Undaunted Heavy Attack PVP Build (Magplar and MagDK)

Major_Lag

malistorr wrote: »

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.

...WHY would you possibly want to use a HEAVY ATTACK build if you don't want to heavy attack people with it???

And yes, HA'ing is uncommon in PvP - no halfway decent player will spam heavy attacks, because on non-HA builds (so >95% of PvP builds there are) the HA damage output is garbage, and you will only kill complete potatoes with it.

The only people who spam HA's in PvP are noobs, zerglings, and the rare player with a proper HA build.

Major_Lag

Bumping this, in light of some new testing I've done on the PTS.

I've compared the performance of using UI+UU+Maelstrom vs using UI+Torug's+Maelstrom.

Testing was done on a 3 mil dummy.
Quite suboptimal because of the Off-Balance cooldown (which does not apply to PvP targets) - but at least with CMX I can see how many times I got Concussion to proc.

NOTE: the build used was far from optimal in terms of choices of enchants and CP. No buff food was used, either.
So please treat the resulting DPS values as purely comparative - especially since the dummy is subject to Off-Balance cooldown!

For both test builds I used the same weapons: a charged UI lightning staff with shock enchant on backbar, and a charged Maelstrom lightning staff with shock enchant on frontbar.

---

UI+UU+Maelstrom:
Rotation used: LA -> WoE -> LA -> Vigor -> barswap -> 3x HA -> barswap -> (repeat)
Spell crit rating: 32.8%
DPS: 9886
TTK: 5:04
Concussions per minute: 15.2 (77 Concussions in 5:04)
Off-Balance uptime: 31%

UI+Torug's+Maelstrom:
Rotation used: LA -> WoE -> barswap -> 3x HA -> barswap -> (repeat) {no Vigor, because no UU set to proc}
Spell crit rating: 29%
DPS: 8128
TTK: 6:10
Concussions per minute: 20.3 (125 Concussions in 6:10)
Off-Balance uptime: 32%

---

Conclusions:

DPS with Torug's was significantly lower than with UU, despite the shorter rotation - since without UU there's no need to use a Stamina ability.

Both builds resulted in the dummy becoming set Off-Balance pretty much on cooldown; the resulting uptime is effectively the maximum possible value on a PvE dummy.

Concussion procs stupidly often, even when using UU instead of Torug's.
On a PvPer under the same (unrealistic) test conditions, you'd be seeing Off-Balance uptime in the >80% range.

As expected from basic math, using Torug's resulted in lower DPS output vs using UU - and the reduced spell crit % (from losing UU) did not help things, either.
Shock enchant DPS with UU was ~800, with Torug's it was ~1500... not nearly enough to help compensate for the loss of UU heavy attack buff.

---

So in the end, it looks like using UI+UU+Maelstrom is significantly superior to using Torug's in place of UU - as long as you can live with having to use a stamina ability to proc the UU buff.

On a Templar, if you use Toppling Charge to proc Off-Balance, you can drop the shock enchant for something else with better utility (Crusher or Weakening, maybe?).
And drop the Charged trait, too - my first guess is that using Sharpened would be much better in that case.

RiskyChalice863

Major_Lag wrote: »

Bumping this, in light of some new testing I've done on the PTS.

I've compared the performance of using UI+UU+Maelstrom vs using UI+Torug's+Maelstrom.

Testing was done on a 3 mil dummy.
Quite suboptimal because of the Off-Balance cooldown (which does not apply to PvP targets) - but at least with CMX I can see how many times I got Concussion to proc.

NOTE: the build used was far from optimal in terms of choices of enchants and CP. No buff food was used, either.
So please treat the resulting DPS values as purely comparative - especially since the dummy is subject to Off-Balance cooldown!

For both test builds I used the same weapons: a charged UI lightning staff with shock enchant on backbar, and a charged Maelstrom lightning staff with shock enchant on frontbar.

---

UI+UU+Maelstrom:
Rotation used: LA -> WoE -> LA -> Vigor -> barswap -> 3x HA -> barswap -> (repeat)
Spell crit rating: 32.8%
DPS: 9886
TTK: 5:04
Concussions per minute: 15.2 (77 Concussions in 5:04)
Off-Balance uptime: 31%

UI+Torug's+Maelstrom:
Rotation used: LA -> WoE -> barswap -> 3x HA -> barswap -> (repeat) {no Vigor, because no UU set to proc}
Spell crit rating: 29%
DPS: 8128
TTK: 6:10
Concussions per minute: 20.3 (125 Concussions in 6:10)
Off-Balance uptime: 32%

---

Conclusions:

DPS with Torug's was significantly lower than with UU, despite the shorter rotation - since without UU there's no need to use a Stamina ability.

Both builds resulted in the dummy becoming set Off-Balance pretty much on cooldown; the resulting uptime is effectively the maximum possible value on a PvE dummy.

Concussion procs stupidly often, even when using UU instead of Torug's.
On a PvPer under the same (unrealistic) test conditions, you'd be seeing Off-Balance uptime in the >80% range.

As expected from basic math, using Torug's resulted in lower DPS output vs using UU - and the reduced spell crit % (from losing UU) did not help things, either.
Shock enchant DPS with UU was ~800, with Torug's it was ~1500... not nearly enough to help compensate for the loss of UU heavy attack buff.

---

So in the end, it looks like using UI+UU+Maelstrom is significantly superior to using Torug's in place of UU - as long as you can live with having to use a stamina ability to proc the UU buff.

On a Templar, if you use Toppling Charge to proc Off-Balance, you can drop the shock enchant for something else with better utility (Crusher or Weakening, maybe?).
And drop the Charged trait, too - my first guess is that using Sharpened would be much better in that case.

This is very insightful, thank you! And it confirmed what I thought would be true on paper: Torug’s is solid for this but UU is better.

It also I think makes quite clear that for classes that can’t proc off balance with a specific ability, going with Charged and Wall of Elements is a good bet. It’s something I’ve not really tried—since I’ve been playing this on my Magplar so far and don’t have a Maelstrom staff—so I do wonder how easy it is to use Wall of Elements on this build in practice in PVP. But it definitely does seem like the best bet for many classes.

As for what enchant and trait the Templar would use, my inclination is to use a Disease enchant in PVP—though I play essentially exclusively BGs and I know that Disease wouldn’t be as efficient damage-wise in a CP campaign. If you use that, then actually the optimal trait may well still be Charged now that I think about it. Going from 20% Major Defile uptime to like 64% Major Defile uptime is a big deal and might well overcome the added damage from Sharpened. Honestly, a Shock enchant with a Charged or Sharpened trait might well still be competitive even on a Templar, because of the minor vulnerability from concussed.

Anyways, after some more testing, a couple things I’d say about this build:

- I think a significant weakness is the lack of movement speed when attacking. You’re relatively easy pickings for people spamming Dizzying Swing. You also in general tend to get hit with a lot of damage when you jump into a group—more damage than if you jumped in and were more mobile while doing your damage. It’s not debilitating in BGs, but I think it’s definitely something that could make it a bit of a difficult build to use to 1vX people. It’s more of a 1v1 and group play sort of build IMO.
- Templars are very smooth to play with this build—even if they aren’t necessarily the most powerful in terms of damage. Toppling Charge and Restoring Focus are just basically the perfect abilities for a UU/UI build. You see someone and just Restoring Focus + Toppling Charge and start doing massive damage (I try to dot them up a bit before using Toppling, but against squishier people it’s not even necessary). I don’t think any other class would be so smooth in terms of setup.

Major_Lag

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

so I do wonder how easy it is to use Wall of Elements on this build in practice in PVP. But it definitely does seem like the best bet for many classes.

It should work quite well - as long as the enemy is afflicted with Concussion, dropping a WoE under them will instantly set them Off Balance.

And in PvP, Wall of Lightning is one of those skills which is normally considered as more of an annoyance than an actual major threat, similarly to standing in Caltrops.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

As for what enchant and trait the Templar would use, my inclination is to use a Disease enchant in PVP (...) Honestly, a Shock enchant with a Charged or Sharpened trait might well still be competitive even on a Templar, because of the minor vulnerability from concussed.

Good call with the Disease enchant, yeah that should be a fairly solid option.
In fact, the Major Defile from Disease enchant would be probably even better than the Minor Vuln from Shock.

On a Templar you have access to Major Defile from Dark Flare, but it's a projectile (dodgeable), so the Disease enchant would be a better source of Defile - can't dodge the staff beam attack.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

- I think a significant weakness is the lack of movement speed when attacking. You’re relatively easy pickings for people spamming Dizzying Swing. You also in general tend to get hit with a lot of damage when you jump into a group—more damage than if you jumped in and were more mobile while doing your damage. It’s not debilitating in BGs, but I think it’s definitely something that could make it a bit of a difficult build to use to 1vX people. It’s more of a 1v1 and group play sort of build IMO.

Yes, I agree that the lack of mobility is a serious detriment when outnumbered.
The snare from heavy attacking is bad enough that even Major Exp + Swift trait(s) don't do much to help.

I'm really looking forward to testing this on a Sorc (after I'm done farming the gear), to see how it would work in practice with Streak thrown in.
Also, when using the Matriarch, that's some "free" damage mitigation due to its LoS blocking properties.

This should also be pretty smooth to use on a Sorc: Streak in, Hurricane, drop WoE and start heavy attacking.
If you can make Def Rune work with this setup, that's even better.

Actually, this is something that would require further testing in practice: would it be better to first WoE and then HA, or HA first (to proc Concussion) and then drop WoE for instant Off Balance proc.
The former offers a greater "burst" potential than the latter - but if the enemy would leave the WoE area before the first Concussion proc, the effect would be wasted unless WoE is applied second.

RiskyChalice863

Major_Lag wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

so I do wonder how easy it is to use Wall of Elements on this build in practice in PVP. But it definitely does seem like the best bet for many classes.

It should work quite well - as long as the enemy is afflicted with Concussion, dropping a WoE under them will instantly set them Off Balance.

And in PvP, Wall of Lightning is one of those skills which is normally considered as more of an annoyance than an actual major threat, similarly to standing in Caltrops.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

As for what enchant and trait the Templar would use, my inclination is to use a Disease enchant in PVP (...) Honestly, a Shock enchant with a Charged or Sharpened trait might well still be competitive even on a Templar, because of the minor vulnerability from concussed.

Good call with the Disease enchant, yeah that should be a fairly solid option.
In fact, the Major Defile from Disease enchant would be probably even better than the Minor Vuln from Shock.

On a Templar you have access to Major Defile from Dark Flare, but it's a projectile (dodgeable), so the Disease enchant would be a better source of Defile - can't dodge the staff beam attack.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

- I think a significant weakness is the lack of movement speed when attacking. You’re relatively easy pickings for people spamming Dizzying Swing. You also in general tend to get hit with a lot of damage when you jump into a group—more damage than if you jumped in and were more mobile while doing your damage. It’s not debilitating in BGs, but I think it’s definitely something that could make it a bit of a difficult build to use to 1vX people. It’s more of a 1v1 and group play sort of build IMO.

Yes, I agree that the lack of mobility is a serious detriment when outnumbered.
The snare from heavy attacking is bad enough that even Major Exp + Swift trait(s) don't do much to help.

I'm really looking forward to testing this on a Sorc (after I'm done farming the gear), to see how it would work in practice with Streak thrown in.
Also, when using the Matriarch, that's some "free" damage mitigation due to its LoS blocking properties.

This should also be pretty smooth to use on a Sorc: Streak in, Hurricane, drop WoE and start heavy attacking.
If you can make Def Rune work with this setup, that's even better.

Actually, this is something that would require further testing in practice: would it be better to first WoE and then HA, or HA first (to proc Concussion) and then drop WoE for instant Off Balance proc.
The former offers a greater "burst" potential than the latter - but if the enemy would leave the WoE area before the first Concussion proc, the effect would be wasted unless WoE is applied second.

I’ll be eager to hear what your experiences with it are after you’re done farming the gear for it. In terms of farming, it really can take a while—particularly to get the UI pieces you want, since the build basically requires a ton of UI pieces that you can only get from the final boss in the dungeon. In the end, I did not farm the exact optimal gear for it, to be honest. I ended up having a UU lightning staff drop when farming the UU gear, and decided it wasn’t worth trying to farm a UI one instead. That means I’m running two pieces of UI armor, so I have 5 light and 2 medium instead of 5 light, 1 medium, and 1 heavy. It’s not optimal, but I didn’t think it was worth running Arx Corinium a ton more times just to completely optimize it. I guess it could be a bit quicker to farm if you are using the Maelstrom staff (since that eliminates the need to get a lightning staff drop), but the UI jewelry could still be a pain.

I’d also be interested to hear what you determine regarding the optimal ordering of WoE and heavy attacks. My inclination is to think it it may sometimes depend on whether you’ve got UI already procced from some other magicka ability or not. If UI isn’t already procced, then casting WoE only after you’ve heavy attacked and procced concussion would lose you some damage on that initial heavy attacking. In that scenario, it may be better to proc UI with WoE before you start heavy attacking.

One thing to make sure to consider for PVP is the mechanic for consuming off balance. Unless it’s been changed at some point without me having ever noticed, I believe off balance is consumed if you stun the person. With a WoE build, you’d proc off balance and then heavy attack, so your heavy attack would stun them, but also consume the off balance and therefore lower your subsequent damage. I’m not sure how quickly you could get them off balance again. I believe concussed lasts 4 seconds (i.e. longer than it takes to have completed a heavy attack), so I suppose if off balance is consumed but they’re still concussed and in your WoE, then they’d get immediately set off balance again and there’d be no downtime on off balance. But if concussed happens to be off of them or they left the WoE, then you’d need to proc off balance again once you’ve consumed it. That would likely result in couple seconds of downtime until your next enchant comes up and/or you get another WoE under them. You could potentially avoid this by stunning them before proccing off balance, so that your heavy attack doesn’t consume it.

Kolzki

Another vote here for a vMA lightning staff. I ran one on a sorc build in UI + shacklebreaker + skoria (or something more defensive) for a long time. I used and infused back bar weapon power enchant and sharpened front lightning glyph and never had any problem proccing off balance.

IMO half of the point of running a heavy attack build is the high stats thanks to not needing as much regen. Shackle helps with that and gives a good all round build with enough stam recovery. High elf also works well for this too. Between curse, execute, CCs, shields and healing there are a lot of skills that benefit from the higher stat pool rather than focusing entirely into heavy attack damage.

The basic rotation was a slightly modified sorc classic: curse > la >wall > la > execute > ha > the old pre-nerfed shock clench.

The curse, heavy attack, execute and skoria should all hit at roughly the same time. The loss of cc from shock clench could be a problem as it was really helpful to get out of tight spots with tougher targets.

Major_Lag

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

I’ll be eager to hear what your experiences with it are after you’re done farming the gear for it.

That... will take a while, my farming time is quite limited on most days.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

One thing to make sure to consider for PVP is the mechanic for consuming off balance. (...) With a WoE build, you’d proc off balance and then heavy attack, so your heavy attack would stun them, but also consume the off balance and therefore lower your subsequent damage.

If this works the same way in PvP as it does in PvE, then Off-Balance does not become consumed if the target already has CC immunity, because the stun ("Off-Balance Exploit") does not proc.
This is one of the very, very few cases where having CC immunity in PvP is actually a bad thing, because you end up taking more damage that way

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

I’d also be interested to hear what you determine regarding the optimal ordering of WoE and heavy attacks. My inclination is to think it it may sometimes depend on whether you’ve got UI already procced from some other magicka ability or not.

If you Streak in, then UI would be already procced from that.
And realistically, when opening the fight, a lot of the time you'd want/need to Streak closer to get within WoE range of the target(s).
Streak can be also used for the CC if the target is already in melee range. IIRC, the Streak stun is unblockable as of Scalebreaker.

RiskyChalice863

I think it's now going to be true that Warden could be very strong with this next patch. You basically would use Dive and Swarm--with one of them being the stamina morph in order to proc UU.* This would get you off balance at range, put minor vulnerability on the target, and give you 4% extra damage. Put Bird of Prey on your front bar for another 10% damage boost as well. Off balance UU/UI heavy attacks + 14% or more damage boost + minor vulnerability would allow you to melt people from very long distance.

The difficulty with Warden would be what to do if someone gap closed on you, since Dive won't be able to proc off balance within 12 meters. While you'd have access to major expedition, the snare from heavy attack would basically mean that once someone closed the distance on you, you'd find it hard to create the distance necessary to proc off balance. You could slot Elemental Blockade and use a Charged weapon with a shock glyph so that you could still proc off balance at close range. But doing that would take up a slot on your bar and using a Charged weapon with shock glyph would seem like a bit of a waste whenever you were attacking at range, since you wouldn't need the off balance or the minor vulnerability. You could also just stack some abilities that would make you a nightmare to attack at closer range. The new Artic Blast could help with that, as could maybe Corrupting Pollen. Doing that would basically give an enemy the choice of: (1) stay on top of you so that they don't get put off balance, but eat the stun from Arctic Blast and have Major Defile; or (2) keep your distance from those and get melted. A really good player might be able to somehow constantly stay in the middle range where they aren't defiled or stunned by also can't be kept off balance, but I think that would be super hard, especially when you've got major expedition in your kit. You could also do a combination of the above two options. What I was thinking is maybe something like the below for skills:

Front Bar:
Screaming Cliff Racer
Growing Swarm
Bird of Prey
Bull Netch
Elemental Blockade
Permafrost

Back Bar:
Living Trellis
Lotus Blossom
Arctic Blast
Corrupting Pollen
Ice Fortress
Life Giver

I don't love that that leaves you without Crystallized Shield or Elusive Mist. One could potentially forego Lotus Blossom for that (though I do like the synergy it has with the build). You could also forego Corrupting Pollen.

You could also replace Arctic Blast with Destructive Clench (and then use Healing Thicket instead of Life Giver, since you'd be on a flame staff back bar in that case). That would basically give you an instant stun within that range where you can't instantly set off balance--which could allow you to more easily get the Blockade + Enchant combo off for off balance. I personally think Life Giver is massively better than Healing Thicket though (Life Giver actually resets fights where I'm about to die, while Healing Thicket does not), but I guess you could go with Barrier from the Support line instead as well.

* My inclination is to think it'd probably be better to use the stamina morph of Swarm instead of Cutting Dive. That probably would lower damage slightly over time, but the burst would be a bit higher. And, more importantly, I think there'd be lots of scenarios where you'd need to spam Dive multiple times--particularly if people dodged it and weren't put off balance, or to reapply off balance if you consumed it with a stun from your heavy attack--and so I think it'd be tough to sustain the stamina to use Cutting Dive as much as you'd want.

RiskyChalice863

Also, I've read that Molten Armaments is now fixed again on the PTS, so if that's the case DKs would of course be very strong with this build. Without an ability to proc off balance at range and without passive damage boosts and whatnot, they wouldn't be able to quite do the kind of massive single target damage at range that Wardens would now be able to do with this build. But they'd still do really high single target damage at range--with only Wardens outdoing them--and they'd outdo Wardens in the AOE damage they do at range. And in close distances--where they could actually proc off balance--they'd be easier to use effectively than the Warden and output an amount of damage that no other class could output (albeit with more setup required than for the Templar).

One thing I also realized regarding this build in terms of the stamina ability that should be used to proc UU: For classes without a good stamina ability option here (which includes DKs IMO), I think maybe Crushing Weapon from the Psijic skill line could be a good bet. You could proc it without yet having a target (which would allow for a quicker combo in general) and actually just not use it and get almost all the stamina back. You'd basically just be paying something like 575 stamina every 10 seconds to proc UU, and as a side bonus get the Psijic damage shield when you block on that bar. That may well be better than doing something like paying ~2600-2800 stamina every 10 seconds to proc UU with abilities like Vigor, Noxious Breath, Silver Leash, etc. that wouldn't really do very much for you as a magicka-based character. Obviously slotting an ability that you’re not really using is not ideal—and I’d certainly not use it over the likes of Leeching Strikes, Restoring Focus, Hurricane, or Swarm/Dive, nor would I use it over Beast Trap in PVE—but it may be useful in PVP for DKs or perhaps Necros (though I’ve not thought as much about the latter).

cmvet

So has anyone tried Elegent over UU and seen what the damage numbers are?

RiskyChalice863

cmvet wrote: »

So has anyone tried Elegent over UU and seen what the damage numbers are?

I've not done any direct tests, but I did a lot of fiddling around on the UESP Build Editor and have thought about it a lot and I don't think Elegant can compare for this particular type of build.

It adds a flat 20% damage boost to heavy attacks. Ultimately, that 20% boost is actually a good bit less, because it is additive with the off balance bonus, CP bonuses, damage bonuses like minor berserk, etc. So, for instance, let's just take the basic case where you have no CP points and no damage bonuses but your enemy is off balance. Without Elegant, your heavy attacks will do 1.7x damage. With Elegant, they will do 1.9x damage. Thus, even in that simple scenario, Elegant only increases damage by 11.8%, not 20%. That number would go down even further with CP and other bonuses included. In other words, Elegant offers a peak damage increase of 20%, but it is likely to be substantially lower in most scenarios.

Compare that to UU, which adds about 1120 base damage (assuming only epic quality items) for each tick. That adds 4480 base damage to lightning heavy attacks, since there's four ticks. Considering that the normal base heavy attack damage is going to generally be roughly 6000-8000, adding 4480 damage to that is a massive percentage increase. Even if you already have UI and the Maelstrom staff as well as CP geared towards the build and an off balance enemy, it's basically impossible to create a scenario where UU doesn't add more than 20% to your heavy attack DPS.

Granted, for raw damage, the other bonuses on Elegant are better than the other bonuses on UU. But for a build focused on lightning heavy attacks I do not think there's any chance Elegant could compare.

With all that said, Elegant is not useless. If you wanted to create really strong fire staff heavy attacks as part of a burst build, it would very likely be better than UU. In that scenario, UU damage only procs once and Elegant's better bonuses would buff whatever other abilities you're using as part of the burst. I'm not sure whether or not such a build would be hugely viable, but Elegant would definitely be better for it IMO.

techprince

I played against heavy attacking magplar once in no-cp. Died one time as he was with a dk constantly stunning. HA did alot of damage but took alot of time as well. I caught him alone and killed him in his wall of elements.

Major_Lag

techprince wrote: »

I played against heavy attacking magplar once in no-cp. Died one time as he was with a dk constantly stunning. HA did alot of damage but took alot of time as well. I caught him alone and killed him in his wall of elements.

I haven't yet tested this build in practice myself - but based on my experience in PvP so far, this seems to be roughly the PvP equivalent of Xynode's "Easy Sorc" build for PvE.

In other words: it's fairly strong for its simplicity, and the learning curve is relatively short.
But in terms of its potential, it seems to hit a hard ceiling pretty quickly.

(Note that the following is merely my speculation about the build! Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of the points.)

In the hands of a skilled PvPer, of course it would work well against average and below-average PvPers in a 1v1 situation.
Of course, any other decent PvP build would accomplish the same end result in those circumstances.

It would also be very good in an Xv1 or XvX context - but then again, that isn't exactly a highly demanding area of PvP combat.
Maybe you could 1vX against a reasonably sized group of bad players, especially on a Sorc and its high mobility. Kite them around LoS and zap them with heavy attack when off balance procs.

But in a 1vX situation when facing multiple skilled players, I just can't see this working at all well.

Shields are hot garbage now in 1vX, they melt like butter when focused on by multiple (skilled) players.
Being a magicka build, you won't be blocking or rolling too much, either.
You are using 2 offensive sets, which leaves you with a monster set as the only defensive option.
And your magicka sustain is largely dependent on heavy attacking, which kills your mobility.

Unfortunately, because of the unique nature of the HA buffs and the sets that provide them, there is very little that can be done about this.

malistorr

I'm at work and don't have time to read the whole thread. I wonder what effect using the Perfected Asylum staff (and 2 casts of force shock (or morph)) to trigger concussion (guaranteed) would have on all this? Then you use WOE and they're off-balance. I guess you'd have to give up using a monster set and use the Perfected Asylum staff on 1 bar and the Maelstrom on another so you'd have to use head and shoulders to complete your 5-item bonus.

Major_Lag

Concussion isn't really a problem.

If you go back and read one of my earlier analysis (testing) posts, you'll see that even a non-Charged vMA staff will still proc Concussion very reliably - to the degree that if the enemy stays in the WoE, they will get set Off-Balance pretty much on cooldown.

Besides, Templar and Warden have means to proc Off-Balance directly at range - no need for WoE in that case, and Concussion becomes superfluous.

And going back to what I wrote in my previous post - you are already running 2 offensive sets with this build. Without a defensive monster set, your survivability would go way down. Unless you only care about zergsurfing - in which case, sure, that would work all right.

malistorr

Guess I'm just surprised to see that. Maybe I'm just not paying attention enough but I barely notice any visual way of determining that concussion and off-balance have happened at all. I know when fighting a world boss for example that is a humanoid form, I'll see him fall over every 15 or 20-seconds, so I know it's happening then. But I don't remember seeing anything at all telling me that off-balance is happening when fighting overland trash mobs or even dungeon mobs. Maybe they're just dead too fast, but I figured if off-balance is happening quickly at the start of the fight I should see something. But I don't remember seeing anything except for world bosses. I don't remember even seeing anything when fighting humanoid trial or dungeon bosses (maybe they're immune?) Either that or the dev should improve the visual queues to let players know that their effects are being applied. I shouldn't have to open an add-on and analyze things just to tell that a status effect happens occasionally. But that's a whole different issue. And I thought that I remember reading in the notes that they're working on improving that. I don't have time to worry about it. I'll just hope that they do improve being able to tell when status effects happen.

And back to the topic, if concussion really is happening that often, which I didn't know it would based on everything I've read about how likely someone is to trigger it, then I agree with you in that it's probably better to have a monster set than the asylum staff.

If the asylum staff (perfected) really is that unnecessary, because we can cause concussions so easily otherwise, I wonder why it's considered such a high end staff. I mean I'm level CP810+ and I can barely even find a vAS hard mode group to join. Then you actually have to pass it, which I hear is very difficult. Then I assume there's a drop rate and so getting this staff sounds like it as difficult (or more) to get than pretty much anything else in the game. For something that apparently doesn't have much real-game benefit.... Amazing.

cmvet

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

cmvet wrote: »

So has anyone tried Elegent over UU and seen what the damage numbers are?

I've not done any direct tests, but I did a lot of fiddling around on the UESP Build Editor and have thought about it a lot and I don't think Elegant can compare for this particular type of build.

It adds a flat 20% damage boost to heavy attacks. Ultimately, that 20% boost is actually a good bit less, because it is additive with the off balance bonus, CP bonuses, damage bonuses like minor berserk, etc. So, for instance, let's just take the basic case where you have no CP points and no damage bonuses but your enemy is off balance. Without Elegant, your heavy attacks will do 1.7x damage. With Elegant, they will do 1.9x damage. Thus, even in that simple scenario, Elegant only increases damage by 11.8%, not 20%. That number would go down even further with CP and other bonuses included. In other words, Elegant offers a peak damage increase of 20%, but it is likely to be substantially lower in most scenarios.

Compare that to UU, which adds about 1120 base damage (assuming only epic quality items) for each tick. That adds 4480 base damage to lightning heavy attacks, since there's four ticks. Considering that the normal base heavy attack damage is going to generally be roughly 6000-8000, adding 4480 damage to that is a massive percentage increase. Even if you already have UI and the Maelstrom staff as well as CP geared towards the build and an off balance enemy, it's basically impossible to create a scenario where UU doesn't add more than 20% to your heavy attack DPS.

Granted, for raw damage, the other bonuses on Elegant are better than the other bonuses on UU. But for a build focused on lightning heavy attacks I do not think there's any chance Elegant could compare.

With all that said, Elegant is not useless. If you wanted to create really strong fire staff heavy attacks as part of a burst build, it would very likely be better than UU. In that scenario, UU damage only procs once and Elegant's better bonuses would buff whatever other abilities you're using as part of the burst. I'm not sure whether or not such a build would be hugely viable, but Elegant would definitely be better for it IMO.

Wouldn't elegant also increase the damage of each tic of a lightning staff or is it only on the final tic. Also, I guess elegant would not increase the damage added by UI on you HA tics.

Major_Lag

malistorr wrote: »

Guess I'm just surprised to see that. Maybe I'm just not paying attention enough but I barely notice any visual way of determining that concussion and off-balance have happened at all.

I use a buff/debuff tracker, so I see everything very clearly.

IMO the basegame UI is complete trash, no idea how the console people put up with that pile of garbage.
For one of the largest MMOs on the market, it's very sad to see that the user interface design lags years behind the de facto MMO standard.

malistorr wrote: »

I don't remember even seeing anything when fighting humanoid trial or dungeon bosses (maybe they're immune?)

They aren't immune to Off-Balance proper, but they are immune to the "Off-Balance Exploit", which would normally consume Off-Balance and knock the enemy down. Which is why you don't see anything "special" happening.

malistorr wrote: »

If the asylum staff (perfected) really is that unnecessary, because we can cause concussions so easily otherwise, I wonder why it's considered such a high end staff. (...) For something that apparently doesn't have much real-game benefit.... Amazing.

Not all endgame (vet trial/arena) weapons are as great as you would think.
This also tends to change up after every major update, if the underlying abilities get nerfed to Oblivion, as they increasingly often do.

As for the Asylum staff, I've never used it (because I don't have it), but it looks like it's valuable (in PvP) primarily for the added DoT pressure and guaranteed Minor Maim that it adds to the magicka spammable.

On the kind of builds that normally use the Asylum staff, you wouldn't even slot WoE at all. Those are burst builds, which would not benefit from the (now heavily nerfed) WoE.

Also, WoE is not really useful in PvP, outside of using it to proc Off-Balance for heavy attack builds, or dropping a Wall of Ice into a chokepoint to slow the enemies down.

cmvet wrote: »

Wouldn't elegant also increase the damage of each tic of a lightning staff or is it only on the final tic. Also, I guess elegant would not increase the damage added by UI on you HA tics.

This has been covered by the OP already, but to summarize - there's just no possible scenario in which Elegance would outperform UU/UI/IA in terms of raw HA damage.

The exception to that are (or rather, were) Sorc Overload heavy attack builds - because the Overload HA has conisderably higher damage per tick, the opposite is true, and the %-based bonus from Elegance gave better results than the flat boost from UU/UI/IA. (not 100% sure this is correct, as I didn't research those builds in any real depth)
But Overload has been nerfed into Oblivion last patch, so that's more of a historical curiosity at this point.

Joxer61

funny thing is..out of ALL that....this is all that really matters....

"How It Has Worked For Me"

mikemacon

cmvet wrote: »

So has anyone tried Elegent over UU and seen what the damage numbers are?

Both UI and UU grant persistent buffs - that is, the buff, once procced, remains with you while you swap bars.

Elegant, however, does not grant a persistent proc. Once you swap bars, that buff does not follow you.

RiskyChalice863

mikemacon wrote: »

cmvet wrote: »

So has anyone tried Elegent over UU and seen what the damage numbers are?

Both UI and UU grant persistent buffs - that is, the buff, once procced, remains with you while you swap bars.

Elegant, however, does not grant a persistent proc. Once you swap bars, that buff does not follow you.

Indeed, and this is crucial if you want to use a vMA staff and a monster set.

RiskyChalice863

The changes to off balance coming soon are going to hamper this build. You won’t be getting that 70% damage boost on your heavy attacks nearly as often, and if someone can survive the first 7 seconds of a fight with you, then the pressure you can put out goes down a good deal until you can trigger off balance again. Damage with this build is still good even without the off balance boost, but losing the ability to keep off balance up 100% of the time is obviously a big nerf to this build.

With that said, there’s a few reasons for optimism:

- My understanding is that Molten Armaments is finally getting fixed in the upcoming patch (though someone please let me know if I’m wrong about that). That would actually mean that DKs will overall do more damage with this build than they do now. Yes, they’ll get the 70% damage boost from off balance a bit less than before, but they will get a permanent 50% damage boost that they’re not currently getting. Overall, I think it’s a net positive for DKs, if only because the build has been bugged for DKs for months.

- The off balance changes aren’t all bad for the Warden version of this build. The Warden version doesn’t set up off balance using a stun. This means that currently the first heavy attack after you set off balance stuns the enemy and consumes off balance. So in order to keep doing the extra heavy attack damage from off balance, you have to proc off balance again. This creates a DPS loss. In the upcoming patch, if you do proc off balance, it won’t be consumed by the stun. So, if someone isn’t immune to off balance, the first 7 seconds of damage actually will be better than they are right now. With that said, Wardens damage in more prolonged fights will go down, and their ability to stun with this build will be much less consistent.

- To be honest, at least in BGs where I use it, quite a lot of people die within the first 7 seconds of being set off balance by this build. So against those people, you still won’t really have a problem killing them. The difference is just that it won’t be quite as consistent in being able to do that if you’ve got teammates setting off balance on them and triggering the cooldown.

Overall, in a sense, this build will be stronger after this patch if Molten Armaments is actually fixed. This is because a DK with a working Molten Armaments and nerfed off balance is probably stronger than any version of this build we currently have.

Amorpho

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

I’ve developed a very interesting build that uses the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets in tandem. The concept is fairly similar to Xynode's Easy Sorc, but it's a bit different (it's not a Sorc build, for one, and it uses different sets) and I'm more focused on PVP.

The Basics

The concept is fairly simple: You want to buff up your heavy attack damage as much as possible, and then proc off balance on the enemy in order to just melt them with lightning heavy attacks. This build actually can really melt people. And you can basically ignore Magicka sustain in your build entirely, because you'll actually gain Magicka during your damage combo. You also can potentially build for a good bit of defense without giving up very much damage.

The basis for the build is as follows:

You run the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets. When procced, each of these sets adds just over 1100 damage to each tick of a channeled lightning heavy attack. There are 4 ticks. So, between the two of these, you add about 9000 damage to your lightning heavy attacks--which are do damage in an AOE. When an enemy is off balance, the damage they take from heavy attacks goes up 70% (80% if you've got the exploiter passive). Therefore, on an off balance enemy, these two sets combine to add over 15,000 damage to your heavy attacks--and that number is higher the more additional damage buffs you have on your heavy attacks. Regardless of class, the concept is to do one of two things: (1) proc the two sets and then pump in large AOE damage from a distance with your heavy attacks, or (2) get in and proc off-balance on someone and absolutely melt them. Since you're a heavy attack build, your sustain will be great. And the fact that you'll be topped up on magicka a lot will really help your defense, along with the fact that you can build for a lot of defense without losing much firepower.

At the moment, I'm using it on my Magplar, but I think the MagDK may be even better for it due to Molten Armaments. I'll describe below what I've built so far (along with some possible alternatives), then also describe what I plan to do with this on my MagDK once I've leveled him, and also give a brief description of how this has worked in the BGs I've played with it.

Magplar Build

The idea with the Magplar is basically to use Restoring Focus as a cheap and effective way to proc Undaunted Unweaver, and use Toppling Charge to stun and proc off balance (as well as proc Undaunted Infiltrator if need be) all in one. The basic combo would be Restoring Focus --> Purifying Light or Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 or 2 heavy attacks --> maybe Radiant Oppression. And in terms of defense, if you're put on the defensive, you'll typically have a really high magicka pool left and Extended Ritual, Living Dark, and Honor the Dead, so it's very survivable.

My item setup is not 100% ideal yet. But in an ideal world, I think you'd have an Undaunted Infiltrator staff, two pieces of Undaunted Infiltrator jewelry, and an Undaunted Infiltrator chest piece. You'd then have Undaunted Unweaver hands, belt, legs, and boots, along with an Undaunted Unweaver jewelry piece. You then want one light and one heavy piece for a monster set. I'm using one piece Pirate Skeleton and one piece Lord Warden, just for the permanent resistance bonuses, but that's up to you, and there are many other solid options. Since it's PVP, I think having all the armor be impenetrable is ideal (though I've only got four impenetrable pieces on this build at the moment). In terms of enchants and jewelry/weapon traits, this is kind of up to you. I've tested it with: (1) all magicka glyphs on my armor except one health glyph; (2) all spell power glyphs on my jewelry; (3) all arcane traits on my jewelry; and (4) a precise weapon. However, a huge component of your damage is from the two sets, and that damage isn't affected by spell damage or magicka. So you could add some protective or healthy traits to the jewelry, and/or some more healthy or prismatic defense glyphs on the armor, and not lose a ton of damage. You could even run stamina recovery glyphs to help with breaking free and whatnot. You could also put Bloodthirsty glyphs on, since that would scale with the damage from your sets. In terms of the weapon trait, Precise is just what dropped for me, but I actually think Precise and Sharpened are clearly your two best bets, since they'll actually affect the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. On the back bar, I’ve got Precise since, again, that’s what dropped, but Defending may be better.

In terms of Mundus, I think The Lover is the best. Again, spell penetration actually affects the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. So do the crit damage and crit chance bonuses from The Shadow and The Thief, but I think The Lover is a bit better.

In terms of race, I'm a High Elf with this. I think that's probably the best one, since it helps your overall damage more than any other race (though I think Khajiit is probably very close), actually helps a lot with stamina sustain from the Spell Recharge passive, and I believe that same passive's 5% damage reduction applies when heavy attacking. But there are other options that would be good as well. Dark Elf would work. Khajiit would work because the critical damage scales with the set damage. And Nord would actually be decent to add some bulkiness.

In terms of food, I think tri-stat food is best. You certainly don't need magicka recovery from your food/drink.

For potions, it will ultimately depend on what you've got on your bar. You could cover Major Prophecy, Major Sorcery, and immovability with your skills--in which case you'd use tri-stat potions. But you could also leave a gap in your skills that you fill with a potion if you’d like. I’ll note that I think Major Prophecy is more important than Major Sorcery here because it scales with the set damage.

I'm not listing CP here, since I've tested this exclusively in BGs and so I haven't put much of any thought into the CPs.

For skills, here's what my bar looks like (with some discussion of alternatives below):

Front Bar: Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, Reflective Light, Radiant Oppression, Eye of the Storm
Back Bar: Extended Ritual, Radiating Regeneration, Honor the Dead, Living Dark, Elusive Mist, Life Giver

There's a lot of flexibility there though. The only real must-haves are Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, and Extended Ritual. A few thoughts on the skills below:

- I like to double bar Honor the Dead because I find it helps me react to burst damage just that little bit quicker, but you can definitely slot something like Purifying Light on the front bar instead.
- Especially if you slot Purifying Light, you could perhaps switch out Reflective Light for Inner Light, but I probably wouldn't (the reason I say you'd especially do that if you've got Purifying Light is that you definitely want at least one ranged Magicka ability you'll use on the front bar, to proc Undaunted Infiltrator).
- You could also swap out Radiant Oppression for Structured Entropy. Major Sorcery isn't actually a huge boost to your heavy attacks on this build, so it's not strictly necessary to have it, but it's a very good ability. I do get some use out of Radiant Oppression, but Structured Entropy could be better overall.
- Rapid Regen is probably better than Radiating Regeneration for PVP. But I also use my Magplar to heal dungeons, and don't want to switch the morph.
- Elusive Mist is surely better than Race Against Time--I'm just not a vampire. But I think I probably will make this character a vampire, in order to use Elusive Mist.
- The front bar ult is really up to you. I like Eye of the Storm and I think it synergizes very well with this build since you can cast it, then use Restoring Focus and Toppling Charge to proc your two sets and gap close and stun right as Eye of the Storm starts going off. But Crescent Sweep would be good, as would Devouring Swarm and the Mage's Guild ult.
- You could potentially get away with going sword and board on the back bar, and replacing Life Giver with Spell Wall. You'd no longer be able to run Regen, but that would open up a spot for sure for Structured Entropy and you'd at least get a bit of a heal over time from that.

Magicka Dragonknight build

For the most part, this build would be the same as above. I think it would be even stronger than the Magplar, but I've not yet tested it out and there would be downsides compared to the Magplar.

The main difference is just the skills. MagDKs would obviously use Molten Armaments. This would add massive damage to the already hard-hitting heavy attacks. I've not yet leveled my MagDK, but I think the damage on this would be extremely high. The way you'd proc off balance is Empowering Chains --> Fossilize --> Lava Whip (either morph).

The MagDK's damage would be much higher, but it would have a more drawn out process to create off balance. Whereas the Templar can gap close, stun, and proc off balance all with one skill, the DK would require three skills to do all of that. Therefore, the MagDK would have to play a little less aggressively, because if you get aggressive against a group, you could be punished before you've really had a chance to do much. Of course, the MagDK can actually do almost as much damage heavy attacking at a distance as a Magplar could against an off balance enemy (50% bonus from Molten Armaments vs. 70% bonus from off balance).

The MagDK also doesn't have quite as strong of survival tools this patch. Again, though, you can stay back and still deal massive damage, so it may not be harder to survive overall.

Finally, the MagDK would have a bit more of an annoying time proccing Undaunted Unweaver. There's no real obvious cheap stamina ability for the MagDK to spam in PVP to proc the set. You could use Vigor, even though it'd be a pretty weak heal on a magicka character. The best option may just be Noxious Breath though. You'd often just be using it on nothing, but it can get really cheap, and if you use Molten Whip, then having Noxious Breath as part of your setup would make your burst stronger. Your stamina sustain would take a hit from having to use Noxious Breath a bunch, but you'll get 990 stamina each time you use Fossilize and Molten Armaments. You could take a stamina recovery glyph in a jewelry piece as well if you find it's an issue--the lost spell damage won't be a huge deal.

Here's what I'd think the skills could be:

Front Bar: Noxious Breath, Empowering Chains, Molten Whip, Fossilize, Molten Armaments
Back Bar: Efficient Purge, Rapid Regen, Coagulating Blood, Volatile Armor, Elusive Mist, Life Giver

There are other ways to do it, but there's a bit less flexibility than on the Magplar, since your combo requires basically everything I listed on the front bar. If the Empowering Chains --> Molten Whip --> Fossilize combo is too unwieldy, one thing I might try is replacing Fossilize with Stone Giant. Stone Giant is a worse ability, but it may be that Molten Armaments is enough damage to basically melt people from afar if I can just stun them. And if they happen to be close, I could still proc off balance (albeit maybe a bit less reliably than you can with Fossilize since you don’t have the immobilize after the stun). This wouldn’t be as good in a 1v1, but it’s possible it’s better in a group context where you don’t necessarily want to be jumping in and taking time using two abilities before really doing your damage.

How It Has Worked For Me

I've played this with my Magplar. The results have been pretty good. I'm far from the best player—so I do come across players who are simply better than me. But I have had very good games with it. And I’ve managed to win 1v1’s against players that I can absolutely tell are better than me.

A few thoughts on it:

- The damage is good. If people are pretty squishy, they can basically be deleted by a Purifying Light/Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 heavy attack and then maybe a couple ticks of another heavy attack or Radiant Oppression. People who are tankier can sometimes survive and get away if I attack them at full health, but not if I’ve got any support with me and typically not if they don’t have some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card (as in, cloak, streak, etc.) or catch me with a stun when my stamina is low. If they can’t find some way to get away or to keep me stunned for a while, it’s extremely difficult for someone to live through two off-balance heavy attacks and an execute. If they live through it, then they’re a pretty tanky build and have dumped away a lot of resources to survive, while I’ve literally gained magicka. I can't wait to see what the damage from the MagDK is like, since it's going to be significantly higher.

- The magicka sustain is incredibly good. You get over 7.2k magicka back from a heavy attack against an off balance opponent in no-CP. This means your damage combo literally gains you magicka. And if you kill people with your heavy attack—which you will—you’ll get another 3600 magicka back from the destruction staff passives. The only time you can really run out of magicka is if you’ve really been put on the back foot by people for a very long time. Overall, it’s the best magicka sustain I’ve ever had on any build that does even remotely similar damage.

- The stamina sustain is actually really good for a magicka build. You’ve got Restoring Focus. You’ve got the High Elf passive that will almost always restore stamina, since your magicka will be high. And you’ve got the Undaunted Unweaver set giving you over 2k extra stamina to work with. You’ll be using Restoring Focus more than is necessary (in order to proc Undaunted Unweaver), so the net stamina return on it isn’t quite optimal, but this is still one of the best magicka builds I’ve played in terms of stamina sustain. And honestly, given how a lot of your damage doesn’t scale with the spell damage stat, I’m thinking of possibly adding a stamina regen glyph or two to my jewelry, just to basically make this build incredibly strong against CC.

- The survivability is good. It’s a light armor build and doesn’t have a massive amount of health, so obviously it’s not the highest survivability possible. But with the defensive monster set combo I’m using along with Restoring Focus obviously always being up, the resistances are actually pretty good. Toppling Charge gives you minor protection for 6 seconds. You’ve got Extended Ritual, Living Dark, Regen, and Honor the Dead—all great defensive abilities. The resto ult is a fight reset basically. And I think Elusive Mist will add a lot of survivability once I get it. The key, though, is really the sustain. It’s basically impossible to catch me without a boatload of magicka to use to survive. There were players that were better than me that were able to get the drop on me and kill me a few times, but it typically would take them a very drawn out fight to do it when I’m pretty sure they’d have done so quicker against me on another build. There have also been some people that have been able to burst me down quickly, but that’s mostly just been lethal arrow and poison injection causing desyncs. I did play one stamden who repeatedly burst me down quickly, but that player was really good, and it was also in my first game on the build when I had no impen gear, no defensive monster set (so my resistances were over 5k lower), and wasn’t using the resto ult. As I mentioned above, though, I think one could build in more survivability into this build without actually giving up a ton of damage.

Final Notes

This is a very long post, but I do have some thoughts on this for PVE as well. I don’t think the Magplar would be very good with it since the benefit of being able to gap close, stun, and set off balance with one ability doesn’t really matter in PVE. However, I think the MagDK would be quite good. You’d use a Maelstrom lightning staff, with an Undaunted Infiltrator staff on the back bar. You'd proc Undaunted Unweaver with Beast Trap--which is a great ability anyways and is on the Easy Sorc build too. This would be similar to the Easy Sorc build, but with fewer shock abilities to proc off balance, but Molten Armaments for a permanent 50% heavy attack damage bonus. That should equal more single-target damage against bosses than the Easy Sorc can achieve, and probably still more AOE damage against groups of trash mobs, especially if someone else is using lightning damage. I think it would be very strong.

I also note that the Easy Sorc build uses Infallible Mage. I've read that that set only affects the damage on the last tick of the lightning staff's damage. I don't have it to test, but I did watch Xynode's latest Easy Sorc video, and I believe he said that too. If so, I do wonder whether a build using Infallible Mage is outdamaged by a build with Undaunted Unweaver, despite Infallible Mage having better bonuses otherwise for DPS. If not, then, if you're able to get it, Infallible Mage would be optimal over Undaunted Unweaver, and this would basically become a DK version of the Easy Sorc. Either way, you could slot Mystic Orb instead of Daedric Tomb (which Xynode suggests as an alternative anyways), Eruption instead of Liquid Lightning, Volatile Armor instead of Boundless Storm, Inner Light instead of Bound Armaments, Dampen Magic instead of Hardened Ward, and Molten Armaments instead of Mage's Wrath. In other words, the skill setup would basically be the same except you slot Molten Armaments instead of the execute.

Interesting build. What are the DPS numbers on dummy?

phoenixkungfu

The changes to the pts are terrible and destroy off balance builds. I hate them and honestly wouldn't mind a new combat team. I'm not bash anymore I'm just not a fan of the direction of the new combat team. Hopefully soon, we will get new life into the game and get new development decision making. The off balance changes ultimately makes the gameplay dull and less interesting in pvp. Forcing a meta class set up build...lol unless your stam spamming a weapon skill...this development team always buff stam weapon skill line. Smh terrible decision making

RiskyChalice863

Amorpho wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

I’ve developed a very interesting build that uses the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets in tandem. The concept is fairly similar to Xynode's Easy Sorc, but it's a bit different (it's not a Sorc build, for one, and it uses different sets) and I'm more focused on PVP.

The Basics

The concept is fairly simple: You want to buff up your heavy attack damage as much as possible, and then proc off balance on the enemy in order to just melt them with lightning heavy attacks. This build actually can really melt people. And you can basically ignore Magicka sustain in your build entirely, because you'll actually gain Magicka during your damage combo. You also can potentially build for a good bit of defense without giving up very much damage.

The basis for the build is as follows:

You run the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets. When procced, each of these sets adds just over 1100 damage to each tick of a channeled lightning heavy attack. There are 4 ticks. So, between the two of these, you add about 9000 damage to your lightning heavy attacks--which are do damage in an AOE. When an enemy is off balance, the damage they take from heavy attacks goes up 70% (80% if you've got the exploiter passive). Therefore, on an off balance enemy, these two sets combine to add over 15,000 damage to your heavy attacks--and that number is higher the more additional damage buffs you have on your heavy attacks. Regardless of class, the concept is to do one of two things: (1) proc the two sets and then pump in large AOE damage from a distance with your heavy attacks, or (2) get in and proc off-balance on someone and absolutely melt them. Since you're a heavy attack build, your sustain will be great. And the fact that you'll be topped up on magicka a lot will really help your defense, along with the fact that you can build for a lot of defense without losing much firepower.

At the moment, I'm using it on my Magplar, but I think the MagDK may be even better for it due to Molten Armaments. I'll describe below what I've built so far (along with some possible alternatives), then also describe what I plan to do with this on my MagDK once I've leveled him, and also give a brief description of how this has worked in the BGs I've played with it.

Magplar Build

The idea with the Magplar is basically to use Restoring Focus as a cheap and effective way to proc Undaunted Unweaver, and use Toppling Charge to stun and proc off balance (as well as proc Undaunted Infiltrator if need be) all in one. The basic combo would be Restoring Focus --> Purifying Light or Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 or 2 heavy attacks --> maybe Radiant Oppression. And in terms of defense, if you're put on the defensive, you'll typically have a really high magicka pool left and Extended Ritual, Living Dark, and Honor the Dead, so it's very survivable.

My item setup is not 100% ideal yet. But in an ideal world, I think you'd have an Undaunted Infiltrator staff, two pieces of Undaunted Infiltrator jewelry, and an Undaunted Infiltrator chest piece. You'd then have Undaunted Unweaver hands, belt, legs, and boots, along with an Undaunted Unweaver jewelry piece. You then want one light and one heavy piece for a monster set. I'm using one piece Pirate Skeleton and one piece Lord Warden, just for the permanent resistance bonuses, but that's up to you, and there are many other solid options. Since it's PVP, I think having all the armor be impenetrable is ideal (though I've only got four impenetrable pieces on this build at the moment). In terms of enchants and jewelry/weapon traits, this is kind of up to you. I've tested it with: (1) all magicka glyphs on my armor except one health glyph; (2) all spell power glyphs on my jewelry; (3) all arcane traits on my jewelry; and (4) a precise weapon. However, a huge component of your damage is from the two sets, and that damage isn't affected by spell damage or magicka. So you could add some protective or healthy traits to the jewelry, and/or some more healthy or prismatic defense glyphs on the armor, and not lose a ton of damage. You could even run stamina recovery glyphs to help with breaking free and whatnot. You could also put Bloodthirsty glyphs on, since that would scale with the damage from your sets. In terms of the weapon trait, Precise is just what dropped for me, but I actually think Precise and Sharpened are clearly your two best bets, since they'll actually affect the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. On the back bar, I’ve got Precise since, again, that’s what dropped, but Defending may be better.

In terms of Mundus, I think The Lover is the best. Again, spell penetration actually affects the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. So do the crit damage and crit chance bonuses from The Shadow and The Thief, but I think The Lover is a bit better.

In terms of race, I'm a High Elf with this. I think that's probably the best one, since it helps your overall damage more than any other race (though I think Khajiit is probably very close), actually helps a lot with stamina sustain from the Spell Recharge passive, and I believe that same passive's 5% damage reduction applies when heavy attacking. But there are other options that would be good as well. Dark Elf would work. Khajiit would work because the critical damage scales with the set damage. And Nord would actually be decent to add some bulkiness.

In terms of food, I think tri-stat food is best. You certainly don't need magicka recovery from your food/drink.

For potions, it will ultimately depend on what you've got on your bar. You could cover Major Prophecy, Major Sorcery, and immovability with your skills--in which case you'd use tri-stat potions. But you could also leave a gap in your skills that you fill with a potion if you’d like. I’ll note that I think Major Prophecy is more important than Major Sorcery here because it scales with the set damage.

I'm not listing CP here, since I've tested this exclusively in BGs and so I haven't put much of any thought into the CPs.

For skills, here's what my bar looks like (with some discussion of alternatives below):

Front Bar: Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, Reflective Light, Radiant Oppression, Eye of the Storm
Back Bar: Extended Ritual, Radiating Regeneration, Honor the Dead, Living Dark, Elusive Mist, Life Giver

There's a lot of flexibility there though. The only real must-haves are Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, and Extended Ritual. A few thoughts on the skills below:

- I like to double bar Honor the Dead because I find it helps me react to burst damage just that little bit quicker, but you can definitely slot something like Purifying Light on the front bar instead.
- Especially if you slot Purifying Light, you could perhaps switch out Reflective Light for Inner Light, but I probably wouldn't (the reason I say you'd especially do that if you've got Purifying Light is that you definitely want at least one ranged Magicka ability you'll use on the front bar, to proc Undaunted Infiltrator).
- You could also swap out Radiant Oppression for Structured Entropy. Major Sorcery isn't actually a huge boost to your heavy attacks on this build, so it's not strictly necessary to have it, but it's a very good ability. I do get some use out of Radiant Oppression, but Structured Entropy could be better overall.
- Rapid Regen is probably better than Radiating Regeneration for PVP. But I also use my Magplar to heal dungeons, and don't want to switch the morph.
- Elusive Mist is surely better than Race Against Time--I'm just not a vampire. But I think I probably will make this character a vampire, in order to use Elusive Mist.
- The front bar ult is really up to you. I like Eye of the Storm and I think it synergizes very well with this build since you can cast it, then use Restoring Focus and Toppling Charge to proc your two sets and gap close and stun right as Eye of the Storm starts going off. But Crescent Sweep would be good, as would Devouring Swarm and the Mage's Guild ult.
- You could potentially get away with going sword and board on the back bar, and replacing Life Giver with Spell Wall. You'd no longer be able to run Regen, but that would open up a spot for sure for Structured Entropy and you'd at least get a bit of a heal over time from that.

Magicka Dragonknight build

For the most part, this build would be the same as above. I think it would be even stronger than the Magplar, but I've not yet tested it out and there would be downsides compared to the Magplar.

The main difference is just the skills. MagDKs would obviously use Molten Armaments. This would add massive damage to the already hard-hitting heavy attacks. I've not yet leveled my MagDK, but I think the damage on this would be extremely high. The way you'd proc off balance is Empowering Chains --> Fossilize --> Lava Whip (either morph).

The MagDK's damage would be much higher, but it would have a more drawn out process to create off balance. Whereas the Templar can gap close, stun, and proc off balance all with one skill, the DK would require three skills to do all of that. Therefore, the MagDK would have to play a little less aggressively, because if you get aggressive against a group, you could be punished before you've really had a chance to do much. Of course, the MagDK can actually do almost as much damage heavy attacking at a distance as a Magplar could against an off balance enemy (50% bonus from Molten Armaments vs. 70% bonus from off balance).

The MagDK also doesn't have quite as strong of survival tools this patch. Again, though, you can stay back and still deal massive damage, so it may not be harder to survive overall.

Finally, the MagDK would have a bit more of an annoying time proccing Undaunted Unweaver. There's no real obvious cheap stamina ability for the MagDK to spam in PVP to proc the set. You could use Vigor, even though it'd be a pretty weak heal on a magicka character. The best option may just be Noxious Breath though. You'd often just be using it on nothing, but it can get really cheap, and if you use Molten Whip, then having Noxious Breath as part of your setup would make your burst stronger. Your stamina sustain would take a hit from having to use Noxious Breath a bunch, but you'll get 990 stamina each time you use Fossilize and Molten Armaments. You could take a stamina recovery glyph in a jewelry piece as well if you find it's an issue--the lost spell damage won't be a huge deal.

Here's what I'd think the skills could be:

Front Bar: Noxious Breath, Empowering Chains, Molten Whip, Fossilize, Molten Armaments
Back Bar: Efficient Purge, Rapid Regen, Coagulating Blood, Volatile Armor, Elusive Mist, Life Giver

There are other ways to do it, but there's a bit less flexibility than on the Magplar, since your combo requires basically everything I listed on the front bar. If the Empowering Chains --> Molten Whip --> Fossilize combo is too unwieldy, one thing I might try is replacing Fossilize with Stone Giant. Stone Giant is a worse ability, but it may be that Molten Armaments is enough damage to basically melt people from afar if I can just stun them. And if they happen to be close, I could still proc off balance (albeit maybe a bit less reliably than you can with Fossilize since you don’t have the immobilize after the stun). This wouldn’t be as good in a 1v1, but it’s possible it’s better in a group context where you don’t necessarily want to be jumping in and taking time using two abilities before really doing your damage.

How It Has Worked For Me

I've played this with my Magplar. The results have been pretty good. I'm far from the best player—so I do come across players who are simply better than me. But I have had very good games with it. And I’ve managed to win 1v1’s against players that I can absolutely tell are better than me.

A few thoughts on it:

- The damage is good. If people are pretty squishy, they can basically be deleted by a Purifying Light/Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 heavy attack and then maybe a couple ticks of another heavy attack or Radiant Oppression. People who are tankier can sometimes survive and get away if I attack them at full health, but not if I’ve got any support with me and typically not if they don’t have some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card (as in, cloak, streak, etc.) or catch me with a stun when my stamina is low. If they can’t find some way to get away or to keep me stunned for a while, it’s extremely difficult for someone to live through two off-balance heavy attacks and an execute. If they live through it, then they’re a pretty tanky build and have dumped away a lot of resources to survive, while I’ve literally gained magicka. I can't wait to see what the damage from the MagDK is like, since it's going to be significantly higher.

- The magicka sustain is incredibly good. You get over 7.2k magicka back from a heavy attack against an off balance opponent in no-CP. This means your damage combo literally gains you magicka. And if you kill people with your heavy attack—which you will—you’ll get another 3600 magicka back from the destruction staff passives. The only time you can really run out of magicka is if you’ve really been put on the back foot by people for a very long time. Overall, it’s the best magicka sustain I’ve ever had on any build that does even remotely similar damage.

- The stamina sustain is actually really good for a magicka build. You’ve got Restoring Focus. You’ve got the High Elf passive that will almost always restore stamina, since your magicka will be high. And you’ve got the Undaunted Unweaver set giving you over 2k extra stamina to work with. You’ll be using Restoring Focus more than is necessary (in order to proc Undaunted Unweaver), so the net stamina return on it isn’t quite optimal, but this is still one of the best magicka builds I’ve played in terms of stamina sustain. And honestly, given how a lot of your damage doesn’t scale with the spell damage stat, I’m thinking of possibly adding a stamina regen glyph or two to my jewelry, just to basically make this build incredibly strong against CC.

- The survivability is good. It’s a light armor build and doesn’t have a massive amount of health, so obviously it’s not the highest survivability possible. But with the defensive monster set combo I’m using along with Restoring Focus obviously always being up, the resistances are actually pretty good. Toppling Charge gives you minor protection for 6 seconds. You’ve got Extended Ritual, Living Dark, Regen, and Honor the Dead—all great defensive abilities. The resto ult is a fight reset basically. And I think Elusive Mist will add a lot of survivability once I get it. The key, though, is really the sustain. It’s basically impossible to catch me without a boatload of magicka to use to survive. There were players that were better than me that were able to get the drop on me and kill me a few times, but it typically would take them a very drawn out fight to do it when I’m pretty sure they’d have done so quicker against me on another build. There have also been some people that have been able to burst me down quickly, but that’s mostly just been lethal arrow and poison injection causing desyncs. I did play one stamden who repeatedly burst me down quickly, but that player was really good, and it was also in my first game on the build when I had no impen gear, no defensive monster set (so my resistances were over 5k lower), and wasn’t using the resto ult. As I mentioned above, though, I think one could build in more survivability into this build without actually giving up a ton of damage.

Final Notes

This is a very long post, but I do have some thoughts on this for PVE as well. I don’t think the Magplar would be very good with it since the benefit of being able to gap close, stun, and set off balance with one ability doesn’t really matter in PVE. However, I think the MagDK would be quite good. You’d use a Maelstrom lightning staff, with an Undaunted Infiltrator staff on the back bar. You'd proc Undaunted Unweaver with Beast Trap--which is a great ability anyways and is on the Easy Sorc build too. This would be similar to the Easy Sorc build, but with fewer shock abilities to proc off balance, but Molten Armaments for a permanent 50% heavy attack damage bonus. That should equal more single-target damage against bosses than the Easy Sorc can achieve, and probably still more AOE damage against groups of trash mobs, especially if someone else is using lightning damage. I think it would be very strong.

I also note that the Easy Sorc build uses Infallible Mage. I've read that that set only affects the damage on the last tick of the lightning staff's damage. I don't have it to test, but I did watch Xynode's latest Easy Sorc video, and I believe he said that too. If so, I do wonder whether a build using Infallible Mage is outdamaged by a build with Undaunted Unweaver, despite Infallible Mage having better bonuses otherwise for DPS. If not, then, if you're able to get it, Infallible Mage would be optimal over Undaunted Unweaver, and this would basically become a DK version of the Easy Sorc. Either way, you could slot Mystic Orb instead of Daedric Tomb (which Xynode suggests as an alternative anyways), Eruption instead of Liquid Lightning, Volatile Armor instead of Boundless Storm, Inner Light instead of Bound Armaments, Dampen Magic instead of Hardened Ward, and Molten Armaments instead of Mage's Wrath. In other words, the skill setup would basically be the same except you slot Molten Armaments instead of the execute.

Interesting build. What are the DPS numbers on dummy?

I'm not really certain what the optimal DPS numbers on a dummy are. The build would be a bit different in PvE. In that case, you'd want a Maelstrom lightning staff for sure. Getting the optimal damage numbers would really depend a lot on Molten Armaments being fixed--which I understand will be happening in the upcoming patch, though I play on console so I cannot check for myself.

Doing some theorycrafting on the UESP build editor, I just got a DK build in which just the heavy attacks alone do just below 36.5k damage per second self-buffed.* It is more like 38.5k counting weapon enchantment damage. With raid buffs, it goes to over 43.5k just from the heavy attacks, and about 46k counting weapon enchantment damage. But, of course, that's just the damage you'd do with your heavy attacks. You'd also be using several other high damage over time abilities, such as Eruption, Mystic Orb, and Flames of Oblivion. You'd ideally light attack weave in between those abilities, and your light attacks do really high damage too because of the sets (almost 12k per light attack self-buffed, not counting crit chance and crit damage). And you'd also use ultimates--including Standard of Might, which buffs all your damage for quite a while. The above numbers are also just with a pretty arbitrary allocation of CP, so I'm sure that could be further optimized, resulting in more damage. I also suspect using Infallible Mage instead of one of the Undaunted sets is probably slightly superior in terms of DPS, though I doubt the difference is very significant.

So, overall, I suspect it wouldn't be very hard to get 50k damage per second self buffed with this build, and quite a bit higher with raid buffs. I'm not sure exactly where the ceiling is, and honestly it may be significantly higher than that. And the damage on this is all AOE, so you could completely melt groups in PvE in a way very few builds could.

I can't actually check this for myself, though, for several reasons (most notably because Molten Armaments is bugged, but also because I've still not leveled my DK). Maybe someone on PC could test this in the PTS.

* The math on that goes like this: Without off balance on the enemy, each heavy attack does 48,356 damage. With off balance on them, it does 53,452 damage. There's a 53.6% crit chance, with 103% critical damage. If you assume off balance is up on cooldown (you'll be keeping up wall of elements and have a shock enchant), that comes out to an average of 77,569 damage per heavy attack. Each heavy attack takes 2.2 seconds, so that ends up 35,259 damage per second with heavy attacks. I then assumed 40% uptime on minor vulnerability, from a shock enchant, and therefore multiplied that damage by 1.032, to get a total of 36,387 damage per second with heavy attacks.

Cronopoly

Damn, I was just about to look into collecting these sets. No need now that Off Balance looks gutted very soon.

RiskyChalice863

Cronopoly wrote: »

Damn, I was just about to look into collecting these sets. No need now that Off Balance looks gutted very soon.

Yeah it’s frustrating. Worth noting though that it’s not really being nerfed in PvE. Bosses always had the off balance cooldown, and mobs aren’t going to stay alive past 7 seconds anyways. If anything, the build is getting a buff in PvE, assuming Molten Armaments is getting fixed (which I’ve read is the case but am on console so can’t see for myself).

For similar reasons, if Molten Armaments is actually fixed, the DK version of this build is probably overall being buffed, even in PvP. After all, having a permanent 50% damage buff and a 70-80% buff on top of that 32% of the time is probably better than simply having a 70-80% damage buff 100% of the time. The average damage boost over long time periods is roughly the same, but there’s more burst potential, so it’s better.

And in a sense, this kind of means the build is buffed for PvP, because this version of the build with working Molten Armaments and nerfed off balance may actually be better than any current version of the build on any class with the pre-nerf off balance. It certainly should have a good bit more burst than is possible on any current build (probably about 15-30% more peak DPS on heavy attacks, at least in no-CP), and will be able to output more AOE damage against groups (because the Molten Armaments damage bonus will apply to everyone hit whereas I believe the off balance boost won’t). That’ll come at the expense of less sustained damage over longer time periods (probably like 3-15% less in no-CP depending on what class one is comparing to). But overall, that tradeoff is probably preferable.

So actually, if Molten Armaments actually is being fixed—and will now apply a 50% damage boost to all ticks of lightning heavy attacks—then I think the build actually gets mildly stronger even in PvP for the simple reason that that is such a huge boost to the build and outweighs the off balance nerf. With that said, the off balance nerf will kind of kill any other class’s use of this build in PvP.


EDIT: In fact, the DPS loss over time on this build with working Molten Armaments and nerfed Off Balance is probably even less than the 3-15% I mentioned above, at least compared to some versions of the build. That’s roughly how much less damage heavy attacks will do over time. But it’s not taking into account that on live you need to take time reapplying off balance every 7 seconds—which ends up being a DPS loss because you’re taking time using abilities that do less damage than the heavy attacks. For instance, a Warden would currently need to throw out a Dive every 7 seconds—which does less damage than heavy attacking. A DK would currently need to use Flame Lash every 7 seconds—which again creates a DPS loss each time. After the patch, you’ll only apply off balance once every 22 seconds, not once every 7 seconds. This gives you more time to heavy attack. So even if those heavy attacks do 3-15% less DPS over long time horizons, the overall DPS loss is lower than that (and may even not be a loss at all compared to some versions of the build). This is a bit less of a factor when comparing the current Templar version of the build, since Toppling Charge is a stun that you’ll probably want to apply every 7 seconds for the stun anyways, so there’s not really a meaningful DPS loss from using it, but the Templar version is the one that I think there’s only a 3% DPS loss compared to.

So, overall, if Molten Armaments is fixed, I think the DPS loss in longer PvP fights for the post-patch DK version of the build compared to any current version of the build will be pretty minimal. Meanwhile, the damage in the peak burst window will be considerably higher than anything on live, as will the AOE pressure. Meanwhile, in PvE, a DK with fixed Molten Armaments should be a flat buff on anything you can currently do with it on live.

Mindcr0w

With raid buffs, it goes to over 43.5k just from the heavy attacks, and about 46k counting weapon enchantment damage. But, of course, that's just the damage you'd do with your heavy attacks.

Assuming Molten Armaments ends up working properly, and that your math is correct, I would be careful about spreading that information.

There are plently of people who struggle to hit those numbers while utilizing their full rotation. A build that can pump out that much damage with just the heavy attacks will have people crying for nerfs.

RiskyChalice863

LaMagrank wrote: »

With raid buffs, it goes to over 43.5k just from the heavy attacks, and about 46k counting weapon enchantment damage. But, of course, that's just the damage you'd do with your heavy attacks.

Assuming Molten Armaments ends up working properly, and that your math is correct, I would be careful about spreading that information.

There are plently of people who struggle to hit those numbers while utilizing their full rotation. A build that can pump out that much damage with just the heavy attacks will have people crying for nerfs.

Hahaha, you make a good point.

The numbers I gave are definitely just theoretical. I created a build on UESP Build Editor and used the numbers it spit out (manually adding a 80% bonus into the formula to determine damage when off balance is up, so I’m not sure I did that in a way that is in keeping with how off balance damage buffs work), but it obviously remains to be seen whether those numbers bear out in reality, particularly as I don’t know if Molten Armaments will actually be fixed. Also, while the CP allocation probably wasn’t optimal, I did base it on 810 CP, used High Elf, and the calculations were with a pretty optimized set of gear (legendary gear, all divines, Maelstrom lightning staff, etc.). So I imagine that even if the numbers are correct, most people wouldn’t be able to reach it. The damage I mentioned is also pretty dependent on the things you’re attacking being in your wall of elements, because that adds a ton of damage through the Maelstrom staff. So if there’s something that’s moving a lot, those DPS numbers wouldn’t quite hold (though I suppose that’s true of most builds in terms of DPS).

But yeah, overall I suspect that this build actually does have a very high floor in terms of DPS. So it’d probably raise the DPS of a lot of people who aren’t super great at rotations (me included). But it also likely doesn’t have a very high ceiling, in the sense that optimal light attack weave builds in the right hands would certainly be able to out-DPS it. This build probably is pretty close to optimal in terms of melting groups of mobs, but those aren’t exactly often the situations where you really need high DPS to kill everything easily.

Mindcr0w

No, it likely won't be breaking any ceilings. Partly because you are sacrificing damage to your actual skills by using 5pc bonuses thst soley buff your weapon attacks, but people will still complain about how strong those heavies are while remaining blissfully ignorant of what you have to sacrifice in trade to get them.