Front/back bar questions

malistorr

Hi all,

For PVE obviously: When I approach a fight I'm going to be casting Crit. Surge and Boundless Storm. Then I plan to use Lightning Flood and Blockade of storms for AOE and then to hopefully to cause concussion and off-balance. Then I plan to heavy attack to finish things off. In this scenario, to keep the bar-swapping to a minimum, is there any reason (in terms of trying to get max DPS possible for these specific skills) that I shouldn't start with my back bar and cast the above 4-skills (all from back-bar) before then swapping to the front bar and then just heavy attacking? I have the lightning Maelstrom staff on the back bar with shock glyph infused. Then the Undaunted Infiltrator lightning staff also shock glyph infused for the front bar.

If it will give me better dps to front-bar some of the above skills and cast them in a different order, please explain in as much detail as possible. If there is reason to, maybe I'll consider switching this plan up. I appreciate any on-topic and helpful comments. If you don't plan to make an on-topic and helpful comment, please do the forum a favor and don't reply at all.

Vigawatt

What skills do you plan for front bar? There is nothing wrong with that approach, but Crit Surge lasts about 30 seconds and Boundless Storm lasts about 20 seconds, while Lightning Flood and Blockade last 10 seconds. If you had about a 10 second rotation, you wouldn't be casting Crit Surge and Boundless Storm every time. So if there were other skills you want to fire off every rotation, you could group those on the back bar. Then cast Crit Surge and Boundless Storm from the front bar as needed.

ShadowKyuubi

Are we talking regular overland mobs or dungeons/trial engagements? Your start is fine, but if it is a long fight you may want to rethink liquid lightning as an ability. It costs a ton right now to be used on only one enemy.

macsmooth

Change your enchant that is on wall of elements bar to weapon power or mag return enchant if you need sustain that is, two shock enchants don’t make double the shock they will share the same cool down on both shock enchants if I remember right as for skills I don’t see any issue with that setup they are mostly aoe skills on a lightening staff bar if you are using single target skills on your front bar you may want to try a fire staff

malistorr

macsmooth: From what I've read, people should only ever use infused as the trait on a back-bar staff. And for people trying to cause concussion and off-balance (lightning-focused mag sorc) they should use the shock glyph back-bar. This is a build to do max damage with heavy attacks. I'm sure it's very different than most other builds.

On the back bar I'm using a Maelstrom lighting staff that has a shock glyph and is infused. That is to try and trigger concussion and off-balance with the Wall of Elements morph, and because I read that infused is the only trait on a back-bar staff that will carry over to the front. I just changed my front bar staff to be precise with a weapon/spell damage enchant last night.

The question is more for mobs, whether in a dungeon, trial, or overland. I needed another space free on my back bar to slot a skill that just gives resists and/or buffs. So now I plan to cast Crit. Surge and Boundless Storm on my back bar as I'm entering a mob fight and then use the Wall of Elements morph. Then I will swap bars and maybe use Lightning Flood before I just heavy attack the rest of the time until everything is dead. Honestly, I just melt mobs this way so quickly that I may decide to drop Lightning Flood and just heavy attack only on the front bar. The fights typically don't last more than a few seconds. The splash damage from heavy attacking is so much that with the AOE from the Wall of Elements Morph and Boundless Storm (and either Grothdar or Iceheart monster set), that I really don't even need Lightning Flood. I might as well just heavy attack only to take advantage of the 3 buffs I get from my gear and also the extra 70% HA bonus damage from triggering concussion and off-balance.

I just didn't know if there would be any extra dps/benefit from casting Boundless Storm on the front bar vs. the back. But based on the replies so far, nobody knows of any reason to do that. So I can keep my plan as-is unless I get any new information. I've been using a pretty similar setup to this for the whole time I've been playing and I have above average dps and never have sustain issues (Because of 40K max magicka and mostly heavy attacking). This play style is pretty easy/low stress and easier on the hands than LA weaving.

I'm not telling anyone else to use my build. But I love playing this way and have great success with it. I'm sure the elitist weaver people have much better dps than I do.

macsmooth

I’m far from being an elitist as I prefer my own builds

You have posted today saying you have a Infused shock enchant on both bars but also saying you change your staff and enchant last night, I can only advise on what I can see and I was just saying that they share the same cool downs and don’t work independently of each other

Boundless storm only reason to be front bar would be for the four second major expedition and for the 2% weapon increase but even then it would be a flimsy justification to be front

My sets may be different to yours but my back bar is the same as yours which I find is just ok, yep when the patch hits me I will have to debate on lightening splash and morphs place in my build but seen as you said you will be heavy attacking a lot you shouldn’t have any issue with the cost of the skills increases

malistorr

Yes, I did change the staff just last night. I had them both with a shock glyph since I have a heavy attack build and figured if concussion and off-balance didn't hit on the back bar, then maybe they'd hit on the front. But with the infused trait concussion can proc. twice as often and based on research, it seemed that changing the trait and enchant on the front would be better dps as you and others have suggested. But whether someone uses both shock glyphs or just 1, the back should be shock with infused no matter what based on my research for people with the lightning maelstrom staff who are heavy attack builds. (I realize this is a small group)

Each tick of my heavy attacks does between 10 and 26k damage. So combined with the other AOE skills, I do pretty well. And the damage from the HAs hits everything within a certain range. So I've hit as high as 125,000 dps during the 1st big fight in nHRC before you split up and go in the 2 gates. When there are mobs this build does really really well with dps. It's probably got the best AOE dps of any build I'm guessing. But I'm sure my single target is average at best.

I've never had to worry about sustain because of heavy attacking. I guess that is a big bonus for me. I just slot skills and use gear that increase my AOE and give me protection and dps buffs. Also because of a few defensive buffs that I get from my skills and gear, I almost never die. I'm usually the one rezzing people in trials etc. so it's a good feeling.