Looking for help moving from normal to vet dungeons

Sirlacker

As the title says, I'm looking for some help and advice transitioning from normal dungeons to veteran ones (and even onto trials).

To preface this all of this and give some info on my character, I'm attempting to follow this guide as a magicka nightblade. So everything will be in relation to said guide.



CP 236 with all points spent;
The Tower
02 - Warlord
The Lover
35 - Arcanist
41 - Tenacity
The Shadow
N/A
The Apprentice
21 - Elemental Expert
17 - Elfborn
10 - Spell Erosion
The Atrinoch
13 - Master-At-Arms
02 - Staff Expert
The Ritual
15 - Thaumaturge
The Steed
12 - Ironclad
The Lady
16 - Hardy
29 - Elemental Defender
14 - Thick Skinned
The Lord
08 - Bastion

My current gear Set-Up is;

Head - Medium - Epic - Shacklebreaker - Divines - Max Magicka (802)
Shoulders - Heavy - Epic - Shacklebreaker - Divines - Max Magicka (324)
Chest - Light - Legendary - Julianos - Infused - Max Magicka (962)
Gloves - Light - Legendary - Julianos - Divines - Max Magicka (324)
Sash - Light - Epic - Julianos - Divines - Max Magicka (351)
Legs - Light - Legendary - Julianos - Divines - Max Magicka (868)
Shoes - Light - Epic - Julianos - Divines - Max Magicka (351)
Necklace - Epic - Willpower - Spell Damage (174)
Ring #1 - Epic - Willpower - Spell Damage (174)
Ring #2 - Epic - Willpower - Spell Damage (174)
Inferno Staff - Legendary - Magnus' - Infused - Fire Damage (3656)
Lightening Staff - Legendary - Magnus' - Infused - Spell Damage (452)

I know not every piece of gear is legendary, and my chest is missing the divines trait, but most do have what I, and the guide, believe to be BiS enchantments. There are a few pieces still sitting on the epic enchant but not many.

I have every ability and morph exactly like the guide and my rotation follows as close as possible to the guides under any given circumstance.

The issue that I'm struggling with, regarding the veteran dungeons is that if I'm not kicked from the party at the beggining due to my low, or at least lower than theirs, CP level, I'm either being kicked due to a lack in DPS or we're getting stuck on a boss because I'm not doing enough DPS and I'm forced to leave the party so the rest can continue.

Single target veteran bosses I'm pulling out on average between 10k-12k DPS with all my buffs including drinks and potions. And yes, I am using the reccomended potion - Spell-Crit Potion and drink - Witchmothers Brew.

If you could please help me as to where I'm going wrong or where I could drastically improve it would be appriciated. As far as I can see the only way forward would to get new gear which means completing the vet dungeons and trials.

VaranisArano

The biggest improvement will come from practicing your rotation.

There's a fair bit that could be tweaked, from gear to race (I'm sure someone will point out that Nord racial passives lean more towards stamina), but ultimately your biggest DPS improvement will come from practicing your rotation.

jaws343

You may be better off running julianos and an overland set while you wait to get a dungeon set with purple jewelry or a monster set. You can use mother's sorrow or spinners as a placeholder. Both of those sets, paired with Julianos, should do better for you than two partial sets.

Even if you are just using blue jewelry on the overland sets to get into the dungeons, you will be better off than running partial crafted sets.

Now your DPS may only go up a small amount, but for the non-dlc and non-2 dungeons, you really do not need more than 15K DPS to clear the content, as long as you can stay alive.

And I will echo the practice suggestion. The gear will help, but practice will help more.

Loc2262

Varanis and Jaws already gave you good tips. I'll add the following:

What's your Spell Penetration? You want around 11-12k if you're not in an optimized group, and make sure Major Breach is applied to the target. Bosses have 18.2k resistance, and you want to reduce that as much as possible. It's the value that most affects your damage done, since it's taken into calculation as the very last step. I.e. your damage done from all sources is multiplied by a "Spell Mitigation" percentage value, which is derived from target resistance and attacker penetration from all sources.

Example: If you attack a regular 18.2k resistance boss and have zero penetration, your damage done is reduced to 63.6% of what it would normally be. At 8k penetration, you have 80% damage done, i.e. you lose 20% damage. That shows how much influence resistance/penetration has on your damage!

As a Magicka char, you get spell penetration as a passive of Light Armor, so you don't really need to use a set that gives penetration. Additionally, use the Lover mundus stone with as many Divines pieces as possible, and put CP into Spell Erosion until you reach around 11k penetration. Make sure the healer puts Elemental Drain on the boss, or the tank uses the melee taunt, to get Major Breach. If solo or they don't do it, use Ele Drain yourself. Then your damage done after resistances is 96%.

A very good place to play around with all kinds of character values is the ESO Build Editor on the UESP Wiki.

Merlin13KAGL

18.2k mitigates 26.5% of incoming damage, leaving closer to 73.5 remaining damage.

@Loc2262 how are you coming up with 63%? I assume the figure comes from comparing damage at no pen vs damage at full pentration, as opposed to mitigation? (1 - 100% / 73.5 %)

Loc2262

I didn't do actual in-game tests, but used the "Complete Formula for Attacker Spell Mitigation" in the ESO Build Editor.

Please note that my values were for PVE, where bosses count as "effective level 50". In PVP, CP 160+ players count as "effective level 66", that might be where the discrepancy comes from. The higher the effective level, the lower the mitigation effect.

The editor say: Resistance 18.2k, penetration 0, effective level 50 = 63.6%. At effective level 66, 72.4%. So please correct me if those figures don't match reality.

Merlin13KAGL

Fair enough. Thanks for explaining.

Yeah, full pen damage is 1.36 x no pen damage (the 100% pen / 0% mitigation vs the 0% pen, using the 18.2 (27.5% mitigation).

So from one to the other, you're losing 36% bonus damage, leaving the 63%.

Seems a little odd that they chose to display it that way, but I guess it works. I'll take a peek at the formula posted.

(You can factor it a number of ways, just as long as you know what the baseline is you're looking at, I suppose.)

Asardes

10-12K seems awfully low even with 240 CP, you can basically do more simply keeping up Elemental Blockade and Twisting Path and heavy attack on top of it. Practice your rotation until you can do it without thinking about it. It's somewhat like driving, when you know where the clutch, brake and throttle are, and how much you need to turn the wheel, so you only have to watch the road and the traffic. If you are CP160+ and you manage to pull 20K+ you are good enough to do vanilla veteran dungeons, for DLC ones CP300+ and 25K+ DPS is recommended.

Loc2262

@Merlin13KAGL: Yeah apparently the way the build editor chose to display/calculate it, and I assume it's done the same or at least similarly enough in the game, is to first calculate the damage you do with buffs and debuffs from all sources, and as a final step apply "damage mitigation" which comes from resistance and penetration.

Neutrally, i.e. with zero resistance and penetration (or rather equal resistance and penetration), the damage is unmodified. Mitigation 100%. Yeah sounds weird. I'd assume "mitigation 100%" means that there's no damage left because it all got mitigated away. Nah, mitigation to them means the remaining amount of damage.

Then it's basically "resistance minus penetration", taking several factors into account, then converting the weird resistance unit that's the basis of those 18.2k into a percentage value.

Asardes

Also note that overland mobs (and most Maelstrom ones) only have 9K resistance, which is half of what group instanced content (dungeon & trial) ones have. So DPS tests on world bosses will turn out quite optimistic numbers. That means your actual DPS is lower than that.

NordSwordnBoard

Recovery is too high for PvE - All three jewelry pieces need spell damage; use heavy attacks to regain magic. Do heavy attacks beofore you need the resources in your rotation. Kutas for damage glyphs make a difference. I'd also use blue magic & health food.

Monster sets - the helmets only come from vet or the golden vendor in cyrodiil - can help your dps increase. My favorite is Illambris, and the final bosses to get it aren't too difficult to beat.

Julianos is a great set, not a waste to gold out, but wait until you start farming sets to do so - you can easily make Julianos fill in the gaps you don't get from dropped sets.

Loc2262

@NordSwordnBoard: His recovery isn't necessarily too high. I like doing a light attack rotation on my Magicka Nightblade, for which I use the Witchmother's Potent Brew buff food (and Skoria to compensate for the reduced health). I have around 1.2k recovery there too, so that sustain is okay. I have less Max Magicka, but don't to do need heavy attacks.

Runefang

Loc2262 wrote: »

@NordSwordnBoard: His recovery isn't necessarily too high. I like doing a light attack rotation on my Magicka Nightblade, for which I use the Witchmother's Potent Brew buff food (and Skoria to compensate for the reduced health). I have around 1.2k recovery there too, so that sustain is okay. I have less Max Magicka, but don't to do need heavy attacks.

Yeah his recovery is fine considering he's a magblade.