I think I suck at weaving

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

I feel like on my Magicka DK, I end up with a lot of downtime between abilities. I try clicking to weave a light attack in between each ability (mostly the whip, but it feels like that animation takes foooreeeeveeeer), but sometimes it just doesn't work, and light attacks are never very high on my end-of-fight report on Combat Metrics. My DPS right now (with atrociously traited gear, 5 BSW, 5 silks, and 1 kena) is like 16k. I run regen glyphs on jewelry to get to 2k regen (yet I still end up heavy attacking for forever), max magicka is about 41k and spell damage (excluding BSW procs and silks) is around 1500 unbuffed. So maybe it's (at least in part) my gear that's holding back my DPS, or maybe it's the rotation I use (eruption, blockade, embers, spam whip, reapply DOTs as needed, shooting star when it's up, heavy attack when magicka gets low), or maybe I'm missing some crucial detail about how to weave light attacks. So here I am, asking the experienced MagDKs of the world for your help, those of you who can pull 100k on a robust skeleton (kidding, but I know some of you guys can get over 40k). Are there any video guides you guys have made or seen that really breakdown how to weave? Or any tips you can give me on my gear or rotation? Thanks in advance everyone!

(PS I just started leveling Trap Beast because I've seen a lot of people use that, so once I get that up, maybe it'll help by giving me free whips. I guess that's the point of it, but still, I'm all ears for any and all suggestions)

FriedEggSandwich

Staves can be tricky to light attack with, especially the fire staff (I'm assuming that's what you are using). The shock staff is easier imo, but obvs you can't use that. I end up medium weaving with a fire staff because I find I can keep it up for longer without making a mistake.

Do you have access to a target skeleton? They are good to practice on. Just alternate a light attack with the same skill over and over, slowly at first to ensure that stuff actually fires off, but then pick up the pace until you start to misfire the light attacks. If you are misfiring light attacks then you have not left quite enough time after the light attack before hitting the skill button. There is a rhythm to it that you will learn. If you still find it difficult to keep up the regular light attacks then just settle for medium weaving instead; the dps is about the same I believe, light attacking is supposed to be a bit quicker but I honestly can't tell. I find medium weaving much easier; you just hold the mouse button down a tiny bit longer so 2 fire balls come out, and this seems to mean you don't have to have such accurate timing.

When it comes to sustain do you have any cost reduction? Your high regen and trouble sustaining make me suspect you don't. Try swapping a regen glyph for a cost reduction glyph and see if that makes any difference to when you run out of mag.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

Staves can be tricky to light attack with, especially the fire staff (I'm assuming that's what you are using). The shock staff is easier imo, but obvs you can't use that. I end up medium weaving with a fire staff because I find I can keep it up for longer without making a mistake.

Do you have access to a target skeleton? They are good to practice on. Just alternate a light attack with the same skill over and over, slowly at first to ensure that stuff actually fires off, but then pick up the pace until you start to misfire the light attacks. If you are misfiring light attacks then you have not left quite enough time after the light attack before hitting the skill button. There is a rhythm to it that you will learn. If you still find it difficult to keep up the regular light attacks then just settle for medium weaving instead; the dps is about the same I believe, light attacking is supposed to be a bit quicker but I honestly can't tell. I find medium weaving much easier; you just hold the mouse button down a tiny bit longer so 2 fire balls come out, and this seems to mean you don't have to have such accurate timing.

When it comes to sustain do you have any cost reduction? Your high regen and trouble sustaining make me suspect you don't. Try swapping a regen glyph for a cost reduction glyph and see if that makes any difference to when you run out of mag.

Awesome, I had never heard of medium attack weaving before, but I'll give that a shot in addition to just practicing the light attack timing. And yeah, I am using a flame staff, and it's good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks it may be more difficult to light attack weave with a flame than a shock staff. I do have a target skeleton, which is where I get my 16k dps number from, and I am not running any cost reduction glyphs. I'll test it out with cost reduction glyphs as well. Thanks so much for the advice!

bebynnag

medium attack weaving isnt such a good idea anymore,

light attacks were buffed a few months back to deal increased damage - and the amount of resources they restore was nerfed

at the same time

heavy attack damage was nerfed - but the amount of resources they restore was buffed

as a result medium weaves became pretty much obsolete as they are not effected by either of the buffs (increase damage and increase resource return)

FriedEggSandwich

puffytheslayer wrote: »

medium attack weaving isnt such a good idea anymore,

light attacks were buffed a few months back to deal increased damage - and the amount of resources they restore was nerfed

at the same time

heavy attack damage was nerfed - but the amount of resources they restore was buffed

as a result medium weaves became pretty much obsolete as they are not effected by either of the buffs (increase damage and increase resource return)

Good advice from someone with more current knowledge than me, did not know that, cheers puff

bebynnag

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

puffytheslayer wrote: »

medium attack weaving isnt such a good idea anymore,

light attacks were buffed a few months back to deal increased damage - and the amount of resources they restore was nerfed

at the same time

heavy attack damage was nerfed - but the amount of resources they restore was buffed

as a result medium weaves became pretty much obsolete as they are not effected by either of the buffs (increase damage and increase resource return)

Good advice from someone with more current knowledge than me, did not know that, cheers puff

there have been so many changes to so many aspects of combat in recent patches im not surprised its being overlooked

cpuScientist

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO wrote: »

I feel like on my Magicka DK, I end up with a lot of downtime between abilities. I try clicking to weave a light attack in between each ability (mostly the whip, but it feels like that animation takes foooreeeeveeeer), but sometimes it just doesn't work, and light attacks are never very high on my end-of-fight report on Combat Metrics. My DPS right now (with atrociously traited gear, 5 BSW, 5 silks, and 1 kena) is like 16k. I run regen glyphs on jewelry to get to 2k regen (yet I still end up heavy attacking for forever), max magicka is about 41k and spell damage (excluding BSW procs and silks) is around 1500 unbuffed. So maybe it's (at least in part) my gear that's holding back my DPS, or maybe it's the rotation I use (eruption, blockade, embers, spam whip, reapply DOTs as needed, shooting star when it's up, heavy attack when magicka gets low), or maybe I'm missing some crucial detail about how to weave light attacks. So here I am, asking the experienced MagDKs of the world for your help, those of you who can pull 100k on a robust skeleton (kidding, but I know some of you guys can get over 40k). Are there any video guides you guys have made or seen that really breakdown how to weave? Or any tips you can give me on my gear or rotation? Thanks in advance everyone!

(PS I just started leveling Trap Beast because I've seen a lot of people use that, so once I get that up, maybe it'll help by giving me free whips. I guess that's the point of it, but still, I'm all ears for any and all suggestions)

You are running out of magic because things are not dying fast enough. As you get better at weaving you will find you have more and more mag. For magDK you have to kind of slow down the weave just a bit for it to run smooth. Like in contrast on my MagSorc it feels alot faster. Whip animation is different if you are coming from pulse

WatchYourSixx

If you are doing a typical do rotation, your Magicka drain should be around 1500~. So if your Regen is like you say, sounds like you are casting something more often than you should be. With your Regen, you should never have to heavy attack.

There are several factors that go into dps, and tbh rotation is probably the most impactful. Your gear as long as it's 5pc light armor and an inferno staff it will pretty much be 25k+ with the right rotation. There's several variations of rotations and I've tried them all, coming out to be roughly the same dps. I can help with rotation of your interested.

The thing I did to learn how to light weave as fast as possible is I would left click then as soon as I saw my character move, press the ability you want. Now once you get used to the timing of that, you'll know that it would go like this. Light attack > skill, light attack>skill. And the time between is as small as you can comfortably make it.

Tbh I thought learning medium weaves was harder, back when they were the meta and hit significantly harder, but sometimes would not fire at all because you released too early.

Anyways I'm happy to help a fellow mag DK out. I'd marry this class if I could.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx I would definitely appreciate some help for getting down a good rotation. Everyone seems to be saying that rotation is super important to DPS, and I really never realized that it was. And I think I was always running out of magicka due to reapplying DOTs too early and spamming whip when the target wasn't off balance. These are things I just need to practice and work on, but if you have advice on rotations, I'd love to head it.

One rotation I saw that looked good (but I have yet to practice it) is Eruption, rearming trap, engulfing flames, embers, spam whip, and reapply DOTs as needed. I usually self buff, so I'd put molten weapons and ele drain on myself, and I feel like that takes away a little DPS, but again, I'm very open to suggestions

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

Update: After adding rearming trap and engulfing flames into my rotation (albeit clumsily), and using all of the same gear with all of the same enchants, traits, and improvement levels, my DPS went from around 16k to around 18k. This rotation is tricky though, and weaving in light attacks has proved to be difficult. However, the uptime on Off Balance has saved me a lot of resources giving the free higher-damage whip, so that helped a lot with sustain. What is a generally accepted rotation for high damage output? It seems like every second, a DOT or ele drain is out and I need to reapply and it's almost overwhelming. Will that just come more easily with practice, or am I trying to do too much?

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

Update again: Switching Inner Light out for Flames of Oblivion, and switching Shooting Star out for Standard of Might has resulted in about 17k DPS. Maybe with practice that could be better, but can anyone recommend ideal skill bars to have? I had better results with Inner Light and Shooting Star, mostly because of the Mage's Guild passives that boost my max magicka and recovery, I believe.

WatchYourSixx

This is my front bar, and my back bar is Elemental Blockade, Eruption, Rearming trap, Flames of Oblivion, and Molten Armaments. I'm using a vMA staff on my backbar thus why my blockade is on the backbar. My Standard is the ult for that bar, and I have shooting star on my front bar as you can see here.



I'm currently running a little unorthodox build, using two charged staves, mother's sorrow with 3 rings 1 armor and 1 staff front bar, and 1 grothdar for the max magicka and 5 burning spellweave. Using thief and focusing on crit was the idea behind this build, though I went with charged because I find the burning tick rather potent and helps buff the damage of elemental blockade. I'm also using a charged enchant on the front staff, so that when I'm in groups with a lightning blockade I get increased whip procs.

Here's an example parse of a solo test on the 3 mil dummy. To the left you can see under the "Old CP" that is my current CP distribution for the blue CP.



My rotation WAS something I had the muscle memory to do in my sleep, recently I added a vma staff though, and moved my blockade to the backbar which changed my rotation up a little bit... I messed it up a couple times in that parse, but its the highest I've gotten since changing from the regular infall/bsw/grothdar or skoria meta.

My old rotation when I had the blockade on the front bar (which is probably easier) was as follows. With my front bar being whips, embers, flames, wall, inner light, and shooting star. Backbar being ele drain, eruption, trap, flames of obliv, and inner light, and standard of might.

FHA = Full Heavy Attack
LA = Light Attack

Start of fight, cast ele drain, pop a spellpower Pot( I use them for the extra regen initially, then the extra mag over regular pots), and inner light, swap.

step 1a: FHA -> LA -> Eruption -> LA -> Rearming Trap ->LA-> Flames of Oblivion -> LA -> Standard of Might -> Swap, go to step 2.

step 1b: LA -> Eruption -> LA -> Rearming Trap ->LA-> Flames of Oblivion -> LA -> Ele Drain, Swap, -> (LA -> Whips) x2, go to step 2.

step 2: LA -> Engulfing Flames -> LA -> Elemental Blockade -> LA -> Burning Embers -> (LA -> Whips) x 5 -> LA -> Engulfing Flames -> LA -> Elemental Blockade -> LA->Burning Embers -> Swap.

Go to step 1b, casting a standard of might every time its up, typically on the fourth backbar it will be coming up.

If you are low on magicka, cast a FHA instead of LA-> Whips x2.

I did that rotation for almost 2 years with very little variation. It took a lot of practice to get it down, but its easy for me now.. The new rotation though is slightly different and gets me confused now and then xD.

If it helps, try just focusing on doing 1 step. For example, I spent several hours when I was first learning this, of doing just the front bar rotation, then I'd add in a backbar rotation, then once you can do the whole thing without an ult, add it in as well.

As far as weaving tips, like I said before its just practice. Knowing when you can cast an ability without negating your light attack because you casted it too early, is tricky but just takes practice. Its just a timing thing. Another thing that might help is BE DRAMATIC when you weave. Take your time, click, wait, ability, wait, click, wait, ability, wait. Then slowly speed up the time between. Keep getting faster and eventually you will find the cutoff. See how fast you can successively LA-> skill.

Test this with a free skill, like Elemental drain, so that you can do it for as long as you like. (or until your target dies) and remember, you want to Light attack first, then skill. Because when you do skill then LA it waits for the animation to finish on the skill, and there's a nasty delay.

So here's my 2 cents. I hope this helps you be a better Mag DK and good luck setting the world on fire! Lemme know if you have any questions. If you are on PC NA I can also meet up with you and help you out.

Edit: the rotation I listed was assuming you maintain your current high recovery, and do not need a lot of full heavy attacks. If you switch glyphs to spell damage, then I would suggest using molten armaments and casting it before step 2 every other time you are about to go to step 2. If that's confusing I can help explain it further...

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx awesome, thank you so much for all the info! You've given me a lot to think about and practice, so I'll definitely get to working on a rotation like that. Once I feel comfortable executing that rotation, I'll see how my regen is doing and whether or not I can afford to switch out a regen glyph for more spell power (spell damage is something I'm worried about as far as my stats go, as it's only 1500 before Major Sorcerery, silks, and spellweave). I don't have a Maelstrom staff, so unfortunately I'm stuck with spellweave and silks. In your opinion, is this a solid setup for gear, or would you advise me to switch sets to Mother's Sorrow or Julianos or something else?

WatchYourSixx

As long as you have bsw, any combination of julianos, silks, mother's sorrow, infallible aether, or moondancer or willpower is all within 2-5% of the same dps. I think you're gear is fine for what you have.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx Wow. So after following your specific rotation, and making sure the light attacks landed before I used my abilities, my DPS has already gone up to 20k. This is from my second attempt after practicing for a bit on my target skeleton, just practicing the rotation and adding in the light attacks, and I'm floored. Honestly, thank you so much for your advice and rotation tips. It has given me a lot to work on and already shown how much better I could get with more practice and maybe some better gear (all my traits are garbage).

WatchYourSixx

I'd suggest just by looking at your parse, change your mundus to lover, and what is your CP distribution?

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx

Apprentice
-41 Elfborn
-51 Elemental Expert
-35 Spell Erosion
-3 Blessed

Ritual
-75 Thaumaturge

Steed
-60 Spell Shield

Lady
-38 Light Armor Focus
-38 Hardy
-37 Thick Skinned
-37 Elemental Defender

Lord
-2 Bastion

Tower
-14 Warlord

Lover
-80 Arcanist
-42 Tenacity

Shadow
-38 Tumbling
-38 Shadow Ward

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

Update, switching my mundus to the lover has increased DPS to 22k, all else the same. I'm not having any regen problems, but I am getting down to the bottom of my magicka pool near the end. If it were a 6mil dummy, I'd have to weave in some heavy attacks, but with my current setup, I'm also afraid to switch my mag regen glyphs for some spell damage glyphs. Any thoughts on that?

Edit: So the regen may be because I switched from Max Health, Max Mag, Mag regen purple food to Max health and mag blue food to get back up to 40k magicka, as a replacement for the Mage mundus stone. Will test again with regen/max mag/max health food

Edit 2: Switching to food with regen, DPS went down to 21k, but had zero trouble with sustain. So I think that wins for me, and I'll swap out one of my regen glyphs for a spell damage one.

WatchYourSixx

Good to see you are improving! I'd like to make a suggestion to CP, that will boost your do a little bit more...

Elemental expert 32, spell erosion 30, elfborn 20 for apprentice, 20 into master at arms for atronach, and 28 into thaumaturge for the ritual. This is calculated using Constellations add-on, which can be used with combat metrics to calculate the optimum CP distribution for a single parse. Assuming you reproduce that parse on average, you should see a 5% dps increase just by changing your points. Once you get the rest of your CP and you are at cap, you will be doing almost 25% more than your current dps, with an optimized CP distribution.

One thing to note about CP that ZOS will never tell anyone, is that CP rounds down to the nearest whole #. So if my CP boosts whatever by 13.99%, it will only give 13%. So if I have 33 points into elfborn, I'll only get 13% increase. If you go down to 31 points or 13.13% increase, I just opened up two points to spend and didn't lose any from taking points away.

I highly recommend for future use to use Constellations add-on if you want the most of your CP. But you can also just look at guides and they will tell you the CP set up they use.

Are you keeping Ele drain on the target? And are you on na or eu?

WatchYourSixx

Also, what is the quality of your staff?

WatchYourSixx

Here is a parse of me using as close to your setup as I could get. I used 5bsw, 5 silks, with your CP distribution just to see how I would do. With your current CP you should be able to shoot for close to this at the very least. one thing to note, I used two random set staves, one inferno one lightning, plus my sun jewelry had 3 x 174 spell damage glyphs. Both staves were gold, all divines gear with an infused waist as the only exception, mostly gold with head shoulder waist being purple, and jewelry was blue. I did not use kena since I did not have set staves. I also used a charged front enchant, which did give me a 8% buff to dps for 64% of the fight. Without it, I would have had roughly 26k dps, so you aren't far behind!

I'm a dunmer, with all the useful passives such as the ones from undaunted, all DK passives, Destro staff passives, light armor passives. I also used my spell power pots because I cant imagine a world without them. I also used witchmother's brew, and did not have to cast a single heavy attack.

If you would like, I can post a rotational video.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx just downloaded Constellations, I will take a look at optimization of my Champion Point distribution. I was keeping ele drain on the target at all times for the parses I posted, and I am on the NA server. My staff quality is purple, and the trait is defending (because I'm cheap and stupid) on the front staff (Silks) and Powered on the back (again, cheap and stupid). I imagine just switching to Infused staves will tremendously help, and farming some Sun and BSW gear that is divines instead of the random collection of traits I have on my gear now. Your parse looks great using roughly the same gear, so I'll definitely start farming for some better traits and start improving my qualities up to gold. I play a high elf, so I'm not sure if that automatically sets me behind DPS capabilities of dark elves, but hopefully it isn't a dealbreaker. And I also have all of my passives maxed out for all class skills, racial, destruction staff, and light armor. Would you recommend that I back-bar a lightning staff the way you did? Because I have a purple lightning staff of the sun with a better trait, I believe, but I was always afraid of using it since I'd lose the fire damage boost. But then again, that wouldn't be a problem if I switched to Julianos, plus I can control the traits on that.

parkham

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO wrote: »

I feel like on my Magicka DK, I end up with a lot of downtime between abilities.

This is the -exact- problem I'm having since I came back. I started playing my Dunmer MagDK and noticed this.

parkham

@Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO I don't wanna hijack your thread, but - maybe both of us could post video of what we are doing and get some feedback? Thoughts everyone?

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@parkham No worries, but honestly, WatchYourSixx's advice has been tremendously helpful to me. Try the rotation he posted in this thread and see if that improves it at all. I noticed that for the light attack weave, the best thing to do was light attack, then fire a skill (whips, most of the time). Just click, wait for the light attack to hit, and as soon as it does, fire whip, and the whip should cancel the remainder of the light attack animation and both skills will hit at almost the same time. Practice slowly (like I'm doing now) and speed it up as you feel comfortable with it.

WatchYourSixx

I highly recommend optimizing your CP, as well as Golding out a infused staff. You will have about a 200~ spell damage boost which should equate to roughly 1-2k dps increase just from the spell damage. Then using infused you will see a little more dps as well. The divines traits will increase dps as well, roughly 5% or more of an increase in dps from divines traits.. I think your on your way!

@parkham rotation is everything to managing DK skills. Luckily we have really nice matching timers so our dots run closely to each other. With my rotation listed above I get about 90% or higher uptime on all my dots and abilities except flames of Oblivion and trap, because they have a shorter duration than eruption.

I opted to reply to the thread as opposed to a direct message in the hopes that this helps others, and if anyone had any input they would like to add that they can.

thedude33

Tagging for DK

WatchYourSixx

@Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO have you made any progress lately? I'm curious how it's been going.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx yeah I have, i reset my CP with Constellations and farmed some BSW gear in divines, so that brought me up to the upper 22k and once breaching 23k. I haven't been able to find an infused inferno staff of the sun, but once I do, I'll gold that, and then hopefully see a big difference. Right now though, I'm keeping my eye out for the staff and accumulating more CP. And I practice the rotation to a point where I feel much more confident with it, now it seems like I'm able to keep the DOTs up at all times while weaving in light attacks. So once I get past the staff roadblock, I'll make another update.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO

@WatchYourSixx ok, so I started running 5 BSW and 5 SotS armor and jewelry and gave up my awful trait SotS staff for a crafted, non-set infused inferno staff. To compensate, I swapped out my monster shoulder for another piece of SotS, and the results are pretty shocking. Having an infused staff (and one day, hopefully a Maelstrom or Master's inferno staff) has increased my DPS by quite a bit. Up to 26k now, single target, self-buffed. And that's with a purple staff, running spell power pots. I gotta say, this improvment has been nice to see. Any other tips and tricks you might have to help push me over 30k? I think the next step is to farm infallible aether, but if I'm wrong, and you have some advice, I'm all ears.

WatchYourSixx

Golding your staff will increase your dps a good bit, as it's about a 200 spell damage boost. Your next biggest jump will be from getting to 660 cp... Other than that, you could go for infallible ahead jewelry, or buy some arcane willpower jewelry, and run a monster set like skoria or grothdarr. Then a maelstrom staff will increase it even more, but for now Golding your staff and grinding out the rest of your CP will be the biggest increase.

Edit: just noticed you have almost Max CP. So that won't boost your dps too much more with the last little bit... Definitely the staff will though.

Do you have undaunted passives for wearing different types of armor?