Hello everyone, my name is Boone. I play as a DD in Dragon’s Crest Guild and I have mained a magDK for most of my time on ESO. However after Morrowind the class simply had no use in top PvE groups and I believe it is underperforming. In my video examples I will stick to a robust skeleton with a charged lightning wall and major breach/fracture provided.
A lot of people will see a MagDK skeleton parse and think to themselves “wow, that class is pretty strong!” What these people don’t see is this is the perfect situation for a magDK and it cannot or very rarely will get this good in a trial. One of the main problems is Power lash inconsistency.
POWER LASH
Power lash morphs into a free spammable skill as long as the target is off-balanced in the same game tick you activate the skill. Sounds great right? The problem is in a trial situation, especially in a non-organized group off balance can be quite inconsistent. Heavy attacks consume offbalance at a high rate and quite often concussion isn’t being reapplied every 3 seconds in mechanically heavy fights. I think any magDK main can agree with me that they hate being reliant on this skill in PvE. At the moment a MagDK relies on that free spammable because their magicka recovery is fairly equal to their magicka expenditure per second excluding the whip. For the sake of comparison I will show what damage I could achieve with a normal build/rotation:
![image]()
I did a test where a magDK gets absolutely no whip procs just to see how much whip costs over a full rotation. The whip itself would cost the same as almost ALL OF our recovery, to demonstrate this on a dummy I had to change to molten whip and equip extreme regen gear (it has the same cost so no worries).
![image]()
813 magicka per second for our spammable! Not usable whatsoever. Personally I believe molten whip is a dead skill except for some very niche builds, such as heavy attack builds that wish to boost ardent flame abilities.
Heavy Attacks
Okay so this is the most obvious solution to our sustain issues. The problem is they just aren’t powerful enough. They are simply too slow. MagDKs to even be close to viable need the absolute max damage from a power lash build. Sacrificing any of our damage for heavy attacks in a normal build is unjustifiable. The time it takes to do one heavy attack -> whip is quite equal to the time it takes to do 2x LA and 2x whip. So in a normal build heavy attacking is just a straight up dps loss.
What about heavy attack builds? Afterall a magDK has molten Armanents, surely this skill can create a sustainable rotation with high damage! In my testing this was much lower than a power lash build.
Heavy attack builds just can’t compare to a power lash build in terms of damage. The inferno heavy attacks especially are just too slow. In a melee position this can be quite dangerous if a fight requires you to block or shield any mechanics which require a quicker reaction time. Either way an example of what I was able to achieve on a heavy attack build is as follows:
![image]()
It’s simply weaker. A lightning staff build will make us more flexible however we lose the 8% damage bonus to single target abilities which obviously is another big compromise.
Melee position
Okay, before I start this section i want to say one thing:
DO NOT NERF STAMINA PLEASE!
In the current Meta for endgame raiding groups there is generally one setup and all top raiding groups are following this trend. Get 2-3 sorcerers for concussion/off-balance uptime and their utility as range dps (magBlade can be useful for range dps also), as for the others, use a stamina class. Stamina currently out dpses every magicka class in a raid situation by a long shot. Generally you can give 5-8k dps single target to a stamina over a magicka class on a dummy with offbalance and fracture. This gap can get larger in a raid with more buffs too. Their sustained AOE damage is quite good also! Stamina characters can have just as good AOE damage as magicka if not even better in many fights.
Stamina users can benefit from off-balance heavy attacks at double the rate a Magicka user can. Since stamina users heavy attacks are so strong, they don’t need to worry about a sustain element at all. You could compare power lash and stamina heavy attacks quite nicely here, the problem being if a stamina heavy attacks a target that isn’t offbalance he gains resources, whereas a power lash user will lose resources.
Stamina users can benefit from more reliable resistance debuff sets. Alkosh is just too inconsistent to use right now on many bosses because synergies are only showing to one person at a time.
Stamina user’s champion points system is set up for more damage through the exploiter passive. Magicka users must stack 75 thaumathurge at least to get the much needed exploiter passive.
To give some sort of comparison I will show a robust skeleton test on my stamplar. I tried to keep the penetration stats as close as I could, however it should be noted that stamina have more flexibility with champion points so they would be able to get more penetration here anyways.
![image]()
So, why should a raid group bring a magDK into their group over a harder hitting, easier sustaining stamina user?
Many people argue that magicka have the luxury of a shield and therefore deserve to have less damage. However, for the last 3 months I have played a stamina Templar and I think any experienced player can agree that deadly cloak is just straight up better than shield providing you have competent healers.
Deadly cloak is a form of protection that is up 100% of the time
and also does damage, combined with medium armour stamina are tankier than a user that has no shield and light armour. The problem with shield is it is a reactionary form of protection, it can’t be up 100% like deadly cloak unless you want to seriously gimp your dps output. Magicka users are more vulnerable to high damage mechanics which is generally the only thing that should kill you in an endgame run.
MagDKs bring engulfing flames, that’s worth it right? In a Meta raid group it buffs: StamDKs flames of oblivion, wall of elements, ilambris, burning damage and sunderflame damage (lol). This is a nice buff I completely agree, that’s why many
TANKS use it. MagDKs have no reason to be in a raid right now, they take up a precious melee spot, pull less damage and are honestly more vulnerable to dying compared to a stamina user.
The solution here is NOT to nerf stamina. Every update we get, the game is becoming less enjoyable for endgame PvE players when in reality it should be the opposite, all because of unrelenting nerfs. The endgame PvE community really has shrank since I’ve entered it and I’d rather see it grow personally. In my eyes Stamina right now are in a perfect situation, we just need to bring some magicka classes up to their level.
Suggestions
So I have some (admittedly imperfect) suggestions for the dev team but I hope they can see where I'm coming from. I ask you guys to come up with some suggestions that I haven't provided here. Hopefully some stuff too that isn't unrealistic
![:#]( ":#")
Balancing a game with PvE and PvP joined together is incredibly hard, and I’ll admit before I begin this that I very rarely play PvP. I believe we as a community need to give constructive, realistic buff suggestions to our loadout. So, if I suggest something that will severely negatively affect PvP don’t hesitate to call me out for it, but please think of a solution yourself. I will suggest things that are going to affect PvP but I will try to explain my choices.
Again, please keep in mind these are suggestions I think would help magDK
strictly in PvE:
1. Reduce the heavy attack charge up significantly. As I discussed previously, they simply aren’t worth it in any capacity even in a build focused on buffing them. I admit I can see this affecting PvP however. So I will try provide more magicka sustaining options.
2. Eruption skill – I would like to see this function as an offensive form of channelled focus. I think its damage can be significantly increased, cost decreased and it should return magicka back to the user every 0.5s if there is an enemy inside the AOE. If you regard this ability to be over performing with these changes I’m sure a damage dealing magDK won’t miss the snare it provides anyways, either way cinder storm is a better snare.
3. Molten whip – Cut this spammables cost by half. Double the spell damage it provides to ardent flame abilities. In PvP magDKs use power lash for the heal it provides. A problem with this solution I can see is in group PvP situations. However if a group is co-ordinated enough surely a magDK risking a loss of healing will be okay.
4. Power Lash – I would like to see this be usable if the target is concussed – not necessarily off balanced, right now this ability is good damage wise it’s just so infuriating to play with during a trial due to its inconsistency. Reduce the heal provided by this ability.
5. Give light armour it’s 3% cost reduction per piece back. Fairly understandable request for all magicka users I think.
6. Allow a synergy activation prompt to be seen by multiple people. Right now synergies are so buggy I’m confused why they are even in the game. Only one person can see the activation prompt at a time which just doesn't work in a raid situation where fast paced mechanics are taking place. Synergies should be reliable. I don’t think anyone would disagree with me on this, especially tanks using alkosh or any DD that has used moondancer in the past.
7. Revert orbs not sharing magicka to multiple people once activated. This change in morrowind still confuses me honestly, if a team is cooperating to help each other’s sustain they should be rewarded for it.
8. Scalding rune – I would like to see this ability provide minor force, a magicka version of rearming trap if you will. Would be nice to see its cost reduced. It’s not only magDK that is behind stamina at the moment but I am no expert in their classes so I will keep this guide more focused on DK.
9. Spell absorption CP passive – Reduce the cooldown on this perk, increase the amount it provides. Move the passive to the Apprentice CP tree. Swap with foresight.
10. Exploiter CP passive – move this CP passive to the atronach skill line so both stamina and magicka users can take advantage of it equally. Swap it with Riposte.
11. Battle Roar – I’d like to see this change reverted to the homestead values.
12. Helping hands – Restore magicka also.
