DPS MagSorc

Texecutioner187

I have a MagSorc, running Julianos and Mothers Sorrow at the moment. Champ level 310 and I'm putting out 8.8k DPS on a dummy. I feel like that's pretty low and trying to figure out what I'm not doing right... My Magicka pool is about 33k so think that's something, but it feels like I shoudl be doing more damage.... thoughts? Feel free to ask any questions about the build that will help figure out why it's not working right...

lauykanson

u most likely have a problem with your rotation and gear

first a monster helmet and shoulder set is highly recommend as each piece give a bonus, for a magsorc best choice will be grothdarr / ilambris...So u gotta start farming vet dungeons for the helmet and doing daily pledges for shoulder

second thing replace mothers sorrow with another set, if you are running pets then buy necropotence from guild traders, just buy the purple jewelry and body pieces they are relatively cheap and good enough for all content. If u don't use pets then farm darkshade caverns for netch's touch set which buffs shock damage.

If you dont feel like farming netch's touch , then use 5x Julianos + 4x necropotence + 2x ilambris/ grothdarr

4 julianos body piece , 1 necro body piece , 3 necro jewelry and front/backbar julianos staves , but either way u have to get ilambris/ grothdarr since they cannot be replaced by something else easily without losing DPS

make sure you enchant jewelry with spell dmg glyph, as you will use lightning staff just heavy attack to get resource back from time to time

for rotation i suggest looking at some guides, eg Alcast's page. For a sorc you must have elemental blockade/ liquid lightning as your main dot, other common skills will be curse/destructive clench/ crystal frags/ force pulse/ mages wrath/ inner light..wtc

look at guides and try learn the rotation, make changes here and there if it makes ur feel more comfortable

Texecutioner187

I actually do have Ilambris and use both of those DOTs. I'll farm Netch Touch and see what happens. My crit is around 60-70 and spell damage at 2200ish with gold spell glyphs on my jewelry.. Any other quick things I can check for?

UrbanMonk

There is another similar post. You should have a look-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/355813/20k-dps-target-skeleton#latest

seedubsrun

What skills are you running? Do you have a food or drink active? if so which one? Which Mundus are you using? What is the trait on your armor? Are you at Undaunted rank 9 with the passives unlocked? All that will greatly affect your setup. Having a good rotation would be the next step after maximizing the potential of the things I asked about.

Texecutioner187

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

seedubsrun

jgruberman wrote: »

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

Yeah that all sounds pretty good then. Make sure you do the Undaunted daily delve quests if you're not already. They can easily be done solo and recently got a big increase to the amount of Undaunted rank they give. Getting to rank 9 will help out a lot. Also, make sure your weapons are gold. Armor isn't too important but you get a big dps boost from gold weapons. Look into where you want your CP to be as well. That can be really helpful as well.

Check out the link posted above for rotation aids. The stuff from @Oreyn_Bearclaw is really thorough and helpful especially for someone just now getting into honing their rotation. The big increase to dps in your rotation comes from when you learn to properly weave light attacks in with your abilities. The rotation I had been using felt clunky and difficult to manage and I was only getting around 22k-25k on a dummy. I tried Oreyn's rotation last night and get into the 30k range now.

Texecutioner187

seedubsrun wrote: »

jgruberman wrote: »

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

The rotation I had been using felt clunky and difficult to manage and I was only getting around 22k-25k on a dummy. I tried Oreyn's rotation last night and get into the 30k range now.

What's your spell damage and crit at?

seedubsrun

jgruberman wrote: »

seedubsrun wrote: »

jgruberman wrote: »

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

The rotation I had been using felt clunky and difficult to manage and I was only getting around 22k-25k on a dummy. I tried Oreyn's rotation last night and get into the 30k range now.

What's your spell damage and crit at?

I'm at work right now so can't give an exact number but I'm pretty sure my crit is about 57% right now and about 2200 spell damage unbuffed. I have 55k magicka though which greatly contributes to my damage. I also use a maelstrom lightning staff on my Elemental Blockade bar and a sharpened lightning with spell damage enchant on my front. Gilliam the rogue did some tests recently and found a maelstrom staff can add 2k-3k spell damage to a parse.

botanist92

could someone help me clear my thoughts with some builds?

is precise vma staves with spell erosion a huge dps loss compared to sharpened vma staves without spell erosion?

is a lightning heavy attack build with netchs touch and necropotence (no dungeon pieces) viable?
skills used would be the usual liquid lightning, blockade of storms, volatile, prey and shock clench.

from the above build, switching out netchs touch with 3 pc inafllible jewellery and 2 pc kena. shock clench would be replaced with either force pulse or mines.

does inner light's major prophecy apply if i drop a ground dot on my back bar (without inner light) and swap to front bar with inner light? (on the ground dot itself)

seedubsrun

botanist92 wrote: »

could someone help me clear my thoughts with some builds?

is precise vma staves with spell erosion a huge dps loss compared to sharpened vma staves without spell erosion?

is a lightning heavy attack build with netchs touch and necropotence (no dungeon pieces) viable?
skills used would be the usual liquid lightning, blockade of storms, volatile, prey and shock clench.

from the above build, switching out netchs touch with 3 pc inafllible jewellery and 2 pc kena. shock clench would be replaced with either force pulse or mines.

does inner light's major prophecy apply if i drop a ground dot on my back bar (without inner light) and swap to front bar with inner light? (on the ground dot itself)

1) Would depend on how much CP you have. If putting points into Spell Erosion to make up for not having a sharpened takes too many points away from CP that boosts your damage (elemental, master at arms, thaumaturge) then yes but if not then probably not. Really though if you cast wall of elements from a vMA staff on back bar then switch to a front bar for most attacks you wont really notice much of a difference. My vMA lightning staff is powered which blows but I can still do 30k on a dummy cause my front bar is a sharpened crafted with a spell damage enchant.

2) Yep, necro and netch is totally viable with the first set up. Second would be solid too but you'll probably have better DPS with a different monster set. I'd go Illambris>grothdar>skoria

3) Not completely sure but I believe now the bar you cast from maintains the qualities of that bar so no it wouldn't apply. I'm sure someone else has a hard yes or no though

botanist92

seedubsrun wrote: »

1) Would depend on how much CP you have. If putting points into Spell Erosion to make up for not having a sharpened takes too many points away from CP that boosts your damage (elemental, master at arms, thaumaturge) then yes but if not then probably not. Really though if you cast wall of elements from a vMA staff on back bar then switch to a front bar for most attacks you wont really notice much of a difference. My vMA lightning staff is powered which blows but I can still do 30k on a dummy cause my front bar is a sharpened crafted with a spell damage enchant.

2) Yep, necro and netch is totally viable with the first set up. Second would be solid too but you'll probably have better DPS with a different monster set. I'd go Illambris>grothdar>skoria

3) Not completely sure but I believe now the bar you cast from maintains the qualities of that bar so no it wouldn't apply. I'm sure someone else has a hard yes or no though

1) assuming 630 cp? im thinking that elemental expert has very little % increase for high points. im still confused as to what master at arms affect as a sorc.

2) im currently using ilambris but if i were to go for pure lightning then the fire proc would be rather wasted.

3) so inner light has to be double barred i guess.

seedubsrun

botanist92 wrote: »

seedubsrun wrote: »

1) Would depend on how much CP you have. If putting points into Spell Erosion to make up for not having a sharpened takes too many points away from CP that boosts your damage (elemental, master at arms, thaumaturge) then yes but if not then probably not. Really though if you cast wall of elements from a vMA staff on back bar then switch to a front bar for most attacks you wont really notice much of a difference. My vMA lightning staff is powered which blows but I can still do 30k on a dummy cause my front bar is a sharpened crafted with a spell damage enchant.

2) Yep, necro and netch is totally viable with the first set up. Second would be solid too but you'll probably have better DPS with a different monster set. I'd go Illambris>grothdar>skoria

3) Not completely sure but I believe now the bar you cast from maintains the qualities of that bar so no it wouldn't apply. I'm sure someone else has a hard yes or no though

1) assuming 630 cp? im thinking that elemental expert has very little % increase for high points. im still confused as to what master at arms affect as a sorc.

2) im currently using ilambris but if i were to go for pure lightning then the fire proc would be rather wasted.

3) so inner light has to be double barred i guess.

Yeah if you're 630 then you could put points into Spell erosion as needed. i wouldn't try to make up the exact amount of a sharpened staff though. somewhere in the 3000 mark would be plenty. Master at arms is direct damage so it's often the first tick of a dot or the damage from an attack that does one single chunk of damage. If a tooltip says "does X amount of damage and then X amount over 10 seconds" that first X amount of damage is direct damage. The storm atro or shooting star ultimates are good examples, mages wrath is one that would be affected. Sorcs have quite a few actually though boosting your damage over time, elemental damage, and crit damage are more important

When I go full lightning I like Grothdar unless I need range and then I use Skoria. If you have room in your bar for it you could slot force pulse since the tri-elemental damage could proc both Illambris attacks

As far as Inner Light goes, if you have a back bar with buffs and AOE and a front bar for damage attacks then you could get away with Inner Light on just one bar. It's often better DPS to slot another damage ability than to double bar Inner Light. You could always drink spell crit potions too.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

seedubsrun wrote: »

jgruberman wrote: »

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

Yeah that all sounds pretty good then. Make sure you do the Undaunted daily delve quests if you're not already. They can easily be done solo and recently got a big increase to the amount of Undaunted rank they give. Getting to rank 9 will help out a lot. Also, make sure your weapons are gold. Armor isn't too important but you get a big dps boost from gold weapons. Look into where you want your CP to be as well. That can be really helpful as well.

Check out the link posted above for rotation aids. The stuff from @Oreyn_Bearclaw is really thorough and helpful especially for someone just now getting into honing their rotation. The big increase to dps in your rotation comes from when you learn to properly weave light attacks in with your abilities. The rotation I had been using felt clunky and difficult to manage and I was only getting around 22k-25k on a dummy. I tried Oreyn's rotation last night and get into the 30k range now.

@seedubsrun
NICE!!! Glad it worked for you. K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Haha.

Texecutioner187

seedubsrun wrote: »

jgruberman wrote: »

I think(on my tank now) I use the salmon millet something... Max HP and magicka, I'm on thief mundus, divine trait on most if not all armor pieces, not yet at undaunted 9 but I think I have the passives 1/2 for now, wearing 5-1-1 armor pieces.

Perhaps my issue is rotation... I have a habit of just dropping liquid lightning and elemental blockade and just doing force pulse twice and then shards. Then repeat. I know there's probably more I need to be doing...

Check out the link posted above for rotation aids. The stuff from @Oreyn_Bearclaw is really thorough and helpful especially for someone just now getting into honing their rotation. The big increase to dps in your rotation comes from when you learn to properly weave light attacks in with your abilities. The rotation I had been using felt clunky and difficult to manage and I was only getting around 22k-25k on a dummy. I tried Oreyn's rotation last night and get into the 30k range now.

What stuff from Oreyn_Bearclaw?

seedubsrun

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

There is another similar post. You should have a look-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/355813/20k-dps-target-skeleton#latest

@jgruberman this link posted by @ToxicPAWS has a section in it where @Oreyn_Bearclaw explains a couple different high DPS magsorc builds and their respective rotations. It was very helpful for me when trying to get more out of my build. I liked that it really simply explains the reasoning behind having the rotation the way it is and how you could apply that concept to really any magsorc build. I'm in a PvE guild that has a 25k requirement for vet trials and I can very easily get passed that number now with the info I picked up from the thread.

Morvane

lauykanson wrote: »

u most likely have a problem with your rotation and gear


If you dont feel like farming netch's touch , then use 5x Julianos + 4x necropotence + 2x ilambris/ grothdarr

4 julianos body piece , 1 necro body piece , 3 necro jewelry and front/backbar julianos staves , but either way u have to get ilambris/ grothdarr since they cannot be replaced by something else easily without losing DPS

lol, NO
why 4 necro better than mother sorrow or other set's? there is no reason in it without CONSTANT 5 piece bonus for pet
next, u can esily skip monster set and left only 1 piece for mana and run with 5 necro and 5 other set (Juli, Netch, IA etc)

Oreyn_Bearclaw

lauykanson wrote: »

u most likely have a problem with your rotation and gear

first a monster helmet and shoulder set is highly recommend as each piece give a bonus, for a magsorc best choice will be grothdarr / ilambris...So u gotta start farming vet dungeons for the helmet and doing daily pledges for shoulder

second thing replace mothers sorrow with another set, if you are running pets then buy necropotence from guild traders, just buy the purple jewelry and body pieces they are relatively cheap and good enough for all content. If u don't use pets then farm darkshade caverns for netch's touch set which buffs shock damage.

If you dont feel like farming netch's touch , then use 5x Julianos + 4x necropotence + 2x ilambris/ grothdarr

4 julianos body piece , 1 necro body piece , 3 necro jewelry and front/backbar julianos staves , but either way u have to get ilambris/ grothdarr since they cannot be replaced by something else easily without losing DPS

make sure you enchant jewelry with spell dmg glyph, as you will use lightning staff just heavy attack to get resource back from time to time

for rotation i suggest looking at some guides, eg Alcast's page. For a sorc you must have elemental blockade/ liquid lightning as your main dot, other common skills will be curse/destructive clench/ crystal frags/ force pulse/ mages wrath/ inner light..wtc

look at guides and try learn the rotation, make changes here and there if it makes ur feel more comfortable

@lauykanson
For the love of god, dont tell people to run 4 pieces of necro. The reason you run that set is for the 5 piece bonus with a pet. You can do better than stacking magic with a 4 piece bonus. You would truthfully be better of with willpower and a non set piece.

Here is the rough math. Basically 10.5 pts of magic is roughly equal to 1 pt of spell damage.

Willpower: 1451 Magic and 193 spell damage. If we convert that to equivelent spell damage, you get (1451/10.5)+(193)=331.2

4 pieces of necro: = 967x3 max magic= 2901 max magic. If we convert to spell damage, you get (2091/10.5)= 276

This is one of the reasons the 5 piece necro is so strong, assuming you have a pet. The 4000 magic you get for the 5 piece roughly equals (4000/10.5) 380 spell damage, which beats sets like Julianos.

Texecutioner187

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Here is the rough math. Basically 10.5 pts of magic is roughly equal to 1 pt of spell damage.

Willpower: 1451 Magic and 193 spell damage. If we convert that to equivelent spell damage, you get (1451/10.5)+(193)=331.2

4 pieces of necro: = 967x3 max magic= 2901 max magic. If we convert to spell damage, you get (2091/10.5)= 276

This is one of the reasons the 5 piece necro is so strong, assuming you have a pet. The 4000 magic you get for the 5 piece roughly equals (4000/10.5) 380 spell damage, which beats sets like Julianos.

So the amount of base damage(without gear or skills) is roughly based on magicka * 10.5? I would really like to learn all of the math if that's available online somewhere.... thanks in advance!

dpencil1

@jgruberman
Here you go: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/introduction-to-pve-damage-calculation-homestead/

Good luck!

Texecutioner187

dpencil1 wrote: »

@jgruberman
Here you go: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/introduction-to-pve-damage-calculation-homestead/

I did see that, but is it still accurate for current patch? Also, I have a few questions here or there about the calculations there... who should I ask? Post on that site asking?

dpencil1

Yeah, it should still be accurate. Asayre is the author. You could tag him or send him a message. He does post here occasionally. Others may also be able to answer your questions if you post them.

Masel

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

lauykanson wrote: »

u most likely have a problem with your rotation and gear

first a monster helmet and shoulder set is highly recommend as each piece give a bonus, for a magsorc best choice will be grothdarr / ilambris...So u gotta start farming vet dungeons for the helmet and doing daily pledges for shoulder

second thing replace mothers sorrow with another set, if you are running pets then buy necropotence from guild traders, just buy the purple jewelry and body pieces they are relatively cheap and good enough for all content. If u don't use pets then farm darkshade caverns for netch's touch set which buffs shock damage.

If you dont feel like farming netch's touch , then use 5x Julianos + 4x necropotence + 2x ilambris/ grothdarr

4 julianos body piece , 1 necro body piece , 3 necro jewelry and front/backbar julianos staves , but either way u have to get ilambris/ grothdarr since they cannot be replaced by something else easily without losing DPS

make sure you enchant jewelry with spell dmg glyph, as you will use lightning staff just heavy attack to get resource back from time to time

for rotation i suggest looking at some guides, eg Alcast's page. For a sorc you must have elemental blockade/ liquid lightning as your main dot, other common skills will be curse/destructive clench/ crystal frags/ force pulse/ mages wrath/ inner light..wtc

look at guides and try learn the rotation, make changes here and there if it makes ur feel more comfortable

@lauykanson
For the love of god, dont tell people to run 4 pieces of necro. The reason you run that set is for the 5 piece bonus with a pet. You can do better than stacking magic with a 4 piece bonus. You would truthfully be better of with willpower and a non set piece.

Here is the rough math. Basically 10.5 pts of magic is roughly equal to 1 pt of spell damage.

Willpower: 1451 Magic and 193 spell damage. If we convert that to equivelent spell damage, you get (1451/10.5)+(193)=331.2

4 pieces of necro: = 967x3 max magic= 2901 max magic. If we convert to spell damage, you get (2091/10.5)= 276

This is one of the reasons the 5 piece necro is so strong, assuming you have a pet. The 4000 magic you get for the 5 piece roughly equals (4000/10.5) 380 spell damage, which beats sets like Julianos.

In order to compare that, you'd need to include the %-buffs to max magicka and spell damage:

Max Magicka: 20% from at least 100 CP spent into the mage tree, 7% inner light (and maybe another 2% from shooting star) and possibly 8% from Northern storm or bound aegis and the siphoning passive on Nightblades. And 2-6% from undaunted. The CP bonus is multiplicative with the others because it gets factored in before, so we have a term that (simplified) looks like

Max Magicka=Base Value*1.2*(1+Sum of other Bonuses)


For spell damage, you can get 20% major sorcery, 5% minor sorcery and up to 12%(although you usually have about 8-10%) from the sorcerer passive. Those are all additive so we can just add together all % bonuses and multiply them with the Base value.

So let's use a sorcerer with a 5/1/1 setup 10% SD boost, bound aegis and inner light slotted to compare 4 necro and 3 WP and a non-set piece:

Willpower: (1400*1.2*1.23)/10.5+(174*1.3)=423 spell damage for abilities and 277 spell damage for light and heavy attacks.

Necro=(2901*1.2*1.23)/10.5=408 spell damage for abilities and 105 spell damage for light and heavy attacks.

So yep, 3 willpower+non set is a lot stronger than the 4-piece neceopotence, even if you factor in buffs. It's going to be a little different from class to class due to the different buffs, but we can safely say that it will not change the big difference in between them.