They need to qualify that damage buff to be for ONLY flame damage skills (since outside of the destruction tree, DK is the only real source of flame damage) or ONLY Dragonknight skills. They took the power off Engulfing so Fatecarver is back to being the single most powerful skill in the game, and they’re inadvertently buffing Fatecarver even more with this morph.

I’d take Flame Skills all day.

That would be insinuated Class Synergy, which is what they should be doing for each Class, not this “when playing a Dragonknight” garbage.

YandereGirlfriend · February 6

Radiate77 wrote: »

RedKynAbyss wrote: »

AdmiralDigby wrote: »

It's a mistake to let Molten Whip buff flat damage to monsters for ALL skills. I forsee it mainly being used to buff Fatecarver.

100% this is what it’s going to be used for. They need to qualify that damage buff to be for ONLY flame damage skills (since outside of the destruction tree, DK is the only real source of flame damage) or ONLY Dragonknight skills. They took the power off Engulfing so Fatecarver is back to being the single most powerful skill in the game, and they’re inadvertently buffing Fatecarver even more with this morph.

I’d take Flame Skills all day.

That would be insinuated Class Synergy, which is what they should be doing for each Class, not this “when playing a Dragonknight” garbage.

Amen!

Callosum · February 7

Radiate77 wrote: »

RedKynAbyss wrote: »

AdmiralDigby wrote: »

It's a mistake to let Molten Whip buff flat damage to monsters for ALL skills. I forsee it mainly being used to buff Fatecarver.

100% this is what it’s going to be used for. They need to qualify that damage buff to be for ONLY flame damage skills (since outside of the destruction tree, DK is the only real source of flame damage) or ONLY Dragonknight skills. They took the power off Engulfing so Fatecarver is back to being the single most powerful skill in the game, and they’re inadvertently buffing Fatecarver even more with this morph.

I’d take Flame Skills all day.

That would be insinuated Class Synergy, which is what they should be doing for each Class, not this “when playing a Dragonknight” garbage.

I can definitely agree with you on this one. While I’ve said that I’m not opposed to class-locked skill buffs, that’s mostly because I’m not confident balance between skill lines, pure classes, and subclasses can be maintained without a tool like that. Honestly though, it’s not something I particularly like.

Class synergy feels like a much better route. I’m actually quite confused that such an obvious option wasn’t explored. For example, buffing flame damage for Whip, and doing something similar for Avalanche/Landslide. That approach would have satisfied a lot of players who want stronger pure-class identity, without creating as much frustration for players who enjoy subclassing and feel that “when playing a Dragonknight” restrictions undermine that system entirely.

BardokRedSnow · February 7

Callosum wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

RedKynAbyss wrote: »

AdmiralDigby wrote: »

It's a mistake to let Molten Whip buff flat damage to monsters for ALL skills. I forsee it mainly being used to buff Fatecarver.

100% this is what it’s going to be used for. They need to qualify that damage buff to be for ONLY flame damage skills (since outside of the destruction tree, DK is the only real source of flame damage) or ONLY Dragonknight skills. They took the power off Engulfing so Fatecarver is back to being the single most powerful skill in the game, and they’re inadvertently buffing Fatecarver even more with this morph.

I’d take Flame Skills all day.

That would be insinuated Class Synergy, which is what they should be doing for each Class, not this “when playing a Dragonknight” garbage.

I can definitely agree with you on this one. While I’ve said that I’m not opposed to class-locked skill buffs, that’s mostly because I’m not confident balance between skill lines, pure classes, and subclasses can be maintained without a tool like that. Honestly though, it’s not something I particularly like.

Class synergy feels like a much better route. I’m actually quite confused that such an obvious option wasn’t explored. For example, buffing flame damage for Whip, and doing something similar for Avalanche/Landslide. That approach would have satisfied a lot of players who want stronger pure-class identity, without creating as much frustration for players who enjoy subclassing and feel that “when playing a Dragonknight” restrictions undermine that system entirely.

I like the idea but again, why is it either or? I think both would go a long way to making subclassing feel more balanced, the gap between subclass builds and pure class builds is very far.

But yea Im not opposed to either idea.

Radiate77 · February 7

I was halfway through typing out a write-up thread on the importance of Insinuated Class Synergy but completely lost interest.

I’m losing faith in this game, and all desire to put in any thought to improving it with changes like the new Molten Whip class restriction being pushed to live.

That’s just not a future that I want to be a part of.

MXVIIDREAM · February 8

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

Wup_sa · February 8

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

ZhuJiuyin · February 9

Nithkaz wrote: »

I'm not using engulfing dragonfire, no changes made affect negatively the build I'm using, that's why something feels odd, and it's not just me

Some people elsewhere have mentioned that ZOS changed the whip's bonus from "increases damage to monsters by 15%" in the text to "increases damage by 15%" (The Chinese translation wasn't displaying correctly, so I wasn't aware of it.). This will indeed reduce the original damage in the damage calculation, because "increases damage by 15%" will not actually increase the damage by 15% in the formula, but will be less than 15%.

Drackolus · February 9

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Nithkaz wrote: »

I'm not using engulfing dragonfire, no changes made affect negatively the build I'm using, that's why something feels odd, and it's not just me

Some people elsewhere have mentioned that ZOS changed the whip's bonus from "increases damage to monsters by 15%" in the text to "increases damage by 15%". This will indeed reduce the original damage in the damage calculation, because "increases damage by 15%" will not actually increase the damage by 15% in the formula, but will be less than 15%.

Sort of, though it also could be less than 15% before. SkinnyCheeks explains it in his most recent video on the week 4 updates, but I'll explain it here too.
Basically, your damage is first multiplied by the combination of all your normal "damage done" buffs, like berserk (slayer is in here for some reason), and then by the combined amount of your "monsters only" damage, like Velothi and Tide-Born.
This means your total damage doesn't increase by whatever one of those damage bonuses say, unless you don't have anything in that category.
For example, if you would do 1000 damage, then add a 10% damage bonus, you would do 1100, a 10% increase. If you get another regular 10% damage bonus, it would be added to your other bonus and then multiplied - thus, 1000 * (1 + 0.1 + 0.1) = 1200, rather than 1000 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 1210. That means the second 10% actually equates to an overall ~9.09% increase. However, if it were instead a monster-specifi, boost, then it would be multiplied, rather than added, for the 1210 figure.
The reason this matters here is because there are many more regular damage boosts than generic, meaning those tend to be a bigger increase. If you have 80% regular and 30% monster, that's an overall 134% increase. Add 15% regular, and you end up with 153.5%. Add 15% monster, and you end up with 161% increase.
That's why Ansuul, Tide-Born, and Velothi are so good. Their boost is more rare.

MXVIIDREAM · February 9

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

More fun 🤣 yeah because more crit is a bad thing obviously

Wup_sa · February 9

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

More fun 🤣 yeah because more crit is a bad thing obviously

It is actually. It creates massive imbalance in PvP and forces everyone to run high ipen through rallying cry.

BardokRedSnow · February 9

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

More fun 🤣 yeah because more crit is a bad thing obviously

It is actually. It creates massive imbalance in PvP and forces everyone to run high ipen through rallying cry.

Even rallying cry alone really isnt enough unless youre in a group. Or especially in a group if its large enough and you stack. Rally plus body impen and sometimes even the cp perk. Otherwise long range crit builds will absolutely melt you.

I would prefer to see WD used more for all classes instead of crit besides nightblade maybe and sorc, just for build diversity sake, but the argument against that is that because of monomyth, this would be a nerf to the classes with WD in the kit only and not crit damage or crit chance, or both. Because of the meta.

So even though this 10 percent buff leans into that meta more, enforcing it, it also is good for DK to have a place in said meta. Its better to have both, which we do have rn.

Only bad thing is no crit heal also.

YandereGirlfriend · February 9

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

More fun 🤣 yeah because more crit is a bad thing obviously

It is actually. It creates massive imbalance in PvP and forces everyone to run high ipen through rallying cry.

Even rallying cry alone really isnt enough unless youre in a group. Or especially in a group if its large enough and you stack. Rally plus body impen and sometimes even the cp perk. Otherwise long range crit builds will absolutely melt you.

I would prefer to see WD used more for all classes instead of crit besides nightblade maybe and sorc, just for build diversity sake, but the argument against that is that because of monomyth, this would be a nerf to the classes with WD in the kit only and not crit damage or crit chance, or both. Because of the meta.

So even though this 10 percent buff leans into that meta more, enforcing it, it also is good for DK to have a place in said meta. Its better to have both, which we do have rn.

Only bad thing is no crit heal also.

I would also like to see Pen in a few more lines. We used to have it in three (Assass, Grave, Tome) but now it's only in two (Grave, Tome). Sprinkling some into some of these otherwise trashcan skill lines would be perhaps a more interesting way of spicing them up than simply stapling Critical Damage onto everything.

With access to Critical Damage being so easy and ubiquitous and then stacked with the free auto-Pen sources (that for some reason keep getting buffed...), Pen went from being vital to essentially a dump stat for many builds.

As a thought experiment, about how much Weapon Damage equivalence do we think that the auto-Pen from Onslaught and Corrosive would translate into? It would be like several thousand. You could do the same thing for the Acuity proc.

If these other damage stats can have the, "Invest nothing except for this ONE WEIRD TRICK!" treatment then perhaps we can have a morph of Overload that provides like five seconds of 5000 Weapon Damage or something, heh.

Mainly joking except to point-out the double-standard. In general, I quite dislike the dump-stat-papered-over-by-a-single-ability meta and would definitely prefer to see more balanced builds return.

BardokRedSnow · February 10

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

I think the only thing they can improve on now is to add crit healing to the new crit damage thing it would significantly help pve and PvP healers would be pretty cool

I wish they took the crit away. It's way more fun to stack flat dmg.

More fun 🤣 yeah because more crit is a bad thing obviously

It is actually. It creates massive imbalance in PvP and forces everyone to run high ipen through rallying cry.

Even rallying cry alone really isnt enough unless youre in a group. Or especially in a group if its large enough and you stack. Rally plus body impen and sometimes even the cp perk. Otherwise long range crit builds will absolutely melt you.

I would prefer to see WD used more for all classes instead of crit besides nightblade maybe and sorc, just for build diversity sake, but the argument against that is that because of monomyth, this would be a nerf to the classes with WD in the kit only and not crit damage or crit chance, or both. Because of the meta.

So even though this 10 percent buff leans into that meta more, enforcing it, it also is good for DK to have a place in said meta. Its better to have both, which we do have rn.

Only bad thing is no crit heal also.

I would also like to see Pen in a few more lines. We used to have it in three (Assass, Grave, Tome) but now it's only in two (Grave, Tome). Sprinkling some into some of these otherwise trashcan skill lines would be perhaps a more interesting way of spicing them up than simply stapling Critical Damage onto everything.

With access to Critical Damage being so easy and ubiquitous and then stacked with the free auto-Pen sources (that for some reason keep getting buffed...), Pen went from being vital to essentially a dump stat for many builds.

As a thought experiment, about how much Weapon Damage equivalence do we think that the auto-Pen from Onslaught and Corrosive would translate into? It would be like several thousand. You could do the same thing for the Acuity proc.

If these other damage stats can have the, "Invest nothing except for this ONE WEIRD TRICK!" treatment then perhaps we can have a morph of Overload that provides like five seconds of 5000 Weapon Damage or something, heh.

Mainly joking except to point-out the double-standard. In general, I quite dislike the dump-stat-papered-over-by-a-single-ability meta and would definitely prefer to see more balanced builds return.

I am all for giving dk more pen lol, I'd prefer that to crit also and saw the suggestion in the thread earlier, it fits with dk far more than crit anything does, and I miss that extra pen from subclassing necro for a bit.

As for corrosive and onslaught, not sure how others feel about it but close quarters skills should be op, because you already have so much disadvantage fighting in melee range in the first place. Granted that corrosive pen counts with long range skills, I wouldnt mind them changing that if we got our ult gen back

Think about it, Zos....

MidnightDuel · February 10

When does U49 go live?
The expectation for U49 is early March, but no official go-live date has been posted that I can find.

We realize that the Night Market Event will start later. The Season Zero Tamriel Tome start was mentioned for April 4, 2026.

Are we looking at two more weeks for the U49 patch? Also, will the U49 patch day be the traditional Monday for PC or the Wednesday for Console, given the new simultaneous release schedule?

shadoza · February 10

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Molten Whip's 15% damage increase against monsters is far too high, and it's entirely predictable that it will be abused in Fatecarver builds. Since Searing Claw's duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, it's easy to stack three layers of the Whip buff in combat. Players simply need to be a main-DK and choose Ardent Flame / Herald of the Tome / any to gain the 15% damage increase against monsters, an additional burning damage buff and chance (which can stack with Arc's Psychic Lesion), resource recovery when burning, and an additional 5% fire damage duel. This will make Fatecarver builds in PvE overpowered!

Don't forget, almost all mainstream PvE builds have Fire Enchanting in their front row, and some use Fire Staff and Elemental Wall in the back row. Giving a skill a 15% damage increase against monsters, the same amount as Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet, is clearly unreasonable.

Please slightly increase Molten Whip's damage and reduce its damage increase against monsters. This approach satisfies both PvE and PvP players and encourages them to use Molten Whip instead of just treating it as a buff in the bar.

Addendum: Even in the live servers, Molten Whip is already being used as a buff in the bar; In the ESO-Logs, such as RGhm, this build has almost become the standard answer. Giving it a 15% monster damage buff will only exacerbate this situation.

This is a screenshot of RGhm's Log, showing that the whip has been abused by Arc-subclasses as a pure buff.

This possible builds after U49：

I see skills from three classes in your suggestion. How is that done?

tomofhyrule · February 10

MidnightDuel wrote: »

When does U49 go live?
The expectation for U49 is early March, but no official go-live date has been posted that I can find.

March 9 for all servers simultaneously.
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69241

Turtle_Bot · February 11

shadoza wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Molten Whip's 15% damage increase against monsters is far too high, and it's entirely predictable that it will be abused in Fatecarver builds. Since Searing Claw's duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, it's easy to stack three layers of the Whip buff in combat. Players simply need to be a main-DK and choose Ardent Flame / Herald of the Tome / any to gain the 15% damage increase against monsters, an additional burning damage buff and chance (which can stack with Arc's Psychic Lesion), resource recovery when burning, and an additional 5% fire damage duel. This will make Fatecarver builds in PvE overpowered!

Don't forget, almost all mainstream PvE builds have Fire Enchanting in their front row, and some use Fire Staff and Elemental Wall in the back row. Giving a skill a 15% damage increase against monsters, the same amount as Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet, is clearly unreasonable.

Please slightly increase Molten Whip's damage and reduce its damage increase against monsters. This approach satisfies both PvE and PvP players and encourages them to use Molten Whip instead of just treating it as a buff in the bar.

Addendum: Even in the live servers, Molten Whip is already being used as a buff in the bar; In the ESO-Logs, such as RGhm, this build has almost become the standard answer. Giving it a 15% monster damage buff will only exacerbate this situation.

This is a screenshot of RGhm's Log, showing that the whip has been abused by Arc-subclasses as a pure buff.

This possible builds after U49：

I see skills from three classes in your suggestion. How is that done?

Sub-classing system allows you to swap out 2 of your class's skill lines for 2 lines from other classes (cannot be 2 lines from the same class), but you need to keep 1 line minimum from your original base class.

In the image above, there's Herald of the Tome (Arcanist skill line), Assassination (NightBlade skill line) and Ardent Flame (Dragon Knight skill line), so it's possible for any of those 3 classes to run that combination of skill lines by swapping out their other respective class lines.

I.e. a DK would swap Earthen Heart and Draconic Power for Assassination and Herald of the Tome, a NB would swap out Shadow and Siphoning for Ardent Flame and Herald of the Tome, or an Arcanist would swap out Soldier of Apocrypha and Curative Runeforms for Assassination and Ardent Flame.

Personofsecrets · February 11

Designing abilites with a bunch of if and then statements that reference what designers are tying to force players to do is rancid design.

"If you are this gain that but only if you have so many of those against these targets."

What a terrible way for DK and ESO to go. If a designer can't make a class and skills stand on their own merrits, then they need to try harder.

About every day now I've been thinking on how awful it is that one of my favorite passive skills, battle roar, is getting eviscerated. And it's all for this rancid type of design to counter some other thing that people had an issue with. With reviewing 10 years of tanking on a pure DK, I often had 2 or fewer DK skills on a bar.

This is a case where two wrongs don't make a right. There will just be another wrong. What's that, people have complaints about multiclassing? Let's nerf DK skills and suck away it's established identity! Shame.

YandereGirlfriend · February 11

This may be an unpopular opinion but I would actually have liked one of the morphs of Leap to retain the Knock-Up even in PvP. Likely the shield morph that PvE tanks are meant to use (e.g. the less popular morph for PvP so that the majority of DK players can keep their preferred Knockback).

When I am dealing damage, I don't want to yeet a player 8 meters away from me. I want them to remain where they are so that I can follow up with an execute.

Giving players that option should they want it seems reasonable.

SneaK · February 11

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

This may be an unpopular opinion but I would actually have liked one of the morphs of Leap to retain the Knock-Up even in PvP. Likely the shield morph that PvE tanks are meant to use (e.g. the less popular morph for PvP so that the majority of DK players can keep their preferred Knockback).

When I am dealing damage, I don't want to yeet a player 8 meters away from me. I want them to remain where they are so that I can follow up with an execute.

Giving players that option should they want it seems reasonable.

DK will be fun until the sweats show how unbalanced everything remains by subclassing.

Feels like the reworks are lacking a bit specifically for PvP. The meta won’t change, Earthern Heart will remain outclassed by Storm Calling or Restoring Light. Draconic won’t compete with other dmg lines so it’ll be subbed too.

Meanwhile in PvE land, every DD will have Whip equipped for a passive bonus so ZOS will see that data and call it a yuge win.