Help a novice with Sorc build

CheverTheShrimp

Hey guys, so I'm having trouble with my main build. Currently, I'm a lv 47 dark elf vampire sorc, I main a mix of Damage/healer and use both restoration and destruction staff with light armour. My trouble is that my build is so weak, I get owed big time in pvp. I can survive decently with pve until I get to some really tough bosses, then I just die. Have you guys got any advice or info in a really good build? I don't want to start again with my sorc as I've spent countless hours to get this far, and it's my first mmo so I'm a bit of a noob. Any advice guys??

FriedEggSandwich

What pvp server are you getting owned on? Blackwater Blade, Azura's Star or Trueflame? It makes a difference. If Trueflame I don't think you need to worry. What sets and skills have you been using in pvp or pve?

CheverTheShrimp

Well, mostly just initiated duels with other players. In Blackwater blade, I survive alright when in a big group, but on my own or a small group I'm a goner.

Well bar one is restoration bar
-crystal fragments
-bound armour
-liquid lightning
-mutagen
-steadfast ward
-power overload

Bar 2 is destruction
-weakness to elements
-bound armour
-shattering prison
-boundless storm
-impulse
-power overload

I'm not very good with organising sets as I'm not sure where I can easily get a good set, but I have sithis restoration staff, unstable element staff, spider silk hat, robe trinimacs valour, lord warden dusks epaulets, spider silk sash, ebonthread gloves, ysgramores breeches and ebonthread boots. I'm currently trying to level up my crafting skills so I'm able to craft better armour and weapons, and all my attributes points mostly on magicka. I can combine abilities to get the most effective damage, but surviving and healing is a bit difficult

dpencil

You're really not giving us enough info about how you're playing now to give you advise on how to improve. Be that as it may, I'll offer a few thoughts just off the cuff. Some you may already be doing, others maybe not.

- You must run buff food, preferably purple tri-stat food, otherwise blue health/magicka food.
- You should have at least two damage shields that you can access very quickly. I use Empowered Ward and Dampen Magicka. Alternately, you could use Hardened Ward and/or Harness Magicka, and Healing Ward if you're using a Resto staff.
- If you're using a standard burst build (crystal frags, curse, mage's wrath) then you've got to practice timing a lot. Everything has to hit the target at the same time, and even then you may also need an ulti to burst down high defense targets.
- You'll likely need to pair a damage armor set with a sustain set like Lich to help with magicka consumption. Spinners, Kagernack's Hope, or Julianos are the most common damage sets chosen.
- Use Defensive Rune whenever you are not in combat to keep you safe from getting ganked from stealth.
- Try to play smart when engaging enemies. Run with a group if you can and don't stray too far from the pack. Don't go rushing into a big group of enemies. Use friendly npcs for cover when possible. Force the enemy to engage you on your terms rather than the other way around.
- Most of the time the main thing you have to do first is survive the immediate burst of your opponent. Your burst won't be ready until a little while into the fight, but lots of other builds unload their main burst in the first seconds. You need to stack all shields, block, reapply shields, and let the enemy fail to get the easy kill. This often puts them on the back foot because they are usually expecting to take you down quickly. Turn the tables immediately, going on the offense and using cover when possible.

Personally, I run a non-meta aoe/dot build centering around Necropotence. Kodi just released a build video for mag sorc using the standard setup if you want a meta build, just Google him.

FriedEggSandwich

OK, so I would suggest having 2 different setups; one for pve and one for pvp. The reason being is that they require different approaches. In pve you're playing a very defined role; damage dealer, or maybe in some cases healer, but you're not trying to be 'jack-of-all-trades'. In pvp you pretty much are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and your own personal survival is more important than the dps you pull for your group.

There are many different "viable" setups for sorcs but this is what I would do; for pve drop the resto staff (unless you're actually playing a healer) in favour of either 2 destros or a destro on your front bar and dual wield on your back bar. As a damage dealer in pve the resto staff is useless to you. As a sorc you have a very powerful ward (Hardened Ward) and good self-healing through damage dealt (Power Surge). Easily attainable pve sets to aspire to are Julianos, Elegant, Spinner's and maybe even Twice Born Star. I personally wear a combination of 5x Julianos, 5x elegant or 5x Spinner's depending on the type of pve. For skills I slot 2x toggles; Bound Aegis and Inner Light, and then 2 ground aoe dots (Liquid Lightening and Wall of Elements) with Force Pulse, Frags, Power Surge and Hardened Ward.

My rotation is to keep Power Surge active and to keep my 2 ground aoe dots active underneath my target, and then in between refreshing these skills when they need it I'm weaving medium or light attacks between Force Pulse spam and Crystal Frags whenever it procs. If I take a lot of damage I cast hardened ward to give Power Surge a chance to heal me up. Power Surge can heal once per second for a flat value whenever you crit. To get the most out of it you need a high crit chance (>60%) and you need to be constantly doing damage for a chance to crit. This is where the ground based aoe dots come into their own; they are constantly ticking and therefore regularly critting, even if you're flat on your back from cc as long as you have Power Surge active and liquid lightening and wall of elements ticking under something you will have healing. When I'm playing well I get about 4k hps from surge in pve.

For pvp you probably do need the resto staff because Power Surge isn't anywhere near as reliable as it is in pve, healing ward is almost mandatory for a sorc in pvp. I would suggest a sustain set like Lich, Seducer or Amberplasm, and combining that with a damage set like Julianos, Elegant or Spinners. For pvp I use 5x Seducer, 5x Spinner's and a vMA destro/resto. Getting good at pvp takes practice. You need to be able to recognise what your opponent is doing to you for you to have any chance of responding appropriately, and nobody can tell you how to do that, you just gotta play. If you know why you're dying you have the tools to improve. General rule-of-thumb is have an offensive bar and a defensive bar and don't use toggles like Bound Aegis. I don't recommend you copy this cos it's not optimised for anyone other than me, but in pvp my skills look like this:

Bar1 (Sharpened Destro):

Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Fragments
Power Surge (for the Major Sorcery only)
Streak
Ult: Atronach or Storm

Bar 2 (Defending Resto):

Healing Ward
Combat Prayer or Rapid Regen
Harness Magicka or Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Ult: Overload

Overload Bar:

Defensive Rune
Efficient Purge
Dark Exchange
Retreating Maneuver
Hardened Ward

Edit: one final tip for any pvp; get used to feeling when your character stops responding and program yourself to break-free whenever you feel it. Setting up interrupt/bash for a single button is a good idea, I have mine set to mouse-wheel left so whenever my character becomes unresponsive in the heat of battle I nudge my mouse wheel left and 8/10 times I break free. The times I don't was because I was rooted and not cc'd. You will eventually learn how to tell the difference between being rooted and cc'd in the heat of battle. Learning to break out of cc quickly is probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve in pvp.

psychotic13

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

OK, so I would suggest having 2 different setups; one for pve and one for pvp. The reason being is that they require different approaches. In pve you're playing a very defined role; damage dealer, or maybe in some cases healer, but you're not trying to be 'jack-of-all-trades'. In pvp you pretty much are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and your own personal survival is more important than the dps you pull for your group.

There are many different "viable" setups for sorcs but this is what I would do; for pve drop the resto staff (unless you're actually playing a healer) in favour of either 2 destros or a destro on your front bar and dual wield on your back bar. As a damage dealer in pve the resto staff is useless to you. As a sorc you have a very powerful ward (Hardened Ward) and good self-healing through damage dealt (Power Surge). Easily attainable pve sets to aspire to are Julianos, Elegant, Spinner's and maybe even Twice Born Star. I personally wear a combination of 5x Julianos, 5x elegant or 5x Spinner's depending on the type of pve. For skills I slot 2x toggles; Bound Aegis and Inner Light, and then 2 ground aoe dots (Liquid Lightening and Wall of Elements) with Force Pulse, Frags, Power Surge and Hardened Ward.

My rotation is to keep Power Surge active and to keep my 2 ground aoe dots active underneath my target, and then in between refreshing these skills when they need it I'm weaving medium or light attacks between Force Pulse spam and Crystal Frags whenever it procs. If I take a lot of damage I cast hardened ward to give Power Surge a chance to heal me up. Power Surge can heal once per second for a flat value whenever you crit. To get the most out of it you need a high crit chance (>60%) and you need to be constantly doing damage for a chance to crit. This is where the ground based aoe dots come into their own; they are constantly ticking and therefore regularly critting, even if you're flat on your back from cc as long as you have Power Surge active and liquid lightening and wall of elements ticking under something you will have healing. When I'm playing well I get about 4k hps from surge in pve.

For pvp you probably do need the resto staff because Power Surge isn't anywhere near as reliable as it is in pve, healing ward is almost mandatory for a sorc in pvp. I would suggest a sustain set like Lich, Seducer or Amberplasm, and combining that with a damage set like Julianos, Elegant or Spinners. For pvp I use 5x Seducer, 5x Spinner's and a vMA destro/resto. Getting good at pvp takes practice. You need to be able to recognise what your opponent is doing to you for you to have any chance of responding appropriately, and nobody can tell you how to do that, you just gotta play. If you know why you're dying you have the tools to improve. General rule-of-thumb is have an offensive bar and a defensive bar and don't use toggles like Bound Aegis. I don't recommend you copy this cos it's not optimised for anyone other than me, but in pvp my skills look like this:

Bar1 (Sharpened Destro):

Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Fragments
Power Surge (for the Major Sorcery only)
Streak
Ult: Atronach or Storm

Bar 2 (Defending Resto):

Healing Ward
Combat Prayer or Rapid Regen
Harness Magicka or Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Ult: Overload

Overload Bar:

Defensive Rune
Efficient Purge
Dark Exchange
Retreating Maneuver
Hardened Ward

Edit: one final tip for any pvp; get used to feeling when your character stops responding and program yourself to break-free whenever you feel it. Setting up interrupt/bash for a single button is a good idea, I have mine set to mouse-wheel left so whenever my character becomes unresponsive in the heat of battle I nudge my mouse wheel left and 8/10 times I break free. The times I don't was because I was rooted and not cc'd. You will eventually learn how to tell the difference between being rooted and cc'd in the heat of battle. Learning to break out of cc quickly is probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve in pvp.

If you're not even using crushing shock for the spammable then why use a destro? Go DW for the burst and switch surge for entropy for empowered frags

FriedEggSandwich

psychotic13 wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

OK, so I would suggest having 2 different setups; one for pve and one for pvp. The reason being is that they require different approaches. In pve you're playing a very defined role; damage dealer, or maybe in some cases healer, but you're not trying to be 'jack-of-all-trades'. In pvp you pretty much are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and your own personal survival is more important than the dps you pull for your group.

There are many different "viable" setups for sorcs but this is what I would do; for pve drop the resto staff (unless you're actually playing a healer) in favour of either 2 destros or a destro on your front bar and dual wield on your back bar. As a damage dealer in pve the resto staff is useless to you. As a sorc you have a very powerful ward (Hardened Ward) and good self-healing through damage dealt (Power Surge). Easily attainable pve sets to aspire to are Julianos, Elegant, Spinner's and maybe even Twice Born Star. I personally wear a combination of 5x Julianos, 5x elegant or 5x Spinner's depending on the type of pve. For skills I slot 2x toggles; Bound Aegis and Inner Light, and then 2 ground aoe dots (Liquid Lightening and Wall of Elements) with Force Pulse, Frags, Power Surge and Hardened Ward.

My rotation is to keep Power Surge active and to keep my 2 ground aoe dots active underneath my target, and then in between refreshing these skills when they need it I'm weaving medium or light attacks between Force Pulse spam and Crystal Frags whenever it procs. If I take a lot of damage I cast hardened ward to give Power Surge a chance to heal me up. Power Surge can heal once per second for a flat value whenever you crit. To get the most out of it you need a high crit chance (>60%) and you need to be constantly doing damage for a chance to crit. This is where the ground based aoe dots come into their own; they are constantly ticking and therefore regularly critting, even if you're flat on your back from cc as long as you have Power Surge active and liquid lightening and wall of elements ticking under something you will have healing. When I'm playing well I get about 4k hps from surge in pve.

For pvp you probably do need the resto staff because Power Surge isn't anywhere near as reliable as it is in pve, healing ward is almost mandatory for a sorc in pvp. I would suggest a sustain set like Lich, Seducer or Amberplasm, and combining that with a damage set like Julianos, Elegant or Spinners. For pvp I use 5x Seducer, 5x Spinner's and a vMA destro/resto. Getting good at pvp takes practice. You need to be able to recognise what your opponent is doing to you for you to have any chance of responding appropriately, and nobody can tell you how to do that, you just gotta play. If you know why you're dying you have the tools to improve. General rule-of-thumb is have an offensive bar and a defensive bar and don't use toggles like Bound Aegis. I don't recommend you copy this cos it's not optimised for anyone other than me, but in pvp my skills look like this:

Bar1 (Sharpened Destro):

Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Fragments
Power Surge (for the Major Sorcery only)
Streak
Ult: Atronach or Storm

Bar 2 (Defending Resto):

Healing Ward
Combat Prayer or Rapid Regen
Harness Magicka or Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Ult: Overload

Overload Bar:

Defensive Rune
Efficient Purge
Dark Exchange
Retreating Maneuver
Hardened Ward

Edit: one final tip for any pvp; get used to feeling when your character stops responding and program yourself to break-free whenever you feel it. Setting up interrupt/bash for a single button is a good idea, I have mine set to mouse-wheel left so whenever my character becomes unresponsive in the heat of battle I nudge my mouse wheel left and 8/10 times I break free. The times I don't was because I was rooted and not cc'd. You will eventually learn how to tell the difference between being rooted and cc'd in the heat of battle. Learning to break out of cc quickly is probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve in pvp.

If you're not even using crushing shock for the spammable then why use a destro? Go DW for the burst and switch surge for entropy for empowered frags

Ranged 3-8k medium attacks between every skill cast adds quite a bit of pressure. Between refreshing curse as soon as it pops, choosing opportune moments to launch insta frags, positioning myself with streak and avoiding damage I don't really find a lot of time for a "spammable", not like you do in pve anyway, and when I do I find wrath to be effective to use because it gives you 4 seconds to burst them to 20% and then they explode. I've played with degeneration and it's nice when you land the empowered frags but in reality players dodge ~60-70% of frags, so in practice you just end up wasting time empowering those frags. Surge can be used in stealth to give you major sorcery before the fight, and also proc frags from stealth if that's your thing.

psychotic13

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

psychotic13 wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

OK, so I would suggest having 2 different setups; one for pve and one for pvp. The reason being is that they require different approaches. In pve you're playing a very defined role; damage dealer, or maybe in some cases healer, but you're not trying to be 'jack-of-all-trades'. In pvp you pretty much are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and your own personal survival is more important than the dps you pull for your group.

There are many different "viable" setups for sorcs but this is what I would do; for pve drop the resto staff (unless you're actually playing a healer) in favour of either 2 destros or a destro on your front bar and dual wield on your back bar. As a damage dealer in pve the resto staff is useless to you. As a sorc you have a very powerful ward (Hardened Ward) and good self-healing through damage dealt (Power Surge). Easily attainable pve sets to aspire to are Julianos, Elegant, Spinner's and maybe even Twice Born Star. I personally wear a combination of 5x Julianos, 5x elegant or 5x Spinner's depending on the type of pve. For skills I slot 2x toggles; Bound Aegis and Inner Light, and then 2 ground aoe dots (Liquid Lightening and Wall of Elements) with Force Pulse, Frags, Power Surge and Hardened Ward.

My rotation is to keep Power Surge active and to keep my 2 ground aoe dots active underneath my target, and then in between refreshing these skills when they need it I'm weaving medium or light attacks between Force Pulse spam and Crystal Frags whenever it procs. If I take a lot of damage I cast hardened ward to give Power Surge a chance to heal me up. Power Surge can heal once per second for a flat value whenever you crit. To get the most out of it you need a high crit chance (>60%) and you need to be constantly doing damage for a chance to crit. This is where the ground based aoe dots come into their own; they are constantly ticking and therefore regularly critting, even if you're flat on your back from cc as long as you have Power Surge active and liquid lightening and wall of elements ticking under something you will have healing. When I'm playing well I get about 4k hps from surge in pve.

For pvp you probably do need the resto staff because Power Surge isn't anywhere near as reliable as it is in pve, healing ward is almost mandatory for a sorc in pvp. I would suggest a sustain set like Lich, Seducer or Amberplasm, and combining that with a damage set like Julianos, Elegant or Spinners. For pvp I use 5x Seducer, 5x Spinner's and a vMA destro/resto. Getting good at pvp takes practice. You need to be able to recognise what your opponent is doing to you for you to have any chance of responding appropriately, and nobody can tell you how to do that, you just gotta play. If you know why you're dying you have the tools to improve. General rule-of-thumb is have an offensive bar and a defensive bar and don't use toggles like Bound Aegis. I don't recommend you copy this cos it's not optimised for anyone other than me, but in pvp my skills look like this:

Bar1 (Sharpened Destro):

Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Fragments
Power Surge (for the Major Sorcery only)
Streak
Ult: Atronach or Storm

Bar 2 (Defending Resto):

Healing Ward
Combat Prayer or Rapid Regen
Harness Magicka or Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Ult: Overload

Overload Bar:

Defensive Rune
Efficient Purge
Dark Exchange
Retreating Maneuver
Hardened Ward

Edit: one final tip for any pvp; get used to feeling when your character stops responding and program yourself to break-free whenever you feel it. Setting up interrupt/bash for a single button is a good idea, I have mine set to mouse-wheel left so whenever my character becomes unresponsive in the heat of battle I nudge my mouse wheel left and 8/10 times I break free. The times I don't was because I was rooted and not cc'd. You will eventually learn how to tell the difference between being rooted and cc'd in the heat of battle. Learning to break out of cc quickly is probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve in pvp.

If you're not even using crushing shock for the spammable then why use a destro? Go DW for the burst and switch surge for entropy for empowered frags

Ranged 3-8k medium attacks between every skill cast adds quite a bit of pressure. Between refreshing curse as soon as it pops, choosing opportune moments to launch insta frags, positioning myself with streak and avoiding damage I don't really find a lot of time for a "spammable", not like you do in pve anyway, and when I do I find wrath to be effective to use because it gives you 4 seconds to burst them to 20% and then they explode. I've played with degeneration and it's nice when you land the empowered frags but in reality players dodge ~60-70% of frags, so in practice you just end up wasting time empowering those frags. Surge can be used in stealth to give you major sorcery before the fight, and also proc frags from stealth if that's your thing.

Here's a tip for landing your frags, use an ice staff and ice reach, its king in PvP

CheverTheShrimp

Sorry for not answering any earlier and apologies about the info, I don't know some of the gaming terms for some things every well but thanks for the great advice you have given so far! I'm going to experiment with a bit of it and see how it goes.

deevoh1991

Hi, Im a high elf sorc as well and I don't play by the rules have equipped 5 sets of heavy armor that help with damage spell output (A.k.a rattlecage) and jewelery that give magic back (a.k.a gem of curses a.k.a rattle cage jewllery)
Basically rattle cage saves me

deevoh1991

Deevo191 wrote: »

Hi, Im a high elf sorc as well and I don't play by the rules have equipped 5 sets of heavy armor that help with damage spell output (A.k.a rattlecage) and jewelery that give magic back (a.k.a gem of curses a.k.a rattle cage jewllery)
Basically rattle cage saves me

Also these items are found in the dungeon called "Vaults of Madness" in activity finder, you should do this in normal mode until you are cp160.

FriedEggSandwich

psychotic13 wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

psychotic13 wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

OK, so I would suggest having 2 different setups; one for pve and one for pvp. The reason being is that they require different approaches. In pve you're playing a very defined role; damage dealer, or maybe in some cases healer, but you're not trying to be 'jack-of-all-trades'. In pvp you pretty much are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and your own personal survival is more important than the dps you pull for your group.

There are many different "viable" setups for sorcs but this is what I would do; for pve drop the resto staff (unless you're actually playing a healer) in favour of either 2 destros or a destro on your front bar and dual wield on your back bar. As a damage dealer in pve the resto staff is useless to you. As a sorc you have a very powerful ward (Hardened Ward) and good self-healing through damage dealt (Power Surge). Easily attainable pve sets to aspire to are Julianos, Elegant, Spinner's and maybe even Twice Born Star. I personally wear a combination of 5x Julianos, 5x elegant or 5x Spinner's depending on the type of pve. For skills I slot 2x toggles; Bound Aegis and Inner Light, and then 2 ground aoe dots (Liquid Lightening and Wall of Elements) with Force Pulse, Frags, Power Surge and Hardened Ward.

My rotation is to keep Power Surge active and to keep my 2 ground aoe dots active underneath my target, and then in between refreshing these skills when they need it I'm weaving medium or light attacks between Force Pulse spam and Crystal Frags whenever it procs. If I take a lot of damage I cast hardened ward to give Power Surge a chance to heal me up. Power Surge can heal once per second for a flat value whenever you crit. To get the most out of it you need a high crit chance (>60%) and you need to be constantly doing damage for a chance to crit. This is where the ground based aoe dots come into their own; they are constantly ticking and therefore regularly critting, even if you're flat on your back from cc as long as you have Power Surge active and liquid lightening and wall of elements ticking under something you will have healing. When I'm playing well I get about 4k hps from surge in pve.

For pvp you probably do need the resto staff because Power Surge isn't anywhere near as reliable as it is in pve, healing ward is almost mandatory for a sorc in pvp. I would suggest a sustain set like Lich, Seducer or Amberplasm, and combining that with a damage set like Julianos, Elegant or Spinners. For pvp I use 5x Seducer, 5x Spinner's and a vMA destro/resto. Getting good at pvp takes practice. You need to be able to recognise what your opponent is doing to you for you to have any chance of responding appropriately, and nobody can tell you how to do that, you just gotta play. If you know why you're dying you have the tools to improve. General rule-of-thumb is have an offensive bar and a defensive bar and don't use toggles like Bound Aegis. I don't recommend you copy this cos it's not optimised for anyone other than me, but in pvp my skills look like this:

Bar1 (Sharpened Destro):

Velocious Curse
Mages Wrath
Crystal Fragments
Power Surge (for the Major Sorcery only)
Streak
Ult: Atronach or Storm

Bar 2 (Defending Resto):

Healing Ward
Combat Prayer or Rapid Regen
Harness Magicka or Daedric Minefield
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Ult: Overload

Overload Bar:

Defensive Rune
Efficient Purge
Dark Exchange
Retreating Maneuver
Hardened Ward

Edit: one final tip for any pvp; get used to feeling when your character stops responding and program yourself to break-free whenever you feel it. Setting up interrupt/bash for a single button is a good idea, I have mine set to mouse-wheel left so whenever my character becomes unresponsive in the heat of battle I nudge my mouse wheel left and 8/10 times I break free. The times I don't was because I was rooted and not cc'd. You will eventually learn how to tell the difference between being rooted and cc'd in the heat of battle. Learning to break out of cc quickly is probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve in pvp.

If you're not even using crushing shock for the spammable then why use a destro? Go DW for the burst and switch surge for entropy for empowered frags

Ranged 3-8k medium attacks between every skill cast adds quite a bit of pressure. Between refreshing curse as soon as it pops, choosing opportune moments to launch insta frags, positioning myself with streak and avoiding damage I don't really find a lot of time for a "spammable", not like you do in pve anyway, and when I do I find wrath to be effective to use because it gives you 4 seconds to burst them to 20% and then they explode. I've played with degeneration and it's nice when you land the empowered frags but in reality players dodge ~60-70% of frags, so in practice you just end up wasting time empowering those frags. Surge can be used in stealth to give you major sorcery before the fight, and also proc frags from stealth if that's your thing.

Here's a tip for landing your frags, use an ice staff and ice reach, its king in PvP

I do use an ice staff cos the static ulti is awesome, but ew to reach. Streak works just as well. Landing frags is easier if you don't use degeneration first to tell your opponent you're about to launch frags. Not much you can do against major evasion though. Using degeneration to buff a frags means you lose a medium attack weave which would probably amount to 20% of your frag damage, or more, and it gives your opponent time to think as you set up an obvious combo. I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, I'm just saying isn't better than surge in my experience. Maybe you have a different experience.