Planning a fire-damage and healing DragonKnight

My initial thought for my DK was medium armor, dual wield, and fire damage to maximise synergy with the dark elf racial bonuses. As I've gotten into ESO over the last couple of weeks, I've made two modifications. First is to use a 2-handed weapon for the Arcane Fighter passive, and the second is to switch to light armor (just like everyone else under the sun).

And because I generally love healing, I've looked into that a bit, and I'm thrilled to discover that that's possible with my same character so I don't need to make an alt. With me being very new to ESO, I'd appreciate any feedback you all have.

Burny Healy DragonKnight

Having been a Dunmer DK from day one, and leveled all my weapons to 50, I still use destro/resto staffs.  I use a mix of heavy armor and medium armor for the sneak bonus, and use 2 different crafted sets to compensate for the lack of other traits missing.

I really need to learn more about crafting armor. Right now, I can make the straightforward basic stuff, but I've seen named sets linked and I need to learn more about that.

Carrick, congratulations on realizing that there are no pigeon holes in this game! You can make any kind of patch-work character you want with mixed armor, weapons, and spells, and have a blast! I'm not too familiar with DK so I can't offer much advice there, but I can offer advice on the crafting.

There are two different types of named armor sets in the game: a) Those you loot in the world (cannot be crafted) and b) Those you unlock by researching traits on armor/weapon pieces (can be crafted).

For (a) you are limited to what you find while questing and what can be purchased from others in a guild store. For (b) you have to invest skill points and time into researching traits (ie. Divines, Impenetrable, Sharpened, Well-Fitted, Exploration, Weighted, Infused etc.) for each piece of armor that you'll be using. Trait research takes days. The more traits you research on a piece of armor or a weapon, the longer it will take for the next trait until you have all 9 traits researched. Tamriel Foundry has a great article which shows you the crafted named sets, how many traits need to be researched per piece to unlock that set, and where you can find the special set crafting tables (since the set must be crafted at its own specific crafting location).

Hope this helps! If you spot me in game, I'd be more than happy to help with any questions. I have a slew of traits already researched for light/medium armor and woodworking so if you're wanting to get into crafting sets I can provide pieces for you to research anytime.

I tried resto staff/flame staff for a bit on my DK and it just never felt comfortable.  I had switched from 2h great sword/sword and board. I never felt like I was doing enough damage and I didn't feel like I would ever be a solo healer. I found a few specs others had used one being the molten monk.

Not saying it cant work but just didn't work for me. Gone back to 2h as both weapons with a support type as my secondary using a fighters guilt talent and molten weapons among a few others.  Things die a lot faster with the 2h. I am only lvl 45 so might be better when I get all skills or decide on vampire or werewolf to supplement better powers. I guess I am just happier swinging a big sword. 

But the molten monk was pretty interesting and featured on eso's websites.

I have found my greatest success has been to alternate my magicka and stamina. For soloing, I usually keep my stamina weapon in one slot and then switch to my resto staff in the other when I need healing or my party does, then switch back. I like utilizing both resource pools since it increases my longevity in a fight. I would never recommend resto staff/destro staff, though. I found the destro staff to be very weak in comparison to the other weapon choices and the fact that they both use magicka is a no-go for sustaining damage and healing. I suppose if you had a huge magicka pool and neglected stamina, it could work. I just prefer to use both.

@Natasi: Trait research takes days. The more traits you research on a piece of armor or a weapon, the longer it will take for the next trait until you have all 9 traits researched.

Ahh, that explains why it's now taking over a day for me to research anything :-P Thanks, I was wondering what the deal was.

I also discovered that for the first set of specially crafted gear, you need 2 things researched per piece, which is a bit of a trial. I've been researching everything I can, but I can still only make 1-2 pieces of armour. Weapons are a lot easier to get 2 researches done.

@Thyth: But the molten monk was pretty interesting and featured on eso's websites.

That looks awesome, and exactly what I'm looking for. I watched a video this morning that helped quite a bit. I just need to get a few more skill points... which seems to be a perpetual state for me. I hear about people having tons of SPs, but there's just not enough yet to do everything I want to do :-D

@Natasi: What stamina weapon do you prefer? I really like my greatsword for PVE, but it seems to be falling short in AvA. Great damage, and I like critical charge, but I invariably charge onto a sorcerer who fries with me a fire pulse, or straight into some boiling oil.

Dual wield's 5th attack is a thrown dagger, and that seems pretty strong. Or I could try a bow, but I'm not sure how well that will work for me since I'm not fully speccing into it with lots of crit and stamina to spam it. Because of that, I've been mostly using Resto staff in AvA so I can have its ranged attack, and have been thinking about Destro staff for when I don't need to be healing.

Welp, the patch today removed Arcane Fighter from 2-handed weapon, which kind of kills that idea...

Guess it's destro staff for me after all!