Tips for maximizing your class

Reignskream · January 2017

I'm looking into tips and the likes for maximizing my class. I'm talking about doing all the dirty math behind the scenes to really understand your class. Honestly, I don't even know where to start when it comes time to do so.

Do I check PTS notes ? Should I participate in PTS realm ? How do I get to the nitty gritty stuff to start really maximizing.

jedtb16_ESO · January 2017

might help if you say what your class is......

Reignskream · January 2017

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

might help if you say what your class is......

This is for a generalization of all classes. Not just one class, otherwise I would have specified.

Mojmir · January 2017

Reignskream wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

might help if you say what your class is......

This is for a generalization of all classes. Not just one class, otherwise I would have specified.

You can't though, some classes have things other don't.
Resource management
Certain buffs
What situation? (Solo,,trials,vma)
Stamina or magicka?
Pve or pvp?
Too many variables

Reignskream · January 2017

Mojmir wrote: »

Reignskream wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

might help if you say what your class is......

This is for a generalization of all classes. Not just one class, otherwise I would have specified.

You can't though, some classes have things other don't.
Resource management
Certain buffs
What situation? (Solo,,trials,vma)
Stamina or magicka?
Pve or pvp?
Too many variables

I'm not talking about whether it's PVP or pve or class mechanics. I'm asking more on the fact of what do people do behind the scenes with these classes to maximize them. All classes have math that need to be done behind the scenes to calculate certain builds. How does one get started in so. Any examples ?

Syrani · January 2017

I think the OP is asking where to find that information, regardless of class. I don't think he is asking how to maximize "his" class, he wants to know how you go about finding that kind of information in general, so he can start doing the math for each class he picks.

Mojmir · January 2017

Reignskream wrote: »

Mojmir wrote: »

Reignskream wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

might help if you say what your class is......

This is for a generalization of all classes. Not just one class, otherwise I would have specified.

You can't though, some classes have things other don't.
Resource management
Certain buffs
What situation? (Solo,,trials,vma)
Stamina or magicka?
Pve or pvp?
Too many variables

I'm not talking about whether it's PVP or pve or class mechanics. I'm asking more on the fact of what do people do behind the scenes with these classes to maximize them. All classes have math that need to be done behind the scenes to calculate certain builds. How does one get started in so. Any examples ?

This guy would know, @Asayre

Reignskream · January 2017

Mojmir wrote: »

Reignskream wrote: »

Mojmir wrote: »

Reignskream wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

might help if you say what your class is......

This is for a generalization of all classes. Not just one class, otherwise I would have specified.

You can't though, some classes have things other don't.
Resource management
Certain buffs
What situation? (Solo,,trials,vma)
Stamina or magicka?
Pve or pvp?
Too many variables

I'm not talking about whether it's PVP or pve or class mechanics. I'm asking more on the fact of what do people do behind the scenes with these classes to maximize them. All classes have math that need to be done behind the scenes to calculate certain builds. How does one get started in so. Any examples ?

This guy would know, @Asayre

Thank you

Asayre · January 2017

There are several things you will want to look at to optimise DPS. I'll give my process from a magicka PvE DPS situation with no regard to resource recovery. There are some basic equations that you may need to know. They can be found here.

Gear
Generally you calculate the expected max magicka, spell damage, spell critical, spell critical modifier and penetration then combine it all together into something called the ability metric

You can do this by creating your own spreadsheets or use the UESP Build Ediot. The latter is helpful as it provides a lot of formulas as well. Note that the UESP Build Editor calls the ability metric the effective spell power.

Once you finish calculating all gear sets you can think of you pick the one with the highest ability metric. For sets with unusual 5 piece bonuses like Silks of the Sun, Moondancer, Burning Spellweave and most monster helms there are two general approaches. The first is to use the average behaviour. For instance, with Silks of the Sun, you could look at your average fire damage contribution, we'll assume 80% here then that means it contributes 320 (400*0.8) spell damage on average making it better than the 5 piece bonus of Julianos (299 spell damage). For Burning Spellweave, you can use CombatMetrics and observe your uptime over the course of several fights. Let's say you found out the uptime is 50% then the average spell damage from Burning Spellweave is 300, similar to Julianos. For monster sets, you can estimate your attacks per second to make a guess of the DPS contribution of each monster set. As an example you can view an old example showing how to calculate the https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/253974/molag-kena-and-nerien-eth. The other option is to use a combat simulator to simulate the theoretical DPS of different sets.

For a more accurate metric you can combine use an average of ability metric and weapon metric where 40 instead of 10.5 is used in the weapon metric. There are some dangers in this method but as long as you assume a constant weapon to ability ratio it should be fine.

Mundus
From the basic equations of ESO you should be able to demonstrate that the Thief is usually the optimal mundus. It is straightforward to show that this is the case as long as

If the inequality is not true, the Shadow is better.

Armour Trait
Again reasonably straightforward to show that Divines is the best trait.

Weapon Trait
Depending on the amount of boss resistance left after all other debuffs you have the choice of Sharpened or Precise. Generally, Sharpened is the best choice. Old calculations that are mostly still valid can be found here.

Champion Point
For magicka damage dealers, there are five signs of interest: Elemental Expert, Thaumathurge, Spell Erosion, Elfborn and Staff Expert. Essentially, we wish to find the maximum of

My approach to find the maximum is to begin with 0 champion points allocated and evaluate the function for an increase of 1 point in each star. The allocation corresponding to the highest function is then used as the next starting point. A webpage with the solver implemented can be found here . If you encounter problems, there is a ‘Help’ tab. Also @Jeckll has a comprehensive guide on how to use the calculator for stamina characters.

In practice, most magicka classes allocate 100 points in Elemental Expert and (practically) 0 in Staff Expert. Thus we only actually need to consider how to allocate 100 points between Thaumathurge, Spell Erosion and Elfborn. The ternary contour diagram below shows the function evaluation for all possible combinations as the sum of CP anywhere within the triangle is 100. The function is reasonably flat near the maximum. It varies by around 2% within 20 points of the maximum.

Rotation
You generally choose skills with higher coefficients. List of all coefficients can be found at UESP Skill Browser. Since there is a limited number of skills you can slot and therefore you can calculate the total coefficients for a given time period. As a simple example consider a situation where you are trying to decide between casting Elemental Blockade and Force Pulse or Unstable Wall of Elements and Force Pulse. We'll assume that each ability takes 1s to cast.
(1) 1 cast of Elemental Blockade and 7 cast of Force Pulse over 8 seconds
coefficient Elemental Blockade : 0.225 ( 9*0.025, 9 ticks in 8 seconds )
coefficient for Force Pulse : 0.09 ( 3* 0.03)
Average coefficient : 0.107

(2) 1 cast of Unstable Wall of Elements and 5 cast of Force Pulse over 6 seconds
coefficient Unstable Wall of Elements : 0.215 ( 7*0.025, 7 ticks in 6 seconds plus explosion 0.04 )
coefficient for Force Pulse : 0.45 ( 3* 0.03 * 5 cast)
Average coefficient : 0.111

Of course, in practical terms you need to consider is the ~3.7% increase coefficient worth the hassle of using Unstable Wall of Elements, namely that you can only cast it after the explosion and whether it syncs in well with other things you would like to cast. As an aside, I only used the magicka coefficient as for most abilities the spell damage coefficient is 10.5 times that of the magicka coefficient.

The other option here is just to simulate it.

Other
Sometimes certain classes behave differently so this one is on a case to case basis. For example due to the mechanics of damage calculation of damage done Minor Slayer is not always that great on magicka nightblades. Or when to use Radiant Oppression requires different calculations.

The general idea is to work out how damage is calculated and then it should be clear which parameters should be averaged to get the optimal damage.