Trait Question about Phoenix Set & Slimecraw

eMKa8 · July 2021

Hi all

I run phoenix & slimecraw (and mother sorrow)

I am a magicka sorcerer and have always heard i should use divines on all my traits. (When looking at pve builds)

But what is the best to do when making a pvp build in terms of traits ?

My gear sets consists of phoenix and slimecraw.
Mother sorrow is on rings and weapons.

I now have all gear traits divines and max magicka And my big pieces i have infused and prismatic defense .

Is that a good set up or is that NOT good for pvp ? I hear a lot of people using impen ?? Or well fitted and stuff like that ?

Thanks for the replies !

Septimus_Magna · July 2021

For magsorc PVP you mainly want sets that boost your max magicka, this increases your shield size but also increases your damage (and sustain to some degree). I personally run the first gear option below with Death Dealers Fete. Atronach mundus with 2x mag regen glyph and 1x tri-stat regen on infused jewelry. Bewitched Sugar Skulls as buff food (or Witchmothers Potent Brew). I personally like 4x impen and 3x well-fitted, you can avoid a lot of damage by rolling at the right time.

5x Crafty Alfiq's (5x body)
3x Grace of the Ancients (weapons + necklace)
2x Trainee (heavy chest + ring)

For the other slots there are a couple options:

1x Swarm Mother (medium head) and 1x Mythic ring (Death Dealers Fete, Malacath, Wild Hunt)
1x Gaze of Sithis and 1x Swarm Mother (heavy head + light shoulder) chance Trainee chest to medium
2x Engine Guardian (medium head + light shoulder)
1x Swarm Mother and 1x Domihaus (medium head + light shoulder)

For the back bar resto staff you can use Grace of the Ancients or one of the arena resto staves.

fred4 · July 2021

Been replying to another thread. I see you are a magsorc now. The answer to all your questions is fairly simple in that case, because the way to build a PvP magsorc is quite hackneyed and never really changes. You build for max magicka. If you're in CP, then 45K magicka at minimum. More, if you can. I recommend Malcolm's YouTube channel. He is an accomplished PvP magsorc main who has played that class for years. More importantly his build videos always cover a lot of options. With pets. Without pets. With a resto staff. With a 1H+Shield back bar. It's not your typical build video that leaves you with just one build. The short summary of PvP magsorc is:

Buff up with multiple shields. Harness Magicka. Hardened Ward. Healing Ward, if you've taken damage (and only then). In that order. The shields get consumed in the order they are cast. Casting Harness Magicka first gives you sustain back. Casting Healing Ward last protects that ward, so it heals you better.
Attack players by casting Haunting Curse (not optional), Mage's Wrath / Fury (optional), Crystal Frags (if procced) or Force Pulse / Elemental Weapon into an ultimate and / or stun. Ultimate is typically Meteor or Overload. Stun is typically Streak. Malcolm will be much better at explaining this.

fred4 · July 2021

I would again defer to Malcolm. Maybe he uses some Infused armor, I don't know. Personally I make almost all my gear Impen. That only gets you to 2K these days. I mostly leave it at that and do not go for more Impen from CP. This is really low by historical standards. People used to run a minimum of 3K Impen in the past, but it was easier to get back then.

You'll want to use some combination of these sets for max magicka:

Crafty Alfiq
Necropotence (if running pets)
3x Ancient Grace
1x Domihaus
1x Swarm Mother
2x Willpower
2x Trainee
Death Dealer's Fete

However you may also choose to go with one sustain set, especially one that also gives you some stamina sustain, such as:

Shacklebreaker
Amber Plasm
Lich (back bar only)

Your sustain has to come from somewhere. Besides jewelry enchants this could be the Atronach mundus and food. On the other hand, if you use a sustain set, you may use Bewitched Sugar Skulls and / or the Mage mundus for the high magicka. This is why watching Malcolm should be good, as he has very likely worked out the optimal combinations.

If you are a high elf, you get some stamina sustain from your racial passives. If you are another race, for example a Breton, you may want to find some stamina sustain elsewhere and are more likely to want a set like Amber Plasm for breaking free and dodge rolling. The Dark Conversion skill can and should be used to convert any excess stamina into magicka at a net profit. I don't actually play magsorc. I have no idea how much stamina sustain you need. The fact that you can Streak means magsorc needs less than some other classes, but I have met magsorcs in the past who used Amber Plasm, despite that set not giving you a lot of magicka. At the risk of repeating myself: Malcolm will probably tell you what the best tradeoffs are in the current patch ... at least for him and his playstyle. It should be a good starting point.

jaws343 · July 2021

I'm currently running Alfiq, Trainee, Grace of Ancients, and Death Dealers + Swarm Mother 1 piece. All impen.

I run tri-stat on the big pieces, max mag on the little ones. All impen.

I'm a dark elf though, so my max stam pool is naturally higher.

Unbuffed I sit at 27K Health, 21K stam, and 47K mag.

With full Death Dealers stacks, I get to 30K health, 23K stam, and 51K mag. Or close to that at least.

jaws343 · July 2021

eMKa8 wrote: »

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

In PVE, enemies cannot crit you, so impen is useless. In PVP, players can crit you, so anything you can do to reduce the damage of enemy critical damage is a good thing. The durability portion isn't really all that important. And while 127 doesn't seem like much, you would put this on 7 pieces, so you would end up with 889 crit resistance, which is nearly doubling your base value.

Mother's Sorrow mostly isn't good in PVP. An experienced player can use it well there and you can build around it, but they would be better off running something else anyways.

fred4 · July 2021

eMKa8 wrote: »

Doesnt it hurt your spell damage tremendously if you go all max magicka ? Or are all spells abilities also scaled off to max magicka ?

Are skills always affected by mac mag or sometimes only by spell damage ?

Damage skills that cost magicka are always affected by both spell damage and max magicka with the ratio being 10.5 magicka is worth 1 spell damage (roughly, varies a bit by skill, but not by much).

ZOS are constantly changing the exact details around.

Shields are and always have been based on max magicka only, except certain health-based shield, such as as templar Blazing Shield and Undaunted Bone Shield, which scale with health.

Most heals should now scale with magicka, except some scale with health, such as the sorc Clannfear heal.

Some damage skills, notably the delayed burst of templar Purifying Light / Power of the Light scale with max magicka / stamina, but that particular skill will be changed next patch.

Armor set procs that do damage now only scale with weapon / spell damage.

Armor set procs that heal now scale with health.

Some armor set procs now scale from your resistances, but I forget which.

And so on. The devil's in the details.

fred4 · July 2021

eMKa8 wrote: »

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

For crit resistance, I believe 68 = 1%. So 127 is roughly 2%. 3400 gives you 50% crit resistance, which means you completely mitigate crit damage from a player / class that does not have some buff to crit damage. The base crit damage multiplier is 1.5. E.g. your crits do 50% more damage than your normal hits. Players, especially nightblades, can have much higher crit damage multipliers. A Khajiit nightblade could have a crit damage multiplier well over 2.0, although in general that's not common. Count on players having a crit damage multiplier of 1.7 on average, if they're not wearing Malacath. Unlike armor, crit resistance has no cap, by the way. You can wear Impregnable Armor, get over 3400 and this all counts.

Crit resistance mitigates the effect of crit-based burst. A run of the mill stat-based player that is not wearing Malacath and not using procs may rely on a succession of lucky crits to kill you, if the two of you are evenly matched in skill. Crit resistance blunts that burst. You're less likely to suddenly be killed or fall into execute range and, even if you are in execute range, you become harder to kill. If you're ever trying the Impregnable Armor set, this is the effect it has. Of course there is Malacath, which defeats that armor set, but Malacath is kind of nerfed.

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

That is correct. It's just something ZOS threw in so PvP gear is not completely useless in PvE. To be honest it can be kind of nice if you ever do really long grinding sessions in Spellscar / Skyreach and the like.

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

As a rule of thumb: No. Like I've said: Really high crit is good for doing consistently high DPS, such as what you need to do a good parse against a foe that has really high health, e.g. a PvE boss. In PvP you're merely trying to get lucky. All you need is for your Haunting Curse, your Mage's Fury, your Crystal Frags to crit together once. You can force this with Mechanical Acuity, but that set has disadvantages, namely the rather long cooldown. Your crit rate doesn't matter as much as in PvE. You can get 3 lucky crits in a row with 20% crit chance. If you don't, then you shield up, rinse and repeat. Try to burst the target again. You may not need crits to burst them either. Having said that, I wouldn't be happy with a 20% crit rate, but anything in the 30% to 45% range I'm usually happy with in PvP.

I suppose as a sorc there is an additional dimension in that one of your main ongoing heals is Crit Surge (or Power Surge) and that requires crits for you to heal. This is arguably why Force Pulse is a good spammable for you. Force Pulse deals 3 hits in 1 second. That's 3 chances to crit and get your Crit Surge heal, which can proc every one second.

fred4 · July 2021

eMKa8 wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

eMKa8 wrote: »

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

For crit resistance, I believe 68 = 1%. So 127 is roughly 2%. 3400 gives you 50% crit resistance, which means you completely mitigate crit damage from a player / class that does not have some buff to crit damage. The base crit damage multiplier is 1.5. E.g. your crits do 50% more damage than your normal hits. Players, especially nightblades, can have much higher crit damage multipliers. A Khajiit nightblade could have a crit damage multiplier well over 2.0, although in general that's not common. Count on players having a crit damage multiplier of 1.7 on average, if they're not wearing Malacath. Unlike armor, crit resistance has no cap, by the way. You can wear Impregnable Armor, get over 3400 and this all counts.

Crit resistance mitigates the effect of crit-based burst. A run of the mill stat-based player that is not wearing Malacath and not using procs may rely on a succession of lucky crits to kill you, if the two of you are evenly matched in skill. Crit resistance blunts that burst. You're less likely to suddenly be killed or fall into execute range and, even if you are in execute range, you become harder to kill. If you're ever trying the Impregnable Armor set, this is the effect it has. Of course there is Malacath, which defeats that armor set, but Malacath is kind of nerfed.

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

That is correct. It's just something ZOS threw in so PvP gear is not completely useless in PvE. To be honest it can be kind of nice if you ever do really long grinding sessions in Spellscar / Skyreach and the like.

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

As a rule of thumb: No. Like I've said: Really high crit is good for doing consistently high DPS, such as what you need to do a good parse against a foe that has really high health, e.g. a PvE boss. In PvP you're merely trying to get lucky. All you need is for your Haunting Curse, your Mage's Fury, your Crystal Frags to crit together once. You can force this with Mechanical Acuity, but that set has disadvantages, namely the rather long cooldown. Your crit rate doesn't matter as much as in PvE. You can get 3 lucky crits in a row with 20% crit chance. If you don't, then you shield up, rinse and repeat. Try to burst the target again. You may not need crits to burst them either. Having said that, I wouldn't be happy with a 20% crit rate, but anything in the 30% to 45% range I'm usually happy with in PvP.

I suppose as a sorc there is an additional dimension in that one of your main ongoing heals is Crit Surge (or Power Surge) and that requires crits for you to heal. This is arguably why Force Pulse is a good spammable for you. Force Pulse deals 3 hits in 1 second. That's 3 chances to crit and get your Crit Surge heal, which can proc every one second.

fred4 wrote: »

eMKa8 wrote: »

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

For crit resistance, I believe 68 = 1%. So 127 is roughly 2%. 3400 gives you 50% crit resistance, which means you completely mitigate crit damage from a player / class that does not have some buff to crit damage. The base crit damage multiplier is 1.5. E.g. your crits do 50% more damage than your normal hits. Players, especially nightblades, can have much higher crit damage multipliers. A Khajiit nightblade could have a crit damage multiplier well over 2.0, although in general that's not common. Count on players having a crit damage multiplier of 1.7 on average, if they're not wearing Malacath. Unlike armor, crit resistance has no cap, by the way. You can wear Impregnable Armor, get over 3400 and this all counts.

Crit resistance mitigates the effect of crit-based burst. A run of the mill stat-based player that is not wearing Malacath and not using procs may rely on a succession of lucky crits to kill you, if the two of you are evenly matched in skill. Crit resistance blunts that burst. You're less likely to suddenly be killed or fall into execute range and, even if you are in execute range, you become harder to kill. If you're ever trying the Impregnable Armor set, this is the effect it has. Of course there is Malacath, which defeats that armor set, but Malacath is kind of nerfed.

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

That is correct. It's just something ZOS threw in so PvP gear is not completely useless in PvE. To be honest it can be kind of nice if you ever do really long grinding sessions in Spellscar / Skyreach and the like.

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

As a rule of thumb: No. Like I've said: Really high crit is good for doing consistently high DPS, such as what you need to do a good parse against a foe that has really high health, e.g. a PvE boss. In PvP you're merely trying to get lucky. All you need is for your Haunting Curse, your Mage's Fury, your Crystal Frags to crit together once. You can force this with Mechanical Acuity, but that set has disadvantages, namely the rather long cooldown. Your crit rate doesn't matter as much as in PvE. You can get 3 lucky crits in a row with 20% crit chance. If you don't, then you shield up, rinse and repeat. Try to burst the target again. You may not need crits to burst them either. Having said that, I wouldn't be happy with a 20% crit rate, but anything in the 30% to 45% range I'm usually happy with in PvP.

I suppose as a sorc there is an additional dimension in that one of your main ongoing heals is Crit Surge (or Power Surge) and that requires crits for you to heal. This is arguably why Force Pulse is a good spammable for you. Force Pulse deals 3 hits in 1 second. That's 3 chances to crit and get your Crit Surge heal, which can proc every one second.

What are good sources of crit if you dont get them from armor sets ? Because now i might go for “ancient grace” , “trainee 2 pieces” , “crafty alfiq” , 1 monster item and gaze of sithis

But that is all into max magicka and nothing into crit (unless i use slimecraw as a one item bonus). But then i lose 1000 magicka and stamina for swarms or domihause one piece set bonus.

If i wouldnt use crafty alfiq which is 100% magicka max. What would then be another good all round magicka PVP set that gives me a bit of everything , thus might be better overall?

The only good source of crit on a mag-stacking build is Inner Light. Sadly, after doing the UESP, I find that still only gets you to 27.something% these days. Not much, but what can you do. I love, love, love Crit Surge, especially for things like solo PvE, but at that low crit I can see how Crit Surge is not always used by sorcs in PvP, something I've known for a while. In general, if you go for mag-stacking, which you should, you will find that any investment in something else hits your magicka pool and, therefore, shield viability pretty hard. You want to hit that 50K mark, otherwise shields are just crap, especially if you're only running one shield.

eMKa8 · July 2021

fred4 wrote: »

Been replying to another thread. I see you are a magsorc now. The answer to all your questions is fairly simple in that case, because the way to build a PvP magsorc is quite hackneyed and never really changes. You build for max magicka. If you're in CP, then 45K magicka at minimum. More, if you can. I recommend Malcolm's YouTube channel. He is an accomplished PvP magsorc main who has played that class for years. More importantly his build videos always cover a lot of options. With pets. Without pets. With a resto staff. With a 1H+Shield back bar. It's not your typical build video that leaves you with just one build. The short summary of PvP magsorc is:
Buff up with multiple shields. Harness Magicka. Hardened Ward. Healing Ward, if you've taken damage (and only then). In that order. The shields get consumed in the order they are cast. Casting Harness Magicka first gives you sustain back. Casting Healing Ward last protects that ward, so it heals you better.

Attack players by casting Haunting Curse (not optional), Mage's Wrath / Fury (optional), Crystal Frags (if procced) or Force Pulse / Elemental Weapon into an ultimate and / or stun. Ultimate is typically Meteor or Overload. Stun is typically Streak. Malcolm will be much better at explaining this.

Lets say i use crafty alfiq for 5 gear items. What would then be the best trait to go with it ? Would it be divines ? Or impen ? Or tristat ? I guess all max magicka for enchant right ?

Thank you ! You do advise me well ;-)

fred4 · July 2021

Sorry, the enchants. All max magicka? That really, really depends on your food. If you're using Sugar Skulls, then maybe yes. I would aim for a minimum of 15K stamina in CP, though. Let's say you are not running Sugar Skulls, because you want to use food that gives you mag regen. Let's say you're not running Shacklebreaker either. Then, to hit the 15K stamina mark, you probably need Hakeijo enchants. Hakeijo enchants are the best bang for the buck, because you also need health and stamina.
I am not sure how much health to aim for, this patch. Are you running the Clannfear? I think that is a health-based heal. As soon as you use such a skill, as soon as you need to max out two stats, not just one (magicka), Hakeijo enchants are the best way to go.

Don't do this in game, by the way. Use the UESP build editor to plan your build and try different options:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor

eMKa8 · July 2021

Doesnt it hurt your spell damage tremendously if you go all max magicka ? Or are all spells abilities also scaled off to max magicka ?

Are skills always affected by mac mag or sometimes only by spell damage ?

eMKa8 · July 2021

jaws343 wrote: »

I'm currently running Alfiq, Trainee, Grace of Ancients, and Death Dealers + Swarm Mother 1 piece. All impen.

I run tri-stat on the big pieces, max mag on the little ones. All impen.

I'm a dark elf though, so my max stam pool is naturally higher.

Unbuffed I sit at 27K Health, 21K stam, and 47K mag.

With full Death Dealers stacks, I get to 30K health, 23K stam, and 51K mag. Or close to that at least.

Why is impen that good ?
No one seems to use it in pve …

eMKa8 · July 2021

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

fred4 · July 2021

eMKa8 wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

I'm currently running Alfiq, Trainee, Grace of Ancients, and Death Dealers + Swarm Mother 1 piece. All impen.

I run tri-stat on the big pieces, max mag on the little ones. All impen.

I'm a dark elf though, so my max stam pool is naturally higher.

Unbuffed I sit at 27K Health, 21K stam, and 47K mag.

With full Death Dealers stacks, I get to 30K health, 23K stam, and 51K mag. Or close to that at least.

Why is impen that good ?
No one seems to use it in pve …

That's because NPCs don't crit. At all. Ever.

vesselwiththepestle · July 2021

If you want to run a support sorc (heal) in a group with Power Surge, Mother's Sorrow isn't the worst set you could wear

.

eMKa8 · July 2021

fred4 wrote: »

eMKa8 wrote: »

@jaws343

I dont really understand the tooltip of impen. It says its critically resistant … but only with a value of 127 when gold …? Thats seems like NOT a lot

For crit resistance, I believe 68 = 1%. So 127 is roughly 2%. 3400 gives you 50% crit resistance, which means you completely mitigate crit damage from a player / class that does not have some buff to crit damage. The base crit damage multiplier is 1.5. E.g. your crits do 50% more damage than your normal hits. Players, especially nightblades, can have much higher crit damage multipliers. A Khajiit nightblade could have a crit damage multiplier well over 2.0, although in general that's not common. Count on players having a crit damage multiplier of 1.7 on average, if they're not wearing Malacath. Unlike armor, crit resistance has no cap, by the way. You can wear Impregnable Armor, get over 3400 and this all counts.

Crit resistance mitigates the effect of crit-based burst. A run of the mill stat-based player that is not wearing Malacath and not using procs may rely on a succession of lucky crits to kill you, if the two of you are evenly matched in skill. Crit resistance blunts that burst. You're less likely to suddenly be killed or fall into execute range and, even if you are in execute range, you become harder to kill. If you're ever trying the Impregnable Armor set, this is the effect it has. Of course there is Malacath, which defeats that armor set, but Malacath is kind of nerfed.

And the durability damage of 50% ?!? What is that really ? That seems very useless isnt it ? If i am not mistaken it says that you dont have to repair it that often … right ?

That is correct. It's just something ZOS threw in so PvP gear is not completely useless in PvE. To be honest it can be kind of nice if you ever do really long grinding sessions in Spellscar / Skyreach and the like.

Is mother sorrow good in pvp ?!

As a rule of thumb: No. Like I've said: Really high crit is good for doing consistently high DPS, such as what you need to do a good parse against a foe that has really high health, e.g. a PvE boss. In PvP you're merely trying to get lucky. All you need is for your Haunting Curse, your Mage's Fury, your Crystal Frags to crit together once. You can force this with Mechanical Acuity, but that set has disadvantages, namely the rather long cooldown. Your crit rate doesn't matter as much as in PvE. You can get 3 lucky crits in a row with 20% crit chance. If you don't, then you shield up, rinse and repeat. Try to burst the target again. You may not need crits to burst them either. Having said that, I wouldn't be happy with a 20% crit rate, but anything in the 30% to 45% range I'm usually happy with in PvP.

I suppose as a sorc there is an additional dimension in that one of your main ongoing heals is Crit Surge (or Power Surge) and that requires crits for you to heal. This is arguably why Force Pulse is a good spammable for you. Force Pulse deals 3 hits in 1 second. That's 3 chances to crit and get your Crit Surge heal, which can proc every one second.

What are good sources of crit if you dont get them from armor sets ? Because now i might go for “ancient grace” , “trainee 2 pieces” , “crafty alfiq” , 1 monster item and gaze of sithis

But that is all into max magicka and nothing into crit (unless i use slimecraw as a one item bonus). But then i lose 1000 magicka and stamina for swarms or domihause one piece set bonus.

If i wouldnt use crafty alfiq which is 100% magicka max. What would then be another good all round magicka PVP set that gives me a bit of everything , thus might be better overall?

The Elder Scrolls Online

Trait Question about Phoenix Set & Slimecraw

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