How are people finding the new pureclass DK?

SilverBride · March 11

Other (comment below)

I haven't checked out the changes yet. I just hope I don't need to redo my skills etc.. And after reading about the new animations, I'm not very excited to see what they did.

LordDragonSlayer · March 13

I personally think the updates to DK suck if you are a tank and trying to optimize the group.

Are they going to mix up the Warden, Templar, and Arcanist classes so tanking and healing and dps is in every skill line? If no, then why do this to the DK class?

DK like every other class should have 3 distinct skill lines, dps, healing, and tanking. Passives should be removed from each skill line and just made available to everyone who has that class. Yes, I know it may make some builds super powerful but so what. These can be reduced in pvp content since that is where their focus lies which I do not understand because the majority of their player base is pve.

Honestly, DK tanks IMO got the royal shaft on this update and took a lot of steps backwards. This is meant as no disrespect to the development/design team but did you really think these actions through or are you so focused on damage and pvp that you forget about the pve aspect? Not every decision has to be made based on pvp because that is not your bread and butter of this game.

DK pure tanks are weaker in comparison to a subclassed one and honestly, taking any DK skill line as a subclassed tanks feels weaker. Earthen Heart was pretty much the DK skill line to take and that has been butchered to the point where IMO it is worthless. So for now the Arcanist/Warden/Necro will become the new tanks until they too ar butchered, then I guess there will not really be a need for a tank.

In fact, since they are redoing most of this game anyway, just get rid of all skill lines and passive combinations and just have individual skills and individual passives. This way it can be a truly open world sandbox where I can pick and choose what skills, passives, character traits (aka current racial traits), etc., I want. The character traits are chosen during character development and the skills and passives are chosen as the character develops in game.

MorallyBipolar · March 13

Overpowered (comment below)

On PC NA there is a DC guild that is all DK's now. They roll over everything like it's not even there.

SeveN085 · March 13

A viable alternative to the current PvE meta

Buffed as DD's, gutted as Tanks. They spread all the useful abilities and passives(and reworked some) for tanking across all 3 lines, so if you want to retain them you have to go pure class but then without subclass you lose group utility.

Vulkunne · March 13

A viable alternative to the current PvE meta

I went the PvE route because the best changes shine the brightest in PvE. So, I am thankful for that.

Otherwise, I think there's still some room for improvement, which is natural and I would afford them some time to polish it further for this reason.

Narvuntien · March 14

Other (comment below)

I don't know what I am doing any more.. I have played magDK for *checks notes* 9 years now and now I don't know what any of my abilities do or what my rotation looks like now.

BasP · March 14

Other (comment below)

It's not on par with optimized subclassed builds for PvE DPS yet, imo, but I'm guessing the upcoming Class Mastery passives will make a pure DK a truly viable alternative to the current meta (for damage dealers at least).

ShilohNC · March 14

I'm finding it still clunky. I haven't found a "pure class" dps build that feels fluid.. I am still looking and will take any advice given..

Wolfshade · March 14

Other (comment below)

Playing all the time pure dk in pve, with always same skills except some smaller changes. Skillchanges makes the class feels that it gives more space to other setups and the wings are now useable after long time of not being a real option and hearth and home gives in combination with the obsidian shield an very good saftyguard to other melee players. Pretty strong and overall good changes for upcoming overland difficulty.

Freelancer_ESO · March 14

Other (comment below)

I think it comes down to what you compare it against.

Against most abilities and most other pure classes in the game it is probably OP.

Against the most optimal abilities used in conjunction with the most optimal subclassing it doesn't seem to be that OP in most content.

Personofsecrets · March 14

Other (comment below)

I'm not that impressed.

The design team killed off the tanking tools that I've been using for 10 years, so that's just gone.

I've hopped on my pure dk that I've been using for a long time in PvP. Maybe whip hits harder, but with making zero changes to the build, it now has stamina problems. It's also much more hard to tell what is going on.

The skills themselves are too visually cluttered. The skills don't feel as impactful either. It's difficult to tell, just from video and audio feedback when a skill has gone off and completed. It's overall a disjointed feeling.

I've never done DPS on my DK (the only toon that I've played). Maybe some DPS players are excited, but I'm certainly not from these other perspectives, especially tanking.

Personofsecrets · March 14

Other (comment below)

SeveN085 wrote: »

Buffed as DD's, gutted as Tanks. They spread all the useful abilities and passives(and reworked some) for tanking across all 3 lines, so if you want to retain them you have to go pure class but then without subclass you lose group utility.

It's also the case that DK's are worse of as pure class tanks post update due to the changes of the passive abilities in the Earthen Heart skill line.

Helping Hands - Lost and totally heavy handed. This was identity defining.
Battle Roar - Weakened in many use cases. This was identity defining.
Mountains Blessing - Less good if someone doesn't want to use certain DK skills (which aren't stellar). This is one of the 2 unique DK tools

It's also the case that even though stone fist was god awful, the design team refused to strictly buff the unique buff from that skill by removing the channel portion of the effect. Now the channel is gone, but the buff is also more weak. That is sort of regressive and makes the unique buff less rewarding overall to both those who didn't like the channel and those who didn't mind playing around it.

A number of other effects also just look weird. Earthspike Mantle doesn't fuse to players as well as the spiked armor did. The animation and sound is also awful. Molten weapons is so bad that I guess the design team is still looking into what to do about it. Like what the heck? How did all of this come to pass?

SilverBride · March 14

Other (comment below)

I hate the 2H bright light show. My DK is a Nord so 2H is the best weapon for a strong lady to weild. But the constant in my face red and orange lights are unbearable. I will have to shelf her if we don't get a way to hide these cartoony effects soon.

Kilthor69 · March 14

Other (comment below)

Is DK better for DPS or Tank after the change?

WreckfulAbandon · March 14

Overpowered (comment below)

Overpowered for sure but if they dial up the intensity for every pure class like they did DK it will improve build diversity and ultimately be good for the game imo. Heart of Flame is way overtuned but I'll wait and see what the next class rework has in store before commenting on it further.

SeveN085 · March 15

A viable alternative to the current PvE meta

Personofsecrets wrote: »

SeveN085 wrote: »

Buffed as DD's, gutted as Tanks. They spread all the useful abilities and passives(and reworked some) for tanking across all 3 lines, so if you want to retain them you have to go pure class but then without subclass you lose group utility.

It's also the case that DK's are worse of as pure class tanks post update due to the changes of the passive abilities in the Earthen Heart skill line.

Helping Hands - Lost and totally heavy handed. This was identity defining.
Battle Roar - Weakened in many use cases. This was identity defining.
Mountains Blessing - Less good if someone doesn't want to use certain DK skills (which aren't stellar). This is one of the 2 unique DK tools

It's also the case that even though stone fist was god awful, the design team refused to strictly buff the unique buff from that skill by removing the channel portion of the effect. Now the channel is gone, but the buff is also more weak. That is sort of regressive and makes the unique buff less rewarding overall to both those who didn't like the channel and those who didn't mind playing around it.

A number of other effects also just look weird. Earthspike Mantle doesn't fuse to players as well as the spiked armor did. The animation and sound is also awful. Molten weapons is so bad that I guess the design team is still looking into what to do about it. Like what the heck? How did all of this come to pass?

Subclassing as DK is now awful too, because they spread all the abilities to different skill lines to the point there's not enough bar space to cover everything.

I was using this for dungeons and it was really great https://hyperioxes.com/eso/tank/dungeon-subclass-tank-build(with some personal adjustments)
Great sustain, great mitigation and good group utility. Ngl it kinda felt like easy mode sometimes, even on DLC HM. It was really hard to die.

Since Helping Hands is gone you're now relying on Soul of Flame for stamina sustain in hard fights. This forces you into Ardent Flame and assuming you want to keep Winter Embrace and Soldier of Apocrypha, you will now lack in bar space for 1 major ability:

Burst Heal(DK/Warden)
Major Resolve Buff(DK/Warden/Arcanist)
Spammable Shield(DK/Arcanist)
Sustain(DK)
Major Heroism(Trample)
Pull for boss fights with adds
Major Protection

For hard fights this is the closest I could come up with to salvage this build

This sacrifices Spammable Shield for delayed Shield from Warding Contingency and from my brief testing I can tell you already it's too slow most of the time, especially if you're on back bar when boss starts channeling heavy. So most of the time you will be eating those heavies directly to your health pool.

You also no longer have bar space for Runeguard so you're missing on minor resolve + minor protection, which forces you to now scribe minor protection in Warding Contingency and take armor buff from either red or blue cp.

So yeah, giving up Burst Heal or Major Resolve is obviously a no go. Lack of Spammable Shield or Sustain(Soul of Flame) will *** you over in harder content. Lack of pull in some of the boss fights will make your dd's hate you. Major Protection or Heroism are probably the top contenders to sacrifice and both of those are painful to give up too.

Before U49 Igneous used to be a spammable shield, sustain tool, minor brutality buff as well as being in the skill line that had Battle Roar and Stone Fist.

I'll be really suprised if someone will manage to come up with strong subclass build now that they spread Burst Heal, Major Resolve and Sustain Ability in all 3 different skill lines. It's a total mess.

Orbital78 · March 15

It is an improvement from what I've seen. The channel is decent but limited compared to fatecarver.

I've been hybrid DPS/healing dungeons for remaining quests and having fun.

ADarklore · March 15

A viable alternative to the current PvE meta

It's interesting when people say, "it's awful, I can no longer complete..." and others say, "it's great, I can finally complete xyz content." This tells me that the person who says it's awful just doesn't like it and therefore it's awful. I've definitely seen more positive commentary about the changes, especially from a DPS perspective. Perhaps I will be in the same boat when Templar gets reworked, as a Templar main for many years, but from my own experience with the new DK as DPS, it's been a welcomed change.

Orbital78 · March 16

People don't like change, and mmo pvp balance is rather hard when the skill lines are combined. I think much of the hate is from pvp as well.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · March 16

Other (comment below)

karthrag_inak wrote: »

"Pureclass"

You mean, the collection of skills and abilities that some dev decided you must play, yes? As opposed to, you know, deciding on skills and abilities that -you- wish to use.

Khajiit just wishes to be clear on terminology.

Specially the characters that existed when I purchased the game. And have played for years. Specifically my main character which is a pure Warden and isn't allowed into end game or on leaderboards since it was ruined last summer. To put a finer point on it, there are a lot of people who never would have played this game in the first place if Subclassing existed. The Subclass disaster caused half of my guilds to crumble and 3/4 of my friends list to quit. It is so deeply unpopular that the devs had to finally admit how unfair it was and actually fix our characters. The same characters and playstyles we spent years perfecting. And do not want to change.

Rungar · March 16

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

The same characters and playstyles we spent years perfecting. And do not want to change.

here it is. What this really means is that the game isnt good enough to warrant the effort to change. I knew deep down many players were too apathetic to grind out the lines and adapt their characters freeform, and this has been dressed up as a class identity issue. Ironically the solution by zos is to completely change the characters, playstyles, and even visuals so you have to do it anyway if you want to keep playing. lol.

Renato90085 · March 16

A viable alternative to the current PvE meta

10-12 sec dot/stack whip/125U dmg buff ult
it give me feel like nb style,but enough strong and FX too hurt my eyes

moderatelyfatman · March 16

Rungar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

The same characters and playstyles we spent years perfecting. And do not want to change.

here it is. What this really means is that the game isnt good enough to warrant the effort to change. I knew deep down many players were too apathetic to grind out the lines and adapt their characters freeform, and this has been dressed up as a class identity issue. Ironically the solution by zos is to completely change the characters, playstyles, and even visuals so you have to do it anyway if you want to keep playing. lol.

I have to disagree with you there. When subclassing came out, I ground out my skill lines to try out the different builds. I really gave it a good go before quitting the game again.

What got me wasn't the change but was the fact that the Green Beam meta had been strengthened even more. Suddenly my Templar didn't have a specialist place as an Executioner since the Arcanist now had access to Radiant Oppression. Subclassing which had meant to increase build diversity had done the opposite.

Bottom line, we didn't want the game to change from the time when it was still fun to play. We didn't want it to change when a skilled player could outdps a less inexperienced player on the meta build.

We didn't ask for hybridisation to take away our mag and stam metas. We didn't ask for patch 35 to replace our class spammables with Rapid Strikes. And the majority of players didn't want subclassing or the population would have boomed and kept growing after that instead of dropping to its lowest in years.

I don't think anyone seriously expects ZOS to rollback the game 5+ year. But we do want the game to be fun again and to be able to take any class (with it's own distinctive playstyle) all the way into endgame.

Rungar · March 16

feels like your just resistant to change no matter what the change is... But as we see with the beam meta, you are equally unhappy when there are no changes. Tough spot for zos.

its a bit foolish that you would think the population would continue growing without a major overland expansion when growth was flat for years and years. Zos has admitted that players come back for the expansions and leave again...only there was no real expansion so they couldnt come bac

but i mean if you want to attribute that to subclassing and hybridization...by all means. But i do understand that you need a certain level of will to redo all your characters and without content to back that up it doesnt work out. I put the effort in to grind out all the subclassing lines, but as happened to yourself, i feel not much will to do anything with the dragonknight changes. The difference is i freely admit its because the content simply isnt there.

phileunderx2 · March 16

Other (comment below)

I'm in the other crowd..not happy that skill got moved to different lines.
Had my mag sorc set up for all elemental damage..it was working great for what I wanted it to do..until latest patch. Firebreath got moved and that messed up everything for me.
Boo

Estin · March 16

A viable alternative to the current PvP meta

I like it. My main class is NB, but DK was the class I learned PvP on, so I knew how to play it pretty well. The class now is more burst focused instead of DOT focused, and their burst hits really hard. The class also plays much faster rather than the old slow attrition dk where you let dot pressure do the work for you until you get corrosive to finish the fight.

The biggest difference I noticed immediately is that sustain is garbage, but is easily workable with if you're using heart of flame on cool down. That skill alone is enough to fix sustain issues if you're not being overwhelmed by a lot of players, and it also gives you a decent heal plus a strong delayed aoe burst. If you open with heart of flame, use 2 other dk skills to get 3 stacks of seething fury, and then use whip, your whip will land on the same tick as the heart of flame burst which lets you hit for a stupid amount of damage. Rinse and repeat. Also, since heart of flame restores resources based on the missing amount, you actually have much higher sustain using max resource food like sugar skulls/crown meal instead of using sustain food like bear haunch/jewels, but you have to use it on cool down.

Defensively, they are pretty tanky, but it's also hard to judge since even when building tanky, you can be ripped to shreds by another dk, especially if they're using corrosive. I do like how ash cloud became another templar rune but better since it's 22m instead of 4m. The small healing and major protection and minor heroism does really help with survivability and does open up basalt blooded warrior as a viable set to use now. Ash cloud is also a free skill to cast, so it's the perfect skill to build whip stacks with. It doesn't do any damage and drops your buffs for a second when recasting, but your LAs provide enough pressure thanks to molten weapons.

Overall, the changes are good and has made DK strong enough to compete against the subclassing meta chasers. I do wish sustain was a little easier to maintain without having to rely on heart of flame, but you can't have everything, the class has to have a weakness you can build around.

peacenote · March 17

LordDragonSlayer wrote: »

I personally think the updates to DK suck if you are a tank and trying to optimize the group. [snip] Honestly, DK tanks IMO got the royal shaft on this update and took a lot of steps backwards. [snip]
DK pure tanks are weaker in comparison to a subclassed one and honestly, taking any DK skill line as a subclassed tanks feels weaker. Earthen Heart was pretty much the DK skill line to take and that has been butchered to the point where IMO it is worthless. So for now the Arcanist/Warden/Necro will become the new tanks until they too ar butchered, then I guess there will not really be a need for a tank.

SeveN085 wrote: »

Buffed as DD's, gutted as Tanks. They spread all the useful abilities and passives(and reworked some) for tanking across all 3 lines, so if you want to retain them you have to go pure class but then without subclass you lose group utility.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The design team killed off the tanking tools that I've been using for 10 years, so that's just gone.... Maybe some DPS players are excited, but I'm certainly not from these other perspectives, especially tanking.

It just happens to be the case that I am least familiar with the DK over all other classes, so I'm probably not "qualified" to respond to this poll.

However, in the event that ZOS is reading through this feedback, I'd like to raise the flag that I'm saddened and concerned with all of this feedback regarding DKs and tanking. Seeing as healing is my primary preferred role, both in PvE and PvP, I'm worried that this trend will continue through the other re-works -- especially because I've seen a lot of comments about how the Warden re-work seems like it might focus on ice damage... and it's currently a Best in Class healing class right now.

While I understand that part of the push for bringing back class identity was to make it so other classes could compete against beaming, tanking was a big part of the DK's class identity for a long time. They were Best in Class tanks for sure. Anything that lessens this is a big step backwards for DK class identity imho.

For all the re-works, whether a class is typically leveraged for tanking or healing, and if it can do it well, should be considered. The points about the abilities being spread out and how that potentially creates a less-than-optimal play experience for supports should also be considered. I really hope, at the end of this, that we don't end up with seven pure classes that can pump out damage but zero that are fun to tank or heal with.

Zodiarkslayer · March 17

Overpowered (comment below)

As a pure class DK is overpowered atm. But whatever. At the end of the refresh cycle all classes will be OP. People take their pet peeves way too serious. Everything will be fine in the end.

I am just happy that there is a new playstyle in the game: The flamethrower. 😁
That's what the game needs: Viable diversity.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · March 17

Other (comment below)

Rungar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

The same characters and playstyles we spent years perfecting. And do not want to change.

here it is. What this really means is that the game isnt good enough to warrant the effort to change. I knew deep down many players were too apathetic to grind out the lines and adapt their characters freeform, and this has been dressed up as a class identity issue.

No, we spent millions in writs doing it. Not worth it at all since everyone is running the same 3 skill lines. In everything. Same 3 sets. In everything. No one will even consider helping the new players level up this mess anymore either. Subclass should not be the meta. There needs to be a downside to cherry picking buffs and skills from all classes that are not skill points and exp. Every new player is automatically penalized by this from the start (that might have changed if they're a DK) or all the classes get reworked years from now. Doesn't anyone have any sympathy for new players who thought Necro was cool? Then they realize, they have to redo it and become an Arcanist. Its pretty simple, I dont want arcanist skill lines on my Warden. Or my DK. Or my Sorcerer. Or Nightblade skills. Or anything that doesn't resemble the characters we have had for years. Many of us bought the game to play THOSE characters. And have thousands of dollars in this game. It IS the majority because they're being forced to redo all of the characters to fix this mess. And maybe convince everone who quit to give them another chance. And that's going to take years.

onyxorb · March 17

Other (comment below)

I don't do much vet content, so not a stickler for meta for my day to day play.
The new DK skills are definitely different, but make sense.

Forcing me to redo a lot of toons since I had ardent flame subclassed on so many.
My DK toons also feel different, but I'm waiting for the class passives to kick in before making up my mind.

Still, feels more positive than not.