Tamriel Foundry

DK tank builds have particularily low damage.  I can't imagine getting anything out of this set on a typical DK tank.

Calling in arithmancer @Asayre, as he probably has the formulas for how those values are calculated.

From my own (untested) perspective, you are likely to be better off staking for weapon damage with the set, if only because weapon damage is easier to stack higher than spell damage. This then is complicated by the fact that most weapon damage sets come with stamina supporting boni, making it hard to boss up your magicka for utility abilities.

I think there are some cool ideas with this set, but my gut feeling is that it is a bit niche and overhyped.

1. Sum up damage from your weapon and all weapon/spell damage set bonuses. Multiply this by any spell power boost you have like Major Sorcery. For example, if you're using a purple Maelstrom staff (1132 damage) and purple Willpower jewelry (186 spell damage) with Major Sorcery (20%), your spell damage is 1582.

2. The set looks for whichever is higher of your spell/weapon damage and sets the higher to the same value. For example, your spell and weapon damage is 1575 and 1188, respectively. With the set both spell and weapon damage will be 1575. In this example you can use Major Sorcery to boost both spell and weapon damage but using Major Brutality has no effect.

3. The set probably works best with Medium armour as the 5 pieces bonus Agility will allow it to increase your spell damage. To make the most out of this set you'll probably want Major Brutality (no need for Major Sorcery), Major Prophecy and Major Savagery. You also want to use as many DoTs as possible.

4. It's currently not clear to me how a DK tank will benefit from Pelinal's Aptitude. I think the 5 set bonus of other sets are more desirable.

Thanks for the fast response, @Asayre!

In regards to the set's utility, do you think would be safe to say it makes a decent off-role suit for a DK when not tanking, i.e. for solo content, DPS-in-a-pinch kind of thing?  Ideally for use when you don't want to respect your entire stat and CP allotments?

Another query, @Asayre ?

To add another DK-specific question here, I've been testing with Igneus Weapons and Flames of Oblivion on my bars.  Those do match your suggested buffs, so I am glad I was on the right track.  My current PTS stat spread however was the result of some guesswork on my part, being assigned as 22 Mag & 42 Stam (on the assumption of being a tank for group content).   Jewelry is set for Reduce Spell Cost.  However while I have the luxury in PTS of using Prismatic Glyphs for enchantment, a relative newer character on Live will have to make specific choices while leveling up.  Would Magicka glyphs be better off for a more efficient choice or would Stam glyphs help boost the Weapon Damage at a more favorable rate, thus allowing the weapon damage to set the bar, so to speak?

Apologies if I seem to be asking basic theory questions, I feel like I am not quite sure as to what is the easier stat to max and buff.  I was leaning towards Magicka, but according to common wisdom, Stamina seems to be what most suggest as easier to increase.  It's throwing me off somewhat as I find it counter-intuitive to my train of thought.

@Koxinga

If I may inquire, what is your attribute pool sizes with 22 mag, 42 stam together with your standard gear? I am doubtful about spreading stats that much to utilise a set; fitting a set based on its bonuses to your purpose and stats is more intuitive.

I think the set serves a niche purpose that is unknown to me. With increased skill costs, and (if you are tanking), the redistribution of block and resource cost reduction champion points, spreading stats that much to use this set erodes into the overall effectiveness.

With DK, you can use your Earthen Heart skills to restore 5% stam using magicka, so you definitely have that avenue to manage resources. But the benchmarks that you want depends on what you are doing with it.

Latin wrote on May 14, 2016 @Koxinga

If I may inquire, what is your attribute pool sizes with 22 mag, 42 stam together with your standard gear? I am doubtful about spreading stats that much to utilise a set; fitting a set based on its bonuses to your purpose and stats is more intuitive.

I think the set serves a niche purpose that is unknown to me. With increased skill costs, and (if you are tanking), the redistribution of block and resource cost reduction champion points, spreading stats that much to use this set erodes into the overall effectiveness.

With DK, you can use your Earthen Heart skills to restore 5% stam using magicka, so you definitely have that avenue to manage resources. But the benchmarks that you want depends on what you are doing with it.

Well my stat allocation was not influenced by the Pelinal's Set, but rather as a result of my leveling-up experiences as a non-V16 DK tank.  It has been my experience that stat-dumping only into Stamina leaves me dangerously unbalanced considering that 3/4's of the necessary powers for DK tanking require Magicka.  I found that the Helping Hands passive merely reinforced the lack of need for maxed-out Stamina, and promoted better balance with Magicka.

When I followed this allocation on PTS my stat pools are the following:  Mag 15,191, Health 25,237, and Stam 19,660.  I haven't run into sustain issues so far, but I haven't been able to test much group content on PTS due to lack of people.

I'm not claiming by any means to be even close to the level of expertise of many of the people that have replied here, in fact I'm very much wanting to find out what I can do to balance my instinctive playstyle preferences with what is the established common wisdom of theorycraft here.  Part of that is trying to determine what's the optimal set-up for a tank using this as an off-role suit when in solo-play or pinch-DPSing.

Koxinga wrote on May 14, 2016

Another query, @Asayre ?

To add another DK-specific question here, I’ve been testing with Igneus Weapons and Flames of Oblivion on my bars. Those do match your suggested buffs, so I am glad I was on the right track. My current PTS stat spread however was the result of some guesswork on my part, being assigned as 22 Mag & 42 Stam (on the assumption of being a tank for group content). Jewelry is set for Reduce Spell Cost. However while I have the luxury in PTS of using Prismatic Glyphs for enchantment, a relative newer character on Live will have to make specific choices while leveling up. Would Magicka glyphs be better off for a more efficient choice or would Stam glyphs help boost the Weapon Damage at a more favorable rate, thus allowing the weapon damage to set the bar, so to speak?

Apologies if I seem to be asking basic theory questions, I feel like I am not quite sure as to what is the easier stat to max and buff. I was leaning towards Magicka, but according to common wisdom, Stamina seems to be what most suggest as easier to increase. It’s throwing me off somewhat as I find it counter-intuitive to my train of thought.

It's pretty bad on a DK in general given how many of their DPS morphs are between mag/stam (as well as their utility skills don't really scale off either stat) and there are flat out better options to take.  A DK using pelinal's would underperform compared to their stat dumped counterparts as well as have just about no utility to offer in return making the set completely useless IMO.

This set best works for Stam Sorcs and Stam Templars.

Okay, I am not married to the idea of Pelinals, but I was enjoying it on PTS.  So to keep an open mind, what would be recommended for a DK Tank in off-role?

Koxinga wrote on May 14, 2016

Okay, I am not married to the idea of Pelinals, but I was enjoying it on PTS. So to keep an open mind, what would be recommended for a DK Tank in off-role?

 

Like offtank?

 

5PC Black Rose, rest NMGs, aim for 23-24k health and dump rest into stam.

usmcjdking wrote on May 14, 2016

Koxinga said on May 14, 2016 :

Okay, I am not married to the idea of Pelinals, but I was enjoying it on PTS. So to keep an open mind, what would be recommended for a DK Tank in off-role?

Like offtank?

5PC Black Rose, rest NMGs, aim for 23-24k health and dump rest into stam.

Not sure what you mean by 'offtank' but I will assume you mean when not-tanking.  Why does this Black Rose set benefit me anymore than the Pelinal's?  That +154 Weapon/Spell Damage is less than I gain under Pelinal's if I do my math correctly.  Can you explain why this set is 'good' or 'better'?

TBH I'm not sure what you mean by off role.  As you are DPSing or healing?

Standard dps or healing gear will suffice if you are not tanking. It's just that your effectiveness depends on how your stats are distributed.

Say if you are skewed towards stamina, then you are pretty much not going to heal at all. If your attribute distribution is spread between all 3 resources, then your damage potential and sustain will be poorer; using Hundings' and other standard stam dps gear would compensate a little bit. Alternatively, say you spread your points purely between health and stamina, or full points in stamina, your effectiveness as a dps will increase at a cost of some health and survivability in some harder contents. Your champion point allocation will also come into play, you can balance them out for versatility at the cost of some sustain and/or mitigation.

The only thing I can think of is if you are skewed towards stamina, you could use the set to boost your spell damage while on medium or heavy armour so that you can use some DK class skills like Molten Whip in your damage rotation. But you probably won't have a large magicka pool for sustain and implicit damage contribution. So the easier way out is still just to use standard stamina attack skills like normal stamina DK dps would do, e.g. Rapid Strikes, where you already have reasonable weapon damage and stamina pool to supplement.

If you are crafting a separate set for dps then it makes more sense to craft one where most of its bonuses are relevant to your purpose. My biggest reservation is that its 2, 3 and 4 piece bonuses are not really relevant to dps or "pinch-dps". Straight-up weapon critical, damage and stamina like that from Hundings or Night Mother's Gaze would be better.

Unless you are trying to solo group dungeons, anything would work for solo-play. The difficulty threshold is quite low for solo content.

@Koxinga, I too am not quite sure what you mean by off-role. Did you mean that you want to use one set that you can use for both tanking, DPS and healing? Perhaps you could give an example situation? I think @Latin makes good points that it's probably better to have one set for tanking and one set for DPS. It sounds like you are more of a stamina based tank since you have more points in Stamina but you have some points in Magicka presumably to increase the amount of DK utility abilities you can use. I believe if you went 64 points in Stamina and enchant your gear with Magicka that will be the best choice. In this way, you'll only need to change your gear to be ready for a DPS role. Stamina glyphs have no impact on weapon damage.

At the moment, I think the only use for Pelinal's is for a hybrid DPS build that uses Stamina and Magicka DoTs with the highest coefficients. But I haven't seen a detailed analysis of such a build so am not convinced by it.

@Asayre

No, I was originally talking about a separate suit of armor that I could swap to, without having to respec Stats and Skills.  @Latin seems to have hit the nail on the head though, in that looking at the numbers, I can't quite see that Pelinal's increases my damage potential as compared with something more focused.  Yea... it's a cool idea, but it needs... something to give it 'omph'.  That or perhaps we can't see what purpose the Devs had in creating it and are misidentifying its purpose.

I think at this point, I'll stick with either my Hist Bark or planned set of Armor Master, and figure out what DPS sets might suit my preferred playstyle when I am Solo-ing and doing damage.  I'm not impressed with Black Rose though, so I'm gonna keep looking.  Some of the new poison-related sets might be fun!

I have been having some success with it focusing mostly on DOT and pairing it with Clever Alchemist.   When you can hit someone with flame, poison, and bleed damage all at the same time, all with 3000+ weapon damage it adds up fast.... throw in either Dizzying Swing and Flame Lash, it might not be "the Meta", but it sure is a lot of fun.   The biggest challenge I have is deciding whether I want a 2hand weapon or bow in my off hand along with sword and board on the PA side.  Bow is probably better, by I am more of a melee guy usually.

As for the magika pool, Searing Strike uses 1000.  Lava Whip maybe 2400,  so as long as you take it easy on the Talons you should be fine.- and if you run low, just use your Stam attacks.  It is different than anything else you might play so it takes a while to get used too, but I have very rarely ran out of both....

 

 

Not sure why you would want this set on a pure tank though?  What skills do you think you could benefit from with the crossover?  The magika regen tanks are my favorite and there isn't too much from stamina I would want to bring over..   Offensively is where the fun is in this set, IMO.      If your a META guy  doing math formulas to get the max damage down to the .001 or whatever, it probably isn't for you.

I have really interesting ideas about this set to make some Stamina\Magicka hybrids, unfortunately I always ignored researching 9 trait in the medium armor but I am on it....