What led to Thief being the BiS Mundus Stone for Magicka DPS again?

MLGProPlayer

Around the release of Morrowind last year, Asayre's math showed that Apprentice was the best Mundus stone for organized trial groups (this was after Thief was nerfed and the other stones buffed).

What has changed since then to bring Thief back into the meta?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

The fact that they released 2 sets that give you 1,100 spell damage together, spell strategist and soria, leading to diminishing returns of spell damage.

WrathOfInnos

We also get more damage out of crits than we did back then. We have Channeled Acceleration, which gives 10% more crit damage. Magblades and Templars are the highest Magicka DPS now, and both get another 10% crit damage (I believe it was still Sorcs and DK meta in mid 2017). Also we have a lot more CPs, Morrowind was 6 patches ago, meaning 60 new blue CPs. Many of these are invested in Elfborn for more crit damage. Back then I often had 40 Elfborn for 16% crit damage, now I have 56-66 for 20-22% on every character.

Apprentice probably reached the peak of usefulness when Mechanical Acuity was popular, since that set encourages building low crit chance. When it was nerfed, many builds started looking at the Thief Mundus and Mother’s Sorrow set as alternate ways to obtain Spell crit.

Other sets affected Mundus stone choice too. Julianos and IA were once popular choices, and each give a couple Spell crit bonuses. Many of the current best sets (Master Architect, Siroria, Spell Strat) don’t give any Spell crit at all. This means that builds will be need to pick up that crit chance somewhere else.

Bkella

Twice Born is still BiS. Forever and always....never forget. Thief and Shadow

Sparr0w

Always been really close, Thief pulls ahead on most due to Siroria/Spell strat givine a shed load of spell damage anyway. Main reason for Apprentice being bis imo was Mechanical Acuity meta.

MLGProPlayer

Sparr0w wrote: »

Always been really close, Thief pulls ahead on most due to Siroria/Spell strat givine a shed load of spell damage anyway. Main reason for Apprentice being bis imo was Mechanical Acuity meta.

It was BiS even before MA came out. Siroria + SS making it redundant though makes sense.

Sparr0w

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Always been really close, Thief pulls ahead on most due to Siroria/Spell strat givine a shed load of spell damage anyway. Main reason for Apprentice being bis imo was Mechanical Acuity meta.

It was BiS even before MA came out. Siroria + SS making it redundant though makes sense.

@MLGProPlayer Yeah I guess, another reason is the increasing CP cap boosts spell crit damage through Elfborn.

Danksta

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Always been really close, Thief pulls ahead on most due to Siroria/Spell strat givine a shed load of spell damage anyway. Main reason for Apprentice being bis imo was Mechanical Acuity meta.

It was BiS even before MA came out. Siroria + SS making it redundant though makes sense.

Before MA came out major and minor force weren't nerfed yet iirc.

Liofa

Every patch, we are getting more and more CPs. That means more points into Elfborn. Back then, we couldn't spend so much into it. As we progressed so much in CP and can spend a lot more into it, critical becomes more and more powerful. Also Channeled Acceleration has made Minor Force easily obtainable for Magicka DPS, giving more worth to Spell Critical Chance. That's mainly why Thief is better.