[DoK] Did I pick the wrong class?

[Osprey39]

I am a returning player that just started up again this past weekend after probably a good 2 or 3 years away. All my characters before were on Order side, so I decided to play Destruction this time around. I started with a Disciple of Khaine because I enjoyed playing Archmage before, and thought they were similar classes (healing by doing damage) except the DoK was melee instead of ranged. I remembered DoKs in my past experience to be very likely to be tops in scenario healing and up there on damage too, so I thought I'd try it out.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what, but my character doesn't feel very effective. I'm level 14 now and in the scenarios I've done, I struggle to do much healing and my damage is horrible. In open RvR, I cannot go into melee to regen my resource because I get curbstomped immediately, so I stand back the back, casting my resource free heal every 4 seconds. That's not terribly effective either obviously.

All that brought me here to ask, did this class get nerfed severely in the last few years, or am I just playing it wrong? I'm not really happy with how it plays, and I'd like to find out if it's the class or it's me before I invest too much more time in it. I'm not looking to be a dps class, but playing a straight healer type doesn't appeal to me. I like the idea of the healer that heals by dealing damage, but if that is not how the DoK plays now, please let me know so I can switch and maybe suggest an alternative healer type that does play like that on Destro. Thanks in advance.

[Tisaya]

I've played a melee dok at t1 just now and found myself useful at 6lvl already. Apparently, the trick is to ditch swords and go either shield or chalice, but whatever you go, be tanky. Stack toughness like crazy, forget about str. You aren't going to do much damage when dead anyway. But if you're tanky, you gonna get focused a lot and even if you don't top dps and heal charts, you are still useful because you draw fire from someone else more squishy than you so you need to heal less.

Playing some tanky wp with book, I know for sure it will get better once you get your bubbles and essence-regenning aoe.

[Shieldslam]

DoK essentially still plays the same. It used to be THE class known for healing off of doing damage and while that still applies nowdays it does require a lot more gear and is harder to pull off since people tend to have a lot of parry/block later on. Generally speaking I'd say the only viable way to play DoK is with a chalice aaaaall the way up to something like rr60/70+ at which point you could possibly try to go for the build you described. In T1, where you are, you can beat any melee class by simply outsustaining as DPS but you autolose to any ranged one due to having no mobility. Also, don't focus on numbers in scenarios (even less so in lowlvls) as those can be HEAVILY inflated and don't actually mean much, if anything.

Regarding your question about nerfs: Yes, DoK got nerfed quite a lot over the years from being a top tier DPS choice to a decent one. Still requires a guard and healers so in the end it kind of is just a DPS with the benefit of healing a bit. However, the shield specc is really damn good now and that is probably what you are looking for, a semi-dps who also heals a considerable amount but again requires a lot of gear to really get going otherwise it's lacking either dmg or defense. Only issue with the shield build is that you tend to really blow up unless you manage to get block up to high numbers as you not only lack important tank abilities like Hold the Line but also tend to catch a lot of aoes due to being a frontline melee.

Unfortunately many things work against a dps DoK currently. The kite meta with a lot of shadowwarriors, archmages and bright wizards around, the fact that scenarios don't seem to consider wether you're dps or heal spec and you might end up as the only healer, the weapon skill change taking away some of your parry, not being welcome in a WB at all unless you're heal specced, tanks generally prefer to guard an actual dps rather than a dps DoK. It's not a bad class but you are more or less forced to focus on being a healer for a long time until you manage to get your RR up and eventually transition .. at which point you can live your fantasy of being a frontline healer but in exchange your chances to get invited into a WB are drastically lowered.

[Helwer]

in case of healing very good from group hot, group absorb and group cleanse i think?!

[kleinbuchstabe]

I started with a Disciple of Khaine because I enjoyed playing Archmage before, and thought they were similar classes (healing by doing damage) except the DoK was melee instead of ranged.

If you are looking for the AM playstyle on destro side, then you need to roll a Shaman. He is the mirror class of AM.
Maybe you try this if you are not happy with DoK.

[Osprey39]

DoK essentially still plays the same. It used to be THE class known for healing off of doing damage and while that still applies nowdays it does require a lot more gear and is harder to pull off since people tend to have a lot of parry/block later on. Generally speaking I'd say the only viable way to play DoK is with a chalice aaaaall the way up to something like rr60/70+ at which point you could possibly try to go for the build you described. In T1, where you are, you can beat any melee class by simply outsustaining as DPS but you autolose to any ranged one due to having no mobility. Also, don't focus on numbers in scenarios (even less so in lowlvls) as those can be HEAVILY inflated and don't actually mean much, if anything.

Regarding your question about nerfs: Yes, DoK got nerfed quite a lot over the years from being a top tier DPS choice to a decent one. Still requires a guard and healers so in the end it kind of is just a DPS with the benefit of healing a bit. However, the shield specc is really damn good now and that is probably what you are looking for, a semi-dps who also heals a considerable amount but again requires a lot of gear to really get going otherwise it's lacking either dmg or defense. Only issue with the shield build is that you tend to really blow up unless you manage to get block up to high numbers as you not only lack important tank abilities like Hold the Line but also tend to catch a lot of aoes due to being a frontline melee.

Unfortunately many things work against a dps DoK currently. The kite meta with a lot of shadowwarriors, archmages and bright wizards around, the fact that scenarios don't seem to consider wether you're dps or heal spec and you might end up as the only healer, the weapon skill change taking away some of your parry, not being welcome in a WB at all unless you're heal specced, tanks generally prefer to guard an actual dps rather than a dps DoK. It's not a bad class but you are more or less forced to focus on being a healer for a long time until you manage to get your RR up and eventually transition .. at which point you can live your fantasy of being a frontline healer but in exchange your chances to get invited into a WB are drastically lowered.

Great summary, thanks! I'm curious what the advantage is of going shield over DW though? I get that you get the extra layer of passive defense from block, but to be honest, it's not the melees that are killing me. It's all the damn casters. I don't see that a shield would help much against them.

[Gladiolix]

Spoiler:

DoK essentially still plays the same. It used to be THE class known for healing off of doing damage and while that still applies nowdays it does require a lot more gear and is harder to pull off since people tend to have a lot of parry/block later on. Generally speaking I'd say the only viable way to play DoK is with a chalice aaaaall the way up to something like rr60/70+ at which point you could possibly try to go for the build you described. In T1, where you are, you can beat any melee class by simply outsustaining as DPS but you autolose to any ranged one due to having no mobility. Also, don't focus on numbers in scenarios (even less so in lowlvls) as those can be HEAVILY inflated and don't actually mean much, if anything.

Regarding your question about nerfs: Yes, DoK got nerfed quite a lot over the years from being a top tier DPS choice to a decent one. Still requires a guard and healers so in the end it kind of is just a DPS with the benefit of healing a bit. However, the shield specc is really damn good now and that is probably what you are looking for, a semi-dps who also heals a considerable amount but again requires a lot of gear to really get going otherwise it's lacking either dmg or defense. Only issue with the shield build is that you tend to really blow up unless you manage to get block up to high numbers as you not only lack important tank abilities like Hold the Line but also tend to catch a lot of aoes due to being a frontline melee.

Unfortunately many things work against a dps DoK currently. The kite meta with a lot of shadowwarriors, archmages and bright wizards around, the fact that scenarios don't seem to consider wether you're dps or heal spec and you might end up as the only healer, the weapon skill change taking away some of your parry, not being welcome in a WB at all unless you're heal specced, tanks generally prefer to guard an actual dps rather than a dps DoK. It's not a bad class but you are more or less forced to focus on being a healer for a long time until you manage to get your RR up and eventually transition .. at which point you can live your fantasy of being a frontline healer but in exchange your chances to get invited into a WB are drastically lowered.

Great summary, thanks! I'm curious what the advantage is of going shield over DW though? I get that you get the extra layer of passive defense from block, but to be honest, it's not the melees that are killing me. It's all the damn casters. I don't see that a shield would help much against them.

Shield is an actual healer with some damage output, dualwield is effectively a pure dps. In a group, SnB takes a healers spot, DW takes a DPS spot and requires an actual healer to work properly.

[Osprey39]

Spoiler:

DoK essentially still plays the same. It used to be THE class known for healing off of doing damage and while that still applies nowdays it does require a lot more gear and is harder to pull off since people tend to have a lot of parry/block later on. Generally speaking I'd say the only viable way to play DoK is with a chalice aaaaall the way up to something like rr60/70+ at which point you could possibly try to go for the build you described. In T1, where you are, you can beat any melee class by simply outsustaining as DPS but you autolose to any ranged one due to having no mobility. Also, don't focus on numbers in scenarios (even less so in lowlvls) as those can be HEAVILY inflated and don't actually mean much, if anything.

Regarding your question about nerfs: Yes, DoK got nerfed quite a lot over the years from being a top tier DPS choice to a decent one. Still requires a guard and healers so in the end it kind of is just a DPS with the benefit of healing a bit. However, the shield specc is really damn good now and that is probably what you are looking for, a semi-dps who also heals a considerable amount but again requires a lot of gear to really get going otherwise it's lacking either dmg or defense. Only issue with the shield build is that you tend to really blow up unless you manage to get block up to high numbers as you not only lack important tank abilities like Hold the Line but also tend to catch a lot of aoes due to being a frontline melee.

Unfortunately many things work against a dps DoK currently. The kite meta with a lot of shadowwarriors, archmages and bright wizards around, the fact that scenarios don't seem to consider wether you're dps or heal spec and you might end up as the only healer, the weapon skill change taking away some of your parry, not being welcome in a WB at all unless you're heal specced, tanks generally prefer to guard an actual dps rather than a dps DoK. It's not a bad class but you are more or less forced to focus on being a healer for a long time until you manage to get your RR up and eventually transition .. at which point you can live your fantasy of being a frontline healer but in exchange your chances to get invited into a WB are drastically lowered.

Great summary, thanks! I'm curious what the advantage is of going shield over DW though? I get that you get the extra layer of passive defense from block, but to be honest, it's not the melees that are killing me. It's all the damn casters. I don't see that a shield would help much against them.

Shield is an actual healer with some damage output, dualwield is effectively a pure dps. In a group, SnB takes a healers spot, DW takes a DPS spot and requires an actual healer to work properly.

You're gonna have to help me out here. How does swapping a sword for a shield make you heal any better? Maybe I'm not high enough level and there's some abilities I'm not aware of, but it seems to me that you'd actually heal for less with your abilities that add a percentage of your damage if you are wielding a shield.

On the survivability front, I still don't see how it's that helpful when from what I can see, most of the incoming damage is from ranged attackers. I'm open minded here, but I need more explanation on the mechanics of it all.

[Gladiolix]

Empowered transfer tactic and Transfer Essence skill are the two reasons. Without shield you can't use the skill, and the tactic is way worse. DW runs out of essence and stops healing, and all the little healing DW did before running out of essence was single target.

Edit: The tactic you get from Path of Sacrifice mastery tree, and the skill you unlock at lvl 30.

[Sinisterror]

Empowered transfer tactic and Transfer Essence skill are the two reasons. Without shield you can't use the skill, and the tactic is way worse. DW runs out of essence and stops healing, and all the little healing DW did before running out of essence was single target.

Edit: The tactic you get from Path of Sacrifice mastery tree, and the skill you unlock at lvl 30.

All correct, stated with confidence(earned or not,is) and straight to the point,very Finnish : D Almost too little info for general public so they miss the point or dont know what you are saying even : D