Replies: 27
Intro: This guide is designed to provide you with a quality set up that will help you pull high DPS in either a raid or dungeon environment. With subpar CP allocation and/or gear you will likely be able to break 20k DPS, and with an optimal set up and clean rotation you will be able to pull over 30k.
Shout-outs: My build would not be possible without the help of a good many theory crafters who have put in immense work long before me. These people include, but are not limited to – @FearTurbo, who has a great guide out there that has helped me with my foray into Stam DK; @Asayre, who’s work and spreadsheet have been really invaluable; @AlphaRahl, @Nosferatuzod, and many others at the wonderful guild of Requiem who have helped me tweak things from patch to patch.
Race: I’m an Orc, because I’m a filthy casual like that. If you want to be pro, you’re ideally going to roll a race that gives you more substantial passives. Khajiit crit bonus has been fixed and makes kitties a great choice for this build; if you never want to worry about sustain issues over longer fights (like those in vMoL) then Redguard is a great choice too. Dunmer would be the third best option with their max stam bonus, however, this race has taken a step back for this build as stam DKs no longer utilize significant fire damage.
Attribute Points: All into stamina.
Mundus Stone: Thief – get that crit.
Champion Points
Warrior: For true optimization, you would shift these around depending on the trial. If you don’t want do that, you’ll be fine splitting your points between Elemental Defender, Thick Skinned, and Hardy. You can be kind to your healers too and put a little bit into Quick Recovery.
Thief: Max out cost reduction, then put the rest into recovery.
Mage: Per Asayre’s spreadsheet, I run 75 in Mighty, 71 in Thaumaturge, 15 in Precise Strikes, and 6 in Piercing. This may change slightly for you depending on your gear, I encourage you to check out Asayre’s work and do your own dps test to find your optimal distribution. The general idea is that the vast majority of our damage is coming from DoTs (everything except our light attack weaves) and all our damage is either physical or poison (with Standard being the exception). Thus, most of your points will be in Mighty and Thaumaturge.
Gear
Armor: You want to run either 7 Med or 5/1/1 (assuming you have full Undaunted passives). I have heard it argued both ways, I currently run 7 Medium, and I wager the difference between the two is minimal. Either way, run Divines on everything with stamina enchants.
Head & Shoulders – Molag Kena.
Jewelry – Agility Set, Robust, with Weapon Power enchants.
Other 5 Pieces – this will vary depending on your situation. For my trials team, I run Night Mother’s – you always want one person running this set on your trials team for the 5 piece bonus. If your raiding team does not have someone doing this then BECOME THAT PERSON. If someone in your raid is already rolling with NM, then you will opt for either Hundings Rage or Twice Born Star (while being sure to pick up the Shadow mundus stone). The dps difference between Hundings and TBS is minimal, however, TBS is nice in that you get a health bonus of about 1k. Note: TBS wins out in an optimal raid setting where warhorn is constantly on cooldown. If you are not in an optimized raiding team, or if you are simply doing a dungeon, equip Hundings.
Weapons: Sharpened vMA Dagger, Sharpened vMA Axe, and Sharpened vMA Bow. If you’re a scrub like myself and you don’t have vMA weapons, then crafting up NM or Hundings will do fine in the meantime. Just make sure that they’re sharpened and golded out. The meta has shifted this patch, for PvE Sharpened > Nirnhoned. Furthermore, you get the greatest return on investment by upgrading your weapons to gold, as opposed to any other piece of armor. So even if you’re cheap GOLD OUT THOSE WEAPONS!!! If you then have the funds left over, upgrade your armor as well. Upgrading one piece of armor from purple to legendary will set you back about 50k gold but will increase your crit by a little over 1%.
If you are going to craft your weapons, you will want the Weapon Damage Enchant on your bow and one of your main bar weapons, on the other you will want poison damage. The poison enchant will be increased by your CP, and having Weapon Damage on both your bow and other weapon helps ensure greater uptime (note: due to the cooldown, both WD enchants cannot proc at once.)
Food: Blue Health and Stamina.
Potions: Essence of Weapon Power! Chug these bad boys so that you don’t have to run 2H for Rally. Ideally you want to have these on cooldown and be 3/3 in Medicinal Use. In particular, make sure to pop one before dropping Standard (and also make sure you’ve just proc’ed Kena).
Skills
Bar 1 (DW): Rapid Strikes | Venomous Claws | Rending Slashes | Flames of Oblivion | Rearming Trap Ultimate: Flawless Dawnbreaker
Bar 2 (Bow): Poison Injection | Acid Spray | Endless Hail | Camo Hunter | Flex Spot Ultimate: Standard of Might
Your flex spot will be dictated by your group needs and the situation. As a DK, be prepared to run chains for your group, especially in vMoL. As a stam user, you may be expected to run rapids as well if going for competitive scores. If you somehow don’t need to run either, throwing another Fighter’s Guild skill in there is a good idea as you can passively increase your bow bar’s damage output. Caltrops is also a worthwhile skill to run on your back bar if you have the room and will net you about a 1k dps increase; I personally don’t run it as someone else on my raiding team does, and multiple caltrops don’t stack.
I used to run trap on my back bar instead of acid spray, and had steel tornado on my front bar. This is a fine option for AoE and many of you will be comfortable doing this. As @AlphaRahl pointed out, however, the above set up provides us with an additional Fighter’s Guild skill on our main bar, increasing our dps. In case it’s not obvious, this is why we have Flawless on our front bar – you will essentially never use this, always continue to generate ultimate until you can pop Standard.
Rotation: I light attack weave (LA) everything except Endless Hail and FOO so that I can keep Kena proc’ed as much as possible. This can be stamina costly, so be sure to carry plenty of pots and don’t be shy about calling out for shards.
Starting on your back bar => Endless Hail > LA Injection > Bar Swap > LA Trap > LA Rending > LA Claws > LA Rapid Strikes (x 3) > FOO > Bar Swap Cancel > rinse and repeat, dropping Standard as needed.
If you run vMA dagger then your front bar rotation will look slightly different, as you want to intersperse Rapid Strikes with your other DoTs.
Furthermore, as this is a 10s rotation (the duration of Endless Hail) and Rearming Trap lasts 16s, you can be flexible about when you refresh your trap. I tend to recast just about every rotation now that it’s damage has been increased, although I’m sure this is a slight dps loss.
That is all, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reply below. I’m always open to feedback and look to improve my build whenever possible.
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