Nos's Mixed Staff DK Build (Dark Brotherhood Updated)

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This DK guide has been updated for Dark Brotherhood. And the build is more unique yet!

Race:

1A). Dunmer – since the only elemental damage we have is fire damage, a dunmer is the best choice for maximizing our DPS.

1B). Altmer – a more well rounded choice that gets extra regen, 1 % max magicka but 3% less fire damage.

With a Dunmer you will get higher single target damage, but with an Altmer you will get higher AoE damage and since endgame content is heading into Mix Add/Single Target direction Altmer becomes just as important.

Attributes:

All in Magicka

Food:

Health and Magicka

Mundus:

Thief and Shadow

Champion Point Distribution:

Blue tree:

My DoT’s account for around 50-60% of my damage, while staff weave (medium weave) is closer to 15-20%. By inputting these ratios into @Asayre‘s worksheet I got the following spread:

100 in Elemental Expert, 20 in Thaumaturge, 46 in Elfborn and 1 in Staff Expert.

Red tree:

Points evenly across Hardy, Thick Skinned and Elemental Defender

Green tree:

100 into reduced cost, the rest into regen.

Gear choice 1:

A). If you have no infallible jewelry:

5 light/1 Medium/ 1 Heavy

3 Willpower – Arcane with Spell Damage Enchants

5  Infallible Aether  Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

2 Skoria Divines with Magicka Enchants

1  Sharpened Maelstrom Lightning staff

1 Sharpened Inferno Staff

B). If you have Infallible Jewelry:

5 light/1 Medium/ 1 Heavy

Infallible Jewelry – Arcane with Spell Damage Enchants

5  Twice Born Star Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

2 Infallible Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

1  Sharpened Maelstrom Lightning staff

1  Sharpened Maelstrom Inferno staff

Bar Setup:

Dk’s are fairly inflexible in their choices as far as skill options. The only thing you could really change out is the Rearming trap.

Main Bar: Inner Light, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flame, Elemental Blockade, Molten Whip. Ultimate – Shooting Star

Offbar: Inner Light, Eruption, Molten Armaments, Rearming Trap, Flames of Oblivion. Ultimate – Standard of Might.

Rotation:

Activate Molten Armaments

Step 1 (Inferno Staff): Fully Charged Heavy Attack>Bar Swap

Step 2: Eruption>LA>Flames of Oblivion>LA>Rearming trap>LA Standard of Might>LA>Bar Swap

Step 3: Engulfing Flame>Medium Weave>Burning Embers>Medium weave>Elemental Blockade>Medium Weave

Step 3: (Whip>Medium Weave) x 6>Elemental Blockade>Bar Swap

Restart at Step 2, but Weave the first tick of channeled lightning attack after eruption to refresh the minor vulnerability debuff.

For AOE, apply Eruption and Elemental Blockade and use fully charged heavy attack on the lightning staff bar. Makes sure that Elemental blockade is down and that Molten Armaments are up.

This setup allows high and free AoE damage and a large increase on sustain.

Reasoning:

1. Why Skoria and not Kena?

- I found that Kena’s uptime is at best between 70-75% which adds around 6-7% increase to damage. Since this build uses a lot of DoT’s, skoria’s damage contribution should also be between 6-7%, plus you can medium weave your front bar for increased damage.

3. Why Infallible Aether?

- Infallible is getting buffed in the Dark Brotherhood update. It is an amazing set for 2 reasons. #1 It provides the Vulnerability debuff to the target that is being heavy attacked. #2 It adds damage to each fully charged heavy attack. At first glance, it seems like a lackluster buff, but at closer examination I found  that it buffs every tick of a channeled lightning heavy attack thus adding quite a bit of damage to each tick. Oh and don’t forget the 5% Minor Slayer and Increased Crit Chance on top of all these goodies! 

4. Whats with the lightning staff on the back bar?

- A few reasons:

A) As I mentioned above, Infallible Aether buffs each tick of a fully charged heavy attack.

B) Each channeled tick is buffed by the vMA lightning staff.

C) DK’s have a 40% buff to staff attacks which synergizes with Lightning staff channel.

D) Each channeled lightning staff heavy attack spreads to nearby targets and hits them for a ton of damage, which scales with Thaumaturge and Elemental expert. The radius is around the same as from elemental ring, except unlike elemental ring, you can do it from range AND it costs 0 magicka. Have you ever run out of magicka while spamming elemental ring in trash pulls or second boss of vMoL? Leave those negative moments in the past. The AoE damage is insane.

E) Fully Charged Heavy Attacks Inflict Vulnerability debuff and since the attack is channeled by moving the cursor from add to add we can actually give the debuff to all the adds surrounding the boss (if there are adds) without stopping our rotation. Keep in mind that because the lightning staff attacks are channeled, you only need the first tick of the heavy attack to proc vulnerability debuff.

F) Lightning Staff is lightning damage, staff damage and DoT damage. This means that it takes advantage of 3 CP stars and thus draws on more sources of DPS buffs. This makes its full DPS potential to be off the charts. The automatic AoE is nice because each additional add automatically  doubles your DPS.

8. Why not elegance?

If there is no infallible jewelry, then switching elegance for infallible, would be a huge dps loss. If the jewelry exists, then 3 willpower/2 Skoria=>TBS>Elegance.

9. How is the single target damage?

Since you are still weaving staff attacks on both bars not much will change in comparison to conventional builds. The only dps loss will be that the LA cast on the lightning staff wont be buffed by the flame damage passive (if you are dunmer) and engulfing debuff. It is a small sacrifice to give up for 8% vulnerability on target as well as 5% increased damage to boss and a buff to your attacks from infallible.

• This topic was modified 8 hours, 47 minutes ago by  Nosferatuzod.