Homestead Ranged Sorc Build

Miss_Morphine

So after much testing on PTS and live, this is what I have come up with for the best possible setup.
For All Setups Run 5/1/1, I simply do not have a med or heavy Illambris shoulder.
Potions: Essence of Spellpower(Increase spellpower, increase spell critical, restore magicka)

Boss Fights



Boss Fights Where You Cannot Use Pets(Specifically Zhaj’hassa and the Twins)



Aoe Fights of 3+ Targets(Gauntlets)
or
If you do not want to switch gear between fights


Rotation Single Target: Heavy attack - Destro Ult - Blockade - Liquid Lightning - Bar Swap - Curse - Volatile Familiar - Force Pulse until Frag proc - Frag Proc...
Once Blockade runs out bar swap, Blockade - Liquid lightning - Bar Swap
Every ult after first use Meteor.
Keep your dots up and treat the familiar as a dot. Let both curse and familiar run all the way out before recasting. Cast familiar on the front bar, always.
Light attack weave If you struggle with weaving do not use Burning Spellweave, use setup #3.

AOE Fights: Curse - Bar Swap - Blockade - Liquid Lightning - Volatile Familiar - Heavy Attack
Destro Ults when ult is up. Keep the four aforementioned dots up just like in the single target rotation, light weaving when applicable.
We don't use BSW because we are doing virtually no fire damage, so the uptime on BSW would be pretty much 0.

My parse completely self buffed other than Ele Drain and Worm:

Spoiler

Trial Parses Coming Soon.

I tested double barring inferno and in purely single target situations it worked out better on the PTS but worse on Live. Not quite sure what to think about that.

Instead of Moondancer you can use Infallible Aether.

Helpful Addons:
For Keeping Up Your Dots(At least until Srendarr is fixed): Action Duration Reminder http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1536-ActionDurationReminder.html
For Quickly Swapping Setups: AlphaGear Lives http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1534-AlphaGearLives.html


Credits:
For ideas: @Oreyn_Bearclaw @Yirmeyahu @Lanranax
For using the familiar again Yolo Wizard and his build found here: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/2-3-the-yolo-wizard-v2-non-overload-pve-dps-build-vet-mol-approved/
For ele drain/worm and such: @Zomnomnombie @Jaylee @Sazza_s

Horowonnoe

dpencil

In terms of duration, Curse (12), LL (10), Blockade and Familiar (8), should determine the order in which they are cast. Not sure why you have Blockade before LL and Curse in your rotation.

Miss_Morphine

dpencil wrote: »

In terms of duration, Curse (12), LL (10), Blockade and Familiar (8), should determine the order in which they are cast. Not sure why you have Blockade before LL and Curse in your rotation.

For the beginning of the fight - sure, but in the end I want to keep blockade up constantly both for off balance and vMA buff to weaves, so I'm going to cast it before LL runs out and cut off LL or have an extra bar swap which works out worse. Curse and familiar end up being recast when they run out so they don't really fit a circular rotation anyway.

Minute_Waltz

What's your unbuffed parse (ele drain only) without pets on a skeleton with your rotation?

Horowonnoe

Minute_Waltz wrote: »

What's your unbuffed parse (ele drain only) without pets on a skeleton with your rotation?

She posted it. Pets are part of the build. Ele only.

Beardimus

Love that screenshot, everything on one screen. Is that vanilla PC or an Add on.

Wish we had that for Console if vanilla

Xerton

Don't take it personally but there are a few flaws in your build.
For example: Inferno Front makes no sense with this build, as most your skills are AoE and for the 8% bonus the active bar counts, not the bar a skill was casted on.
So you should go lightning front and inferno back bar.
This would also increase your BSW uptime (y i know you don't get inferno weaves, but trust me).

Next thing is, that you should not play with BSW in the first place. Necropotence is way more effective.
Pets only scale with magicka and you other skills don't care.
1 Spell dmg = 10.5 magicka.
So Necropotence gives you: 710 spell dmg (not real spell dmg, but you know what i mean)

And BSW with your uptime (let's say it is even 60%) only 586. Ofc you also lose 3% crit chance but that does not rly matter.

Next thing is: With inferno back bar your destruction staff ultimate deals way more dmg as it gets the fire buff + lightning AoE buff on front bar.
The only 2 skills that count as single Target and currently get your inferno damage boost are frags and force pulse.

Don't have parses atm as i am in office and my combat metrics currently bugs and does not let me save fights, so you just have to trust me:
On vMoL first Boss i had 60k and until i have to run into the backyard i have between 58-62k on Rakkhat HM.

Oh and as you said you can't use Pets on vMoL first boss: After each door you have to re summon your pets or they will bug.
On the twins you can use them to, you have to set a keybinding to tell them which enemy to attack.
But i agree with you, that it is better to change and go BSW without pets, as they tend to die in negates.
If you are lucky and they survive your dmg will be much higher, but it just is not reliable.

Miss_Morphine

Xerton wrote: »

Don't take it personally but there are a few flaws in your build.
For example: Inferno Front makes no sense with this build, as most your skills are AoE and for the 8% bonus the active bar counts, not the bar a skill was casted on.
So you should go lightning front and inferno back bar.
This would also increase your BSW uptime (y i know you don't get inferno weaves, but trust me).

Next thing is, that you should not play with BSW in the first place. Necropotence is way more effective.
Pets only scale with magicka and you other skills don't care.
1 Spell dmg = 10.5 magicka.
So Necropotence gives you: 710 spell dmg (not real spell dmg, but you know what i mean)

And BSW with your uptime (let's say it is even 60%) only 586. Ofc you also lose 3% crit chance but that does not rly matter.

Next thing is: With inferno back bar your destruction staff ultimate deals way more dmg as it gets the fire buff + lightning AoE buff on front bar.
The only 2 skills that count as single Target and currently get your inferno damage boost are frags and force pulse.

Don't have parses atm as i am in office and my combat metrics currently bugs and does not let me save fights, so you just have to trust me:
On vMoL first Boss i had 60k and until i have to run into the backyard i have between 58-62k on Rakkhat HM.

Oh and as you said you can't use Pets on vMoL first boss: After each door you have to re summon your pets or they will bug.
On the twins you can use them to, you have to set a keybinding to tell them which enemy to attack.
But i agree with you, that it is better to change and go BSW without pets, as they tend to die in negates.
If you are lucky and they survive your dmg will be much higher, but it just is not reliable.

Not taking anything personally, especially since on paper I thought all of the same things.
One of the first things I thought was lightning frontbar, inferno backbar, necropotence.
Then I tested, I tested necropotence, I tested every combination of frotbar and backbar, I even tested Mother's Sorrow, TBS, Infalliable v Moondancer. I tested with one dummy and with 3 to see what happens with adds. Multiple trials with everything.
Note that I tested the inferno backbars with another person giving me lightning blockade.

If I were to just theorycraft without testing I would have come to the same exact conclusion as you, but in practice I parse higher with what I posted. Noticeably and consistently higher. The stars haven't yet aligned for me to get clean parses in trials but I have been doing better even when everything goes south. Like 55k on Rakkhat, 47k while running meteors - all of that without being able to do a clean execute phase. And I'm probably not as good a player, so I wonder what someone like you would pull with this setup.
And I'm aware of the pet command, thought I wasn't aware of the resummon bug. It's that pets die in pillar explosion and negate that gets me to downvote them for that fight.
@Xerton

Minute_Waltz wrote: »

What's your unbuffed parse (ele drain only) without pets on a skeleton with your rotation?

Haven't saved one to post, but I will once I do.

Beardimus wrote: »

Love that screenshot, everything on one screen. Is that vanilla PC or an Add on.

Wish we had that for Console if vanilla

It's the addon Superstar

Lynx7386

Out of curiosity, what's making your eyes glow purple?

Masel

BSW everywhere

Good build, even though I hope someone is able to come up with something new that is further away from the old meta (2 Illambris, 5 BSW and 4 Aether/Moondancer and a vMA staff) and still worth running (thus not sacrificing too much DPS)


@Lynx7386 Bound aegis does that

Ghost-Shot

Beardimus wrote: »

Love that screenshot, everything on one screen. Is that vanilla PC or an Add on.

Wish we had that for Console if vanilla

It's an add on, very useful.

WarpigFunk

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, what's making your eyes glow purple?

Bound Aegis probably. Sorc skill giving bonus to mag and some damage shielding. When active your eyes glow purple and you have a purple mist emanating from your body.

Lynx7386

Yea I've used bound armaments but not the other morph, guess I never noticed it

Miss_Morphine

Yeah, it's Bound Aegis.

Xerton

@Miss_Morphine so i tried around yesterday and i still deal more dmg with necropotence and lightning front.
One thing you have to have in mind is, that the necropotence setup benefits more from warhorn as it has a way higher max magicka pool in the first place.

So even if you should have slightly lower dps on your skeleton, in a raid with warhorn things look a lot different.

Oh and: Even with lightning front i still got a 60% uptime of BSW. So if you want to stick to BSW there is no real reason not to swap. (in case you have lightning moondancer and inferno maelstrom).

Croblasta

Xerton wrote: »

@Miss_Morphine so i tried around yesterday and i still deal more dmg with necropotence and lightning front.
One thing you have to have in mind is, that the necropotence setup benefits more from warhorn as it has a way higher max magicka pool in the first place.

So even if you should have slightly lower dps on your skeleton, in a raid with warhorn things look a lot different.

Oh and: Even with lightning front i still got a 60% uptime of BSW. So if you want to stick to BSW there is no real reason not to swap. (in case you have lightning moondancer and inferno maelstrom).

What were you doing to keep BSW at 60% with lightning staff front?

Miss_Morphine

Croblasta wrote: »

show previous quotes

Xerton wrote: »

@Miss_Morphine so i tried around yesterday and i still deal more dmg with necropotence and lightning front.
One thing you have to have in mind is, that the necropotence setup benefits more from warhorn as it has a way higher max magicka pool in the first place.

So even if you should have slightly lower dps on your skeleton, in a raid with warhorn things look a lot different.

Oh and: Even with lightning front i still got a 60% uptime of BSW. So if you want to stick to BSW there is no real reason not to swap. (in case you have lightning moondancer and inferno maelstrom).

What were you doing to keep BSW at 60% with lightning staff front?

Wall of elements and force pulse destro ult/meteor.

Morvane

I just wanna ask why Buond Agis >>>>> Inner Light? Does 8% mana from it better than 7% mana and 2k+ crit from lantern?

Xerton

@Morvane if you really want to do dmg you have to use potions, not the dropped ones, but those you actually craft yourself.
They give you 20% spell dmg and crit.
All you get from Inner Light would be 7% max magicka.
Bound aegis on the other hand gives you 8% max magicka AND 2% spell dmg via the sorc passive

---

@Croblasta as mentioned above, the wall of elements and force pulse are more than enough to keep up BSW

Morvane

Xerton wrote: »

@Morvane if you really want to do dmg you have to use potions, not the dropped ones, but those you actually craft yourself.
They give you 20% spell dmg and crit.
All you get from Inner Light would be 7% max magicka.
Bound aegis on the other hand gives you 8% max magicka AND 2% spell dmg via the sorc passive

---

@Croblasta as mentioned above, the wall of elements and force pulse are more than enough to keep up BSW

@Xerton really I didnt count ur spellcrit potions. thats true.
so, second question. how u keep uptime of bsw with lightning WoE? Oo

and 3d. I have old set gear. 5 gold julianos, 2 Ilambris (and any other Msets), 3 willpower 2 crap staves.
im 600 cp sorc, returned in-game with Homestead. what is better option for gearing for me now?
I think its 5 Juli, 5 BSW and 1 kena or 2 maelstorms (but I have only Frost sharpened ).
or I can still use old setup and just need change champion points like u?

Xerton

@Morvane i don't use lightning WoE, i have a lightning front and an inferno back bar.

I would not use a frost staff, the risk of pulling the boss is not worth it, as the dmg gain from maelstrom weapon isn't that huge at all in the first place.
I did not test it, nor did i do the math, but i believe 5x Julianos + 5x BSW with 2 random staffs could be stronger than 5x BSW + willpower + ilambris.
But only if you play the rotation perfectly. Because ilambris proccs anyway no matter how bad your rotation is, so it gives you a fixed dps.
In order to outperform that you would need to utilize your extra spell dmg from BSW perfectly.

Best would be if you would use BSW weapons and slot one Kena piece.

But yes, you could just stick to your old setup.

Morvane

@Xerton so I have 5 gold Juli (include 2 staffs), 5bsw (3 jewel + 2 divines), 1 kena gold divines.
does this setup will be much better than old 5 juli, 3 wp, 2 ilMBRIS, 2 crap staves? Seems so, but I need ur qualified opinion for saving my pocket from collapsing

And if I understood u correctly, vMSA is BiS, but not must have wep cause difference isn't very big?

Xerton

@Morvane i did not test it, so i can't give a definitive answer to that. If you have that gear already -> go ahead use it and test it. Otherwise just stick with your old gear.

And yes Maelstrom staff would be BiS, but other than with stam builds, they are not a must have

Xerton

@Miss_Morphine here is the math behind necro vs BSW:
First fo all one has to know, that 10.5 magicka gives your skills the same dmg increase as 1 spell dmg. Except for pets, they only scale with max magicka.

So in order to compare the dmg output with different spell power and max magicka values we have to use the following formula:

(spell dmg A + max magicka a / 10.5) / (spell dmg b + max magicka b / 10.5)

The result shows us the dmg of setting a compared to setting b, where a value bigger than 1 means higher dmg and a value below means less dmg.

With necropotence my average stats are: 2808 spell dmg and 50150 max magicka
With BSW: 3500 spell dmg and 42662 max magicka

-> (2808 + 50150 / 10.5) / (3500 + 42662 / 10.5) = 1.00279555

So the dmg of your abilities will be 0.28% higher on average (the max dmg a skill can hit will be higher with BSW, as they hit harder when ever BSW is active)

So that sounds like it would not make a difference, but actually it does, because your pet does not benefit at all from spell dmg and thus deals way more dmg with necropotence as only max magicka matters.

And there are two more reasons to war necropotence: Bigger dmg shields and as the orbs from the undaunted skill tree return a percantage of your max magicka, it makes your sustain a little bit easier. Having a bigger ressource pool in the first place obviously helps a lot too

Edit: And i forgot warhorn. With horn active you deal 1.16% more dmg

Morvane

@Xerton
so I just follow ur advice and guides in links.
now I have simple setup - 5 gold juli 5 gold bsw 1 gold kena. I use rotation from guides in links. My dps in vet dungeons grove up very very significantly. I use 2 inferno staves both wep damage enchants

for PvP I just change BSW to Lich jewelry and 2 impen pieces, left gold Julianos as well and its also awesome and very easy to use (except I cant use monster sets now but I dont care of this.

thanks a lot for ur answers and @Miss_Morphine for this topic

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Xerton wrote: »

@Miss_Morphine here is the math behind necro vs BSW:
First fo all one has to know, that 10.5 magicka gives your skills the same dmg increase as 1 spell dmg. Except for pets, they only scale with max magicka.

So in order to compare the dmg output with different spell power and max magicka values we have to use the following formula:

(spell dmg A + max magicka a / 10.5) / (spell dmg b + max magicka b / 10.5)

The result shows us the dmg of setting a compared to setting b, where a value bigger than 1 means higher dmg and a value below means less dmg.

With necropotence my average stats are: 2808 spell dmg and 50150 max magicka
With BSW: 3500 spell dmg and 42662 max magicka

-> (2808 + 50150 / 10.5) / (3500 + 42662 / 10.5) = 1.00279555

So the dmg of your abilities will be 0.28% higher on average (the max dmg a skill can hit will be higher with BSW, as they hit harder when ever BSW is active)

So that sounds like it would not make a difference, but actually it does, because your pet does not benefit at all from spell dmg and thus deals way more dmg with necropotence as only max magicka matters.

And there are two more reasons to war necropotence: Bigger dmg shields and as the orbs from the undaunted skill tree return a percantage of your max magicka, it makes your sustain a little bit easier. Having a bigger ressource pool in the first place obviously helps a lot too

Edit: And i forgot warhorn. With horn active you deal 1.16% more dmg

Ha, I was about to comment and then saw the edit. I just got a necro set and need to do some more testing. The one thing that jumps off the page at me is that necro seems like it would scale much better with warhorn.

Another thing to perhaps consider is the inherent RNG associated with any proc based set. I would also thing that necro would give you a lower standard deviation on your parses.

Izaki

So in which fights is it possible to actually use the pets?
Sanctum:
Mantikora: scamp can't block so you get a huge bleed on everyone with 4 sorcs.
Stonebreaker: all good.
Ozara: wasn't targeting the boss at all, just ran offsomewhere.
Serpent HM: scamp gets rekt by the Meteor.

Hel Ra:
First boss: gets rekt at 30%.
Second boss: up top gets rekt by impulse, down below targets the welwas
Warrior: gets rekt by literally everything (shield, cleave, rain things)

AA:
Storm Atro: gets rekt by the lightning cause he stays on boss
Stone Atro: have to shield him up very often (too often)
Valariel: all good.
Mage HM: spreads chain lightning, stands in the void, gets rekt by everything actually.

vMol:
The Forgotten: doesn't know what pillars are.
Twins: targets anything, runs off
Rakkhat: all good. (Unless he steals pad?)

On console its basically impossible to make them work because you can't target anything...