20k DPS Target Skeleton

Dekeon

Joined a new guild that requires folks to have 20k DPS on the target skeleton to play trials in vet.. I play a magic sorcerer so I thought it be ok. Well I couldn't do more than 17k with netch touch and juiliano staff..will power jewelry.I have 2 gold staves and divines on everything. 2334 spell dmg unbuffed. I was told that I needed gold weapons/items. Spent all my money on gold staff and I made 3 pieces of armor gold. It added 1k DPS. most in the guild couldn't get to 20k either. Very frustrated. i had a great time in the game leveling but end game for me sucks. I know I'll get comments that I suck..yada yada yada. But that's ok. Looking for any advice to help. One person said in zone chat that they felt that netchs touch wasnt very good.

Turelus

It's probably just your rotation and if you're adding a light attack weave.

Light Attack Wave is a simple one to explain, it's basically a part of the larger animation cancelling mechanic.
You do a light attack, before the full animation has played you press you skill, this cuts the attack animation and let's you fire your skill, do this with every skill effectively adding the light attack damage onto every skill you use.

As for the skill rotations and what buffs builds to use I would say check guides on AlcastHQ, Tamriel Foundry and other sites which dedicated to end game builds and mechanics. You can also find videos and guides on most on how to animation cancel and how that will bring your DPS us.

Links to AlcastHQ and Tamriel Foundry can be found in my signature for quick access, otherwise head to Google and just start searching, check dates of builds and guides as some may be outdated.

Toomdad

Like @Turelus said. Just go to alcasthq and look up his trial build. Just set everything up as he lists with whatever set option you can get, or the closest. Do the rotation he does in his video and do some practicing.

I also am in a guild with the same requirements and was stuck between 15 and 17k. After doing this and messing up the rotation a bit I hit 22k. Once I got used to it and made a couple tweaks for my play style I got up to and tested at 26k. I still have plenty of equipment upgrades to get and better execution of the rotation but I'm certainly in my way now.

Do not discount the animation canceling, committing to that probably was a pretty big part of my initial jump.

Good luck, you can certainly do it.

Jim_Pipp

I'm starting to think that gear sets are far less important than the right rotation - gear/race etc matters, but I've seen two players with identical builds get 17kdps and 25kdps against a target skeleton.

The player with the higher dps was light attack weaving and refreshing his dot's as they expired rather than recasting them when they had a few seconds left.

Against a target skeleton you won't need your defensive abilities (e.g. damage shields). Drop them from your bar to make room for more dot's or things that will buff your spell damage, crit, crit damage or sustain. Once you have the dps you want start thinking how you can rebuild your character to keep it.

Anyway, I a bit confused about your gear. If you have 5 pc netches touch then I assume you have some monster sets? They could be better than willpower or the few pieces of julianos.

If you have a high max magica then you would possibly get nearly 3k dps just from using the scamp and keeping the aoe active. If you have the scamp then use the necropotence set because the +4000 magic is almost equivalent to +400 spell damage to all abilities instead of just shock.

Finally, good luck. I know how disheartening it is to take a seemingly good build against a target skeleton only to see a dissapointing number 6 minutes later.

Turelus

Gear and sets do matter, but player skill is far more important I feel.

For example myself and a friend both play the same class, race and build. Our gear when the same he could still get 5-10k more DPS than me because he's got a natural talent for fast rotations and animation cancelling, I suck at both of those.

theamazingx

What is your rotation? Practice makes perfect, but not until you know what to practice.

Also, don't waste money golding armor just yet - for weapons it's significant, but armor can be left purple for now with little impact.

FlyLionel

If you could post a video it would help you a lot.

UrbanMonk

From my personal testing of a lot of set combos, I can say that ATM for mag sorcs, Netch is working out better if not great than other sets i.e. TBS, Necro, Spider cultist etc. Combine this with 3Aether/ Moondancer jwelery and 2 Ilambris should set you up good. I'm assumign that you don't have vMA staves so, you might have to play around the gear for best possible combos. At alcast site you can definitely get options for that.

Apart from gear as many said, Skill and rotation is very important. Let me give u an example, I was doing 28k DPS with my certain skill sets and rotation, and then i introduced Curse (pet one) in my rotation and immediately i saw a increase of 2-2.5k avg in my dps.

SO i'd recommend that you try to work on your rotation and skills alongwith optimal CP allocation and 20k DPS is nothing.

Best of luck.

Juhasow

You can do 20k on skeleton even with non set items. All what matters is rotation and right CP's distribution.

kylewwefan

Are you using one lightning one fire? Or 2 lightning? You might have hard time getting there with a desto/resto combo.

Are your staff skill lines all leveled up and points in?

Are you using ultimate? Many tests open up with destro ult.

75 point in thaumaturge for 10% off balance damage extra?

Spell damage on jewelry ? I accidentally put physical damage ones on before. Oops!

Inner light for Crit. Thief mundus.

Practice weaving your spammable. Crushing shock or force pulse weaved with "medium" or light attack.

Elemental drain is a must for DPS testing. Whether you apply it yourself or have someone else do it.

You can take innerlight and power surge off by using pots.



I've done many Vet trials and my DPS is nothing spectacular. You're right close to 20K and that is honestly enough. Also, if you don't have mages guild leveled up, it's a good idea and something to do.

seedubsrun

I have a pet build I use a monster set with and a Netch build I don't and get pretty solid DPS on a test dummy with both without having the very BiS gear. I'm not the greatest with my rotation yet but I can consistently get around 29k with both setups. When I first did a test I got around 18k-20k usually so practice with the rotation is absolutely key.

The next most important part of setting up a good test is preparing your build to recreate trial buffs as accurately as possible. When doing a test solo that usually means: Having an ultimate ready to go at the start and elemental drain equipped. If you have any friends that can apply ele drain for you it makes practicing your rotation a lot easier. If you have the CP, put 75 into Thaumaturge and use lightning staves on both bars. This will replicate a healer applying off balance for a group and give you a bonus to DPS.

Then, I'd focus on your skills. I run Inner Light and Power Surge when I'm just doing dungeons and solo stuff with my pet build and drop them for Bound Aegis when I do trials for more magic and therefore more damage. I use spell power/crit potions only for that stuff.

Here's the bars for my pet build as an example of something that's worked for me:

Bar 1: Sharpened crafted lightning
Bound Aegis
Destructive Clench
Familiar
Deadric Prey
Hardened Ward
Shooting Star

Bar 2: Maelstrom Lightning (I only have powered)
Bound Aegis
Mages Wrath
Familiar
Liquid Lightning
Elemental Blockade
Destro Ultimate

I start my rotation by drinking a potion and applying elemental drain then:
Destro ultimate> Liquid Lightning> LA (light attack)> Blockade> Bar swap
LA> Pet pulse> LA> Deadric Prey> LA> Heavy attack> Clench> LA> Bar Swap and repeat

I only use the destro ultimate to kick off the battle and will then use shooting star as it becomes available. I found that when it's usable I'll use Shooting Star in place of destructive clench and still be able to keep my rotation solid.

The goal is to have my two Dots, pet pulse, and prey up all the time. Start using mages wrath between 20% and 24% as long as you're sure you can get below 20% within 4 seconds of the first cast of it. Keep your dots down and weave Wrath and light attacks. When I'm down to 6%-8% I'll let the dots fall off and just finish.

For a Netch build use haunting curse instead of deadric prey. In place of the pet I'll either double bar Inner Light for more magicka and crit or use Boundless Storm for a bit more defense and decent AoE damage. I'm sure someone here can suggest something better though. Maybe @Oreyn_Bearclaw.

Like I said this is just one example and I'm not the best at it yet but it's a pretty simple rotation that's been quite effective

Waffennacht

I have horrid rotation, and I get 26k dps with: bum bum bum -
x2 ilambris/infernal guardian
x5 Necropotence (Lightning front bar)
x5 Clever Alchemist (Restoration staff back bar) - yeah that's right

Front bar:
Familiar, Prey, Blockade, H Ward, Frag - destro ult
Back bar:
Familiar, Power Surge, Combat Prayer, H Ward, LL - DboS

Sometimes I run those spell power potions in which case drop Surge, put Prey there and put innerlight main bar.

Resto Staff is for Prayer to heal and buff familiar

Purple staff

Oreyn_Bearclaw

The easiest way to pull 20k DPS on a target dummy is with a Heavy Attack sorc pet build. It can certainly be done with a non-pet build as well. Dont feel bad, almost nobody is pulling 20k out of the gates when they first get to end game. It can be very overwhelming.

First, lets start with gear. For your 5 piece: Necro vs. Netchs vs Julianos. Necro is best with a pet, Netchs is best without a pet (requires double lighting), Julianos is more than capable of pulling 20k plus with either. For Jewelry, Willpower is perfectly fine until you get trials jewelry. For weapons, ideally you want a trial staff (moondancer/aether) on your front bar, and a VMA staff on your back bar. Both sharp, both lighting (back bar fire is best in a good trial group, but for a dummy, double lighting is where its at). As I am guessing you dont have those, any sharp lighting staffs will work. Spell damage enchant on front bar, shock enchant on back.

Monster sets: this might be a small issue. You certainly dont need a monster set to pull 20k, but its basically free DPS of 2-3k. The right monster set might get you where you need to go on its own. ilambris is best, but grothdar or even skoria can work. Dont worry about traits too much on the monster set at first, the good ones will come with time. With either netch or necro, you will want one medium and one heavy for your head/shoulders, but it doesnt matter in the slightest as to which is which. Weight is more important than trait for your head/shoulders pieces, because you want to take advantage of undaunted passives

Since you already have gold netchs touch, no reason you cant go with that. With netches touch (and pretty much always on a dummy) you want to go double lighting staff. Make sure you put 75 pts into thaumaturge for the exploiter passive if you have the CP for it. If you are really low non CP, that might not be a viable option just yet. If you want the easier route, gets some Necro gear (a good sorc carries both), and then clench becomes volatile familar, and Haunting curse can become daedric prey.

Necro Bars:

Back: Bound Aegis, Liquid Lighting, Elemental Blockade, Volatile Familiar, Daedric prey, Shooting Star,
Front: Bound Aegis, Inner Light, Volatile Familiar, Mages Wrath, Shield, Elemental Rage*

*we front bar elemental rage for the destro passives. On a dummy, you can drop shield for elemental drain and swap your ultimates. Front bar shooting star is ideal or the max magic buff.

Netch Bars:

Back: Bound Aegis, Liquid Lighting, Elemental Blockade, Destructive clench, Haunting Curse, Shooting star
Front: Bound Aegis, Inner Light*, Ward (ele drain on a dummy), Mages Wrath, Boundless storm* (could be surge if you dont want to run potions), elemental rage.

*These are really a flex spot, but boundless storm is not bad with netches and helps with survival, and inner light will boost your magic for more DPS. It also boosts crit, but you should be running spell power potions if trying to get good parses. When I run netch, i usually drop boundless and inner light and run Force pulse and frags here, but the rule of 4s still applies (see below: 4 back bar skills, 4 front bar skills). You can also front bar clench so you can swap elemental rage to your back bar.

These are not meta DPS bars, but they are very easy to hit your goal. Your back bar has 4 DOTs and a toggle, your front bar is stacked with sorc skills to boost your spell damage.

Rotation: Sorcs are all about counting 4s, just like your favorite song. Cast your four back bar dots, swap, cast 4 skills on your front bar, swap, repeat. The catch, is that a heavy attack counts as 2 skills. So the simplest rotation looks like this: LL,Blockade, Clench/Pet, Curse/prey, swap, HA, HA, Swap, repeat. Where the skill comes in is trying to light weave these DOTs. The biggest mistake is hanging out on your front bar too long. The vast majority of your DPS comes from your back DOTs, so you need to cast them on cooldown.

On the non pet build, you should actually cast your curse every other rotation for max DPS. On a pet build, you would cast daedric prey every rotation. When you get to 20%, the only thing that changes is that your 2 heavy attacks become 4 mages wrath weaves (rule of 4s) but but make sure you still keep up the back bar DOTS.

This is a totally self buffed parse of the Heavy Attack pet build with Necro. You will notice that my light weave does about 3.3k DPS. So your weave is important but shouldnt be a deal breaker for hitting 20k.

seedubsrun

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

The easiest way to pull 20k DPS on a target dummy is with a Heavy Attack sorc pet build. It can certainly be done with a non-pet build as well. Dont feel bad, almost nobody is pulling 20k out of the gates when they first get to end game. It can be very overwhelming.

First, lets start with gear. For your 5 piece: Necro vs. Netchs vs Julianos. Necro is best with a pet, Netchs is best without a pet (requires double lighting), Julianos is more than capable of pulling 20k plus with either. For Jewelry, Willpower is perfectly fine until you get trials jewelry. For weapons, ideally you want a trial staff (moondancer/aether) on your front bar, and a VMA staff on your back bar. Both sharp, both lighting (back bar fire is best in a good trial group, but for a dummy, double lighting is where its at). As I am guessing you dont have those, any sharp lighting staffs will work. Spell damage enchant on front bar, shock enchant on back.

Monster sets: this might be a small issue. You certainly dont need a monster set to pull 20k, but its basically free DPS of 2-3k. The right monster set might get you where you need to go on its own. ilambris is best, but grothdar or even skoria can work. Dont worry about traits too much on the monster set at first, the good ones will come with time. With either netch or necro, you will want one medium and one heavy for your head/shoulders, but it doesnt matter in the slightest as to which is which. Weight is more important than trait for your head/shoulders pieces, because you want to take advantage of undaunted passives

Since you already have gold netchs touch, no reason you cant go with that. With netches touch (and pretty much always on a dummy) you want to go double lighting staff. Make sure you put 75 pts into thaumaturge for the exploiter passive if you have the CP for it. If you are really low non CP, that might not be a viable option just yet. If you want the easier route, gets some Necro gear (a good sorc carries both), and then clench becomes volatile familar, and Haunting curse can become daedric prey.

Necro Bars:

Back: Bound Aegis, Liquid Lighting, Elemental Blockade, Volatile Familiar, Daedric prey, Shooting Star,
Front: Bound Aegis, Inner Light, Volatile Familiar, Mages Wrath, Shield, Elemental Rage*

*we front bar elemental rage for the destro passives. On a dummy, you can drop shield for elemental drain and swap your ultimates. Front bar shooting star is ideal or the max magic buff.

Netch Bars:

Back: Bound Aegis, Liquid Lighting, Elemental Blockade, Destructive clench, Haunting Curse, Elemental Rage
Front: Bound Aegis, Inner Light*, Ward (ele drain on a dummy), Mages Wrath, Boundless storm* (could be surge if you dont want to run potions).

*These are really a flex spot, but boundless storm is not bad with netches and helps with survival, and inner light will boost your magic for more DPS. It also boosts crit, but you should be running spell power potions if trying to get good parses. When I run netch, i usually drop boundless and inner light and run Force pulse and frags here, but the rule of 4s still applies (see below: 4 back bar skills, 4 front bar skills)

These are not meta DPS bars, but they are very easy to hit your goal. Your back bar has 4 DOTs and a toggle, your front bar is stacked with sorc skills to boost your spell damage.

Rotation: Sorcs are all about counting 4s, just like your favorite song. Cast your four back bar dots, swap, cast 4 skills on your front bar, swap, repeat. The catch, is that a heavy attack counts as 2 skills. So the simplest rotation looks like this: LL,Blockade, Clench/Pet, Curse/prey, swap, HA, HA, Swap, repeat. Where the skill comes in is trying to light weave these DOTs. The biggest mistake is hanging out on your front bar too long. The vast majority of your DPS comes from your back DOTs, so you need to cast them on cooldown.

On the non pet build, you should actually cast your curse every other rotation for max DPS. On a pet build, you would cast daedric prey every rotation. When you get to 20%, the only thing that changes is that your 2 heavy attacks become 4 mages wrath weaves (rule of 4s) but but make sure you still keep up the back bar DOTS.

This is a totally self buffed parse of the Heavy Attack pet build with Necro. You will notice that my light weave does about 3.3k DPS. So your weave is important but shouldnt be a deal breaker for hitting 20k.

This is great info. I definitely need some tightening of my rotation and I think your examples are a great place to start for me. I don't get much time to play all in one chunk so running trials has been really difficult for me to get into but I've been making more of an effort lately. Trials is quite a bit different than running solo or two man vet dungeons like I'm more used to. I think I should easily be able to have really great trials DPS going forward. Now to just learn all the mechanics...

caperon

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

The easiest way to pull 20k DPS on a target dummy is with a Heavy Attack sorc pet build. ...

Generally i agree, only note than even with pet, netch is better than julianos. Pet doesn't scale with spell damage so with netch you only lose damage from daedric prey, all your other habilities are lighting damage unles you use daedric tomb. But in that case i would use necro instead of julianos, since necro bufs all your damage.

Sorc with double lighting, pet and no tomb Netch > julianos

FrancisCrawford

Some notes on gear:

• Ilambris and Grothdarr helms can both be bought from time to time from The Golden.
• If you don't yet have high Undaunted rank for Undaunted Mettle, 7 light is better for DPS than 5-1-1 or 6-1.
• If you have a monster set, your options for set-piece count are mainly 5/4/2 and 5/3/2/1, where the 2 is monster. If you don't have a 1-piece set for your staff (e.g. Maelstrom) and also don't have trials gear (hence no Minor Slayer 3-piece option), 5/4/2 and 5/3/2/1 are likely to be very close, assuming the 3 is Willpower, with perhaps a tiny advantage for 5/4/2.
• I crafted a lot of Julianos. I bought a lot of Willpower.Then I farmed a lot of Necropotence. My top gear-out is -- I think -- 5 Necropotence/4 Julianos/2 Ilambris.
• I use the Thief mundus without bothering to check whether Shadow would actually be better. One reason is that I really like Power Surge in practice in dungeon situations.
• If you're on the PC, add-ons that tell you when skills are running out can be huge helps.
• One of Ilambris' big advantages over Grothdarr is range. That's not relevant in a dummy test. Especially if you're going dual lightning, consider using Grothdarr over Ilambris.

Also -- in a pure single-target test, in a build that includes Daedric Prey, for somebody who struggles to beat 20K, I think the Twilight (either morph) should give better numbers than Bound Aegis.

Edit: As of the first version of the relevant PTS patch otes, Willpower is getting (relatively speaking) nerfed in the Horns of the Reach release.

Sunah

Like most people say. Its all about that rotation man. I just got my stamplar semi geared and started slapping the Target Dummy for an hour. I went from 20k dps to hitting my max (so far) 27.2k. This is all just tightening up that rotation. Light attack weaving and keeping potions and all buffs proc'd.

illuminousflux

Learn to spell weave and always recast wall of elements and liquid lightning before their timers run out. If your DoTs drop then it will hurt your DPS significantly. Also start your rotation with meteor and curse for burst damage in the very beginning, it will help you get a higher dps number to maintain throughout the fight.

SoLooney

dang only 20k requirement to do vet trials, thats some low requirement. All depends on your cp, gear, quality of gear and weps, rotation, light attack weaves and ani cancelling. use necropotence, ilambris, moondancer/infall aether for pet build and netchs touch, grothdarr, moomdancer/infall aether for no pet, switch grothdarr to ilambris if you can get fire attacks in your rotation.

If using netchs touch, you need 75 thaumaturge, no questions asked, you will be concussing and setting enemies off balance, you need that extra 10perc damage from exploiter passive

Oreyn_Bearclaw

caperon wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

The easiest way to pull 20k DPS on a target dummy is with a Heavy Attack sorc pet build. ...

Generally agree, only note than even with pet, netch is better than julianos. Pet doesn't scale with spell damage so with netch you only lose damage from daedric prey, all your other habilities are lighting damage unles you use daedric tomb. But in that case i would use necro instead of julianos, since necro bufs all your damage.

Sorc with double lighting, pet and no tomb Netch > julianos

I dont disagree. I just put julianos on the list because its easy to get. I have actually been meaning to do some parses with 5 Julianos, 3 willpower, 2 ilambris and random staffs just for comparison. Obviously the parse I posted had BIS gear. You wont hit 36k without BIS gear, but I think 30k is certainly doable. Gear matters, your rotation matters more.

You will notice that in my "Heavy Attack" build, i still managed to get off 37 light attacks (I think 38 is perfect with that setup). So skill still is a big factor in the new HA meta.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

illuminousflux wrote: »

Learn to spell weave and always recast wall of elements and liquid lightning before their timers run out. If your DoTs drop then it will hurt your DPS significantly. Also start your rotation with meteor and curse for burst damage in the very beginning, it will help you get a higher dps number to maintain throughout the fight.

That is potentially dangerous advice. Ideally, you cast most DOTS on cooldown. Recasting DOTS early is often a DPS loss, and in the vast majority of situations, you are better off erring on casting them a bit late. This is one of the reasons I do a 4 count as mentioned above. It basically puts the dots on a cooldown timer.

There is a simple analysis you can do with basically Any DOT because this game is based on global cooldowns. The simplest rotation is that you simply spam a spam skill like FP, whip, funnel, etc. They do a flat amount of damage and can be cast every second, so that essentially becomes your DPS.

We cast DOTS because with the same press of a button (spending one global skill) we an get more total damage from a DOT, but that generally only holds true if that dot runs its full course.

Quick and Simple example: You have a spam skill that hits for 10k. And a 10 second DOT that does 12k over the life of it. If you recast the DOT 2 seconds late, you likely replaced that with 2 extra spam skills. Not ideal, but not as detrimental.

If you recast it 2 seconds too early, then that DOT didnt do 12k, it did something less. If you re cast it early enough to where your DOT does less than your spam skill, it was essentially a DPS loss because you would have done better to simply hit your spam skill one more time. Every DOT works a little differently in this game, but most of them become a DPS loss if they are recast more than about a second or two early. There are obvious exceptions to this rule, but I will generally tell people to err on the side of a second late than a second early.

Edit: another thing to consider is that for 99.9% of people, you are better off with a fixed and circular rotation. Because of the above logic, we generally cast DOTS in order of duration, longest to shortest. Practically what that does is that your longest DOT is cast on cooldown, and every DOT after is a touch late. That is better than the alternative which would be to cast your shortest DOT on cooldown and everything else a touch early.

There are exceptions, for example, NBS typically cast Twisting path a bit early because its a longer DOT compared to the others. Because twisting gives ridiculously high uptime on scathing, we live with it.

Dekeon

Here is my video of my dps on the skeleton....be gentle lol


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyvi3-L93fA&feature=youtu.be

Waffennacht

You're not weaving nor using animation cancelling

dpencil1

@Dekeon
Ok, thx for the video! The problem is sustain, plain and simple. Ditch force pulse for Ele Drain (this can be something else in a group) and use Heavy Lightning attacks between applying your dots. Maybe even drop Destructive Touch for Inner Light since it is a big drain on resources for a small dps gain. You will get more dps overall by not using it and just never running out of magicka. Switch Haunting Curse for Daedric Prey and drop Bound Aegis for the Twilight Matriarch (it is a dps increase of Aegis on single target).

You didn't show us your CP, but the fact you only have about 300 means you will be missing some dps over end game builds. Use Asayre's CP calculator after a good parse to figure out your optimal distribution.

Also, to echo what Waffennacht said, you should be doing light attacks between every skill.

JKith

1: Post a "My Build" screenshot so we can give you real info to help you. There could be so many things contributing to your lack of DPS.
2: Rotation, rotation, rotation,...gotta practice it!!
4: You should be easily getting 20k dps on a MagSorc, You can do it! I get 24k with no potions, no ulti, no anything, and 35k self-buffed with everything. If you don't want to waste potions, and work on your main rotation, shoot for 20k to 22k DPS on a naked rotation, you can do it over and over and over again without wasting gold!

NBrookus

SoLooney wrote: »

dang only 20k requirement to do vet trials, thats some low requirement.

It's probably for a progression group. Everyone starts somewhere.

UrbanMonk

@Dekeon -

1. 1st You have to change your gear setup.
1.1 My recommendation is farm normal mode of SO/AA for Aether (Infaliable Mage set) Jwelery. In normal mode you'll get Blue quality but that would be fine. And get 1 Piece of Aether body parts in Divine. Any part (except head and shoulder) will do.
1.2 For the Rest of the body parts (except Head & Shoulder) get Divine Necro pieces. For head & shoulder- Get 1 Heavy- Ilambris & Medium Shoulder Ilambris, again in divine.
1.3 For the weapons, get 2 Lightening staves of Necro. This will be the most expensive part of this setup. So either you can farm it or buy it. On EU-PC you can fetch 2 of these close to 600-700k. Make sure they are sharp. If you want, you can get away with a precise on the back bar and it wont hurt to much. But main bar have to be sharp.

2. Skill Setup-
2.1 MainBar- Inner light/ Bound Aegis/ Empowered Ward/ Familiar/ Wall of Elements - Ultimate- Shooting Star
2.1 OffBar- Bound Aegis/ Familiar/ Daedric Prey/ Liquid Lightening/ Mages Wrath- Ultimate- Elemental Rage (destro Ulti)

I prefer Empowered ward for it's duration, but you can go hardened ward if you like. We have WOE on main bar to gain the destro staff passive working on this bar and Destro ulti on offbar to get the same effect on backbar.

3. Rotation-

The rotation i give you is very simple and perfectly lined up with timer of our dots. You can choose to weave or not weave light attacks in between.

Start from offbar by -

1. Activating Familiar- LL- Elemental Rage- Daedric Prey- Swap to main bar
2. Drop WOE- Activate familiar again- and 2 Heavy Lightening Attacks. After 2 HA are over Drop WOE again + Activate Pet- Swap to offbar
3. From now on, it'll be easier- Drop LL- Put curse swap to main bar.
4. On Main Bar- 2 HA- WOE-PEt- Swap back to off bar.

Step 1 & 2 are only for the start to make sure all skills are activated for max DPS on both bars, and the nyou just rinse and repeat Step 3 & 4. Till enemy health level is 20% after that you'll stay on Off bar and keep running LL / Curse and pet, You only swap to main bar to put WOE and then back to off bar. and here you spam MAges wrath while keeping an eye for other dots i.e. pet/LL/WOE/Curse.

This should easily help you get 25k DPS considering your CP is low. But the trick is to practice and practice you rotation for perfection.

I hope this helps.

UrbanMonk

This is the problem that ZOS has brought for the new experienced players. Sustain for them is so ridiculous now. As always experienced players adapt and move on but young ones are left there in ruins.

gg ZOS ...so much for bringing the ceiling down..

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I think a lot of the info above is wildly overkill. Also, don't feel like you need to farm trial normal runs. At some point you will most likely for weapons, but there is nothing wrong with your gear save maybe working on a monster set. At your DPS, trait on the monster set is not that important. Divines is certainly best, but even training would work in the meantime. You won't notice bad traits on an armor piece or 2.

Everyone one and their mom has a different take on how to sorc, but for the most part they have a lot in common. Here are some general pointers:

1. Find a simple and circular rotaton and practice it over and over. You can get more nuanced with time. Fancy openings do help on a dummy, but they are just the icing on the cake. More important that you learn the basic rotation. The parse I posted starts with an ultimate and then I go right into the 4 skill/2 HA rotation that is consistent through out the fight. I only break it to drop a second ultimate and reapply ele drain.
2. Ele drain (and a shield) can be swap canceled. Heavy attack>ele drain>bar swap. It basically takes not time out of your rotation.
3. Build your rotation around your most powerful skill, which is liquid lighting. It is also your longest DOT. So it is a natural start to your rotation.
4. Cast your DOTs in descending order of duration. This will maximize uptime. Pick 4 DOTs and cast them in a row every time. These can be spread over multiple bars, but I personally think it makes sense to put them on the same bar.
5. Use 2 heavy attacks in every rotation and drop force pulse for the time being. This will fix your sustain issues. You never want to get to the point where you are just spamming heavy attacks, it kills your dps. Use them early and often.
6. Front bar a lighting staff and make sure at least one destro staff skill is slotted. Most of your damage as sorc is AOE so lighting is better, that and your sorc passives make it hit harder. On a target dummy, double lighting is king for sorc.
7. Pay attention to buffs and debuts. There are really 4 to be concerned about on a self buffed dummy. Major Breach is your big debuff. Normally a tank will give it to you, but ele drain is the way to do it yourself. The next 3 can all come from Spell Power potions. Major sorcery (spell damage), major prophecy (spell crit), major intellect (magic regen). Figure out a way to keep them up 100%. It can be done with trash pots, power surge, and inner light, but spell pots are the best. Potions can be consumed independently of your global cooldowns.
8. Practice some more. No need to waste potions to practice. I used to practice in worm cult so I would never run out. Also, you are going to need to get used to weaving. Eventually it will become muscle memory.

tunepunk

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I'm curious how you get that high crit values? My Liquid lightning doesn't get near those values, or even light attack crits for 11k? what's the secret?

Mundus stone? CP?

What does your LL tooltip say? What's the actual number on the skill?

Izaki

Waffennacht wrote: »

I have horrid rotation, and I get 26k dps with: bum bum bum -
x2 ilambris/infernal guardian
x5 Necropotence (Lightning front bar)
x5 Clever Alchemist (Restoration staff back bar) - yeah that's right

Front bar:
Familiar, Prey, Blockade, H Ward, Frag - destro ult
Back bar:
Familiar, Power Surge, Combat Prayer, H Ward, LL - DboS

Sometimes I run those spell power potions in which case drop Surge, put Prey there and put innerlight main bar.

Resto Staff is for Prayer to heal and buff familiar

Purple staff

Yeah that's no good for trials