Help with Magsorc PVP

Valyr · March 2017

Hey lads,

I'm 360~ CP and have been trying to pvp. I find I can't even break through people's shields before dying myself.

Skills:

Inferno Staff: Frag, Crushing Shock, Endless Fury, Curse, Ele Drain; Ultimate: Dawnbreaker

Restoration Staff: (Vampire skill) Mist Form, Harness Magicka, Healing Ward, Hardened Ward, Boundless Storm; Ultimate: Negate Magick

Equips: (Heavy) Rattlecage, Spinners . (most purple)

Rotation: Ele drain, Curse, spam crushing shock, fury if they ever reach ~20%.

Sometimes when I'm Tel Var Stone hunting I kind of get in a close fight with another player, but more often than not I'm put on the defensive and end up just spamming my shields while they wail on me until I'm out of magicka and I die. Are there any errors I can fix with my set up?

Thank you.

Morgul667 · March 2017

Id put on main bar:

frag, pulse, curse, shield, finisher with either negate or destro ult, you need to spam your shield it has to be on main bar

Then second bar is more flexible

Id go with :

boundless storm, surge, occlusion, dark exchange, tp
ultim is either negate or destro ult

I use julianos and liche but i think rattlecage is better

Undaunted set use the infernal gardian (the one that can proc and send balls of fire when you use a shield)

X3ina · March 2017

Personally:
I'd move hardened to the front bar and curse to back bar.
Slot eye of the fire instead of dawnbreaker.
Slot bound armor instead of ele drain.

Remove mist form slot streak instead.
Double bar bound armor instead of thundering.
Slot overload to get a buff bar for: mines, surge, thundering and that .... anti gank skill (i kinda don't remember how its called).

This will allow you to stay semi offensive while on the back bar (curse) + extra 8% max magicka and extra resistances (bound armor).
On top of that i would drop rattle and spinners ...

BiS imo:
5x Amberplasm/BSW (impenetrable)
3x Willpower (arcane)
2x Skeleton (impenetrable)
1x Maelstrom fire (sharpened)
1x Dragonstar resto (defending)

Easy to get armor combinations:
5x Amberplasm/Spellweave (3 jewelry rest body)
4x Magnus (weapons and body)
2x Skeleton

Light armor set from glenumbra looks (not sure yet) nice aswell.

Valyr · March 2017

X3ina wrote: »

Personally:
I'd move hardened to the front bar and curse to back bar.
Slot eye of the fire instead of dawnbreaker.
Slot bound armor instead of ele drain.

Remove mist form slot streak instead.
Double bar bound armor instead of thundering.
Slot overload to get a buff bar for: mines, surge, thundering and that .... anti gank skill (i kinda don't remember how its called).

This will allow you to stay semi offensive while on the back bar (curse) + extra 8% max magicka and extra resistances (bound armor).
On top of that i would drop rattle and spinners ...

BiS imo:
5x Amberplasm/BSW (impenetrable)
3x Willpower (arcane)
2x Skeleton (impenetrable)
1x Maelstrom fire (sharpened)
1x Dragonstar resto (defending)

Easy to get armor combinations:
5x Amberplasm/Spellweave (3 jewelry rest body)
4x Magnus (weapons and body)
2x Skeleton

Light armor set from glenumbra looks (not sure yet) nice aswell.

I've never heard of that setup. I've heard heavy armor being a lot better than light armor in PvP, hence my rattlecage. How are you able to keep your shields up without the enemy player melting them away while you're casting your shields?

Thank you

X3ina · March 2017

If the enemy goes over offensive he will die from my curse/frag/fury/eye combo. Rest of the time i can easily mitigate his damage with my shields, that's why i have them on all bars lol

Valyr · March 2017

Ah, I will try both setups you two recommended!

Thank you a million

Lord-Otto · March 2017

I think Rattlecage is your problem.
Heavy armor is very good, so is Rattlecage. Just not on MagSorc. There's little healing heavy could take advantage of. Shields are typically your primary defense, and they are not affected by your armor resistances. You also lose penetration with heavy, which might make you struggle against other heavy armor users.
Typically, magsorcs use five light and stack Harness with Hardened. You will have to re-apply that every three seconds, regardless, so you barely get your burst off.

However, Harness allows you to shield indefinitely against other magicka users. It's tougher against stamina builds, you gotta watch your resources. Avoid being targeted by 2+ players, shields don't scale. Pirate Skeleton also helps immensely. If you frontbar Hardened, you can refresh it more easily, but you'll have to do it more frequently.
Knowing this should make shielding more feasible. If you're still struggling, it might just be CP. That ~15% damage reduction you get from Hardy/Elemental Defender might make all the difference.
As for Rattlecage, I would sub Lich instead. It's strong, it's light and it looks awesome, what more could you want? =3

Berenhir · March 2017

Valyr wrote: »

Hey lads,

I'm 360~ CP and have been trying to pvp. I find I can't even break through people's shields before dying myself.

Skills:

Inferno Staff: Frag, Crushing Shock, Endless Fury, Curse, Ele Drain; Ultimate: Dawnbreaker

Restoration Staff: (Vampire skill) Mist Form, Harness Magicka, Healing Ward, Hardened Ward, Boundless Storm; Ultimate: Negate Magick

Equips: (Heavy) Rattlecage, Spinners . (most purple)

Rotation: Ele drain, Curse, spam crushing shock, fury if they ever reach ~20%.

Sometimes when I'm Tel Var Stone hunting I kind of get in a close fight with another player, but more often than not I'm put on the defensive and end up just spamming my shields while they wail on me until I'm out of magicka and I die. Are there any errors I can fix with my set up?

Thank you.

How much magicka do you have? If you don't have any healing outside of healing ward, you will end up going defensive after initial hits from your enemy and die trying to maintain your shields. You are missing surge on your bars.

Your shields should enable you to go full offensive after applying them. Hardened Ward should at least be around 10k in size.

Rattlecage isn't a set I'd ever play on a sorc... if you want to go heavy, use heavy seducer as long as you have low CP, go for heavy Julianos when you have 500ish CP.

And in heavy armor: Combat Prayer > Healing Ward. Don't slot mist form, you're playing a sorc not some heavy armor magplar. If they root you, put down mines, go lightning form and throw a frag in their face.

And you want to apply mages wrath way before they reach 20%. If you apply it in execute range, you're doing it wrong. Look at it as a 20% health debuff that has to be kept up from the beginning of the fight.

psychotic13 · March 2017

Front bar a shield it's essential, you'll die a lot less.

Lord-Otto · March 2017

psychotic13 wrote: »

Front bar a shield it's essential, you'll die a lot less.

Whenever I do that, I immediately get zerged down and miss having all shields on my Streak bar. I swear, the zergs are just waiting in bushes for me to switch for frontbar shield! (>.>)
But joke aside, frontbarring does make it easier. Still prefer backbar, but that's because of Entropy, really.

Valyr · March 2017

I have 36k Magicka.

You've all been very insightful, I had no idea shields didn't depend on my own armor/spell resists! That changes everything haha

I will definitely change up my entire setup!

Lord-Otto · March 2017

Hm, 36k is slightly low. Are you using three armor types for the Undaunted passive?
Oh, and glad we could help.
(^.^)

Valyr · March 2017

Ah no, I was trying to get the 5 heavy armor bonuses. But I'll keep that in mind while I'm getting my new gear together

I've also realized I could block WHILE casting my shields! That might be a big reason I've been melting so fast!

psychotic13 · March 2017

Valyr wrote: »

Ah no, I was trying to get the 5 heavy armor bonuses. But I'll keep that in mind while I'm getting my new gear together

I've also realized I could block WHILE casting my shields! That might be a big reason I've been melting so fast!

You want to run light not heavy

I have a build here you can check out:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/307821/magicka-sorcerer-dw-pvp-build-riddick/p1

Minalan · March 2017

Heavy works for group play. If your sorc is a negate or Destro ult monkey, ensconced in a coordinated group with Discord, HA has its uses.

Outside of that, it won't kill anyone.

Kidz_BeAstx · March 2017

@Valyr Try 5 lich 5 burning spellweave and 2 llambris. I theory crafted this a little while ago but I've been too lazy to do any farming, I don't like having to run the same dungeon 700+ times just to get a set bonus, despite the fact that I need it badly. You can get like 14K crit for damage shields in PvP if you go for max magicka, by the way max stats are way stronger than max weapon/spell damage. The higher you can get your stuff then the higher your damage/shields/heals will be. But with this build you'd have around 45k max magicka, 3k recovery, and 3.6k spell damage. Try it, and you will feel better. I've done the math.

chrisub17_ESO104 · March 2017

I don't have access to the best gear, 5 spinners 3 magnus all purple. purple willpower jewelry, purple weapons.

The secret to using shield is having bolt escape. You won't survive just standing there. Shields give you enough time to get out of most bad situations with bolt. Streak is even better it can give you an extra second from the stun.

I run defensive skills on backbar and offensive on front. So back is hurricane, bolt, 2 shields and power surge.

front bar is my offensive bar which I mix up a bit.

The only issue i have with this is that bar swapping can lag out in a big fight. So if I go offensive say close to an enemy zerg, I try to keep some distance while on the front bar. With backbar, two shields and streak, I can get out of quite a few bad situations.

close up fights with someone in heavy where you can't really use streak effectively, that's a situation I try to avoid basically. If I can LOS them enough then I might be able to wear them down, but it's tough. Again streak is essential you need a way to get some breathing room, plus streak lets you keep the pressure on also and not let them get breathing room if they try to run.

Valyr · March 2017

Just wanted to let you guys know, I've redone my entire setup to light armor, (light) Seducer/Spinner set, and I'm doing ALOT better in pvp! I'm tanky with my shields, no magicka issues, and I do ALOT of damage! Thank you all so much for your suggestions!!!!!

Thank you!

Lord-Otto · March 2017

(^_^)

Vanzeii · March 2017

Valyr wrote: »

Just wanted to let you guys know, I've redone my entire setup to light armor, (light) Seducer/Spinner set, and I'm doing ALOT better in pvp! I'm tanky with my shields, no magicka issues, and I do ALOT of damage! Thank you all so much for your suggestions!!!!!

Thank you!

What do you have your cp into for the warrior?

Vanzeii · March 2017

@Lord-Otto

I only get about 34-36k magicka. Is it because I am running witch mother's potent brew? What should my magicka pool be at? I am 280cp so I dont know if that matters.

Lord-Otto · March 2017

As long as you're running 5 light, 1 med, 1 heavy with the Undaunted passive, you should be fine. Witchmother is good food, and with 600CP, you should get to 40k magicka.

I had 33k with Witchmother during no CP week. So you should be in the right range.
I chose Witchmother specifically for no CP and typically run blue food. With that I get to 41-42k, depending on my monster Set. If you're throwing in Willpower or Magnus or Necropotence, you should get higher numbers, of course.