Magicka Sorcerer DPS. What am I doing wrong? (Video included)

ZeroXFF

Long story short: I seem to be hitting a wall at about 21k DPS, while other people with a similar setup seem to be doing over 25-30k, and I have no idea what it is I'm doing wrong.

Here is a video of a pass on a target skeleton (not my best, but pretty close):
https://youtu.be/C3w_aSn4B2s

The things you don't see in the video:
Race: High Elf
Mundus stone: Apprantice

For those who don't want to watch the video, here is my setup...

Gear:
Necropotence, Willpower, Ilambris, Precise Lightning and Flame Staves (Julianos, so essentially no set, while I'm trying to figure out how to kill last boss in vMA) with weapon damage and absorb magicka enchants. Everything except weapon enchants and jewelry is golden. All light armor.

Rotation:
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
5. [When available] Shooting Star
6. 2x Heavy Attack
7. Force Pulse/Power Surge (depending on whether Power Surge has to be refreshed, meaning every 3rd rotation it's PS, otherwise FP)

Everything done with light attack weaving (I'm not perfect at it, but I think I'm doing pretty well in this regard). The potions I use are simple magicka potions.

Champion Points:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
81 Thaumaturge

Ruusa

Your rotation is too long, the dots on back bar are running out before you reapply them. To fix this, the front bar part should be either
a) heavy attack, FP, light attack, FP, swap
b) heavy attack, FP, light attack, PS, swap
c) heavy attack, heavy attack, swap (if you are running out of magicka)

Put meteor on front bar since a mages guild passive gives you bonus max magic when you are on the bar with meteor on it

I consistently get better result with two lightning staves than fire/lightning. To proc Ilambris, put a fire enchant on the front bar staff, that and force pulse proc ilambris a lot.

Absorb magicka enchantment doesnt do much damage. Instead use fire / spell power or fire / lightning enchants. The heavy attacks should prevent you from running out of magicka.

You have too much champion points in thaumaturge. There is no need to put more than 75 in that because of diminishing returns. Put those 6 points you save to Spell Erosion, since your penetration is likely very low. You likely also have too much in master at arms and moving most of those to ele expert, spell erosion and elfborn would give more damage but you can test that yourself.

I tested you setup as closely as I could and got 22k on first try and 26k after these above tweaks.


For skeleton parses and places where you have a healer, remove surge and use spell power pots if you can afford them. Then either replace surge with shield (for dungeons / trials) or ele drain (skeleton). For vMA you need both surge and shield of course.
I did one more test with same setup but used spellpower pots and ele drain instead of surge, got 32k. Ele drain really is that amazing


Also, for the sake of comparing your results to other peoples results check if they had someone off screen applying ele drain to the skeleton if they didnt do it themselves. That will improve their results. Also most people start their dps tests with ultimate already charged. These reasons might be why others are getting better skeleton parses with exact same build.

Also good luck with vMA!

GrigorijMalahevich

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Long story short: I seem to be hitting a wall at about 21k DPS, while other people with a similar setup seem to be doing over 25-30k, and I have no idea what it is I'm doing wrong.

Here is a video of a pass on a target skeleton (not my best, but pretty close):
https://youtu.be/C3w_aSn4B2s

The things you don't see in the video:
Race: High Elf
Mundus stone: Apprantice

For those who don't want to watch the video, here is my setup...

Gear:
Necropotence, Willpower, Ilambris, Precise Lightning and Flame Staves (Julianos, so essentially no set, while I'm trying to figure out how to kill last boss in vMA) with weapon damage and absorb magicka enchants. Everything except weapon enchants and jewelry is golden. All light armor.

Rotation:
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
5. [When available] Shooting Star
6. 2x Heavy Attack
7. Force Pulse/Power Surge (depending on whether Power Surge has to be refreshed, meaning every 3rd rotation it's PS, otherwise FP)

Everything done with light attack weaving (I'm not perfect at it, but I think I'm doing pretty well in this regard). The potions I use are simple magicka potions.

Champion Points:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
81 Thaumaturge

You damage is not going to help you kill last vMA boss... high damage helps to skip a lot of vMA mechanics and get a higher score.

Mundus - take thief, your DPS will increase massively

Add ele drain to the rotation. You should be able to reach 25k minimum

Joy_Division

Yep, you can't let your DoTs run out.

Also, most people doing these target dummy test start out with a destro ultimate, which is going to give them a bug head start over you.

Also, heavy attacking with a lightning staff + Maelstrom Staff is going to give them 1000s of DPS you aren;t getting.

Maybe switch out force pulse for destructive clench since you aren;t really using it as a spammable, get an extra Dot in there.

ZeroXFF

@Ruusa
Firstly, thanks for the detailed response, it did help. Now to the details...

I changed CPs to the following:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
46 Spell Erosion
8 Staff Expert
2 Master-at-Arms
75 Thaumaturge

I also use 2 lightning staves now, and the new lightning staff has a fire enchant now.

I adjusted the rotation as advised, and doing 2x heavy attacks when Power Surge doesn't have to be renewed, and 1x Heavy + FP + PS when it does. I'm not quite sure I'm doing correctly the light attack in between, but I think that wouldn't make that much of a difference. With all that my best pass was 23k, not quite the 26k you had, but still a noticeable improvement.

I also tried removing Power Surge and using potion and Weakness to Elements instead (can't morph it yet, never used it before). That put me at 24k. Once I morph WtE and get used to the new rotation, I'm sure I can crack the 25k mark, but I doubt I will get to 32k from just that. Hence the question, what exactly are you doing, and what exactly is your CP setup?

Also, I read somewhere that CPs only give their benefit at full percentage points. The reason I was using 81 points in Thaumaturge was because it reaches 23% at 72 points and 24% at 81 points. So by going with 75 I'm essentially wasting 3 points that would be better spent elsewhere if not for the Exploiter perk. Do I have wrong info? And while we're at it, is the Exploiter perk worth getting, or would I be better off going to 66 Thaumaturge (22%), and instead bumping up Elemental Expert by 1% and get a few more points in Spell Erosion?

@Valera Progib
This isn't meant for vMA, I'll be using a completely different setup there. The only reason I mentioned it, was so that people don't tell me to "just get MA staff", because I know about it, and I'm working on it. And until I get it, I want to be able to do good enough damage in dungeons so that I can finish even stuff like vRoM when the other DD is useless. And I know that people can get way over 20k without it.

After the aforementioned changes I also went out and took the Thief Mundus stone. There was no massive improvement. The best pass after that was 0.1k higher than before, and this is well within test variance.

@Joy_Division
Destructive Clench does improve my dps slightly when using the original rotation, but there are 2 issues with it:
1. It costs over 1k more magicka, so suddenly a sustainable rotation isn't sustainable any more.
2. In "real world" situations (dungeons etc.) I do need a spammable, because some targets die before Destructive Clench does its damage, Force Pulse does slightly more damage in AoE situations, and it does significantly more damage when the target is moving and I can't use LL and Blockade effectively.

Horowonnoe

Light attacks in between skills make a huge difference. And that is the one thing that can improve your dps by 5-8k. More than any gear ever will practice light attack weaving in between skills. Try killing the robust lambent centurion with it (the 50mil one) and after you are done i guarantee you will know your rotation inside and out. Ive done this.

I get 39k on a dummmy using your original cp, 2 lightning staves both infused with shock enchant front bar and vma back bar. But u can use random staff with spell dmg enchant. Nirnhoned or infused. Forget precise. Same gear. Check out nos's magicka sorc build. Its very similar to what i am doing and has the rotation written out. Use apprentice stone(spell dmg) or lover(pen). But for practice you can use atronach (regen one). Lose thief.

SoLooney

im hitting 42k on my mag sorc with someone giving me drain

your other problem is not getting proper spell pen, using a flame staff, not using spell power pots, and using surge. you also dont use infall aether, moondancer, or master achitect 4 piece, and the lack of a vma staff

also im using a pet build so 5 necro.

ZeroXFF

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Light attacks in between skills make a huge difference.

I was talking about just the one every 3rd rotation when I'm recasting Surge. The reason is, I'm actually using a macro for it, so I can't go HA->FP->LA->PS, it turns into HA->LA->FP->PS or HA->LA->FP->LA->PS, depending on how quickly I smash that PS button. I do it almost perfectly when I'm applying the dots on the 2nd bar though. And yeah, I'm still doing the light attack on the 1st bar, just not in the order that was suggested, which might mess with the timing, which is why I mentioned it. Would it do that?

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Check out nos's magicka sorc build

Will do. I'll also try your other suggestions tomorrow (time to go to sleep here) and then report how it went.

SoLooney wrote: »

your other problem is not getting proper spell pen

How much spell penetration should I aim for? Aside from Major Breach are there other spell pen buffs/debuffs that are commonly used that I will have to balance around?

Eatmyface

Just a few quick thoughts on the above (I'm at work so sorry if I've made an error - all from memory!):

1. Ele. drain morph - go do a few dolmen circles in the desert in a big group - you'll max it in no time. I don't know why it is but they level unbelievably fast doing this. EDIT: I remembered they level off exp. Lol.

2. 6 extra CP's in any of the other Mage options would be > 1% extra in Thaum.... Leading into the next point:

3. Exploiter perk = key. 10% is huge when your blockade keeps the target off balance 100% of the time and you have two HA's in your rotation.

4. Sustainability won't be an issue using your pots... So that's where ditching surge for ele. drain & FP for a now sustainable clench gives you heaps more damage.

5. Clench also stuns, so you can use it to keep target still while you apply dot's/aoe's and run into range to then keep em still (in real world). Also, splash dmg. from clench generally hits more than two others due to nature of dungeons being tight fights.

6. Definitely keep the apprentice stone. With your heavy attacks it is going to make a big difference too - 363 spell dmg increase with 7 x divines. From what I've read (not tested myself), if your crit is 40-50% on a pet build, you're sweet. The extra 10% doesn't make a big enough impact. I.e. that 363 spell damage could be a 20-30% increase in spell damage ALL ThE TIME vs a 10% increase to crit CHANCE (key word).

7. Most importantly - don't worry about real world. DPS tests are all "fake" anyway. The target stands still in your dot's/aoe's 100% of the time, you never have to stop your rotation to break free, after getting knocked down, etc. etc. - the list goes on. If you want a big DPS score you have to build for it and accept that you'll likely never replicate it in the real world / will swap some of those damage skills straight out for ease of play / survivability or whatever.

Hopefully not too many errors in there lol. That's kept me entertained the last 20 odd minutes


EDIT: Use sharpened on your back bar for increased penetration, infused on front.

Ruusa

I'm not online now so cant get screenshots but essentially here's what I used:

CP:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
75 Thaumaturge
6 Spell Erosion

Is what I tested with, which is your original CP but 6 points moved from thaumaturge to spell erosion. Your current CP seems even better. The exploiter passive is really important and its the reason you need 75 points in there. And yes, you understood correctly about CP's and percentage points.

Gear: 5 gold necropotence robe infused rest divines (but the difference between infused and divines is really minor, dont change your armor, divines may even be better) 2 ilambris divines, one of them heavy one medium. Your both ilambris pieces are light. If you have the last passive from undaunted skill line using one medium and one heavy would get you more resources but less sustain.

3 Infallible Aether jewelry, which is better than Willpower but I didnt have any Willpower at hand. Spell damage enchant.

Random gold lightning staves front bar infused with fire enchant backbar nirnhoned with lightning enchant. I dont even own precise staves so couldnt test with those. I usually use Necropotence staves and then one IA armor piece, but since you dont have those I tested with random staves. Maelstrom lightning staff backbar and IA lighting staff frontbar would be even better, I'm very much waiting for next patch so I can change some vMA lightning staff with stupid trait to infused

Generic cheap magicka pots first, last test spell power pots (restore magic + spell crit + spell power). Max magic + health food.

Apprentice mundus. Difference between thief and apprentice and lover is really minor based on my previous tests.

Elemental drain skill does two things: gives the skeleton major breach, which reduces skeleton's resistance and gives you major damage boost, and also restores magicka to you. The unmorphed skill also gives exact same major breach but no magic return, so if you are not running out of magic then there is no difference in damage boost between the morphed and unmorphed version.

Bars (with ele drain)
Crushing shock*, ele drain, pet, inner light, bound aegis, meteor
liquid lightning, blockade, pet, daedric prey, bound aegis, destro ulti

Rotation:
Ele drain, potion, destro ulti
LL - light attack - blockade - light attack - pet - light attack - prey - swap
Heavy attack - crushing shock - light attack - crushing shock OR ele drain if its running out - swap
LL - light attack - blockade - etc ....

Drink potion on cooldown and use meteor when its ready, and then do one less force pulse. If meteor is ready then front bar is: heavy attack - meteor - light attack - force pulse - swap

Weaving light attacks between skills is really important and will easily add couple thousand dps even without vMA staff. vMA staff makes them even more important.


*Force pulse is more damage, but I need crushing shock for vMA and cant be bothered to switch morphs. For pure damage keep using force pulse

WrathOfInnos

As others have said, elemental drain is needed. If you're solo go with lover mundus. For group content where others are providing debuffs to enemies, use mage or apprentice (don't use thief or shadow after the nerf a couple months ago).

A maelstrom staff will add a lot of damage to your light and heavy attacks. Just make sure that wall of elements is active when you heavy attack (don't heavy attack after it drops off in the rotation).

You can also try swapping force pulse to Daedric tomb (morph of mines).

Spell power/spell crit/magicka restore potions will also add to your DPS by:
1. Allowing you to skip casting surge every 30s
2. Keeping up spell crit when you're not on your bar with inner light
3. Giving more sustain than cheap magicka potions

Horowonnoe

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Light attacks in between skills make a huge difference.

I was talking about just the one every 3rd rotation when I'm recasting Surge. The reason is, I'm actually using a macro for it, so I can't go HA->FP->LA->PS, it turns into HA->LA->FP->PS or HA->LA->FP->LA->PS, depending on how quickly I smash that PS button. I do it almost perfectly when I'm applying the dots on the 2nd bar though. And yeah, I'm still doing the light attack on the 1st bar, just not in the order that was suggested, which might mess with the timing, which is why I mentioned it. Would it do that?

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Check out nos's magicka sorc build

Will do. I'll also try your other suggestions tomorrow (time to go to sleep here) and then report how it went.

SoLooney wrote: »

your other problem is not getting proper spell pen

How much spell penetration should I aim for? Aside from Major Breach are there other spell pen buffs/debuffs that are commonly used that I will have to balance around?

uh oh.. don't use a macro : o

Saint314Louis1985

Valera Progib wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Long story short: I seem to be hitting a wall at about 21k DPS, while other people with a similar setup seem to be doing over 25-30k, and I have no idea what it is I'm doing wrong.

Here is a video of a pass on a target skeleton (not my best, but pretty close):
https://youtu.be/C3w_aSn4B2s

The things you don't see in the video:
Race: High Elf
Mundus stone: Apprantice

For those who don't want to watch the video, here is my setup...

Gear:
Necropotence, Willpower, Ilambris, Precise Lightning and Flame Staves (Julianos, so essentially no set, while I'm trying to figure out how to kill last boss in vMA) with weapon damage and absorb magicka enchants. Everything except weapon enchants and jewelry is golden. All light armor.

Rotation:
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
5. [When available] Shooting Star
6. 2x Heavy Attack
7. Force Pulse/Power Surge (depending on whether Power Surge has to be refreshed, meaning every 3rd rotation it's PS, otherwise FP)

Everything done with light attack weaving (I'm not perfect at it, but I think I'm doing pretty well in this regard). The potions I use are simple magicka potions.

Champion Points:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
81 Thaumaturge

You damage is not going to help you kill last vMA boss... high damage helps to skip a lot of vMA mechanics and get a higher score.

Mundus - take thief, your DPS will increase massively

Add ele drain to the rotation. You should be able to reach 25k minimum

actually i believe high dmg absolutely helps with last boss of vma. at the beginning of the final round you can get into crystal phase after dropping 1 destro ultimate. after the crystal phase you can come down and just burn the crap out of the boss rather than do any of the remaining mechanics.

GrigorijMalahevich

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

Valera Progib wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Long story short: I seem to be hitting a wall at about 21k DPS, while other people with a similar setup seem to be doing over 25-30k, and I have no idea what it is I'm doing wrong.

Here is a video of a pass on a target skeleton (not my best, but pretty close):
https://youtu.be/C3w_aSn4B2s

The things you don't see in the video:
Race: High Elf
Mundus stone: Apprantice

For those who don't want to watch the video, here is my setup...

Gear:
Necropotence, Willpower, Ilambris, Precise Lightning and Flame Staves (Julianos, so essentially no set, while I'm trying to figure out how to kill last boss in vMA) with weapon damage and absorb magicka enchants. Everything except weapon enchants and jewelry is golden. All light armor.

Rotation:
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
5. [When available] Shooting Star
6. 2x Heavy Attack
7. Force Pulse/Power Surge (depending on whether Power Surge has to be refreshed, meaning every 3rd rotation it's PS, otherwise FP)

Everything done with light attack weaving (I'm not perfect at it, but I think I'm doing pretty well in this regard). The potions I use are simple magicka potions.

Champion Points:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
81 Thaumaturge

You damage is not going to help you kill last vMA boss... high damage helps to skip a lot of vMA mechanics and get a higher score.

Mundus - take thief, your DPS will increase massively

Add ele drain to the rotation. You should be able to reach 25k minimum

actually i believe high dmg absolutely helps with last boss of vma. at the beginning of the final round you can get into crystal phase after dropping 1 destro ultimate. after the crystal phase you can come down and just burn the crap out of the boss rather than do any of the remaining mechanics.

This is what I meant by writing
"You damage is not going to help you kill last vMA boss... high damage helps to skip a lot of vMA mechanics and get a higher score."
If you ask me, first couple of clears I would take Supression Field and use it whenever CG appears and just ignore that mechanic. More simple than to burst last boss to 70% before he teleports. On my MagDK I don't care, just put destro ult and skip that mechanic to crystal stage...

ZeroXFF

@Eatmyface
Ok, let's give Clench a shot. What rotation should I use?

@Ruusa
Ok, so I made myself 2 new golden staves, one with Nirnhoned and one with Infused traits, and put golden enchants on them, lightning and fire respectively. I also made myself new pots, since the ones I had before were with magicka+spell damage only, without crit. I left the CPs alone for now since you said that my new setup should be even better. The result was:

1. With Surge and without Major Breach: 24.5k
2. With the new pot and with Major Breach: 27.5k
3. I also did a little experiment, since I really don't want to use these fancy pots in dungeons and normal trials, so I used my setup with Surge, but replaced Inner Light with the Weakness to Elements. The result was: 25k

Now if I practice the rotation more and morph Weakness to Elements, I might be able to get to 28-29k with pot and full 25k without. I guess the remaining few points are down to either the adjusted original CP setup being better after all and/or the IA set. The 3p alone gives you about 1.5k dps.

I'll test the CP hypothesis and try a sharpened staff on the 2nd bar sometime in the next few days, as well as explore @Horowonnoe 's suggestion with Nos's build and adding Clench to my rotation somehow. I will then make a video with whatever works best, and we'll see if anyone can find anything else I'm doing wrong.

Eatmyface

@ZeroXFF nice work and good to see things on the improve!

I would try slotting clench in place of FP, but use it before your heavy attack(s), not in the middle.

When you morph weakness into ele. drain you will get a ridiculous amount of magicka back from liquid lightening and blockade. So sustain becomes even less of an issue.


ALSO, I just looked at your video again and noticed you're using 7 x light armor... So you're forgoing the extra 4% increase to mag + health + stam by not having a med and heavy piece in there, as well as some survivability from the heavier armor stats (not relevant to a DPS test, I know). I'm sure you're aware of this but.... Some food for thought:
Ditch inner light and it's 5% mag increase (you get the major prophecy from pots) and take the extra 4% max mag+health+stam back from undaunted passive, meaning overall you only lose 1% in mag. BUT this leaves you space for perhaps mages wrath for the execute phase? Or something else? You'd get less from the mages guild passive for not slotting IL but the extra damage of using mages wrath might be worth it + you get an extra 2% spell damage for slotting MW from the Expert mage passive. Or keep IL on and just change you armor to include a medium and heavy leg/chest/head, as pet damage scales off max mag so that would be more powerful..

I'm at work again so can't test or check any of the stuff I'm writing but hopefully you manage to find a good fit for everything!

ZeroXFF

Ok, so finally I got around to do some in-depth testing. Each dps number is now the average of 3 passes (rounded down to the nearest 0.1k), and these passes do not include attempts where I noticed myself making a significant mistake (forgetting a pot where it does more than give magicka or failing to refresh a dot etc). The videos are from one of the attempts that is included in the average.

Gear is the same with all configurations, only adjusting CPs, abilities and the rotation. I could not get heavy and medium Ilambris pieces yet, and I will work on that, but the difference shouldn't be too big compared to 7x light that I'm wearing now. All gear (except jewelry) and all enchants are golden. Jewelry is purple.

5x Necropotence, all pieces divines with magicka enchants.
2x Ilambris, all pieces divines with magicka enchants.
3x Willpower jewelry, all pieces arcane with spell damage enchants.
1x No set infused lightning staff with fire enchant (main bar).
1x No set nirnhoned lightning staff with lightning enchant (2nd bar).


*** 1. Original setup, only with adjusted rotation (and gear). ***
DPS:
24.5k (24384 24805 24481)

Video:
https://youtu.be/yC5-rElbBzU

CP:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
81 Thaumaturge

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
(1st bar)
5. Heavy attack
6. Heavy attack (if magicka seems to not be enough to finish the fight before I run out, Surge doesn't have to be refreshed and ultimate isn't ready)
6.1 Force Pulse (if I have enough magicka, Surge has to be refreshed)
6.1 Meteor (if ready)
6.2 Force Pulse (if Surge doesn't need to be refreshed)
6.2 Surge (if it has to be refreshed)


*** 2. Moved 6 CPs from Thaumaturge to Spell Erosion. ***
DPS:
24.4k (24711 24102 24533)

Video:
https://youtu.be/Yz8aP7JqBlk

CP:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
6 Spell Erosion
6 Staff Expert
44 Master-at-Arms
75 Thaumaturge

Rotation:
Same as in 1.

*** 3. Elemental Drain + Surge. ***
DPS:
26.5k (26617 26268 26647)

Video:
https://youtu.be/NgPEHoW8qh0

CP:
Same as 2.

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
(1st bar)
5. Heavy attack (if ultimate is not ready)
5.1 Meteor
5.2 Force Pulse
6. Force Pulse (if Elemental Drain doesn't have to be refreshed)
6. Elemental Drain
7. Force Pulse (if Surge doesn't need to be refreshed)
7. Surge

*** 4. Clench instead of Force Pulse. ***
DPS:
27.0k (26906 27129 26983)

Video:
https://youtu.be/DdSLNhrNSuA

CP:
Same as 2.

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
(1st bar)
5. Clench
6. Heavy Attack
6.1 Meteor (if available)
6.2 Light attack (an additional one, since there is nothing else to do because of a lack of a spammable skill)
7. Elemental Drain (if Surge was refreshed in the previous round)
7. Surge (if Elemental Drain was refreshed in the previous round)

*** 5. 4 with crit+spell power pots. ***
DPS:
29.9k (29849 29540 30475)

Video:
https://youtu.be/_KJO5-VtM2g

CP:
Same as 2.

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
(1st bar)
5. Clench
6. Heavy Attack
7. Elemental Drain (if ultimate is not ready)
7. Meteor (if it's ready)

*** 6. 3 with crit+spell power pots. ***
DPS:
28.8k (28232 29879 28383)

Video:
https://youtu.be/duTiWrpW_Cs

CP:
Same as 2.

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. Volatile Familiar
4. Daedric Prey
(1st bar)
5. Heavy attack
6. Heavy attack (if struggling with magicka, ultimate not ready and Elemental Drain doesn't have to be refreshed)
6.1 Force Pulse (if enough magicka, ultimate ready or Elemental Drain has to be refreshed)
6.2 Meteor (if available)
6.2 Elemental Drain (if it has to be refreshed or ultimate is likely to be ready next round)
6.2 Force Pulse (if enough magicka, ultimate not ready and Elemental Drain doesn't have to be refreshed)

*** 7. Nos without pot. ***
DPS:
26.6k (27247 26360 26202)

Video:
https://youtu.be/YK84fMO7dv0

CP:
Same as 1.

Rotation:
(2nd bar)
1. Liquid Lightning
2. Blockade
3. [Every other round] Elemental Drain
(1st bar)
4. Volatile Familiar
5. Daedric Prey
6. 1x/2x Heavy Attack (if low on magicka)
6. 3x/4x Force Pulse/Crystal Fragments (if enough magicka)

*** 8. Nos with crit+sp pot. ***
DPS:
29.5k (31138 29372 28212)

Video:
https://youtu.be/_aTnVO6tNzM

CP:
Same as 1.

Rotation:
Same as 7.

*** 9. 5 with different CPs. ***
DPS:
30.2k (29415 30169 31278)

Video:
https://youtu.be/7bZvxbYVnO4

CP:
40 Elfborn
49 Elemental Expert
46 Spell Erosion
8 Staff Expert
2 Master-at-Arms
75 Thaumaturge

Rotation:
Same as 5.

*** 10. 1 with different CPs. ***
DPS:
26.1k (26191 25943 26307)

Video:
https://youtu.be/KKzIhfl6X1s

CP:
Same as 9.

Rotation:
Same as 1.

*** 11. 4 with different CPs. ***
DPS:
28.8k (28432 29255 28833)

Video:
https://youtu.be/ggJ4yUbi4XY

CPs:
Same as 9.

Rotation:
Same as 4.

I did not make a test with a sharpened staff on 2nd bar because I already spent over 500k in gold and material cost on this thread, and I doubt the difference would be that big compared to the nirnhoned staff. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to test it and tell us how much of a difference it makes.

The observations:
1. The rotation I use in 4/5/9/11 gives the highest dps. However it's only sustainable when used with pots that give a permanent Major Intellect buff and prevent me from losing any magicka on Surge.
2. The new CP setup is consistently better.
3. The rotation from 1/2/10 allows me to decide on the fly whether I need more magicka or if I can do more damage, and it doesn't require external support. And since it doesn't include Elemental Drain in the test, it should be on par with the Clench rotation if someone else (like the tank) provides that debuff.
4. Nos's build has high potential, at least if you use pots, but it's difficult to get it right, and it also drains magicka very quickly.

Conclusions:
1. I'll use 9 for trials, except I'll replace Elemental Drain with Mages' Wrath or Force Pulse.
2. I'll use 10 for dungeons, except when the tank is being selfish and doesn't apply Major Breach with his taunt, and the 2k extra dps I'd be doing with 11 would make a difference.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. This is already a 25-50% boost over what I did prior to making this thread.

ashl3y44

In video 9, where you hit 30.2. It was good DPS but I only see 2 maybe 3 light attacks between the whole rotation you just move from one skill to another. You need to be doing light attacks between every single skill. If you did that you would probably hit 35k. So for example my rotation goes LA-LL-LA-blockade-LA-scalding rune>barswap cancel the animation, light attack-curse>heavy attack- LA- destructive clench > barswap cancel into light attack- then repeat from the beginning. It is very hard to get used to. But this is the best way to get the best DPS.