stamsorc issues

Lynx7386

So I finally picked up caltrops from cyro and respected back to my trials stamsorc dps build, but its not performing as Well as expected.

Here's my current setup:
Khajiit
5x twice ranged serpent
5x strength of the automaton
2x kra'gh
At about 700 stam recovery, 3k weapon damage, 14 into health and 50 into stamina, all stam enchants, mainhand weapon power offhand and bow poison.

Front bar(dual wield)
Shrouded daggers
Rearming trap
Deadly cloak or rending slashes
Bound armaments
Camouflaged hunter
Flawless dawnbreaker

Back bar (bow, only 4pc tfs)
Endless hail
Razor caltrops
Hurricane
Bound armaments
Poison injection or critical surge
Greater storm atronach

Rotation:
Start on Back bar - hurricane - la - caltrops - la - endless hail - swap - slashes/cloak - la - trap - ha - shrouded (heavy into shrouded about 4 times before swap and restart), fitting in poison injection during execute right before hail in the rotation.

With this setup about the max I can get on a 3 mil dummy is 20k dps, on the 350k precursor I can hit around 25k.

I'm running into sustain issues though, even with 75 points in the champion star for heavy attack return and 75 in stam recovery.

During last night's Asylum trial I had to replace injection/surge on my bow bar with dark deal just to keep my stamina up enough for dodging.

How can I improve sustain for this build?

Danksta

I've just found out that Stormfist is pretty awesome. I'm actually parsing higher with it on my stam sorc and stamplar, even with the one piece recovery. It's only slightly higher on a 3 mil dummy but significantly higher on the 6 mil dummy. Also for vAS you shouldn't really be dodge rolling a whole lot.

Your bars are set up a little weird too. Camo Hunter is a wasted slot if you're running good pots, and bar space is already tight with stam sorcs.

My bars look like this:
Front bar: Rending Slashes, Shrouded Dagger, Hurricane, Deadly Cloak, Bound Armaments Ult: Flawless DB (DBoS actually because I sometimes PvP on this toon and only PvE with him when asked)
Back bar: Poison Injection, Caltrops, Endless Hail, Trap, Bound Armaments Ult: Ballista (haven't checked out storm atro yet but sounds like a good option in certain fights)

Having Hurricane on your front bar allows you to more easily keep up Hurricane without over casting it. The bigger Hurricane gets the more damage it does so you really don't want to cast it early.

Lynx7386

See I find it easier to run hurricane, caltrops, and hail on back bar because of their durations. 15s, 12s, 10s respectively, so casting them in order means that my hurricane runs out right around the same time my hail does, and makes the rotation easier while allowing me to stay on front bar longer. Similarly, I hate having Rearming trap on the back bar because it only lasts 6 seconds (7.5 with double proc), so I don't want to cast it early in the rotation otherwise it runs out before hurricane gets to max strength where that crit damage modifier really counts.

I didn't have weapon crit pots at the time but I will craft some so i can get rid of hunter. Only thing is hunter also gives an extra 3% weapon damage on the front bar in can't make up for, but I guess that would let me run both deadly cloak and slashes where before I was using either or.

That may help dps a bit but I still run into the problem of sustain. What can I do about that? You'd think it wouldn't be a problem when I'm using 4-5 heavy attacks per rotation but my stam pool doesn't seem to recover like it should from heavies. I could bump the champion star for heavies to 100 but id be losing 25 points in the stam recovery star for it.

Asardes

Things I noticed right away, even though I don't play a Stamina Sorcerer currently:
- Why do you need to put 14 points into health? You could instead run 1 light 1 heavy or 2 heavy monster sets for more health but normally you don't need either since you have constant heals, and quite high resistance with Hurricane and Bound Armaments up and Deadly Cloak active.
- Weapon Damage is seriously low. It should be more like 4K, considering the amount of Sorcerer and Fighters Guild skills present.
- You don't need to spam Shrouded Daggers 4x, since by the time you do that your DoTs would have long run out.
- Main hand enchant should always be poison since it's procced more often, and only off hand and back bar (if you aren't using poisons) should be berserker
- Neither Poison Injection or Critical Surge are optional skills, but you should use both if you don't use Weapon Power potions
- Camouflaged Hunter is OK if you don't use Weapon Power potions, but redundant if you do, and in trials you always do.
- Greater Storm Atronach does scale from your maximum stats, but doesn't benefit from CP or physical penetration since it does magic damage

The gear seems fine, but I would split the skill setup in 2 versions, one for solo/dungeons, another for trials.

Solo/dungeon setup (skill buffed):
Front Bar: Rending Slashes | Shrouded Daggers | Deadly Cloak | Hurricane | Camouflaged Hunter || Flawless Dawnbreaker
Back Bar: Poison Injection | Endless Hail | Razor Caltrops | Rearming Trap | Critical Surge || Ballista

Trial Setup (potion buffed):
Front Bar: Rending Slashes | Shrouded Daggers | Deadly Cloak | Hurricane | Bound Armaments || Flawless Dawnbreaker
Back Bar: Poison Injection | Endless Hail | Razor Caltrops | Rearming Trap | Bound Armaments || Ballista

Rotation is essentially the same:
Rearming Trap -> LA -> Razor Caltrops -> LA -> Endless Hail -> LA -> Poison Injection -> bar swap -> HA -> Rending Slashes -> HA -> Shrouded Daggers -> HA -> Shrouded Daggers -> LA -> Deadly Cloak -> LA ->Hurricane [repeat]

With 3 heavy attacks there's no way you will not be able to sustain, regardless of group makeup, and when playing solo Critical Surge will keep you healed at full. If you still have trouble sustaining, which I doubt, you can do one more HA instead of LA on front bar with one of the abilities. The order of the skills on the back bar is not that important (you can swap cancel caltrops instead since that animation is rather clunky), but be sure to not swap on Hail because the bow special effect will fail to activate.

BuddyAces

Get rid of tfs. Seriously. It's worthless. If you want pen because you're Solo or never play with another stamina toon use spriggans or sunder. Most mobs are dead before you'll get the full benefit of tfs or maybe you have to disconnect from a fight to rez or whatever which makes you lose your stacks.

Having a base pen like nmg, spriggans or sunder is going to be better off than tfs in almost every situation.

Most dungeons in this game you won't need to run deadly cloak minus a few fights, there can be better options. Not saying to discard it entirely, just know when you should run it or when a better option is better per encounter.

Three heavy attacks on your front bar and grabbing an orb now and then is plenty for sustain. Normal stamina rotation on back bar that every stamina does etc.

Dump all points into stamina. You do not need a heavy piece unless you're still learning mechanics or want a buffer for just in case. A health glyph on the chest piece or any big piece is more than enough.

If I've repeated anything that anyone else wrote then nevermind. At work on a short break so I didn't get to read the whole thread.

Edit
Disreguard the deadly cloak part. Missed where you said you were doing trials. I derped.

Lynx7386

- Why do you need to put 14 points into health? You could instead run 1 light 1 heavy or 2 heavy monster sets for more health but normally you don't need either since you have constant heals, and quite high resistance with Hurricane and Bound Armaments up and Deadly Cloak active.

Currently for a minimum 18k health I like to keep at on dps just to minimize 1 shots. I'm working on getting light/heavy monster pieces to benefit more from undaunted passives.

- Weapon Damage is seriously low. It should be more like 4K, considering the amount of Sorcerer and Fighters Guild skills present.

That's 3k with just major brutality, in at 3500 or so with the enchant proc, but I'm also only isonf purple gear right now (saving tempers to gold out eventually)

- You don't need to spam Shrouded Daggers 4x, since by the time you do that your DoTs would have long run out.

Ok, I have a hard time keeping track of dots so I base bow many times I use shrouded on when hurricane is about to run out. Ill try to tighten that up though.

- Main hand enchant should always be poison since it's procced more often, and only off hand and back bar (if you aren't using poisons) should be berserker

Thanks, wasn't aware of this. It should be easy enough to swap my main and iddhand weapons and get a power enchant for the bow.

- Neither Poison Injection or Critical Surge are optional skills, but you should use both if you don't use Weapon Power potions

Crit surge I mostly run when i need the healing, not so much for trials which is when I use poison injection for an execute boost. I don't need the brutality since shrouded daggers provides it.

- Camouflaged Hunter is OK if you don't use Weapon Power potions, but redundant if you do, and in trials you always do.

Yea I think ill be dropping it for cloak.

- Greater Storm Atronach does scale from your maximum stats, but doesn't benefit from CP or physical penetration since it does magic damage

From What I've heard, on single target fights the atronach is still the best ultimate for stamsorc despite the champion point issue. I'm working on unlocking ballista for the bow and might use that instead, but its hard to beat a 30 second high damage ult that also gives me 8% more health and one of my allies major berserk.

BuddyAces

Going to ask again even though you brought it up first. Does anyone know if the atro pulls more dps than ballista? Has anyone ran the tests yet?

Lynx7386

BuddyAces wrote: »

Going to ask again even though you brought it up first. Does anyone know if the atro pulls more dps than ballista? Has anyone ran the tests yet?

I'd like to know as well, some people say atro is over 100k damage over the duration and has a similar cost to other ults that only do 30-50k. It at least seems more efficient but I guess it depends on how fast your ult generates

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Lynx7386 wrote: »

So I finally picked up caltrops from cyro and respected back to my trials stamsorc dps build, but its not performing as Well as expected.

Here's my current setup:
Khajiit
5x twice ranged serpent
5x strength of the automaton
2x kra'gh
At about 700 stam recovery, 3k weapon damage, 14 into health and 50 into stamina, all stam enchants, mainhand weapon power offhand and bow poison.

Front bar(dual wield)
Shrouded daggers
Rearming trap
Deadly cloak or rending slashes
Bound armaments
Camouflaged hunter
Flawless dawnbreaker

Back bar (bow, only 4pc tfs)
Endless hail
Razor caltrops
Hurricane
Bound armaments
Poison injection or critical surge
Greater storm atronach

Rotation:
Start on Back bar - hurricane - la - caltrops - la - endless hail - swap - slashes/cloak - la - trap - ha - shrouded (heavy into shrouded about 4 times before swap and restart), fitting in poison injection during execute right before hail in the rotation.

With this setup about the max I can get on a 3 mil dummy is 20k dps, on the 350k precursor I can hit around 25k.

I'm running into sustain issues though, even with 75 points in the champion star for heavy attack return and 75 in stam recovery.

During last night's Asylum trial I had to replace injection/surge on my bow bar with dark deal just to keep my stamina up enough for dodging.

How can I improve sustain for this build?

Silly question perhaps, but are you running weapon pots on cooldown? If so, get rid of camo hunter. I never run this skill, even if just running surge and running trash pots in non-score content. Stam sorc has you splitting time fairly evenly between your bars, and you dont have room for it on both. I think this skill is a waste of a slot.

Also, I know you are a Khajiit for life, but there is a reason redguard is BIS. The sustain difference is noticable. You could also consider looking into Vicious Ophidian. On my sorc, I always main bar it unless I am just trying to parse on a dummy. I often pair it with sundeflame or NM if I need to run a debuff set, and automaton if I need to go full damage. That said, on a dummy, you should be able to sustain without it.

My rotation has me always casting the same backbar: Hail, PI, Trap, Caltrops, and my front bar is typically Rending, DaggersX2, Deadly CLoak, Hurricane. I do between 2 and 3 HAs per font bar rotation and can sustain a 6 million dummy just fine.

Personally, I use Surge and Rending as my flex spot. If I am comfortable on heals, I drop surge for rending.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Lynx7386 wrote: »

- Why do you need to put 14 points into health? You could instead run 1 light 1 heavy or 2 heavy monster sets for more health but normally you don't need either since you have constant heals, and quite high resistance with Hurricane and Bound Armaments up and Deadly Cloak active.

Currently for a minimum 18k health I like to keep at on dps just to minimize 1 shots. I'm working on getting light/heavy monster pieces to benefit more from undaunted passives.

- Weapon Damage is seriously low. It should be more like 4K, considering the amount of Sorcerer and Fighters Guild skills present.

That's 3k with just major brutality, in at 3500 or so with the enchant proc, but I'm also only isonf purple gear right now (saving tempers to gold out eventually)

- You don't need to spam Shrouded Daggers 4x, since by the time you do that your DoTs would have long run out.

Ok, I have a hard time keeping track of dots so I base bow many times I use shrouded on when hurricane is about to run out. Ill try to tighten that up though.

- Main hand enchant should always be poison since it's procced more often, and only off hand and back bar (if you aren't using poisons) should be berserker

Thanks, wasn't aware of this. It should be easy enough to swap my main and iddhand weapons and get a power enchant for the bow.

- Neither Poison Injection or Critical Surge are optional skills, but you should use both if you don't use Weapon Power potions

Crit surge I mostly run when i need the healing, not so much for trials which is when I use poison injection for an execute boost. I don't need the brutality since shrouded daggers provides it.

- Camouflaged Hunter is OK if you don't use Weapon Power potions, but redundant if you do, and in trials you always do.

Yea I think ill be dropping it for cloak.

- Greater Storm Atronach does scale from your maximum stats, but doesn't benefit from CP or physical penetration since it does magic damage

From What I've heard, on single target fights the atronach is still the best ultimate for stamsorc despite the champion point issue. I'm working on unlocking ballista for the bow and might use that instead, but its hard to beat a 30 second high damage ult that also gives me 8% more health and one of my allies major berserk.

This is the beauty of a stam sorc rotation (and most stam classes). It is circular for the most part. Treat it as 4 back bar skills (Hail, PI, Trap, Caltrops) and 5 front bar skills (Rending, Daggers, Daggers, Deadly Cloak, Hurricane). The order I listed is the order I used, but honestly, its not that important. As stated above, caltrops (and hurricane) are both skills that swap cancel well, so I cast them last. I also generally like to put some longer durration skills at the end of the bar in circular rotations, that way if you get off, they are still active. The only skill you really cant put last is Hail if using a VMA bow, because you apparently need the first tick of hail to hit on your bow bar if you want the buff.

The only thing I "manage" in the rotation is my stamina. I can turn my buff/dot trackers off and it doesnt affect my ability to hit this rotation, just treat it as a big circle. You should always know what to cast next. Yes, some of your shorter skills will have downtimes and some of your longer skills will be recast perhaps a touch early, but this is the best and easiest way to manage a stam rotation. If you treat it like a mageblade and try to juggle everything separately, you will drive yourself mad. It's too many skills for most mortals to juggle.

How I manage stam (other than being redguard and casting potions on cooldown):

1. When very high on resources, particularly in the first rotation of a fight, I dont do any heavy attacks. I quickly light attack everything to get all my DOTS rolling as fast as possible. This is also viable in execute phase, assuming your resources are in a good spot.
2. The vast majority of the time, I am casting 3 Heavy attacks per front bar rotation. Again, it really doesnt matter which skills, but consistency is good. Personally, I light attack my daggers, which means I heavy attack Rending, Cloak and Hurricane.
3. If my stamina is really low (really should only be the case if you die), I go to four heavy attacks per front bar and drop one of my daggers. There are other fights the require a lot of blocking that can put you in this situation as well.

There are certainly more nuanced aspects of this rotation to increase DPS in certain scenarios, but these are the basics. Stam sorc will sustain for a full pull on a trial dummy if you follow those rules.

Powerburrito20

with all else being the same, how much will razor caltrops add to your dps on stam sorc? I have yet to unlock caltrops as of yet.

Lynx7386

Don't have a vma bow yet which will definitely change my rotation when I get one.

Should I just drop to 1pc monster set when they happens?

Powerburrito20

@Lynx7386 we are running a very similar build, including race, and netting very similar numbers. with 5x nmg, 5x automaton, and 2x kraig, I'm running at 25k - 27k without caltrops. wondering how much that would increase me, if at all.. but also huge sustain issues and thinking another skills might very well make it worse. I have a race change token and was thinking of changing to redguard. unsure if the 10% more stam. will out dps the 8% crit from Khajiit.

rafaelcsmaia

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@Lynx7386 we are running a very similar build, including race, and netting very similar numbers. with 5x nmg, 5x automaton, and 2x kraig, I'm running at 25k - 27k without caltrops. wondering how much that would increase me, if at all.. but also huge sustain issues and thinking another skills might very well make it worse. I have a race change token and was thinking of changing to redguard. unsure if the 10% more stam. will out dps the 8% crit from Khajiit.

The damage increase of 10% stam is about 4% on the tooltips based on my testing. 8% crit, considering a multiplier of 60% is 4.8%, if your modifier is higher (which it should be with warhorn and such) I think it might go up to around 6.4% max.

The difference is negligible dps wise if you ask me, but adrenaline rush is a whooping ~400 more regen.

If I were you, id stick to what I like more, if you just wanna min max, stick to the cat if your resources are OK, if not, go Redguard.

Lynx7386

Well, I stay khajiit on principle even ok my magicka characters, so a race change is out of the question, I just have to find a way to work around it.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@Lynx7386 we are running a very similar build, including race, and netting very similar numbers. with 5x nmg, 5x automaton, and 2x kraig, I'm running at 25k - 27k without caltrops. wondering how much that would increase me, if at all.. but also huge sustain issues and thinking another skills might very well make it worse. I have a race change token and was thinking of changing to redguard. unsure if the 10% more stam. will out dps the 8% crit from Khajiit.

Caltrops will give you about 3k single target and significantly more in AOE situations. Basically the same thing can be said about a VMA bow if you aren’t using one of them.

As to the race change, most people see very little difference between 10% Stam and 8% crit. But that’s not they only comparrison to be made as redguard is a significant boost to sustain. You don’t do a lot of DPS if you are out of resources. And if you are needing an extra HA per rotation, that is also a DPS loss.

If you are looking for what race is BIS, the answer is absolutely redguard. You can certainly make Khajiit work, but if you aren’t set on playing one, I would advise a change.

BuddyAces

@Oreyn_Bearclaw Figured I'd ask you since you seem pretty knowledgeable(sp), any answer on Atro vs Ballista?

Powerburrito20

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Caltrops will give you about 3k single target and significantly more in AOE situations. Basically the same thing can be said about a VMA bow if you aren’t using one of them.

@Oreyn_Bearclaw I also have no vma bow. guesstimate of dps increase of with bow?

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

As to the race change, most people see very little difference between 10% Stam and 8% crit. But that’s not they only comparrison to be made as redguard is a significant boost to sustain. You don’t do a lot of DPS if you are out of resources. And if you are needing an extra HA per rotation, that is also a DPS loss.

If you are looking for what race is BIS, the answer is absolutely redguard. You can certainly make Khajiit work, but if you aren’t set on playing one, I would advise a change.

Ya. the Khajiit is just simply a looks thing for me, not really set on playing one, so most likely will change as i am totally out of resources by 3/4 the way through a 3m dummy, and that's with skipping a skill on DW bar and adding an extra HA every other rotation.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Caltrops will give you about 3k single target and significantly more in AOE situations. Basically the same thing can be said about a VMA bow if you aren’t using one of them.

@Oreyn_Bearclaw I also have no vma bow. guesstimate of dps increase of with bow?

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

As to the race change, most people see very little difference between 10% Stam and 8% crit. But that’s not they only comparrison to be made as redguard is a significant boost to sustain. You don’t do a lot of DPS if you are out of resources. And if you are needing an extra HA per rotation, that is also a DPS loss.

If you are looking for what race is BIS, the answer is absolutely redguard. You can certainly make Khajiit work, but if you aren’t set on playing one, I would advise a change.

Ya. the Khajiit is just simply a looks thing for me, not really set on playing one, so most likely will change as i am totally out of resources by 3/4 the way through a 3m dummy, and that's with skipping a skill on DW bar and adding an extra HA every other rotation.

@Powerburrito20

How many HA's are you doing per rotation? You really shouldn't need more than 3. As to the VMA bow, I think its very similar to adding caltrops. It used to be a bit more, but since the VMA weapon changes, I believe it is about 3k on a dummy, but obviously that becomes more in an AOE fight or even on a ST fight with raid buffs. Both are really important if you are trying to push numbers on a stam character. People also typically run back bar Double damage health poisons if you werent aware. Stam sorcs in particular have amazing AOE thanks to hurricane, and the bow (Hail) and Caltrops really help make that shine. I understand that not everyone will get a VMA bow, but caltrops are a no brainer. You can get them in an afternoon without too much effort.

My stam sorc was orginally a khajiit (as was my stam DK). I am 100% a min/maxer in terms of race, so I made the change without looking back. Fun fact, I was working on flawless conqueror at the time for my stam sorc. I kept running into sustain issues in a few spots that always seemed to cost me a death or two. My first run on a redgaurd got me the title. The difference is more than minimal. Maybe it shouldnt be that way, but it absolutely is.

Powerburrito20

@Oreyn_Bearclaw haha, your really making it hard for me to stay a cat. but i know i will change race soon...

i must be doing 3 HA per rotation, but sustain continues to drop through fight until i get down to around 5 or 10 % stam ( dummy at maybe 30% ) then I'm dropping my spammable and doing probably 4 HA, maybe 5, cant remember.

I am aware of the double poisons on back bar, just arent running them for parses yet until i get rotation and sustain down solid.

Lynx7386

Double poisons? How do you manage that with a bow?

BuddyAces

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Double poisons? How do you manage that with a bow?

voilet coprinus
nightshade
fleshly larva

Has 2 diff poison damages in one

Edit
I'm going to guess that folks know which plants I'm talking about since my phone must have auto corrected those plant names into what you see.

Lynx7386

Oh, not what I was thinking. I figured he was referring to the poison enchants

Draxys

For ults, don't forget negate is a great option for some trash pulls

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Oh, not what I was thinking. I figured he was referring to the poison enchants

Yeah, they are called double damage health poisons because there are 2 different damage heaths on the toolip of the poison. They are pretty cheap to make.

Lynx7386

Yea I just don't have much room for it with dawnbreaker on the front bar for the damage boost

Draxys

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Yea I just don't have much room for it with dawnbreaker on the front bar for the damage boost

I'm assuming this was a reply to me here, but you can just swap ballista/negate depending on what's next and even rotate steel tornado in with negate as well.

Asardes

Lynx7386 wrote: »

- Weapon Damage is seriously low. It should be more like 4K, considering the amount of Sorcerer and Fighters Guild skills present.

That's 3k with just major brutality, in at 3500 or so with the enchant proc, but I'm also only isonf purple gear right now (saving tempers to gold out eventually)

It should be 4K+ without enchant procs, just Major Brutality up. Are you missing some passives?
- Medium Armor: Agility passive (12% with 5 or more medium armor pieces slotted)
- Fighters Guild:Slayer (3% per ability slotted)
- Storm Calling:Expert Mage (2% per ability slotted)
For the Bound Armaments setup outlined above you should have a weapon damage multiplier of 1.44 so there's no way you have 3K weapon damage unless you are missing most of those passives or your gear is not upgraded.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

@Asardes the expert mage passive is bugged, it only gives you the weapon and spell of the the weapon itself, ie, 1337 or 1537, not for your weapon damage enchants or set bonuses, see here, https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/379131/expert-mage-passive-bugged.

Morgul667

Do heavy attacks between all skills used on your dual wield bar

Use stormfist (the stam recovery stat helps)

Asardes

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Asardes the expert mage passive is bugged, it only gives you the weapon and spell of the the weapon itself, ie, 1337 or 1537, not for your weapon damage enchants or set bonuses, see here, https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/379131/expert-mage-passive-bugged.

That's an odd bug, and I'm surprised it's still there after such a long time. Still, that's only about 2% loss from that bug, with the passive being only roughly as effective as it should. But that doesn't justify the huge disparity from 4K+ to 3K stated by the OP. I have a fully leveled stamina Sorcerer that doesn't have enough points ATM to spec any passive, just the basic combat skills and the rest I've put in crafting to carry on doing writs till I have time to play him. Incidentally his weapon damage is also about 3K so that's why I suspected the missing passives. By comparison my Stamina Warden has 4.45K weapon damage and my Stamina DK between 4.8K-5.2K self buffed depending on sets worn. Stamina NB is only about 4.2K since one of his sets is Briarheart, but with that procced he jumps right away to about 4.8K. I never consider enchants when calculating my weapon damage since they are not procced most of the time.