Tamriel Foundry

For your 5 piece set, you will most likely want Silks of the Sun due to the sustain changes with Morrowind. The trade off of using Silks over Burning Spell Weave is that you lose about 3% crit and gain just over 1k health. So this allows you to use Witch Mothers Brew for Max Health, Max Magicka, and Magicka regen. If your going with the typical DK Flame Lash build, you don't want to be constantly heavy attacking to regen Magicka, so having the regen from Witch Mothers Brew is important in sustaining ur Magicka to allow for more attacks/spammable which equals more DPS.

Something to ponder would be how Silks and Spellweave both work. Silks is a constant buff while Spellweave is reliant upon a 20% proc chance. If your using Spellweave and are having sustain issues, then you end up heavy attacking more with a lighting staff most likely, which translates to less chance for Spellweave to proc. If you can sustain fine with Max Health Max Magicka food (e.g. high offbalance uptime and get lots of Flame Lash procs or use regen on jewelry) , I would test the difference between BSW and Silks, however I think you will find very little difference (personally haven't tested in a raid yet).

For a monster set, Grothdar is going to be the most damage. Skoria grants more health for more suvivability with decent damage. If your using Max Health Max Magicka food then there is no reason to use Skoria, go with Grothdar. The only purpose of using Skoria is for the added health when using Witch Mothers Brew which is nice for new content/getting used to Morrowind changes. Remember an alive DPS is worth more then a dead DPS. Illambris is only worth it if using both lighting and flame attacks, and for most DK's in end game they won't be using any lighting attacks aside from lighting staff heavy attack on trash. In the end it comes down to your comfort level, the content your doing, and personal play style but I hope that I helped in some way!

I actually use flame staff -- I know it's not "optimal" but I prefer it for... well, a lot of reasons. Thus, EVERYTHING I do is Fire damage. With that said, you're right in that Heavy attacks probably don't procc it. :\a

There's also the fact that I can just pick up BSW from Guild stores instead of having to run things over and over x_X

I too would be interested in knowing the difference between the two sets. However, I'd like to know mathematically which one would be better, if they are both equivalent, or if one is superior to the other.

Maybe if you have some spare time @Asayre, you can answer this burning question.

LucidSeraph wrote on June 6, 2017

I actually use flame staff — I know it’s not “optimal” but I prefer it for… well, a lot of reasons. Thus, EVERYTHING I do is Fire damage. With that said, you’re right in that Heavy attacks probably don’t procc it. :\a

There’s also the fact that I can just pick up BSW from Guild stores instead of having to run things over and over x_X

Typo alert: You meant that Sun was the one you could buy.

 

quiz_234 wrote on June 6, 2017

For your 5 piece set, you will most likely want Silks of the Sun due to the sustain changes with Morrowind. The trade off of using Silks over Burning Spell Weave is that you lose about 3% crit and gain just over 1k health. So this allows you to use Witch Mothers Brew for Max Health, Max Magicka, and Magicka regen. If your going with the typical DK Flame Lash build, you don’t want to be constantly heavy attacking to regen Magicka, so having the regen from Witch Mothers Brew is important in sustaining ur Magicka to allow for more attacks/spammable which equals more DPS.

Something to ponder would be how Silks and Spellweave both work. Silks is a constant buff while Spellweave is reliant upon a 20% proc chance. If your using Spellweave and are having sustain issues, then you end up heavy attacking more with a lighting staff most likely, which translates to less chance for Spellweave to proc.If you can sustain fine with Max Health Max Magicka food (e.g. high offbalance uptime and get lots of Flame Lash procs or use regen on jewelry) ,I would test the difference between BSW and Silks, however I think you will find very little difference (personally haven’t tested in a raid yet).

For a monster set, Grothdar is going to be the most damage. Skoria grants more health for more suvivability with decent damage. If your using Max Health Max Magicka food then there is no reason to use Skoria over Grothdar. The only purpose of using Skoria is for the added health when using Witch Mothers Brew which is nice for new content/getting used to Morrowind changes. Remember an alive DPS is worth more then a dead DPS. Illambris is only worth it if using both lighting and flame attacks, and for most DK’s in end game they won’t be using any lighting attacks aside from lighting staff heavy attack on trash. In the end it comes down to your comfort level, the content your doing, and personal play style but I hope that I helped in some way!

I don't see how it can be a significant advantage for a DPS set to offer max health. If the health is valuable, then you can always change something around in attribute points or enchantments.

 

You obviously disagree with the idea that having health over magicka is BAD, and you may be entirely right. (I suspect that you are.) But I don't see how it can be affirmatively GOOD.

LucidSeraph wrote on June 6, 2017

I actually use flame staff — I know it’s not “optimal” but I prefer it for… well, a lot of reasons. Thus, EVERYTHING I do is Fire damage. With that said, you’re right in that Heavy attacks probably don’t procc it. :\a

There’s also the fact that I can just pick up BSW from Guild stores instead of having to run things over and over x_X

What I had wrote about a lightning staff wasn't very clear, I had assumed a lightning staff for AoE cleave. I too agree with and use double inferno in most cases. Double inferno is optimal in single target situations or in AoE when your raid has high AoE damage and you can then focus priority targets.

Flame staff light and heavy attacks DO proc Burning Spellweave. That is not the case for lighting staff, obviously.

 

Did some quick math and thoughts, correct me if I'm wrong...

Spellweave: 500 spell damage * (8/12) seconds = 333.33 spell damage with maximum uptime. Gain 688 spell critical from the set. Lightning staff heavy attack is buffed by Spellweave proc (while lightning staff heavy attack is not buffed with Silks).

Silks: 400 flat spell damage to all of your fire damage (which is basically every DK skill). Gain 1064 health bonus from the set which allows the use of Witchmothers Potent Brew for 319 magicka regen. Because Silks spell damage is constant, you do not have to worry when to use your ultimate (bad timing of Ultimate use when Spellweave is not proced would result in a dps loss).

quiz_234 wrote on June 6, 2017

Did some quick math and thoughts, correct me if I’m wrong…

Spellweave: 500 spell damage * (8/12) seconds = 333.33 spell damage with maximum uptime. Gain 688 spell critical from the set. Lightning staff heavy attack is buffed by Spellweave proc (while lightning staff heavy attack is not buffed with Silks).

Silks: 400 flat spell damage to all of your fire damage (which is basically every DK skill). Gain 1064 health bonus from the set which allows the use of Witchmothers Potent Brew for 319 magicka regen.Because Silks spell damage is constant, you do not have to worry when to use your ultimate (bad timing of Ultimate use when Spellweave is not proced would result in a dps loss).

You forgot about the burning effect from BSw which is independent from the regular burning effect and contributes quite a bit to your dps

So I think what I'm seeing here is that Silks is more consistent than BSW and requires less precise management/timing, even if BSW edges out in terms of pure damage. Plus, the health bonus from Silks means somewhat less pressure on your healer (remember, a dead DPS isn't doing any damage!)

Given that I haven't even done any Trials yet and mostly pug dungeons (I work very odd hours so it's super difficult to find a group), I think I'm going to go with Silks for now :) If I get lucky on my drops, of course, I'm going to KEEP any BSW Divines I find (especially since who knows how the meta will change in the future), but Silks is so much easier to obtain and easier to manage. Less worrying about when things have procc'd (and being a DPS DK you're already having to keep track of half a dozen DoTs and buffs x_X ) and more worrying about, y'know, doing my job of burninating the countryside ;)

After one evening of carefully watching Tamriel Trade Centre and shopping around, I already have 4/5 Silks; I just ran out of immediate cash for the last piece (been spending money on alt horses, so I'm not as flush as I could be right now).

Thank you all for the help and advice, especially with solid numbers!

I'm probably going to run Sun, just because I prefer the consistency of it, but I don't understand the benefit of health on a set either.  If I were to run BSW, I would just respec my attributes or enchantments appropriately to compensate and end up running the same amount of health.

DonkeyJote wrote on June 8, 2017

I’m probably going to run Sun, just because I prefer the consistency of it, but I don’t understand the benefit of health on a set either. If I were to run BSW, I would just respec my attributes or enchantments appropriately to compensate and end up running the same amount of health.

Well I would say that that is the benefit. That you don't have to respect or change anything else. If respecting isn't a hassle for you than there is no actual benefit. Its a convenience thing. Doesn't matter how you get to 17-18k health, ya know. I think that whoever said the 2 piece health bonus on silks is good simply meant what I just said. That barring any other sources for a little extra health, you are all set with silks and its 2 piece bonus. And that the extra health makes up for the loss of health when going from max health/max mag food to the max health/max mag/mag regent drink.

I don't think its any more complicated than that, ya know?

I realize this is an old post but I am wondering if silks is still better to run on a mag DK focused on doing dps? btw kind of fits my build because it is aimed at anfire mage type of setup which works great on DK so far since almost every one of his class skills involves fire or flames of some kind.

So I've been experimenting with both sets BSW and Sun.  I like Sun better because the tradeoff of extra 1000k health for only approx 3% spell crit loss is a benefit in my opinion, especially with an apprentice mundus.  Also especially when running dungeons.  I found my character just too squishy with the spell weave with the loss of health and the trade off from magicka to gain health was just too much to sustain dps in the vet dungeons. I'm running both flame staves and heavy with fire damage spells on both bars. Since I've been running sun, I find myself surviving much longer and most of the time I don't even die once in the vet dungeons.  I like Sun for now (post dragonbones dlc) I also hear that the MagDK may get a buff in Summerset. 

Hope this helps! 

Just adding to the thread that with the new expansion an exciting opportunity has arrived: run both! Especially if you don't have Siroria yet, Sun is a great stop-gap. Also BSW helps a tiny bit more with sustain now with the new Combustion passive, since it guarantees burning on the proc.