Khaine – Stamina Dragonknight PVE Build

Khaine – Endgame Stamina Dragonknight Build

Khaine once upon a time was called "Toxicity". Built for poison and damage over time, this was designed to be rewarding but not necessarily easy. My main character designed not for the players, but for ME. All of the bulds on the channel were for the players in mind.I play them ALL, but this one was never intended to be originally shared. However, people demanded it, and it happened! Over time people learned to love the build and it's fast paced playstyle with it's multiple moving parts, so it was in it's own right, a public/community success!

I continued to share it and update it, now for almost 9 years! This build was first demanded, utilised by thousands, and then update 49 came.

The REVAMP of the Dragonknight, and all the poison was gone. And the community started to worry about it's viability, since poison is now REMOVED from the dragonknight class in The Elder Scrolls Online.

Adaptation is KEY!

Toxicity had a very specific flavor to it, utilizing specific dots, specific spamables and specific weapon types. This underlined it's thematic playstyle and was incredibly difficult to master, but if you could, you were rewarded with great results!

With the Changes to the Dragonknight Class skills and passives, poison was no longer possible, but the damage over time skills still existed, albeit it fire, and far shorter, the potential for use was still there. Retaining it's style was still a possibility. So this build was put under extreme testing to maintain it's identitiy of sorts but also consider the NEW skills that had been exploed, and possibly even utilized. A tricky task retaining something's identity when some much changes all at once.

Murder Of Fire, and Hot Sauce already took advantage of the new version of the Magma Fist and Whip combo, so duplicating another playstyle and removing Toxicity's style wasn't an option. I needed to keep it fresh but relevant. So after weeks of testing AND battling to maintain a design with constraints, I managed to alter the build in a way that made sense!

The OLD version technically still functioned amazinly well, but was way faster now with the damage over time skills being halved in duration (although stronger) but there was something missing.

Molten Whip had been boosted significantly but was never part of the rotation, altough part of the build. It was sitting on the bar racking up spell damage for using Ardent Flame abilities. Which was NICE but no longer possible. So what do we do with that slot? Well now, if you use ANY dragonknight skills, you build up stacks that MUST be consumed...SO? We now use the same skills we did before, but each time the whip is ready, it is FIRED as a cheap high damage skill inbetween everything else, and dramatically improves our dps!

On Top of that, we can now utilise something very specific to the build that was on it for YEARS in the early days but now BACK! Molten Armaments! It's not just an empower, it's not just brutality and sorcerey to the group, it's also now a skill that does DAMAGE for maintaining light and heavy attacks! Which means, along side Flames of Oblivion (now Incinerate) we have Major Brutality, Major Sorcerey, Major Prophecy and Major Savagery at ALL times! Yup you guessed it, TRI POTS! NO more weapon pots for us, and a much needed boost to health and magicka sustainability!

The whip was always ON the build, Molten Armaments USED to be and we also added a resistance buff that we used to swap out to, that is now PART of the build and replaced a previous poison dot of the same time duration, but now hits multiple targets and increases dps. SO one swap for one, one purpose for a similar one with more bonuses attached, it was win win in decision making and STILL feels like the Og Toxicity but just more RAW!

Damage types have changed and so must we!

The Dragonknight is now all about Fire and Fury rather than Fire and Poison. With there being limited skills in the game for poison damage types now, it was not viable to continue the poison side of the theme for the build. Which meant taking away ALL poison skills, including Poison injection. It's a great skill and utilized a bonus from a weapon type, but removing it, allowed us another weapon type to support skill we already had (Maelstrom Bow for Endless Hail boosting) We then replaced Poison injection with Shatterspike Armor (resistance buff) and fire skill.

This had equivilent uptime, hits MULTIPLE targets, has a flat damage bonus, and supports ramping up damage bonuses from the new land slid passive! So, removing one damage bossting skill on single target, and replacing it with a "resistance buff" actually gave us more damage due to layered effects!

Everything about this build update, has carefully slid in on top of the foundation we already had, and flawlessly gave it back it's edge while giving it some new, absolute rage!

The Verdict

Inspired by Kaela Mensha Khaine from the Aledari Craftoworlds in Warhammer 40,000, this build is now all about FIRE and BLOOD! He was renamed and reborn as the Bloody Handed God! The Aeldari Avatar!

To date, the build has stood the test of time. Multiple updates over years of game changing patches, and still keeps it's playstyle identity in tact! But change as we must, this build was not destroyed with it's changes, it was boosted! Huge damage application on single target, far better resource management than ever before, far better survival, and everything you do applies pure burning and bleeding pressure to the targets! Retaining it's playstyle while keeping up, was the goal, not reinvention, but revival. And it worked!

This generally speaking, as hybrid as it may be, is a Stamina Dragonknight at heart, but a DEMON in a fight!