Off-Meta Stam Sorc Build (No-CP—almost 4K Stam Recovery)

RiskyChalice863

I’ve come up with a pretty interesting Stam Sorc build, aimed at no-CP PvP and BGs, though I think it’d also work well in solo PvE (of course with some tweaks to optimize it for that).

The idea of the build is to pump up stamina recovery to an absolutely ridiculous level to have effectively infinite sustain, maintain a ludicrous amount of self-healing over time, be insanely mobile, and get your burst damage largely from putting out crazy amounts of DoTs and using proc sets that are keyed off of DoTs.

The end result is:

- Stamina recovery that peaks out at over 3800 in no-CP
- Potential burst damage of around 35k in 1 second in no-CP (just based on tooltip damage—not counting potential crits but also not counting damage reduction from PvP and opponents’ resistances).
- Tons of DoT pressure, much of which is in an AOE
- Huge amounts of AOE damage
- Easy to achieve +50% movement speed, along with the ability to spam Ball of Lightning
- The ability to keep up around 4,000 healing per second while on the offensive in no-CP PvP (and that’s already halved for PvP, so it’s way higher in PvE), along with the ability to spam Dark Conversion essentially infinitely.
- Access to Major Protection, Minor Protection, and Major Evasion, along with the snare removal and projectile absorption of Ball of Lightning.
- Access to Werewolf Form, if you like using that.

So here’s what you do:

Race: Wood Elf

Mundus: Serpent

Gear:
- The sets are Bone Pirate’s + Azureblight’s Reaper + Skoria, with Blackrose Prison dual wield (Spectral Cloak) on the back bar. The Skoria set should be one light and one heavy. You will be dual-wielding on both bars. One of Bone Pirate or Azureblight’s Reaper won’t be up on the back bar due to using Spectral Cloak there, and it’s sort of up to you which one you lose. There’s obvious pros and cons to both (i.e. a trade off between having more sustain on the back bar or being able to set some DoTs and then switch to your defensive bar and having Azureblight still work).
- I think you want two stamina recovery glyphs on the jewelry, along with one stamina cost reduction glyph.
- The jewelry should probably all be Robust, and the gear should probably all increase stamina, except for one magicka increase and probably a health increase somewhere.
- I think it’s probably best for the front bar dual wield to either be two daggers or one mace and one dagger, with the main hand being nirnhoned and the off hand being sharpened or precise. On the back bar, it probably makes sense to have two swords (but the type of weapon here isn’t very important) and have them be both defending.
- You will want a poison with multiple DoTs on the main hand of your front bar weapon, along with a poison or flame enchant on the off hand. Back bar enchant on the main hand would be whichever of poison or flame enchant you didn’t use on the front bar, though shock enchant would also be good. The off hand enchantment on the back bar doesn’t matter very much, so it could be whatever you want.

Potion: You ideally want the Essence of Weapon Crit potions that give Major Savagery, Major Endurance, and restore health and stamina.

Food/Drink: Dubious Camoran Throne

Skills:

Front Bar:
Bloodthirst
Rending Slashes
Turn Evil
Resolving Vigor
Bound Armaments
Werewolf Berserker

Back Bar:
Hurricane
Ball of Lightning
Dark Conversion
Critical Surge
Quick Cloak
Reviving Barrier/Temporal Guard/Greater Storm Atronach

How it Works:

DAMAGE:
The idea is to activate Hurricane and Quick Cloak and then either Ball of Lightning into the fight or just close the gap with your massive speed. You then use Rending Slashes on someone and spam (which will be easier to land with your huge speed and the snare from Rending Slashes). Bloodthirst and Rending Slashes will proc your poison and fire/poison enchant, and Quick Cloak will proc the back bar main hand enchant, and all of those either can or definitely do creates more DoTs. Meanwhile, Bloodthirst itself is a DoT. So between Bloodthirst, Hurricane, Quick Cloak, Rending Slashes, your multiple DoT poison, and potential burning and poison status effects from your enchants, you will create a crazy amount of DoT hits. This will proc Azureblight Reaper and Skoria really quickly, and also maximize Critical Surge healing. This will all create immense pressure and huge AOE damage. It also has very high burst potential, because Azureblight Reaper and Skoria could easily go off at essentially the same time. The ideal burst would involve those all going off basically at once and then using Bound Armaments on a feared opponent, but even just using Bloodthirst at that point would be good. Also, you can go into Werewolf Form and those proc sets should proc off of the light attack bleed, so this should be good in Werewolf Form, even though we’re really just running that ultimate for the passives it gives.

HEALING:
The healing over time on this build if you are keeping Vigor and Critical Surge up, and hitting your last Bloodthirst hits is massive. Meanwhile, if you’re in big trouble, your stamina recovery is so high that you can actually spam Dark Conversion for a burst heal without really running out of stamina. You can also spam Ball of Lightning and Dark Conversion one after the other virtually infinitely. Your stamina recovery is so high that that’ll put no pressure on your stamina, and Dark Conversion will sustain the Ball of Lightning spam. Obviously, Dark Conversion can potentially be interrupted, so there’s some potential for counterplay from some classes there, but you’ve got just enough Magicka to use Ball of Lightning twice in a row initially (this is the reason you need a magicka increase piece in your gear), which should put enough distance between you and someone else that they actually can’t use some gap closer interrupt like Toppling Charge to stop your Dark Conversion and Ball of Lightning will absorb any projectiles. But you’ve also got a burst heal potion, and potentially a fight reset ultimate (Barrier).

DEFENSE:
Relatedly, while this is a medium armor build, you can have peaks of really high tankiness. Specifically, using Quick Cloak will proc 4 seconds of Major Protection (as well as Major Evasion). Turn Evil will give you Minor Protection in a specific area. And if you’ve got Defending glyphs on your back bar that should get your resistances on that bar to just below 20k in no-CP (which isn’t high, but isn’t awful either). Ball of Lightning will absorb projectiles. And just in general, you’re so fast that you will be hard to hit and you have so much stamina recovery that you can spam dodge like crazy. The amount of health isn’t crazy high, but you should get over 20k, and more like 21-22k with bound armaments up and at least one bound dagger procced.

SUSTAIN:
If you’re curious, the way you get stamina recovery so high (peak of about 3800 stamina recovery in no-CP) is by: (1) being a wood elf; (2) using the Serpent mundus stone; (3) two stamina recovery glyphs; (4) 20% stamina recovery boost from having major endurance on your potion; (5) 20% stamina recovery boost on the front bar from having Bound Armaments slotted; (6) 15% stamina recovery boost on the front bar from having Werewolf Form slotted; (7) massive stamina recovery boost from Bone Pirate, as well as a bit from Azureblight Reaper; and (8) 10% stamina recovery boost from minor endurance if in the area of Turn Evil. You also get stamina cost reduction from a glyph and Sorcerer passives. With sustain this good, you can, for instance, essentially spam Bloodthirst without losing any stamina. In fact, there’s only a few abilities on your bar that aren’t cheap enough that your stamina recovery essentially covers the cost simply during the global cooldown time. The sustain is better on the front bar than the back bar, but it’s still quite good on the back bar.

SPEED:
You have access to +30% speed from Quick Cloak, +10% speed from Hurricane, and another +10% speed after dodge rolling from being a Wood Elf. So you are really fast. And you’ve got mobility from Ball of Lightning.

MincVinyl

From a 5 year pvp bosmer stamsorc(yes even before the racial changes) I can almost guarantee you that you will do little damage and your vigor wont be worth using because of how low your damage will be. Also if you really want to go for an off meta build avoid brpdw.

a few sorta viable options for true off meta stamsorc would be
-power bash build(could utilize the mag version of bound armaments once the relics come out that zos talked about)
-timing the bound armaments+snipe+draining+bow ult (true kite build)

---

I would hate to derail this thread, but stamsorc is pretty down there in the tier list. Mag and Stamblade are probably all that I can think of that would be lower all of which are generally forced to run the meta to compete. The only thing stamsorc has to offer is escape options now. Warden or necro can easily compare in raw damage, but theirs will be in aoe, where SS really only has dizzy to lean on(which is being gutted, but thats another rant). As for speed, most sources in the game have been reduced to short durations which makes building into that move fast and hit hard playstyle not work anymore. You must give up a lot of sustain or damage capabilities to maintain speed like we used to before murkmire.

RiskyChalice863

MincVinyl wrote: »

From a 5 year pvp bosmer stamsorc(yes even before the racial changes) I can almost guarantee you that you will do little damage and your vigor wont be worth using because of how low your damage will be. Also if you really want to go for an off meta build avoid brpdw.

a few sorta viable options for true off meta stamsorc would be
-power bash build(could utilize the mag version of bound armaments once the relics come out that zos talked about)
-timing the bound armaments+snipe+draining+bow ult (true kite build)

---

I would hate to derail this thread, but stamsorc is pretty down there in the tier list. Mag and Stamblade are probably all that I can think of that would be lower all of which are generally forced to run the meta to compete. The only thing stamsorc has to offer is escape options now. Warden or necro can easily compare in raw damage, but theirs will be in aoe, where SS really only has dizzy to lean on(which is being gutted, but thats another rant). As for speed, most sources in the game have been reduced to short durations which makes building into that move fast and hit hard playstyle not work anymore. You must give up a lot of sustain or damage capabilities to maintain speed like we used to before murkmire.

I’ll take some of these points one at a time:

Point 1: Regarding Damage

The damage isn’t actually low—particularly since a lot of the damage is based on triggering procs freakishly fast, and procs don’t get affected by stats.

PROCS: Azureblight’s Reaper and Skoria will proc a ton. If you’ve got Hurricane, Quick Cloak, Rending Slashes, a damage health poison, burning DoT, and poison DoT up, and you are hitting your Bloodthirst hits (which admittedly is a big if, but is made easier by having massive speed and a snare), you are going to proc Azureblight Reaper on someone in 2 seconds. It has a 2 second cooldown after that, and you won’t always have the poisons and burning and poison DoTs up, but even the worst case scenario is Azureblight Reaper taking 3 seconds to proc. So, taking the cooldown into account, we’re talking about an 11k AOE proc every 4-5 seconds in a 1v1, and way more procs if there’s multiple people near each other. Similarly, with like 7-10 DoT ticks going every second, you’ll be proccing Skoria almost off cooldown. So that’ll be another 9k AOE proc every 5-7 seconds. These are big values in no-CP.

DOTS: Beyond the procs, you’ve also just got the damage from the DoTs themselves. They won’t individually do as much damage as on a more damage-focused build, of course, but when you’ve got so many DoTs up, things add up. We’re talking about roughly 2.5k tooltip damage per second in DoTs in no-CP, and roughly double that to someone who you’ve got your poison on. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

SPAMMABLE: Then there’s the actual damage from Bloodthirst itself. That’ll be around 7500 tooltip damage (and more like 8500 damage to someone you’ve stunned, and even more to someone in execute range). And the Bound Armaments proc will be more like 11k. Obviously, stats-focused builds can eclipse those individual numbers, but you have to look at this in the context in which there’s so much proc and DoT damage. Bloodthirst is really only half the damage.

This all adds up to quite a lot of damage.

BURST DAMAGE: In terms of burst damage, if Skoria and Azureblight Reaper go off at essentially the same time (which won’t be that uncommon given how frequently they’ll both go off) and you use Bound Armaments, and your DoTs and poisons are up, you can do about 36k tooltip damage in 1 second, in no-CP. And that’s not counting crits (though this burst isn’t particularly crit friendly, despite you having a 36% crit chance, since the procs can’t crit). It’s actually pretty hard to devise a build that can do that kind of damage in 1 second in no-CP.

SUSTAINED DAMAGE: And in terms of sustained damage, you can put out a ton of pressure. Those procs add up to an average of about 4k per second. The DoTs average out to about 3.75k per second (taking into account that poisons are up about half the time). Bloodthirst is another 7.5k per second. And the weapon enchantments themselves are another 0.66k per second. So that’s roughly a sustained 16k tooltip damage per second (more with crits)—at least until you’ve got to spend a few seconds cycling back through to restart your DoTs. Even taking into account that the procs don’t crit and the penetration is only respectable (one sharpened weapon and the wood elf penetration buff after dodges), again I think it’s actually pretty hard to devise a build that can do that kind of consistent damage in no-CP with no sustain issues.

Point 2: Regarding Healing

The Vigor on this build is certainly worth using. Resolving Vigor will have a tooltip of just below 13k over 4 seconds (in no-CP). You’ve got the stamina sustain to basically keep that up all the time if you want to. That’s a strong heal in no-CP. Even in PvP, that’s like 1.6k healing per second, and more like 1.9k counting crit heals. Yes, it’ll certainly take away some DPS to refresh it off cooldown, and Echoing Vigor wouldn’t be very strong, but having the sustain to keep Resolving Vigor up all the time if you want/need to is strong.

Meanwhile, between DoTs and Bloodthirst, you’ve got so many individual hits going off per second that Crit Surge will be proccing essentially off cooldown. For reference, if all your DoTs are up, there’s only a 1.1% chance that Crit Surge would take longer than 1 second to go off, even assuming there’s only one person in your AOE DoTs. It’ll end up averaging taking some small fraction of a second to go off each time once it’s off cooldown. We’re likely talking about 1.3-1.4k healing per second in PvP from Crit Surge.

The heal from Bloodthirst is obviously a bit more variable, since it depends on the damage done, which depends on resistances of the enemy. But, in PVP, you’re likely looking at like 600-1200 healing per use of Bloodthirst, unless the person is blocking (in which case more like half that).

This all amounts to like 4,000+ healing per second in no-CP PvP, while on the offensive. That’s definitely near the high end of what’s possible in terms of healing per second in no-CP PvP.

Point 3: Regarding Speed

This build does actually get a couple pretty easily sustainable speed buffs though. Specifically, Hurricane and the speed buff from dodge rolling as a Wood Elf will give an easy +20% speed boost that you can basically have up at all times. The major expedition from Quick Cloak will not always be on since it only lasts 4 seconds, but considering the build also gets Major Protection for 4 seconds from Quick Cloak as well and the sustain on the build is crazy good (meaning you’ll want to and be able to spam Quick Cloak a lot), you probably will end up being able to have Major Expedition up a pretty good percent of the time.

Point 4: Regarding Off-Meta

I gather that you’re pointing out that BRP DW is meta. I get that. But I certainly think a DW/DW Stam Sorc build with almost 4k stamina recovery that uses Flurry and lots of DoTs to proc DoT-centered proc sets, and uses Dark Conversion to allow for Ball of Lightning spamming qualifies as off-meta, even if it uses a popular weapon set on the back bar. I don’t think this is something one really ever sees other people doing.

RiskyChalice863

One thing to note is that it actually may maximize this build to put a weapon damage enchantment or shock damage enchantment on the main hand of the back bar instead of a flame or poison enchantment. Either one would very slightly lower the proc chance of the two proc sets, and would eliminate the actual damage from one of the burning or poison DoTs. But the extra damage from either one of them may outweigh that.

The shock damage glyph is probably better for damage (especially since minor vulnerability would scale up the proc damage, while weapon damage doesn’t, and also the actual enchantment itself does a bit of damage), but weapon damage would increase the Vigor heals and increase by a bit the damage of your Hurricane and Quick Cloak against groups. Overall, I think shock damage is probably the best option here, primarily because it would increase damage by more, create a bigger possible burst, and weapon damage isn’t way better for healing (since minor vulnerability should increase Bloodthirst healing, and Critical Surge and Dark Conversion don’t scale off of weapon damage).

dazee

this is a pvp build right? Sounds fun.

RiskyChalice863

dazee wrote: »

this is a pvp build right? Sounds fun.

Yeah, it’s for PvP, particularly no-CP.

I don’t really play CP PvP, so I’ve not put any real thought into how it would work there or how to allocate CP. That said, I think it would still work in CP, but I imagine it wouldn’t be quite as good in CP. Proc sets don’t scale as well in CP, nor do Crit Surge and Dark Conversion healing. That said, I bet the overlapping Azureblight’s Reaper procs could get pretty nasty against a group of multiple people chasing you in Cyrodiil.

I also think one could take some version of this into solo PvE successfully. It’s got the sustain and self healing that you need in solo PvE, as well as a level of AOE damage that is always very helpful. I imagine there’d be some changes to skills and stuff to optimize it for solo PvE, but I think it’d work.

RiskyChalice863

I’ve just determined that Flurry doesn’t count as DoT damage for purposes of Azureblight’s Reaper. This changes how quickly the set will proc. It’ll proc more quickly when poisons are up, but the upshot is that on average it’ll proc more like every 8 seconds on average, as opposed to every 4.5 seconds on average. This decreases the sustained damage estimate I gave above by about 1,000 per second. It doesn’t change the burst damage, though it does obviously make the burst a bit less common.

One other alternative to Azureblight’s Reaper is to go with the Red Mountain set. In fact, that’s the set I originally built this build around (I only today decided to switch over to Azureblight’s Reaper). Red Mountain will be procced by Flurry, Rending Slashes, and Quick Cloak. It will proc on average in 2 seconds. It has a cooldown of 2 seconds. So you’d get a Red Mountain proc roughly every 4 seconds on average. This would end up coming out to about 1000 or so more single target DPS than Azureblight’s Reaper (as in, similar sustained DPS to what I mentioned above).

However, Azureblight’s Reaper has a few advantages over it: (1) it does almost 1.5k more damage in its proc, so it lends itself to higher burst, even if it happens less often; (2) the Azureblight proc’s timing is more predictable—since it’s based on a set number of DoT ticks being applied, not on a percentage chance per hit—which makes the burst easier to prepare for and follow up on; (3) the Azureblight proc is AOE; (4) the Azureblight proc is per person with no overall cooldown, meaning it can go off considerably more often against groups, potentially bombing groups; and (5) the Azureblight proc isn’t dodgeable, whereas the Red Mountain proc is pretty telegraphed. With that said, Red Mountain not only has higher sustained damage, but also has the distinct and fairly significant possibility of getting two procs within a 2-3 second span—which would be devastating. There’s also a trade-off between Azureblight’s Reaper giving extra stamina recovery whereas Red Mountain gives extra weapon damage.

Overall, I still think Azureblight’s Reaper is probably better for this build, but it’s not quite as good as I advertised earlier, and Red Mountain has advantages and may even be a bit better in 1v1 situations. I think it’d be defensible to use either.

Neloth

> Off-Meta Stam Build
> Blackrose Prison dual wield (Spectral Cloak)

Asardes

From my experience, regardless of class, what is over 2K recovery is pretty much wasted anyway (maybe 2.2K if you're using New Moon Acolyte).

Tolino

@RiskyChalice863
This is just theory crafted, right?
I have some recommendations!

1)3800 Stamreg is completely oversustain. Stamsorc has whit darkdeal great Sustain. Anything over 2k Stamreg (without potions) is wasted.

2) You should switch to 2h+dw and use the MSA-2h Axe. Stamped + MSA-2h have a great synergy whit Azureblight. This gives you much more AOE-Pressure than Rending Slashes!

3) Bloodthirsty and Werwolf doasn't work well whit the AOE-Dot/Burst concept of Azureblight.

4) 3 prismatic enchants give you more resources than 1 Mag, healt and Stam - enchant!

5) Kra'gh is great whit Azureblight.

Sets
2x Kra'gh (Most Azureblight procs/dmg) /2xTrollking/1xResis+1Domihaus(God Stats/defensive mix)
5x Azureblight body
3x Agility (Maybe 3-Stats)
Brp-dw: Axe(nirn whit Foulness enchant) + Dagger/Axe(charged whit shock enchants)
MSA-2h Axe(defending whit a poisen or Weapon enchant)

1light-5 medium-1Heavy or 5medium-2Heavy
All prismatc entchant
5 Impen 2 Well-fited or 7 Impen
Food: Orzorga's smoked bear(Hp, Stamreg, hpreg and Magreg) or Arteum
Charged for great minor defile and vulnarbility Uptime
Steed Mundus or Serpent

Frontbar:
Deadly/Quick Cloack
Vigor
Camouflaged Hunter/crit surge
Whirling blades
Bound Armarments
Dawnbreaker (main stun)

Backbar:
Rally/crit surge
Hurrican
Dark deal
Ball of lightning
Stamped
Undo/Atro

JinxxND

Azure blight is a bad set now that dots don't do dmg, any meta NMA/fury/spriggans/shieldbreaker will just heal thru your all dots with the high wd they have with one vigor and prolly kill you in one cc

JinxxND

I do like off meta builds but so far in think you're investing too much into sustain and not enough into dmg with the amount of sustain your running brp dw is kinda overkill in that you can just survive by roll dodging forever and kiting, I would look into other proc sets if your looking for dmg such as ashen grip, viper, red mountain, poisonous serpent, stuff that is more instant/bursty to get people to 50% if you plan on using spin2win and even then you gonna need some high wd for the execute to kill with the healing

Grianasteri

Id tentatively suggest that 4k recovery, on any build, is significant overkill.

Note that I LOVE off meta builds, most of my 18 characters are off meta. In fact let me think... I think perhaps 4 align with current meta, best in slot build design.

Luede

less theroy, more play, then u will see what will work. This build won't

Asardes

Another good arena weapon for any stamina character is the Asylum Maul, especially if you have cheap ultimate abilities. Sorcerer has 15% ultimate cost reduction (Power Stone passive) so a few of those abilities become really cheap DBoS = 107, Onslaught = 116. You can bring them even lower with 3p Potentates instead of Agility - the former also makes you way more resistant.

RiskyChalice863

JinxxND wrote: »

Azure blight is a bad set now that dots don't do dmg, any meta NMA/fury/spriggans/shieldbreaker will just heal thru your all dots with the high wd they have with one vigor and prolly kill you in one cc

I don't really agree with this, primarily because I don't think the build is really giving up much of anything by stacking dots, since the abilities are worth using regardless of damage. Hurricane and Quick Cloak provide really important buffs on this build, so you'd want to use them regardless of damage (meaning you're not giving up damage by using them). Meanwhile, poisons and enchantment DoTs are pretty standard stuff, and I've not suggested doing anything extra to maximize them anyways (and in fact, in a post on this thread, I suggested dropping one of the flame/poison enchantments for a shock enchantment). The only dot that I think might be dropped if I weren't using the sets is Rending Slashes. But even that gives the build its only snare--which is pretty important on a Flurry build.

As for healing through the dots, the DoTs aren't really the primary damage component of the build. Flurry and the proc sets are. I agree the dots themselves wouldn't kill someone that isn't a potato (though with your poisons up, the DoTs certainly provide decent pressure that is nice to have, if only to negate healing). The way you kill people with this build is by getting Azureblight and Skoria to proc and combining that with Flurry and Bound Armaments. It's sort of a burst build that gets its burst by applying dots (as well as getting tons of Crit Surge healing that way), not a dot build.

In terms of killing in one cc, this is a no-CP build that has the stamina sustain to essentially always be able to cc break immediately and the ability to immediately dodge or Ball of Lightning away right after breaking free if need be and can also use Reviving Barrier. Killing someone instantly before they can cc break isn't really a thing in no-CP--at least not when facing a build that isn't complete paper. And this build isn't complete paper. It's not got crazy resistances, but in no-CP its got like 20-21k health, over 16k resistances on the front bar and over 19k resistances on the back bar, and access to major protection, minor protection, and major evasion (the latter of which puts a huge damper on the burst of many builds, as it negates 25% of the damage of things like Leap, Shalks, Blastbones, Curse, Jabs/Sweeps, Onslaught, Dawnbreaker, Crescent Sweep, etc.). And that's not mentioning that the stamina sustain allows for a lot of dodge rolling and blocking (which can potentially both stop the CC--depending on the cc being used--and mitigate at least part of the burst that comes after it). I also would suggest all the gear being impenetrable, though I forgot to mention that earlier.

JinxxND wrote: »

I do like off meta builds but so far in think you're investing too much into sustain and not enough into dmg with the amount of sustain your running brp dw is kinda overkill in that you can just survive by roll dodging forever and kiting, I would look into other proc sets if your looking for dmg such as ashen grip, viper, red mountain, poisonous serpent, stuff that is more instant/bursty to get people to 50% if you plan on using spin2win and even then you gonna need some high wd for the execute to kill with the healing

A lot of people have mentioned overinvestment in sustain. I don't really agree.

Stamina sustain is a lot harder in no-CP, since there's not all those cost reduction CP points (not to mention that you're almost always fighting when in BGs, so there's not tons of downtime for the stamina to come back). People here are suggesting anything above like 2000-2200 stamina recovery is overkill on a Stam Sorc, and I disagree. In no-CP, breaking free will cost 5400 stamina. In BGs against decent players and/or teams that actually travel as a group, you'll be basically getting stunned on cooldown and you're dead if you don't break free. That means you basically have to dedicate about 770 stamina per second (or about 1440 stam recovery) just to breaking free. If you're doing that, and only have 2000 stamina recovery and are trying to actually cast stamina abilities every global cooldown, you're going to run out of stamina in ~20 seconds (depending on how expensive the abilities you're using are and exactly how big your stamina pool is). Even this build will tend towards zero if you actually are having to break free that often and are trying to use a stamina ability every global cooldown, but it'd take more like ~45 seconds. That's a pretty big difference.

Granted, one doesn't necessarily actually use stamina abilities every single GCD, but the ability to sustain while relentlessly pressuring an opponent and keeping up your buffs like that is a big deal. For instance, a build with 2000 stamina recovery just could not sustain for very long at all in no-CP if they tried to do a Flurry spam with a Resolving Vigor every 4 seconds combined with the need to break free. Granted, they'd get more damage/healing from those abilities when they did use them, but there's a definite trade off. And considering so much of this build's damage and healing isn't dependent on stats--proc and poison damage don't scale off stamina or weapon damage, and neither do the heals from Crit Surge and Dark Conversion--the downside of missing out on some weapon damage to get stamina recovery isn't as high as it might be on other builds. Weapon damage primarily affects the Flurry damage and Vigor heals on the build. But you just won't be able to sustain spamming those constantly without really high recovery. You'll either need to have downtime, or will need to use heavy attacks, and either way that'll be a hit to your damage/healing that isn't necessarily better than simply having a lower tooltip due to building into sustain.

Furthermore, in BGs, the amount of recovery you get in the short time period in between fights is important. The fights are so frequent (particularly if you've got the speed of this build) that it's easy to start a new fight relatively low on resources because of the previous fight. Over time, this can add up, and it's a really big deal with stamina because if you do go low on stamina, you're basically dead if you're stunned.

Overall, I get that one could do more damage with less sustain, but this build actually still does a lot of damage, and I think the sustain is actually quite useful in BGs.

JinxxND wrote: »

I do like off meta builds but so far in think you're investing too much into sustain and not enough into dmg with the amount of sustain your running brp dw is kinda overkill in that you can just survive by roll dodging forever and kiting, I would look into other proc sets if your looking for dmg such as ashen grip, viper, red mountain, poisonous serpent, stuff that is more instant/bursty to get people to 50% if you plan on using spin2win and even then you gonna need some high wd for the execute to kill with the healing

As for the BRP DW, one could run something else there. The logic there is that I'd want Quick Cloak in the build anyways for major expedition and major evasion, so might as well add major protection to it. And I don't think major protection is total redundant to dodge rolling. After all, major protection is mitigation you get while going defensive, whereas you can't damage people while dodge rolling. So yeah, if I'm just trying to run away from a fight, I can spam dodge roll and Ball of Lightning to get away, and so the major protection isn't super important. But the major protection does give me a window to go really aggressive while being very tanky--which is particularly nice on a build that uses a channeled spammable (making blocking a bit harder).

Tolino

JinxxND wrote: »

Azure blight is a bad set now that dots don't do dmg, any meta NMA/fury/spriggans/shieldbreaker will just heal thru your all dots with the high wd they have with one vigor and prolly kill you in one cc

@JinxxND
You don't need high dot-dmg to make a Azureblight-Build work. Your burst comes from various procs on multiple opponents at the same time!
Azureblight is more of a niche set compared to a meta-max-stats-build. A normal (Stamsorc)Build can't charge in a group and let dem explode. But you will have more issus in a normal 1vs1! A good off-meta build can / should outperform a meta build in a certain area. But you will have more situations in which you have more disadvantages compared to a meta build.


@RiskyChalice863
If you need 3800Stamreg you are doing something completely wrong! I have 2k Stamreg (2.3k whit Major Endurance) in NoCP) and my Sustain is fine. I have more than I actually need, even in long fights. Your sustain doesn't only come from your Stamreg! Your Potion, Heavy Attacks and Dark deal make a big difference.
And just to say. And this build is complete paper! In NoCp everyone is significantly less tanky compared to Cp. Even your 3s Major Protection won't prevent you from dying quickly

JinxxND

I don't think azureblight is good at all this patch you can get more dmg from numerous proc sets esp on a melee build whereas azureblight would see better use on a bow build cause you can dot an entire team up with stuff like acid spray (which dot ticks every 1 second helping it get to 20 stacks) and have it blow up like a chain effect if the team stays near ea other, dot sets like the reworked ashen grip will procs constantly in melee giving you more burst more frequently in non CP instead of having to stand on someone trying to load them up with single target dots outside of stampede/hurricane a team decide to stand in it the whole time.

Tolino

JinxxND wrote: »

I don't think azureblight is good at all this patch you can get more dmg from numerous proc sets esp on a melee build whereas azureblight would see better use on a bow build cause you can dot an entire team up with stuff like acid spray (which dot ticks every 1 second helping it get to 20 stacks) and have it blow up like a chain effect if the team stays near ea other, dot sets like the reworked ashen grip will procs constantly in melee giving you more burst more frequently in non CP instead of having to stand on someone trying to load them up with single target dots outside of stampede/hurricane a team decide to stand in it the whole time.

Acid spray would be a option! But you don't want to stay at range because of Hurrican! You also don't want to stack Singel target DoTs. You want AOE-Dots. Whit Hurrican, Stampede+MSA 2h and deadly cloak you can get to the proc with 5s! This is whitout any Axe bleed, poison, etc. special kra'gh quickly brings 20staks. You will have procs each ~5-6s per enemy player! Whit doubel the tooltip of ashen grip. You can have several procs at the same time. Azurblight is AOE.
But ashen grip is still a lot weaker than red mountain.

RiskyChalice863

Tolino wrote: »

JinxxND wrote: »

Azure blight is a bad set now that dots don't do dmg, any meta NMA/fury/spriggans/shieldbreaker will just heal thru your all dots with the high wd they have with one vigor and prolly kill you in one cc

@JinxxND
You don't need high dot-dmg to make a Azureblight-Build work. Your burst comes from various procs on multiple opponents at the same time!
Azureblight is more of a niche set compared to a meta-max-stats-build. A normal (Stamsorc)Build can't charge in a group and let dem explode. But you will have more issus in a normal 1vs1! A good off-meta build can / should outperform a meta build in a certain area. But you will have more situations in which you have more disadvantages compared to a meta build.


@RiskyChalice863
If you need 3800Stamreg you are doing something completely wrong! I have 2k Stamreg (2.3k whit Major Endurance) in NoCP) and my Sustain is fine. I have more than I actually need, even in long fights. Your sustain doesn't only come from your Stamreg! Your Potion, Heavy Attacks and Dark deal make a big difference.
And just to say. And this build is complete paper! In NoCp everyone is significantly less tanky compared to Cp. Even your 3s Major Protection won't prevent you from dying quickly

A few points on the sustain:

- It's more like 3600 stamina recovery. The 3800 number is if you happen to be standing in your Turn Evil area, so it'll usually be 3600. And it's more like 3000 on the back bar (could be slightly more or less depending on what ultimate you use--Storm Atronach increases it--and whether you have a perfected blackrose prison set or just a normal one). Those numbers are like a couple hundred lower if you use Red Mountain instead of Azureblight.
- That 3600 stamina recovery is with Major Endurance included, so it's directly comparable to the 2.3k number you gave, not the 2k one.
- A big point on sustain is that this build actually runs Dark Conversion rather than Dark Deal. This is so that the build can much more reliably have the magicka to pretty frequently use Ball of Lightning (as well as, of course, keeping Crit Surge up), and also so that it has the ability to spam a burst heal. I think this is a valuable element of the build, but the byproduct of it is that there's less stamina sustain under the hood than on a normal Stam Sorc build.

So let's compare that to the sustain you say is fine. You're talking 2.3k with Major Endurance. If you use Dark Deal every 20 seconds (to keep the stamina over time up), then that's the equivalent to about 2.9k stamina recovery. That's basically what this build has on its back bar. The front bar is a bit higher (particularly with Azureblight), but the difference here is probably that that higher stamina recovery on the front bar will eliminate (or greatly decrease) the need for heavy attacks--which you mention using. That is worth something, as heavy attacking is lost damage. And if it did seem to be oversustaining, one could easily just pare it back a bit by using 1 or 2 weapon damage glyphs instead of stamina recovery ones, switching to a different mundus stone, or by switching out Werewolf Form for some other ultimate.

Tolino wrote: »

JinxxND wrote: »

Azure blight is a bad set now that dots don't do dmg, any meta NMA/fury/spriggans/shieldbreaker will just heal thru your all dots with the high wd they have with one vigor and prolly kill you in one cc

@JinxxND
You don't need high dot-dmg to make a Azureblight-Build work. Your burst comes from various procs on multiple opponents at the same time!
Azureblight is more of a niche set compared to a meta-max-stats-build. A normal (Stamsorc)Build can't charge in a group and let dem explode. But you will have more issus in a normal 1vs1! A good off-meta build can / should outperform a meta build in a certain area. But you will have more situations in which you have more disadvantages compared to a meta build.


@RiskyChalice863
If you need 3800Stamreg you are doing something completely wrong! I have 2k Stamreg (2.3k whit Major Endurance) in NoCP) and my Sustain is fine. I have more than I actually need, even in long fights. Your sustain doesn't only come from your Stamreg! Your Potion, Heavy Attacks and Dark deal make a big difference.
And just to say. And this build is complete paper! In NoCp everyone is significantly less tanky compared to Cp. Even your 3s Major Protection won't prevent you from dying quickly

I disagree regarding the build being "complete paper."

You say everyone is significantly less tanky compared to CP, but everyone also does significantly less damage compared to CP. The fact is that bursting people down instantly is more common in CP than no-CP because: (1) it's not a level playing field, so people with 810 CP can naturally destroy people with much lower CP because their damage is buffed a ton by CP and the person they're attacking doesn't have CP to have commensurately buffed their defense; (2) even without a CP discrepancy, if someone has lots of CP built into damage and someone they're attacking hasn't put as much CP into defense--or at least not defense against the type of damage the attacker is using (including not investing in crit resistance against builds with buffed up crit damage)--then there's a greater discrepancy between damage and resistances than is possible in no-CP, resulting in more damage being done; and (3) crit chances are higher in CP, so burst is more consistently applied.

Anyways, admittedly I usually try to have higher resistances than this on my builds. But you're responding here to something saying this build would get killed in one CC. And I just don't see how that's the case in no-CP. Please show me a build that could two-shot this (which you'd need to do to "kill in one cc" since this build would break free instantly and then dodge/streak away if low) in no-CP. The resistances are both just above 16k on the front bar, and just over 19k on the back bar. The health is just below 22k with Expert Summoner procced from Bound Armaments. You've got major evasion up at all times, and major protection on demand, as well as access to minor protection. And you have 26% crit resistance.

See the following somewhat crazy example below:

Let's say someone builds a Orc Stamina Warden build with Molag Kena, Fury, Spriggan's, and the Master's Bow on the back bar. And let's say Molag Kena, Fury, and Master's Bow are all procced. All the gear and everything is legendary (even though I'm only assuming Epic gear on the Stam Sorc). Gear pieces all are max stam, with spell damage glyphs on all the jewelry. There's a weapon damage enchantment on the back bar that is procced, and a frost damage glyph on the front bar. The front bar weapon is sharpened two-handed maul. Mundus Stone is weapon damage. You have Bird of Prey, Growing Swarm, Shalks, and Bull Netch on the front bar--giving you +16% damage from Warden passives, and Major Brutality. You use Bewitched Sugar Skulls. You hit a Dizzying Swing for a stun, which happens to proc the frost damage glyph, and then you immediately land a Subterranean Assault and Dawnbreaker of Smiting (which does extra damage to werewolves) right after. This all happens with minor vulnerability from Growing Swarm on the Stam Sorc. This is a very unrealistic build (basically no sustain whatsoever) and is assuming that every single possible weapon damage proc is up and everything happens perfectly. It's a no-CP build with 6542 weapon damage and 33091 stamina.

How much damage would that burst do to this build? You say the Major Protection wouldn't save the build from dying quickly, so let's assume that is up, along with Major Evasion. But let's be generous and assume minor protection isn't up and the Stam Sorc is on the front bar, where the resistances are lower.

The tooltip on Dizzying Swing would be 14479. Subterranean Assault is 17006. Dawnbreaker is 22152. The Frost Damage glyph is 3192. The physical penetration on the build is 6202, but the Subterranean Assault and Dawnbreaker would hit after Major Fracture lowered an additional 5280. And the Mace would make you ignore 20% of the physical resistance.

Dizzying Swing would do 4896 damage. The frost damage glyph would do 1079 damage. Subterranean Assault would do 4811 damage. Dawnbreaker would do 6020 damage.* That's a grand total of 16806 damage. That's not nearly enough to kill this build if it's near full health, and the Sorc really wouldn't find it very hard to get away and/or heal up.

But now let's assume that every single one of those hits crit--which has only a 0.6% chance of happening. Crits only do 24% more damage against this build, since it's got impenetrables on everything and the Warden build I've described just has a normal 50% crit damage. Even with all crits, the combo only does 20,839 damage.

If this Sorc build had Expert Summoner up (which isn't hard to have up, since you just need a Bound Armament dagger) and was at full health, it'd live through even that ridiculously unlikely burst. Granted, there'd also be dots from Dawnbreaker, Poison Injection, and Growing Swarm to contend with after that, but you could use Barrier or a potion to recover, and probably could even barely survive without either if you got a Crit Surge proc during the burst (which there's a good chance of) and cast Vigor after breaking free.

Ultimately, I think what this example should show is that it's actually virtually impossible to cleanly burst combo this build in no-CP if major protection is up. Even the most ridiculous and unrealistic build I could think of, with every single weapon damage proc fully up, and its weapon enchantment up, off balance not on cooldown in order to allow execution an ideal burst combo, and assuming all crits on every hit wouldn't do enough damage to cleanly one-shot it. Obviously, one isn't always at full health and major protection won't always be up but I just don't see how a build can be called "complete paper" if it can survive that.


* Dizzying Swing damage = 14479*0.89452727*0.7*0.5*1.08 = 4896
* Frost glyph damage = 3192*0.89452727*0.7*0.5*1.08 = 1079
* Subterranean Assault damage = 17706*0.95852727*0.7*0.75*0.5*1.08 = 4811
* Dawnbreaker damage = 22152*0.95852727*0.7*0.75*0.5*1.08 = 6020

JinxxND

You can try it man and let me know how it goes but I haven't seen azureblight do well since the dot nerf if anyone is getting significant dmg from it its usually from a bow player acid spraying behind his group making everyone blow up all the melee builds trying to use it as the main dmg set usually just die to burst dmg or get out healed by more meta fury/high wd healing setups

RiskyChalice863

Edit: To add to what I know was already a long rant above, the math above was slightly wrong. Subterranean Assault would do a couple hundred less damage to this build than I said, because of the Wood Elf poison resistance. Not a big difference, but I thought I’d correct it.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

If you’re dead set on azurablight give sheer venom a try as your second 5 piece set instead of bone pirate. It just received a buff too. I used it for awhile and its a solid set if you plan on pairing it with lots of DoTs.

RiskyChalice863

There's actually a pretty good argument to run a variant of this on Stamcro instead.

On the front bar, you'd run Blastbones instead of Bound Armaments. You'd also run Colossus instead of Werewolf Form. And since you don't have much of anything that will proc Azureblight, I think you'd want to go with Red Mountain instead (which is a very valid alternative for Stam Sorcs as well--as I've mentioned above). The glyphs and whatnot might be a bit different.

The back bar would be very different. You'd run Summoner's Armor instead of Hurricane. You'd go with Spirit Guardian instead of Crit Surge. And you'd probably run Goliath instead of Barrier. Crucially, instead of running BRP DW and going with Quick Cloak, I think you could run Deaden Pain as your source of Major Protection. This would free you up to run one-handed on the back bar for extra tankiness. It would also provide extra passive damage mitigation, as well as allow you to run Potentates weapons on the back bar for even more mitigation. So you could get very tanky on the back bar. The last two slots are defensive slots with several alternatives. I think you'd want to run some combination of two of the following: Elusive Mist, Hexproof, Absorb Missile/Defensive Position, Spiked Bone Shield, and Shuffle. Those things obviously counter different things the most, so I imagine one could shift between them depending on what you're facing. Defensive Posture + Shuffle is probably a good default option. Without Hurricane and Quick Cloak, you may potentially want to run a couple Swift glyphs.

This sort of build would have several advantages over the Stam Sorc version.

- To begin with, while on balance you may do a little less sustained damage (primarily due to the loss of the Hurricane DoT, as well as the lack of both Major Brutality AND Major Savagery without potions, and the lack of various Sorc passives), your sustained pressure would actually be a good bit greater due to major defile.
- Meanwhile, you'd actually have much more burst potential due to Blastbones and Colossus, as well as having extra crit chance in execute.
- You'd be a bit tankier on the front bar, due to the 10% Spirit Guardian damage mitigation. Combined with Defensive Stance's shield and the passive that lowers DoT damage by 15%, you'd definitely be harder to burst down on the front bar.
- You'd be quite a bit tankier on the back bar, due to running sword-and-board, having 10% damage mitigation from Spirit Guardian, 3% damage mitigation from Deaden Pain, another 5% damage mitigation from Potentates, and 15% DoT damage mitigation.
- Since Blastbones is so cheap and is basically every third or fourth ability cast, you can basically maintain the same amount of crazy high sustain while building a little bit more into damage (or building more into speed to make up for the loss of Hurricane, as described below)

The primary negatives are basically:

- You're not nearly as fast, since you don't have the +10% speed from Hurricane, don't have Ball of Lightning, and don't have access to Major Expedition unless you go with Elusive Mist--which doesn't really allow you to use that speed offensively anyways. One way to mitigate that a little bit is to put on a couple Swift glyphs on the jewelry. Combined with the Wood Elf passives and the ability to dodge roll a lot, you'll still be quite mobile.
- Deaden Pain is not always necessarily available, since you need a corpse. This build would generate quite a lot of corpses (Blastbones + Spirit Guardian + Summoner's Armor) and not consume them in any other way, so the potential is there for massive Major Protection uptime, but you could be left without it in a crucial moment where a build with the BRP DW could guarantee having it.
- Without Quick Cloak, you'd have no easy way to passively proc the weapon enchantment on the back bar. To mitigate this, it may make sense to put your poisons on the back bar weapon and just swap bars every 10 seconds or so and proc the poisons. That's a hassle would be a bit of a DPS loss though.
- The flip side of the Stam Sorc build not having Colossus is that it basically is free to always use Barrier or whatever back bar ult you have. So, while in theory the Stamcro build has a defensive ultimate too, the Stam Sorc would have it available much more.

RiskyChalice863

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

There's actually a pretty good argument to run a variant of this on Stamcro instead.

On the front bar, you'd run Blastbones instead of Bound Armaments. You'd also run Colossus instead of Werewolf Form. And since you don't have much of anything that will proc Azureblight, I think you'd want to go with Red Mountain instead (which is a very valid alternative for Stam Sorcs as well--as I've mentioned above). The glyphs and whatnot might be a bit different.

The back bar would be very different. You'd run Summoner's Armor instead of Hurricane. You'd go with Spirit Guardian instead of Crit Surge. And you'd probably run Goliath instead of Barrier. Crucially, instead of running BRP DW and going with Quick Cloak, I think you could run Deaden Pain as your source of Major Protection. This would free you up to run one-handed on the back bar for extra tankiness. It would also provide extra passive damage mitigation, as well as allow you to run Potentates weapons on the back bar for even more mitigation. So you could get very tanky on the back bar. The last two slots are defensive slots with several alternatives. I think you'd want to run some combination of two of the following: Elusive Mist, Hexproof, Absorb Missile/Defensive Position, Spiked Bone Shield, and Shuffle. Those things obviously counter different things the most, so I imagine one could shift between them depending on what you're facing. Defensive Posture + Shuffle is probably a good default option. Without Hurricane and Quick Cloak, you may potentially want to run a couple Swift glyphs.

This sort of build would have several advantages over the Stam Sorc version.

- To begin with, while on balance you may do a little less sustained damage (primarily due to the loss of the Hurricane DoT, as well as the lack of both Major Brutality AND Major Savagery without potions, and the lack of various Sorc passives), your sustained pressure would actually be a good bit greater due to major defile.
- Meanwhile, you'd actually have much more burst potential due to Blastbones and Colossus, as well as having extra crit chance in execute.
- You'd be a bit tankier on the front bar, due to the 10% Spirit Guardian damage mitigation. Combined with Defensive Stance's shield and the passive that lowers DoT damage by 15%, you'd definitely be harder to burst down on the front bar.
- You'd be quite a bit tankier on the back bar, due to running sword-and-board, having 10% damage mitigation from Spirit Guardian, 3% damage mitigation from Deaden Pain, another 5% damage mitigation from Potentates, and 15% DoT damage mitigation.
- Since Blastbones is so cheap and is basically every third or fourth ability cast, you can basically maintain the same amount of crazy high sustain while building a little bit more into damage (or building more into speed to make up for the loss of Hurricane, as described below)

The primary negatives are basically:

- You're not nearly as fast, since you don't have the +10% speed from Hurricane, don't have Ball of Lightning, and don't have access to Major Expedition unless you go with Elusive Mist--which doesn't really allow you to use that speed offensively anyways. One way to mitigate that a little bit is to put on a couple Swift glyphs on the jewelry. Combined with the Wood Elf passives and the ability to dodge roll a lot, you'll still be quite mobile.
- Deaden Pain is not always necessarily available, since you need a corpse. This build would generate quite a lot of corpses (Blastbones + Spirit Guardian + Summoner's Armor) and not consume them in any other way, so the potential is there for massive Major Protection uptime, but you could be left without it in a crucial moment where a build with the BRP DW could guarantee having it.
- Without Quick Cloak, you'd have no easy way to passively proc the weapon enchantment on the back bar. To mitigate this, it may make sense to put your poisons on the back bar weapon and just swap bars every 10 seconds or so and proc the poisons. That's a hassle would be a bit of a DPS loss though.
- The flip side of the Stam Sorc build not having Colossus is that it basically is free to always use Barrier or whatever back bar ult you have. So, while in theory the Stamcro build has a defensive ultimate too, the Stam Sorc would have it available much more.

To add to this, it may well be better or a Stamcro to run Quick Cloak on the front bar instead of Rending Slashes. You can then run Hexproof and Defensive Posture on the back bar (with Spiked Bone Shield being a potential option instead of Defensive Posture, particularly in group play, as well as Elusive Mist being a potential option in place of Hexproof).

The DoT on Quick Cloak is less damage than the one on Rending Slashes, and you do lose the snare. But this allows you to have Major Expedition and Major Evasion. I think the Major Expedition is really nice, particularly since this build doesn't have a gap closer. Meanwhile, you could get the Major Evasion if you used Shuffle, but having it on your DoT frees you up to add another valuable defensive ability to your back bar (in this case, probably a purge). Also, while Quick Cloak is less damage than Rending Slashes, it is crucially an AOE ability. This makes it good for getting NBs out of stealth. It also means you can potentially be outputting more overall damage with it in a group situation (though the damage is so low that this is not particularly meaningful).

I think Major Expedition + ability to run an extra defensive ability + ability to get NBs out of stealth + AOE DoT damage > a little extra single target DoT damage and a snare. The snare is the more concerning aspect of this, but practically speaking Major Expedition is going to have a very similar effect as putting a 30% snare on an enemy. And you could always run a single DoT poison that snares if you'd like. That'd sacrifice some DoT damage and a little bit of Skoria proc chance compared to running double DoT poisons, but would definitely accentuate a speedy playstyle where you stick to someone with Flurry.