Optimal Magica User Gear Set

Ley

I've been trying to figure out the best set of gear I could equip for a well rounded magica using character that doesn't lack in DPS, sustainability or survivability and this is what I've come up with. Your thoughts and input would be greatly appreciated.
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Head - Any of the undaunted monster helm sets that add 1 piece +Health bonus (can not be the same as shoulder): Maw of the Infernal, Nerien'eth, Nightflame, Scourge Harverster, Spawn of Mephala, or Valkyn Skoria. Preferably light armor with magica enchantment and either Divines or Infused traits.

Shoulder - Any of the undaunted monster helm sets that add 1 piece +Health bonus (can not be the same as helm): Maw of the Infernal, Nerien'eth, Nightflame, Scourge Harverster, Spawn of Mephala, or Valkyn Skoria. Preferably light armor with magica enchantment and either Divines or Infused traits.

Hands - Magnus, light armor, magica enchantment, divines trait (or nirn).

Legs - Magnus, heavy armor, magica enchantment, reinforced trait.

Chest - Magnus, heavy armor, magica enchantment, reinforced trait.

Waist - Magnus, light armor, magica enchantment, divines trait (or nirn).

Feet - Healers Habit, light armor, magica enchantment, divines trait.

Neck - Healers Habit, magica enchantment, reduce magica cost.

Ring 1 - Healers Habit, magica enchantment, reduce magica cost.

Ring 2 - Healers Habit, magica enchantment, reduce magica cost.

Weapon 1 - Magnus destro staff or 2 handed, absorb magica enchantment, precise trait (or nirn).

Weapon 2 - Magnus restro staff, absorb magica enchantment, precise trait (or nirn).

**Weapon 2 - Seducer, 1 handed weapon, absorb magica enchantment, defending trait.

**Shield 2 - Seducer, magica enchantment, reinforced trait.
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Set bonuses for purple vr14 gear:
1800 mp
240 mp regen
340 spel dmg
1950 hp
8% chance to negate spell cost.

Other gear bonuses:
5150 mp
558 spell cost reduction
13% increases mundus effect (paired with The Atronach for more regen)
3 nirn pieces (2 armor 1 on each weapon)

5 light armor 2 heavy for added armor and spell resistance.
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TLDR;
5 piece Magnus
4 piece Healers Habit
1 piece undaunted monster helm
1 piece undaunted monster shoulder

I welcome any constructive thoughts on this gear setup.
Do the undaunted pieces even give the HP bonus in you only have 1 equipped?

Ley

Paulington

Magnus is decent for levelling, as is Seducer/Torug's, but that is far from optimal. A better setup is:

Head: Valkyn Skoria (Infused or Divines, pref. Infused).
Shoulders: Valkyn Skoria (Infused or Divines, pref. Divines)
Chest: Torug's Pact (Heavy, Infused, Max Magicka).
Gloves:: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Sash: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Legs: Martial Knowledge (Infused, Max Magicka).
Boots: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Weapon 1: Inferno Staff of Torug's Pact (Nirnhoned and Flame Damage).
Weapon 2: The Master's Greatsword (Sharpened) OR Inferno/Resto Staff of Torug's Pact (Nirnhoned and Flame Damage).
Necklace: Necklace of the Healer. (Spell Damage).
Ring 1: Ring of Cyrodiil's Light. (Spell Cost Reduction).
Ring 2: Ring of Cyrodiil's Light. (Spell Cost Reduction).

This is right up there with the best setups for Magicka DPS in the game as it currently stands. Some people prefer to run Adroitness shoes/necklace and some prefer to run no Undaunted sets and they can use three pieces of Burning Spellweave instead (for the max magicka and spell damage bonus) but it's mostly small variations on this setup.

To explain the Master Greatsword, it gives about 180 more spell damage than an Inferno/Resto staff does, no idea why but it does hence why I use it on my second bar for more damage.

It does plenty of damage (15-20k single target sustained as a Sorcerer) and gives you plenty of survivability due to monster wards and the sustainability is good too if you heavy attack weave. If you want a bit more sustainability you can use two Healer rings instead but really I don't think it is necessary as during long PvE fights you will have Elemental Drain up at least and other magicka regenerating spells.

I don't pretend to know everything and I just want to get across that this is just one of the many ways to skin a cat. .

Hope that helps!

AssaultLemming

I just run 5 martial 4 healers 2 torugs these days in PvP, gives very solid burst and insane sustain for healing and long fights. I was pondering today testing out 5 martial 5 healers with a master's resto and stygian daggers...

Ley

@Paulington I appreciate that you took the time to put that together, I have been wondering what a good set up was to stack dps on my gear. I really wanted to fit martial knowledge into my gear set but I wanted heavy chest and legs more. I guess I should have specified that I'm more concerned with the gear working in pvp, than in pve, although I'm not opposed to having 2 separate sets. I don't mind killing mobs a bit slower but I have to be able to survive a stealth gank or getting caught out in the open with 10 players blasting me in pvp long enough to break free, shield myself, get to safety.

@AssaultLemming I considered a setup similar to yours but ran into the problem of not being able to have nirn pieces or heavy chest and legs for extra survivability. I'm open to dropping those stipulations from my desired gear set but I would definitely need some convincing.

Robbmrp

The other really good swap would be to go with Seducer instead of Magnus. From what I've read on it, Magnus is better for short term use and Seducer better for long term. My wife runs with almost that exact same build, monster helm/shoulder, 4 Healers habit and 5 seducer and that works out really good for her.

Joy_Division

Ley wrote: »

@Paulington I appreciate that you took the time to put that together, I have been wondering what a good set up was to stack dps on my gear. I really wanted to fit martial knowledge into my gear set but I wanted heavy chest and legs more. I guess I should have specified that I'm more concerned with the gear working in pvp, than in pve, although I'm not opposed to having 2 separate sets. I don't mind killing mobs a bit slower but I have to be able to survive a stealth gank or getting caught out in the open with 10 players blasting me in pvp long enough to break free, shield myself, get to safety.

@AssaultLemming I considered a setup similar to yours but ran into the problem of not being able to have nirn pieces or heavy chest and legs for extra survivability. I'm open to dropping those stipulations from my desired gear set but I would definitely need some convincing.

There is no reason not to stack spell damage as high as it can go in PvP. You aren't competing against mobs, but players who stack nirn and heal themselves and will not let you kill them slowly. If 10 (decent) players are blasting you, losing 600 spell damage for an arena set or something won't save you. As a sorc and a NB, you might escape (rather than kill). As a Temp or DK, you die gloriously.

ZoS severely underestimated how much Spell damage bonuses on sets perform vis-a-vis other traits. Instead they seriously overestimated how much we valued crit (in the beginning crit bonus were half of what they were in 1.5 and they are still, for some reason, lower). Attention ZOS: we cared about crit in 1.5 because of ultimate regen.

s7732425ub17_ESO

Magnus/healer is the optimal balance of magicka sustain with high damage output. Sure, it does not have spell damage to the max, but if you want to never ever have to use a magicka potion or rely on 100% elemental drain uptime, you cannot find better. This also makes for a great healer set.

And yes, a one piece set bonus works if you only have one piece of the set equipped...

Ley

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Magnus/healer is the optimal balance of magicka sustain with high damage output. Sure, it does not have spell damage to the max, but if you want to never ever have to use a magicka potion or rely on 100% elemental drain uptime, you cannot find better. This also makes for a great healer set.

And yes, a one piece set bonus works if you only have one piece of the set equipped...

I figured the one piece would work but it just seemed odd to consider it a set bonus when it works solo.

I find myself spamming heals in pvp more often than I'd like because it seems like everyone around me is suicidal and sometimes keeping everyone else alive = more dps than me just focusing on dps. It's amazing how much sustainability is noticeable in those situations.

I understand the glass cannon builds for gankers or people who rely on people like me to keep them alive as they run into the fray. I'm more impressed by the people who can jump into a group of 20 enemies by themselves, disrupt everything they're doing and manage to get away alive.

I rarely ever encounter 1v1 or even 1v2 situations, it's either (few v many) or (many v many). So I usually have to be able to survive a lot of pounding while spamming shield and heals on myself until I can get the situation under control or I run around healing everyone around me and swap to dps to pick off stragglers. On the rare occasion that I do have a 1v1 encounter, the fight tends to get drawn out a little because I have to wear down their resources.

Anhedonie

Optimal - what a funny word. Gear is kinda bound to your build, imo. I run 5 magnus+5 healer's habit. Was trying to get master restoration staff, but no luck yet. Even as a templar healer (with the worst resource managment comparing to other classes, thank you, ZOS) I don't have any troubles with magicka or healing power.

Ley

Anhedonie wrote: »

Optimal - what a funny word. Gear is kinda bound to your build, imo. I run 5 magnus+5 healer's habit. Was trying to get master restoration staff, but no luck yet. Even as a templar healer (with the worst resource managment comparing to other classes, thank you, ZOS) I don't have any troubles with magicka or healing power.

It is what we do, some of anyhow, we try to optimize our gear and builds to serve us best. I wasn't posting that gear set as an optimal set. I was just hoping that with some feedback, I'd be able to optimize my current set to serve me better.

I remember zos mentioning once, that they wanted to redesign all sets so that they had lvl 1 to vr14 versions, I'd like for this to happen. There are so many sets that don't go up to vr14 that I'd like to use. As it is now, if you want to each gear slot to be used to its full potential, your options are fairly limited. Not being able to craft jewelry limits us in the sense that to get the most out of our gear we must use a dropped set that includes jewelry. There's only a handful of vr14 sets that include jewelry and, Light of Cyrodiil and Healers Habit being the more popular ones for magica users.

Johngo0036

I run 2 swords, gives you around 200 - 300 more spell damage currently,
and that is without any dualwield passives.

Ley

Johngo0036 wrote: »

I run 2 swords, gives you around 200 - 300 more spell damage currently,
and that is without any dualwield passives.

In pve I mainly used a 2 hander for the extra damage, I also tried out 1h+shield and dual wielding just for the extra item slot and they did all give more damage than staffs. Problem is, in pvp as a magica user, getting too close to the fight tends to get me killed so I decided for pvp at least, I'm gonna need to stick with a ranged weapon or else I miss out on damage from light/heavy attacks.

Mayrael

I used to use full warlock set to magica sustain + full martial knowledge (infused /divines) + 2 torgus pact swords (nirn). Output burst and resource managment was incredible in this setup though it was a pure glass canon , when ambushed it was easy target especialy if there were multiple enemies.

olsborg

When using DW instead of say a Destrostaff you loose quite abit of dps from not being able to lightatk weave. Sure your spells/abilities hits harder, but not sure its worth it (imo)

Me, however like to have some stamina sustain during fights, specially since alot of ppl are trying to actively drain it using fear/fossilize.

Im using Shadow Dancer, Eyes of Mara and Healers Habit. 3/4/4

Tankqull

Paulington wrote: »

Magnus is decent for levelling, as is Seducer/Torug's, but that is far from optimal. A better setup is:

Head: Valkyn Skoria (Infused or Divines, pref. Infused).
Shoulders: Valkyn Skoria (Infused or Divines, pref. Divines)
Chest: Torug's Pact (Heavy, Infused, Max Magicka).
Gloves:: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Sash: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Legs: Martial Knowledge (Infused, Max Magicka).
Boots: Martial Knowledge (Divines, Max Magicka).
Weapon 1: Inferno Staff of Torug's Pact (Nirnhoned and Flame Damage).
Weapon 2: The Master's Greatsword (Sharpened) OR Inferno/Resto Staff of Torug's Pact (Nirnhoned and Flame Damage).
Necklace: Necklace of the Healer. (Spell Damage).
Ring 1: Ring of Cyrodiil's Light. (Spell Cost Reduction).
Ring 2: Ring of Cyrodiil's Light. (Spell Cost Reduction).

This is right up there with the best setups for Magicka DPS in the game as it currently stands. Some people prefer to run Adroitness shoes/necklace and some prefer to run no Undaunted sets and they can use three pieces of Burning Spellweave instead (for the max magicka and spell damage bonus) but it's mostly small variations on this setup.

To explain the Master Greatsword, it gives about 180 more spell damage than an Inferno/Resto staff does, no idea why but it does hence why I use it on my second bar for more damage.

It does plenty of damage (15-20k single target sustained as a Sorcerer) and gives you plenty of survivability due to monster wards and the sustainability is good too if you heavy attack weave. If you want a bit more sustainability you can use two Healer rings instead but really I don't think it is necessary as during long PvE fights you will have Elemental Drain up at least and other magicka regenerating spells.

I don't pretend to know everything and I just want to get across that this is just one of the many ways to skin a cat. .

Hope that helps!

use dual wield it provides evben more spell dmg than 2h

Septimus_Magna

olsborg wrote: »

When using DW instead of say a Destrostaff you loose quite abit of dps from not being able to lightatk weave. Sure your spells/abilities hits harder, but not sure its worth it (imo)

Me, however like to have some stamina sustain during fights, specially since alot of ppl are trying to actively drain it using fear/fossilize.

Im using Shadow Dancer, Eyes of Mara and Healers Habit. 3/4/4

I agree, not to mention ultimate regen will be significantly lower with DW compared to destro staff.