How to counter Dragonknights?

Usureki · June 12

My very last attempt to have a constructive dialogue about the topic before coming to the conclusion that ESO balancing is simply utter garbage and the developers have either no will or competency to fix their game...

I see that 99% of the time, whichever group has more DKs in their party win BGs and when people see the blue and red flames they just leave regardless of the 30 min penalty - myself included.
I see one man army DKs harassing whole guilds in Cyro forts doing their 1vX "strategy" - some shout haxx right away, others say that this is a matter of experience and skill, I no longer know.
I see dozens of forum posts and comments dedicated in describing their frustration in a similar manner as this post. The phenomenon is widely known, but ignored by official comms.

I've tried doing offensive pen tactics, I've tried outsustain, I've tried status effects, I've tried melee, I've tried ranged etc... I'm tired boss. Just so damn tired of seeing DKs dominating EVERY single PvP scenario to a level that I've grown to have toxic prejudices against players playing that class. I know mastery is a huge factor in this game, and I did my best to constantly improve myself in the past months and I do feel that I've improved, but the fact that DKS literally whip my @$$ all the time is starting to be more than annoying. I understand that Arcanist is considered the worst PvP class and screw me I guess that I still want to play with my main char, but c'mon.... am I really supposed to wait 'til EO 2027 to be able to have ANY freakin' chance in PvP?

So please help. Give me some ideas and strategies one can use against DKs in U50.
Thanks in advance.

ceruulean · June 12

Play Vengeance campaign

DarkStrifeYT · June 12

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

VinnyGambini · June 12

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Sorry but this is blatantly untrue. Max resist is gives you 50% dmg reduction. So you can go from 30k to 15k, you will never go from 30k to 2k.

Highwayman · June 12

Broadly speaking? Not taking higher skill players into account?

Most over commit on their whips. They stop hitting heart of flame and let their buffs run out. Try playing evasive during the whip phase and hit them with a stun and burst combo after their 4th whip. Lots of them will still try to take that last whip while you have them in execute instead of turtling back up.

If they pop corrosive, pop major expedition and run a circle around the nearest obstacle (or just out run them) and re-engage when they are done burning.

ADawg · June 12

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Use ranged attacks they say.

Then they gave em STREAK

Usureki · June 12

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Thanks for the tip, but I don't think it satisfied me. Yes, they are melee.. which means that they hit one third range (7m) compared to my Arcanist "ranged" abilities with 22 m. But anyway, they have 50% damage reduction vs ranged: https://eso-hub.com/en/skills/dragonknight/draconic-power/wing-buffet so I don't think that works. Also a Truly Superb Glyph of Flame Resist gives 2708 fire resistance, which translates to a damage reduction of 4,1%, but only in the case of fire damage and DK can get physical too.

React · June 12

Use an addon to show when a fossilize is cast on you and when you take corrosive damage.

Run major evasion for a huge damage reduction vs incinerate, heart/soul of flame, leap, disintegrating dragonfire initial hit, etc.

Aim for 33k+ HP.

Don't let them stand on top of you parsing you, move out of melee range when you're not pressuring them.

Most of what is killing you is blockable, try to block when it counts.

Luneca · June 13

ceruulean wrote: »

Play Vengeance campaign

DK and NB still rule the roost there.

Personally, if you can't stand the DKs, I'd just fire siege. Works wonders even in a 1v1.

Theignson · June 13

React wrote: »

Use an addon to show when a fossilize is cast on you and when you take corrosive damage.

Most of what is killing you is blockable, try to block when it counts.

React,
I know about the corrosive addon, but what is the fossilize add on?
I forget whether you ever did a video showing your add on and UI layout? That would be really helpful. There are so many addons its hard to keep track of them

zammo · June 13

ADawg wrote: »

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Use ranged attacks they say.

Then they gave em STREAK

And 50% mitigation to projectiles.

Nordstern · June 13

Usureki wrote: »

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Thanks for the tip, but I don't think it satisfied me. Yes, they are melee.. which means that they hit one third range (7m) compared to my Arcanist "ranged" abilities with 22 m. But anyway, they have 50% damage reduction vs ranged: https://eso-hub.com/en/skills/dragonknight/draconic-power/wing-buffet so I don't think that works. Also a Truly Superb Glyph of Flame Resist gives 2708 fire resistance, which translates to a damage reduction of 4,1%, but only in the case of fire damage and DK can get physical too.

Honestly, that guy gave you the best advice you can get. And it works. So dont try to find excuses. Triple flame resist will help a lot. Just avoid corrosive.

React wrote: »

Use an addon to show when a fossilize is cast on you and when you take corrosive damage.

Run major evasion for a huge damage reduction vs incinerate, heart/soul of flame, leap, disintegrating dragonfire initial hit, etc.

Aim for 33k+ HP.

Don't let them stand on top of you parsing you, move out of melee range when you're not pressuring them.

Most of what is killing you is blockable, try to block when it counts.

Tbh these add ons are beyond pathetic and I really dont know why they are even allowed to exist.

ceruulean · June 13

Luneca wrote: »

ceruulean wrote: »

Play Vengeance campaign

DK and NB still rule the roost there.

Personally, if you can't stand the DKs, I'd just fire siege. Works wonders even in a 1v1.

The imbalance is not that bad. A worse player will still die eventually. At most NB can stall out with movement speed or cloak but won't win a duel against a tank. DK is ez mode but pure melee and can't do ranged builds.

RaidingTraiding · June 13

running some infused flame resist glyphs helps with medium/light no s&b builds, makes it so you don't get near one shot by whips. Having at least 50% flame resist on both bars is what i've been aiming for. I also go full damage mitigation in cp (including crit resist slottable) and i run a defending ice destro back bar, that way you can get some tankiness on that bar and can put weakness of elements on them. having storm calling for streak and hurricane also helps a lot, that plus rat and you can avoid a lot of damage by just being more mobile than them through speed. this also means you dont have to block a lot but you do have the ice destro when you need to. I've had some success with heavy dots on them, but by running infused flame resist glyphs and heavy into the blue damage mitigation cp, focusing on burst i think wouldnt be too effective.

Usureki · June 13

Nordstern wrote: »

Honestly, that guy gave you the best advice you can get. And it works. So dont try to find excuses. Triple flame resist will help a lot. Just avoid corrosive.

Wow dude that's quite arrogant. I am more than thankful for the helpful responses, nevertheless my reasoning was that trying to play ranged against the absurdly overpowered class having an extra 50% dmg reduction VS ranged by their ability may not work. Also if I am supposed to SPECIFICALLY enchant my inventory JUST AGAINST the main damage of a class, might be proving my point. These are not excuses, these are facts.

Tbh these add ons are beyond pathetic and I really dont know why they are even allowed to exist.

Am I right to assume that you are playing DK main?

Your comments on other threads and your attitude kinda indicates that.

EDIT: fixed the messed up the quotes

JohnRingo · June 14

Usureki wrote: »

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Thanks for the tip, but I don't think it satisfied me. Yes, they are melee.. which means that they hit one third range (7m) compared to my Arcanist "ranged" abilities with 22 m. But anyway, they have 50% damage reduction vs ranged: https://eso-hub.com/en/skills/dragonknight/draconic-power/wing-buffet so I don't think that works. Also a Truly Superb Glyph of Flame Resist gives 2708 fire resistance, which translates to a damage reduction of 4,1%, but only in the case of fire damage and DK can get physical too.

Just build a werewolf. Problem solved.

React · June 14

Nordstern wrote: »

Tbh these add ons are beyond pathetic and I really dont know why they are even allowed to exist.

Fossilize is a debuff now, therefore it can be tracked like any other debuff in the game. The base game UI can track it, so if you have an issue with people specifically tracking fossilize, you must also have an issue with base game debuff tracking existing in the first place.

Ironically, fossilize was made dodgeable to "give it more counterplay" according to the developers, when the reality is it is drastically stronger now than it was before they changed it. Before, the counterlplay was to just have good reaction time, since it had no delay you always had time to break free and roll or block before the next ability hit you. Now that its delayed, it is far more punishing as if it lands the caster can guarantee a whip/spammable/ult with no counterplay, or the stun can be stacked with an undodgeable stun like dawnbreaker for an unavoidable combo.

Couple that with the fact that the game suppresses particle effects in high stress environments (cyrodiil) and you now have a delayed unblockable stun with no visual tell of when to dodge. Thank goodness its a debuff that can be tracked, otherwise you'd be constantly getting hit by unavoidable death.

As for the addons people are using to detect corrosive and onslaught damage, I agree those are silly and shouldn't exist as they're pulling info that isn't normally visible to the player first hand. Don't use them myself, but still reccomend them to people who are struggling with fighting dks.

Miracle19 · June 14

Maintain distance and don’t brawl 1v1 especially as an arcanist. You should not expect to be a ranged player able to brawl against a melee brawler.

Force them to come way out of position into an unfavorable fight if they want to kill/fight you and you will notice they are not as hard to counter as you’d think. Dots and status effects help a ton as well as they go through DKs absurd block.

Ultimately, don’t try to beat DK at that they do best(will never work), do what your class does best and use positioning to cover up your weakness.

SundarahFr3akinrican · June 14

A lot of the tips in here are good but also just know, they are over tuned right now in comparison to other classes or play styles

Nordstern · June 15

Usureki wrote: »

Nordstern wrote: »

Honestly, that guy gave you the best advice you can get. And it works. So dont try to find excuses. Triple flame resist will help a lot. Just avoid corrosive.

Wow dude that's quite arrogant. I am more than thankful for the helpful responses, nevertheless my reasoning was that trying to play ranged against the absurdly overpowered class having an extra 50% dmg reduction VS ranged by their ability may not work. Also if I am supposed to SPECIFICALLY enchant my inventory JUST AGAINST the main damage of a class, might be proving my point. These are not excuses, these are facts.

Tbh these add ons are beyond pathetic and I really dont know why they are even allowed to exist.

Am I right to assume that you are playing DK main? Your comments on other threads and your attitude kinda indicates that.

EDIT: fixed the messed up the quotes

Well of course you have to adapt your build to "just counter the meta". I've been using triple flame resist for whole U49 and it worked great. And yes, ranged abilities aren't the way to go against a dk with wings but wheres the problem? Do you know that dk wings used to reflect all ranged attacks?!
And no, I don't main any class anymore, I use most of them. I just dont think there should be add ons that give such a huge gameplay advantage. There is already a visual indicator which is exactly how obvious the devs wanted it to be. It would maybe be a different thing if we had a 30k hp cap but with all these heal tanks it needs a perfect combo to be able to kill them. Impossible if they can get even more carry by thumbless add ons like this.

Nordstern · June 17

X94 wrote: »

[snip]

You say I suck at the game while crying about a "15k spammable" because your lack of game knowledge makes you think having 30k resistances is all defensive stats you need in pvp.
And yes, ofc adding flame resist above armor cap makes sense. Most players will have 15k+ penetration. So your armor+flame resist would have to be close to 50k to "do absolutely nothing". Also feel free to 1v1 me if you insult me here. Im playing on Xbox.
[edited to remove quote]

Usureki · June 17

JohnRingo wrote: »

Usureki wrote: »

DarkStrifeYT wrote: »

Since Dks are all melee distance, use ranged attacks and speed up while hitting them from far away. Also use fire resistance enchantments on jewelry. Dks go from hitting 30k to 2k or less

Thanks for the tip, but I don't think it satisfied me. Yes, they are melee.. which means that they hit one third range (7m) compared to my Arcanist "ranged" abilities with 22 m. But anyway, they have 50% damage reduction vs ranged: https://eso-hub.com/en/skills/dragonknight/draconic-power/wing-buffet so I don't think that works. Also a Truly Superb Glyph of Flame Resist gives 2708 fire resistance, which translates to a damage reduction of 4,1%, but only in the case of fire damage and DK can get physical too.

Just build a werewolf. Problem solved.

No.

Usureki · June 17

React wrote: »

Use an addon to show when a fossilize is cast on you and when you take corrosive damage.

Run major evasion for a huge damage reduction vs incinerate, heart/soul of flame, leap, disintegrating dragonfire initial hit, etc.

Aim for 33k+ HP.

Don't let them stand on top of you parsing you, move out of melee range when you're not pressuring them.

Most of what is killing you is blockable, try to block when it counts.

Thank you so much for the advice, I took some time to refer to your recommendations and I'd have some comments.

I've found addons showing Corrosive Armor, but not for Fossilize, which is way more difficult to detect, especially when ESO decides not to play all sounds effect some time. Are you referring to BanditUI addon, or something else?

I already have 30k HP w/ 30k armor, 4k spell damage w/ 14k pen. Nevertheless I feel that I'm hitting HP sponges when I strike at DKs (don't even let me start at WWs..), so moving more to the defensive side does not really make sense I think. Everytime I try to move more to the defensive, I just realise that I cannot kill anyone, it just takes more time for them to kill me.
I must be doing something wrong, but I also feel that Arcanist is so underpowered for doing execute and/or burst, that it is near impossible for me to take on a defensive character, or any DK/WW. Many recommended already to move to a proc-like status effect build instead, but I'm still mourning my attempt to live my dream of my build, though I'm soon giving in.
Check my current build, feedbacks are welcome.

"Move out of melee range" they say, I've heard it a lot. Well I'm a ranged magicka caster, so yeah, my intention is indeed not to get melee range. BUT! Melee range is a freaking 7 meters and the amount of distance closing abilities present in this game is just laughable.
I would gladly rely on Apocryphal Gate, but that ability simply does not work 90% of the times. Even having 3*+7% movement speed from jewelries, I'm still easily chased down by those DK "melee" characters, as my Arcanist abilities are having a 22 meters range (3x the "melee" range) - also if I'm running away I'm not facing them, but they can still attack me.
Do you have any recommendation in keeping the range needed not to be erased from the BG in 2 seconds?

Blocking is a very useful advice, I did improve a lot by practicing a bit more blocking, but it did not solve my issue at all. DK has better sustain, better damage output and better defensive capabilities outright. 1 DK ability does a number of effect that other classes need to cast 2-3 times to achieve. This is not a matter of blocking, however a good advice it was.

So all in all, I still believe that I'm playing the game with a different, more difficult and unfair ruleset when I try my Arcanist against a DK (or a WW). I'm eager to learn how can I improve, but my empirical experience from the past months, that whichever team has more DKs or WWs just win the BGs 99.9% of the time.
This makes me very angry and question the competence and intention of those implementing these "balance" systems. I'm still not convinced that I have any realistic chance to beat a player with the same experience level as I have, I still believe that Arcanist is just literally trash in PvP and I'm still in awe how ZOS devs can just simply ignore this and putting salt on wound, just refresh all other classes already performing better in PvP.
I'm just really, really sad.

Usureki · June 17

Miracle19 wrote: »

Maintain distance and don’t brawl 1v1 especially as an arcanist. You should not expect to be a ranged player able to brawl against a melee brawler.

Force them to come way out of position into an unfavorable fight if they want to kill/fight you and you will notice they are not as hard to counter as you’d think. Dots and status effects help a ton as well as they go through DKs absurd block.

Ultimately, don’t try to beat DK at that they do best(will never work), do what your class does best and use positioning to cover up your weakness.

Same here. It is not I, who search for melee conflict, it is them, and they have a far greater toolset to do so than my toolset to avoid it. Also I'm feeling quite the contradiction, when people are saying that "well dont fight a melee fighter in melee", absolutely disregarding the fact that they have 50% damage reduction vs ranged.

Is there a third secret mode to attack, other than melee or ranged? For targeted strikes, no. Am I really supposed to absolutely ditch my targeted abilities for AoEs and DoTs because this DK class is ridiculously overpowered? Then why, in Mara's name did ZOS give Arcanist LITERALLY ONLY TARGETED ABILITIES to begin with

gammelscroll · June 19

Usureki wrote: »

My very last attempt to have a constructive dialogue about the topic before coming to the conclusion that ESO balancing is simply utter garbage and the developers have either no will or competency to fix their game...

I see that 99% of the time, whichever group has more DKs in their party win BGs and when people see the blue and red flames they just leave regardless of the 30 min penalty - myself included.
I see one man army DKs harassing whole guilds in Cyro forts doing their 1vX "strategy" - some shout haxx right away, others say that this is a matter of experience and skill, I no longer know.
I see dozens of forum posts and comments dedicated in describing their frustration in a similar manner as this post. The phenomenon is widely known, but ignored by official comms.

I've tried doing offensive pen tactics, I've tried outsustain, I've tried status effects, I've tried melee, I've tried ranged etc... I'm tired boss. Just so damn tired of seeing DKs dominating EVERY single PvP scenario to a level that I've grown to have toxic prejudices against players playing that class. I know mastery is a huge factor in this game, and I did my best to constantly improve myself in the past months and I do feel that I've improved, but the fact that DKS literally whip my @$$ all the time is starting to be more than annoying. I understand that Arcanist is considered the worst PvP class and screw me I guess that I still want to play with my main char, but c'mon.... am I really supposed to wait 'til EO 2027 to be able to have ANY freakin' chance in PvP?

So please help. Give me some ideas and strategies one can use against DKs in U50.
Thanks in advance.

Go 1 bar sorc and "oneshot" those filthy DKs.