Sorceress Build Advice

Rhyagell

Hi!

I'm interested in starting a mage. I have already created the character, got to level 5 but haven't spent any of the skill points etc yet. What would be a good build to go for to make this mage actually good with staff/magic? I'm usually jumping into knight/sword builds so I've got no knowledge of any other build. Would it be wiser to put the character in light/medium armor etc etc?

Thanks for any help.

Biro123

Hm.. tricky to answer. Builds aren't really a thing at such low level as you'll be outgrowing your gear too quickly. Also not really sure what you want to do with it. PvP? questing levelling, dungeons..? is it for solo or group play? if group, what role? DD/Tank/heals?

But generally, though, I'd pump everything into magicka.

As always, buy a skill from each class line and slot it to start levelling that line.

Get pets. They are good for solo pve - and having them (more the better) slotted helps level up your summoning line quicker to get that all Important Hardened Ward (usually magsorc's main defence)

Until then, use the dmg shield from the light armour line for defence.

Main skills to aim for to start with would be mages fury (lightning) - daedric curse (summoning) - morph to velocitous, and crystal shard (dark magic) - morph to frags. Thiese will probably be your bread and butter single-target dmg abilities forever.

If you want AOE, lightning splash and wall of elements (destro staff).

Force shock from the destro line is a commonly used anytime..

If you're keen on staves, destro on your front bar, resto on your back bar works fairly well.


(btw, when you say mage, I assume you mean a Magicka Sorc)


*Edit
Not sure if you're aware too, but toggle abilities (like pets) have to be slotted on both bars otherwise they unsummon once you switch weapon.
When you unlock the lightning ulti (overload) - it gives you a third skill bar. To set it up, activate overload then go to your skills menu and drag some different skills in. Then switching overload on/off will also switch to a different skill bar (but beware of pet unsummons etc).

Asardes

Which race?

Rhyagell

Sorry, my character is a Nord. I forgot that matters.

I don't know what things like AOE and whatnot means, but I'm mostly a solo player. Sometimes I join others for dungeons or dolmens/delves, but that's about it.

Asardes

If she's Nord you'll want to go stamina as well, and stamina sorcerers are very strong now. Nord is probably one of the best picks for stamina sorcerer tank. You'll want to level the class skills, picking the stamina morphs as soon as they become available, 1H+S, 2H and heavy armor skills, also level fighters guild by killing undead & daedra - those passives are really useful. Forget about pets because those scale of your magicka.

http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sorcerer+Skills
Your priorities should be:

Dark Magic:
Encase -> Restraining Prison - works almost the same as DK talons, very good CC for a tank
Rune Prison -> Defensive Rune - stuns the attacker, useful mostly for PvP
Dark Echange -> Dark Deal - restores your health and stamina, very good for sustain

Daedric Summoning:
Bound Armor -> Bound Armaments - increases your resistance and damage done

Storm Calling:
Lightning Form -> Hurricane - huge area (Area of Effect) "storm" that damages enemies and grants you more resistance
Surge -> Critical Surge - grants you more weapon damage and heals you when you score a critical hit
Bolt Escape -> Streak - allows you to move very fast and stun enemies

The other skills are not that useful for a stamina build, since they don't have a morph and utility. Endgame it's advisable to take all passives, but for the beginning you should concentrate on active skills.

Ultimates are not very good for stamina, since all are magicka damage, and that's why it's advised you level fighters guild to access Dawnbreaker and level your weapon skills and use those ultimates.

Biro123

AOE = Area of Effect - stuff that hits multiple enemies.

Rhyagell

Thank you @Biro123 and @Asardes for helping me out, I appreciate it.

So, alongside concentrating on the aforementioned abilities above, would it be wise to do upgrade stamina and magicka so that they are even, or should I be leaning more toward magicka > stamina > health?

Asardes

Rhyagella wrote: »

Thank you @Biro123 and @Asardes for helping me out, I appreciate it.

So, alongside concentrating on the aforementioned abilities above, would it be wise to do upgrade stamina and magicka so that they are even, or should I be leaning more toward magicka > stamina > health?

Nope. Spreading you abilities in stamina and magicka would seriously gimp your build. I've leveled a hybrid build - Nord DK - and was a pain to kill anything. I was relieved when I could afford to buy the Hakeijos that allowed me to enchant my armor and keep on tanking, although I had moved every attribute point in stamina. So put everything in stamina from the beginning, level as a DD, then, if you fancy it, take up tanking. Only for the most challenging endgame content, like veteran trials, do you also need to put some points in health and magicka.

ryanborror

Don't put anything in stamina. Wear light armor or at least 5 pieces of it. Only put attributes in health if you are repeatedly dying for multiple days and you think it's an issue, but keep in mind that one tamriel has made some content more difficult, so it's natural to struggle with a new character.
You want to prioritize leveling you 3 class skill lines, destro staff, light armor, mages guild and maybe restoration staff if you feel like you need the healing spells in it. Easiest way to do this is to put one skill from each skill line on your bar and if you really want to level something fast put multiple skills on the same bar that you use while killing things and turning in quests.
I'd suggest morphing the first daedric summoning skill to get the clannfear, as he takes enemies attention and can heal you. Here is an example of a set up at level 15:
Bar 1 flame staff: unstable clannfear, force shock, crystal fragments, lightning splash, twilight, overload
Bar 2 restoration staff: unstable clannfear, regeneration, encase, endless fury, twilight, storm atronach.
Ive put at least one skill from every skill line that we're trying to level and then multiples from storm calling and daedric summoning to level them faster as I feel they have the most necessary skills to get to (conjured ward, bound armor, streak)
Hopefully this is somewhat helpful. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Snootking

Why is nobody explaining how the game works at all? Just contradicting each other entirely and probably leaving the OP very confused.

Basically, any class can pretty much fill any role, be that damage dealer, tank or healer. Races also have racial passives which lean towards certain styles of play. Also, to be effective you need to choose whether you will be a stamina or magicka build.

Generally speaking stamina builds use mostly abilities from the melee weapon skill lines and any class skills which have stamina morphs (as most of these skills start off being scaled off of magicka) and are melee close combat fighters using medium/heavy armour. Magicka builds generally use light armor and staves (although can make use of other weapons) and fight from long range using spells.

For you a nord leans towards a stamina build with a lot of tankiness due to max health, health recovery and damage reduction racial passives. This doesnt mean to say you can't be a magicka sorcerer, it just means you miss out on ths racial bonuses which other races have which maximise magicka such as high elf and breton.

Before anybody can help you with builds you need to decide what type of playstyle and role you want to have. Do you want to be a melee damage dealer or tank, or do you want to use spells and fight from a distance like a 'typical' sorcerer.

If melee then you're off to a good start, put everything into stamina and take a look at weapon skills and which ones sound cool to you. If magicka then you may want to consider starting again with a more suitable class but you don't have to.

Really good build advice can be found on sites such as deltiasgaming, sypherpk and alcasthq.

Sorry long post but hope this helps.

Biro123

Yeah, hybrids don't really work too well in this game - it generally works best to polarise as much as possible to either stamina or magicka.

As you said in your original post that you want a mage that is good with staff/magic - That's how I advised you. As others have said Nord isn't optimal for magicka (hence the advice here for a stamina setup) - but it is perfectly doable. If you want to play a Nord Magsorc - play a Nord Magsorc. You'll be able to do most content in the game.

If, however, you want to ultimitely optimise that character to be the best it can be - Nord isn't the right choice. If you think that may disappoint you further down the line, then I'd suggest starting a new one with Breton or Altmer, before you've spent too much time on your Nord. But as I say - if you're happy with a Nord sorc - go for it!

Asardes

In this game racials tend to determine the roll and wether a stamina or magicka build is optimal, rather than class.

Nord: excellent tank, decent stamina DD
Imperial: excellent tank, good stamina DD
Orc: good tank, good stamina DD
Redguard: excellent stamina DD
Bosmer: good stamina DD (especially PvP)
Khajiit: excellent stamina DD (especially PvE)
Breton: excellent healer, good magicka DD
Argonian: excellent healer, decent magicka DD
Altmer: excellent magicka DD, decent healer
Dunmer: excellent magicka DD, decent healer, decent tank

So
- if you want an optimized magicka sorcerer DD pick Altmer or Dunmer
- if you want an optimized stamina sorcerer Tank pick a Nord, Imperial or Orc
- if you want an optimized stamina sorcerer DD pick Khajiit or Redguard

Since you already picked Nord I recommended the role for which it's best optimized by its racials. If you decide later to do hard content racial choices will matter.

Rhyagell

I'm sorry I'm a bit late to reply to the posts, got a bit busy. Thank you for all the replies!

I've just read through everything you guys posted but I had to google a few things, so please forgive me if my definitions of ESO terms are mixed up or something. Oh, and if need be, I will gladly start a new character for a magicka sorc so that I can try both.

If I go stamina sorcerer, I need to focus on leveling my stamina, going for melee skill lines, use medium/heavy armor and this will make me a tank (which is to take damage for the team?), correct?

If I go for magicka sorcerer, I need to be a Dunmer/Altmer, focus on magicka, light armor, and "magick" (and mages guild) skills and this will make me a "damage dealer" (be a high hitter?), correct?


I apologize if my newbiness makes this difficult to explain. I'm used to just jumping into MMOs and playing randomly by myself.

Asardes

As stamina sorcerer you can be both tank and DD.

- A tank taunts and draws aggro from enemies (puncture, inner fire), debuffs them (heroic slash), locks them in place (encase) or slows them down (caltrops), so the DDs can kill them faster and without being attacked themselves. A tank has to have high resistance (hurricane, bound armaments) and preferably have access to stamina sustain (dark exchange) and self heals (critical surge). Tanks wear at least 5 pieces of heavy armor and have 1H+S at least on their main bar for better blocking and skill usage.

- A DD kills enemies. As stamina DD you will use mostly weapon skills to deal damage, and class skills for utility. For example a stamina sorcerer has to keep up mostly the same buffs as he would as a tank (hurricane, bound armaments, critical surge) and the rest of the bar should be taken up by actual DD skills. For example steel tornado and rending slashes from dual wield skill line, or endless hail from bow skill line. Ideally you should keep bow on your back bar and either dual wield or two handed on your main, with their respective skills.

Rhyagell

@Asardes

Oh! I think my Nord is more of a tank than anything else, now that I read your post. I'm always using protective/armor spells to keep myself and allies alive (when they are near or in a group) and use the talons skill and whatnot to slow enemies down etc. I use a sword and shield on my first bar to do the buffs (?) and then when that's done, I switch to my second bar with a 2hand weapon and massive damage skills so that I can hit hard. I don't think I unlocked enough or the right skills though to really utilize that tankish roll though. I should have come here a long time ago and asked for help, it would have made this a lot easier.

A stamina DD sounds like a fun mixture to play though, so I'm definitely going to give this a shot. Plus I'll also at least have some idea as to what skills to unlock, unlike when I started my first character (during beta).

Asardes

A tank/DD hybrid is possible for solo content, and even for normal dungeons. But for veteran dungeons and trials you must have at least 2 different sets of gears. I have a Nord Stamina DK main char. He's mainly a PvE tank but being a full stamina build he can pull respectable damage with 2H/Bow combo when he wears his mostly medium armor DD sets. That's mostly what I play in PvP too, since I tried tanking a few times and I'm being ignored for not doing damage and I have a really hard time killing stuff. Stamina builds are pretty similar, since they mostly use weapon skills which are common for all classes. Before one Tamriel I would run the silver pledge and some gold pledges as an off-tank. Meaning I wore my DD gear with 1H+S on main bar, and 2H maul on the back bar. I PuGed most of those pledges, so the DDs and healers were often times very weak. I had to beat the dungeon mostly trough my own efforts - tanking, DPS-ing and self healing at the same time. I've found medium armor much better for this mixed role, because it has more sustain and more damage (that applies to heals from rally and vigor). Since the patch came I only aim for veteran hard mode dungeons for max key gain, so mixed roles or PuG-ing is out of the question now. I spend all my time in dungeons as a full tank now.

Rhyagell

I didn't know you could swap gear, unless you're manually switching between sets by re-equipping? Either way I suppose I'm gonna have to try this too when I upgrade my bags to accommodate the extra gear. I'll try/do anything to get a better footing in dungeons and dolmens, especially for my hybrid toon. I've been kicked out of groups like crazy as soon as I'm invited and I'd like to not to face that anymore since I want to do more of the game content now.

I do have a question concerning your last post. When you said "class skills for utility", what do you mean by "for utility"? I've seen a few people say but I haven't found an explanation of what it means yet.



Oh, and I almost forgot. I read some of the sites @Snootking suggested above (lots of content though so it'll take me some time) and this is what I had done in prep to start testing what I'd like more—stamina sorc or magicka sorc with the intent of distant battle and using staffs and doing veteran dungeons etc. I'll just use my weird hybrid Nord for PvE and whatnot, since there's nothing that can be done for him now.

The stamina sorc build:

Race: Nord (with focus on stamina and skills you mentioned here)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Sword and Shield for buffing and debuffing etc
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): Destruction Staff or 2H for dealing damage

and my magicka sorc build:

Race: Altmer (High Elf) (with focus on magicka)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Sword and Shield for buffing and debuffing etc
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): Destruction Staff/Bow or Dual wield for dealing damage

I hate to be such a bother. I'm probably annoying you guys with my endless questions and my ignorance of MMO games and their terms, but I do appreciate the help.

Asardes

Rhyagella wrote: »

I didn't know you could swap gear, unless you're manually switching between sets by re-equipping? Either way I suppose I'm gonna have to try this too when I upgrade my bags to accommodate the extra gear. I'll try/do anything to get a better footing in dungeons and dolmens, especially for my hybrid toon. I've been kicked out of groups like crazy as soon as I'm invited and I'd like to not to face that anymore since I want to do more of the game content now.

If you are on PC there is an addon called Alpha Gear that lets you define gear and skill sets and bind them to a key. Of course you can only swap when you are out of combat. I use it all the time. For example as tank I have different setups, one for trash fights and some bosses, one for the other bosses, and a few special setups that are based on the latter, and where I only swap a few skills. http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1150-AlphaGearAlphaTools.html

Rhyagella wrote: »

The stamina sorc build:

Race: Nord (with focus on stamina and skills you mentioned here)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Sword and Shield for buffing and debuffing etc
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): Destruction Staff or 2H for dealing damage

It's not advisable to use a destruction or restoration staff on a stamina build, since the power of those skills scales of maximum magicka and spell damage. Similarly, it's not advisable to use bow or 2H weapon on magicka build since those skills scale of maximum stamina and weapon damage. You can use 2W on magicka build, but only for the twin blade and blunt passives with swords equipped. You can also use 1H+S on magicka build mostly for the block cost reduction and block mitigation passives from that skill line, because the active skills scale of stamina and weapon damage as well. But those kind of builds are a minority.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Weapon+Skills

To sum that up:

Restoration Staff, Destruction Staff - magicka builds only
Bow, Two Handed, Double Wield, One Hand and Shield - stamina builds only

Rhyagell

Oh, right, I forgot about the staffs being relevant to magicka and whatnot. Ugh. in light of that the stamina sorc will be a lot easier to keep up if I can use so many different kinds of weapon mixtures.

Fixed builds:

The stamina sorc build:

Race: Nord (with focus on stamina and skills you mentioned here)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Sword and shield
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): 2h/Bow or DW

and my magicka sorc build:

Race: Altmer (High Elf) (with focus on magicka)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Destruction staff
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): Restoration staff

And thanks for the link to the mod, it looks incredibly useful! And I thought the mini map and plunder skull timer was useful. As soon as the servers come back up I'll install it and start messing around.

Kravz

i think u doing it right,
as a nord go for a stam build, race really decides that for you.

for leveling use 1 skill of each your class plus 2x weapon skills.
example:
bar1: aoe dps
w1: twin slashes/wirlwind when u get it
w2: flurry
c1: clanfear
c2 : lightning form
c3 : ult: negate

bar2: single target or tank
w1: puncture
w2: low slash/charge
c1: clanfear
c2: encase
c3: ult overload

armor 5xheavy or med 1x1x

you can rely on clanfear to heal and tank most content btw

magicka is about the same with other weapons

Asardes

Actually having pets is not ideal for a stamina build, since it's damage and heals always scale of your maximum magicka and spell damage. It also takes up a slot on both bars that's better reserved for bound armaments skill. That one actually boosts your resistance, your heavy attack damage and your maximum stamina. If you want a toggle take that instead.

From the tool tip:

Bound Armaments

Protect yourself with the power of Oblivion, creating a suit of Daedric mail that grants Minor Resolve, increasing your Physical Resistance by 1320. The armor also increases your damage with Heavy Attacks by 11% and increases your Max Stamina by 5%.Converts into a Stamina ability, and increases your damage with Heavy Attacks.

They are both Daedric Summoning abilities, so they activate the following passive:

Daedric Protection

Increases your Health Recovery and Stamina Recovery by 20% when a Daedric Summoning ability is slotted.

For a stamina build in general heals and damage abilities that scale of magicka and spell damage are a poor choice since they are weak. Those that scale of stamina are much better. If you need other self heals, besides critical surge, rally (2H skill line), vigor (Assault skill line) or Lacerate (ultimate) and blood craze (2W skill line) are far better choices, because those scale on your stamina and weapon damage.

As an afterthought pet builds are weak endgame even for magicka sorcerers. They are good for leveling and soloing some easy content while leveling the skill lines, and that's about it. As a stamina sorcerer you are better of doing a skill reasignment after you finish leveling the skill lines, to recoup the points and invest them in something more useful, like armor passives, fighters guild passives and skills etc. http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sorcerer+Skills