An Effective Stormweavers Cavort Build for PvP?

Caribou77 · February 2023

Has anyone put together an effective build using stormweavers cavort that they are happy with?

I have tried a few builds on my Magsorc, but the reduction of mag regen to zero when you are sprinting or blocking makes it unusable.

Even with 2k mag regen and a 38k magicka pool, I find that I’m out of magicka much faster and far too often to be viable.

Has anyone found a way to make this mythic work?

AdamLAD · February 2023

No one uses it due to said reasons. When hybridization was introduced, it essentially doubled the amount of sustain people have. When you only used max magicka, you only used the magicka recovery and magicka skills. Zos basically doubled the sustain as now you have skills not costing magicka, and the stamina sustain you never used has more of a use. It's why there is a huge power creep

Caribou77 · February 2023

Thanks AL, I appreciate your detailed & insightful answer. Looks like the devs did not think through the design of this mythic very carefully, as I believe it was introduced after hybridization.

OBJnoob · February 2023

I might be mixing my people up... But I think @fred4 told me he uses it successfully?

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

I've messed around with it, I found a way to help sustain, but the main issue was sacrificing the raw damage and 40% mitigation of sea-serpents (or other mythics) and the fact that block costing mag is already covered by frost staff.

Simply put, it does way too little, requires too much investment and was introduced far too late into the games lifespan to be an effective option.

Being a light armor piece on a large body slot also doesn't really help it with light armor being in the worst spot of the 3 armor types currently and the huge difference between light armor and the other 2 armor types resistance values for the large armor slot.

fred4 · February 2023

I don't play much PvP or ... at all anymore. The mythic suits me, though. I think all the points raised by Turtle_Bot are valid, but they don't apply to me. Sea Serpent is meta, due to the extreme damage, but I've long favored utility over 1v1 effectiveness. I like speed and I've long found dodge rolls the most effective defense on my magblade. This means I typically run Hissmir Fisheye Rye and get stam regen to something like 1.3K. Stormweaver's allows me to forget about stamina and raise my magicka pool, e.g. by using Ghastly Eye Bowl at the same health, or by using Witchmother's. I thus have more damage with that mythic than on my regular builds.

On the other hand, as someone who values speed so much, I find myself reliant on casting RAT more frequently than with Wild Hunt and I have found almost no use for stamina. I am a pure magblade who wants to use a staff and Swallow Soul. I sometimes use Vigor, but that's it. This is the biggest problem as I feel my stamina goes to waste. I've found no way to translate the default stamina regen into more power or utility. Utility skills are mostly magicka. This is why a stamina or hybrid toon arguably has the edge. It would help if Relentless Focus was the stronger damage morph, for example, but you got to use Merciless Resolve.

My original idea was to stack magicka and use Dampen, as I played that in the past. This did not work out. The shield is too weak these days. Still, I retained Bright-Throat's Boast, a set with half-decent stats that benefits perma-cloaking, because the 5-piece bonus mag regen works out of combat. A nightblade with Inner Light and a Siphoning skill gets a half-decent magicka multiplier to compete with Major Sorcery / Brutality.

As to the OP easily running out of magicka, I think that may have to do with not being used to a one resource, e.g. stamina, playstyle. I have not had that issue. If anything, I don't dodge roll enough. I have better sustain for consecutive dodge rolls now and have had to consciously force myself to roll more in sticky situations than I normally do.

Whenever I've played magsorc in the past, I've felt the class gets away with less stam sustain than I am used to on magblade. Cloak makes you safe, but it doesn't create distance. I have to block and dodge roll more on magblade than on sorc. On sorc, I just Streak. Sorc is very good at using dual-sustain. Not just due to Dark Deal / Conversion, but because Streak or a dodge roll are defenses you can frequently use intercheangeably in the same situation, depending on what resource you have available. Maybe that's why Stormweaver's feels crap on sorc. This isn't the case on magblade. You can't generally cloak in someone's face. You have time windows where you need stamina and only stamina will do. At other times you need magicka. Unifying this to one resource arguably helps magblade more than sorc.

Caribou77 · February 2023

Thank you so much for your detailed answers, Turtle and Fred. There are so many contingent variables in this game, and I really appreciate hearing from players with lots of experience, like yourselves and Adam.

Turtle, I am curious about the comment you made regarding the weak state of light armor (esp. vs medium). How do you get penetration on Magsorc without relying on mostly (5 pieces) of light armor and environmental susceptibility? I do mostly BGs, so champion points aren’t a source of pen for me.

I’d love to get more medium armor bonuses (speed, stam regen, spell dmg are key in bgs), but I always struggle with pen.

Any pro tips on penetration sources, or number you’re happy with in pvp?

I strive for a minimum of 18k, which is tough for me on Magsorc.

fred4 · February 2023

I play a light armor magblade, because I need that armor type for cloak sustain. Being a Breton my resistances are completely unbalanced with something like 7.xK physical and 14K magical, unbuffed. This is a double-whammy, because light armor has physical damage penalities on top of that. I guess that's what Turtle is referring to. Medium feels more balanced defensively and is said to have marginally better stats in PvE terms. Whether that's due to the pen cap being provided by the group for you in PvE, I'm not sure. Nowadays there is a crit damage cap in PvE as well, after all.

In PvP neither of those caps really apply. Players may well have more than 18K resistances. They also have some crit resistance. High pen can work. High crit damage can also work, especially on a nightblade or if you were to wear that forgotten set, Mechanical Acuity.

Being a light armor magblade is pretty brutal for defense. I really only feel comfortable in 6 light, if I combine Mara and Rallying Cry. Otherwise I have to dodge roll and cloak more.

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thank you so much for your detailed answers, Turtle and Fred. There are so many contingent variables in this game, and I really appreciate hearing from players with lots of experience, like yourselves and Adam.

Turtle, I am curious about the comment you made regarding the weak state of light armor (esp. vs medium). How do you get penetration on Magsorc without relying on mostly (5 pieces) of light armor and environmental susceptibility? I do mostly BGs, so champion points aren’t a source of pen for me.

I’d love to get more medium armor bonuses (speed, stam regen, spell dmg are key in bgs), but I always struggle with pen.

Any pro tips on penetration sources, or number you’re happy with in pvp?

I strive for a minimum of 18k, which is tough for me on Magsorc.

For pen on my magsorc, I tend to use DW/2H maces/maul on the front bar. The passive pen from those weapons and passives just outperforms all light armor builds except probably 7 pieces light armor and allows me to use more pieces of medium or heavy armor for better base damage and defenses.

I still run frost staff back bar for the additional mitigation, access to major breach via ele sus and to allow me to use both mag and stam for blocking.

I never get rid of 1 armor type completely unless the build doesn't have a flex piece (1 pc trainee/monster set), usually going 3-3-1, 4-2-1 or sometimes 5-1-1 armor weights to max out the undaunted passive bonus as well as give me at least some of the passives from all the different armor weights. I tend to use the 1 piece of trainee/monster set to fill out the 1 piece of whatever weight I'm missing to allow for this.

It also comes down to class, weapons and playstyle, DK generally can get away with a lack of base pen due to corrosive. If using 2h, then the 2h ultimate is a pseudo corrosive that any class can use, there's also breach from frost staff as well that helps cover it and frost staff acts like a pseudo magicka sword and shield for defensive purposes.

It works for me on my magsorc because I tend to be more comfortable on a damage based sorc that plays like a stamsorc but uses mag abilities (probably why I don't particularly enjoy shields all that much), I also tend to build more for crit to give me enough burst, so I only tend to have around 8k base pen (before breach) and I've found that to generally be enough (14k with breach) to out-damage most tanks while not going over-pen on squishys.

Fred is right in that medium armor is strictly better than light armor for pve where the tank and healer/support dps provide enough pen to reach pen cap already, but it also tends to be true for pvp as well, just for slightly different reasons (mostly defensive aspects).
The extra mitigation, off-stat sustain and speed from medium armor combined with the higher raw damage that allows for better healing is also much stronger unless your base damage and crit chance values are high enough to allow for critical damage/healing to become more reliable (much harder to achieve in pvp).

The main exception to this is current meta light armor sets such as rallying cry, dark convergence etc, that are either so stat dense (RC) or provide such a strong proc (DC) that it becomes worth using over a medium armor counterpart (although DC is fast fading to RoA due to RoA having an almost invisible pull that allows for multiple uses and other CC to still be used, while almost everyone knows how to play around DC by now).

I also play mostly open world (cyro), so my situation will be different to yours (BGs) and as such my experiences will be different as I have CP to account for as well as different types of enemies to go against (large zergs/ball groups/faction stacks compared to essentially going against small scales/solos).

Caribou77 · March 2023

Thanks, Turtle -- this is awesome! I'm trying a new build with maces and it's great to free up some other resources for higher magicka/shields. I've typically relied on Crushing Shock for my spammable, so experimenting with using Crystal Frags, and so far it's going okay...