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Undaunted Heavy Attack PVP Build (Magplar and MagDK)

  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    I've looked into how the HA damage scales with spell damage, and the results are... not at all what I expected.
    In fact, it scales in a very strange way.

    For a first test, I took a gold CP160 lightning staff and a white lvl1 lightning staff, heavy attacking a dummy.
    No abilities and no potions were used. No proc sets were used, either.
    Both staves had a weakening enchant on them (so it would not affect damage output), Precise trait.
    CP allocation was reasonably representative of a typical PvE DD build.

    I looked at the damage inflicted by the final non-crit tick of a fully-charged HA:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34700 max magicka: 1881 damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34700 max magicka: 2561 damage

    Clearly, the attack damage scales extremely poorly with spell damage.

    But what about the UI/UU buffs to HA damage? Again, let's look at the final non-crit tick:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 1844 unbuffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 3328 UU buffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 33679 max magicka: 4787 UI+UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 2520 unbuffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 4004 UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 5489 UI+UU buffed damage

    This confirms my earlier theory that the UI/UU damage buffs are a CONSTANT value not subject to any scaling.
    (Edit: to clarify, it does not scale with offensive stats, but DOES scale with the relevant Champion Point bonuses. Not relevant for no-CP PvP of course.)

    So we have a constant non-scaled damage buff and base attack damage which scales exceptionally poorly with spell damage.

    Ok, so let's compare the numbers with some higher spell damage, using the gold CP160 staff - again looking at the final non-crit tick:
    • 1441 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5463 damage (3x infused jewelry with stam regen enchant)
    • 2342 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5910 damage (3x infused with spell damage enchant)

    Conclusion: for PvP use of an UI+UU heavy attack build, feel free to use as many STAMINA regen glyphs on your jewelry as you like!

    Even with 3x STAMINA regen glyph, your damage output will drop by only a few %, but your survivability will go WAY up. Of course this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that heals do scale with spell damage... which is less of an issue if you just shieldstack :)
    Edited by Major_Lag on September 8, 2019 5:28AM
  • malistorr
    malistorr
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    And dump the UU set for IA if you really want to max staff HA damage. Use an infused Maelstrom lightning staff back bar and charged UI staff front bar. Both lightning with shock glyph for PvE and I imagine fire and fire glyph for PvP although I don't PvP so others can better speak to what to do with staffs in that case.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    True, using IA would be better, but being a trials set it's "somewhat" less accessible than UI/UU - the latter 2 you can even farm solo if you are so inclined (yes, even Blackheart Haven).

    Also, using UU gives buffs to max stamina, which is quite valuable in PvP - especially in no-CP PvP where you really need that extra stamina to not be dying a lot.

    Maelstrom staff is a good idea, although it's less useful on Templars, since they have class access to Off Balance via Toppling Charge, so there is no real need to use WoE.

    On classes without class access to Off Balance, you will want to use WoE to proc OB, and then the Maelstrom staff is very useful indeed. Use shock dmg enchant, and maybe also charged trait, for maximum chance of getting a Concussion proc. On a Sorc also use Boundless (if using IA set instead of UU).

    If you use a Maelstrom lightning staff then you will want an UI restoration staff to go with it (in PvP that is).

    Edit: also, about this:
    malistorr wrote: »
    and I imagine fire and fire glyph for PvP although I don't PvP so others can better speak to what to do with staffs in that case.
    No, you want lightning staff both for PvE and PvP.

    The whole reason this build works is that the lightning heavy attack is a channeled attack and every tick gets the damage buffs, resulting in MASSIVE damage.

    If you use a fire staff, you only get one tick from it, since it's a projectile attack. So the resulting DPS would be very poor compared to using a lightning staff.
    Edited by Major_Lag on September 8, 2019 6:40AM
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    I've looked into how the HA damage scales with spell damage, and the results are... not at all what I expected.
    In fact, it scales in a very strange way.

    For a first test, I took a gold CP160 lightning staff and a white lvl1 lightning staff, heavy attacking a dummy.
    No abilities and no potions were used. No proc sets were used, either.
    Both staves had a weakening enchant on them (so it would not affect damage output), Precise trait.
    CP allocation was reasonably representative of a typical PvE DD build.

    I looked at the damage inflicted by the final non-crit tick of a fully-charged HA:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34700 max magicka: 1881 damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34700 max magicka: 2561 damage

    Clearly, the attack damage scales extremely poorly with spell damage.

    But what about the UI/UU buffs to HA damage? Again, let's look at the final non-crit tick:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 1844 unbuffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 3328 UU buffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 33679 max magicka: 4787 UI+UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 2520 unbuffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 4004 UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 5489 UI+UU buffed damage

    This confirms my earlier theory that the UI/UU damage buffs are a CONSTANT value not subject to any scaling.
    (Edit: to clarify, it does not scale with offensive stats, but DOES scale with the relevant Champion Point bonuses. Not relevant for no-CP PvP of course.)

    So we have a constant non-scaled damage buff and base attack damage which scales exceptionally poorly with spell damage.

    Ok, so let's compare the numbers with some higher spell damage, using the gold CP160 staff - again looking at the final non-crit tick:
    • 1441 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5463 damage (3x infused jewelry with stam regen enchant)
    • 2342 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5910 damage (3x infused with spell damage enchant)

    Conclusion: for PvP use of an UI+UU heavy attack build, feel free to use as many STAMINA regen glyphs on your jewelry as you like!

    Even with 3x STAMINA regen glyph, your damage output will drop by only a few %, but your survivability will go WAY up. Of course this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that heals do scale with spell damage... which is less of an issue if you just shieldstack :)

    Thank you for the testing! I'd not done any in-game testing on my UU/UI build for this particular issue, but I had seen a similarly surprisingly low effect of spell damage when I theorycrafted the build on the UESP Build Editor. I definitely think it's right that spell damage scales awfully for this build. The one thing that may stop me from going full stam regen enchants, though, is the last thing you mentioned: The fact that heals scale with spell damage. And while you can shieldstack, your magicka isn't actually all that high with the build either, since you've only got two magicka bonuses on the UU/UI sets. So I think it's basically a question of what would help the defense of the build more: more stamina regen or better heals. If they're roughly even, then you'd still want the spell damage, just because you'd get a slight bit more damage too. But if the stamina regen is really preferable for defense (which I think it may be, particularly in BGs where stamina sustain is really tough on a magicka character), then it's better to go with the stamina regen.

    I'm also tinkering with doing a version of this on a Nightblade. The idea would be to proc UU with Leeching Strikes (similar to proccing with Restoring Focus on a Templar), and then use cloak + concealed weapon to proc off balance. One problem with that is that you need a decent bit of magicka recovery to really liberally use cloak, and I'd need cloak for my damage combo and to get out of trouble. So I suspect even on a heavy attack build you couldn't get away with running the Nightblade with bad recovery. My thought is that you could just run magicka recovery glyphs still on the jewelry with a Nightblade. That'd give you around 1500 recovery--which is just a ton for this kind of build (maybe more than is necessary, I'd have to test)--without giving up much damage.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    malistorr wrote: »
    And dump the UU set for IA if you really want to max staff HA damage. Use an infused Maelstrom lightning staff back bar and charged UI staff front bar. Both lightning with shock glyph for PvE and I imagine fire and fire glyph for PvP although I don't PvP so others can better speak to what to do with staffs in that case.

    IA does indeed to a bit more damage than UU overall. The extra damage the 5-piece gives to each heavy attack tick is slightly lower, but the other bonuses are better for damage, so it ends up very slightly ahead even on heavy attacks. And it's more convenient to use, since you don't have to use a stamina ability to proc. The extra minor vulnerability is also obviously really good. So yeah, if you have IA, I'd suggest using that over UU. But IA is a trial set. And I think there's a lot of people who would find trials sets inaccessible. I, for one, have never run a trial, don't actually know anyone to run a trial with, and am not sure I'm high enough CP to even do it (am somewhere between 250 and 300 CP). So IA isn't really an option, and UU is still quite good for this.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    True, using IA would be better, but being a trials set it's "somewhat" less accessible than UI/UU - the latter 2 you can even farm solo if you are so inclined (yes, even Blackheart Haven).

    Just out of curiosity, how could one solo Blackheart Haven? As you might imagine, I did quite a lot of runs through Blackheart Haven for this build, so I'm probably more familiar with it than I would ever have wanted to be (though not as familiar as I am with Arx Corinium--I did that a shocking number of times for this). How could you solo the final boss? Wouldn't he turn you into a skeleton and then you'd basically be helpless and die? Maybe a SUPER tanky build could live through the skeleton phase?
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    My thought is that you could just run magicka recovery glyphs still on the jewelry with a Nightblade. That'd give you around 1500 recovery--which is just a ton for this kind of build (maybe more than is necessary, I'd have to test)--without giving up much damage.
    Sure, mix and match mag + stam recovery glyphs as needed?
    Maybe 1 mag regen, 1 stam regen and 1 spell damage glyph?

    Edit: remember to adjust buff food and mundus as needed.
    IA (...) And it's more convenient to use, since you don't have to use a stamina ability to proc.
    True. But with UU you get 2k extra stamina, and the cheapest stamina abilities are about 2.5k base cost, so it comes out to about the same end result.
    Just out of curiosity, how could one solo Blackheart Haven?
    Here's a complete description of a working non-werewolf method:
    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6322424/#Comment_6322424

    Edited by Major_Lag on September 8, 2019 7:45AM
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    My thought is that you could just run magicka recovery glyphs still on the jewelry with a Nightblade. That'd give you around 1500 recovery--which is just a ton for this kind of build (maybe more than is necessary, I'd have to test)--without giving up much damage.
    Sure, mix and match mag + stam recovery glyphs as needed?
    Maybe 1 mag regen, 1 stam regen and 1 spell damage glyph?
    IA (...) And it's more convenient to use, since you don't have to use a stamina ability to proc.
    True. But with UU you get 2k extra stamina, and the cheapest stamina abilities are about 2.5k base cost, so it comes out to about the same end result.
    Just out of curiosity, how could one solo Blackheart Haven?
    Here's a complete description of a working non-werewolf method:
    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6322424/#Comment_6322424

    The convenience issue also relates to the buff only lasting 10 seconds. The UI buff tends to naturally stay on during a fight, since, even with a heavy attack build, you're not going to go 10 seconds without casting a magicka ability. But the UU buff will often come off in the middle of a fight, requiring you to use a global cooldown to cast a stamina ability that you probably don't need, in order to keep the damage buff up. It's not a debilitating weakness of the build or anything, but I've definitely lost fights due to the UU buff going down. Particularly when someone is low health and I want to finish them, so I get greedy and don't take a global cooldown to proc UU but then I no longer have the damage to finish the person. While it's not a huge issue, IA avoiding it would definitely be pretty helpful.

    I would certainly miss the extra stamina from UU though. That extra max stamina is quite nice in no-CP--which is where I've used the build. Overall, though, I suspect IA would be slightly better for the build.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    I was thinking in terms of the Sorc, where Hurricane lasts 15 seconds - so even if you don't recast it early, you will still have decent uptime on the UU buff in longer fights.
    Particularly when someone is low health and I want to finish them, so I get greedy and don't take a global cooldown to proc UU but then I no longer have the damage to finish the person.
    That's a L2P issue.

    CC enemy on cooldown, that should go without saying. This isn't a burst build so you aren't using CC to create an offensive window in the "traditional" sense, but to drain the enemy's resources.

    On classes with a good magicka execute, use it. It can be especially devastating on a Sorc, since you can cast Wrath and then immediately start a HA.
    Even better, Curse then Wrath then HA. Not quite a proper burst, but that's still a lot of damage in a short time.

    Try putting more pressure on the enemy with DoTs. If you can get them to purge early, that's even better.
    On a Templar, maybe try using a poison instead of a weapon enchant, since you don't need Concussion to proc Off Balance.
  • Lokey0024
    Lokey0024
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    Think the point alot of you are forgetting is you can build exceptionally tanky and put out a decent/ton of damage without stat investment in damage. You can run 35k health with Tourgs pact heavy and max health/magicka regen food and still put out massive damage numbers.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    Lokey0024 wrote: »
    Think the point alot of you are forgetting is you can build exceptionally tanky and put out a decent/ton of damage without stat investment in damage. You can run 35k health with Tourgs pact heavy and max health/magicka regen food and still put out massive damage numbers.
    It seems you don't quite grasp how this build functions.
    None of the things you have mentioned are even remotely applicable to this build.

    The strength of this build comes from the fact that your primary means of dealing damage is also your primary means of magicka sustain.

    And because of the high sustain, the "tankiness" of this build comes from shieldstacking and heals, not from raw HP and recovery.

    This build plays VERY differently from "typical" PvP builds, and the logic that applies to "normal" builds ceases to be valid here.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    I was thinking in terms of the Sorc, where Hurricane lasts 15 seconds - so even if you don't recast it early, you will still have decent uptime on the UU buff in longer fights.
    Particularly when someone is low health and I want to finish them, so I get greedy and don't take a global cooldown to proc UU but then I no longer have the damage to finish the person.
    That's a L2P issue.

    CC enemy on cooldown, that should go without saying. This isn't a burst build so you aren't using CC to create an offensive window in the "traditional" sense, but to drain the enemy's resources.

    On classes with a good magicka execute, use it. It can be especially devastating on a Sorc, since you can cast Wrath and then immediately start a HA.
    Even better, Curse then Wrath then HA. Not quite a proper burst, but that's still a lot of damage in a short time.

    Try putting more pressure on the enemy with DoTs. If you can get them to purge early, that's even better.
    On a Templar, maybe try using a poison instead of a weapon enchant, since you don't need Concussion to proc Off Balance.

    What I’m talking about isn’t really a l2p issue. As a Magplar, I’m proccing UU with Restoring Focus. If someone gets low in a fight but the UU proc ends, I have two options: (1) try to finish them off despite having less DPS, or (2) take a global cooldown to cast Restoring Focus, which could give the other player time to heal up since I’m doing no damage when I cast that. Either way, I could possibly fail to get the kill because UU fell off. It’s not ultra common for that scenario to occur, but it has happened and wouldn’t with IA. And even if someone isn’t low when UU comes off, you’re still required to take a global cooldown to reapply a buff that still has 10 seconds left in its duration, when someone with IA could do something more useful with that global cooldown. I try to cast restoring focus after a toppling charge so that it doesn’t give them a real chance to heal when I use it, but it still gives them a moment where I’m not pressuring as much as I otherwise could. Anyways, I’m not saying I always make the right decisions in fights or anything (I definitely don’t), but having to take a global cooldown to cast Restoring Focus every 10 seconds in order to keep your DPS at its highest level is just objectively a downside compared to IA, not matter how good someone is at the game.

    In terms of using the execute, I absolutely would use Radiant Oppression in the above situation, but I’m actually no longer slotting it on the build. I’ve found better overall results from running an extra dot instead. The downside of that is that the above scenario can occur, when I could jesus beam someone down if I’d slotted it. I could slot jesus beam still if I didn’t double bar Honor the Dead, but I personally think having the burst heal on both bars is really helpful, since it slightly speeds up my reaction to big spikes of damage.

    I was thinking today how poisons would be even stronger than an enchant on this build. You’d have poisons going off nearly off cooldown. I think it’d be extremely strong. I’ll probably try it out. But I don’t tend to use poisons a lot, just because of the cost to constantly use them.

  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    Lokey0024 wrote: »
    Think the point alot of you are forgetting is you can build exceptionally tanky and put out a decent/ton of damage without stat investment in damage. You can run 35k health with Tourgs pact heavy and max health/magicka regen food and still put out massive damage numbers.
    It seems you don't quite grasp how this build functions.
    None of the things you have mentioned are even remotely applicable to this build.

    The strength of this build comes from the fact that your primary means of dealing damage is also your primary means of magicka sustain.

    And because of the high sustain, the "tankiness" of this build comes from shieldstacking and heals, not from raw HP and recovery.

    This build plays VERY differently from "typical" PvP builds, and the logic that applies to "normal" builds ceases to be valid here.

    I agree. The way I play it, the tankiness of the build basically comes from the fact that I’ve almost always got a high magicka pool left when I’m put on the defensive. So it’s really hard to catch me without the resources to keep myself alive.

    One could potentially lean into defense more though, without sacrificing much damage. For instance, I could put all protective glyphs on my jewelry and not lose much damage. I don’t really think heavy armor (which was suggested above for Torug’s Pact) is the way to build in more defense though. Light Armor’s spell penetration and spell crit actually do scale with the UU/UI damage, so if you’ve got to build defense into the build, I think it should probably be in other areas where the damage tradeoff is smaller.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    But I don’t tend to use poisons a lot, just because of the cost to constantly use them.
    PvP isn't exactly a cheap pursuit - certainly not at a high enough level.
    Armor does not degrade, but generally you do need to invest more into potions and poisons. Alchemy 4x crafting passive is a must (on at least 1 character).

    PvP and endgame PvE has this in common, both involve gulping down potions more or less on cooldown.

    And if you use the golden vendor a lot, then using poisons is still quite cost-effective in the long run (more kills = more AP).

    BTW, are you applying Defile to the enemies? You should be.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    But I don’t tend to use poisons a lot, just because of the cost to constantly use them.
    PvP isn't exactly a cheap pursuit - certainly not at a high enough level.
    Armor does not degrade, but generally you do need to invest more into potions and poisons. Alchemy 4x crafting passive is a must (on at least 1 character).

    PvP and endgame PvE has this in common, both involve gulping down potions more or less on cooldown.

    And if you use the golden vendor a lot, then using poisons is still quite cost-effective in the long run (more kills = more AP).

    BTW, are you applying Defile to the enemies? You should be.

    Yeah, one of the things I like about the build (or at least the Magplar version I’ve been playing) is that I can easily get the buffs one might otherwise want to get from a potion. I can run Reflective Light and Structured Entropy for Major Prophecy and Major Sorcery. I can run Elusive Mist for immovability. And the sustain on the build is so good—and the base recovery values so low—that I don’t feel like I need to chug potions on cooldown for the recovery bonuses. So I’m basically just running tri-stat potions and only really using them on the rare occasion where I’m really low on a resource, or to help me survive a sticky situation. Of course, this isn’t completely optimal, but it’s definitely much cheaper than chugging potions every 45 seconds, and I don’t think the build would gain a ton extra if I did.

    I’m not currently using any defile on the build, but that’s more out of laziness than anything. I’ve long thought a disease weapon enchant is probably my best bet for a weapon enchantment on this build if I’m not using poisons (though a shock enchant might be competitive). I just havent bothered getting one and switching it in yet. I do think it’d improve the performance of the build though.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    You should definitely use some source of defile, preferably Major, if at all possible. Or disease enchant.
    In CP PvP, remember to put some CP into Befoul for maximum effectiveness.

    Use potions for utility as needed. Detection. Immovability. Speed. Resource recovery (health/stamina in particular).
    It should go without saying, but Detection pots are great against NBs, especially on classes which don't have a suitable AoE ability like Sorc's Boundless/Hurricane or Templar's RoR.

    If you are on PC, you can use an addon to equip/unequip a poison (out of combat of course) as needed.
  • FrancisCrawford
    FrancisCrawford
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    Could somebody please remind of some basic numbers and so on here?

    1. How much magicka does a heavy attack normally return?
    2. How is that increased by off-balance?
    3. Off-balance increases damage via Exploiter and ... what else? (It seemed like there was a 50%ish total damage increase suggested above, and I don't know why.)
    4. What is the current duration of off-balance?
    5. What is the current duration of boss off-balance immunity?
    6. Only bosses get off-balance immunity, correct?

    Thanks!

  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    1. How much magicka does a heavy attack normally return?
    Depends on type of staff. It's also affected by CP allocation.
    For a lightning staff, the base value is 3633.
    For resto staff it's 3219, but the resto HA passive increases this.
    2. How is that increased by off-balance?
    Doubled.
    Off-balance is a x2 multiplier to resource recovery, and x1.7 (+70%) to damage.
    Note that there's a CP passive (Exploiter) which increases the amount of additional off-balance damage.
    4. What is the current duration of off-balance?
    5 seconds.
    5. What is the current duration of boss off-balance immunity?
    15 seconds, IIRC. So you can get up to 25% uptime on off-balance on bosses (5s effect + 15s immunity).
    6. Only bosses get off-balance immunity, correct?
    As far as I know, that would be correct.
  • de_la_Dude
    de_la_Dude
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    4. What is the current duration of off-balance?
    5 seconds.

    This was increased to 7s in v5.1.5.
  • Lokey0024
    Lokey0024
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    Major_Lag wrote: »
    Lokey0024 wrote: »
    Think the point alot of you are forgetting is you can build exceptionally tanky and put out a decent/ton of damage without stat investment in damage. You can run 35k health with Tourgs pact heavy and max health/magicka regen food and still put out massive damage numbers.
    It seems you don't quite grasp how this build functions.
    None of the things you have mentioned are even remotely applicable to this build.

    The strength of this build comes from the fact that your primary means of dealing damage is also your primary means of magicka sustain.

    And because of the high sustain, the "tankiness" of this build comes from shieldstacking and heals, not from raw HP and recovery.

    This build plays VERY differently from "typical" PvP builds, and the logic that applies to "normal" builds ceases to be valid here.

    It's a proc set build, not really science. I get swarmed alot so having some magicka regen is required, you can't just ask players to please stop spamming their heavy hitting stuff while I channel a heavy attack, but health recov is preferred.

    I would hate to fight XvX against the build you're running. Sounds like a ridiculous amount of damage kinda quick. Especially off balance and defiled.
    Edited by Lokey0024 on September 8, 2019 3:01PM
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Could somebody please remind of some basic numbers and so on here?

    1. How much magicka does a heavy attack normally return?
    2. How is that increased by off-balance?
    3. Off-balance increases damage via Exploiter and ... what else? (It seemed like there was a 50%ish total damage increase suggested above, and I don't know why.)
    4. What is the current duration of off-balance?
    5. What is the current duration of boss off-balance immunity?
    6. Only bosses get off-balance immunity, correct?

    Thanks!

    Most of these were already answered but I’ll just say one thing regarding #3. The damage bonus from off balance is 70%. However, I believe damage bonuses are additive not multiplicative. So if you had a 50% damage boost from Molten Armaments and a 70% damage boost from off balance, you’d have a total of a 120% damage boost. So if you did 1000 base damage, it’d be 1500 with Molten Armaments and then 2200 with off balance as well. That’s how you end up with it seeming like a lower than 70% bonus. If you stack damage bonuses, there’s some diminishing returns.
  • Major_Lag
    Major_Lag
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    Lokey0024 wrote: »
    I would hate to fight XvX against the build you're running. Sounds like a ridiculous amount of damage kinda quick. Especially off balance and defiled.
    Oh yes, it should be excellent to use for XvX, mostly just spam HA and shields while running in an appropriate direction.

    And it's an AoE, too - perfect for those tightly stacked zergs and ram operators :D
    Hit'em when they are stacked inside a chokepoint for massive damage - for example, the doors on river bridges work very well for that.
    de_la_Dude wrote: »
    This was increased to 7s in v5.1.5.
    Thanks! It's kinda hard to keep track of all the changes :)
    However, I believe damage bonuses are additive not multiplicative. So if you had a 50% damage boost from Molten Armaments and a 70% damage boost from off balance, you’d have a total of a 120% damage boost.
    Hmm, you are probably right.
    I haven't checked how the damage bonuses stack, mostly because the majority of the possible boosts are quite small to begin with.

    And IIRC, Armaments are bugged (?) and do not boost the lightning HA damage correctly, so there's also that.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
    ✭✭✭
    I’m almost done leveling a Magicka Nightblade, and I think this could be really strong for that class as well.

    Leeching Strikes is a great way to proc UU. You’d get great stamina regen from it, and it would give you a good bit of passive healing from your heavy attacks. Meanwhile, Concealed Weapon out of cloak would stun and proc off balance, and since it’d automatically crit it would get you more consistent initial burst than Toppling Charge plus Burning Light does. Soul Harvest/Incapacitating Strike would really up the damage on the heavy attacks a lot and probably be really good (Soul Harvest would be the obvious choice for CP, but Incapacitating Strike would be interesting in a no-CP environment, since silence is really strong and you’d get extra sustain from using your heavy attacks). Meanwhile, obviously cloak and shade are probably the best survivability tools in the game.

    So I think the general combo would be: Cloak —> Leeching Strikes —> Concealed Weapon —> Soul Harvest if you have it —> Heavy Attacks. I’d probably slot Lotus Fan to gap close if need be, and 1 or 2 dots (perhaps Structured Entropy and Crippling Grasp). And I’d probably slot Rapid Regen and Healing Ward for heals, though you could go for Harness Magicka instead of Rapid Regen. The back bar ult would probably be Soul Siphon rather than the resto ult—particularly if I don’t have Crippling Grasp slotted on the back bar, and therefore need a siphoning ability there.

    I think that it could actually be more powerful than my Templar version of it in terms of damage potential and survivability. But it would also be more counterable, since abilities that would pull me out of stealth (such as Hurricane) would prevent me from proccing off balance, which would stop me from doing big damage. So a good player could adjust to it better. Nevertheless, I’m excited to try it out.

    EDIT: Merciless Resolve could actually be decent with this as well. A fully charged heavy attack adds 2 ticks for Merciless Resolve, so you can get up to 5 faster than you'd think. It'd be a bit finicky because if the heavy attack is not fully charged you don't get any ticks at all. But it could be used to add some tankiness to the build a large portion of the time. That tankiness could maybe even allow use of a damage-based monster set for me--Skoria being an obvious choice but I want to get Maw of the Infernal and see how it works with this too, and also maybe try Zaan--while I'm using a Lord Warden/Pirate Skeleton combo now on the Magplar just for resistances.
    Edited by RiskyChalice863 on September 9, 2019 3:26AM
  • Masel
    Masel
    Class Representative
    I've been recommending another build earlier in this thread.

    Off-balance is a debuff you definitely do not want to miss in a heavy attack build. It doubles the resources you gain, and gives 70% more heavy attack damage without a cooldown on players +10% from exploiter passive in cp pvp, both values that boost the flat bonuses from the Maelstrom Staff and UI and a free ranged stun. Using both UU and UU was not ideal because it took away the chance of building for a charged trait for a higher guarantee of off-balance upfront and gave you more stamina than you actually needed to have.


    Just my view, based on the practice of pvping for roughly 8 months on heavy attack dk builds. I use chudan+torugs+UI with defending resto and charged vMA lightning staff on front bar with unstable wall this patch, and it is very successful because players underestimate the impact of Off-Balance and standing in the unstable wall.




    Edited by Masel on September 9, 2019 8:19PM
    PC EU

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  • malistorr
    malistorr
    ✭✭✭✭
    Wouldn't IA be better than Torugs? It just does so much. Or would most of it's buffs only apply to PvE? I don't PvP but for PvE it seems like it should be no comparison on which is better for a heavy attack build.
  • Masel
    Masel
    Class Representative
    malistorr wrote: »
    Wouldn't IA be better than Torugs? It just does so much. Or would most of it's buffs only apply to PvE? I don't PvP but for PvE it seems like it should be no comparison on which is better for a heavy attack build.

    IA is redundant. It applies vulnerability, which is applied by the shock enchant, but doesnt apply concussion and off-balance.

    For PvP only that is.
    PC EU

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  • malistorr
    malistorr
    ✭✭✭✭
    Guess it depends on if you want to heavy attack or not. If not, like most people, it wouldn't be better, even with the extra 8% or so crit. chance. If someone mostly heavy attacks (which I imagine is super rare in PvP) then it would probably be better IMO.
  • Joosef_Kivikilpi
    Joosef_Kivikilpi
    ✭✭✭✭
    Major_Lag wrote: »
    I've looked into how the HA damage scales with spell damage, and the results are... not at all what I expected.
    In fact, it scales in a very strange way.

    For a first test, I took a gold CP160 lightning staff and a white lvl1 lightning staff, heavy attacking a dummy.
    No abilities and no potions were used. No proc sets were used, either.
    Both staves had a weakening enchant on them (so it would not affect damage output), Precise trait.
    CP allocation was reasonably representative of a typical PvE DD build.

    I looked at the damage inflicted by the final non-crit tick of a fully-charged HA:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34700 max magicka: 1881 damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34700 max magicka: 2561 damage

    Clearly, the attack damage scales extremely poorly with spell damage.

    But what about the UI/UU buffs to HA damage? Again, let's look at the final non-crit tick:
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 1844 unbuffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 34190 max magicka: 3328 UU buffed damage
    • White lvl1 staff, 181 SD, 33679 max magicka: 4787 UI+UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 2520 unbuffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 4004 UU buffed damage
    • Gold CP160 staff, 1441 SD, 34190 max magicka: 5489 UI+UU buffed damage

    This confirms my earlier theory that the UI/UU damage buffs are a CONSTANT value not subject to any scaling.
    (Edit: to clarify, it does not scale with offensive stats, but DOES scale with the relevant Champion Point bonuses. Not relevant for no-CP PvP of course.)

    So we have a constant non-scaled damage buff and base attack damage which scales exceptionally poorly with spell damage.

    Ok, so let's compare the numbers with some higher spell damage, using the gold CP160 staff - again looking at the final non-crit tick:
    • 1441 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5463 damage (3x infused jewelry with stam regen enchant)
    • 2342 SD, 33679 max magicka, UI+UU buffs active: 5910 damage (3x infused with spell damage enchant)

    Conclusion: for PvP use of an UI+UU heavy attack build, feel free to use as many STAMINA regen glyphs on your jewelry as you like!

    Even with 3x STAMINA regen glyph, your damage output will drop by only a few %, but your survivability will go WAY up. Of course this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that heals do scale with spell damage... which is less of an issue if you just shieldstack :)

    Thank you for the testing! I'd not done any in-game testing on my UU/UI build for this particular issue, but I had seen a similarly surprisingly low effect of spell damage when I theorycrafted the build on the UESP Build Editor. I definitely think it's right that spell damage scales awfully for this build. The one thing that may stop me from going full stam regen enchants, though, is the last thing you mentioned: The fact that heals scale with spell damage. And while you can shieldstack, your magicka isn't actually all that high with the build either, since you've only got two magicka bonuses on the UU/UI sets. So I think it's basically a question of what would help the defense of the build more: more stamina regen or better heals. If they're roughly even, then you'd still want the spell damage, just because you'd get a slight bit more damage too. But if the stamina regen is really preferable for defense (which I think it may be, particularly in BGs where stamina sustain is really tough on a magicka character), then it's better to go with the stamina regen.

    I'm also tinkering with doing a version of this on a Nightblade. The idea would be to proc UU with Leeching Strikes (similar to proccing with Restoring Focus on a Templar), and then use cloak + concealed weapon to proc off balance. One problem with that is that you need a decent bit of magicka recovery to really liberally use cloak, and I'd need cloak for my damage combo and to get out of trouble. So I suspect even on a heavy attack build you couldn't get away with running the Nightblade with bad recovery. My thought is that you could just run magicka recovery glyphs still on the jewelry with a Nightblade. That'd give you around 1500 recovery--which is just a ton for this kind of build (maybe more than is necessary, I'd have to test)--without giving up much damage.

    Have done it before. Absolutely melted people. Ran Sword and Shield Infiltrator, proc leeching, then switched to Maelstrom staff with blockade. Wrecked kids.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
    ✭✭✭
    Masel wrote: »
    I've been recommending another build earlier in this thread.

    Off-balance is a debuff you definitely do not want to miss in a heavy attack build. It doubles the resources you gain, and gives 70% more heavy attack damage without a cooldown on players +10% from exploiter passive in cp pvp, both values that boost the flat bonuses from the Maelstrom Staff and UI and a free ranged stun. Using both UU and UU was not ideal because it took away the chance of building for a charged trait for a higher guarantee of off-balance upfront and gave you more stamina than you actually needed to have.


    Just my view, based on the practice of pvping for roughly 8 months on heavy attack dk builds. I use chudan+torugs+UI with defending resto and charged vMA lightning staff on front bar with unstable wall this patch, and it is very successful because players underestimate the impact of Off-Balance and standing in the unstable wall.

    That’s really interesting. And actually, I’ve thought a lot about running Torug’s for this kind of build. I think it has definite benefits.

    But I do think doing charged Torug’s would sacrifice quite a lot of damage compared to UU. UU adds about 1120 damage per tick, which does 1904 extra with the 70% off balance bonus. There’s 4 ticks per heavy attack, so that’s 7616 damage per heavy attack. Heavy attacks take 2.2 seconds so that’s 3462 extra damage per second. If you’re doing charged Torug’s, you increase the base enchant damage from 2339 to 3041 and make it proc every 2.8 seconds instead of every 4 seconds. So that’s 1086 DPS instead of 585 DPS—a bonus of like 500 DPS. That’s way lower than the extra UU damage. The upside, of course, is that you can proc off balance at range pretty easily with wall of elements and heavy attacks. But in PVP I’m able to basically proc off balance constantly on someone with things like Toppling Charge. That does require me to get in the thick of things more but the extra damage is quite high. And we also shouldn’t forget that the extra UU damage affects an AOE, while the extra Torug’s damage doesn’t.

    I’m not saying you’re wrong or that your build doesn’t work well. I’m quite sure it does. And UU can be a pain to keep procced, and definitely requires being aggressive. But I think UU does quite a lot more damage, at least for a class that can reliably proc off balance.
  • Joosef_Kivikilpi
    Joosef_Kivikilpi
    ✭✭✭✭
    Masel wrote: »
    I've been recommending another build earlier in this thread.

    Off-balance is a debuff you definitely do not want to miss in a heavy attack build. It doubles the resources you gain, and gives 70% more heavy attack damage without a cooldown on players +10% from exploiter passive in cp pvp, both values that boost the flat bonuses from the Maelstrom Staff and UI and a free ranged stun. Using both UU and UU was not ideal because it took away the chance of building for a charged trait for a higher guarantee of off-balance upfront and gave you more stamina than you actually needed to have.


    Just my view, based on the practice of pvping for roughly 8 months on heavy attack dk builds. I use chudan+torugs+UI with defending resto and charged vMA lightning staff on front bar with unstable wall this patch, and it is very successful because players underestimate the impact of Off-Balance and standing in the unstable wall.




    Ahhh Masel, finally another individual who knows the power of the charged vMA Lighting Staff blockade in PVP with this build. Good to see another one. Granted... I'd be terrified of petrify on this build lolz
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