I have not really seen any posts about this topic, so I figured I would make one. I am not here to make suggestions about your build or anyone's build. This post is purely for informational purposes, and while I can extrapolate a bit, it's really up to you to make your own conclusions as to whether this is relevant to you and your particular build. I do have a conclusion at the very end if you wish to skip all the preamble.
Introduction
As of the Murkmire update, the DK passive World in Ruin was changed to reduce the cost of all poison abilities by 25%. Most notably, this meant that Venomous Claw would cost only around 700 stamina, prompting a build such as Masel's Claw of the Mad God to take advantage of the low cost. This is coupled with the relative uniqueness in how the game applies the DOT component of Searing Strike and its morphs. For those of you not familiar, the skill has a relatively low upfront damage, and then a DOT component that follows it which lasts 10.5 seconds. The game applies begins applying the DOT half a second after you cast the skill, so if you cast the skill you should see the first tick at .5 seconds. This is illustrated here. Due to global cooldown (GCD), you can only cast a skill every second. As a result, even if you spam Searing Strike and its morph over and over, you will always get the first tick off, which is the premise that Masel's build functions on. As we can see here, even when I use the ability over and over, half a second later the first tick for the ability goes off.
So I got to thinking, mechanically Venomous Strike and Burning Embers function identically. If a stamina DK can use this skill in lieu of some other spammable skill, is it viable for a magicka DK to do the same thing? After all magicka DK suffers from sustain problems more than any other spec than perhaps non-pet magicka Sorcerer (both are fairly abysmal terms of sustain let's be honest).
Testing Conditions
Before we get to the results I think it's important to state under the conditions I did my damage tests. I did not feel like personally wasting my own resources and so on doing dozens of damage tests, so I was on the PTS v4.2.4. Functionally the skills I used perform the same as live, so this is ultimately no difference.
Gear and bar setup (Superstar):
I opted to go with full Arcane instead of a combination of Bloodthirsty, as that is what I had done for the first half of my tests and I didn't feel like redoing them all. Swapping out a few or all of the Arcane traits for Bloodthirsty will definitely net you an increase in damage.
I used Molten Whip instead of Flame Lash since I cannot test the impact of Flame Lash on DPS effectively in a solo environment. Furthermore, its impact is entirely dependent on the up-time of off balance. One could mathematically figure out a DPS difference based upon the cooldown of off-balance and the cooldown on Power Lash, but that is not the topic for discussion.
Using Burning Embers instead of Molten Whip reduces our magicka drain, but we've effectively lost a DOT, and we need to replace that. The candidate I used was Destructive Touch morphed into Destructive Clench. We do not need the additional range since as a mDK we play primarily in melee range, and this increases the damage on the skill anyway. Destructive Clench allows us to take advantage of the Ancient Knowledge passive without having to use Elemental Rage for our front bar ultimate. I opted for Shooting Star for my front bar ultimate while testing for the 2% increased magicka and magicka regeneration.
All of the tests are against a 6m test dummy. I provided my own Elemental Drain, and I used Channeled Acceleration as I am more comfortable using that in my own rotation. I use a dynamic rotation reapplying my DOTs as they are falling off and for sustain I used Spell Symmetry after I reapplied my ground dots on back bar. I always began the test with a Standard of Might ready and I always dropped another Standard of Might at 20%. Starting the test with 250 ulti takes a not insignificant amount of time to generate for 10+ damage tests, hence why I didn't feel like redoing my tests with Bloodthirsty as well. Being that this is the PTS I did not have access to Vampire for the increased sustain.
Since Burning Embers has 6 ticks on the DOT component, and the first tick of that always goes off the damage we get from simply using it back to back is actually the base damage + 1/6 of the DOT component. I tested a few tooltip values and found that Burning Ember's tooltip damage to be approximately 24% lower than Molten Whip. Given that, in most of my testing, Whip makes up about 15% or so of my total damage, we should expect only a few 1-2% decrease in our overall DPS when using Burning Embers, and that is assuming somehow none of the other ticks from Burning Embers go off.
Results
I kept track of several metrics over the course of my tests: Magicka Drain/s, Magicka Regen/s, DPS (Damage per Second), HPS (Healing per Second), and the magicka drain of each of my skills, and the number of times I cast Spell Symmetry.
Molten Whip:
Burning Embers:
A few things to note here:
- The magicka drain due to Eruption on my Molten Whip tests is significantly lower than Burning Embers, especially on run 1, where is only drained 175 magicka. I looked over the combat report and found that I actually cast it 7 times.
- On average the skills I kept the same had similar impact on my magicka drain, which implies that over several runs, my rotation remained relatively the same.
- On average both setups had similar DPS, even across several runs.
- Burning Embers' impact on my magicka drain was significantly lower than Molten Whip's. Destructive Clench has a high magicka cost, and so I lost a lot of magicka to that skill.
- The HPS on Burning Embers tests is significantly higher, since we are casting the skill more often, and procing the heal more often. For comparison while typing this up I did a fast 3mil test with a mNB using Swallow Soul and got around 6.5k HPS.
Conclusion
In a static scenario, Burning Embers actually performed very similarly to Molten Whip. With a DPS difference of about .8% in my testing, with the higher damage in favor of Molten Whip I would say that Burning Embers is certainly a viable alternative although not necessarily better. This especially becomes true if you are looking to run a Shock enchant on your back bar instead of an Absorb Magicka enchantment and struggle with sustain issues. But remember, if you do tests yourself, the Shock enchantment provides a small uptime of Minor Vulnerability (about 50%). This will skew your results if you do not use it in both cases, since in a group or even a raid environment, you should expect a much higher uptime on Minor Vulnerability.
Burning Embers had a much higher HPS when we used it as a main spammable. This is because Burning Embers made up a larger % of our overall damage and the heal is proportionate to the damage dealt with the effect expires (which includes when we recast the ability). The heal serves more utility when we use it a spammable however, since we are effectively procing a small heal often instead of a giant heal every 10 seconds. When used a spammable the average heal for most of my runs stood at about 10k, but when we used Whip the heal averaged about 25k. Most DD will have only 15-18k health, and so that's a lot of healing that is wasted. If you have to wait 10 seconds for a heal, you're already dead (insert north star meme here). If you are concerned about your survivability in a group, using Burning Embers as your main attack may be a decent option, and it also offsets the health cost of using Spell Symmetry. This could be attractive in a situation where you might not be the healer's primary focus.
The tests done with Burning Embers certainly had lower magicka drain on average, and this is even after considering the fact that I didn't have to cast Spell Symmetry as often. If you are struggling with sustain, this could be a viable alternative. Using Burning Embers I certainly had no problem sustaining on a 26mil dummy.
All of your damage comes from damage over time effects. This is why while Burning Embers overall damage actually keeps up with Molten Whip. Any DK will tell you there are times when several of your DOTs will all fall off around the same time and you are stuck recasting blockade, eruption, and 2 other dots back to back. If you use Molten Whip, while you are recasting these other abilities the damage Whip is putting out is effectively 0. If you use Burning Embers, you still have it ticking in the background. Burning Embers will likely be the last skill you used when you recast other DOTs, so it should almost never fall off on its own. In my own testing Burning Embers had an uptime off 99%.
This continues to be useful if a boss likes to move around. Most ranged magicka DD have at least 2 ground DOTs to reapply if a boss moves: Blockade and some class based DOT such as Liquid Lightning, Twisting Path, Eruption, Winter's Revenge, and Blazing Spear. The disadvantage a melee attacker like mDK has is that it can't begin damaging again until it gets within 7m of the boss while a ranged DD can continue with their rotation. With Destructive Clench on your bar (or Reach if you really felt) you can begin reapplying that DOT as you close the gap, followed by Engulfing Flames with its shorter range, and finally continuing with Burning Embers. I have not personally tested this in a boss fight extensively, so your mileage may vary.
In my testing I used Shooting Star for my front bar ultimate since I wanted the increased max magicka and magicka regeneration. While Elemental Rage and Standard of Might are used in a similar fashion: large AoE fire based ulti that cost 250 ultimate and deal similar damage over their lifetime, Elemental Rage offers more burst damage, and so that is definitely still an option. I could also see the possibility of having Take Flight on your front bar as a burst ultimate to use on trash mobs, or for use in dungeons that you would like to close the gap quickly. In a trial I would not see this as a viable option.
Finally, and I think that this is definitely worth mentioning: since we are using Destructive Clench your tank may not always appreciate you CC'ing enemies regularly. This is a valid concern, please take this into consideration if you do choose to use Clench.
If you think I missed anything important, or notice any glaring errors in my testing or logic please let me know. I put this up simply for informational purposes, but it's not my intention to mislead anyone.
ESO_Nightingale wrote: »interesting. whip seems like it's in a weird place. maybe because it isn't a dot... hmm
I wouldn't have thought of this on my own if I hadn't seen your build a while ago.Just as effective as the venomous claw morph on stam dk! Was about time someone posted a build with it, I didn't have time to do it yet
ESO_Nightingale wrote: »interesting. whip seems like it's in a weird place. maybe because it isn't a dot... hmm
Dagoth_Rac wrote: »The constant passive heal while attacking seems like it would be great for VMA.
FrancisCrawford wrote: »Dagoth_Rac wrote: »The constant passive heal while attacking seems like it would be great for VMA.
@Joy_Division has been recommending exactly that approach to VMA for a while now, in conjunction with Flappy Wings.
SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »All they had to do was not take away the free cost of lash and let us maintain the stun/give us a small damage bump
I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but what I mean is using Volatile Armor instead is definitely a DPS loss. Certainly it would have even greater sustain, but at that point you're over-sustaining. Clench may cost a lot, but it's not enough that you would be suffering greatly, and it definitely does more damage than Volatile Armor. Generally speaking you wouldn't even be running elemental drain on your back bar anyway, your healer or someone else would be taking care of it, so you would already have shield there. Slotting Inner Light on your backbar isn't going to grant a giant damage bonus, since we don't spend as much time on backbar.
Finally, in the situation where we are running Clench, we aren't running Whip at all. In that situation we are running:
Destructive Clench, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion, Inner Light, and Shooting Star for our ultimate. In order to run Volatile Armor over Clench you simply have to hot swap them out, and then re-slot Fiery Rage for the Ancient Knowledge passive.
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but what I mean is using Volatile Armor instead is definitely a DPS loss. Certainly it would have even greater sustain, but at that point you're over-sustaining. Clench may cost a lot, but it's not enough that you would be suffering greatly, and it definitely does more damage than Volatile Armor. Generally speaking you wouldn't even be running elemental drain on your back bar anyway, your healer or someone else would be taking care of it, so you would already have shield there. Slotting Inner Light on your backbar isn't going to grant a giant damage bonus, since we don't spend as much time on backbar.
Finally, in the situation where we are running Clench, we aren't running Whip at all. In that situation we are running:
Destructive Clench, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion, Inner Light, and Shooting Star for our ultimate. In order to run Volatile Armor over Clench you simply have to hot swap them out, and then re-slot Fiery Rage for the Ancient Knowledge passive.
Have you tried the Wild impluse staff as your back bar and running wall on your front bar? Is that too much of a dps loss for you? On my toon, elemental ring costs 2.6k magic with the staff and does between 10k and 25k damage, each of the 3 ticks of the dot after do between 5-7k, per tick. How much DPS does clench give you?
I mean I am not questioning you are a much better DPS then me, I have no idea how you sustain 1.6k magic drain, mine tops out at 1.3k.
I have not really seen any posts about this topic, so I figured I would make one. I am not here to make suggestions about your build or anyone's build. This post is purely for informational purposes, and while I can extrapolate a bit, it's really up to you to make your own conclusions as to whether this is relevant to you and your particular build. I do have a conclusion at the very end if you wish to skip all the preamble.
Introduction
As of the Murkmire update, the DK passive World in Ruin was changed to reduce the cost of all poison abilities by 25%. Most notably, this meant that Venomous Claw would cost only around 700 stamina, prompting a build such as Masel's Claw of the Mad God to take advantage of the low cost. This is coupled with the relative uniqueness in how the game applies the DOT component of Searing Strike and its morphs. For those of you not familiar, the skill has a relatively low upfront damage, and then a DOT component that follows it which lasts 10.5 seconds. The game applies begins applying the DOT half a second after you cast the skill, so if you cast the skill you should see the first tick at .5 seconds. This is illustrated here. Due to global cooldown (GCD), you can only cast a skill every second. As a result, even if you spam Searing Strike and its morph over and over, you will always get the first tick off, which is the premise that Masel's build functions on. As we can see here, even when I use the ability over and over, half a second later the first tick for the ability goes off.
So I got to thinking, mechanically Venomous Strike and Burning Embers function identically. If a stamina DK can use this skill in lieu of some other spammable skill, is it viable for a magicka DK to do the same thing? After all magicka DK suffers from sustain problems more than any other spec than perhaps non-pet magicka Sorcerer (both are fairly abysmal terms of sustain let's be honest).
Testing Conditions
Before we get to the results I think it's important to state under the conditions I did my damage tests. I did not feel like personally wasting my own resources and so on doing dozens of damage tests, so I was on the PTS v4.2.4. Functionally the skills I used perform the same as live, so this is ultimately no difference.
Gear and bar setup (Superstar):
I opted to go with full Arcane instead of a combination of Bloodthirsty, as that is what I had done for the first half of my tests and I didn't feel like redoing them all. Swapping out a few or all of the Arcane traits for Bloodthirsty will definitely net you an increase in damage.
I used Molten Whip instead of Flame Lash since I cannot test the impact of Flame Lash on DPS effectively in a solo environment. Furthermore, its impact is entirely dependent on the up-time of off balance. One could mathematically figure out a DPS difference based upon the cooldown of off-balance and the cooldown on Power Lash, but that is not the topic for discussion.
Using Burning Embers instead of Molten Whip reduces our magicka drain, but we've effectively lost a DOT, and we need to replace that. The candidate I used was Destructive Touch morphed into Destructive Clench. We do not need the additional range since as a mDK we play primarily in melee range, and this increases the damage on the skill anyway. Destructive Clench allows us to take advantage of the Ancient Knowledge passive without having to use Elemental Rage for our front bar ultimate. I opted for Shooting Star for my front bar ultimate while testing for the 2% increased magicka and magicka regeneration.
All of the tests are against a 6m test dummy. I provided my own Elemental Drain, and I used Channeled Acceleration as I am more comfortable using that in my own rotation. I use a dynamic rotation reapplying my DOTs as they are falling off and for sustain I used Spell Symmetry after I reapplied my ground dots on back bar. I always began the test with a Standard of Might ready and I always dropped another Standard of Might at 20%. Starting the test with 250 ulti takes a not insignificant amount of time to generate for 10+ damage tests, hence why I didn't feel like redoing my tests with Bloodthirsty as well. Being that this is the PTS I did not have access to Vampire for the increased sustain.
Since Burning Embers has 6 ticks on the DOT component, and the first tick of that always goes off the damage we get from simply using it back to back is actually the base damage + 1/6 of the DOT component. I tested a few tooltip values and found that Burning Ember's tooltip damage to be approximately 24% lower than Molten Whip. Given that, in most of my testing, Whip makes up about 15% or so of my total damage, we should expect only a few 1-2% decrease in our overall DPS when using Burning Embers, and that is assuming somehow none of the other ticks from Burning Embers go off.
Results
I kept track of several metrics over the course of my tests: Magicka Drain/s, Magicka Regen/s, DPS (Damage per Second), HPS (Healing per Second), and the magicka drain of each of my skills, and the number of times I cast Spell Symmetry.
Molten Whip:
Burning Embers:
A few things to note here:
- The magicka drain due to Eruption on my Molten Whip tests is significantly lower than Burning Embers, especially on run 1, where is only drained 175 magicka. I looked over the combat report and found that I actually cast it 7 times.
- On average the skills I kept the same had similar impact on my magicka drain, which implies that over several runs, my rotation remained relatively the same.
- On average both setups had similar DPS, even across several runs.
- Burning Embers' impact on my magicka drain was significantly lower than Molten Whip's. Destructive Clench has a high magicka cost, and so I lost a lot of magicka to that skill.
- The HPS on Burning Embers tests is significantly higher, since we are casting the skill more often, and procing the heal more often. For comparison while typing this up I did a fast 3mil test with a mNB using Swallow Soul and got around 6.5k HPS.
Conclusion
In a static scenario, Burning Embers actually performed very similarly to Molten Whip. With a DPS difference of about .8% in my testing, with the higher damage in favor of Molten Whip I would say that Burning Embers is certainly a viable alternative although not necessarily better. This especially becomes true if you are looking to run a Shock enchant on your back bar instead of an Absorb Magicka enchantment and struggle with sustain issues. But remember, if you do tests yourself, the Shock enchantment provides a small uptime of Minor Vulnerability (about 50%). This will skew your results if you do not use it in both cases, since in a group or even a raid environment, you should expect a much higher uptime on Minor Vulnerability.
Burning Embers had a much higher HPS when we used it as a main spammable. This is because Burning Embers made up a larger % of our overall damage and the heal is proportionate to the damage dealt with the effect expires (which includes when we recast the ability). The heal serves more utility when we use it a spammable however, since we are effectively procing a small heal often instead of a giant heal every 10 seconds. When used a spammable the average heal for most of my runs stood at about 10k, but when we used Whip the heal averaged about 25k. Most DD will have only 15-18k health, and so that's a lot of healing that is wasted. If you have to wait 10 seconds for a heal, you're already dead (insert north star meme here). If you are concerned about your survivability in a group, using Burning Embers as your main attack may be a decent option, and it also offsets the health cost of using Spell Symmetry. This could be attractive in a situation where you might not be the healer's primary focus.
The tests done with Burning Embers certainly had lower magicka drain on average, and this is even after considering the fact that I didn't have to cast Spell Symmetry as often. If you are struggling with sustain, this could be a viable alternative. Using Burning Embers I certainly had no problem sustaining on a 26mil dummy.
All of your damage comes from damage over time effects. This is why while Burning Embers overall damage actually keeps up with Molten Whip. Any DK will tell you there are times when several of your DOTs will all fall off around the same time and you are stuck recasting blockade, eruption, and 2 other dots back to back. If you use Molten Whip, while you are recasting these other abilities the damage Whip is putting out is effectively 0. If you use Burning Embers, you still have it ticking in the background. Burning Embers will likely be the last skill you used when you recast other DOTs, so it should almost never fall off on its own. In my own testing Burning Embers had an uptime off 99%.
This continues to be useful if a boss likes to move around. Most ranged magicka DD have at least 2 ground DOTs to reapply if a boss moves: Blockade and some class based DOT such as Liquid Lightning, Twisting Path, Eruption, Winter's Revenge, and Blazing Spear. The disadvantage a melee attacker like mDK has is that it can't begin damaging again until it gets within 7m of the boss while a ranged DD can continue with their rotation. With Destructive Clench on your bar (or Reach if you really felt) you can begin reapplying that DOT as you close the gap, followed by Engulfing Flames with its shorter range, and finally continuing with Burning Embers. I have not personally tested this in a boss fight extensively, so your mileage may vary.
In my testing I used Shooting Star for my front bar ultimate since I wanted the increased max magicka and magicka regeneration. While Elemental Rage and Standard of Might are used in a similar fashion: large AoE fire based ulti that cost 250 ultimate and deal similar damage over their lifetime, Elemental Rage offers more burst damage, and so that is definitely still an option. I could also see the possibility of having Take Flight on your front bar as a burst ultimate to use on trash mobs, or for use in dungeons that you would like to close the gap quickly. In a trial I would not see this as a viable option.
Finally, and I think that this is definitely worth mentioning: since we are using Destructive Clench your tank may not always appreciate you CC'ing enemies regularly. This is a valid concern, please take this into consideration if you do choose to use Clench.
If you think I missed anything important, or notice any glaring errors in my testing or logic please let me know. I put this up simply for informational purposes, but it's not my intention to mislead anyone.
Just as effective as the venomous claw morph on stam dk! Was about time someone posted a build with it, I didn't have time to do it yet
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but what I mean is using Volatile Armor instead is definitely a DPS loss. Certainly it would have even greater sustain, but at that point you're over-sustaining. Clench may cost a lot, but it's not enough that you would be suffering greatly, and it definitely does more damage than Volatile Armor. Generally speaking you wouldn't even be running elemental drain on your back bar anyway, your healer or someone else would be taking care of it, so you would already have shield there. Slotting Inner Light on your backbar isn't going to grant a giant damage bonus, since we don't spend as much time on backbar.
Finally, in the situation where we are running Clench, we aren't running Whip at all. In that situation we are running:
Destructive Clench, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion, Inner Light, and Shooting Star for our ultimate. In order to run Volatile Armor over Clench you simply have to hot swap them out, and then re-slot Fiery Rage for the Ancient Knowledge passive.
Have you tried the Wild impluse staff as your back bar and running wall on your front bar? Is that too much of a dps loss for you? On my toon, elemental ring costs 2.6k magic with the staff and does between 10k and 25k damage, each of the 3 ticks of the dot after do between 5-7k, per tick. How much DPS does clench give you?
I mean I am not questioning you are a much better DPS then me, I have no idea how you sustain 1.6k magic drain, mine tops out at 1.3k.
So I did a couple of quick attempts with it. Overall the DPS that Wild Impulse puts out is about the same as Clench overall, roughly 2.5k dps. Wild Impulse is a bit more actually. However, overall our DPS went down because every other skill we are firing off is now weaker as a result of running the Blackrose Staff. After all, in order to run that we are giving up one of our 5-pc sets or our monster set in order to run it. We could run Blackrose instead of Maelstrom but based on tooltip values alone Maelstrom outperforms Wild Impulse. 4800 over 8 seconds is only 600 dps (and testing confirms this, each component of Wild Impulse is about 500-600 dps and it cannot crit and Gilliam confirmed this is intentional). Maelstrom is 1.3k minimum added to our light attacks, which ideally should be firing off about every second. Factor in critical hits and any other bonuses and you can see why Maelstrom is so strong. Maelstrom on its own contributes about 2-2.5k damage on its own without necessarily giving up much other damage since it's on back bar.
I sustain 1.6k-1.7k drain with judicious use of spell symmetry. In a real raid or dungeon environment, you usually have a healer providing some sustain support, so you don't need to do that as much.
Yeah I see in my haste I wrote just 600 dps, instead of 600 dps per element, which is 1.8k. Sorry about that. That said I still find that getting two full 5-pc sets + a monster set tends to outperform the Blackrose Prison Staff on front bar, and as far as back bar options go, Maelstrom is superior. Only because back bar weapon tends to be sort of a freebie, and we should already be running Elemental Wall, so it's an obvious choice. I do like the idea of Wild Impulse, I just don't find its benefits are justifiable in the face of all of that.Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but what I mean is using Volatile Armor instead is definitely a DPS loss. Certainly it would have even greater sustain, but at that point you're over-sustaining. Clench may cost a lot, but it's not enough that you would be suffering greatly, and it definitely does more damage than Volatile Armor. Generally speaking you wouldn't even be running elemental drain on your back bar anyway, your healer or someone else would be taking care of it, so you would already have shield there. Slotting Inner Light on your backbar isn't going to grant a giant damage bonus, since we don't spend as much time on backbar.
Finally, in the situation where we are running Clench, we aren't running Whip at all. In that situation we are running:
Destructive Clench, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion, Inner Light, and Shooting Star for our ultimate. In order to run Volatile Armor over Clench you simply have to hot swap them out, and then re-slot Fiery Rage for the Ancient Knowledge passive.
Have you tried the Wild impluse staff as your back bar and running wall on your front bar? Is that too much of a dps loss for you? On my toon, elemental ring costs 2.6k magic with the staff and does between 10k and 25k damage, each of the 3 ticks of the dot after do between 5-7k, per tick. How much DPS does clench give you?
I mean I am not questioning you are a much better DPS then me, I have no idea how you sustain 1.6k magic drain, mine tops out at 1.3k.
So I did a couple of quick attempts with it. Overall the DPS that Wild Impulse puts out is about the same as Clench overall, roughly 2.5k dps. Wild Impulse is a bit more actually. However, overall our DPS went down because every other skill we are firing off is now weaker as a result of running the Blackrose Staff. After all, in order to run that we are giving up one of our 5-pc sets or our monster set in order to run it. We could run Blackrose instead of Maelstrom but based on tooltip values alone Maelstrom outperforms Wild Impulse. 4800 over 8 seconds is only 600 dps (and testing confirms this, each component of Wild Impulse is about 500-600 dps and it cannot crit and Gilliam confirmed this is intentional). Maelstrom is 1.3k minimum added to our light attacks, which ideally should be firing off about every second. Factor in critical hits and any other bonuses and you can see why Maelstrom is so strong. Maelstrom on its own contributes about 2-2.5k damage on its own without necessarily giving up much other damage since it's on back bar.
I sustain 1.6k-1.7k drain with judicious use of spell symmetry. In a real raid or dungeon environment, you usually have a healer providing some sustain support, so you don't need to do that as much.
Thank you for the response. Couple things.
The BR staff does 3 ticks of ~5k. ~5k every 1.8 seconds, not over 8. Total is ~15k over 8 seconds. So that is ~1.8k dps. And the staff makes the skill cheaper and you get access to an AOE spammable, something I consider very important, I use lightning staff for the AOE on my sorc and sap essence on my magblade.
As I said, I am not a top end DPS, my light attacks are hardly ever higher then ~5% of my DPS and the 20-25% of the damage you do with light attacks makes me jealous and irritated that they are that high. I use a controller and find no fun in light attacks, much less any motivation to practice enough to get to your level of damage from them. I look at your 26 mill dummy test and see ~480 light attacks out if ~500 seconds and see no way I could ever do that, even if I cared to, it just seems so repetitive and unfun. I get 35k dps without doing that and that is enough for the content I do.
My DPS has went up using the brr staff on the back bar and wall on my front, with using embers as my spammable, so thank you for that. My bars look like this-
Inner light, coag blood, wall, engulfing flames, burning embers, ulti meteor
Inner light, igneous weapons, flames of Oblivion, eruption, elemental ring, standard of might.
I use front bar BSW and elf bane. With grothdar.
Yeah I see in my haste I wrote just 600 dps, instead of 600 dps per element, which is 1.8k. Sorry about that. That said I still find that getting two full 5-pc sets + a monster set tends to outperform the Blackrose Prison Staff on front bar, and as far as back bar options go, Maelstrom is superior. Only because back bar weapon tends to be sort of a freebie, and we should already be running Elemental Wall, so it's an obvious choice. I do like the idea of Wild Impulse, I just don't find its benefits are justifiable in the face of all of that.Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »I messed with this a bit after the dot spammable vids came out. It’s not bad, probably wouldn’t bother running clench though, you’d probably get more dmg out of volatile armour too.
Possibly, the reason I chose clench was to also grant us Ancient Knowledge on our front bar so we don't have to run destro ulti. Then again, there aren't many amazing options to replace it with in the first place. That said, Clench does have higher tooltip damage, especially if you're playing Altmer or Dunmer, since their passives will boost the fire damage. Volatile Armor deals magic damage and wouldn't be boosted. Clench is more of a "I don't have any other good option". That said, since Volatile Armor is an AoE it would be good for a maelstrom build I suppose.
Yeah clench just costs too much and does too little unfortunately. The way to achieve the same bonus from ancient knowledge and mages guild is take whip off your bar completely and move spell sym to the front.
You would then either slot inner light and shield on the back (in place of ele drain) or volatile armour and shield, or volatile armour AND inner light.
I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but what I mean is using Volatile Armor instead is definitely a DPS loss. Certainly it would have even greater sustain, but at that point you're over-sustaining. Clench may cost a lot, but it's not enough that you would be suffering greatly, and it definitely does more damage than Volatile Armor. Generally speaking you wouldn't even be running elemental drain on your back bar anyway, your healer or someone else would be taking care of it, so you would already have shield there. Slotting Inner Light on your backbar isn't going to grant a giant damage bonus, since we don't spend as much time on backbar.
Finally, in the situation where we are running Clench, we aren't running Whip at all. In that situation we are running:
Destructive Clench, Burning Embers, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion, Inner Light, and Shooting Star for our ultimate. In order to run Volatile Armor over Clench you simply have to hot swap them out, and then re-slot Fiery Rage for the Ancient Knowledge passive.
Have you tried the Wild impluse staff as your back bar and running wall on your front bar? Is that too much of a dps loss for you? On my toon, elemental ring costs 2.6k magic with the staff and does between 10k and 25k damage, each of the 3 ticks of the dot after do between 5-7k, per tick. How much DPS does clench give you?
I mean I am not questioning you are a much better DPS then me, I have no idea how you sustain 1.6k magic drain, mine tops out at 1.3k.
So I did a couple of quick attempts with it. Overall the DPS that Wild Impulse puts out is about the same as Clench overall, roughly 2.5k dps. Wild Impulse is a bit more actually. However, overall our DPS went down because every other skill we are firing off is now weaker as a result of running the Blackrose Staff. After all, in order to run that we are giving up one of our 5-pc sets or our monster set in order to run it. We could run Blackrose instead of Maelstrom but based on tooltip values alone Maelstrom outperforms Wild Impulse. 4800 over 8 seconds is only 600 dps (and testing confirms this, each component of Wild Impulse is about 500-600 dps and it cannot crit and Gilliam confirmed this is intentional). Maelstrom is 1.3k minimum added to our light attacks, which ideally should be firing off about every second. Factor in critical hits and any other bonuses and you can see why Maelstrom is so strong. Maelstrom on its own contributes about 2-2.5k damage on its own without necessarily giving up much other damage since it's on back bar.
I sustain 1.6k-1.7k drain with judicious use of spell symmetry. In a real raid or dungeon environment, you usually have a healer providing some sustain support, so you don't need to do that as much.
Thank you for the response. Couple things.
The BR staff does 3 ticks of ~5k. ~5k every 1.8 seconds, not over 8. Total is ~15k over 8 seconds. So that is ~1.8k dps. And the staff makes the skill cheaper and you get access to an AOE spammable, something I consider very important, I use lightning staff for the AOE on my sorc and sap essence on my magblade.
As I said, I am not a top end DPS, my light attacks are hardly ever higher then ~5% of my DPS and the 20-25% of the damage you do with light attacks makes me jealous and irritated that they are that high. I use a controller and find no fun in light attacks, much less any motivation to practice enough to get to your level of damage from them. I look at your 26 mill dummy test and see ~480 light attacks out if ~500 seconds and see no way I could ever do that, even if I cared to, it just seems so repetitive and unfun. I get 35k dps without doing that and that is enough for the content I do.
My DPS has went up using the brr staff on the back bar and wall on my front, with using embers as my spammable, so thank you for that. My bars look like this-
Inner light, coag blood, wall, engulfing flames, burning embers, ulti meteor
Inner light, igneous weapons, flames of Oblivion, eruption, elemental ring, standard of might.
I use front bar BSW and elf bane. With grothdar.