Lightning Flood morph description doesn't tells that it also increases dmg compared to liquid light.

Benemime

I was about to pick liquid lightning but it hit me that I read on summerset patch notes that Lightning Flood also has its dmg increased now compared to liquid lightning.

The "new effect" morph description only advise about that it has its range increased, ignoring that it also buffs the dmg compared to the other morph

remilafo

yeah i get better dps with lightning flood..

but better sustain with liquid...

choose

AcadianPaladin

Glad to hear I made the right choice. Sustain's no problem for me but happy to have a bit more dps. Heh, the reason I chose flood was the radius. With all my lightning on the ground and around my sorc I have trouble quickly targeting the skill out to range so I wanted the more forgiving (bigger) radius.

Skullstachio

Just so most of you know, you will actually get more damage out of liquid lightning(mostly on stationary targets) than you do with lightning flood, mainly because since it lasts an extra 4 seconds, it is basically granting 4 extra ticks of damage.

Lightning Flood: 693 x 6 = 4158 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 10 = 6050 Damage over time.
Your basically losing out on more DPS using lightning flood over liquid lightning.
the trick with liquid lightning, is that when dealing with melee combatants, you should stand in the liquid lightning, use it as an arena whereas long range targets with staves, bows etc. you will want to cast it on them and weave your heavy attacks (if using a lightning staff) to off them as fast as possible.

Disclaimer: these calculations were made on the UESP, you can check out the link for proper specs.
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Lightning_Splash

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

@Alpha-Lupi that is not how damage works. You do not just cast it once then forget about it. You recast it when the dot expires.

Using your own numbers-

Lightning Flood: 693 x 6 = 4158 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 10 = 6050 Damage over time.

So we take all damage over a minute

Lightning Flood: 693 x 60 = 41,580 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 60 = 36300 Damage over time.

As you can see, that is almost exactly the 15% increase in dps that is promised by using flood but you have to cast flood 10 times and liquid only 6 in that minute making that 15% DPS increase a 33% increase in magic used.

f047ys3v3n

I actually switched the morph to LF when they increased the LF damage. I did this for 3 reasons.

1) The range of LL has always been tiny and very hard to keep enemies, even bosses, in. Really any movement at all and there out. For this reason it is not much of an AOE. Really it is more like a single enemy DOT that is also not sticky. This makes it a pretty unreliable source of damage in practice. It is good in a few fights with very stationary bosses, and garbage in many fight that have movement mechanics or bosses that tanks have to move a little when tanking.

2) The damage per second is actually more. Since I never have enough magic to use a spam-able and have to do a full heavy every rotation anyway the extra duration between casts does not equate to any more casts of something else anyway. ZOS has eliminated spam-able use for all but cheat engine users anyway so you might as well buff the DOT's up some since they are really all you have. I might add that this is very inconvenient in many of the older fights that have mechanics clearly designed for spam-able use and that play poorly with ZOS decision to make ground cast DOT's the rule rather than the exception. ZOS does a very poor job of understanding how ill conceived balance changes and the entire rewriting of the sources of damage, resource management, and the cadence of combat, translate to how the content plays. Try vDSA again sometime and witness how poorly designed it now feels.

3) LL and wall both have 6 second morphs. This is clearly the sub optimal morph for wall but the advantage of perfectly synced DOT duration is very high. Furthermore, both hits of haunting curse come out to 12 seconds. This syncs your 3 best DOT's leaving only the 8 second unstable familiar DOT unsynced. That is unfortunate but the unstable familiar DOT is the least impressive. It deals less damage per every 2 seconds than LF does every 1 second and requires two bar slots. I am continually on the fence about whether to run it or frags. Frags has just proven difficult for me to manage well enough though I do think it the better option.

Anyhow, I like the new LF a lot better than LL, which I always found a terrible pain to use. I still wish that it was a true instant cast though instead of the jerry rigged version they added to 2 button cast skills since it likes to hang and sometimes mis-cast when lag hits.

danno8

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Alpha-Lupi that is not how damage works. You do not just cast it once then forget about it. You recast it when the dot expires.

Using your own numbers-

Lightning Flood: 693 x 6 = 4158 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 10 = 6050 Damage over time.

So we take all damage over a minute

Lightning Flood: 693 x 60 = 41,580 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 60 = 36300 Damage over time.

As you can see, that is almost exactly the 15% increase in dps that is promised by using flood but you have to cast flood 10 times and liquid only 6 in that minute making that 15% DPS increase a 33% increase in magic used.

That's a pretty common mistake.

People look at the damage per cast and call it damage per second.

The only thing I would add is that you do have to consider that you do get an extra 4 GCD's to play with over those 60 seconds by using the longer duration LL. Assuming you use a spammable that does say 10k damage during those 60 seconds then you get an extra 40k damage over those 60 seconds, or 666 DPS equivalent.

Does the 15% increase on LF create and additional 666 DPS? I don't really know, lol, but the 10 second LL sounds better to me and much easier to maintain as well.

blunned

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Alpha-Lupi that is not how damage works. You do not just cast it once then forget about it. You recast it when the dot expires.

Using your own numbers-

Lightning Flood: 693 x 6 = 4158 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 10 = 6050 Damage over time.

So we take all damage over a minute

Lightning Flood: 693 x 60 = 41,580 Damage over time.

Liquid lightning: 605 x 60 = 36300 Damage over time.

As you can see, that is almost exactly the 15% increase in dps that is promised by using flood but you have to cast flood 10 times and liquid only 6 in that minute making that 15% DPS increase a 33% increase in magic used.

You said that isn’t how damage works and then made the exact same mistake he/she did but in the opposite direction. Your example is not how actual damage works either, because you are not accounting for the fact that with liquid lightning you gain the ability to use more skills in those extra four seconds (that cause damage) instead of using (some of) that time recasting liquid flood. It definitely was brought closer with the 15% damage increase, but liquid lightning still wins out in the dps race if you can manage your DOTs appropriately because you can use that extra time to use other skills (ie spammables) that cause more damage while liquid lightning is still ticking and outweighs the 15% increase of lightning flood plus having to recast much more frequently.

Septimus_Magna

Lightning Flood can be good on a heavy attack rotation because sustain isnt an issue. You could also consider Unstable Wall for more dps and better DOT sync.

AcadianPaladin

I find that flood hits more foes at a time due to its radius. It also gets and stays on the boss better for me since my aiming in a rush is sometimes a bit off. One big reason I use flood is that in most of the big fights I'm in, even the boss doesn't stay stationary for 10 seconds regularly. Due to enemy repositioning, I find myself almost glad that flood lasts only 6 seconds.

So I think there are perhaps a lot of factors involved in terms of playstyle. I often drop flood on a trash mob then by the time they run through my blockade and get close (way less than 10 seconds) I drop flood at my feet as they arrive in my face. I tend to duo dungeons a lot without a tank so I'm sure I see bosses and mobs moving more than a normal group with a tank to hold them in one spot.

I'm not trying to make a case that flood is better than lightning, simply explaining why I'm a bit happier using it for me.

Gprime31

LL is 2-3k more dps on parse. math is not real world testing ppl

ZeroXFF

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

I actually switched the morph to LF when they increased the LF damage. I did this for 3 reasons.

1) The range of LL has always been tiny and very hard to keep enemies, even bosses, in. Really any movement at all and there out. For this reason it is not much of an AOE. Really it is more like a single enemy DOT that is also not sticky. This makes it a pretty unreliable source of damage in practice. It is good in a few fights with very stationary bosses, and garbage in many fight that have movement mechanics or bosses that tanks have to move a little when tanking.

2) The damage per second is actually more. Since I never have enough magic to use a spam-able and have to do a full heavy every rotation anyway the extra duration between casts does not equate to any more casts of something else anyway. ZOS has eliminated spam-able use for all but cheat engine users anyway so you might as well buff the DOT's up some since they are really all you have. I might add that this is very inconvenient in many of the older fights that have mechanics clearly designed for spam-able use and that play poorly with ZOS decision to make ground cast DOT's the rule rather than the exception. ZOS does a very poor job of understanding how ill conceived balance changes and the entire rewriting of the sources of damage, resource management, and the cadence of combat, translate to how the content plays. Try vDSA again sometime and witness how poorly designed it now feels.

3) LL and wall both have 6 second morphs. This is clearly the sub optimal morph for wall but the advantage of perfectly synced DOT duration is very high. Furthermore, both hits of haunting curse come out to 12 seconds. This syncs your 3 best DOT's leaving only the 8 second unstable familiar DOT unsynced. That is unfortunate but the unstable familiar DOT is the least impressive. It deals less damage per every 2 seconds than LF does every 1 second and requires two bar slots. I am continually on the fence about whether to run it or frags. Frags has just proven difficult for me to manage well enough though I do think it the better option.

Anyhow, I like the new LF a lot better than LL, which I always found a terrible pain to use. I still wish that it was a true instant cast though instead of the jerry rigged version they added to 2 button cast skills since it likes to hang and sometimes mis-cast when lag hits.

After reading this I might actually redo my sorc once changing morphs is less of a pain (next DLC). This makes so much sense.