[DoK] DPS Spec Advice

[freshour]

Haha yeah literally every possible duo, trio, I'm a melee DoK so I take what parties I can get and play with friends who try anything once . It definitely has its shining moments though.

The tricky part is getting people to try it, the fun part is listening to them in TS trying to rationalize how it worked haha.

[Darosh]

No one worth their salt will complain about running with a DoK (or any other class for that matter) that knows what hes doing and that knows the compositions that are viable for his class - moreso, everyone worth their salt has unterstood that composition>class (in every single case).
Especially with as few premades around the meta in place is to be taken with a metric shitton of salt - and is not to be dragged around/brought up every single time it comes to grouping.

It sounds like you are asking the wrong people to group with you.

Are there really only that few people around on destro at the moment, that have a basic unterstanding of the mechanics of this game? Sounds dire. I mean, sure, its ALL things considered not the topnotch thing you could possibly run, but ffs, everything is workable - especially in a pug environment like this.

[th3gatekeeper]

No one worth their salt will complain about running with a DoK (or any other class for that matter) that knows what hes doing and that knows the compositions that are viable for his class - moreso, everyone worth their salt has unterstood that composition>class (in every single case).
Especially with as few premades around the meta in place is to be taken with a metric shitton of salt - and is not to be dragged around/brought up every single time it comes to grouping.

It sounds like you are asking the wrong people to group with you.

Are there really only that few people around on destro at the moment, that have a basic unterstanding of the mechanics of this game? Sounds dire. I mean, sure, its ALL things considered not the topnotch thing you could possibly run, but ffs, everything is workable - especially in a pug environment like this.

The issue I see on destro is order zergs and out numbers us almost all the time during NA hours. So most prefer to make an rdps group rather than form a melee group and have a higher chance of getting nuked on BY order range. This means little place for mdps and likely tanks too... thus melee Dok by extension.

Most people I play with will grab any group as long as there are heals... but there are the people who only run "meta" or who also only run rdps roam groups.... so yeah... it does limit things... especially when getting destro to warband is like pulling teeth...youd almost think by their reaction they shut off all renown gain in warbands or something.... it's bizzare....

[Darosh]

Spoiler:

No one worth their salt will complain about running with a DoK (or any other class for that matter) that knows what hes doing and that knows the compositions that are viable for his class - moreso, everyone worth their salt has unterstood that composition>class (in every single case).
Especially with as few premades around the meta in place is to be taken with a metric shitton of salt - and is not to be dragged around/brought up every single time it comes to grouping.

It sounds like you are asking the wrong people to group with you.

Are there really only that few people around on destro at the moment, that have a basic unterstanding of the mechanics of this game? Sounds dire. I mean, sure, its ALL things considered not the topnotch thing you could possibly run, but ffs, everything is workable - especially in a pug environment like this.

The issue I see on destro is order zergs and out numbers us almost all the time during NA hours. So most prefer to make an rdps group rather than form a melee group and have a higher chance of getting nuked on BY order range. This means little place for mdps and likely tanks too... thus melee Dok by extension.

Most people I play with will grab any group as long as there are heals... but there are the people who only run "meta" or who also only run rdps roam groups.... so yeah... it does limit things... especially when getting destro to warband is like pulling teeth...youd almost think by their reaction they shut off all renown gain in warbands or something.... it's bizzare....

Scenarios, too, are a thing.

But I see where you are coming from - the overall mentality changed alot to the worse within the last two months.

Under those circumstances I'd actually even vouch for heading to t3; taking a break from t4 as it will ultimately just burn you out, to pick up new folk - you'd help build the destro community, get yourself with a little bit of luck some new players for your roster that you can turn into your personal dps/heal/guardbots and grind the t3 sets.
Or, again sticking to scenarios for the time being - running a premade yourself to make up for the **** experience in RvR atm.

Thinking about it, yeah, starving the fairweather xrealm crew a little bit might normalize conditions in t4, too.

[freshour]

Spoiler:

No one worth their salt will complain about running with a DoK (or any other class for that matter) that knows what hes doing and that knows the compositions that are viable for his class - moreso, everyone worth their salt has unterstood that composition>class (in every single case).
Especially with as few premades around the meta in place is to be taken with a metric shitton of salt - and is not to be dragged around/brought up every single time it comes to grouping.

It sounds like you are asking the wrong people to group with you.

Are there really only that few people around on destro at the moment, that have a basic unterstanding of the mechanics of this game? Sounds dire. I mean, sure, its ALL things considered not the topnotch thing you could possibly run, but ffs, everything is workable - especially in a pug environment like this.

I will try and summarize my experience on my melee DoK.

I started out attempting maximum melee heals. This involved getting as close to the possible STR/Weapon Power cap as I could to maximize life taps and channels and DE. I then sacrificed Pillage Essence to get heal debuff. So I was running Divine Fury, Murderous (more crit bigger lifetaps, parry for sustain), Curse of Khaine, and Empowered Transfer - my DPS was lower than other DD DoK's but I put my HD on everyone. I also tried out Potent + Bloodthirst and this yielded amazing results when AA was maxed out but healing was lower. I tried other DD specs like Heal debuff and AP Drain which was a monster for 1v1's and in 6 mans as it could eliminate a superior DD of the other team in comparison to the DoK (as far as damage goes) as well as AP drain the crap out of an AM. I then moved to chalice builds, trying to min max melee healing and casting - melee healing b/w AOE hots and during those times you're not sure if you should use a few AOE heals or not. This yielded superior healing results to all DoK specs and my melee experience aided in this a lot as far as when to go in, when to sit back and so on. I've went from max possible (minus genesis) Str/Ws/Weapon Power, to nearly as high as possible Parry/Dodge/Disrupt, to incorporating AOE detaunt and HD and losing the AP drain (which was almost as tanky as the max armor/parry/dodge/disrupt spec but with any AOE detaunt you will inevitably have targets too far apart to detaunt them all or clip one with your DE who was initially out of range when you triggered it. I have duo'd with Mara, BG, BO, Chosen - BG seems to be the best of that group as most BO's I played with were more damage spec'd and I was actually even tankier than they were haha. I tried spirit debuffing 6 mans taking advantage of a Magus which undoubtedly increased my channel healing and allowed to me use bloodthirst even with the ICD but still the ICD itself is semi capping our damage.

Add to that - that I've had almost every 6 man group possible on this game as I really do enjoy random comps, having to swap tactics/gear/renown for each group and I really don't mind the gold loss because that is part of the fun, figuring out what works. But until there is something changed I'm enjoying my frontline healing spec with empowered transfer and some parry strike through for life taps between my AOE heals - it is the maximum possible healing output at the moment and quite a bit of fun to be honest. My DD days aren't over, just on the shelf for a bit.

[Darosh]

Spoiler:

No one worth their salt will complain about running with a DoK (or any other class for that matter) that knows what hes doing and that knows the compositions that are viable for his class - moreso, everyone worth their salt has unterstood that composition>class (in every single case).
Especially with as few premades around the meta in place is to be taken with a metric shitton of salt - and is not to be dragged around/brought up every single time it comes to grouping.

It sounds like you are asking the wrong people to group with you.

Are there really only that few people around on destro at the moment, that have a basic unterstanding of the mechanics of this game? Sounds dire. I mean, sure, its ALL things considered not the topnotch thing you could possibly run, but ffs, everything is workable - especially in a pug environment like this.

Spoiler:

I will try and summarize my experience on my melee DoK.

I started out attempting maximum melee heals. This involved getting as close to the possible STR/Weapon Power cap as I could to maximize life taps and channels and DE. I then sacrificed Pillage Essence to get heal debuff. So I was running Divine Fury, Murderous (more crit bigger lifetaps, parry for sustain), Curse of Khaine, and Empowered Transfer - my DPS was lower than other DD DoK's but I put my HD on everyone. I also tried out Potent + Bloodthirst and this yielded amazing results when AA was maxed out but healing was lower. I tried other DD specs like Heal debuff and AP Drain which was a monster for 1v1's and in 6 mans as it could eliminate a superior DD of the other team in comparison to the DoK (as far as damage goes) as well as AP drain the crap out of an AM. I then moved to chalice builds, trying to min max melee healing and casting - melee healing b/w AOE hots and during those times you're not sure if you should use a few AOE heals or not. This yielded superior healing results to all DoK specs and my melee experience aided in this a lot as far as when to go in, when to sit back and so on. I've went from max possible (minus genesis) Str/Ws/Weapon Power, to nearly as high as possible Parry/Dodge/Disrupt, to incorporating AOE detaunt and HD and losing the AP drain (which was almost as tanky as the max armor/parry/dodge/disrupt spec but with any AOE detaunt you will inevitably have targets too far apart to detaunt them all or clip one with your DE who was initially out of range when you triggered it. I have duo'd with Mara, BG, BO, Chosen - BG seems to be the best of that group as most BO's I played with were more damage spec'd and I was actually even tankier than they were haha. I tried spirit debuffing 6 mans taking advantage of a Magus which undoubtedly increased my channel healing and allowed to me use bloodthirst even with the ICD but still the ICD itself is semi capping our damage.

Add to that - that I've had almost every 6 man group possible on this game as I really do enjoy random comps, having to swap tactics/gear/renown for each group and I really don't mind the gold loss because that is part of the fun, figuring out what works. But until there is something changed I'm enjoying my frontline healing spec with empowered transfer and some parry strike through for life taps between my AOE heals - it is the maximum possible healing output at the moment and quite a bit of fun to be honest. My DD days aren't over, just on the shelf for a bit.

Tbh, its sounds like you've been on the lookout for a swiss-knife spec and burned yourself out in the process.

As to your experience, I take issue with one thing in particular: why would you run a Magus to debuff spirit, y u no run Sorc/Z ?
Sorc/Z nets you ~800 worth of spirit debuff without sacrificing anything whatsoever. The 300ish debuff on the Sorc is part of every ST spec and the 500ish debuff is on the Z who just needs to swap it out. And you wouldn't need to sacrifice the dps slot for a magus that requires alot of babysitting aswell to be considered a threat, which you cannot provide if you run a dps DoK yourself - you'd have a Sorc providing enough burst to account for you aswell.

[freshour]

Okay well first off the spirit damage is only for my channel it is not for an overall "crazy dps gain" - it basically makes the covs hit for like 180 instead of 100 or with blood thirst a little higher. I was just using that as an example lol. Obviously I have ran with sorcs before. Armor debuffs however are the biggest increase in healing/damage for a DoK by a long shot as the majority of our damage is all physical.

But not really looking for a build for everything, mostly just wanted a build that could perform in SC's, RvR is really a toss up as it is 95% kite kite kite kite kite kite kite and the dok has only 1 snare and the cov is easy enough to get away for most classes so RvR is really a joke outside of T3 - I just do it for fun sometimes .

But in reality I have multiple specs I played I was only looking for the spec that performs optimally in as many situations as possible. A ST magus can also throw out a pretty decent amount of damage though so you gotta give them a little credit.

[Darosh]

Okay well first off the spirit damage is only for my channel it is not for an overall "crazy dps gain" - it basically makes the covs hit for like 180 instead of 100 or with blood thirst a little higher. I was just using that as an example lol. Obviously I have ran with sorcs before. Armor debuffs however are the biggest increase in healing/damage for a DoK by a long shot as the majority of our damage is all physical.

But not really looking for a build for everything, mostly just wanted a build that could perform in SC's, RvR is really a toss up as it is 95% kite kite kite kite kite kite kite and the dok has only 1 snare and the cov is easy enough to get away for most classes so RvR is really a joke outside of T3 - I just do it for fun sometimes .

But in reality I have multiple specs I played I was only looking for the spec that performs optimally in as many situations as possible. A ST magus can also throw out a pretty decent amount of damage though so you gotta give them a little credit.

The problem with a Magus is that he can be shutdown just like a WL, while he provides nothing that another class could not provide otherwise.

In regards to the "180 instead of 100" - it significantly adds up, especially if you run comps that can push the limits in regards to timestamp economy; you are neglecting the procs of your groupmembers.

Lackluster elaboration (I am lazy):
You'd need half the time (gcds) to kill your target, if you were trying to kill it with only procs.
If you consider the average HP pool sitting at, what, 6k(?) you are looking at a major increase in dps - especially if you factor in the procs of the other three members of your group (that actually proc stuff) aswell.
If we were looking at bigger HP pools, yes, an increase like that would very likely be neglible.
You'd provide 320 more damage per gcd (considering the ICD) if four members of your group are hitting a target and proc the thing; 10gcds in procs would net your group 7,2k funneld, 4k unfunneld. Shamans can proc stuff via lifetaps aswell, so you'd be looking at more damage in that case.
Now break that down to timestamps and just with that seemingly insubstantial increase in damage you'll have secured a kill that would otherwise not have happened.
Abbd.: "break that down to timestamps" as in: Work that into the rest of a burst thats successs is dependant on whether or not a healer has time to react. Every little bit of damage can have a major impact; if your target survives a burst with 300HP, that bit of additional damage can make or break an engagement.

The marked part => swiss-knife.

In regards to the RvR situation... yes, its a mess.

[freshour]

I'm totally with you in that it is "effectively double damage" or at least a lot more. While I don't think a Magus is an Engie in regards to overall utility (not the place for that chat), I do think they are viable ST classes when they assist properly. I do think in nearly every situation a sorc is better for sure. But something about seeing a Magus, a class which normally is so bad... when played at nearly its skill cap in ST - it is really fun to be a part of that party with a DD DoK and beat some good people haha.

[freshour]

Okay so I was sort of thinking over the proc meta abusing that destro did to get the ICD (thanks by the way) and I'm curious... What do you guys think about leaving the ICD and allowing the covenants to crit specifically CoC and prayer for WP - IF feated - so it can only hit once per GCD, but has the ability to crit for the DoK/WP - OR that if feated has a chance to either proc more than once, or to proc on the enemy nearest?

Basically what I'm trying to do here is figure out some way to not bring back proc meta, but to not make it totally void that the DoK has a super fast AA nature by design to proc CoV/CoC - so now that those are gone, what could be added to the AA's to make up in that damage/utility of faster, lower hitting moves? It cannot be mega OP or it will never get approved. Granted this all pending my proposal gets denied.