Here's something... unusual. And fun
We all know that various stamina-based "materials farm builds" exist; they are based on sets such as Coward's, Fjord's and/or Darkstride. All medium armor, stam regen glyphs.
So you just get automatic Major Expedition while sprinting, and a large stam pool + stam regen to sustain it for extremely long distances and rapidly recover stamina while picking up materials.
However, I consider that quite boring... who wants to just
sprint everywhere? Meh.
I play magicka characters exclusively, and wanted my farming build to also be magicka-based.
Luckily, Sorcs have access to one of the fastest means of non-mounted movement in the game: Streak
(which also happens to be my favorite movement skill!)
Unfortunately, Streak is subject to a
brutal progressive (and
unbounded!) cost increase with each consecutive cast, rendering it highly unsustainable as a means of rapid movement over long distances.
But can anything be done about it? As it turns out, the answer is: yes
Here's what I came up with (tested on the PTS):
5pc BTB, 5pc Seducer, 2pc Willow's Path.
7x Light, all Divines with max magicka enchant; 3x mag regen glyph on Infused jewelry.
Green mag regen buff food. (but Ghastly Eye Bowl might work even better here)
50+ CP into Arcanist.
Edit: Atronach mundus. 64 attribute points into Magicka.
Skill loadout:
Streak, Siege Shield, Purge, Guard, Revealing Flare, Barrier ulti
(the Support skills are there to passively increase mag regen by a huge amount!)
With the above setup, I got a bit over 30k max magicka, and
6k magicka recovery.
This lets me
Streak seven times in a row (casting every consecutive GCD) before running out of magicka; a maximum of 10x in a row if I wait 3 seconds before
each cast, but of course that's much slower overall.
Over long distances, the optimal "rotation" appears to be 4-5 consecutive Streaks, then sprint for the next 4 seconds to reset the cost increase penalty (and recover the magicka spent). Repeat.
This build only has ~550 stamina recovery - but thanks to the sprint cost reduction in Dragonhold update (and with some CP into Sprinter), this is easily more than enough, without having to use Dark Deal for stamina sustain.
For a practical long-distance test, I tried covering the distance from the east end of the northern bridge out of Belkarth (standing by the lantern on the main road), to the Seeker's Archive wayshrine.
Using a fully upgraded horse with Rapid Maneuver active, it takes about 24 seconds to cross that distance, from a standing start.
With this build, Streaking the same distance takes about 30 seconds... good enough for me
Edit:
Possible improvements:
- Instead of 2pc Willow's, use 1pc Chokethorn and (mismatched) 1pc monster set with a max magicka 1pc bonus, for a little more max magicka.
- Replace one of the Support skills with Boundless Storm (or just put it on backbar), for Major Expedition during the sprinting phases. (it also looks 30% cooler )
- ???