Advice needed: stam sorc Battlegrounds build

Aurielle

I recently decided to give Battlegrounds a try and, after a bit of reading, felt like a stam sorc would be a good option due to their mobility. Only thing is, I'm a TOTAL noob when it comes to small scale no-CP PVP, and I'm not sure where to start. So I've a few questions for those of you who're familiar with Battlegrounds:

1. Is Mechanical Acuity worthless on a Khajiit in a no-CP PVP environment? If so, what would be a better offensive alternative that synergizes well with the Khajiit's crit passive? High pen? Some other proc set? I already have Bone Pirate covered for sustain, so it's just the offensive set that I'm not 100% sure about.

2. Should I go 5 HA / 2 MA for more survivability, or 5 MA / 2 HA so I can use Shuffle?

3. Best monster set(s)? I'm using Valkyn Skoria at the moment.

4. What would a typical DW/Bow setup look like? I don't really want to go 2H/Bow or 1HS/2H as I got burned out a little on said setups on my stamplar.

5. Are resource drain poisons a no-no in Battlegrounds? Or will everyone else be using them, so they're fair game?

Thanks in advance.

Maulkin

Khajiit stamsorc is not bad because you proc Crit Surge more often. Not as good as Redguard but acceptable.

I would personally use a proc set like either viper or red mountain on one bar over acuity. Proc sets are pretty strong in no-CP. Otherwise Automaton is also very good since most of your heals don’t scale with damage, apart from Vigor.

If you are planning to not play 2H, which means no Rally, I would argue Troll King is the best monster set for the missing heals. Although Skoria is probably the 2nd best choice and certainly the best for damage. Keep Skoria if you have no troubles staying alive.

If you are planning to play with bow, go medium build. It synergises well with a roll based defence. Both medium and heavy is viable on stamsorc, it’s down to what suits you best. Also if you have access to master weapons they are pretty strong. 3 agility, 2 Skoria, 5 bone pirate, master axes and master bow is a pretty brutal build damage wise.

Bow/DW and S&B/DW are both viable, the latter works well with both heavy and medium builds. For the former, since you asked, I would use Poison Injection and Draining Shot from Bow, Blood Craze and Bloodthirst from DW. Then Vigor, Shuffle, Crit Surge, Streak/BoL, Dark Deal and Hurricane. DBoS and either Ballista or WW ult on bow bar for sustain.

Every one is using poisons in BGs. I recommend the entrapping ones that root and increase stam cost by 30%. Apply freely and without shame.

Good luck!

Aurielle

Thank you, @Maulkin! I knew there was a reason why I hung onto my Viper gear. I’ll give the 5 Viper / 5 BP / 2 VS setup a try. I’m assuming all impen? Or is a mix of impen small pieces/infused big pieces (with tri-stat glyphs) preferable? My magicka pool for streak/crit surge is super low ATM (still need to grind out Undaunted on this character, ugh), so tri-stats would help with that.

Also, what are your thoughts on using Endless Hail/Arrow Barrage for applying pressure at, say, flag capture points? I have a vMA bow that’s not seeing any use on my other characters, which seems a shame.

Sixty5

First off, Mechanical Acuity is an interesting choice in PVP, especially in no-CP, you can get a lot of potential use out of it, but in all honestly I feel like there are much better sets to use.

Medium vs heavy comes down to choice, that choice being, do you want to rely on Forward Momentum or not? Stam Sorc is a class that feels the need to be mobile, so having some form of snare removal is pretty vital IMO.

Monster sets are really up to you, but the top two in my book are Bloodspawn and Troll King.
Bloodspawn gives you a stam recovery 1 piece, and helps to prop up your resists if you are in medium. The ult generation from it is also pretty damn nice.
Troll King on the other hand gives you an unethical amount of extra healing, especially if you are running Bound Armour for the 20% bonus health recovery.
My suggestion would be to flip between the two until you find the one you like more.

As far as DW + Bow goes, I haven't really run it myself in PVP for a long time, but you'd want something like
Rending Slashes, Steel Tornado, Dawnbreaker front bar
Poison Injection, Shuffle, Overload/Negate back bar
And then fit Hurricane, Surge, Vigor, Streak/BoL where you can.
Final slots can be filled with Bound Armour, Dark Deal, Rune Prison, Flying Blade, Rapid Strikes, Draining shot, or whatever flex options you like.
You'll definitely want Surge on this sort of setup, since you are running a bunch of dots, and you have no other source of Major Brutality.
You'd also probably want to go with Axe + Dagger, since the bleed proc is free damage, and Sorc bleeds are nasty.

Poisons are entirely up to you. If you can afford them then go for it.


As far as a sample build goes, you could run something like

2 pc Medium Bloodspawn/Troll King
5 Ravager (2 body, 1 jewellery, 2 weapons)
5 Bone Pirate (3 Body, 2 jewellery)
Masters Bow

Rending Slashes, Steel Tornado, Ball of Lightning, Vigor, Bound Armaments, Dawnbreaker
Poison Injection, Shuffle, Hurricane, Crit Surge, Bound Armaments, Overload
Defensive Rune, Dark Deal, Caltrops, Trap Beast, Bound Armaments, Overload

You end up pretty durable, and Bleeds + Poison really put the hurt on people. Sustain should be pretty good (1800ish stam recovery)

Aurielle

Thanks, @Sixty5. I’ll give that setup a try as well. I don’t have any Ravager (I usually just decon that, haha, oops), but given how ubiquitous it is in Cyrodiil, I’m guessing it’s pretty cheap in guild stores. I also don’t have a Master bow — just a vMA bow, alas. vDSA is the one thing I haven’t done in ESO yet, as no one in any of my guilds seems to run it, and I can’t find anyone in Craglorn willing to run it with someone who’s never done it before.

I REALLY don’t want to go 2H, as I use it on my stamplar (and used to use it on my DK and NB before I turned them into mag characters) and want a bit of variety to keep things fresh for myself, but I do hear you re: snare removal. I was thinking of using potions to counter snares, but I also don’t really want to give up my speed potions... I’ll see if I can make DW/Bow work. If not, I guess I’ll have to grind up the 2H line for the umpteenth time.

Maulkin

Aurielle wrote: »

Thank you, @Maulkin! I knew there was a reason why I hung onto my Viper gear. I’ll give the 5 Viper / 5 BP / 2 VS setup a try. I’m assuming all impen? Or is a mix of impen small pieces/infused big pieces (with tri-stat glyphs) preferable? My magicka pool for streak/crit surge is super low ATM (still need to grind out Undaunted on this character, ugh), so tri-stats would help with that.

Also, what are your thoughts on using Endless Hail/Arrow Barrage for applying pressure at, say, flag capture points? I have a vMA bow that’s not seeing any use on my other characters, which seems a shame.

I run all impen with tri-stat on the big pieces. Your magicka pool will be low, but that's unavoidable unless you go for Shacklebreaker body, which is actually what many heavy builds do. Basically you get a choice between Bone Pirate and Shackle for the permanent 5-p buff. If you go for BP, you can use one magicka regen glyph to help you with the sustain.

I don't like Endless Hail at all for PvP to be honest. Nor do I think you have space for it. You need a hard CC which is what Draining Shot is. And you need your Poison Injection DoT to push single target skills. Your AoE Damage can come from Hurricane, DBoS and (potentially) Steel Tornado.

vMA is best weapon ever for PvE but complete pooh for PvP. Skip it. Do you have a Master's Bow? It works great with that build since you only need viper on the DW bar.


@Sixty5
Ravager or Steel Tornado. Pick one, not both. Ravager has extremely low proc chance (8%) unless you land multiple melee attacks. Works well with Jabs or Flurry. Without them it's kind of a wasted set imo. Hence I recommended Viper which will allow the OP to experiment with Steel Tornado and Bloodthrist without having to change the gear.

Aurielle

Maulkin wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Thank you, @Maulkin! I knew there was a reason why I hung onto my Viper gear. I’ll give the 5 Viper / 5 BP / 2 VS setup a try. I’m assuming all impen? Or is a mix of impen small pieces/infused big pieces (with tri-stat glyphs) preferable? My magicka pool for streak/crit surge is super low ATM (still need to grind out Undaunted on this character, ugh), so tri-stats would help with that.

Also, what are your thoughts on using Endless Hail/Arrow Barrage for applying pressure at, say, flag capture points? I have a vMA bow that’s not seeing any use on my other characters, which seems a shame.

I run all impen with tri-stat on the big pieces. Your magicka pool will be low, but that's unavoidable unless you go for Shacklebreaker body, which is actually what many heavy builds do. Basically you get a choice between Bone Pirate and Shackle for the permanent 5-p buff. If you go for BP, you can use one magicka regen glyph to help you with the sustain.

I don't like Endless Hail at all for PvP to be honest. Nor do I think you have space for it. You need a hard CC which is what Draining Shot is. And you need your Poison Injection DoT to push single target skills. Your AoE Damage can come from Hurricane, DBoS and (potentially) Steel Tornado.

vMA is best weapon ever for PvE but complete pooh for PvP. Skip it. Do you have a Master's Bow? It works great with that build since you only need viper on the DW bar.


@Sixty5
Ravager or Steel Tornado. Pick one, not both. Ravager has extremely low proc chance (8%) unless you land multiple melee attacks. Works well with Jabs or Flurry. Without them it's kind of a wasted set imo. Hence I recommended Viper which will allow the OP to experiment with Steel Tornado and Bloodthrist without having to change the gear.

Sounds good, thanks. And yeah, I had a feeling that the vMA bow would be no good. I guess it works, potentially, for zerg surfing in Cyrodiil. Not so much for small scale. That being said, I still have to grind Undaunted on this character, so... it’ll get some temporary use, at least. No Master’s bow, unfortunately. I need to find someone on PS4 who can help me grind vDSA. No one in my guilds ever advertises for it.

Maulkin

One word of general advice. I generally recommend people new to BGs or new to a class, to lean more towards survivability than all out damage at the start. Until they get the hang of the class. Erroring on the side of caution if you will.

So I generally recommend people that want to play dw/bow Sorc to start by incorporating troll king, draining shot, blood craze and bloodthirsty, basically heals and CC, to help you disengage and recover from tricky situations which are very frequent in no-CP content.

Once you get the hang of it, you can build for more aggression.

Aurielle

Maulkin wrote: »

One word of general advice. I generally recommend people new to BGs or new to a class, to lean more towards survivability than all out damage at the start. Until they get the hang of the class. Erroring on the side of caution if you will.

So I generally recommend people that want to play dw/bow Sorc to start by incorporating troll king, draining shot, blood craze and bloodthirsty, basically heals and CC, to help you disengage and recover from tricky situations which are very frequent in no-CP content.

Once you get the hang of it, you can build for more aggression.

Just want to say that I’m loving 5 Viper / 5 Bone Pirate / 2 Skoria. Such damage, much speedy! Thanks again for the tips. Survivability is pretty good (even with two pieces of Viper that still have to be transmuted to impen), though I do think I might need to use Troll King when up against the obvious pre-made groups. I was at the top of my team’s scoreboard multiple times, and more often than not had the most kills and fewest deaths. What gets me is that I haven’t even been able to morph Dawnbreaker yet, and don’t have any points in Undaunted Mettle yet! People just melt when I spam Bloodthirst at execute range. Really looking forward to playing with the new Bloodthirsty jewellery traits on this setup when Summerset drops.

Battlegrounds are super fun — I really wish I’d tried them sooner.

Aznox

I pretty much agree with everything @Maulkin and @Sixty5 said.

There are many viable setup, mine is :
- Troll King
- Shacklebreaker
- Automaton
- 5H/1M/1L
- S&B/DW
- No vigor, no snare removal, no gap-closer
- Werewolf

also i you might want to adapt you build to game mode, i run different setups for Chaos Ball and Crazy King.

Sixty5

Maulkin wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Thank you, @Maulkin! I knew there was a reason why I hung onto my Viper gear. I’ll give the 5 Viper / 5 BP / 2 VS setup a try. I’m assuming all impen? Or is a mix of impen small pieces/infused big pieces (with tri-stat glyphs) preferable? My magicka pool for streak/crit surge is super low ATM (still need to grind out Undaunted on this character, ugh), so tri-stats would help with that.

Also, what are your thoughts on using Endless Hail/Arrow Barrage for applying pressure at, say, flag capture points? I have a vMA bow that’s not seeing any use on my other characters, which seems a shame.

@Sixty5
Ravager or Steel Tornado. Pick one, not both. Ravager has extremely low proc chance (8%) unless you land multiple melee attacks. Works well with Jabs or Flurry. Without them it's kind of a wasted set imo. Hence I recommended Viper which will allow the OP to experiment with Steel Tornado and Bloodthrist without having to change the gear.

Yeah my thinking was that it should proc of dots and bleeds. Turns out it doesn't.

Thankfully Heritence exists, and that does pretty much the same thing. but procs much more. so that's going to be what I run.

the_broo11

I've seen a lot of people recommending nirn/poison front bar and infused/weapon damage enchant back bar, but I'd highly recommend going nirn/weapon damage enchant front bar and powered/poison back bar. Heals are notably weaker in nocp, so having that extra healing on the bow bar is huge for survivability. IMO, the only situation that I'd consider the nirn/infused option is if I was running an orc in 5heavy.

If you do opt for my suggestion, then you'll want to make sure you're weaving with DW so that you get good uptime with the weapon damage enchant.

Chilly-McFreeze

The idea behind nirn (for bigger dmg and heals) and poison on front is that poisons don't proc at a 100% every X second rate. So your uptime on poisons, which can be really nasty, is higher than on backbar, while a LA/ skill will definitely proc the enchant every X seconds. Plus you get far higher weapon dmg with the meta idea. Also, you will be on your back bar regularly for buffs, Poison injection on yet another opponent etc. so enchant downtime should be relatively low.

Sure, x% more healing is nice but it's only active while on backbar. So you limit yourself to stay there for the time vigor hots you. With an infused dmg enchant procced you can switch around and get even bigger heals on nirn front bar.