What setup for stamina using penetration set?

eso_lytw8

So looks like meta sets for stam are veli + rele + warriors. with nirn dagger, sharp dagger + inf vms bow with 60 points into piercing and shadow mundus. This is what I run on my main, but I have some nice penetration sets that I run on alts.

So if running TFS or spriggans, does anyone have any setups? lets say briarheart + TFS + veli + VMA bow.

Specifically I am after any recommendations on champ points and what off hand trait?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

So here's the thing, the amount of pen you need is based on the content you play and the other players you play with. If you play with a team if 12 all the time and have a good tank, that keeps up crusher and gets enough synergies to have 90%+ uptime on alkosh and either a stamplar or a healplar running PotL. Personally, I don't have either of that. So I do what is have to to get ~9k pen and then put everything into other stats.

So I do run TFS and spriggans on two different toons, a stamblade that uses a maul and a Sharpened back bar VMA bow, with poisons, that toon only has like ~2300 into piercing but the on the toon that runs spriggans, I have about 4100 into piercing, it is a bow/bow build and also runs tzogvins, front bar, the toon gets another 1500 pen from that.

As I said, the amount of pen you need depends a lot on what and who you run with

majorana

For an optimized trial group you need around 7-9k penetration (bosses have around 18k resistance, major+minor fracture alkosh and crusher enchants bring it down to 7-9k (depends on the group) ).

TFS and spriggans give 3.5-4k penetration you can either use sharpened weapon and cp for rest of penetration or you can use precise off-hand and around 30 cp in piercing, imo precise weapon is better but it depends on the rest of your build.

MashmalloMan

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

So I do run TFS and spriggans on two different toons, a stamblade that uses a maul and a Sharpened back bar VMA bow, with poisons, that toon only has like ~2300 into piercing but the on the toon that runs spriggans, I have about 4100 into piercing, it is a bow/bow build and also runs tzogvins, front bar, the toon gets another 1500 pen from that.

Whats the point of using a sharpened VMA bow? Nothing beats what an infused bow can get you especially when your on back bar for less than 30% of your rotation.

At one point sharpened carried over, I don't think it does anymore, but you would run the risk of over penetrating anyway.

Poisons are lackluster, they don't stack in groups. Only 1 person can use them.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

So I do run TFS and spriggans on two different toons, a stamblade that uses a maul and a Sharpened back bar VMA bow, with poisons, that toon only has like ~2300 into piercing but the on the toon that runs spriggans, I have about 4100 into piercing, it is a bow/bow build and also runs tzogvins, front bar, the toon gets another 1500 pen from that.

Whats the point of using a sharpened VMA bow? Nothing beats what an infused bow can get you especially when your on back bar for less than 30% of your rotation.

At one point sharpened carried over, I don't think it does anymore, but you would run the risk of over penetrating anyway.

Poisons are lackluster, they don't stack in groups. Only 1 person can use them.

good questions. I have poisons on my back bar, that are triggered by endless hail. Poisons don't get amped by infused. My back bar is also not the usual stamblade bar.

I have power extraction there for my AOE spammable and because I don't use weapon power pots, so sharpened is better then infused for that.

I run precise 2h on the front bar, with a weapon damage enchant.

I don't run with the same group twice most of the time and most people think like you, so no one ends up using poisons.

Also I had a ton from the daily log in and wanted to get rid of them.

I also have 6 vMA bows, already transmuted 4 of them to infused for my other toons and wanted my stamblades kit to be different.

Want me to really blow your mind? I don't run poison injection, on most of my Stam builds, and my dps went up.


Any of that enough of an answer for you?

Sharpened never carried over by the way.

MashmalloMan

As others said, depends on the content you run. I personally aim for 8k pen before debuffs as someone who does a mix of trials/dungeons and has no interest in resetting CP. If I was doing raids all the time with organized groups, I'd do 6.5k penetration.

• 5280 major fracture
• 1320 minor fracture
• 3010 alkosh
• 2108 infused crusher or 2740 infused torugs pact crusher

If your group can keep these all up reliably, that leaves you with 6482 or 5850 penetration left out of 18200 for your base and TFS covers a large chunk of that.

I wouldn't bother with Spriggan's, it's statistically less valuable then other sets and you will want to use it on both bars, you can use TFS very easily on only front bar.

So maybe TFS (front bar) + Relequen (easy to get) for boss dps.

Maybe you don't have TFS weapons, so if it's your static set and your avoiding advancing yokeda. TFS + Veiled Heritance. Nirn main + precise offhand. Poison/Absorb sta enchants. WPD inf backbar VMA bow. I'd put my cp in piercing to cover 3200 - 3700 pen giving you base pen of 7.5-8k. This setup would be very strong for more trash oriented playstyle like 4man dungeons. Doesn't hurt to have the extra pen here and you won't run in to extreme diminishing returns on piercing cp.

You'd be missing minor slayer though, I still love Vicious Ophidian especially if you require dubious cameron throne, swap that out for blue food. I like using VO as static set and TFS as buff set with weapons.

MashmalloMan

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

So I do run TFS and spriggans on two different toons, a stamblade that uses a maul and a Sharpened back bar VMA bow, with poisons, that toon only has like ~2300 into piercing but the on the toon that runs spriggans, I have about 4100 into piercing, it is a bow/bow build and also runs tzogvins, front bar, the toon gets another 1500 pen from that.

Whats the point of using a sharpened VMA bow? Nothing beats what an infused bow can get you especially when your on back bar for less than 30% of your rotation.

At one point sharpened carried over, I don't think it does anymore, but you would run the risk of over penetrating anyway.

good questions. I have poisons on my back bar, that are triggered by endless hail. Poisons don't get amped by infused. My back bar is also not the usual stamblade bar.

I have power extraction there for my AOE spammable and because I don't use weapon power pots, so sharpened is better then infused for that.

I run precise 2h on the front bar, with a weapon damage enchant.

I don't run with the same group twice most of the time and most people think like you, so no one ends up using poisons.

Also I had a ton from the daily log in and wanted to get rid of them.

I also have 6 vMA bows, already transmuted 4 of them to infused for my other toons and wanted my stamblades kit to be different.

Want me to really blow your mind? I don't run poison injection, on most of my Stam builds, and my dps went up.

Any of that enough of an answer for you?

So all of that works for you and that's fine, to each their own. It's not necessarily the best options to go with, but it's an alt anyway so whatever. I mess around with my alts too, but why mention it as advice if you know it's not worth the investment of time to get those items.

I have temporary sets on my alts, but I'm not going to tell people to use those sets because I plan on replacing them with something better in time anyway.

I'm sure you would prefer an infused WPD enchant for 100% uptime vs your less than 50% uptime on the regular WPD enchant.

You have a point about poisons, I usually waste the crappy ones on pvp, but if you were inclined to check, you could always just remove the poisons if someone else in your group was using them. They just don't do enough anymore for me to be worth the investment for the extra dps or cost of the good poisons.

PI really doesn't provide a huge amount of dps to begin with, it's mainly powerful in execute and it's only single target so if you don't need it in trash pulls you could wait half a second for endless hail to start after caltrops. The reason it's important for most rotations is because VMA bow doesn't proc within 1 GCD and a weapon swap, so it makes sense to just always use 2 abilities after endless hail.

You could take out PI if your not focused on single target DPS and put rearming trap there, saves you a slot front bar.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Sharpened never carried over by the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyqU4Yq4AJs

At one point it did. This was before Morrowind and the only reason I mentioned it was because it didn't seem to make sense for someone to spend time aiming for a sharpened VMA bow in the current patch, but once again, to each their own.

Could you not slot extraction front bar for more front loaded dmg if it's that important to you instead of using that with your bow? Is your bar space that tight?

eso_lytw8

Thanks for the replies, definitely help. Last patch things were much easier. If I did not run a penetration set I ran lover, if I ran a penetration set then I just switched to warrior. It was that simple and I could get great results with both. But now with shadow buff things are more complicated.

So a little background, I have four stam characters (nb, warden, sorc, and dk). All have VMA infused bows. For sets I run advancing + relequens on the nb and warden using alcast recommendations. But not sure what to do with sorc and dk. I have a lot of great sets I have collected over the years that are all gold...2x VO, 2x Briarheart, TFS, spriggans, hundings, nmg, etc. Instead of doing more farming including mats I want to make strong builds for my other two with gold sets I already have. So I am thinking go back to old pen set+ damage set.

Conclusions so far is to go with pen set (TSF) + 30 points into piercing as suggested. I would have about 7k penetration on both bars. A tank running alcosh and crusher would have 10.4k penetration getting me close to cap but not over. I could run precise in off hand and then just need to figure out where to put the other 30 champ points I am saving... all into precise strikes maybe?

Only other question, I see mention of running TFS weapons which I do have in gold. Are you able to frontbar only TFS and maintain the stack? Maybe by just doing two backbar skills at a time?

Thanks

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

@Marshall1289 i dont care about being the best dps, so i can pretty much do whatever i want, i get 30k+ dps on all my toons, who all use different mundus stones/all different sets/all different races. i have no pressure to because better because i personally dont care about that and i have no group that needs me to be better. i am already better then 80%+ of the people that i meet in the group finder and that is enough for me.

one thing though-

So all of that works for you and that's fine, to each their own.

dont couch your criticism in this. it is very condescending. i am fully aware of my decisions with my toons and how they impact the dps output of my character, i have been here for a long time.

vesselwiththepestle

eso_lytw8 wrote: »

I could run precise in off hand and then just need to figure out where to put the other 30 champ points I am saving... all into precise strikes maybe?

Only other question, I see mention of running TFS weapons which I do have in gold. Are you able to frontbar only TFS and maintain the stack? Maybe by just doing two backbar skills at a time?

TFS-stacks are applied very fast and easily, that's why players are front-baring it. When you go on front-bar, it will proc from your running dots (it procs from any damage). Also it depends on your other set. If you are wearing Briarheart, I would wear TFS on the body and Briarheart front-bar because of the longer CD.

Regarding CP, I would distribute them because of diminishing returns, not all on one star. Although I don't know, if Precise Striks and Shadow mundus are multiplicative or additive, if it's multiplicative it might be worth it to put the points there.