Help Improving DPS?

Anotherone773

Violynne wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

These are the two things i see people struggle with all the time. They try to follow a cookie cutter build and they dont understand what they do wrong and why they arent getting the great results that alcast or the OP is getting even though they spend hours upon hours practicing.

Fantastic advice, which is what I'm following. I refuse to let someone else build my set, or set my bar. I want to learn those for myself, and determine what works for me.

I've been practicing animation canceling. Not for rotation improvement, but to determine if there's improvement doing this.

I've determined there is. I can clearly see for myself how much more damage I can administer doing this and I have to admit I'm amazed how effective it is.

With this, I'm now forming my own combos, swapping bar locations, to take advantage of this.

I enjoy learning this way, because it suits me and my play style. I don't have a test dummy, but I can see the numbers flying on screen to know I'm between 22k - 25k, which is all I need given most have said this is plenty for dungeons.

I have no intention of speed running anything in the game. If it takes 3 minutes long to kill a boss, it takes 3 minutes to kill the boss.

Definitely worth it to build MY character.

That is awesome, when you dont follow someone elses build and try to replicate it but instead use it more as a template and figure out the why of what they did you actually learn a lot about mechanics. Then you can adapt the build to your playstyle and make it your own and what works best for you. In the process you learn mechanics and how to build characters in this game so you can modify and build characters according to what you want them to do and where the game is at with buffs/nerfs and what is available to you to use.

I see a lot of comments on people needing to learn to play their character and i think making builds your own is an important part of that process.

@Woefulmonkey You have a lot of advice here, some of its conflicting. I dont think i can honestly say any of its wrong. There are multiple ways to get to the desired effect and multiple playstyles and goals to consider.

* do you want to be an elite player that does the top 10% of possible max damage?
* Are you happy with above average DPS?
* Do you want to run vet hard mode dungeons/trials with a core group?
* are dungeons your end game and not interested in trials?
* are you just looking for something to make overland content easier?
* Do you want to follow someone elses build exactly and try to learn their playstyle?
* Do you want to use someone elses build as a template and build off that?
* Do you want to make your own builds from scratch?
* Etc, etc.

Because every player will answer these questions and similar ones differently, you will get a variety of advice that seems to conflict but isnt necessarily wrong. It just may be wrong for you while it works great for them. So you will have to choose the advice that works best for you and that may require some trial and error but you will eventually get there. And as your skill level( at the game in general) increases and your knowledge of mechanics increases, your playstyle will change.

Woefulmonkey

I am definitely not interested in being a 'top DPS' player. I don't care about reaching 56K DPS or even 32K DPS.

I would be content having average DPS that would make doing Vet Dungeons possible and hopefully make it so I can also do Trials with my Guild eventually.

If following a 'Build Template' is the only way to get to an 'Average' DPS rating I would consider doing that but would prefer to have my own play style.

Based on the advice you have given so far I think my main problem has been that I saw no obvious benefit to maxing out my Stamina pool and I underestimated the effects of increasing weapons damage.

Also since I am testing with no buffs other than what I get from skill and items it is hard for me to say what my target DPS should be.

I have been working on the assumption that other test this same way and that I would need to get to 15K+ just to be average.

If getting to 'average' is a huge pain in the ass, I will probably just abandon my DPS and convert this guy to be just a Thief and stick with my Tank and Healer for Dungeons.

Anotherone773

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Anotherone773

Ok just as a quick update.

After following only part of the advice you have in my first test with a very basic rotation and only have purple gear I was able to get to 9.9K dps even when I stumbled many times during the rotations.

The 'Per Hit' damage difference is quite obvious. It looks to be almost double on average.

I now have

3 agility items for jewelry
5 Hundtings Rage items (all have Mundus enchantments)
4 Mechanical Acuity items (2 have Mundus enchantments)

Jewelry and Weapons now have Weapons damage enchantments

Base Weapons Damage is now at 3111
Base Stamina is now at 27202

My Health however is now at 10K which seems way to low, definitely means I will die by many single hit boss attacks even in normal dungeons, but I will work on tweeking things on that front.


I am going to convert all times to 'Mundus' traits and work on altering my CP again.

I will respond back with how things turn out.

Thanks again for taking the time to give this advice.

10k is low for HP yes. Buffed with blue food you want to be around 18-20k. I never recommend going max all in stamina. That is sort of a pro mode and people try to duplicate it in dungeons and i literally burn all my resources (as a healer)trying to keep them from dying and i eventually just stop healing them because they are sucking to many resources with some build they followed but dont know how to play so they have almost no survivability without their own personal pocket healer. I would start with 10-15 in health and as you learn your build and become more confident and better at it decrease it 5 points at time. It may take days, or weeks or months to get to the point where you feel you can lose 5 points in health. But trying to go max stam on a character that isnt really built and you dont know how to play well yet...well make sure you have a stack of soul gems and repair kits.

Your stam is still low. Make sure you use food buffs. Your ability damage increases with max stamina. As an example my snipe( focused aim) right now does 11764 with no food. Adding a blue food buff, it does 12721. So blue food alone increased its damage by 7.5%. When you get into to 10k,20k,30k dps ranges that becomes significant and more so if you have high crit chance. At 30k dps you are talking another 2k-3k dps from food alone. Thats how meta players edge up their dps to high numbers. adding 2% here and 3% there isnt much by itself but when you start stacking all of them it gets you up there.

jkolb2030 wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

jkolb2030 wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

jkolb2030 wrote: »

There are some good posts in here, and some missing the mark a bit...

OP - I would read over every response in here and see how others builds and setups work for them, and learn the nightblade class a little bit more so you can begin to understand why they are suggesting what they are.

I would also start with using an Alcast build like the one found here:
https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-nightblade-build-for-pve/

Note that this build is really a full damage build meant for group play, so it will need to have some things changed for you to survive over land - like adding a heal such as Vigor from the Assault skill tree (PvP based). However, this is a very good DPS build to start with, as he goes over everything you need in the forms of enchants, CP, skills, and rotation.

The final part of increasing your DPS is practice practice practice. You will need to spend a lot of time getting used to your skills, and getting the ability to 'weave' them with light attacks so you are using your skills as quickly as possible while also landing light attacks inbetween each sill.

@jkolb2030 This isnt directed at you but you posting that build reminded me of something...and i feel its a good point to make especially on these forums.

Alcast is good for pointing you in the right direction. The thing i hate about alcast and all builds in general is:

1) They are someone elses build. One size doesnt fit all. What works for one person doesnt always work well for someone else. Everyone has a different playstyle and trying to force yourself into someone elses playstyle isnt always a good idea.

2) Alcast builds are very specific to situations, end game pve/pvp. They assume a lot of things that are not common outside of trials. Such as getting a lot of buffs, having dedicated heals and tanks. A trial build and playstyle is very different than overland and even dungeons.

These are the two things i see people struggle with all the time. They try to follow a cookie cutter build and they dont understand what they do wrong and why they arent getting the great results that alcast or the OP is getting even though they spend hours upon hours practicing.

Meanwhile people on the forums keep feeding them the same " Just keep practicing, your doing something wrong." nonsense. Their real problem is they didnt learn to make the build their own for their playstyle and instead are trying to mimic someone else on both build and playstyle.

For example i run a bosmer bowblade with a single bar. I almost never parse a dummy as its more of a novelty to me than practical. People instantly assume that its a crap build. I hit 35k plus ST open world and can hit 20k plus on bosses solo, self buffed( and i have very few), with no poisons and using trash pots. i dont even have a complex rotation, actually i dont have a real rotation as my rotation changes depending on situation and need. I dont do a 1, 2,3,4,,5 ,swap, 1,2,3,4,5, swap or some other nonsense with LA weaves and animation cancelling and all that jazz.

I used the exact build you posted at first and didnt like it. It did not suite my playstyle at all or what i wanted to do with that character. I also found having to do a ridiculously long rotation to be exhausting and boring both. So i kept the base direction of the build and started modifying it. Every modification i would gain a little more DPS and stuff would die easier. Abilities that are a main part of the rotation i found to only be useful in certain situations. So i learned when to keep them in and when to not use them. Rather than just keep them in because someone says so.

That 20k dps i do self buffed, the meta players and elitist will tell you that is way to low. 20k is barely passable for anything vet or endgame so you should stick to normal and open world. But, i watched a video a few weeks ago of someone soloing a trial boss with ~25mil HP. He had combatmetrics up the whole time. His sustain....was 22k.

So one has to ask themselves: If a person can solo a trial boss, with 22k sustain dps when in a group of 12 you arent even 15% of the damage, why is 20-25k dps considered low end? It is good enough to solo at least some trial bosses yet isnt good enough in a trial when you have 11 other players.

the answer to this is actually really simple. Its all ***. The whole meta, must do x amount of dps,gitgud,l2p. Its all a bunch of BS created by meta players and elitists. Their primary goal is to burn through content as fast as possible. So you need to be near max DPS or as close as possible so you can " pull your weight" and content can all be ran in 5 minutes.

These same players are the ones who a month after content is released are complaining about "lack of content" because they burn through all content as fast as possible and then have nothing to do for 3 or 6 months. So they whine about the lack of content. Maybe if they would stop trying to burn through every new dungeon and trial in 5 minutes and actually stop and smell the roses, they might enjoy the game a little more and find content last a lot longer.

That is one reason im so against meta players and elitists. You dont need meta builds to do ALL content in this game and you dont need 6 million dps to do all content in this game. I have proven this in every single one of these games ive played but running newer subpar players through the content on nonmeta builds. And its 10 times more enjoyable because every fight feels like an accomplishment even if its my 50th time running it. Having 3 new people in group and killing that boss for the 50th time feels just as good as the first time i killed it and got to enjoy the accomplishment.

So i always recommend using something like alcast to give you a direction to go, but making a build your own and a playstyle your own.

@Anotherone773

TLDR ; If you read my post i specifically said to read everyones post here and to follow Alcast's build as a starting point to begin to understand his class, role and the gear sets that are available to him. I also only linked Alcasts post as it explains most of the sets/items he uses for his builds.

So your long elaborate speech about how i was offering a cookie cutter build or how i was trying to be some elitist or meta-head is kind of moot. No where did i tell the OP that this how he has to play and the only way to play his class - i was simply giving him a starting point to work from as every other response was also someone else giving him their personal build.

Even though I personally play the meta for vet trials, most of my advice and posts on these forums are far from dictating other players do the same - unless they are specifically asking for methods so they can too can progress to the end game trial meta.

I'm sorry if I struck one of your nerves for a post that was taken completely the wrong way.

@jkolb2030 you obviously didnt read my post

Anotherone773 wrote: »

@jkolb2030 This isnt directed at you but you posting that build reminded me of something...and i feel its a good point to make especially on these forums.

Literally the first line of my post, made your entire post unnecessary.

You are correct, i skimmed it lol...

Okay, yeah I apologize - my mistake.

Again, it was still a post to point the OP in a direction to build off of a constant instead of piecing a build together as he was doing before.

Yeah, he tried 5 builds before but they didnt work, but i dont think he was following the whole build and then making small changes to fit his playstyle or what he was using it for, so it ended up being a hybrid of a bunch of different builds and that one i looked at looked like it hasnt been updated in a couple of years so you know that one wasnt going to be a lot of use.

Anotherone773

Something else i thought of..what i see many players( in any game) do is button mashing. If you watch those high dps players on dummies, their button pushes are very calm and relaxed. Very unhurried. They know pushing buttons to fast is pointless and actually worse than not pushing them fast enough. So regardless of how simple or complex the rotations you use are, make sure your not mashing buttons to fast. Take your time. its better to start out slow and as you get use to it build up speed to a good speed in which everything is firing correctly rather than to try to rush through the rotation trying to get a bit more dps. You will find the sweet spot on the speed you need to push buttons to make things happen in the correct order.

Joxer61

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Something else i thought of..what i see many players( in any game) do is button mashing. If you watch those high dps players on dummies, their button pushes are very calm and relaxed. Very unhurried. They know pushing buttons to fast is pointless and actually worse than not pushing them fast enough. So regardless of how simple or complex the rotations you use are, make sure your not mashing buttons to fast. Take your time. its better to start out slow and as you get use to it build up speed to a good speed in which everything is firing correctly rather than to try to rush through the rotation trying to get a bit more dps. You will find the sweet spot on the speed you need to push buttons to make things happen in the correct order.

Very good point and thanks for pointing it out! I believe I just might be one of those, trying to "make up" for my terrible aussie lag we are so used to having in any MMO. Thought tends to be to just keep hitting 'em and they hopefully will go off as intended....but....with ESO I am noticing that my lag isn't as bad as it was/is in GW2 and therefore I tend to burn thru my resources. SO yea, stepping back,if you will, and slowing down just a tad is working out much better, and I feel I am learning the rotations as well!
So again, thanks for your input, it's helping more than just the OP!

Oreyn_Bearclaw

10k health is definitely too low. With blue health+stamina food and undaunted passives, you should be about 16k no problem. That is frankly enough for anything, but shifting a few points to health is not the end of the world, and frankly a good move for most players. With food, there is no reason to go above 18k health IMO, but that is up to you. As a general rule, the more health you have the less stamina you have which means less raw damage. Everyone has to find a personal balance between damage and survival.

For what its worth, the best way to do this is enchant everything with stamina and and put on food, then reset your attribute points. Add points into health until you hit your level, then dump the rest into stam. As you get better, slide points into stam a few at a time until you find your sweet spot. It is cheaper to adjust attributes than it is to adjust gear. Most skilled players put absolutely nothing into health, but its not a good place to start.

4 pieces of Mechanical acuity is just a terrible idea. You are only getting two useful bonuses (1 stam and 1 weapon damage boost). The magic and spell damage boost are worthless, and the reason this set is on the map is because of the 5th piece bonus for the crit. Dont decon it, because you might want it at some point, but for a four piece set you would do much better with nightmothers or even something like Morkuldin for a little extra regen. 5/5/2 is generally much stronger that 5/4/3 in terms of gear combos. If you have to go 5/4/3, my recommendation is 5 hundings, 4 night mothers, 3 agility. Your better bet for easy to craft/buy/farm gear is 5 hundings, 5 Spriggans, 2 Krags. This gear is not best in slot, but it will break 30k easy on a sNB, and its super easy to get. Spriggans rings and body pieces are dirt cheap, and hundings weapons can be crafted. Kraghs is from Fungal 1 on vet, which is about as easy as vet dungeons get. Once you get a little more comfortable, you can go farm Velidreth from vCOS, but that is a much harder dungeon. The other plus side to that gear combo is that it has a lot of physical penetration built into it. Great for solo, parsing, and small groups that dont provide you with penetration.

Also, havent read everything, but I saw some mention of the tower mundus. Tower is a garbage stone (one of the 2 or 3 I havent bought for my house). Lover is far and away your best bet unless you are in a well oiled group that is actively stacking penetration for you , in which case you want to go warrior. Pretty sure that is not the case.

FrancisCrawford

5/1/1 on armor types is not optimal unless you have 1 or better 2 ranks in Undaunted Mettle. And I'm guessing OP doesn't have those, since they're achieved at ranks 7 and 9 respectively in the Undaunted skill line.

All advice assumes a certain frequency of light attacks. OP: How many light attacks do you do? Ideally, your number of light attacks plus twice your number of heavy attacks would roughly equal the number of seconds in the fight. However, I'm guessing your figure is far below that, and that you are not "weaving" effectively.

As for making some progress on your DPS, for starters:

• Notwithstanding any other advice, don't recast skills until they have run out or are very close to running out.
• Have Endless Hail up (almost) 100% of the time.
• Have Poison Injection up (almost) 100% of the time.

Joxer61

@Oreyn_Bearclaw ...mate, I just LOVE all your characters names!! Awesome!

Woefulmonkey

@Anotherone773

Hey, thanks again for all your advice, this is the most progress I have made in DPS since I started investigating about a week ago.

Ok, so I have respect and changed equipment focusing on weapons damage, penetration, and max stamina.

I now have the following gear.

5 Hundings Rage
4 Ashen Grip
3 Agility Jewelry

All Armor has Divines I changes mundus stone to Tower for more stamina
All weapons have Sharpened for penetration

Enchantments
All weapons have + weapon damage effect
All items have either Health or Stamina boots
All Jewelry has +weapon damage

My stats now look like this

Magica 9550 recovery 591 WITH FOOD 13414
Heath 16985 recovery 436 (I am concerned about getting lower than this for survivability) WITH FOOD 21185
Stamina 27405 recovery 837 WITH FOOD 31269

Spell Damage 1572 crit 14%
Weapon Damage 3122 crit 65%

Spell Resistance 14248
Physical Resistance 14248
Crit Resistance 1017

My Weapon Penetration has to be over 5K (CP giving + 3049, 2 daggers giving 1376 each)

With this setup, no buffs, not food and using a simple rotation I was able to get to 11.7K DPS pretty easy.

With FOOD on I made it to 12K DPS.

Is Stamina still too low? (With food stam goes up 4K but I only got about 300 more DPS)

If so any ideas on how to get more Stamina without giving up Health?

Again you have been incredibly helpful way more than the static 'Build' recommendations I have found online.

Just trying to apply them without understanding the importance of Base Weapon Damage, Penetration, and Max Stamina was not helping me much at all.

Aurielle

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Anotherone773

Hey, thanks again for all your advice, this is the most progress I have made in DPS since I started investigating about a week ago.

Ok, so I have respect and changed equipment focusing on weapons damage, penetration, and max stamina.

I now have the following gear.

5 Hundings Rage
4 Ashen Grip
3 Agility Jewelry

All Armor has Divines I changes mundus stone to Tower for more stamina
All weapons have Sharpened for penetration

Enchantments
All weapons have + weapon damage effect
All items have either Health or Stamina boots
All Jewelry has +weapon damage

My stats now look like this

Magica 9550 recovery 591 WITH FOOD 13414
Heath 16985 recovery 436 (I am concerned about getting lower than this for survivability) WITH FOOD 21185
Stamina 27405 recovery 837 WITH FOOD 31269

Spell Damage 1572 crit 14%
Weapon Damage 3122 crit 65%

Spell Resistance 14248
Physical Resistance 14248
Crit Resistance 1017

My Weapon Penetration has to be over 5K (CP giving + 3049, 2 daggers giving 1376 each)

With this setup, no buffs, not food and using a simple rotation I was able to get to 11.7K DPS pretty easy.

With FOOD on I made it to 12K DPS.

Is Stamina still too low? (With food stam goes up 4K but I only got about 300 more DPS)

If so any ideas on how to get more Stamina without giving up Health?

Again you have been incredibly helpful way more than the static 'Build' recommendations I have found online.

Just trying to apply them without understanding the importance of Base Weapon Damage, Penetration, and Max Stamina was not helping me much at all.

At this point, you may struggle to get your stamina much higher than that if you're unwilling to lose some health. You honestly don't need more than 18k health on a stamblade in group or solo content; if you're in a dungeon group, the tank will be taking the brunt of the damage, and you'll have a healer with you. If you're solo, the old saying "a good offence is a good defense" applies. With a bow, you will be able to kite (i.e. damage from range while continually moving out of the enemy's reach) and negate the need for a large health pool. Heck, I "fake tank" normal group content with less health than you currently have when I get tired of waiting for the dungeon queue to pop on my main character.

The most important thing for you when it comes to increasing your DPS beyond 12k will be getting the rotation down and incorporating any crucial skills you might be missing. You've gotten some good advice here, re: rotation. I recommend practicing the rotation one bar at a time if you're struggling with the whole rotation. Get really good with your back bar DOT rotation, then move on to your primary damage bar when you're comfortable. Over time, it will be second nature/muscle memory. I personally find it very helpful (esp. when trying out a new rotation) to arrange my skills on my bars based on the order in which I'll be using them in the rotation.

Also, if you've not yet gotten Caltrops, I can't emphasize it enough. It is one of (if not THE) most important damage over time skills you could have in your arsenal as a stamina player. If you don't like Cyrodiil, give Battlegrounds a try. They're quick (approx 10 minute) PVP matches that award a lot of Alliance Points -- even if your team loses.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Stats without food are irrelevant as you ALWAYS run food. If your magic changes with food, you are running the wrong food. 3 ways to get more stamina. 1. Run Blue health stamina food NOT purple tri stat food. Two slide more points into stamina, this will lower health, it’s a trade off. 3. Undaunted passives.

As I already stated, your build is likely not the main Problem. This game is all about rotation. I can certainly type one out for you, but a video of you on a dummy is going to be the most useful.

beetleklee

First, I won't recommend you step into a vet dungeon to get monster helms as you should not go into those doing 5k DPS. Nor will I recommend getting trials sets.

So for now, there are a few options.

A good beginner set up is 5 Piece Hunding's, 4 Piece Night Mother's Gaze, and 3 Agility jewelry. Both sets are craftable, and the Agility jewelry is easy to find in guild stores (get all 3 with the Robust trait only)

Run the 5 piece Hunding's as all body pieces. You won't be able to run a 5 piece NMG with this until Summerset when jewelry crafting becomes available. Run NMG as 2 body pieces, both dual wield weapons, and your bow.

All body pieces should be divines. Run the chest as heavy, and a smaller piece like the belt as light, rest as medium. Some people prefer 7 medium but once you get the Undaunted passives, having a piece of all 3 will get you close to 18k health with blue food.

Run 1 dagger 1 axe. Dagger nirnhoned with poison enchant (or precise/infused if you don't have access to nirnhoned yet) and an infused axe with a Weapon Damage enchant.
The bow should also be nirnhoned, or infused, with disease damage enchant.

Make all your gear purple, and if you want, gold out the weapons. It'll net you 200 more weapon damage. Don't worry about golding the body pieces, it won't net you a big DPS increase and only do it when you have your final sets.

All body gear should have stamina enchants. All enchants should be golden Truly Superb CP 160 ones, and gold quality isn't a big deal since Kuta is cheap (2k-3k each)

If you don't have Undaunted to 10 yet, do the Bolgrul delve dailies and maybe find a group willing to help you with normal daily pledges for the easier dungeons where low DPS won't be as much of an issue.

Have all 64 attribute points into stamina.

Khajiit isn't an issue, it's the 2nd best stam race after Redguard, and switching to Redguard won't bring your DPS up to 30k. I run a Khajiit StamDK and still do 36k on a 6 mil dummy and get 50k+ in raid situations. A guildmate runs a Khajiit StamNB and pulls even bigger parses in raids.

For CP, you want everything to be geared towards stam/stam regen, poison, physical, disease and direct damage, damage over time, and physical penetration. Red CP you want points into Ironclad, Spell Shield, Elemental Defender, Thick Skinned and Hardy. Red CP you will change around in the future depending on the trial, but 48 Thick, 49 Ele and Hardy, up to 81 Ironclad and the rest Spell Shield.

You want blue points into Thaumaturge, Mighty, Precise Strikes, Master at Arms, and Piercing. 20-23 piercing, 40 Thaum, 61 Precise strikes and master at arms, 56 Mighty (this will be at CP 720)

Green CP: You definitely want all geared towards stam, so Mooncalf, Tenacity, Warlord, Shadow Ward, and Tumbling. 76 Tenacity and Mooncalf depends on how well you sustain, 49 is a starting point but if you more regen you can up it to up to 76. The rest put points around evenly into shadow ward, tumbling, warlord, typically 35-40.

Run Warrior Mundus (will probably run Lover for Summerset)

StamNB has one of the hardest rotations, so I recommend you practice slowly at first, don't worry about DPS. Keep practicing one bar over and over again until you can speed it up, then do the same with the other bar

Endless Hail will be your biggest damage source. You also need to get Caltrops and Vigor from PVP, don't worry about dying, just run with a zerg, take resources and repair keeps and you should get it in a few hours.

Make sure you have the Fighter's guild passives that generate ult and do more damage against undead/daedra.

Here are some good guides on the build and rotations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfRgKwnIJe4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1vXGrDcFQc

Woefulmonkey

@Anotherone773

Thanks again for all your help. I feel I have a much clearer understanding of how to manipulate DPS at a basic level now.

I was able to get up to 12.5K dps by switch my mundus boon to the Warrior for weapons damage.

I then tried to increase my stamina by sacrificing health but that had no affect on the DPS. (This is probably because I am using strong attacks not fast attacks in between skills and not using a back rotation)

I think to get more DPS with my existing rotation at this point I would have to increase weapons damage somehow (their appears to be a way to get to 4K but I don't know what that takes).

Other than that I think I would need to add a 'back' rotation to add more dots, but I don't know if I want that level of management for combat. I do use swap rotations for the Healer and Tank but that is very situational and not a constant switching scenario.

I will also try using the 'damage boost' trait for weapons but I have about 30 days before I unlock that for daggers.

Until then I will keep an eye out for better monster gear that improves weapons dmg and experiment with Potions since I don't use them at the moment.

LOL still not seeing how people are getting 32 to 56 DPS just through rotations and marginal changes through equipment and CP settings. I mean if I am struggling to nickel and dime my way to 15K it seems crazy that somehow people are managing to double and nearly quadruple that DPS.

Anotherone773

Joxer61 wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Something else i thought of..what i see many players( in any game) do is button mashing. If you watch those high dps players on dummies, their button pushes are very calm and relaxed. Very unhurried. They know pushing buttons to fast is pointless and actually worse than not pushing them fast enough. So regardless of how simple or complex the rotations you use are, make sure your not mashing buttons to fast. Take your time. its better to start out slow and as you get use to it build up speed to a good speed in which everything is firing correctly rather than to try to rush through the rotation trying to get a bit more dps. You will find the sweet spot on the speed you need to push buttons to make things happen in the correct order.

Very good point and thanks for pointing it out! I believe I just might be one of those, trying to "make up" for my terrible aussie lag we are so used to having in any MMO. Thought tends to be to just keep hitting 'em and they hopefully will go off as intended....but....with ESO I am noticing that my lag isn't as bad as it was/is in GW2 and therefore I tend to burn thru my resources. SO yea, stepping back,if you will, and slowing down just a tad is working out much better, and I feel I am learning the rotations as well!
So again, thanks for your input, it's helping more than just the OP!

I was very guilty of that during the last event. I kept trying to rush through delves to complete the quests fast and was hitting buttons to fast. I noticed DPS drops of 30-50% by doing that. I was like why is my dps suddenly so crappy. And then i realized that im hitting buttons to fast and some things arent firing and others are firing more than once. So i slowed my roll and my dps shot back up to where it usually is for that character. Which ends up being faster in the long run.

@Woefulmonkey Thats a pretty good improvement. There is a line between damage and penetration where one has a higher benefit than the other. I typically go for higher damage and decent penetration. I use 5 piece hundings for the weapon damage. 3 piece agility jewels also give a damage bonus,though when summer set drops i will likely not be keeping any dropped sets of jewels. I use 2 piece red mountain because of the damage bonus. And i use velidreth shoulders because of the damage bonus.

You can get the shoulders by running undaunted pledges and getting keys. I believe they are in the center chest if i remember correctly. Caltrops and vigor will be useful to you as well. I like draining shot on my bow because of the big heal but it only works on trash, not bosses so limited use as a heal and i wouldnt recommend it for your setup.

The rule of thumb is what you can do on a dummy self buffed should be the same as what you can do in a combat situation with buffs from others. So buffs from others make up for you having to run and dodge and block stuff. I actually find my dps in a combat setting to be decently higher than on a dummy.

In a PUG people are going to want you to do 25k plus in vet dungeons. You can run the content with lower but you will likely get kicked out of a PUG for not doing at least 25k. You might want to find a guild of non elitists to run endgame content with. Casual players who run for fun and dont care if a dungeon take 20-30 minutes longer or if there are wipes and are ok with passable dps on trials. PUGs and end game raiders you will get a lot of elitist players that want min max everything and meta builds.

Also, stamina increases only affect abilities not light and heavy attacks. Its sort of like (ability base damage x weapon/spell damage modifier x stamina/magicka modifier = total damage of ability). Weapon and spell damage increase give the biggest increase to ability damage and increase light and heavy attack DPS. Stamina and magicka increases give smaller damage bonuses to the abilities that use them.

I think you said your daggers are both absorb health enchantments. I would probably swap the absorb health on main hand to disease ( befoul glyph). That will probably get you a little better damage. I would also go with nirnhoned or sharpened or something like that personally for a trait. You might not want to make to many expensive changes right now because in a month summerset will drop and gear is going to be majorly impacted. So i would reserve big gear changes for after summerset goes live.

Edit: I know it seems like your nickle and diming your way to 15k but what your really doing is tweaking things to get a few hundred dps here and there. As you learn more about how the mechanics work and how to build your character and play it, your dps will continue to increase even if it seems like right now your going to run out of nickles. Im still tweaking mine and have been for months. Making small changes to what i use and when i use it. Changing gear a little bit changing cp around a little bit. A couple months ago i was doing half the dps i am doing now and i just making adjustments and watched my dps gradually climb. I still have many changes i want to do, im just lazy about doing it and my character can currently do all content easily that i am using him for so im not pressed on it. My other two characters are disasters i havent even begun messing with them yet. They do just enough dps to get through overland content, albeit a bit slow.

I dont use crafted pots or poisons, not because i am against them but because i am not doing content worthy of using them. Im also currently skilling up alchemy on two other characters so they are sucking up a lot of my ingredients. If you want cheap practice with just working pots into your rotation and getting use to using pots as part of combat, you can just use trash stam pots to help you get in the habit of using pots. That way when you use good ones your efficient with them. Crafted poisons arent as bad since you can make so many at a time. And its not really something you need to practice with since you dont have to take any extra steps to use them after equipping them.

I would only use crafted pots and potions in vet content and trials. Outside of that its just a waste except pvp where its still debatable unless you want to be a top pvper.

Colecovision

You need the fabricant test dummy. It has around 250k hit points. It also has lower resistance, so the numbers are inflated. If it takes almost 10 minutes to clear the 3m dummy, you won’t even know when you did things right.

I was stuck at 9k then 12k and now 27k on the 3mil dummy. The jump started with the fabricant. It took me around 25 seconds at first, but now it’s down to 11 and it’s just for combos. You have to go back to the 3mil for your real score, but you need something you can clear in a reasonable amount of time in order to improve.

Also, I put everything in stamina. I use healthy agility or briarheart to add health when needed, and robust when I can get away with it. Ymmv

SugaComa

Ok
.. your DPS measurements get reduced longer you do damage as you slip out if your rotation ...

So your first thing is to fire each skill and track the numbers

To see if any skill is under performing

Secondly your build seems like it's more set for PvP and if so lower DPS is fine if you can burst a high DPS in short time

My dummy parse is around 17k when I try to take down my khajit target dummy

But if I just do a quick burst fire to see my output for PvP I hit 28 to 32k

My feeling is you skill have heals mixed in so you can heal your self ... These high DPS numbers come from skill with damage dealing on skills on both bars ... In dungeons your tank n healer are there to help you survive

Koensol

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Anotherone773

Thanks again for all your help. I feel I have a much clearer understanding of how to manipulate DPS at a basic level now.

I was able to get up to 12.5K dps by switch my mundus boon to the Warrior for weapons damage.

I then tried to increase my stamina by sacrificing health but that had no affect on the DPS. (This is probably because I am using strong attacks not fast attacks in between skills and not using a back rotation)

I think to get more DPS with my existing rotation at this point I would have to increase weapons damage somehow (their appears to be a way to get to 4K but I don't know what that takes).

Other than that I think I would need to add a 'back' rotation to add more dots, but I don't know if I want that level of management for combat. I do use swap rotations for the Healer and Tank but that is very situational and not a constant switching scenario.

I will also try using the 'damage boost' trait for weapons but I have about 30 days before I unlock that for daggers.

Until then I will keep an eye out for better monster gear that improves weapons dmg and experiment with Potions since I don't use them at the moment.

LOL still not seeing how people are getting 32 to 56 DPS just through rotations and marginal changes through equipment and CP settings. I mean if I am struggling to nickel and dime my way to 15K it seems crazy that somehow people are managing to double and nearly quadruple that DPS.

To be honest, it is about everything lining up and enhancing each other. All the different bonusses amplify the dmg. But most importantly, rotation. Person A with the best trials gear in the game can pull 15k if he plays with a terrible rotation. Person B can pull 50k with the same gear because he has a close to perfect rotation. Its as simple as that.

A couple things to consider:
Don't use the same increase weapon damage enchants on all weapons. They do not stack and have a cooldown of about 5 seconds. Since you dont have nirnhoned yet, keep the 1 sharpened dagger, but make the other infused and put the increase weapon dmg enchant on that one so you get more wp dmg and higher uptime on the enchant. Put a poison damage glyph on the other dagger. On bow bar you can use some other damage enchant like disease, etc. Best would be double dot poisons, but you don't have to use them really.

About the level of management comment. If you want to step up your dps, you need to put in the work. You cannot go freewheeling and expect to get good results. And when you get the rotation down and do it a lot, you don't even have to think anymore. Your muscle memory will do all the work. It is just getting started that requires some effort.

And about the potions, use the ones that give stamina back and give you bonusses to stam regen, crit and weap dmg. Use them every time they come off cooldown. They help a lot for dps.

Also I would still recommend getting the spriggans set in stead of ashen grip. Ashen grip quite literally is in the top 5 absolute worst sets in the game. And spriggans is a damn solid set that gives max stam, weapon damage and good penetration. It is cheap on the market. Just use 2 agility with it untill you get a monsterset. I recommend kragh to start off with since it drops in the easiest vet dungeon: fungal grotto 1.

As for food, don't use the purple food, because it gives magicka (worthless) and also it gives about 1k less stamina and health as the blue food that gives max health+stam. 17 to 18k health is all you need really in dungeons.

By the way, what platform are you on? If on PC EU I could hit you up some time and help you with some of the dungeons to get your monster set. Could also craft you potions, poisons, food... whatever you need.

Bobby_V_Rockit

Aim for 35k stamina, 3500 weapon damage, 17-18k health (3x weapon damage glyphs on jewellery will help there). That’ll bump you up

Joxer61

@Anotherone773 ....

"in a PUG people are going to want you to do 25k plus in vet dungeons. You can run the content with lower but you will likely get kicked out of a PUG for not doing at least 25k. You might want to find a guild of non elitists to run endgame content with. Casual players who run for fun and dont care if a dungeon take 20-30 minutes longer or if there are wipes and are ok with passable dps on trials. PUGs and end game raiders you will get a lot of elitist players that want min max everything and meta builds."

OMG!! I thought they only did that crap in Guild Wars 2, one of the reasons I left and came back here! So sad to see that that that mentality is in this game as well. Ah well, hopefully will be running with Guildies so won't have to deal with them because even if I can do the numbers I refuse to hang with that crowd.

Aurielle

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Anotherone773

Thanks again for all your help. I feel I have a much clearer understanding of how to manipulate DPS at a basic level now.

I was able to get up to 12.5K dps by switch my mundus boon to the Warrior for weapons damage.

I then tried to increase my stamina by sacrificing health but that had no affect on the DPS. (This is probably because I am using strong attacks not fast attacks in between skills and not using a back rotation)

I think to get more DPS with my existing rotation at this point I would have to increase weapons damage somehow (their appears to be a way to get to 4K but I don't know what that takes).

Other than that I think I would need to add a 'back' rotation to add more dots, but I don't know if I want that level of management for combat. I do use swap rotations for the Healer and Tank but that is very situational and not a constant switching scenario.

I will also try using the 'damage boost' trait for weapons but I have about 30 days before I unlock that for daggers.

Until then I will keep an eye out for better monster gear that improves weapons dmg and experiment with Potions since I don't use them at the moment.

LOL still not seeing how people are getting 32 to 56 DPS just through rotations and marginal changes through equipment and CP settings. I mean if I am struggling to nickel and dime my way to 15K it seems crazy that somehow people are managing to double and nearly quadruple that DPS.

What I've bolded is the most important part. Yes, you absolutely need a back bar rotation with DOTs (esp. Caltrops). It's how people get 30k+ sustained stamina DPS, and it's not crazy at all when you consider/understand the numbers involved. You can get burst 30k DPS that's fine for single target PVP, but absolutely garbage for group content in PVE because you can't sustain it beyond a few seconds before you're out of stamina. Being a good damage dealer takes a lot of practice and patience, and it requires combining high single target damage with high DOT damage that is never allowed to expire, as well as using light attacks between all your skills (or at least half, depending on the class). If you don't want to follow any of the rotations that have been suggested to you right down to the letter, including a back bar bow rotation with Caltrops, then you will struggle to achieve the sort of numbers that you want to achieve. Also, stamina absolutely has a significant impact on DPS. The reason why you're not seeing much benefit has everything to do with your rotation.

If you want an easy, moderately high damage rotation that involves limited bar swapping and light attack weaving, then a basic pet magicka sorcerer is the best option for you, rather than a stamina NB (which has a far more complicated rotation). If you follow Alcast's build here: https://alcasthq.com/eso-magicka-sorcerer-pet-build-pve/ three of your skills have to be double-barred, and you only have to click four skills during the rotation.

Anotherone773

@Joxer61 No vet pugs are full of elitists and people who want to speed run. I dont PUG vets because of the players i encounter in them. Literally suck all the enjoyment out of the game for me. I find normal dungeon PUGs to be far more enjoyable. When i get less busy in life i will probably start a guild that focuses on casual and newbie group content runs. I usually do that in every game. Just the older you get the busier you seem to get so havent had the time to even consider tossing a guild together.

I love running newbies through raids though. so much more fun and rewarding. Killing bosses with 2-3 new players in group is much more fulfilling than running the same trial with the same group for the 50th time as part of a weekly routine. I go out of my way to not make my gaming like a job, since i have one of those.

kylewwefan

Seems like your on the right path now. If your mostly looking to do dungeons though I would suggest using the lover mundus stone and maybe bumping up the cp into piercing a bit.

Make sure you’re using Killers Blade at execute range.

Make some poisons for your bow. Fleshy larvae, Nightshade, nirnroot.

Use them ultimates. Frequently. Dawnbreaker is good, Ballista....I’ve even had good luck with meteor.

Joxer61

Anotherone773 wrote: »

@Joxer61 No vet pugs are full of elitists and people who want to speed run. I dont PUG vets because of the players i encounter in them. Literally suck all the enjoyment out of the game for me. I find normal dungeon PUGs to be far more enjoyable. When i get less busy in life i will probably start a guild that focuses on casual and newbie group content runs. I usually do that in every game. Just the older you get the busier you seem to get so havent had the time to even consider tossing a guild together.

I love running newbies through raids though. so much more fun and rewarding. Killing bosses with 2-3 new players in group is much more fulfilling than running the same trial with the same group for the 50th time as part of a weekly routine. I go out of my way to not make my gaming like a job, since i have one of those.

That's awesome! Once I dust my toons off and get back into the swing of things I will be looking you up mate, for sure! I HATE speed runs (again, GW2), dungeons and such are designed and made to be experienced not blurred thru, so yea, I love your way of thinking! Now I just need to settle on a class, lol!

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Anotherone773

Thanks again for all your help. I feel I have a much clearer understanding of how to manipulate DPS at a basic level now.

I was able to get up to 12.5K dps by switch my mundus boon to the Warrior for weapons damage.

I then tried to increase my stamina by sacrificing health but that had no affect on the DPS. (This is probably because I am using strong attacks not fast attacks in between skills and not using a back rotation)

I think to get more DPS with my existing rotation at this point I would have to increase weapons damage somehow (their appears to be a way to get to 4K but I don't know what that takes).

Other than that I think I would need to add a 'back' rotation to add more dots, but I don't know if I want that level of management for combat. I do use swap rotations for the Healer and Tank but that is very situational and not a constant switching scenario.

I will also try using the 'damage boost' trait for weapons but I have about 30 days before I unlock that for daggers.

Until then I will keep an eye out for better monster gear that improves weapons dmg and experiment with Potions since I don't use them at the moment.

LOL still not seeing how people are getting 32 to 56 DPS just through rotations and marginal changes through equipment and CP settings. I mean if I am struggling to nickel and dime my way to 15K it seems crazy that somehow people are managing to double and nearly quadruple that DPS.

That is because you DPS is low enough that a few % increase in damage is not perceivable over the typical standard deviation of your parses. Stamina skills scale of Max Stamina and Weapon damage, at a ratio of about 10.5 to 1. That means that boosting your stamina by 10.5 points is roughly an equivalent damage boost as increasing your weapon damage by 1 pt. If you were pulling 35k DPS, and slid 10-15 points from health to stamina (or vice versa), I assure you that you will feel it.


This is an interesting range. Very few people are pulling 56k single target on stameblade. That is not even something that should be on your radar until you are speed running vet trials and trying to push score. 32k on the other hand is very doable. Again, pulling this type of damage is about 25% gear and 75% rotation. If you magically got BIS gear tomorrow, your 12k.5 rotation would not jump to 30k. It might jump to 16-17k, but I think at this point you are looking in the wrong place. Yes there is gear that will add damage, but I think based on what I am reading, you have shaken out most of the rough patches in your build. Gear improvements at this point are going to be pretty minimal (except maybe a VMA bow).

A basic stamblade rotation looks something like this (LA = Light Attack):

Prefight - Buff Leaching, Relentless, and a weapon power potion.

Hail, LA>Poison Injection, LA>Rearming Trap, LA>Caltrops, Bar Swap Cancel, LA>Rending Slashes, LA, Deadly Cloak, LA>Surpise attack (X 2 or 3), Swap Cancel, repeat.

You want to reapply your prefight buffs as they run out. Potions will be on their own timer, but its not hard to simply do Leaching and Relentless every other rotation. In the beginning, I would not worry too much about your spectral bow proc, but as you get more comfortable, you can start to add it in when you see it up. Once you are a master, you will fire the bow every 5th skill, but that is where the circular part of the rotation breaks down. This is required for 50, but it aint required for 30k. You can also work on popping your ultimate on cooldown. Nightblades use really low cost ultimates, so managing them is actually trickier because they come up much faster.

When you target is below 25% health, your replace Surprise Attack with Killers balde, but keep the rotation the same otherwise.

Again, Start with trying to keep the rotation as circular as possible. When you are very comfortable with it, look to add subtle changes for more damage. If your rotation doesnt resemble a giant repeatable circle, well, that's a problem.

Edit: Holy crap, I missed the part about possibly adding a back bar rotation. This is absolutely a requirement if you want to even flirt with the ranges you are talking about. Nothing tricky here, as every time you go to the back bar you essentially do the same thing. Hail, Poison Injection, Rearming Trap, Caltrops, (Leeching Strikes every other time). Again, we are back to making your rotation a big circle. 4-5 back bar skills, 4-5 front bar skills, all with light attacks, repeat.

The only animation canceling you should really be doing is swap canceling. Meaning you cast a skill, bar swap, and go right into the light attack and next skill on your other bar. The bar swap cancel essentially replaces the annimation of the skill, so you dont miss a beat on your global cooldowns when you swap. A weave is also really important (a light attack in front of every skill), but please dont call that annimation canceling because its not.

Sawzallz

I'm a stam sorc, wood elf and my dps is 33k on the clockwork dummy,
I'm using strength of auto and briarheart gold, I have weapon damage enchantments, also weapon damage enchantments don't stack so i just put poison enchantment on off hand.

Yamakaziing

K stop with bull crap meandering around the question and giving crap answers that are not truthful. What build for Stamblade gets you 30k dps? Simple question with a simple answer. Answer it for us.

MashmalloMan

@Yamakaziing You've necroed a very old post, the most recent comment is April 27.

Donny_Vito

Marshall1289 wrote: »

@Yamakaziing You've necroed a very old post, the most recent comment is April 27.

Yes, he did. 5 piece Relequins / 5 Berserking Warrior (used to be called Advancing Yokeda). Monster set can be Veledrith or Selenes. Dual-wield and back bar a bow (Maelstrom Bow if you have).