Stamina Sorcerer - Is It Good?

Yzalirk

Hey guys,

I was wondering if a Stamina Sorcerer build is any good? Particularly for a DPS role. I have never played as a Sorcerer but I heard that they are a great class. The abilities sound really cool, like the Lightning abilities and pets, but do they work well for a Stamina build? This question is from a POV that wants to stray away from the Stamina meta. Is it worth investing time in this build?

Thanks,
-Yzalirk

VaranisArano

Hi. I love my stam sorcs.

So, here's the thing about stam sorcs. I love them. They are hands down the easiest class I've ever leveled. Once you get Hurricane and that AOE starts chewing up mobs, leveling turns into easy mode.

End-game Stam Sorcs have nasty AOE. Hurricane is brutal and the Implosion chance on low health enemies does a fair bunch of damage. The ability to have a third bar while using the Overload Ultimate adds a lot of utility to the class. Stam Sorcs do less single-target damage than some other stam classes, but their AOE damage potential is excellent. Crit Surge is great for self-healing, making stam sorcs some of the sturdiest stam builds.

Now, the problem is that if you are looking for something to break the "Stamina meta", the stam sorc probably isn't it. Why not?

Well, Stam Sorcs don't use a whole lot of class skills for damage. Once you move beyond the Crit Surge for healing, Hurricane for AOE damage, and Dark Deal for resource return, you've pretty much exhausted the class skills of the Stam Sorc. So Stam Sorcs still use the Stamina meta - the weapon skills for damage and the Bow for Endless Hail/Poison Injection, and Caltrops, and so on. So outside of extra AOE from hurricane, stam sorcs play like pretty much every other stamina class when they do DPS.

So I highly recommend Stam Sorcs as a fun class that's easy to play with a lot of damage potential...but they still use the same weapon skills as every other stam class because like every stam class other than warden, they weren't actually designed with a lot of viable class skills for stamina.

Lukums1

Not seen my vMA runs?

Godly as hell.

Can tank veteran dungeons, excels at raid content, excels at solo farming, and awesome speed boosts, healing, burst damage.

What's not to love.

Morgul667

I love my stamsorc

SydneyGrey

Stamsorcs are the best.
I like them so much, I have two. I wanted to try both a Redguard and a Bosmer to see which one did better damage or which had better stamina sustain. (I'm still figuring it out. LOL. They're pretty close.)

Vapirko

Yeah they’re great, still decent in PvP too if you decide to go there.

Minyassa

I love mine, even though he still needs a ton of work. He's extraordinarily squishy at the moment and his DPS isn't great according to my fabricant dummy, but he does well in dungeons. I'm still working on gear.

fosokles

Some Stamina classes don't have a unique class skills that you can use like surprise attack on Night blade, or Biting jabs from the templar. That makes them weapon based classes with class buffs and passives.

What makes stam sorc great is the passives, not the damage abilities, which should be added to help the class.

Marlew

Greetings,

yes, i love my Stamsorc too!

I played all Classes thru the Years, and it will be always my Favourite.

I did nearly all content with it, VetDungs, Raids, Farming Dungs on Normal, really easy to do that alone.

Specially for old man like me, it is a class that forgive your slow reflexes and messing sometimes rotation up

Cheers

sudaki_eso

Started a StamSorc last weekend and damn, its so much fun Can highly recommend it to at least try the class. And you dont have to follow the meta, just for fun i am using a lighting staff instead of a bow right now which most people are using and so far it is working (i am still level 20) with some adjustments. Not sure if i will use this setup for the endgame content but the "play as you want" works with my build very well.

Loc2262

At level 20, you don't follow any "meta" anyway. Due to attribute scaling, your magicka is much higher than it'd normally be, so mixing stamina and magicka skills works pretty well. Play as you want until you reach endgame level!

Sawzallz

I need help with my Stamsorc she's a wood elf what skills should I run I tried everything the best I have is potion injection acid spray dark deal hurricane and critical surge. I don't know what to do to I wanna remove acid spray

VaranisArano

Sawzallz wrote: »

I need help with my Stamsorc she's a wood elf what skills should I run I tried everything the best I have is potion injection acid spray dark deal hurricane and critical surge. I don't know what to do to I wanna remove acid spray

Hi. Sounds like you are using a bow. That's great! Bows are super useful for boosting your DPS and can be very effective for soloing.

Critical Surge is a fantastic source of self-healing. Hurricane is a great AOE DOT. Poison Injection is a beautiful DOT and Acid Spray is like a low-strength, multi-target version of Poison Injection.

I'd strongly suggest adding Endless Hail. Endless Hail gives you another AOE DOT and is standard in stamina DPS rotations because it adds another layer of damage that stacks with Hurricane and Poison Injection to really increase your DPS. If you are running solo content, such as for questing, Snipe is pretty good, but not so much for group dungeons where your AOE from Endless Hail will be more important.

You may also want to consider a secondary weapon, since Stam Sorcs rely on weapon skills for their primary damage. Dual Wield is a common second choice for PVE DPS while Two-handed is a good PVP choice. I use Dual Wield on my Stam Sorc DPS, and my fairly simple rotation looks something like this:

Start on Bow bar: Crit Surge (for buff), Hurricane (AOE and protection), Endless Hail (AOE), Poison Injection (Dot), swap to Dual Wield Bar

Dual Wield Bar: Rending slashes or Trap Beats (DOT), then Flurry/weave heavy attack or heavy attack for sustain, until its time to restart at Hurricane.

On trash mobs, I'll use Acid Spray or Steel Tornado to clear the pack fast. Both of those are really effective in trash mobs, but not so much elsewhere.

For high level DPS, Stam Sorc is about layering damage. (Really, most high level DPS is about layering sources of damage.) You can see I'm stacking damage from Hurricane, Endless Hail, Poison Injection, and Trap Beast on top of my spammable. However, if that all seems really complicated, I can level a stam sorc through overland content just fine with Hurricane + Flurry.

For a pure Bow Build, I'd recommend Crit Surge -> Hurricane -> Endless Hail->Poison Injection/Acid Spray with Dark Deal if you need sustain. Lethal Arrow/Snipe is a great way to soften up enemies from afar if you are solo questing. Also, you'll have a small magicka pool, but you can use Mage's Fury to great effect if you are struggling to finish off enemies - just have enough magicka to use it as an execute.

Sawzallz

VaranisArano wrote: »

Sawzallz wrote: »

I need help with my Stamsorc she's a wood elf what skills should I run I tried everything the best I have is potion injection acid spray dark deal hurricane and critical surge. I don't know what to do to I wanna remove acid spray

Hi. Sounds like you are using a bow. That's great! Bows are super useful for boosting your DPS and can be very effective for soloing.

Critical Surge is a fantastic source of self-healing. Hurricane is a great AOE DOT. Poison Injection is a beautiful DOT and Acid Spray is like a low-strength, multi-target version of Poison Injection.

I'd strongly suggest adding Endless Hail. Endless Hail gives you another AOE DOT and is standard in stamina DPS rotations because it adds another layer of damage that stacks with Hurricane and Poison Injection to really increase your DPS. If you are running solo content, such as for questing, Snipe is pretty good, but not so much for group dungeons where your AOE from Endless Hail will be more important.

You may also want to consider a secondary weapon, since Stam Sorcs rely on weapon skills for their primary damage. Dual Wield is a common second choice for PVE DPS while Two-handed is a good PVP choice. I use Dual Wield on my Stam Sorc DPS, and my fairly simple rotation looks something like this:

Start on Bow bar: Crit Surge (for buff), Hurricane (AOE and protection), Endless Hail (AOE), Poison Injection (Dot), swap to Dual Wield Bar

Dual Wield Bar: Rending slashes or Trap Beats (DOT), then Flurry/weave heavy attack or heavy attack for sustain, until its time to restart at Hurricane.

On trash mobs, I'll use Acid Spray or Steel Tornado to clear the pack fast. Both of those are really effective in trash mobs, but not so much elsewhere.

For high level DPS, Stam Sorc is about layering damage. (Really, most high level DPS is about layering sources of damage.) You can see I'm stacking damage from Hurricane, Endless Hail, Poison Injection, and Trap Beast on top of my spammable. However, if that all seems really complicated, I can level a stam sorc through overland content just fine with Hurricane + Flurry.

For a pure Bow Build, I'd recommend Crit Surge -> Hurricane -> Endless Hail->Poison Injection/Acid Spray with Dark Deal if you need sustain. Lethal Arrow/Snipe is a great way to soften up enemies from afar if you are solo questing. Also, you'll have a small magicka pool, but you can use Mage's Fury to great effect if you are struggling to finish off enemies - just have enough magicka to use it as an execute.

Yeah I try I might have to respec so I can put points in two handed and none on crafting cause my templar has better crafting skills,I use acid spray to get a instant crit.

AcadianPaladin

Yzalirk wrote: »

Hey guys,

I was wondering if a Stamina Sorcerer build is any good? Particularly for a DPS role. I have never played as a Sorcerer but I heard that they are a great class. The abilities sound really cool, like the Lightning abilities and pets, but do they work well for a Stamina build? This question is from a POV that wants to stray away from the Stamina meta. Is it worth investing time in this build?

Thanks,
-Yzalirk

I run a pet magsorc dps and a bow/bow stamsorc dps. If you want the lightning and pets, definitely go magsorc since pets and lightnint are really fueled by a high magicka pool. Stamsorc's do well using the skills mentioned above - Crit Surge and Hurricane are a wonderful 'base'. I like Dark Deal to help with sustain/healing and use several of the good bow skills mentioned above. I also slot several from the Fighters Guild - as much because they are good skills as for the passives they provide: Silver Shards, Lightweight Beast Trap and Flawless Dawnbreaker. Finally, I also like Caltrops (Cyrodiil Alliance skill) to provide another potent AoE. Beyond that, bow/bow playstyle requires lots of mobility while keeping your foe(s) within the radius of your AoEs while simultaneously dancing just out of your opponent(s) melee range. The meta for stamsorc is DW/bow so bow/bow is definitely not a cookie cutter meta build. That said, my bow/bow stamsorc can solo quite a few world bosses, solo dolmens and breeze through public dungeons.

xiZeroPointix

fosokles wrote: »

Some Stamina classes don't have a unique class skills that you can use like surprise attack on Night blade, or Biting jabs from the templar. That makes them weapon based classes with class buffs and passives. What makes stam sorc great is the passives, not the damage abilities, which should be added to help the class.

This...its the passives. Look at them closely. Bound arnaments is a great skill too. Level this to get the passives which is typically only Powerstone for the 8% reduction in ultimate cost. Daedric protection for the 10% health and stam recovery. Bound arnaments alone give you major and minor ward ( physical and spell resist). You get 8% max stam increase and 11% increase to heavy attack damage which paramount to your soon to be endgame rotation. You get 3% weapon damage for every class skill you slot. Slot overload for a 3rd bar and load it up with sorc class skills ( streak, dark deal, rune cage, mines and bound arnaments cause it has to be slotted on all 3 bars if u dont want the ability to drop off) there are alot of good skills such as negate because ultimates scale off your max stat now so you can slot ultimate that deal magic damage as well cause you have a passive that increases magic and physical damage as well. Sorcs are best known for there max stat and raw damage passives. You also get to take advantage of many other weapon skill line passives to further the damage. Sorc does not have many buffs and debuffs as compared with other classes, but small group play is where the sorc really shines. All the buffs from templar and dk healers and tanks go straight to you furthering your damage potential. Stam sorc is my main after switching from mag sorc and havent gone back. The class is fast especially with an orc and the damage output is endgame competetive. You wanna have a magsorc for trials not all, but there are a few were its better to have one.

Skill Recommendations: Dual Wield

1) bound arnaments- takes up 2 slots but overall gives you minor ward and resolve that stacks with hurricanes major ward and resolve. If you need more resources, swap in dark deal
2)rending slashes- extreme bleed damage and the other morph is a heal over time. Flex this out for steel tornado morph of whirlwind when u have 4 or more trash but with all the aoe from the back bar and skill 3 i rarely slot this anymore.
3) shrouded daggers- your main spammable. Its cheap and hit hard and the damage increases for each target hit. Will also hit 1 target 3 times as well. Amazing damage..when in doubt rending slash and spam this.
4) blade cloak- amazing skill to make you very hard to kill and a good dot every 2 seconds. Have this up 100% in a fight.
5) hurricane- the bread and butter of stam sorc. This is the skill that gives the speed..high resist..and a dot that increases damage the longer its up. Keep up 100% leave it on the front bar.

Ultimate: dawnbreaker of smiting for more conal aoe damage and stun to clear trash faster..or overload for the third bar and put dark deal and crit surge here, as well as vigor and other utility skills. Do not slot a different ult on this bar.

Back bar: Bow

1) bound arnaments- its a toggle. If you lack damage and healing swap for crit surge
2) lightwieght trap- same duration shorter duration than rearming, but has overall more damage and can be thrown up to 28m away ( gives you 10% crit damage and a potent dot.
3) endless hail- i use this for the longer duration so i can cast buffs before swithcing bars to keep up aoe dots up 100%
4) Razor caltrops- endless hail with this skill and pve mobs wil melt away. Make sure to light attack between each skill to proc the hawk eye passive.
5) poison injection- hands down one of the strongest single target dot in the game. Has execute damage on enymies below 50% health. Put this on everything.
Ultimate: Ballista..super strong single target damage for bosses or high health mob boss...amazing dps

Rotation should be like this.
Apply buffs
Swap to bow bar
Endless...then immediately lay down trap..light attack...caltrops..light attack poison inject..barswap into rending slashes..heavy attack..shrouded...heavy attack shrouded...heavy attack apply blade cloak...hurricane and repeat.

Cast ulti when available. If using overload and u cast ulti on back bar...u will have to build some ult to access iverload fir resource sustain.