The cookie cutter: Dark Brotherhood sorc builds

Minalan

From my first looks at PTS, it looks like the old Max Magicka and swords is out for sorcs boys.

Dawn breaker is out, as it's no longer Magicka based.
Trapping webs is a stamina skill and an AOE like liquid lightning.
Shields are cut down to nothing.


So here's what's I'm thinking most builds will look like:
Gear: 5 piece Kags with Torugs and Kena shoulders
5 X impen, 2 infused on the large pieces.
5/1/1 light/med/heavy

Kags gives health as a bonus, and three piece torugs gives health as well. It should add up to 23k in PVP. With impen, you should survive long enough to hit shields when they're down and avoid a gank. Losing divines on this only means that we miss regen with the atronach mundus, but we'll make up for it, just watch..

Skills: We're being pigeon-holed into destro-resto. Because there are no other spammable skills. You can use swords and spam mages wrath, but really. That's terrible. It won't pressure tank or heal type builds enough IMO.

Bar 1: Force pulse/crushing shock, frags, curse, empowered ward, dampen magicka, overload

The reasoning is simple. Empowered ward gives an eight second shield and 10% Magicka recovery with minor intellect. That helps make up for what we miss out with running five impen. To make up for it, stack with dampen magicka. Keep those up, stay of the offense longer.

Bar 2: mages wrath, mines, surge, healing ward, streak, ice comet

Pretty standard here. No imagination, heal and get out of dodge.

Overload bar: When you're not in combat, you should always be on your overload bar. Always. This is so you don't make yourself Wrobel r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d trying to keep a six second shield up:

Radiant Mage light
Mines
Defensive Rune (always switch to this bar and hit this)
Empowered Ward
Streak

This is your basic 'f*** you ganker' setup. Even on live I've found myself on the handing-out end of mushroom stamps 90% of the time.

You keep defensive rune up instead of shield, it lasts like two minutes, so it's not hard to keep going. Radiant light prevents their ambush stun and they can't escape and cloak. 3-4 light overload attacks kill any Nightblade. Mines and defensive rune usually make sure that they land. Your shield is eight seconds and enough. Immovable pots mean that terrible gankers (most of them) will be surprised when you kill them, but the good ones can still get away (but not kill you). I'm usually miserly with ultimate, so I'm sitting at 1200 most of the time. Ravage Magicka poison has little effect on this.

Potions: I usually keep immovable pots with health, magicka, and regen for 1v1 (bind to F1). I keep spell power pots as well when I know I need the major sorcery buff and can't get to it in overload (bind to F2). Stam recovery pot (on F3) because you never know.

The build should have about 23k health/39K magic/10k-ish stamina. Use blue food, or purple if you need more Stam. With a staff and Kena shoulders, count on 3200 or so spell damage.

For the staff, I'm thinking sharpened with spell damage enchant, or infused with spell damage enchant for PVE content. I'll probably keep Nirn on the resto staff, it doesn't matter as much. With two swords, you can get the three piece torug health bonus. Don't laugh, 1K health with impen and resists is great.

Thoughts? Ideas? I don't see the old builds working out at all next patch, but with a few changes..

AverageJo3Gam3r

I think you're right. A bigger focus on defense is in order. Honestly, I'm not too worried about the patch. I already have a magplar and my DK is mag specced half the time. Neither of them have shields and I do alright. Plus, due to lag I've always ran with a shield on the front bar. Too many times I went to swap to reshield and lag wouldn't let me. Never again! I said.

Defensive rune is a hidden gem. Love that thing.

Minalan

I'm just working on ways to keep going. No matter what else Wrobel does in his next horror-show Sorc update, we'll survive.

This build works in PVP. I'm just throwing it up to see if anyone has better ideas.

For example, I think it might work better to drop 'Anulment' completely and just run empowered Ward and lightning form instead for the resists, movement speed, and 2 seconds of shield duration. Keep some points in 'hardy' and when someone does manage to eat into health, it's survivable.

The issue is lack of build diversity. We're all going to sort of look something like what I just posted. Any sorc still built like glass will die to a well placed frag 4-5 seconds into a shield. Time your burst when they're on their back with shields down. One good crit or execute and they never get back up. God help the pet-builds, this build takes them apart.

NordSwordnBoard

Minalan wrote: »

From my first looks at PTS, it looks like the old Max Magicka and swords is out for sorcs boys.

Dawn breaker is out, as it's no longer Magicka based.
Trapping webs is a stamina skill and an AOE like liquid lightning.
Shields are cut down to nothing.


So here's what's I'm thinking most builds will look like:
Gear: 5 piece Kags with Torugs and Kena shoulders
5 X impen, 2 infused on the large pieces.
5/1/1 light/med/heavy

Kags gives health as a bonus, and three piece torugs gives health as well. It should add up to 23k in PVP. With impen, you should survive long enough to hit shields when they're down and avoid a gank. Losing divines on this only means that we miss regen with the atronach mundus, but we'll make up for it, just watch..

Skills: We're being pigeon-holed into destro-resto. Because there are no other spammable skills. You can use swords and spam mages wrath, but really. That's terrible. It won't pressure tank or heal type builds enough IMO.

Bar 1: Force pulse/crushing shock, frags, curse, empowered ward, dampen magicka, overload

The reasoning is simple. Empowered ward gives an eight second shield and 10% Magicka recovery with minor intellect. That helps make up for what we miss out with running five impen. To make up for it, stack with dampen magicka. Keep those up, stay of the offense longer.

Bar 2: mages wrath, mines, surge, healing ward, streak, ice comet

Pretty standard here. No imagination, heal and get out of dodge.

Overload bar: When you're not in combat, you should always be on your overload bar. Always. This is so you don't make yourself Wrobel r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d trying to keep a six second shield up:

Radiant Mage light
Mines
Defensive Rune (always switch to this bar and hit this)
Empowered Ward
Streak

This is your basic 'f*** you ganker' setup. Even on live I've found myself on the handing-out end of mushroom stamps 90% of the time.

You keep defensive rune up instead of shield, it lasts like two minutes, so it's not hard to keep going. Radiant light prevents their ambush stun and they can't escape and cloak. 3-4 light overload attacks kill any Nightblade. Mines and defensive rune usually make sure that they land. Your shield is eight seconds and enough. Immovable pots mean that terrible gankers (most of them) will be surprised when you kill them, but the good ones can still get away (but not kill you). I'm usually miserly with ultimate, so I'm sitting at 1200 most of the time. Ravage Magicka poison has little effect on this.

Potions: I usually keep immovable pots with health, magicka, and regen for 1v1 (bind to F1). I keep spell power pots as well when I know I need the major sorcery buff and can't get to it in overload (bind to F2). Stam recovery pot (on F3) because you never know.

The build should have about 23k health/39K magic/10k-ish stamina. Use blue food, or purple if you need more Stam. With a staff and Kena shoulders, count on 3200 or so spell damage.

For the staff, I'm thinking sharpened with spell damage enchant, or infused with spell damage enchant for PVE content. I'll probably keep Nirn on the resto staff, it doesn't matter as much. With two swords, you can get the three piece torug health bonus. Don't laugh, 1K health with impen and resists is great.

Thoughts? Ideas? I don't see the old builds working out at all next patch, but with a few changes..

Thanks for the info. I never used defensive rune in the field before and that sounds like a good alternative to the ward to try.

AverageJo3Gam3r wrote: »

I think you're right. A bigger focus on defense is in order. Honestly, I'm not too worried about the patch. I already have a magplar and my DK is mag specced half the time. Neither of them have shields and I do alright. Plus, due to lag I've always ran with a shield on the front bar. Too many times I went to swap to reshield and lag wouldn't let me. Never again! I said.

Defensive rune is a hidden gem. Love that thing.

I hear you about the bar swap with lag and not getting to shields in time. I'm looking for more passives/alternatives to the shield in general because of this. I want the first bar to be all burst damage and the shield there gives me one less damage slot.

Emma_Overload

Minalan wrote: »

From my first looks at PTS, it looks like the old Max Magicka and swords is out for sorcs boys.

Dawn breaker is out, as it's no longer Magicka based.
Trapping webs is a stamina skill and an AOE like liquid lightning.
Shields are cut down to nothing.


So here's what's I'm thinking most builds will look like:
Gear: 5 piece Kags with Torugs and Kena shoulders
5 X impen, 2 infused on the large pieces.
5/1/1 light/med/heavy

Kags gives health as a bonus, and three piece torugs gives health as well. It should add up to 23k in PVP. With impen, you should survive long enough to hit shields when they're down and avoid a gank. Losing divines on this only means that we miss regen with the atronach mundus, but we'll make up for it, just watch..

Skills: We're being pigeon-holed into destro-resto. Because there are no other spammable skills. You can use swords and spam mages wrath, but really. That's terrible. It won't pressure tank or heal type builds enough IMO.

Bar 1: Force pulse/crushing shock, frags, curse, empowered ward, dampen magicka, overload

The reasoning is simple. Empowered ward gives an eight second shield and 10% Magicka recovery with minor intellect. That helps make up for what we miss out with running five impen. To make up for it, stack with dampen magicka. Keep those up, stay of the offense longer.

Bar 2: mages wrath, mines, surge, healing ward, streak, ice comet

Pretty standard here. No imagination, heal and get out of dodge.

Overload bar: When you're not in combat, you should always be on your overload bar. Always. This is so you don't make yourself Wrobel r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d trying to keep a six second shield up:

Radiant Mage light
Mines
Defensive Rune (always switch to this bar and hit this)
Empowered Ward
Streak

This is your basic 'f*** you ganker' setup. Even on live I've found myself on the handing-out end of mushroom stamps 90% of the time.

You keep defensive rune up instead of shield, it lasts like two minutes, so it's not hard to keep going. Radiant light prevents their ambush stun and they can't escape and cloak. 3-4 light overload attacks kill any Nightblade. Mines and defensive rune usually make sure that they land. Your shield is eight seconds and enough. Immovable pots mean that terrible gankers (most of them) will be surprised when you kill them, but the good ones can still get away (but not kill you). I'm usually miserly with ultimate, so I'm sitting at 1200 most of the time. Ravage Magicka poison has little effect on this.

Potions: I usually keep immovable pots with health, magicka, and regen for 1v1 (bind to F1). I keep spell power pots as well when I know I need the major sorcery buff and can't get to it in overload (bind to F2). Stam recovery pot (on F3) because you never know.

The build should have about 23k health/39K magic/10k-ish stamina. Use blue food, or purple if you need more Stam. With a staff and Kena shoulders, count on 3200 or so spell damage.

For the staff, I'm thinking sharpened with spell damage enchant, or infused with spell damage enchant for PVE content. I'll probably keep Nirn on the resto staff, it doesn't matter as much. With two swords, you can get the three piece torug health bonus. Don't laugh, 1K health with impen and resists is great.

Thoughts? Ideas? I don't see the old builds working out at all next patch, but with a few changes..

I agree with your Bar 1 completely, and I've already started playing with this exact setup on the Live server. I learned on the PTS that you absolutely must have your 2 shields on your attack bar, because you can't afford to weapon swap every 6 seconds (or less).

The downside to this is that you now have to have your execute on your off bar... there's just no way around it.

FriedEggSandwich

As a sorc who's been using 5x impen in pvp for the last 6 months I can tell you losing the regen is negligible. I use 5x kags, 3x arch-mage, 3x willpower with 2x spell damage glyphs and 1x cost reduction glyph and I never run out of magicka with 1600 regen. I can streak quite a few times in a row and still turn around and fight.

I also wear 2x heavy with reinforced trait which combined with boundless storm and nirnhoned staff gives me 23k spell resistance and 19k physical resistance fully buffed. I expect these figures to go up with the change to defending in the next patch.

My lack of infused leaves me with just 35.5k max magicka. This means my ward is only 10.3k, but due to spending 35+cp each in ele defender and hardy it's a tough little ward, and combined with my resistances underneath I don't take enough damage to warrant having my ward on my front bar, it does just fine on my back bar. "Tanking up" in this manner takes the panic/urgency out of a ward cast.

I can confirm that defensive rune is trolltastic in pvp and well worth slotting instead of another ward.

Bar 1
Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Frags
Power Surge
Streak
Atronach

Bar 2
Defensive Rune
Combat Prayer
Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Overload

By having bar 1 filled with sorc skills I make full use of Expert Mage passive and add a whole 12% to my spell damage. Wrath is fine as a spammable "dps filler". OK it does no damage, but it costs nothing and in all honesty doesn't need to be used as a "dps filler" all that much. The idea is that I cast wrath when I have nothing else to cast at that moment; so curse is waiting to pop and I'm waiting for a frag proc and I'm too far away to streak, then wrath gets used to try to proc a frag. It's not like I'm regularly spamming wrath to try to do damage, usually there is a better skill to use. But using wrath mid fight in this manner has it's uses anyway; it can help to finish fights early. You just need to drop your opponent below 18% hp within 4 seconds of casting wrath and they explode. If you're regularly weaving wrath between other skills throughout the fight this will just happen naturally.

I'm only undaunted rank 4 so don't get any benefit from mettle yet. So these stats are without that passive, but I have 21.5k hp, 35.5k magicka and 13.5k stamina with purple food. I have 2933 spell damage buffed and 1609 magicka regen. In my experience this is a sweet spot for doing good damage for as long as you need to, and still being pretty damn hard to kill. Also the use of combat prayer as my burst heal also adds 8% to my damage output, which is noticeable.

Edit: In the next patch I will be looking for ways to increase my physical and spell (and maybe crit) resistance even more, whilst attempting to further increase my damage output. I'm tired of the "you die if your wards fail" meta.

Minalan

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

From my first looks at PTS, it looks like the old Max Magicka and swords is out for sorcs boys.

Dawn breaker is out, as it's no longer Magicka based.
Trapping webs is a stamina skill and an AOE like liquid lightning.
Shields are cut down to nothing.


So here's what's I'm thinking most builds will look like:
Gear: 5 piece Kags with Torugs and Kena shoulders
5 X impen, 2 infused on the large pieces.
5/1/1 light/med/heavy

Kags gives health as a bonus, and three piece torugs gives health as well. It should add up to 23k in PVP. With impen, you should survive long enough to hit shields when they're down and avoid a gank. Losing divines on this only means that we miss regen with the atronach mundus, but we'll make up for it, just watch..

Skills: We're being pigeon-holed into destro-resto. Because there are no other spammable skills. You can use swords and spam mages wrath, but really. That's terrible. It won't pressure tank or heal type builds enough IMO.

Bar 1: Force pulse/crushing shock, frags, curse, empowered ward, dampen magicka, overload

The reasoning is simple. Empowered ward gives an eight second shield and 10% Magicka recovery with minor intellect. That helps make up for what we miss out with running five impen. To make up for it, stack with dampen magicka. Keep those up, stay of the offense longer.

Bar 2: mages wrath, mines, surge, healing ward, streak, ice comet

Pretty standard here. No imagination, heal and get out of dodge.

Overload bar: When you're not in combat, you should always be on your overload bar. Always. This is so you don't make yourself Wrobel r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d trying to keep a six second shield up:

Radiant Mage light
Mines
Defensive Rune (always switch to this bar and hit this)
Empowered Ward
Streak

This is your basic 'f*** you ganker' setup. Even on live I've found myself on the handing-out end of mushroom stamps 90% of the time.

You keep defensive rune up instead of shield, it lasts like two minutes, so it's not hard to keep going. Radiant light prevents their ambush stun and they can't escape and cloak. 3-4 light overload attacks kill any Nightblade. Mines and defensive rune usually make sure that they land. Your shield is eight seconds and enough. Immovable pots mean that terrible gankers (most of them) will be surprised when you kill them, but the good ones can still get away (but not kill you). I'm usually miserly with ultimate, so I'm sitting at 1200 most of the time. Ravage Magicka poison has little effect on this.

Potions: I usually keep immovable pots with health, magicka, and regen for 1v1 (bind to F1). I keep spell power pots as well when I know I need the major sorcery buff and can't get to it in overload (bind to F2). Stam recovery pot (on F3) because you never know.

The build should have about 23k health/39K magic/10k-ish stamina. Use blue food, or purple if you need more Stam. With a staff and Kena shoulders, count on 3200 or so spell damage.

For the staff, I'm thinking sharpened with spell damage enchant, or infused with spell damage enchant for PVE content. I'll probably keep Nirn on the resto staff, it doesn't matter as much. With two swords, you can get the three piece torug health bonus. Don't laugh, 1K health with impen and resists is great.

Thoughts? Ideas? I don't see the old builds working out at all next patch, but with a few changes..

Thanks for the info. I never used defensive rune in the field before and that sounds like a good alternative to the ward to try.

AverageJo3Gam3r wrote: »

I think you're right. A bigger focus on defense is in order. Honestly, I'm not too worried about the patch. I already have a magplar and my DK is mag specced half the time. Neither of them have shields and I do alright. Plus, due to lag I've always ran with a shield on the front bar. Too many times I went to swap to reshield and lag wouldn't let me. Never again! I said.

Defensive rune is a hidden gem. Love that thing.

I hear you about the bar swap with lag and not getting to shields in time. I'm looking for more passives/alternatives to the shield in general because of this. I want the first bar to be all burst damage and the shield there gives me one less damage slot.

Rune won't save you from groups! Or damage. It gives you two seconds to react when hit from a solo ganker, which is most of them. It's just a way to walk around in Cyrodiil without being killed in one shot. (See Fenrush's video, one second dead. F***ing Wrobel loves his favorite baby class)

The ganker gets up right away with stun immunity, in those two seconds you should have wards up, steak distance, mines, and block ready while spamming light attacks and dodge rolling. You need to have immovable up and rolling, so you ignore his fear.

When they jump to you again, they should hit mines, and get overload light to the face. They should get caught in mines and killed.

Fight back! It takes time to learn and Stam NB's are almost impossible. I'm sure as soon as you kill one, we'll eat another nerf.

Azurethe

Shields were cut down to nothing as in the duration or their effectiveness? @Minalan

Minalan

Azurethe wrote: »

Shields were cut down to nothing as in the duration or their effectiveness? @Minalan

Duration, six seconds for hardened ward, and anulment.

You can get 8 seconds with empowered ward, and stack a 6 second shield (healing or Anulment) on top of that. That seems to work out best with all of the CC out there.

Azurethe

Minalan wrote: »

Azurethe wrote: »

Shields were cut down to nothing as in the duration or their effectiveness? @Minalan

Duration, six seconds for hardened ward, and anulment.

You can get 8 seconds with empowered ward, and stack a 6 second shield (healing or Anulment) on top of that. That seems to work out best with all of the CC out there.

Yea I know, didn't know if you were saying shields were useless (pls) or you were talking about duration, now I know

FriedEggSandwich

Continued from my last post..

I recently managed to complete vMA enough times to get myself a defending fire staff and a defending resto staff. I wasn't too bummed about the trait as I already knew it was getting a buff next patch, and it pretty much fits with the idea behind my pvp build, i.e tanking up. I still wear 5x kags, but I replaced the 3x arch mage with 2x torugs and 1x maelstrom. This lost me about 180 regen but I gained about 200 spell damage.

The pts currently has EU character transfers so I just hopped on to see what my stats looked like with my current build. I took advantage of the free crafting mats to switch my 2 reinforced heavy pieces to impen.

So on pts I was wearing 5x kags, 3x willpower, 2x torugs and 1x maelstrom. I was wearing 5x light and 2x heavy with 7/7 impen. Both my staves are defending and all my jewellery is arcane with 2x spell damage glyphs and 1x cost reduction glyph. I was buffing up with power surge for the major sorcery, boundless storm for the major ward and resolve, and combat prayer for the minor ward and resolve.

Here is a screenshot of my character sheet while fully buffed:

This is as high as it's possible for a sorc to get resistances while still wearing 5x light armour and without investing cp into defensive lines such as Resistant and Light Armor Focus. I haven't actually fought with this setup on pts yet so not sure how it performs, but it looks good in theory. On live this build performs well despite having lowish regen and defending not being as potent.

I thought I would make the most of being on pts, so I made myself 3 more pieces of kagrenac's hope in heavy armour and upgraded to yellow. So now I was wearing the same set bonuses but this time with 5x heavy and 2x light. Here is the screenshot of my character sheet fully buffed:

You'll notice the slight increase in resistances and health regen, but I lost another 200 magicka regen and 10% spell crit. But most importantly what you can't see is I lost >4k spell pen, which is a big deal. I could make this back by using a sharpened staff instead, but then I lose the 5.1k resistances from defending, which just defeats the point of my efforts. I'm not sure the heavy armour 5 piece passives are enough to make up for these losses.

So it's definitely still necessary for a dps spec sorc to use no less than 5x light armour. And the stats in the first screenshot are about as good as you can expect from the "tanking up" approach in the next patch. I'm not sure exactly how effective this approach will be next patch, but I'm hoping it will be at least as effective as it currently is on live and allow me to get away with just using one 10.3k hardened ward in pvp. I haven't factored in poisons though, so maybe I'll have to rethink everything.

Edit: I still don't have Undaunted Mettle on pts, so the stats in the screenies would be 4% higher with this passive maxed, and hardened ward would be more like 11k as a result.

Edit 2: If there was a non-resto staff heal that could be used in place of combat prayer on the back bar then it would be possible to tank-up even further by using S&B on the back bar. I looked at the expensive morph of purge but it costs 5k magicka and only heals for 16% of your hp, and only when it purges an effect. Dark Exchange is another candidate but I don't think it's insta cast and it needs to be. The only other option would be to rely on surge heals, but I suspect this won't be enough for open world pvp. So sorcs are still stuck with resto staff for now I think, although I will probably test S&B at some point.

Brrrofski

So my sorc build since build since like August will now become the new meta? Copycats...

Derra

Pretty much ran the same overload bar for solo play since ages.

It´s sad gear choices will get eliminated by those changes. No more room to fit winterborn/skoria/nerieneth. Also only running hardened without any harness morph is pretty much off the table as an option.

Minalan

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

Continued from my last post..

I recently managed to complete vMA enough times to get myself a defending fire staff and a defending resto staff. I wasn't too bummed about the trait as I already knew it was getting a buff next patch, and it pretty much fits with the idea behind my pvp build, i.e tanking up. I still wear 5x kags, but I replaced the 3x arch mage with 2x torugs and 1x maelstrom. This lost me about 180 regen but I gained about 200 spell damage.

The pts currently has EU character transfers so I just hopped on to see what my stats looked like with my current build. I took advantage of the free crafting mats to switch my 2 reinforced heavy pieces to impen.

So on pts I was wearing 5x kags, 3x willpower, 2x torugs and 1x maelstrom. I was wearing 5x light and 2x heavy with 7/7 impen. Both my staves are defending and all my jewellery is arcane with 2x spell damage glyphs and 1x cost reduction glyph. I was buffing up with power surge for the major sorcery, boundless storm for the major ward and resolve, and combat prayer for the minor ward and resolve.

Here is a screenshot of my character sheet while fully buffed:

This is as high as it's possible for a sorc to get resistances while still wearing 5x light armour and without investing cp into defensive lines such as Resistant and Light Armor Focus. I haven't actually fought with this setup on pts yet so not sure how it performs, but it looks good in theory. On live this build performs well despite having lowish regen and defending not being as potent.

I thought I would make the most of being on pts, so I made myself 3 more pieces of kagrenac's hope in heavy armour and upgraded to yellow. So now I was wearing the same set bonuses but this time with 5x heavy and 2x light. Here is the screenshot of my character sheet fully buffed:

You'll notice the slight increase in resistances and health regen, but I lost another 200 magicka regen and 10% spell crit. But most importantly what you can't see is I lost >4k spell pen, which is a big deal. I could make this back by using a sharpened staff instead, but then I lose the 5.1k resistances from defending, which just defeats the point of my efforts. I'm not sure the heavy armour 5 piece passives are enough to make up for these losses.

So it's definitely still necessary for a dps spec sorc to use no less than 5x light armour. And the stats in the first screenshot are about as good as you can expect from the "tanking up" approach in the next patch. I'm not sure exactly how effective this approach will be next patch, but I'm hoping it will be at least as effective as it currently is on live and allow me to get away with just using one 10.3k hardened ward in pvp. I haven't factored in poisons though, so maybe I'll have to rethink everything.

Edit: I still don't have Undaunted Mettle on pts, so the stats in the screenies would be 4% higher with this passive maxed, and hardened ward would be more like 11k as a result.

Edit 2: If there was a non-resto staff heal that could be used in place of combat prayer on the back bar then it would be possible to tank-up even further by using S&B on the back bar. I looked at the expensive morph of purge but it costs 5k magicka and only heals for 16% of your hp, and only when it purges an effect. Dark Exchange is another candidate but I don't think it's insta cast and it needs to be. The only other option would be to rely on surge heals, but I suspect this won't be enough for open world pvp. So sorcs are still stuck with resto staff for now I think, although I will probably test S&B at some point.

You NEED undaunted mettle to make this sorc build competitive. 35K Magicka is NOT enough. Sorcs should level the medium line early and grab all of the passives. (Hey, 1% bonus is 1%. Take it.)

I use pots for sustain, and picked the Mage for the extra 1K Magicka, because you can pass 40K with undaunted easy. That means more spell damage from abilities that scale with it.

All of us are going to have to back-bar resto still. That's more of Wrobell's idiocy. I tried combat prayer, but it just wasn't as good as healing ward for saving my hide (or a team mates when they steal it). On top of that they wrecked our surge heal on Critical hits. We'll depend on it now more than ever.

If you're on PTS, try out an infused staff with a spell damage enchant. The uptime is good, and the damage should work out well for trash mobs with low resists, I want to know how it compares to maelstrom. For PVP I'll be using a spell damage enchant with sharpened just like everyone else.

FriedEggSandwich

35k is fine for pvp atm, I've never had any more than 38k for pvp anyway. I would love to have undaunted mettle but I don't believe suddenly having 4% more stats is gonna change anything drastically. I've duelled with this build and fought open world with this build and it works. I can take damage and dish out damage. I run with 44k magicka in pve, but magicka is what you sacrifice when you try to tank up with heavy armour and traits other than infused.

Poisons are the unknown factor for me atm; I've no idea how they will affect me but I suspect they will be the bane of my life. I would rather increase my magicka regen than max magicka if I'm honest.

Minalan

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

35k is fine for pvp atm, I've never had any more than 38k for pvp anyway. I would love to have undaunted mettle but I don't believe suddenly having 4% more stats is gonna change anything drastically. I've duelled with this build and fought open world with this build and it works. I can take damage and dish out damage. I run with 44k magicka in pve, but magicka is what you sacrifice when you try to tank up with heavy armour and traits other than infused.

Poisons are the unknown factor for me atm; I've no idea how they will affect me but I suspect they will be the bane of my life. I would rather increase my magicka regen than max magicka if I'm honest.

6% more stats my friend, drop one heavy and wear one medium piece. It's worth it.

I'll say this, the undaunted grind is brutal to get level 9...

Ishammael

Why not run 5xSeducer, 3xWill, 3xShadow Dancer? At least 5x impen.

Use tri-glyphs if you feel like you need more HP. Run mage mundus to get your mana to 40k.

Lava_Croft

Minalan wrote: »

Shields are cut down to nothing.

I quit reading there.

Minalan

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Shields are cut down to nothing.

I quit reading there.

Because six seconds is an eternity or something?

This thread is about surviving without it.

Lava_Croft

Minalan wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Shields are cut down to nothing.

I quit reading there.

Because six seconds is an eternity or something?

'Cut down to nothing' implies that shields are useless. However, their duration is heavily shortened while the burst protection that shield stacking provides is buffed.

Minalan

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Shields are cut down to nothing.

I quit reading there.

Because six seconds is an eternity or something?

'Cut down to nothing' implies that shields are useless. However, their duration is heavily shortened while the burst protection that shield stacking provides is buffed.

Unless a sorc changes their build. Anyone will wait four or five seconds into a shield. Stun. GG.

this is about how to avoid that.

Makkir

@FriedEggSandwich I have been running something really close on LIVE right now and doing awesome.
Have you tried PTS with vamp? I think the fire dmg is a fair trade off for the stage 4 perks.

Minalan

Makkir wrote: »

@FriedEggSandwich I have been running something really close on LIVE right now and doing awesome.
Have you tried PTS with vamp? I think the fire dmg is a fair trade off for the stage 4 perks.

I can usually survive the VD explosion of a comrade without vamp.

With? I think it would be constant vicious deaths. How bad is it? What about dragon Knights?

Feynn

Nice thinking. I mean, it would be nice if the developers actually introduced changes for you instead of changes against you forcing you to adapt so that you can still float and not drown, but still... Any thought on Sorcerer in PvE?

FriedEggSandwich

Makkir wrote: »

@FriedEggSandwich I have been running something really close on LIVE right now and doing awesome.
Have you tried PTS with vamp? I think the fire dmg is a fair trade off for the stage 4 perks.

I've considered vamp for a while, just for the achievement completion if anything, but I was put off by the amount of fighters guild skills that get used in pvp. I might give it a go on pts though, good idea. Thanks for the heads up, I'll let you know if I end up loving it

With regards to my build I have to admit I've gone back to stacking hardened and harness at the loss of defensive rune. Next patch I don't believe I will be competetive with just one ward, even with close to 25k resistances and 7/7 impen. Maybe your suggestion of going vamp would help with that, mist form is looking pretty attractive.

Having harness again certainly makes survival easier, I'd forgotten just how easy, and it also makes up for the regen loss of using torugs and maelstrom instead of 3x arch-mage. With just hardened it takes no more than 2 average players to take me down, with harness + hardened I can tank up to 10 players for about 30 seconds even if I don't kill anyone, even longer if I can LoS. It's a shame that using 2 wards is so much more effective than just using one, it feels like more than twice as effective but that's hard to quantify. I still haven't determined whether 6 seconds is gonna be enough time to cast 2 wards and still be able to offence though. I'm sticking with the high resistances though, it's so funny being spambushed with no ward and watching you health bar remain almost static

Makkir

It's not just the attractiveness of mist form & bat swarm which absolutely add to the "survivability" of our builds, it's the undeath and magicka/stamina regen passives they provide at stage 4. I mean, it's almost a no brainer.

I only run heal ward and hardened ward right now on live with around 2k magicka regen, 41k magicka, and 3.1k spell power (with major sorcery active and I run inner light on my destro bar). Everyone's losing their freaking minds (insert Joker meme here) over the 6 second change but to be honest I do just fine in 1vX right now without needing a 20 second shield. Most of the time I open up on someone without a shield active because like you, I am running impen and some survivability. If I can keep someone on the defense then I don't really need to be spamming shields anyway. We'll see how it goes when changes go live.

Minalan

Makkir wrote: »

It's not just the attractiveness of mist form & bat swarm which absolutely add to the "survivability" of our builds, it's the undeath and magicka/stamina regen passives they provide at stage 4. I mean, it's almost a no brainer.

I only run heal ward and hardened ward right now on live with around 2k magicka regen, 41k magicka, and 3.1k spell power (with major sorcery active and I run inner light on my destro bar). Everyone's losing their freaking minds (insert Joker meme here) over the 6 second change but to be honest I do just fine in 1vX right now without needing a 20 second shield. Most of the time I open up on someone without a shield active because like you, I am running impen and some survivability. If I can keep someone on the defense then I don't really need to be spamming shields anyway. We'll see how it goes when changes go live.

I've dueled on PTS. The problem with the six seconds, is that you're stunned five seconds into the shield and killed. Now you have impen, so that's not as much of an issue.

That's why this build is going to be pretty much the only viable one. Destro. 5 X impen or so. Dual shields. Everyone using the same spells and attacks unless you're a pet build, but let's be honest while pets are sometimes annoying, they aren't viable.

I'm going to try out Dampen Magicka (the bigger light armor ward) on top of the ten-second Empowered Ward (the smaller sorc ward) with this.

ManDraKE

With the new spell damage glyphs for staffs, i'm thinking more on a high dps pressure build with destro and high mobility to avoid having to rely that much in shield stacking. The builds suggested by the OP is, imho, boring to play, so i'm going to try a build with a lot of soft CC's with high mobility, once people start timming their CC's with the 6 seconds duration of the shields no impen will save you if you are in LA, so better start being more mobile without need of dodge roll so you always have stam for cc break, on live you can eat the entire CC and not get killed because of the shields, that won't be a thing when DB hits live.

Also i don't want to re craft everything, so i want to create a build where i can keep using divines/infused (<=== cheap ***)

Minalan

ManDraKE wrote: »

With the new spell damage glyphs for staffs, i'm thinking more on a high dps pressure build with destro and high mobility to avoid having to rely that much in shield stacking. The builds suggested by the OP is, imho, boring to play, so i'm going to try a build with a lot of soft CC's with high mobility, once people start timming their CC's with the 6 seconds duration of the shields no impen will save you if you are in LA, so better start being more mobile without need of dodge roll so you always have stam for cc break, on live you can eat the entire CC and not get killed because of the shields, that won't be a thing when DB hits live.

Also i don't want to re craft everything, so i want to create a build where i can keep using divines/infused (<=== cheap ***)

You're absolutely right. My build is boring and that's the whole complaint.

What's your idea for the skill bars? Lightning form for better mobility and protection helps with the LA problem.

ManDraKE

Minalan wrote: »

What's your idea for the skill bars? Lightning form for better mobility and protection helps with the LA problem.

haven't sit to do theorycrafting yet, but i was thinking in put encase and lighthing form in 2nd bar, and mines with defensive rune on overload bar, and try to avoid recasting too much shields so i can have more magika to streak out (im using seducer+atro mundus so i have a really high magika sustain). For open world i think this will work better, since mobility is king in that scenario. For duels, probably your build will be more effective

I'm also considering ice staff, destructive touch with ice staff is a *** pain in the ass, but the problem i see with that is that i will have to take off something of my main bar to make room for it, curse is the number 1 candidate but is a really useful to have in your front bar to fight NB's.

Shaloran

I honestly don't care that much about the nerf to shields. Seriously has noone thought about the fact that the shield is rarely up for more than six seconds anyway? And that's with my 42k magicka and 100 bastion. Nerf all you like;I'll still kill.