Why Moondancer?

g0dlik3buthumbl3

Why is moondancer preferable to infallible aether? I would have thought the spell crit bonus would be worth more damage than the magicka increase, no?

Tempah

They both work great. But I prefer max magicka over extra crit. there is a small diference between the two but it isn't massive. and moondancer staff looks cooler imo

Eweroun

Much people prefer it due to the proc (can give more sustain or more spell damage). That's a nice thing to have offcourse. Downside is that if you cannot slot it on front bar, you'll need to master your rotation into perfection.

Tempah wrote: »

They both work great. But I prefer max magicka over extra crit. there is a small diference between the two but it isn't massive. and moondancer staff looks cooler imo

I don't know if that staff is handy to wear. All those moons on top could be pretty heavy. Looks like you'll need a lot of muscle excercises

g0dlik3buthumbl3

What I mean though is that moondancer seems to have replaced infallible aether in everyone's BiS builds, indicating it pulls more DPS. I would have thought infallible aether would best BiS due to the crit bonus. Is the magicka increase worth more damage than the crit or something?

Eweroun

g0dlik3buthumbl3 wrote: »

What I mean though is that moondancer seems to have replaced infallible aether in everyone's BiS builds, indicating it pulls more DPS. I would have thought infallible aether would best BiS due to the crit bonus. Is the magicka increase worth more damage than the crit or something?

It's BiS if you can manage the proc. But I run like 2 infallible swords on my templar and get 52K DPS on first boss of vMoL. Maybe I could add another 3-4K with moondancer.

Merlin13KAGL

IA = ~ +1.5% dmg (+3% chance at +50% damage)

MD = ~4.8% dmg (if you're already around 2k Spell Damage) (967 Magicka = 96 effective spell damage)

You'd have to be sitting at ~6400 spell damage or more for IA to be better.

This is massively simplified, but you get the idea - plus with MD, you get a slightly larger Magicka pool.

f047ys3v3n

Magica > Crit. It's just a magnitude thing. The magnitude of a crit bonus in a set piece was once good back in 1.5 when crit generated ulti and was 4% per buff but it was hit with a monster nerf in 1.6 when they inexplicably wanted to wreck the Infalible Aether set and hit it with the mother of all tripple nerfs (reduction of 20% in magnitude, no ulti gen, cap removal on everything else made other set bonuses better). Overnight the BIS gear went from Endgame VSO Infallible Aether raid gear to a green set piece that only dropped top level from Cyridiil delves, martial knowledge. The irony was they were actually the same motif as martial knowledge was the trash drop set in Craiglorn that now was made BIS out of ZOS stupidity.

Hmm, back then they wrecked endgame raid gear for no reason not long after most raiders acquired it. Now they break vMA staves (a month ago now) by only allowing only one person in raid to have the crushing wall bonus not long after many people acquire them in the Wrothgar event. They say nothing about the break, ignore all requests to fix or address this, and pretend, like they do with cheat engine, that it doesn't matter and nobody is lit and quitting over it. Are you noticing a trend? Seems they break all the rewards not long after raiders acquire them.

Hey, I get that ZOS doesn't give a rats ass about raiders but could you at least just leave us alone and not break our ***.

Wow, that was a bunny trail. Bottom line, there are historical reasons why crit set bonuses on gear are rather weak even in PVE. They have, of course, always been of low value in PVP (why they are on PVE endgame raid gear though that didn't stop ignorant forum causal PVP players from complain about being wrecked by the OP raid sets that we weren't even wearing in PVP.) Those historical reasons basically boil down to ZOS treats endgame raiders very dishonestly and disrespectfully and likes to take their shinys away.

s7732425ub17_ESO

I believe the question you are asking is why 3 MD versus 3 IA.

Since the nerf of crit damage with the last patch, it has been calculated that the max magicka bonus gives slightly more damage than the crit chance bonus. But the difference is soooooooooo small, that it really doesn't make a difference. If you have 3 IA, use it. If you have 3 MD, use it. Doesn't really matter at all.

g0dlik3buthumbl3

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

I believe the question you are asking is why 3 MD versus 3 IA.

Since the nerf of crit damage with the last patch, it has been calculated that the max magicka bonus gives slightly more damage than the crit chance bonus. But the difference is soooooooooo small, that it really doesn't make a difference. If you have 3 IA, use it. If you have 3 MD, use it. Doesn't really matter at all.

What I was asking in a nutshell. Thanks.

Autolycus

g0dlik3buthumbl3 wrote: »

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

I believe the question you are asking is why 3 MD versus 3 IA.

Since the nerf of crit damage with the last patch, it has been calculated that the max magicka bonus gives slightly more damage than the crit chance bonus. But the difference is soooooooooo small, that it really doesn't make a difference. If you have 3 IA, use it. If you have 3 MD, use it. Doesn't really matter at all.

What I was asking in a nutshell. Thanks.

The difference is quite small as mentioned already, but to supplement this idea, I'd also note that the crit makes more of a difference for some classes than others. A magicka Sorc, for example, has pets and shields that scale only with magicka, thus the case for MD is stronger. A magblade or magplar has inherent crit damage passives, however, and thus the crit works more in their favor. Bottom line, though, the difference is quite small in either case, and MD is exceedingly difficult to obtain compared to IA.

code65536

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

IA = ~ +1.5% dmg (+3% chance at +50% damage)

MD = ~4.8% dmg (if you're already around 2k Spell Damage) (967 Magicka = 96 effective spell damage)

You'd have to be sitting at ~6400 spell damage or more for IA to be better.

This is massively simplified, but you get the idea - plus with MD, you get a slightly larger Magicka pool.

That's the general idea, but your numbers are off.

The damage increase from crit chance depends on your CHD. Most people have a CHD higher than 0.5. 1.5% extra damage is the bare minimum for people with absolutely no CHD bonuses, but once you factor in things like Elfborn, NB/Templar passives, Trap, and War Horns, IA will be higher than 1.5%--more like 2+%.

MD's increase is also much less than 4.8%. You need to be looking at your effective pool. Let's say someone is at 2300 SD and 43K magicka; their SD+magicka is equivalent to 67K. The amount of magicka added by that 967 max magicka is amped by various passives and the amount of spent CP points; for simplicity of this back-of-the-envelopment math, let's say that MD adds roughly 1.5K after amps. Now you're looking at 2.2% from MD.

So as you can see, IA and MD add roughly the same amount of DPS. Last patch, IA was slightly better than MD. But this patch, the balance has shifted and now MD is slightly better than IA. The reasons for this shift are:

1. Proc sets can no longer crit.
2. Minor Force was nerfed from 0.12 CHD to 0.1 CHD.
3. Major Force (War Horn) was changed from multiplicative to additive, which was a massive nerf. It used to range anywhere from 0.15 to 0.3 CHD, but is now only 0.15 CHD.
4. Many people are now running 75 points in Thaumaturge for the Exploiter passive, which takes points out of Elfborn, further reducing CHD.
5. Many sorcs are now using pets, which scale off of max magicka.

If you're looking at just the 3p or 4p, there's not that much reason to go and farm MD to replace your IA; unless you're a pet sorc, we're looking at differences of less than 1%.

g0dlik3buthumbl3

With that rationale, is a stamina enchant now more desirable than a crit, or at 32/34k stamina will the crit still be a higher increase in dps?

WuffyCerulei

For the full 5 piece set, Moondancer gives more oomph, but for 3 or 4 pieces, there isn't a huge difference compared to Infallible Aether. Both give Minor Slayer at 3 pieces.