Questions about StamSorc pvE

Sleeping_OwI

I'm bored and since i've already played and mastered every other dd class, i thought i'd try my hand at sorcerer, the only one i never played cuz i never really liked it. I did play magsorc for a few hours when leveling it but didn't like it much, and i also got too many mag toons already, so i thought i'd make the sorcerer stam. But i have some questions:

1- which spammable do sorcs use? Sorcerer is weird in this regard as it's the only class without a proper clear-cut spammable, which confuses me. Both morphs of crystal shard seem weird or clunky. The mag morph randomly had a different animation and cast time which kept throwing me off rhythm (my character being in lightning form and almost invisible which made seeing my animations harder, also made this worse), and the stam morph seems like that weird psijic spammable, except that it needs to be cast every 3 skills? If that's the case, what would be the main spammable of the class? I'll be using dual wield for front bar, so maybe Flurry? would Crystal Weapon be worth using as a sort of second spammable?

2- which backbar weapon works best on a stam sorc? 2handed or inferno or lightning staff?

3- i haven't unlocked Bound Armaments myself yet, but i have rarely seen it on other players, and its visual animation looks very cool which makes me wanna use it, but i hear that it's actually quite weak in terms of damage numbers? What's the deal with that? Is it worth using for dds or not?

4- Pets are absolutely necessary if I want to do as much damage as possible, right? I do hate sorcerer pets, but if i have to use them, i will. But i do also hate how many ability slots they take up, 2 on each bar, 4 total ! 🤦 So which pets and morphs would be better for stam sorc?

5- is the class execute skill, Mage's Fury, worth using on stam sorc? Can stam even sustain it? If not, dual wield execute or just no execute at all?

6- which ultimate is better for solo? And which for groups? Shooting Star or Lightning Atronach?

7- which would be the other essential class skills? Lightning Splash, Lightning Form, Surge?

8- which monster or mythics is best for content? I assume Stormfist and Maw are two great options, which one is stronger on sorc?

Thanks in advance for any info and insight

MerguezMan

1. weapon skills as spammable.
2. dual wield or bow ; though you may slot destro staff for major breach.
3. PVE -> yes ; PVP -> not really
4. No pets needed. And Haunting curse hits super hard
5. Yes, mage fury works great. Use 2H execute if you feel short on stam
6. Solo -> fighter's guild dawnbreaker ; group -> Atronach, or Support - Barrier if you need a carry
7. Crit surge, stam version of lightning form, and Atronach Ult are overall great. Dark deal is nice playing solo.
8. Hands down Markyn ring for anything. Any damage monster set if you fancy special effects, that's up to you.

Pelanora

Id agree with this advice over the advice you got from reddit

SmellyUnlimited

There are a lot of guides on Stamsorc, but if you’re wanting a dual wield build then a bow or 2Hander backbar would be your best complement. Flurry or Crystal Weapon would be your spammable, but crystal weapon just feels clunky to me. It’s just a “fancy” way of light attacking as you normally would. Depends if you’re doing group content or solo for other aspects of your build.

Solo arena: Hurricane and Crit Surge are your bread and butter on your backbar. Then dark deal for extra sustain (vigor front bar). If you go bow backbar then I’d use Endless Hail and Barbed Trap as your other two skills on the back, or if 2Hander you can run Stampede and carve, or stampede and reverse slash for an execute (you likely won’t have the magicka sustain to use Mage’s Fury).
Dual wield bar slotting Bound Armaments gives you really good passive bonuses, but it’s not a necessity. I’d run flurry, rending slashes, deadly cloak, vigor, and either whirlwind for multiple enemies (plus execute), or just a flex spot for what you need at the time (hardened ward for survivability, haunting curse for damage, etc.).

I think it makes one of the most fun solo arena classes. I don’t think I could stomach running pets in PvE content. There’s way too many twilight tormentors floating around already trying to see through that garbage in a trial.

Turtle_Bot

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

Zodiarkslayer

5 - I'd also look up a 2H frontbar for use of Executioner, because the Sorcerer execute is really difficult to sustain on a Stam focused build.
3 - You can slot Bound Armaments on backbar and still get the passives frontbar, now.
Dont use crit surge and camo hunter in Trials, but Heroism Pots and get Maj Brutality from your resident Dragonknight.

2 - Bow backbar works for both 2H and Dualwield frontbars. 2H backbar is best for Dualwield frontbar. Regardless, in both cases you can run a Magicka DoT (Lightning Flood is decent) and draw some sustain from it.
1 - Typically you use Rapid Strikes or Wrecking Blow, if you can weave them well. Crystal Weapon works exceptionally well on a Bow frontbar, but bad with anything else. The bow animation is just a small twitch to the side and serves as a good visual clue.

Last I checked StamSorc can hit somewhere in the 130k+ region. And I thought it was a build with only the Tormentor and not Daedric Prey, but I could be wrong.

Sleeping_OwI

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

So which Class abilities are *the most* crucial/essential for stamsorc and must be kept at all times? Because the overly limited bar space is really confusing and annoying me and i'm having a hard time choosing what to keep and what to drop.

So with both pets, i'll only have 3 slots left on each bar:

Back bar: Stampede, Hurricane, ...?

Front bar: main Spammable, Barbed trap, ...?

So it seems i can't have Daedric Prey and Bound Armaments at the same time, i have to choose one? And if I use a weapon/guild spammable instead of the weird clunky Crystal weapon, i'll be missing out on the unique Minor Prophecy. Can Crystal Weapon be used as a spammable by itself effectively? Would the damage be good enough for actual content? Or would the damage of other spammables like Flurry or Shard make up for the lack of Minor Prophecy?

And this way I've already dropped Camo Hunter & Crit Surge, which handicaps me quite a bit in solo and pugs. >_<

Turtle_Bot

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

If I want to use both pets for max damage, that'll leave me very little bar space, i'm not sure what to keep and what to remove. So 3 spare slots on each bar:
Back bar: stampede, flood, hurricane
Front bar: spammable, barbed trap, daedric prey?
No space for crystal weapon or bound armament? I was really looking forward to using BA, and i've already removed everything this way; no camo hunter for solo play, no crit surge, no second spammable... Why is sorcerer like this, i hate having so few abilities >_<

Back bar would likely be stampede, bound armaments and hurricane
front bar would likely be spammable, barbed and prey

You could swap armaments and barbed to make the rotation easier, but your overall damage will slightly decrease (1%) due to losing the fighters guild passive from the front bar. Fighters guild gives +3% per FG ability slotted, sorc passive only gives 2% per sorc ability slotted, this is where that 1% difference comes from. If the rotation is much easier for you though, that will be a much bigger dps increase than any loss from the adjustment in the passives.

Lightning flood is a very mediocre ability, that is not worth slotting at all unless your group is extremely desperate for another synergy for some reason, at which point running mystic orb from undaunted skill line would be better since its very close in damage to flood, but provides group sustain as well.

Sleeping_OwI

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

If I want to use both pets for max damage, that'll leave me very little bar space, i'm not sure what to keep and what to remove. So 3 spare slots on each bar:
Back bar: stampede, flood, hurricane
Front bar: spammable, barbed trap, daedric prey?
No space for crystal weapon or bound armament? I was really looking forward to using BA, and i've already removed everything this way; no camo hunter for solo play, no crit surge, no second spammable... Why is sorcerer like this, i hate having so few abilities >_<

Back bar would likely be stampede, bound armaments and hurricane
front bar would likely be spammable, barbed and prey

You could swap armaments and barbed to make the rotation easier, but your overall damage will slightly decrease (1%) due to losing the fighters guild passive from the front bar. Fighters guild gives +3% per FG ability slotted, sorc passive only gives 2% per sorc ability slotted, this is where that 1% difference comes from. If the rotation is much easier for you though, that will be a much bigger dps increase than any loss from the adjustment in the passives.

Lightning flood is a very mediocre ability, that is not worth slotting at all unless your group is extremely desperate for another synergy for some reason, at which point running mystic orb from undaunted skill line would be better since its very close in damage to flood, but provides group sustain as well.

Oh, I thought Lightning Flood is Sorcerer's equivalent of other class Aoe skills like Graveyard, Shard, Eruption, Winter, Twisting Path that are strong and essential in their kits... I didn't know it was this weak, tho I had noticed its numbers were quite low even on the stronger morph... well that sucks, as it makes Sorc's Aoe power even worse than nightblsde lol, but at least it makes choosing skills easier.

I see, but wouldn't the constant bar swap waste more time and dps with Bound Arms on back bar? Bar swapping takes one second, so bar every 4-5 seconds seems really counter-effective to me, lots of total time that could've been used to cast spammable instead. Amd also considering that our stats are always lower on back bar so it loses a bit of its firing damage too. but idk, you're the sorc expert.

Turtle_Bot

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

So which Class abilities are *the most* crucial/essential for stamsorc and must be kept at all times? Because the overly limited bar space is really confusing and annoying me and i'm having a hard time choosing what to keep and what to drop.

So with both pets, i'll only have 3 slots left on each bar:

Back bar: Stampede, Hurricane, ...?

Front bar: main Spammable, Barbed trap, ...?

So it seems i can't have Daedric Prey and Bound Armaments at the same time, i have to choose one? And if I use a weapon/guild spammable instead of the weird clunky Crystal weapon, i'll be missing out on the unique Minor Prophecy. Can Crystal Weapon be used as a spammable by itself effectively? Would the damage be good enough for actual content? Or would the damage of other spammables like Flurry or Shard make up for the lack of Minor Prophecy?

And this way I've already dropped Camo Hunter & Crit Surge, which handicaps me quite a bit in solo and pugs. >_<

When it comes to *the most* crucial class abilities, it boils down to what you and your group specifically need and will likely change depending on the content and also if you are grouped or solo.
For example, to get the most damage in a group specifically, you will want to use abilities similar to what I listed above and let the group provide the missing buffs (for example minor prophecy/savagery from a support DPS sorc or healer NB respectively).

If your group needs you to keep some healing on yourself to allow the healers to do other things (or you're playing solo), then swapping scamp or armaments for crit surge will help with that.

With how ZOS has changed sorc over the past 5+ years, all the power (PvE wise) has been put into the pets, the tormentor/matriarch and atro in particular. It's why tormentor/matriarch and atro are always slotted, even on builds that would otherwise be considered no-pet builds.

Simply put, *the most* crucial class abilities for all sorcerers are flappy bird (tormentor for group DPS, matriarch for solo/healing) and atro ultimate and deadric prey is right behind those 2 as it buffs those 2 abilities even further. Everything else in the class kit is basically there to fill in what you or your group needs.

Turtle_Bot

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Typically it will be a weapon ability that is your main spammable. Sorc doesn't have a true spammable in its kit, with all the changes over the years moving frags and weapon into being more delayed burst types of abilities over a true spammable.

2. Depends on what weapon you have equipped on your front bar, if you have dual wield front, then 2h back is very common, but bow is another good option as well.

3. If you're going pure stamsorc, then yes bound armaments is good in PvE.

4. Pet builds are the strongest builds for PvE (for all sorcs) and it's not even close. If you just want to have fun and mess around in overland and normal dungeon/arena level content, then pets are definitely not necessary, but if you are aiming to move into vet trials, or vet HM DLC dungeons etc, then you will want to run pets as the damage they provide (for PvE) is unmatched by anything else sorcerer has access to. Depending on how you play will determine which pet morphs of the pets you will want to run (if you do run the pets), if you are playing more solo, then minimum 1 of either the matriarch or the clannfear to give you a heal, if you are doing organized group content that will have proper healers, then you will want tormentor at the bare minimum and likely scamp as well depending on the content.

5. Fury is hit or miss. If you know there are going to be a lot of adds that are easy to get to below 20% health then it can be quite strong to spam on all the adds for some nice AoE damage, but outside of that specific scenario, your standard weapon based executes will be better. If you're not using the Crystal Weapon morph, then using Crystal Frags is better than running fury, since the frags proc does more damage than the fury proc, it can be used at any health percent threshold and using it is cheaper while providing additional cost reduction. The only thing fury has over frags proc is being AoE, but once again, that limits it to being better only in the above described scenario.

6. Atro is 100% the best choice for group play as it gives group wide major berserk on its synergy, which is a strong increase to the groups overall damage. Atro is probably the best option for solo play as well, but the ultimate slot becomes much more flexible here, so for solo play go with what you enjoy using (even weapon abilities and dawnbreaker are good options).

7. You will always want hurricane (stamina morph of lightning form) and critical surge (self heal on crit damage morph of surge) from the class skills (this goes for magicka sorcerers as well in PvE). If you are going to run the pets, then you will also want to run daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse) as that buffs the pets damage by a further 45% (including atro). Otherwise choose whatever skills from the class kit you enjoy or need for a specific situation.

8. Storm-fist is a good proc set for PvE, illambris is decent as well, but that is better suited to magsorc than stamsorc. Maw is probably the best set if you are running the other pets and prey already. Another option is to go 1 piece of Slimecraw (+771 crit chance) combined with the Mora's whispers mythic that grants you another up to 1528 crit chance depending how many books from shalidors library you have collected (this is an achievement you can look up for more details).

If I want to use both pets for max damage, that'll leave me very little bar space, i'm not sure what to keep and what to remove. So 3 spare slots on each bar:
Back bar: stampede, flood, hurricane
Front bar: spammable, barbed trap, daedric prey?
No space for crystal weapon or bound armament? I was really looking forward to using BA, and i've already removed everything this way; no camo hunter for solo play, no crit surge, no second spammable... Why is sorcerer like this, i hate having so few abilities >_<

Back bar would likely be stampede, bound armaments and hurricane
front bar would likely be spammable, barbed and prey

You could swap armaments and barbed to make the rotation easier, but your overall damage will slightly decrease (1%) due to losing the fighters guild passive from the front bar. Fighters guild gives +3% per FG ability slotted, sorc passive only gives 2% per sorc ability slotted, this is where that 1% difference comes from. If the rotation is much easier for you though, that will be a much bigger dps increase than any loss from the adjustment in the passives.

Lightning flood is a very mediocre ability, that is not worth slotting at all unless your group is extremely desperate for another synergy for some reason, at which point running mystic orb from undaunted skill line would be better since its very close in damage to flood, but provides group sustain as well.

Oh, I thought Lightning Flood is Sorcerer's equivalent of other class Aoe skills like Graveyard, Shard, Eruption, Winter, Twisting Path that are strong and essential in their kits... I didn't know it was this weak, tho I had noticed its numbers were quite low even on the stronger morph... well that sucks, as it makes Sorc's Aoe power even worse than nightblsde lol, but at least it makes choosing skills easier.

I see, but wouldn't the constant bar swap waste more time and dps with Bound Arms on back bar? Bar swapping takes one second, so bar every 4-5 seconds seems really counter-effective to me, lots of total time that could've been used to cast spammable instead. Amd also considering that our stats are always lower on back bar so it loses a bit of its firing damage too. but idk, you're the sorc expert.

Flood unfortunately suffers from having majority of its damage tied up in the synergy, hence why the DoT component of it is not as good as other abilities.

I just put armaments on the back bar since you can charge its proc from either bar and gain its bonus stamina when its slotted on either bar.

You could swap armaments and barbed to make the rotation easier, but your overall damage will slightly decrease (1%) due to losing the fighters guild passive from the front bar. Fighters guild gives +3% per FG ability slotted, sorc passive only gives 2% per sorc ability slotted, this is where that 1% difference comes from. If the rotation is much easier for you though, that will be a much bigger dps increase than any loss from the adjustment in the passives.

As stated in my earlier reply, armaments can be slotted on the front bar instead. Having an easier (more comfortable) rotation also gives a lot more DPS than the extra 1% from having the fighters guild passive instead of the sorc passive for having barbed on the front bar and armaments on the back bar.

Bar swapping is independent of the global cooldowns that are on abilities (it's why you can bar swap cancel the cast animations (not cast times, but animations specifically) of abilities using bar swap).

Armaments is more of a delayed burst (think of it like NB's spectral arrow). It takes time to charge it up and requires a GCD to cast it, but its overall damage will be higher than a regular spammable.

Zodiarkslayer

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

So which Class abilities are *the most* crucial/essential for stamsorc and must be kept at all times? Because the overly limited bar space is really confusing and annoying me and i'm having a hard time choosing what to keep and what to drop.

So with both pets, i'll only have 3 slots left on each bar:

Back bar: Stampede, Hurricane, ...?

Front bar: main Spammable, Barbed trap, ...?

So it seems i can't have Daedric Prey and Bound Armaments at the same time, i have to choose one? And if I use a weapon/guild spammable instead of the weird clunky Crystal weapon, i'll be missing out on the unique Minor Prophecy. Can Crystal Weapon be used as a spammable by itself effectively? Would the damage be good enough for actual content? Or would the damage of other spammables like Flurry or Shard make up for the lack of Minor Prophecy?

And this way I've already dropped Camo Hunter & Crit Surge, which handicaps me quite a bit in solo and pugs. >_<

So, I have looked it up a little and yeah, 2 pets, daedric prey, Rapid Strikes is standard frontbar and Stampede, Barbed Trap, 2 pets is standard backbar.
Some will say crystal frags (140k) for the proc and minor prophecy is best for the frontbar flex spot (not crystal weapon). Some will say Bound Armaments (137k). I guess it'll depend on your rotation and if you have a main set to synergise with the passive +MaxStamina or not. Coral Riptide comes to mind. Or, if your group has a second Sorc or a Nightblade. Hybridization, yeah!

For the backbar flex spot, Hurricane and Carve look similar. I guess Hurricane is better in content, while Carve seems better for parsing, because of the longer duration and the thus higher frontbar time (~85% and more). Especially if you have strong frontbar sets like Advancing Yokeda.

For SOLO and Dungeon Pugs, I'd be swapping out the volatile familiar for Crit Surge and Camo Hunter. The two pets can't proc crit surge anyway. And the benefit of independent healing and being able to use crown store or trash pots is much higher than the 5k dps of the monkey.

Noone uses Monster sets anymore. It is always Slimecraw plus Mythic. Wether this is the Kilt or (fully upgraded) Mora's Whispers or something more content specific, will depend on said content.