Nos's Mixed Staff DK Build (Shadows of the Hist Updated)

Replies: 129

EDITS:

06/20/2016 – Updated with a minor gear change

7/26/2016 – Updated of Shadows of the Hist

This DK guide has been updated for Shadows of the Hist.

Race:

Dunmer – with the changes to Dunmer introduced in Shadows of the Hist, it now severely outperforms Altmer, making it a contest for a racial choice.

Attributes:

All in Magicka

Food:

Health and Magicka

Mundus:

Thief and Shadow

Champion Point Distribution:

Blue tree:

100 in Elemental Expert, 38 in Thaumaturge, 38 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:

5 light/1 Medium/ 1 Heavy

3 Infallible Jewelry – Arcane with Spell Damage Enchants

5  Twice Born Star Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

2 Infallible Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

1  Precise Maelstrom Lightning staff

1  Sharpened Maelstrom Inferno staff

Bar Setup:

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>Rearming trap>Flames of Oblivion>Standard of Might>Hold down heavy attack till first tick (applying Infal debuff)>Bar Swap

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

Step 3: (Whip>Medium Weave) x 5

Step 4: Engulfing Flame>Medium Weave>Burning Embers>Medium weave>Elemental Blockade>Medium Weave>Whip>Medium Weave>Whip>Medium Weave

Restart at Step 2, but Weave the first tick of channeled lightning attack after FoO 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 seemingly unlimited sustain.

Reasoning:

1. 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! as of Shadows of the Hist update Minor Slayer buffs applies to trash mobs as well.

2. 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.

3. Why not elegance?

The percentage contribution from weaves to your overall damage does not warrant the use of Elegance.

Parses:

Finally got to use this guy in vMoL….first time on Rakhhat with him:) Gonna polish this:)

http://imgur.com/3mmXJAU

http://imgur.com/2QLwRg3

http://imgur.com/a/b7Xbb

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by  Nosferatuzod.