Need help with my magicka nightblade

Articulemort

I need help figuring out my mag blade, mostly for PvE but I do occasionally go into PvP. My current set up is...
5 pieces of julianos all divines with max magicka glyphs
Vicious death waist in divines with max magicka glpyhs
Gold Inferno staff of vicious death sharpened with gold weapon damage glyph
Gold resto staff of vicious death precise with gold life drain glyph
All jewelry arcane willpower with gold spell damage glyphs
Molag Kena shoulder infused with max magicka glyph

Plus I am a high elf and a vampire
I have..
38k max magicka(59 points in magicka 5 into health)
1k magicka recovery
2800 spell damage
52% spell crit
^those are with a desto staff equipped. Everything goes down a little bit besides spell damage when I swap to resto.

CP trees...
Green
32 in magician
75 arcanist

Blue
26 elfborn
26 elemental expert
24 spell erosion
30 staff expert

Red
23 hardy
23 thick skinned
48 elemental defender
13 bastion
(i only have 320 cp currently)

My bars
Desto
Swallow soul
Impale
Unstable wall of fire
Reapers mark
Inner light
Ult is either soul tether or incap strike

Resto
Illustrious healing (or concealed strike when I'm in pvp)
Healing ward
Sap essence
Shadowy disguise
Purge
Ult is always soul tether

Now my question....
How can I maximize my spell damage or at least increase my dps? I don't know how to test dps on console but I doubt mine is above 20k. Honestly that's my only question, I feel like my damage is very lackluster, and everyone is always saying how bad ass mag blades are.

QuantumPie

I have not played a magblade in a long time however, based on your gear you have the optimal setup. If you want to increase your spell damage after using the Julianos setup you would probably need to use a much rarer set but I can't remember them of the top of my head. If you are not already make sure you are using spell damage potions which give you a decent increase for spell damage and crit. A few things I noticed in your bars (some of this might be outdated so I apologize if it is) is you should be using Funnel Health instead of Swallow Soul. As for your Unstable Wall of Elements, you might want to changed that to blockade to make it easier for large groups to stand on it and for the 8s duration instead of 6s. There is also an ability called cripple (un-morphed) that you might want to consider using for the movement speed buff and DoT. If you want to test your dps, you can try going to Orsinium and finding a giant or mammoth and get a sample of your burst dps. If you don't want to bother looking for them just head into a silver dungeon to test it. Hope this helps!

MrTarkanian48

I have a magblade that I used to use for PVE (Dungeons) and have cleared vet maelstrom many times. Your gear seems reasonable,Juliannos is good and accessible. Some options that may out perform it now ould be Twice-Born, Scathing Mage, or Necropotence. I do have some suggestions.

1) Complete undaunted achievements To get to undaunted 9 and put 2 points in undaunted mettle. Then run 5 light, 1 medium, 1 heavy piece in order to max out your stats. My Mag NB is Altmer and I am able to get my max mag up around 42K-44K.

2) Crit seems low. Be sure to run thief with all divines gear if possible.

3) What type of PVE content are you doing? Back bar resto is good for Maelstrom runs when you need to self sustain, but not good for DPS in group dungeons when you have a healer. Go DW Sharpened Vicious Death swords on front bar, and back bar VD Destro. This will increase your damage on front bar.

4) My bars for group dungeons are:
DW: Inner Light, Crippling Grasp, Sap Essence, Siphoning Attacks, Impale, Meteor
Destro: Inner Light, Structured Entropy (unless running Spell power pots), Funnel Health, Merciless Resolve, Blockade of Fire, Soul Harvest.

Mark Target, Cloak, Purge, and resto staff abilities should not be on your bar if you are dps in a group. Mark debuffs the boss, but your tank or healer should be doing that already. The major berserk is nice, but the skills mentioned before are more of a priority. You want to output constant damage, so none of your time should be spent cloaking. Your healer can provide purge with Extended ritual, as well as all other necessary heals.

If you are interested in a Maelstrom build, I mimic the one that Sharmony uses. Look up his name on youtube. He has informative build videos on Mag NB.

Enter combat, buff Siphoning attacks and Merciless. Drop your dots Cripple and Blockade (These both have 8 second duration, so applying at the same time makes it easy to know when they expire, as the bright flame on the ground disappears). Weave medium attacks and funnel health four times, proc merciless resolve. Rinse and repeat. You are missing cripple which is a huge dot and a nice speed boost. Merciless resolve is a must have. 8% damage increase while active and the spectral bow proc is a free ability that hits extremely hard (30k+ crits)

I don't actually use soul harvest, unless the boss is in execute phase to empower your Impales for 10 seconds. Just kill things on that bar to get the 10 ultimate gain bonus. Swap to back bar to drop meteors. Some people swap the ultimate and put soul harvest on their AoE DW bar. It's whatever your preference is.

5) Put most your blue CP in elemental expert and Elfborn. None in erosion and none in staff expert (or very few) Elemental expert buffs your basic light/heavy attacks and all other magic damage. Staff expert is only light and heavy. They are much better spent in Ele expert.

6) Focus green cp mostly in mag cost reduction. Your Regen will be bad, but you don't care because you have siphoning attacks. Just learn to keep SA attacks up and you will have no issues unless you go into a long sap essence spam. Soul harvest is cheap, and you will Regen resources while you do your weave.

7) Opt for Funnel Health morph if group content is the focus as you will help your teammates with heals over time. Soul Harvest is preferred in Maelstrom, but I use just keep funnel health as I don't want to spend the gold to respec every time.

This should be a big improvement. As you get better and get more gear, try to get 2pc nerieneth as it works great for this class. 2 piece Kena is also an option.

This will improve the dps. Keep in mind that currently you will almost inevitably do less dps then optimized stam builds with vMA DW weapons and bow. But it is fun gameplay as a magblade, and sometimes DPS from range is preferred in some fights.

Articulemort

Thanks @MrTarkanian48 I really appreciate all the tips. The reason I don't dual wield is to weave attacks between skills. And I put points into staff expert because I was recently running the elegant set in an attempt to mix things up a bit. Frankly, it didn't change my dps at all.

I'll look into the tips you have supplied to see if I can get to a better dps. I ran vWGT yesturday and really felt that my dps wasn't up to the standard expected amount for a dungeon like that. Hopefully some of your tips will help with that.

And I really wanna clear vMA, wicked bad. I'll have to check out that YouTube you mentioned. I can clear nDSA solo, but I cant even get to the boss fight in stage 3 of vMA...

MrTarkanian48

Articulemort wrote: »

Thanks @MrTarkanian48 I really appreciate all the tips. The reason I don't dual wield is to weave attacks between skills. And I put points into staff expert because I was recently running the elegant set in an attempt to mix things up a bit. Frankly, it didn't change my dps at all.

I'll look into the tips you have supplied to see if I can get to a better dps. I ran vWGT yesturday and really felt that my dps wasn't up to the standard expected amount for a dungeon like that. Hopefully some of your tips will help with that.

And I really wanna clear vMA, wicked bad. I'll have to check out that YouTube you mentioned. I can clear nDSA solo, but I cant even get to the boss fight in stage 3 of vMA...

No problem. I did make a mistake on my bars. I put Structure Entropy on my DW bar, and Cripple on my Destro Bar. You are right in that you can't weave on dual wield bar. The idea is that you will only be on your DW bar to either A) Buff Entropy and Siphoning Attacks Spam Sap Essence when in large groups of trash mobs or C) Spam Impale on bosses when their health drops below 25%. This way you are always doing the most damage possible in AoE and Execute situations.

In all other situations you stay on Destro and weave Funnel and Staff attacks and reapply your 2 dots every 8 seconds.

Regarding the Blue CP. I did the same thing for awhile with putting points into Staff Expert, until it dawned on me that your light and heavy attacks are considered elemental damage, and therefore are buffed by elemental expert. By splitting your points between elemental expert and staff expert you do get the most damage out of your staff attacks, however, you gimp all you magic based abilities like funnel, Merciless Resolve, Sap, Cripple, and Impale. By investing most your points into elemental expert you are buffing all these abilities as well as your light and heavy attacks. Its a win/win. Once you hit 531 you will most likely want 100 in Ele Expert, and more or less split the rest between Elfborn and Thaumaturge

Vet Maelstrom is very challenging, and was the most challenging content I've experienced in the game. Keep gaining Champ points as you will need every advantage you can get. The biggest thing is just doing it over and over until you learn all the mechanics and enemy spawns. I died hundreds if not thousands of times before completing it once. It will feel good when you finally complete it, so just take a break when you get frustrated, and go back later. Good luck.

Articulemort

So @MrTarkanian48 I listened to some of your advice and it is definitely helping. I cant believe I wasn't using merciless resolve. That 30k crit is awesome.

So thank you very much kind sir!!