Changelog: Revamped the Build for Summerset.
A lot of people asked questions about a strategy that is safe and fun to play because they are struggling with the arena.
With this toon, I completed nearly everything in the game: flawless vMA, top 10 score runs in vDSA, every vet trial including vMoL and vHoF. it is also a very effective DPS-enabler for the whole group and has probably one of the strongest AoE components in the game.
Here is a full flawless vMA run video with the BiS-Version of the Build:
https://youtu.be/AN0804z4-Do
Race:
Altmer is best due to additional elemental (especially shock) damage and max magicka, dunmer (since SotH) and breton would be your second and third choice.
Stats and Gear Setup:
Why charged/infused?
Because this gives us the highest uptime on minor vulnerability and off-balance and the whole group 25% off-balance and therefore more overall damage (8% damage taken by the target), 70% more damage on all heavy attacks (includes team members). Dont forget that adds do not have a cooldown on off-balance and the heavy atatck splash damage scales with the damage on the original target. So when there are adds to a boss, aim at them (Hulks in vMoL, Centurions in vHoF etc.)
Why Channeled Acceleration?
Minor force is a very potent buff, and lightweight trap gives us a full uptime on it, and is completely ranged. Rearming trap might give you a higher uptime, but forces you in melee range, which you cant reliably do all the time so in the long run, the uptime is very often similar.
--> lightning staff benefits from all four of those trees. Liquid lightning and blockade benefit from Elemental expert, Elfborn and Thaumaturge and do get empowered a lot as well. The trade off is overload. With more points in elfborn/elemental expert, overload will hit harder, while the heavies and dots suffer a little.
Bar Setup:
Front Bar:
Empowered Ward/Endless Fury(in raids), Daedric Prey/Endless fury(solo), Channeled Acceleration, Volatile Familiar, Inner Light
Ultimate: Thunderous Rage
Back Bar:
Power Surge(solo)/Endless Fury, Liquid Lightning, Elemental Blockade, Volatile Familiar, Inner Light
Ultimate: Greater Storm Atronach
Usual strategy:
Keep Surge, Liquid lightning, acceleration, the volatile familiar pulse and blockade up and Heavy Attack your way through. Shield every now and then. It's as simple as that, stuff dies really fast, especially in AoE situations. Stuff just melts! Save your Ulti for Bosses and Difficult Rounds. This applies to stages 3 and 5 in particular because of all the adds.
What's with the pet?
Pets got buffed a lot with Homestead and Horns of the Reach. They are basically free DPS as they act as companions that choose targets and take them down by themselves. Plus, they take aggro from you. I'm not using daedric prey because enemies in vMA simply die too fast to make it really worth running. Bosses melt fast enough without it. If you plan to use overload, put daedric prey where power surge is and keep it up to buff you buddies. The storm atronach puts out less burst, but stronger sustained single target dps and gives melee allies a really strong synergy.
Also, Pets are immune to a lot of Mechanics in vMA, such as the lightnign Water, Spinning Blades etc. You can actually get through without having to resummon them more than 3 or 4 times (argonian behemoth kinda kills the familiar in enrage phase). So basically, it's like doing vMA with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.
For low health mobs, don't bother putting down liquid lightning, as they die too fast with blockade and heavy attacks.
CP Allocation:
Red and Green depend on the trial. Blue is as follows
56 Thaumaturge
56 Elemental Expert
56 Elfborn
56 Master-at-arms
Rest into spell erosion,
The new CP system changes how they work, as most of the trees now have jump points. The returns from them get floored to the full percentage value, e.g. Investing 15.4% in a tree will effectively give you a 15% return.
So you want to use the points in a way of where you don't waste too many. The above distribution is always just above the full percentage for trees that have jump points.
DPS Parse with no spell power potion setup (just me):
Rotation video :
https://youtu.be/n2tbylHs1QA
Easy mode!
it is Surge (every third rotation) > Channeled Acceleration (also every third rotation) > Light Attack (LA) > LL > LA > Blockade > Bar Swap > Full Heavy > Familiar Pulse > Heavy Attack > Prey > LA > Trap > Bar Swap > Repeat
The heavy attack bugs hit me more than on line on the PTS due to the latency, so there is more potential to it. I start off really goo but lose dps over time because my atronach doesnt go off etc.
Few additional things:
1. The difference between the staffs is that heavy attacks with lightning and resto staffs are channeled. For this build, this means that EACH tick of the attacks gets the crushing wall buff and puts on the minor vulnerability from aether, thhis adds around 5-6k dps alone.
2. Necropotence Gives you huge Shields and Buffs your Pet damage a LOT. You can push past 30k dps easily with the 5 Skills in this build.
3. Forget the usual sorc ressource management issue: With this build, you can run arund with nearly no mag recovery as you get a ton of ressources back from your heavy attacks.
4. Sorcs get an original buff of 5 % to shock damage.
Issues:
The only issue is Mobility: As long as you channel attacks, you have reduced movement speed. I didnt have any issues with this, but you need to adapt your gameplay to it! Especially in the last round on top, you need to stay cautious for the fireballs dropping down.
So go in there and melt!