Looking for Sorcerer build advice and tweaking

TheHereticMonk

Hello all!

I'm looking to improve my build, as it's begining to feel a bit squishy, and was hoping you could share your collective wisdom to help me out.

99% of the time I play solo and generally have no problems. However I'm starting to get whupped in Craglorn.

I'm a V16 sorcerer wearing all light armour, for the magicka passives, with dual wield on one bar and resto on the other.
My gear is 5 piece Seducer with 4 or 3 Magnus depeding on which weapon is out.
Chest, head and legs are reinforced the rest is divines. Weapons are sharpened.
All the armour has magicka enchants, my resto is drain magicka and the swords are fire and ice damage. All the glyphs are kutas. All equipment is V15 epic.
My jewlery is a bit lacking but it's the best I've found so far. It's 3 piece Soulfire with kuta reduce magicka cost enchants.

Skill bar one (dual wield):
Crystal Blast - pretty much my only attack.
Power Surge - activated before encounters.
Hardened Ward - lifesaver.
Bound Aegis - always on.
Inner Light - always on.
Ice Comet

Skill bar two (resto staff):
This one I vary a bit depending on what I'm doing. Generally I only switch to it when I'm out of magicka and use heavy resto attacks to restore my magicka.
Crystal Blast/Blessing of Restoration
Harness Magicka/Restraining Prison - which one depends on if I'm fighting casters or melee attackers.
Boundless Storm - if I need the extra defence and mobility.
Bound Aegis
Inner Light
Greater Storm Atronach/Absorption Field

I've got all the passives in all utilised skill lines and any others that affect combat.
I've always got V15 increase magicka and health food on.
My quickslot potion is V15 restore magicka and health with unstoppable on top.

I'm using Crystal Blast over Fragments as when soloing the AoE is handy and an occasional 20% damage increase doesn't seem worth it if I've got to replace a buff skill with another attack skill just to get Fragments to proc.

Champion Points:
Magican x 10
Arcanist x 12
Healthy x 10
Elusive x 10
Blessed x 10
Elfborn x 10
Spell Erosion x 10
Thaumaturge x 12
Light Armor Focus x 10
Hardy x 10
Elemental Defender x 10
Bastion x 10
Quick Recovery x 2

Attributes:
Magicka 54
Health 10
I tried all in magicka but if my ward ran out before I could renew it I died instantly.

Mundus Stone:
Apprentice
Though I'm thinking of switching to Atronach as I run out of magicka too quickly so the increased recovery would be good even if it takes a bit longer to kill things.

Phew! Well that's it. Thanks for taking the time to read it all and if you need any more info just ask.

Please feel free to rip my build to shreds as I'd like to improve it to prepare for Maelstrom and cope in Craglorn better.

Many thanks in advance!

MormondPayne_EP

Your build is very light on offense and is way too defensive. It will take you forever to kill anything.
Forget about Bound Aegis, its garbage. Inner light is a waste of a slot too.

I keep most of my defensive abilities on the resto bar and offense on the other bar (whether it be destro, dual wield or whatever) it does mean having to switch bars every couple of rotations but you are probably doing that already anyway.

I would switch the Mundus to Atronach and I also use purple v15 food that buffs all 3 stats (~ additional 4-5k of Health, Stam and Magicka.

Bar 1 - Dual Wield

1 - Streak
2 - Inevitable detonation (if you don't have it go with encase or daedric mines)
3 - Velocious Curse
4 - Endless Fury/Mages Fury
5 - Crystal Fragments (I prefer frags over blast as the instant proc is useful and at half price)
Ult - Power Overload or Dawnbreaker

Bar 2 - Resto
1 - Streak
2 - Hardened Ward
3 - Boundless Storm
4 - Healing Ward
5 - Power Surge
Ult - Ice Comet

This is a variation of my PvP set up but I use it in PvE whenever I can be bothered doing any PvE.

For me, I apply my ward, boundless storm and power surge, then open with Inevitable detonation, cast curse, streak through the mobs then cast endless fury until frags procs then use it, drop a comet or dawnbreaker when it is up. Reapply wards, boundless and surge as required. Streak through them some more and start the rotation again.

The main point here is remain mobile, streak through as a CC on the mobs while doing damage, apply your defenses when they get low and start again. If you want better CC swap out inevitable detonation with Enase or Daedrive Mines. Daedrive Mines would be my preference.

Let me know if there are any questions.

Tryxus

Here's what I had on my previous Sorc for PvE:

Attributes:
64x Magicka

Gear:
5 pcs Kagrenac (go Magnus if you can't get Kag)
1 pc Molag Kena
2 pcs Torug's Pact
3 pcs Willpower (Magicka Regen enchants)

Not the gear I had when I rerolled (was be4 IC update), but def what I would go to if I was still Sorcing around xD
Sorcs need to find a good balance between Magicka Regen and Spell Damage

Skill Setup:

Bar 1: Resto Staff (for setting up stuff)
- Inner Light
- Bound Aegis
- Power Surge
- Mage's Wrath
- Healing Ward

Ultimate: Energy Overload -> It restores Magicka and enables you to have a 3rd Skill Bar

Bar 2: Destro Staff (Offensive)
- Inner Light
- Bound Aegis
- Force Pulse
- Elemental Ring
- Crystal Fragments (burst DPS)

Ultimate: Shooting Staff (duh )

Bar 3: Overload
- Inner Light
- Bound Aegis
- Dark Conversion (to recharge Magicka)
- Hardened Ward (for defense while using Dark Conversion)
- Streak

Ultimate: Energy Overload (can't change that)

Champion Points:

Warrior:
- Lady: Hardy and Elemental Defender

Thief:
- Tower: 30x Magician
- Lover: Arcanist

Mage:
- Apprenctice: 30x Spell Erosion
- Ritual: Thaumaturge

TheHereticMonk

@MormondPayne_EP I was under the impression that Bound Ageis and Inner Light were pretty much essential due to the max magicka increase which in turn boosts your spell damage. The extra crit given by inner light also works nicely with Power Surge to give me healing with most hits.
I never use stamina except for the occasional dodge roll and break free so I thought blue food was better than purple as it gives a higher increase on just health and magicka.
I don't have Inevitable Detonation because I do no PvP, but using Daedric Mines seems interesting. I didn't realise they immobilised targets so never considered them as a CC skill. Do you prefer the tomb or minefield morph? Just reading about it I would lean towards tomb as waiting 3 seconds seems useless in the heat of battle when I'm on my own.
Is the damage Velocious Curse deals decent enough considering you can only use it on one target at a time and it takes 3.5 secs to do anything?
Maybe I need to give Bolt another go. It didn't give me much breathing room as enemies just caught up to me rapidly so I started using hardened ward instead and just holding my ground. Once I level it to get the morph Streak may feel better.
The damage for Endless Fury seemed poor, just looking at the description, compared to Crystal Blast so I never gave it a go.
Hmmm... Dawnbreaker eh? Never even considered that. Seemed a bit weak unless you were fighting Daedra or Undead.

@Tryxus why Kagrenac's? I'm soloing so the res perk is useless to me. As for Magnus over Seducer isn't an 8% guaranteed cost reduction better than an 8% chance at being free?
Again, like @MormondPayne_EP you're going for Mage's wrath. So clearly I'm missing a trick. Does it do a lot more damage than the description suggests?
I like the destro skills force pulse and elemental ring. But having dual wield gives me the extra armour set perk which seemed to outweigh having a destruction staff. Additionaly the increased spell power with dual wielding (especially with the DW passives) made me feel sacking off destro for DW was the way to go. Obviously I can't switch my resto for a destro staff as nothing restores ultimate or magicka as fast as continous resto staff attacks, or so I've found.
I went for Ice Comet over Shooting Star as it does more damage and the slow effect is a nice CC perk. There rarely seem to be enough targets grouped in PvE to make the Shooting Star ultimate restoring perk worth it
As I've sod all stamina Dark Conversion seemed pointless and why do you need Hardened Ward while using it? Does it make you vulnerable or something? Also, why Hardened Ward over Empowered Ward when you're not using summoned pets?
Healing Ward absorbs so much less than Hardened/Empowered Ward so why bother with that at all? It also lasts a lot less time.
Why so many points in Thaumaturge? All your main attacks seem to be elemental damage rather than magic damage. I'd understand if you were using Crystal Blast/Frags as your primary attack, but wouldn't Elemental Expert be more use with your set-up?
The third bar with Energy Overload is tempting but I found rotating through 3 bars cumbersome and slow in a manic fight. It's even worse when you need the 3rd bar skill and you're out of ultimate.

@MormondPayne_EP and @Tryxus please don't think I'm being ungrateful I just would like to understand the logic/justification of your builds before I go respecing. Thank you both so very much for taking the time to read and reply to my post!

Cheers!

a1x23

For pve i would run destro for crushing shock/force pulse.

When i pve this is my build

Destro.) 1. Endless fury 2. Crystal frags 3. Power surge 4. Liquid lightning 5. Crushing shock U. Dawn breaker

Resto.) 1. Harness magicka 2. Healing ward 3. Hardend ward 4. Minefield 5. Streak U. Greater atro

Put shields up, drop mines, buff with power surge, use crushing shock to proc a frag then drop liquid lightning on top of mines. If the mob isnt dead hit them with dawn breaker to finish them or drop atro for the stun, streak away, reapply shields and rebuff and do it all over again

a1x23

Using healing ward is your main heal and the lower your health the stronger the heal/sheild. Always keep hardend ward up at all times. Its your main defense. Using hardend ward also makes you able to stack all attribute points into magicka since it scales off max magicka so gives you a bigger shield.

Johngo0036

you are certainly very very defensive,
and missing one of the biggest damage dealers in the game for a sorc, velocious curse...

Front bar should look something like this,
Mages Wrath
Velocious curse,
crystal frags,
streak,
daedric mine field/hardened ward,

I like to have my ward on front bar as sometimes weapon swap just takes tooooooo long,

Back bar,
Harness magicka,
Healing ward
Daedric Mine field
crit surge,
boundless storm,

As far as CP is concerned you want to get as many as you can into bastion,
Reason being is that no elemental damage, physical damage can hit you if you have a massively strong shield....
Keep your shield(hardened ward) up at ALL times and no enemy can damage you.......

I generally put all my CP in this one skill in the red constellation.. Forget the other spell shield, etc....

In pve i have 13k health and almost a 30k shield...(hardened ward)
Makes surviving super easy...

a1x23

@Johngo0036 you should switch to power surge for the spell damage buff

Johngo0036

I meant powersurge.. lol.....

Got confused with the 2...lol...

Tryxus

TheHereticMonk wrote: »

@Tryxus why Kagrenac's? I'm soloing so the res perk is useless to me. As for Magnus over Seducer isn't an 8% guaranteed cost reduction better than an 8% chance at being free?
Again, like @MormondPayne_EP you're going for Mage's wrath. So clearly I'm missing a trick. Does it do a lot more damage than the description suggests?
I like the destro skills force pulse and elemental ring. But having dual wield gives me the extra armour set perk which seemed to outweigh having a destruction staff. Additionaly the increased spell power with dual wielding (especially with the DW passives) made me feel sacking off destro for DW was the way to go. Obviously I can't switch my resto for a destro staff as nothing restores ultimate or magicka as fast as continous resto staff attacks, or so I've found.
I went for Ice Comet over Shooting Star as it does more damage and the slow effect is a nice CC perk. There rarely seem to be enough targets grouped in PvE to make the Shooting Star ultimate restoring perk worth it
As I've sod all stamina Dark Conversion seemed pointless and why do you need Hardened Ward while using it? Does it make you vulnerable or something? Also, why Hardened Ward over Empowered Ward when you're not using summoned pets?
Healing Ward absorbs so much less than Hardened/Empowered Ward so why bother with that at all? It also lasts a lot less time.
Why so many points in Thaumaturge? All your main attacks seem to be elemental damage rather than magic damage. I'd understand if you were using Crystal Blast/Frags as your primary attack, but wouldn't Elemental Expert be more use with your set-up?
The third bar with Energy Overload is tempting but I found rotating through 3 bars cumbersome and slow in a manic fight. It's even worse when you need the 3rd bar skill and you're out of ultimate.

The reason I would go for Kagrenac or Magnus is that both have a good mix of Spell Damage and Magicka Regen, with Kag being slightly better due to also having a Health Bonus (as a Sorc, you need so much Magicka that you could do with a HP bonus too ) and higher Spell Damage than Magnus.

Same goes for Magnus: it has a SD bonus unlike Seducer. Seducer is more geared towards Sustain and Regen, which is why it's a good set for PvP, but as a DPS in PvE you need Damage

There are also the Twilight's Embrace and Law of Julianos sets, which have Spell Critical bonuses instead of Regen. But as I said: Sorcs need a balance between Regen and Spell Damage.

Mage's Wrath: it's an execute. When your target is at 25% HP left, the attack will do 300% times the damage. Plus Mage's Wrath hits surrounding enemies as well (for a portion of the damage) so it's really great for your DPS

Ah, a Destro Staff. The reason I'd pick the Staff over DW is simple: Sorcs lack direct damage skills. They do have Crystal Frag, Velo Curse and Overload but if you really want that burst from a Crystal Frag proc, use a Destro Staff.

Force Pulse and Elemental Ring are great direct attacks you can use: Force Pulse can hit 2 targets with a direct triple element blast while Elemental Ring is an AoE that also applies a DoT effect. These 2 are necessary to max out your DPS:

Weave with Pulse>Proc?>Yes>Frag
Weave with Pulse>Proc?>No>Weave with Pulse>Proc?>Yes>Frag

Throw in an Elemental Ring if there are multiple enemies, and use Wrath on a weakened one to finish it off. And don't forget to power yourself up with Power Surge to boost your Spell Damage (it lasts for 23 sec, keep that in mind)

(another small reason for Destro Staff: it's a ranged weapon, and as a Magicka user you wear the least protective armor there is.)

For the 3rd bar:
Sorcs need a lot of Magicka, but if you happen to run (almost) out, go to your 3rd bar and pop a Hardened Ward so you can use Dark Conversion (use a light Overload attack to restore Magicka if you have to)

I always did this to recharge my Magicka during boss battles. Sacrificing a bit of Stamina to regain HP and Magicka is never pointless: it's your backup strategy for when you find yourself with your main resource. (Also, I never bothered with Pets since they're almost useless at endgame PvE, so Hardened > Empowered)

Healing Ward is there as an additional self heal: if you still have shield strength left when it expires, you get healed for that amount. And with the short duration, if you manage to not get hit during that short time... It's pretty good for self sustain. Against tougher bosses (Craglorn or Public Dungeon bosses) I would replace it with Hardened Ward again since it absorbs more damage so it's better suited against their tougher attacks

Thaumaturge for Crystal Frag: in the end, Crystal Frag becomes your main burst DPS attack. The other attacks are just there to proc it, Frags is your main move.

Rotating between 3 bars isnt that hard, I usually put it on my setup (Resto staff) bar so I can choose to switch between either my offensive bar (Destro) or my backup/recharge bar (Overload)

That's how I did it, and it worked pretty well for me. I used this build to solo both the Exalted Viper and the Orc final boss of Craglorn, as well as every Public Dungeon out there.

Brrrofski

You've taken some wrong morphs. Yes, wrong.

Fragments over blast day. The instant proc aline makes it better. It procs off everything. Ward, power surge. Anything that's om the same bar.

You want hardened ward over empowered. Increases shield strength by 33%.

Forget inner light and bound armor.

Also, use a destro instead of sword for pve. You need to weave and use destro skills.

For me:
Bar 1:
Pulsar
Endless Fury
Crystal frag
Crushing Shock
Hardened ward
Overload

Bar 2:
Liquid lightning
Restraining Prison/daedric minefield
Healing ward/harness magica
Power surge
Lightning form
Ice comet

That's what I rock in pve and craglorn is fine.

Your champ points are way too spread out.

For starters, stick red in bastion. I put my 81st in it yesterday. The rest are irrelevant if you have a shield up. Which as a sorc, you should. Shields don't crit, take poison damage, take fire damage etc. So just load bastion and keep your shield up.

DRXHarbinger

Today I would go.
5x Julianos, 1xMK shoulders and 2x torugs and all willpower with sp dmg enchantments. Will give you near 4k spell damage and then it's up to champion points, food and passives etc. Just go all power. Put all max magika on your gear, traits go all Devines and go apprentice for extra spell damage. You'll end up beating most enemies before you run out of magika.

I find using velocious curse combined with destructive lightening staff (the damage is at the start and constant over flame staffs etc having to charge ) use power surge, mage light and hardened ward.

First attack always the curse and hopefully it'll proc frags. Heavy attack and your magika will be full again and repeat, ultimate and repeat again. You'll have near 40k magika and won't need potions, you won't need regen, all about burning them down ASAP. Speed factor always wins.

I use two bars both the same only a different ultimate. For masses of undead and daedra it's dawnbreaker and the other is always meteor / ice comet.

If any boss is just a bit too hard switch to the atronarch. It'll do a touch of tanking your ward will go over it and it actually does a lot of damage. It's really the key power for beating Molag Kena, 3 sorcs all using them will wreck her plus take out the spawning atronarch that is the real problem in the fight imo.

jakeedmundson

I use this build as a baseline... works really well...
and really... you don't need a resto staff. The healing you get back from power surge and using dark magic skills with the passive that heals you for 8% every use.... its more than enough. Plus, if you use hardened ward.... pretty much unkill-able in pve.

Go with a destro on bar 1, dual wield on bar 2.

Make sure to have hardened ward, inner light, bound aegis (depending on the fight - solo? no, use hardened ward only), crystal frag and something to proc the instant cast of crystal frag... i use force pulse. (its cheap and does a good amount of damage)
Here's how i would set it up...

bar1 destro - main damage bar
- force pulse - weave this with light/medium attacks until you proc the cast for crystal frag, hit frag, then come back here
- crystal frag
- elemental ring (destro staff impulse morph) or daedric prey (pair this with greater storm atronarch for 40% more damage)
- power surge, or bound aegis, or hardened ward
- inner light
- meteor if you use elemental ring (good aoe set up) or atronarch if you use daedric prey (single target dmg)

bar 2 DW - buffs and finisher bar (although before each fight after you buff up, drop liquid lightening on your target before switching to bar 1)
- mages fury
- boundless storm
- liquid lightening
- power surge, or bound aegis, or hardened ward
- inner light
- overload

overload bar (which benefits from your dw passives)
- replace mages fury with restoring twilight
- all the rest from bar 2 can carry down here.

obviously you can't have power surge, boundless storm, bound aegis, hardened ward, and inner light going at the same time... you would be all buffs with very few damage skills. you have to get to know which area you're playing and pick and choose which pieces you want to use.
When i'm soloing... i use hardened ward on bar one, power surge and boundless storm on bar 2. i can activate all of them and switch between bars as i need for the next 20-30 seconds. If i go into dungeons, i mix it up a bit depending on bosses and adds that they might have.

overload is going to be your massive damage dealer....its almost unfair how strong it is. It almost makes me mad after leveling a dk and comparing

EDIT: forgot to mention.... you don't NEED to use power surge if you use potions for the extra spell damage... yes you will not get healed as often, but in a dungeon... the healer will take care of that I personally still use power surge when i solo.

MormondPayne_EP

TheHereticMonk wrote: »

@MormondPayne_EP I was under the impression that Bound Ageis and Inner Light were pretty much essential due to the max magicka increase which in turn boosts your spell damage. The extra crit given by inner light also works nicely with Power Surge to give me healing with most hits.
I never use stamina except for the occasional dodge roll and break free so I thought blue food was better than purple as it gives a higher increase on just health and magicka.
I don't have Inevitable Detonation because I do no PvP, but using Daedric Mines seems interesting. I didn't realise they immobilised targets so never considered them as a CC skill. Do you prefer the tomb or minefield morph? Just reading about it I would lean towards tomb as waiting 3 seconds seems useless in the heat of battle when I'm on my own.
Is the damage Velocious Curse deals decent enough considering you can only use it on one target at a time and it takes 3.5 secs to do anything?
Maybe I need to give Bolt another go. It didn't give me much breathing room as enemies just caught up to me rapidly so I started using hardened ward instead and just holding my ground. Once I level it to get the morph Streak may feel better.
The damage for Endless Fury seemed poor, just looking at the description, compared to Crystal Blast so I never gave it a go.
Hmmm... Dawnbreaker eh? Never even considered that. Seemed a bit weak unless you were fighting Daedra or Undead.

@Tryxus why Kagrenac's? I'm soloing so the res perk is useless to me. As for Magnus over Seducer isn't an 8% guaranteed cost reduction better than an 8% chance at being free?
Again, like @MormondPayne_EP you're going for Mage's wrath. So clearly I'm missing a trick. Does it do a lot more damage than the description suggests?
I like the destro skills force pulse and elemental ring. But having dual wield gives me the extra armour set perk which seemed to outweigh having a destruction staff. Additionaly the increased spell power with dual wielding (especially with the DW passives) made me feel sacking off destro for DW was the way to go. Obviously I can't switch my resto for a destro staff as nothing restores ultimate or magicka as fast as continous resto staff attacks, or so I've found.
I went for Ice Comet over Shooting Star as it does more damage and the slow effect is a nice CC perk. There rarely seem to be enough targets grouped in PvE to make the Shooting Star ultimate restoring perk worth it
As I've sod all stamina Dark Conversion seemed pointless and why do you need Hardened Ward while using it? Does it make you vulnerable or something? Also, why Hardened Ward over Empowered Ward when you're not using summoned pets?
Healing Ward absorbs so much less than Hardened/Empowered Ward so why bother with that at all? It also lasts a lot less time.
Why so many points in Thaumaturge? All your main attacks seem to be elemental damage rather than magic damage. I'd understand if you were using Crystal Blast/Frags as your primary attack, but wouldn't Elemental Expert be more use with your set-up?
The third bar with Energy Overload is tempting but I found rotating through 3 bars cumbersome and slow in a manic fight. It's even worse when you need the 3rd bar skill and you're out of ultimate.

@MormondPayne_EP and @Tryxus please don't think I'm being ungrateful I just would like to understand the logic/justification of your builds before I go respecing. Thank you both so very much for taking the time to read and reply to my post!

Cheers!

Hey buddy,

I mirror pretty much everything that @Tryxus says but to address some points you raised.

Purple food vs Blue food is a negligible, the difference is really small so if you prefer a slight up on magicka then, by all means, go with blue, I like to have some extra stamina on hand and the trade off in losing a few hundred points in Magicka is worth it for me.
Also, giving up two slots for bound aegis and inner light is not worth the additional magicka you gain for me. Your first bar has almost no offensive options other than Crystal so just having some damage to be able to weave in would instantly up your DPS despite losing out a little bit raw damage because of a small drop in magicka.

For Set take 5 x Kagrenac, 3 x Magnus, 3 x Willpower (Jewellery) and 2 x Torugs (dual wield swords, I use resto staff as Magnus). With these sets and food I have the following stats:
Health 18k
Magicka 32k
Stamina 16k

My buffed spell damage (using surge) is 3106.

I suppose you could switch out seducer with Kagrenac if you want as well.

For Velocious Curse, my tool tip damage on that is 10464. I cast it and then blast away at them while waiting for it to burst. It does good damage and is pretty much just "bonus" damage in my book because I can still hit hard while it ticks down.
In PvE, I probably would go with Daedric Tomb, the instant arming is useful.

Also, Dawnbreaker of smiting for me buffed hits for 10.5k with another 11k over 5 seconds and add an additional 60% for Daedra or undead. Plus it is super cheap so you can pretty much cast it every few minutes easily. It far out DPS's Ice Comet in PvE.

I'm happy to shed any more light where I can.

Cheers.

TheHereticMonk

First off thanks to everyone for taking the time to share you advice, it is greatly appreciated!
Secondly I made a mistake in my original post which I've corrected; I am using Hardened Ward not Empowered. My bad!

@Johngo0036 & @Brrrofski are you saying that all damage hits Hardened Ward first? There's no seep through effect? So as long as I have the ward up I will never take any elemental/poison/disease status effects? That would immediately make my CPs in elemental defender redundant. Also do critical hits apply to the ward or are they mitigated to deal normal damage levels?

Many of you have advocated Healing Ward as my main heal so I can drop Blessing of Restoration. The amount healed is based on ward strength left when it expires so it seemed a bit useless to me. However, if you have Hardened Ward and Healing Ward active, which takes damage first? If it's Hardened Ward then, yeah, it's quite likely that when Healing Ward disperses it'll have a decent amount left to heal. If not then hmmm... as one or two Blessings gives me full health guaranteed.

So everyone has advised me to switch to Fragments over Blast. Considering you're all saying that at most I only need Bound Aegies or Inner Light. Then I'll be freeing up a space up for another skill that I can use to proc frags. So I'll be giving that a play. On this point @Brrrofski stated that frags will only proc off skills on the same bar as frags. Can anyone else verify this? As @Brrrofski is the only person that mentioned it and that's a pretty important point. Oh and just to clarify do staff attacks proc frags? As I've neve bothered with weaving (which again, you all suggest) but if staff heavy and light attacks do proc frags then I can see the benefit of weaving.

I'm gonna play about with Velocious Curse, Daedric Tomb and Mage's Wrath as my new proc sklls as I've never used those. I'm hesitant to switch out DW for Destro Staff as I do like the extra armout trait and Spell Damage they give. The destro skill mentioned are nice but I don't know if they're worth it to give up DW.

Using the 3rd bar granted by Overload as a soley magicka restoring bar is a nice idea. I'll give that a go.

Using Overload means I'll probably not try Dawnbreaker as Ice Comet is so good, at least to me.

Nobody's advocated Structured Entropy over Power Surge I noticed. Is this just because Power Surge lasts so much longer? As the extra health with Entropy seemed nice.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help me out!

jakeedmundson

TheHereticMonk wrote: »

First off thanks to everyone for taking the time to share you advice, it is greatly appreciated!
Secondly I made a mistake in my original post which I've corrected; I am using Hardened Ward not Empowered. My bad!

@Johngo0036 & @Brrrofski are you saying that all damage hits Hardened Ward first? There's no seep through effect? So as long as I have the ward up I will never take any elemental/poison/disease status effects? That would immediately make my CPs in elemental defender redundant. Also do critical hits apply to the ward or are they mitigated to deal normal damage levels?

Many of you have advocated Healing Ward as my main heal so I can drop Blessing of Restoration. The amount healed is based on ward strength left when it expires so it seemed a bit useless to me. However, if you have Hardened Ward and Healing Ward active, which takes damage first? If it's Hardened Ward then, yeah, it's quite likely that when Healing Ward disperses it'll have a decent amount left to heal. If not then hmmm... as one or two Blessings gives me full health guaranteed.

So everyone has advised me to switch to Fragments over Blast. Considering you're all saying that at most I only need Bound Aegies or Inner Light. Then I'll be freeing up a space up for another skill that I can use to proc frags. So I'll be giving that a play. On this point @Brrrofski stated that frags will only proc off skills on the same bar as frags. Can anyone else verify this? As @Brrrofski is the only person that mentioned it and that's a pretty important point. Oh and just to clarify do staff attacks proc frags? As I've neve bothered with weaving (which again, you all suggest) but if staff heavy and light attacks do proc frags then I can see the benefit of weaving.

I'm gonna play about with Velocious Curse, Daedric Tomb and Mage's Wrath as my new proc sklls as I've never used those. I'm hesitant to switch out DW for Destro Staff as I do like the extra armout trait and Spell Damage they give. The destro skill mentioned are nice but I don't know if they're worth it to give up DW.

Using the 3rd bar granted by Overload as a soley magicka restoring bar is a nice idea. I'll give that a go.

Using Overload means I'll probably not try Dawnbreaker as Ice Comet is so good, at least to me.

Nobody's advocated Structured Entropy over Power Surge I noticed. Is this just because Power Surge lasts so much longer? As the extra health with Entropy seemed nice.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help me out!

Power surge heals you also... you get 40% of all of your crit damage back as health. Plus, if you use crystal frag with the dark magic passive... you heal 8% of your max health every time you hit with it. I personally wouldn't even use a resto staff. With class heals and shields... you're a tough monster.

TheHereticMonk

Ah wait I'm being a muppet!
I do have Empowered Ward as this grants minor mending. The 8% heal boost in conjuction with Power Surge and the Blood Magic passive seemed to be sensible.
I'm guessing you all think I'm wrong.
I'll just go sit in the corner over there and hang my head in shame.

Scyantific

Hardened Ward over Empowered Ward always.

Waffennacht

Hardened ward scales with magicka, as a magicka build the 33% will WAY out perform any healing effect recieved via the other morph.

Crystal frag always. The 20% damage is huge, but more importantly is the insta cast.

Only abilities that share a bar with Crystal frag can proc Crystal frag. So if you have frag on two bars, proc it on one bar, then switch bars, the frag on the new bar will also be proced.

Innerlight is a beast imo. With 3 skill bars (overload) you can sacrifice one slot for 10% crit increase and magicka increase (remember increasing max magicka also increases damage dealt)

With your armor I would greatly suggest x5 seducer x4 magnus, this way all set traits are magicka based (wards are refreshable and uncrit able) this means that health traits or damage prevention traits are pretty much worthless.

You want divines trait all on armor except, head, legs and chest. On these you would want infused. On all peices would be magicka glyph.

My first bar is:
Crystal Frag
Hardened Ward
Velacious Curse
Tangling Webs
Innerlight

Ult is Overload.

This offensive build goes: Crystal Frag (usually hard cast to enter combat) then velacious curse, then tangling webs (if Crystal procs i use it immediately) then hardened ward, then webs, then curse again (as it goes off by now)

If you notice all of these are instant and spammable. Meaning this cycle is all one after another and capable of proccing frag. Sometimes RnG is awesome and I frag, curse, frag, webs, frag, hardened, frag and by then its gg.

With power surge going, this will fully heal you per hit. Keeps pressure on. If you do run outta magicka I have two options.

Option one (low magicka and health) go to resto back up:
Combat Prayer
Power surge
Dark Conversion
Hardened Ward

I run Combat prayer, its my oh NO heal (can crit making innerlight even better) adds 8% damage and spammable.
Hardened ward, I know healing ward is an option, vut even with the 300% proc it still pales compared to hardened and it wont heal usually unless you stack (and i don't wanna switch weapons just to stack nor put two wards on the same bar)
Power surge is no duh
Dark Conversion, as i said before great for mobs or low on magicka plus a mediocre heal.

So if outta magicka can go to back up for dark conversion + hardened ward + combat prayer to heal and magicka return.

Or you can go to overload and spam light attack for mad damage and magicka return (i also have streak, and ward on overload so I can light attack and ward if needed)

Just some advice I have

Brrrofski

TheHereticMonk wrote: »

First off thanks to everyone for taking the time to share you advice, it is greatly appreciated!
Secondly I made a mistake in my original post which I've corrected; I am using Hardened Ward not Empowered. My bad!

@Johngo0036 & @Brrrofski are you saying that all damage hits Hardened Ward first? There's no seep through effect? So as long as I have the ward up I will never take any elemental/poison/disease status effects? That would immediately make my CPs in elemental defender redundant. Also do critical hits apply to the ward or are they mitigated to deal normal damage levels?

Many of you have advocated Healing Ward as my main heal so I can drop Blessing of Restoration. The amount healed is based on ward strength left when it expires so it seemed a bit useless to me. However, if you have Hardened Ward and Healing Ward active, which takes damage first? If it's Hardened Ward then, yeah, it's quite likely that when Healing Ward disperses it'll have a decent amount left to heal. If not then hmmm... as one or two Blessings gives me full health guaranteed.

So everyone has advised me to switch to Fragments over Blast. Considering you're all saying that at most I only need Bound Aegies or Inner Light. Then I'll be freeing up a space up for another skill that I can use to proc frags. So I'll be giving that a play. On this point @Brrrofski stated that frags will only proc off skills on the same bar as frags. Can anyone else verify this? As @Brrrofski is the only person that mentioned it and that's a pretty important point. Oh and just to clarify do staff attacks proc frags? As I've neve bothered with weaving (which again, you all suggest) but if staff heavy and light attacks do proc frags then I can see the benefit of weaving.

I'm gonna play about with Velocious Curse, Daedric Tomb and Mage's Wrath as my new proc sklls as I've never used those. I'm hesitant to switch out DW for Destro Staff as I do like the extra armout trait and Spell Damage they give. The destro skill mentioned are nice but I don't know if they're worth it to give up DW.

Using the 3rd bar granted by Overload as a soley magicka restoring bar is a nice idea. I'll give that a go.

Using Overload means I'll probably not try Dawnbreaker as Ice Comet is so good, at least to me.

Nobody's advocated Structured Entropy over Power Surge I noticed. Is this just because Power Surge lasts so much longer? As the extra health with Entropy seemed nice.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help me out!

Shields take flat damage. Fire does the same as physical which does the same as frost which does the same as poison. The type is irrelevant, just the number. So as long as you have a shield up, elemental defender does nothing. As a sorc, you always need your shield up.

Also, you can't crit shields, so reduction in crits is irrelevant. I have all 83 red CP in bastion. When it maxes at 100, I'll probably go blessed for healing ward/rapid regen/combat prayer. I don't think it will affect the heals from blood magic or power surge as they are flat %. Elfborn would increase them maybe, as it increases damage when you crit, so you have 8%/40% of a higher number.

I tried dual wield on my sorc. While you can get great burst (endless fury until frag proc, curse, entropy, Frag; magica det if you had that too) overall I prefer weaving. Easier on your resources, a constant damage output and builds ultimate a lot easier.

Frags 100% only proc if the skill is on the same bar. Have hardened ward on your bar. Proccing off a shield is awesome. Staff attacks don't, but force pulse/crushing shock does. When your weaving you're hitting that once every less than a second. A lot of proc chance with ultimate gain thrown in.

I run ice comet and overload like you plan to do. Great choice of skills. I use ice comet in pvp mostly for the bust (like the combo above). Dungeons depend. Static boss or tank will keep boss static in the aoe, comet. Something that teleport or moves about like the engine guardian, overload.

I have efficient purge (mainly for pvp but can be handy in dungeons), dark conversion for a bit of regen if needed, rapid maneuver (for pvp, Frag for dungeons), streak and hardened ward. I keep ward on it as it's easier than deactivating overload to shield. So I throw some overload light atracks, shield, throw more, shield. Which, as frags is on the same bar, procs it for some added damage while already hitting hard.

Ovrerload is my favourite ultimate in the game just ahead of ferocious leap. Hitting for 11k per light attack, resort magica, gives and extra bar, incredibly cheap and can be overcharged to like 400% I think. If I don't use ultimates in a while, I can get a decent amount of light attacks, deactivate and still have ice comet to drop.

I always use power surge in dungeons purely for the added duration. Less time buffing, more time to dps. I do run entropy in pvp though as I'll use just before ice comet or using a proced frag to activate empower from might of the guild passive. 20% extra damage to a proceed frag hurts a lot. I have it on my back bar so cast it then swap instantly to cancel the animation.

I have a vr16 templar, sorc and Dk. The sorc was the most difficult by far to find out how I got the best out of if. There's so much variety in skills, rotations and playtstyles it's hard to find what works for you. The other two are pretty standard for skills and rotations. Key skills stand out so easilly. It was a lot more fun working it out for my sorc.

Johngo0036

Hi,

If you have hardened ward and harness magicka up at all times no Magick or physical damage will seep through until your shield is totally gone,

When you recast both you have full shield up again.

Hardened ward = Spell and Physical Shield,
Harness Magicka = Magicka shield..

If you are in a bind and are taking massive damage spam hardened ward...
If you see your health dropping pop hardened ward and then healing ward...

Trihugger

I am going to say this straight out, none of the things that have been described are maximally damaging in any scenario. Some are straight up bad.

The current setup that does the highest PvE damage is the overload setup. I'm not going to even touch the slideshow that PvP is. Currently power overload is bugged and doesn't gain any +% damage(read: power overload is 3% less damage), so use either the unmorphed or the magicka return morph which name eludes me right now

For Gear: 5x Julianos, 1 Kena, 1 Torug, 3x Willpower. You want 5 Light, 1 Medium, and 1 Heavy for the 6% from Undaunted Mettle (Run your pledges if you don't have undaunted high enough, it's damn important). Ideally you'd want 3x Spell power enchants on the jewelry but if you are having sustain problems you can put one minus magicka cost and 2 spell power enchants instead until CP's allow otherwise. You want to shoot for about 20k HP on your dual swords bar, and 19k on the staff bar after BLUE food. Easily doable, and makes getting willpower jewelry that much cheaper, with the healthy affix on them until your CP's get high enough to swap to arcane.

For Weapons: Torug Fire Destro Staff/2 Torug Swords - Twin Blade and Blunt passive makes all your attacks on that bar do 5% more damage. So liquid lightning and the execute hit that much harder. Fire destro staves do much more single target damage, lightning destro are more AoE centric. I prefer fire as most the time I want ST damage.

Destro Bar - Force Shock, Crystal Frags, Pulsar (Or Velocious if there's nothing to AoE), Inner Light, Bound Aegis w/ either Overload or Shooting star as the ult depending on how much magicka you have. More than likely you'll be using Overload as the breakpoint is something like 40k magicka. (We are not ever casting shooting star)

Dual Sword Bar - Liquid Lightning, Mage's Wrath, Power Surge, Inner Light, Bound Aegis w/ Overload

Overload Bar - Liquid Lightning, Power Surge, Hardened Ward, Inner Light, Bound Aegis

As far as CP's go, you want to max the Elemental Expert and then Elfborn for blue as something like 90%+ of your damage with this setup will be elemental. For Green you want the Magician and then Arcanist. %reduction is more important than increased regen for DPS.

Despite seemingly popular belief, for red you will EQUALLY distribute between Bastion, Hardy, and Elemental Defender. The reason being in trials and dungeons you do not WANT to have to spam your shield to survive. It's a waste of damage and magicka when you can get CP's to simply have that healer you brought actually ... you know, just heal your ass through the reduced damage instead. This is double true in PvP areas where your shield strength is HALVED.

As far as a general read through to how this build is supposed to play you can use the YOLO sorc guide on Tamriel Foundry as a guide: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/2-1-8-the-yolo-wizard-magicka-sorcerer-insane-burst-dps-pve-build/

Just ignore the 2 piece Kena stuff as that really is only a thing with damn near, if not maxed CPs.

On a side note, I would recommend going to Tamriel Foundry in the future for this kind of information. Not to be rude but the responses I have read in this thread are probably the reason why there are so many 5k dps sorcs out there that could be pushing 15k instead.

jakeedmundson

Trihugger wrote: »

I am going to say this straight out, none of the things that have been described are maximally damaging in any scenario. Some are straight up bad.

The current setup that does the highest PvE damage is the overload setup. I'm not going to even touch the slideshow that PvP is. Currently power overload is bugged and doesn't gain any +% damage(read: power overload is 3% less damage), so use either the unmorphed or the magicka return morph which name eludes me right now

For Gear: 5x Julianos, 1 Kena, 1 Torug, 3x Willpower. You want 5 Light, 1 Medium, and 1 Heavy for the 6% from Undaunted Mettle (Run your pledges if you don't have undaunted high enough, it's damn important). Ideally you'd want 3x Spell power enchants on the jewelry but if you are having sustain problems you can put one minus magicka cost and 2 spell power enchants instead until CP's allow otherwise. You want to shoot for about 20k HP on your dual swords bar, and 19k on the staff bar after BLUE food. Easily doable, and makes getting willpower jewelry that much cheaper, with the healthy affix on them until your CP's get high enough to swap to arcane.

For Weapons: Torug Fire Destro Staff/2 Torug Swords - Twin Blade and Blunt passive makes all your attacks on that bar do 5% more damage. So liquid lightning and the execute hit that much harder. Fire destro staves do much more single target damage, lightning destro are more AoE centric. I prefer fire as most the time I want ST damage.

Destro Bar - Force Shock, Crystal Frags, Pulsar (Or Velocious if there's nothing to AoE), Inner Light, Bound Aegis w/ either Overload or Shooting star as the ult depending on how much magicka you have. More than likely you'll be using Overload as the breakpoint is something like 40k magicka. (We are not ever casting shooting star)

Dual Sword Bar - Liquid Lightning, Mage's Wrath, Power Surge, Inner Light, Bound Aegis w/ Overload

Overload Bar - Liquid Lightning, Power Surge, Hardened Ward, Inner Light, Bound Aegis

As far as CP's go, you want to max the Elemental Expert and then Elfborn for blue as something like 90%+ of your damage with this setup will be elemental. For Green you want the Magician and then Arcanist. %reduction is more important than increased regen for DPS.

Despite seemingly popular belief, for red you will EQUALLY distribute between Bastion, Hardy, and Elemental Defender. The reason being in trials and dungeons you do not WANT to have to spam your shield to survive. It's a waste of damage and magicka when you can get CP's to simply have that healer you brought actually ... you know, just heal your ass through the reduced damage instead. This is double true in PvP areas where your shield strength is HALVED.

As far as a general read through to how this build is supposed to play you can use the YOLO sorc guide on Tamriel Foundry as a guide: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/2-1-8-the-yolo-wizard-magicka-sorcerer-insane-burst-dps-pve-build/

Just ignore the 2 piece Kena stuff as that really is only a thing with damn near, if not maxed CPs.

On a side note, I would recommend going to Tamriel Foundry in the future for this kind of information. Not to be rude but the responses I have read in this thread are probably the reason why there are so many 5k dps sorcs out there that could be pushing 15k instead.

Are you ok?.... all the way up there?
Try being polite... no one takes advice from an arrogant jerk. Is every person that plays an amazing player? no.... and they don't have to be to enjoy playing.
First of all... it's a game. Get over yourself.... i know it will be hard... but with some time and practice, i think you can do it.
Second....literally everything you just went through was discussed in this thread in some variation....
The OP wasn't looking for specific info on how to do trials (read the title).... so everyone put some ideas out there in a mixed bag to give him/her some basic suggestions on common build ideas.

Trihugger

jakeedmundson wrote: »

Are you ok?.... all the way up there?
Try being polite... no one takes advice from an arrogant jerk. Is every person that plays an amazing player? no.... and they don't have to be to enjoy playing.
First of all... it's a game. Get over yourself.... i know it will be hard... but with some time and practice, i think you can do it.
Second....literally everything you just went through was discussed in this thread in some variation....
The OP wasn't looking for specific info on how to do trials (read the title).... so everyone put some ideas out there in a mixed bag to give him/her some basic suggestions on common build ideas.

The OP asked for build advice and tweaking, or so says the title, so I gave him the optimal build advice and tweaking. And, in an attempt to educate the OP some, I wanted to drive home the sentiment as to just how un-optimized some of the suggestions are.

I quite frankly don't know why anyone wouldn't point the OP in the direction of what is numerically the absolute best and then the OP can tweak variations of that to his/her liking. It sounds like the OP didn't like getting rolled in Crag, and with the suggestions the rest of you made he might survive Crag but will just get rolled in the Imperial City/Sewers instead.

That's just me. I play to win as I find winning fun. If you find doing some ... other activity as enjoyable power to you. I merely wanted to educate.

As far as the personal attacks, I think you might reconsider who needs to get over themselves.

jakeedmundson

Trihugger wrote: »

jakeedmundson wrote: »

Are you ok?.... all the way up there?
Try being polite... no one takes advice from an arrogant jerk. Is every person that plays an amazing player? no.... and they don't have to be to enjoy playing.
First of all... it's a game. Get over yourself.... i know it will be hard... but with some time and practice, i think you can do it.
Second....literally everything you just went through was discussed in this thread in some variation....
The OP wasn't looking for specific info on how to do trials (read the title).... so everyone put some ideas out there in a mixed bag to give him/her some basic suggestions on common build ideas.

The OP asked for build advice and tweaking, or so says the title, so I gave him the optimal build advice and tweaking. And, in an attempt to educate the OP some, I wanted to drive home the sentiment as to just how un-optimized some of the suggestions are.

I quite frankly don't know why anyone wouldn't point the OP in the direction of what is numerically the absolute best and then the OP can tweak variations of that to his/her liking. It sounds like the OP didn't like getting rolled in Crag, and with the suggestions the rest of you made he might survive Crag but will just get rolled in the Imperial City/Sewers instead.

That's just me. I play to win as I find winning fun. If you find doing some ... other activity as enjoyable power to you. I merely wanted to educate.

As far as the personal attacks, I think you might reconsider who needs to get over themselves.

Obviously, everyone is doing well with the build they posted.... or they wouldn't have posted it. Which i already mentioned matched your build anyway- not each one specifically... but combining a couple touches on the same ideas you did.
'Winning' is in the perspective of the player.
Have a good day

TheHereticMonk

Whoa, let's all be happy and keep the peace. First agro I've come across on these forums. Always thought they had a really good vibe unlike someplaces *cough, GameFAQs, cough*.
Big thanks to everyone who's posted. Even if I may not find your comments necessarily useful, I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Anyhow, moving on...

Thanks to those who clarified the mechanics of Hardened Ward. I have taken the majority advice and put all my CPs into Bastion and am noticing a huge difference!
Crystal Fragments is proving to be quite awesome. I do miss the AoE from blast, but you can't have everything. The frequency of the proc, which is what concerned me, isn't proving to be an issue. As you all said, having it proc off my wards is lovely and now I'm using bolt to flee, it amuses me to do so then turn around and chuck a (usually) proced frags at those foolish enough to pursue me.

@Waffennacht suggested Webs as my CC. This was a good idea. Okay, it's not as imboilising as Daedric Shards, but the magic damage is decent and seems to hit harder and last longer than mines. I like.

Velocious Curse has been a pleasant surprise! Wow, it leveled up quick (like a handful of writs took it from zero to morphable) and it hits pretty hard when it explodes. Only problem I'm having is I cast it too frequently sometimes, dispelling it from the previous target. But that's my fault not its.
Mage's Wrath however is a bit of a dissapointment. Probably a great finisher against enemies with large health bars, but seriously meh against your average mobs and enemies. Trying to optimaly target it to hit enemies specifically lower than 20% is fiddly when dealing with mobs (remember I play solo). So I just chuck it around for average damage and occasionally get lucky. Gonna have to find a better frag proccing skill preferably with AoE. May have to give in and move onto the destro staffs to acheive this.

I am missing the large magicka boost from Bound Aegis (not the buffs as they were average) but found myself missing the crit bonus from Inner Light more. Especially when using in tandem with Power Surge, really noticed the reduced heal frequency. So I may eventually sneak Inner Light back on

Obviously most of the new skills I'm playing with aren't leveled fully (or morphed in some cases) so I'll keep playing with them and see how it goes.

One last thing, can anyone confirm how ward damage is distributed when using both Hardened and Healing Ward at the same time. Is it first one cast takes damage and then when it depletes, the next one? Or do they equally share the damage of each hit?
If it's the former, then casting Hardened followed by Healing would normally provide a decent heal and at worst an extra saftey net. Either works. If it's the latter then I think I'll just use Hardened.

Once again, a big thanks to you all. The advice supplied has already made a noticeable difference in Craglorn, not to mention it's been nice to break out of the rut I was in and try new skills I had dismissed.

Keep 'em coming

Waffennacht

What you described is shield stacking it goes first casted ward takes the damage first.

Typically you would do hardened ward first, then healing, allowing the healin ward to lapse healin you for big big points.

Yes, sometimes I too recast curse too early lol. I tried to set up my rotation so its fires by the time I come back to it.

Webs is the rare spammable range attack for sorcs and though it has a bit of a cost, in the higher levels you wont notice it.

Yeah surge plus innerlight is a great way to keep that bar full! Just remember that you can't always count on rng. That's why most run healin ward (i run combat prayer as I do poorly with healin ward cuz of bar set up)

Glad we helped!

Edit: I feel the exact same way about Mage's Wrath. Most of my attacks deal the same amount as a procd wrath, and have more utility. I actually use overload as a finisher, does more dmg and returns magicka rather than costing it, plus as almost all players have heals, I don't need to switch moves.

Just keep spamming, just keep spamming, spamming spamming... where is that Nemo?

TheHereticMonk

@Waffennacht Thank you for explaining shield stacking. Healing ward seems much more useful now.

Any other suggestions for a Mage's wrath replacement then? Excluding the destro skills.

Waffennacht

Honestly I don't know of much. This one of the complaints of sorcs. As most players find the Daedric summoning tree lack luster we have a problem using moves outside of the staples.

Basically every playable move for a sorc has been listed in this thread.

The only moves that haven't been mentioned are the difficult to acquire magicka detonation and caltrops.

Detonation is a really powerful bomb, its velacious curses big brother. Outside of streak, caltrops is the best anti NB move we can choose. But I don't even have these unlocked just yet (silly 1v1 giving like no xp)

For finishers Sorcs have wrath and overload imo.

The things I don't use but can be for offensive purposes are daedric mines, Liquid Lightning (PvE) encase (PvE)... wrath... um... hmm.. can't think of any more.

Btw i think there is only really one move that destro staff has that people use.