[DPS] Slowly getting there - Need advices again

preevious

Hi, everyone

Not too long ago, I made a post requesting advices on how to increase my DPS so I can start vTrials.
Thanks to all the advices, I improved quite a bit, with an big increase on the parses.

Now, I need more advices and would be gratefull if I couls benefit from the community's wisdom again !

Stuff :

Inferno maelstro backbar, lightning medusa frontbar
infaillible aether on body

I have 2 builds (same character, I switch skills / champion points arounds)

1st build )
An heavy attack build :

Unstable wall (fire) - mystic orb - SWAP - volatile familiar - entropy - daedric prey - heavy attack (lightning) - SWAP
(two pets going at it while I'm doing this)

• I launch frags on front bar when they proc.
• If only 0-1 frags proced during a rotation, I add 1-2 frags hard cast.
• Obviously, I weave a light attack with each skill (or I try to. I succeed 0.65-0.7 LA / sec)

With that rotation, I parse 80k -/+ 1k on the trial dummy (normal bi-stat food) , and a bit over 40k on the 6 M (parse food, no ele drain)

2nb build)
A light attack build

Unstable wall (fire) - mystic orb - SWAP - volatile familiar -- daedric prey - crystal frags * 5-6 - SWAP
(two pets going at it while I'm doing this)

• I still weave LA with each skill, with the same succes as above.

With that build, I parse 72-74k on the trial dummy.


Now, for the problems I have :

The LA build is significally weaker, counter-intuitively. What problem do I have with it? Considering that :

• I know elemental weapon parse better than frags, but since My weaving is not yet perfect, it'd have too much of an impact. That's why I use frags (since the delay is <1s, it's basically a spammable, now)
• I know an inferno staff would be a better pick, on front bar, I'm in the process of trying to score one (medusa ...).
• I have sustain issues, on that one. I suppose wearing FG would solve it all, but I was told not to parse with it.

Also, how to work on the weaving? I mean, sometimes, the light attack just doesn't fire, despite using the same timing. Are there ways to train that efficiently?

And finally, since it works good, I'd also be happy to have advices on the HA build, to maybe bring it over 80k all the time. It works rather well, and it's confortable.

Thanks, everyone.

zvavi

First of all, your sets are leaning to heavy attack, you get nothing from a whole 5th piece on your non heavy build. Light attack builds are generally stronger in optimized trial groups, where you have much more support than a trial dummy sustain wise (therefore people usually parse with sustain food, with max magicka to emulate the damage from bi stat food, and magicka regen, to emulate the extra synergies, symphony, hollowfang, etc etc that you will get in the optimized group.

Also, daedric prey is one of your strongest skills, you should use it almost in cooldown (frag proc excluded)

I would recommend trying to hybrid the 2, to heavy attack after the entropy cast only when the dummy (and boss) is off balance (when you use a lightning staff) for massive damage and sustain, while when it is not off balance, keep your rotation as the light attack one.

preevious

@zvavi

Interresting ..
I tried to do that, messed up a lot because not used yet, did less than 0.5 la/s, kept using the wrong skills (entropy in the la round), and parsed at 79k.

It seems a hybrid LA/HA is pretty potent. On the trial dummy, it's basically one round LA, one round HA.
It's extremely promising, I gotta keep trying that.

Now...

Should I change infaillible aether? I do HA. Half as much as before, but I still do some .. (siroria..?)
Should I orient CP towards thaumaturge (DoTS+) or towars captain at arms (direct damage+) (my guts says captain ..but not by much)? (what's the type of pets damage, anyway? direct or dot?)
And finaly, I should get a medusa inferno (that will make me cry)

zvavi

preevious wrote: »

Interresting ..
I tried to do that, messed up a lot because not used yet, did less than 0.5 la/s, kept using the wrong skills (entropy in the la round), and parsed at 79k.

It seems a hybrid LA/HA is pretty potent. On the trial dummy, it's basically one round LA, one round HA.
It's extremely promising, I gotta keep trying that.

Now...

Should I change infaillible aether? I do HA. Half as much as before, but I still do some .. (siroria..?)
Should I orient CP towards thaumaturge (DoTS+) or towars captain at arms (direct damage+) (my guts says captain ..but not by much)? (what's the type of pets damage, anyway? direct or dot?)
And finaly, I should get a medusa inferno (that will make me cry)

Passive pet attacks and storm summon are direct, while the AoE active of the monkey and the storm atronach over time is a dot.
Lightning staff heavy is 3 ticks dot, 1 tick direct, wall is a dot, except the explosion which is direct. The orb doesn't get bonus damage from CP of direct or dot orb is affected by the dot cp. Curse is direct.

Siroria will be good, might even be stronger on the heavy attack variation. Frags are direct.

WrathOfInnos

Yes, Siroria will perform better than IA, ideally using a Siroria inferno staff as your front bar weapon. If you don’t have that, an easy alternative is to craft a set of Mechanical Acuity and use that as your front bar Inferno Staff with Siroria pieces on body/jewelry.

Also you should check out this discord, 12000 players discussing builds and finding ways to improve: https://discord.gg/cGT2Ztah

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I wont even get into your HA build. It is not surprising that newer players do better with HA builds, because frankly, they are easier to perform.

I am hesitant to start with gear, but you could certainly do better for a LA build. You really want siroria/FG as your trial set if possible, Medusa works better on the body, but not a deal breaker to front bar. For parsing purposes, if you have to front bar a crit set, I would go with mother's sorrow over medusa and work Trap into your rotation for the minor force. Gear is certainly important, but it's not your biggest problem.

A LA/ratio of .65-.70 is not bad, but it needs work. This is the elephant in the room. If there is one stat above all else to gauge a DPS's potential, its the LA ratio. Most of us wont be in the .95 range (about as high as you realistically see), but the .85-.9 range is very doable with practice, and its what you are realistically going to need if you want to see 90k+parses. It's a little different since the buffs to the trial dummy, but an old rule of thumb (especially for mag sorc and NB) is that your DPS potential is roughly equal to your LA ratio with extra zeros. You want 90k? better be close to .9. A .9 LA ratio with good DOT/buff management will be closer to 100k these days on a mag sorc.

The other big issue I see with your rotation is that you are wildly undercasting daedric prey. It should be the centerpiece of your rotation. A magic sorc rotation should be on a 6 count, with Daedric prey on the 1. Prey, 5 skills, prey, 5 skills, and so on. I think technically if the 1 comes up and you have a frag up, you should cast the frag (making that rotation a 7 count), but then go back to prey on the 1 after that, but I usually just keep it on the 6 count. If looking for a static rotation, I would figure out how to make it a 12 count rotation with prey on the 1 and 7, or think of it as two alternating 6 counts. The more static your rotation, the lower your DPS potential will be.

preevious

@Oreyn_Bearclaw

Wow, thanks, that's very detailed.
zvavi mentionned daedric prey as well. I wasn't aware it was such a critical skill. But yes, it increases the damage of my pets, my ult and my monster set .. And the ult and pets are among the top damaging skill I have.
I'm gonna try casting it on cooldown, no matter when I'm in the rotation.

regarding the LA ratio, I'm working on it. I try to parse every day, and It's slowly improving.

For the gear, I'll try FG, as I only need to reconstruct 1 piece to have it (don't have staves, though, so, it'll be body, for now), and will farm siroria.
Right now, with a full LA build, I have sustain issues, even on parse food. But as svavi told me, if I have to regain some resources with a HA, I'll do it when the enmy is off balance.

I'm only starting dabling with dynamic rotations, but I can roughly do it.

Thanks !

@zvavi

Thanks for the extra info. It looks like that for CP, I should increase direct damage instead of dots.

@WrathOfInnos

Thanks for the discord adress. I'll definitively check it.
Also, frontbarrng siroria implies getting a staff. Since there's no chests in there, it'll be a long walk.

El_Borracho

Like others have said, Siroria is much better on a LA build, with either Medusa or Mother's Sorrow. IA is strictly for heavy attack builds and healers. As for False Gods, not a real big fan of the non-perfected gear after the nerf last year. I think Siroria or Master Architect are better

If you are running Medusa, you want to do 2 heavy body and 3 jewelry or you are missing out of the reason for wearing Medusa over MS: carrying Minor Force to the back bar without using trap. If Medusa is only on your front bar, you are getting no Minor Force on your back bar.

But more to the point, hitting 74K is more than enough to run all vet trials. Have at it

Viewsfrom6ix

zvavi wrote: »

Passive pet attacks and storm summon are direct, while the AoE active of the monkey and the storm atronach over time is a dot.

Minor correction here, if monkey you mean volatile familiar, the aoe active skill is not a dot as it is not affected by thaumaturge.

Back to the OP.

I only play magsorc and cp600. I was in your shoe recently but I finally got over 90k dps on trial dummy.

Here is my advice.

Practice elemental weapon weaving. It was really difficult for me to get a hang of it at first, but eventually I got better as I used it in more. No tangible tips on this, just practice. It is the highest single target dps spammable for magsorc.

When parsing use spell pots if you're not already.

Use siroria (frontbar) with medusa/mother's sorrow with maw/zaan when parsing. DPS difference is negligible between medusa and MS. Zaan is slightly better than maw.

Prioritize crystal frag when procced and daedric pray. Make sure to recast scamp, wall and trap at most 1 second after the skill ends. Maximizing your uptime on buffs and dots to 100% as close as possible. I still have a very hard time with this.

Swap orb with spell symmetry if you're having sustain issues.

Hope this helps and good luck!

preevious

@El_Borracho

Thanks for the encouragements. I started doing some crags vet trials (PUG).
Since I have combat metric on, I know that I'm not a dead weight there, as I seem to be above the median percentage of group DPS . Now, I'll farm siroria for a bit and seek a group to test the other vTrials. I can't PUG them, sadly, because PUGS asks for the very same achievement you get for completion.

@Viewsfrom6ix
Thanks for the info. So, thaumaturge is useless for orbs and volatile familiar? Captain at arms it is, then, it'll outperform thaumaturge by a country mile.
Also, yes, I'm trying to be more dynamic, recasting prey on cd, etc etc. I might have a rythm problem, because I realize I cast less than 1 skill / s.
I hit 75-76k with a purely LA rotation, now, with infaillibe aether slowing me down slightly. (siro would add 400 SD)


Thanks for those infos!

Viewsfrom6ix

Yes, thaumaturge does not affect orb and familiar.

Edit: It does!

preevious

I just stumbled into some (old) posts that says the ancient knoweledge passive (from the destro staff, a juicy 8% damage to either single target or multi-target skills) does not apply when you don't have a destro staff skill actually equipped?

Is that true/still the case? If so, I realise I don't have destro skill on my frontbar .. that would be detrimental as well .

zvavi

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Passive pet attacks and storm summon are direct, while the AoE active of the monkey and the storm atronach over time is a dot.

Minor correction here, if monkey you mean volatile familiar, the aoe active skill is not a dot as it is not affected by thaumaturge.

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

Yes, thaumaturge does not affect orb and familiar.

just checked it on my not yet all cp allocated low lvl magsorc, tooltip went up when i put more points in thaumaturge. so, it is affected by cp. so you are wrong.
the quick tests:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/659372216047370246/796762020576886804/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/659372216047370246/796762068018528256/unknown.png

preevious wrote: »

I just stumbled into some (old) posts that says the ancient knoweledge passive (from the destro staff, a juicy 8% damage to either single target or multi-target skills) does not apply when you don't have a destro staff skill actually equipped?

Is that true/still the case? If so, I realise I don't have destro skill on my frontbar .. that would be detrimental as well .

it is old news, they changed it pretty long ago, you dont need destruction skill slotted anymore (in the past the tooltip said "when destruction skill is slotted")

zvavi

deleted

Viewsfrom6ix

zvavi wrote: »

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Passive pet attacks and storm summon are direct, while the AoE active of the monkey and the storm atronach over time is a dot.

Minor correction here, if monkey you mean volatile familiar, the aoe active skill is not a dot as it is not affected by thaumaturge.

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

Yes, thaumaturge does not affect orb and familiar.

just checked it on my not yet all cp allocated low lvl magsorc, tooltip went up when i put more points in thaumaturge. so, it is affected by cp. so you are wrong.
the quick tests:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/659372216047370246/796762020576886804/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/659372216047370246/796762068018528256/unknown.png

@zvavi
Wow! Thank you for correcting me and presenting your tests. My information must be dated.

@preevious
Thaumaturge does affect mystic orb as well after checking myself. I still recommend at most 34 thaumaturge points at cp810

zvavi

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

Thaumaturge does affect mystic orb as well after checking myself. I still recommend at most 34 thaumaturge points at cp810

if yes than it is a buff to orbs that i didnt notice in the last patch, give me few minutes i will test. was your test affected by sorc reverse execute passive? ok, so i tested it, and you are right, orb is affected by thaumaturge now, i tested the non morphed version, did u test the morphed?

Oreyn_Bearclaw

preevious wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw

Wow, thanks, that's very detailed.
zvavi mentionned daedric prey as well. I wasn't aware it was such a critical skill. But yes, it increases the damage of my pets, my ult and my monster set .. And the ult and pets are among the top damaging skill I have.
I'm gonna try casting it on cooldown, no matter when I'm in the rotation.

regarding the LA ratio, I'm working on it. I try to parse every day, and It's slowly improving.

For the gear, I'll try FG, as I only need to reconstruct 1 piece to have it (don't have staves, though, so, it'll be body, for now), and will farm siroria.
Right now, with a full LA build, I have sustain issues, even on parse food. But as svavi told me, if I have to regain some resources with a HA, I'll do it when the enmy is off balance.

I'm only starting dabling with dynamic rotations, but I can roughly do it.

Thanks !

@zvavi

Thanks for the extra info. It looks like that for CP, I should increase direct damage instead of dots.

@WrathOfInnos

Thanks for the discord adress. I'll definitively check it.
Also, frontbarrng siroria implies getting a staff. Since there's no chests in there, it'll be a long walk.

Regarding Sustain: False god will likely help if not outright fix your sustain issues. You will probably wear FG more often than Siroria in actual content TBH. If you don't have a staff, you may want to consider Mothers Sorrow on the front bar and make room for barbed trap (dont ignore minor force, you need it from somewhere). You should have the bar space. Most players I know breaking 100k DPS on a 2 pet sorc dont actually run Mystic Orb when parsing. They will slot it in trials for a lot of fights, but it makes sustain without heavy attacks on a dummy close to impossible as far as I can tell. It is also less efficient of a skill on a dummy than in actual content, because the dummy hit box isnt that big. You dont get the full duration because it goes out of range. Barbed trap also helps a bit with sustain as its a stamina skill.

The other thing about sustain is that its a bit counter intuitive, but the better you get at your rotation, the less you need to worry about it. Your magic drain per second will actually increase as you get faster, but you wont need to parse for nearly as long to kill the dummy. If you can sustain a target Dummy with parse food (even if you are about tapped at the end of the fight), you really shouldnt need to worry about sustain in actual content with a good group (especially with False God).

Regarding Bars: The best bar setup to my knowledge is as follows.

-Front Bar: Elemental Weapon, Crystal Frags, Twilight Tormenter, Volatile Familar, Daedric Prey, Meteor
-Back Bar: Unstable Wall, Barbed Trap, Twilight Tormenter, Volatile Familar, Boundless Storm, Strom Attro

This would be using Mother's sorrow over Medusa (Front Bar MS FIRE Staff is what you want until you get a trial staff). In actual content, I am a big fan of Medusa. It allows me to put orb in place of trap, and boundless becomes my flex for a shield if I need it. This also makes for a fairly easy dynamic rotation on the dummy. You need to go to your back bar every 10 seconds for Wall, but trap and boundless are much longer, so they are fairly easy to manage. Then on front bar, you are juggling daedric prey (every 6 skills), and Volatile Familiar. Casts frags as they proc, otherwise weave your spam, ele weapon (Force Pulse works just fine as well). You can simplify a bit by trying to cast Blockade and familiar back to back. If possible, cast familiar from the front bar for more frag procs, but back bar casting is not the end of the world.

Regarding Daedric Prey: Yes, it is very important. Most classes have a class defining skill that becomes the centerpiece of their rotations. NBs have Relentless Focus, Wardens of Sub Assault, Necros have blastbones, etc. Sorc is honestly one of the easier ones to manage. The only thing I will say. You are better off casting it one second late than one second early. It also has a damage component, which is effectively a time bomb. It boosts pets for the duration, but the explosion at the end is also important. If you recast early, it wont go off.

preevious

@Oreyn_Bearclaw

Indeed, I still cast it too early half the time, but it'll come around with practice.



Thanks, everyone. I'm in the process of learning all this and changing my gear setup.
I'll sure I'll improve a bit more, thanks to all of you.

Cheers.