I don't know who the class representative is for Stamina DK's but I hope you a have strong voice. We stamina DK's need you now more than ever. The class balance changes recently mentioned pre-pts for Summerset are not only relatively minor for stamina dk's, they are clearly geared towards their magicka counterparts.
1) Combustion passive shouldn't be a proc chance based on a status effect. Status effects don't work on wards (magicka shields). In addition, status effects have the highest chance to proc with weapon enchants. This also translates to the fact, that the highest chance of proccing status effects (weapon enchants) do not affect argonian/bosmer and dunmer due to their inherit resistance to poison/fire resistance relatively speaking. In addition the combustion passive should be based on applying poison and fire damage and not dependent the status effect. That would make the passive much more useful, in addition the original damage amp of 50% of the combustion passive should
be kept in addition to what zos is adding now. It should not be replaced with this new change.
2) Elder Dragon is still completely useless of a passive. 5%
Health recovery is useless. I repeat, it is completely useless. Not only is it useless but it requires the condition of using a draconic ability, which limits build diversity especially for stamina dk's who already have a limited magicka pool (considering that all Draconic abilities are relatively high cost magicka abilities). 5% health recovery for each draconic ability is essentially 32.5 more health recovery every second if you are geared towards Troll King (TK provides 1500 recovery if health drops below 50%. 5% of 1500 is 75, but remember that's 75 health recovery over 2 secs.) So even geared towards high recovery builds it's completely useless of a passive ability. Let's not forget it's also affected by defile, which is part of the current meta in PvP and we all know it.
3) Granting us snare removal with no immunity means nothing. The average Stamina DK magicka pool is 12K. Reflective plate is an extremely high cost magicka ability. With no immunity and because snares are extremely common place, the snare will be applied almost immediately back again. This leaves stamina DK's to recast the ability only 3 times, and each time will be useless as the snare will be reapplied again. And because Stamina DK's have no other utility stamina morphs, with only two that apply dots (venomous claws and noxious breath) this leaves our other utility skills like volatile armor, igneous shields, fossilize extremely difficult to use and captialize on. Especially igneous or in this case the possibly new morph fragmented shields as both are extremely high cost magicka abilities.
I can see 3 things that would help give Stamina DK's
both identity and balance.
1) Give the new reflective plate morph a small snare immunity. I'd say 2-3 sec is fine for now.
2) I'd change the Elder Dragon passive to something that you ZOS even promote on character selection screen when you claim DK's are master of arms. I'd do just that. Change it to something like "Master at Arms" or "Strength of the Dragon" or keep it as "Elder Dragon" but change the passive to give physical damage/fire damage bonus where one skill point gives 1% and 2-3% for the second skill point when equipping a draconic ability on the skill bar. This would force DK's to make interesting builds to incoporate their draconic abilities into their skill slots and it would put them on par with the Passive skill damage bonuses of Warden (Advanced Species)/Sorc (Energized)/Templar (Balanced Warrior and Piercing Spear)/Nightblade (Master Assassin) as all have passives that grant some form of damage bonus for both their stamina and magicka counterparts. Dragonknights are the only class that not only have a time limited weapon damage buff, but they are also the only class with a completely meaningless passive. You could save yourself the two skill points and it would have no bearing on your overall survivability or performance. I cannot see, for any good justifiable reason as to why the Elder Dragon Passive still exists.
3) Give stamina DK's another poison morph
(or even something unique, that's different than just a poison whip. @Vaoh posted an amazing suggestion below). We only have two, both of which are dots, and both of which are easily cleansed or countered (when a NB goes cloak, a templar purges, a sorc who shield stacks, a warden will out-heal unless defiled). The stamina morph can occupy the place of the Molten Whip morph. I don't know of one DK, whether it be Magicka or Stamina, worth their grain of salt who even uses this completely and utterly useless morph. If you are concerned about PvE dps, just do what you have done to Stamina Wardens. Give the poison spammable morph a slight delay. Make it akin to subterranean assault (perhaps not as clunky or slow). At least this will allow for more skill required to implement in rotation with PvE dps and even in PvP.
I implore you guys to please re-evaluate these 3 scenarios I have talked about. And if for any god-forsaken completely biased reason
@ZOS_Wrobel , if you think that somehow your justification of what you think Dragonknights should be and shouldn't be is the correct way of thinking, then at the very least, change that god awful waste of 2 skill-points passive Elder Dragon.
4) P.S. The World In Ruin passive which grants any of the DK's fire and poison Area of Effect abilities an additional 6% is another completely useless passive for Stamina Dragonknights.
Our only poison AOE is Noxious Breath. Noxious Breath has several issues. It's hit box is extremely wonky, thus your ability to have it land on a player becomes a guessing game. Did it land? Did it not? I have to depend on my opponents debuff bars to see if it lands, which is essentially about 50% of the time. And it doesn't miss because the opponent dodges, or moves out of the way. No, it's just that the hit box mechanics for this ability is that bad. The other issue is that its dot is *** poor in terms of damage output, and the Major Fracture debuff is much better utilized on something like Ransack, which is just as cheap, deals more burst damage, and is much easier to land. So in essence, World In Ruin, is another useless passive for Stamina DK. We only have one AOE poison which is difficult to land due to bad hit box mechanics, and when it does, I've basically wasted 2x the amount of stamina just to have it hit, and wasted all that dps pressure I could have been applying to my opponent.
@ZOS_Wrobel @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_whoever the hell else will listen.
Post has been edited several times to clean it up in terms of verbosity, grammatical errors, and to add additional suggestions.