Weapon enchants and traits

eMKa8

I was thinking of doing the following .
2 Mother sorrow staffs (both inferno) and then do this

Backbar : Infused + weapon damage enchant
Frontbar : infused + flame enchant

Does that hold up as a good set up , or should i use another frontbar trait instead of infused ?

Ould it be better to use precise + flame enchant ?

the1andonlyskwex

At least in BGs, I find that a sharpened frontbar weapon seems to make a huge difference (in a good way). That might shift depending on where you play though. What works in PvP can often depend somewhat on your local meta (which can change based on platform, server, game mode, campaign, MMR, etc.).

fred4

Mother's Sorrow in PvP? No. It's a PvE set. You're trying to burst people down, not do consistently high damage. The PvP equivalent of Mother's Sorrow is called Mechanical Acuity . Crit chance can be useful on some builds, but I wouldn't say you need more than 40% in PvP. Hard enough to get, these days, but you don't need full Mother's Sorrow if you slot Inner Light. You are not looking to do consistent damage. Instead you are hoping for a succession of random crits when it counts. That can even happen on a build with base crit chance. Like I said, 40% is about as much as I'd push for. The only class where I'd maybe, just maybe use Mother's Sorrow in PvP is a magplar. That's due to Sweeps not being burst. It being 4 hits that individually crit, or not, means you're actually only trying to apply pressure on a templar and the reason why Sweeps / Jabs does so much damage as per tooltip. It's not a bursty skill. In general, if you're looking for a "standard" damage set in PvP, Spinner's beats Mother's Sorrow, but there's also Stuhn. Both classes that have crit bonuses, nightblade and templar, also have skills that can reliably proc Stuhn.

In general your enchants have to be in service of generating burst. The general thing, the thing that practically every PvPer does, is use an Increase Weapon / Spell Damage enchant on the back bar. Sometimes on the front bar, but commonly on the back bar when the back bar is ranged. It's easy to initiate combat that way, then swap to your front bar. The back bar trait may be Infused. It may even be Infused + Heartland Conqueror and / or Torug's Pact, which will up your weapon / spell damage substantially over the +348 base value of the enchant. You then have 5 seconds to bar swap and try to burst your opponent. However Defending or Powered back bars are also common, especially since damage is so high right now and you also need to defend.

For the front bar Sharpened is best, hands down. I believe the best enchant is Shock by popular agreement, e.g. for the chance to proc Minor Vulnerability. Depends on build, though. Some classes already have Minor Vulnerability in their toolkit.

The only reason I have gone Infused on the front bar is out of sheer desperation in the past, e.g. to run a "deal magic damage and restore health" enchant and improve my healing while dealing damage. There were good Infused weapon options in the distant past, such as Oblivion enchants and Prismatic enchants, but they're all nerfed.

Nirnhoned is also "so yesterday". It's less damage than Sharpened and the only good reason to run it is as a compromise when you're front-barring a heal, such as Rally. Since Sharpened was buffed again fairly recently to it's current values, Nirnhoned is generally out.

Precise may be worth trying as a healer or in specific builds. If you are a nightblade, one approach is to build heavily into crit, since nightblade has +10% crit damage from a passive and another +10% from Grim Focus. Add Race Against Time (Minor Force), CP, Khajiit and Shadow Mundus and you're pushing a crit modifier well beyond 200%. In that case and probably only then is it a good idea to run something like a Precise Maul, possibly with the Heartland Conqueror set (+14.4% crit chance).

By the way, two destro staves? Unless one of them is an ice staff, no, just no. You're not a PvE DD. You're a PvPer now. You need defenses. Your back bar should be resto, 1H+Shield, a bow or an ice staff. Maybe, just maybe dual-wield, if you have an arena weapon that gives you a defensive buff. Double fire staves? Only if you're trying to prove some sort of point . Should you use an ice staff back bar, be aware that it's light attacks are really slow. Activating the back bar enchant into a bar swap will only work if you are quite close to the target, maybe 10m, not from a greater distance.

chuckythexii

fred4 wrote: »

Nirnhoned is also "so yesterday". It's less damage than Sharpened and the only good reason to run it is as a compromise when you're front-barring a heal, such as Rally. Since Sharpened was buffed again fairly recently to it's current values, Nirnhoned is generally out.

So this is not entirely true, penetration effectiveness is on a bell curve. It is relatively ineffective against light armored targets which haven't got much resist to penetrate, it is also ineffective against heavy armor players that over-buff their resists because they know people are using penetration. It is most effective against medium armor users where you get the full value of penetration without over-penetrating.

So against light/tanks damage increase is better, against medium/bruisers penetration is better.

Penetration also has no effect on other forms of damage mitigation like protection or CP reductions. It also does not benefit as much from damage enhancement like brutality or crits.

Also if you don't think people are running around with extra resists go ahead and look up the multiple tank/WW complaint threads.

fred4

eMKa8 wrote: »

A lot of pvp builds focus heavily into max magicka instead of spell power or crit.

For sorcs, yes. That's because your shields scale with magicka and because (some) healing skills now scale with magicka. In case of other classes, especially ones that don't use shields, those builds may however be living in the past.

Before CP 2.0 you got +20% health / magicka / stamina simply for having 300+ CP. This matched the Major Brutality / Major Sorcery bonus (+20% weapon / spell damage). Add Inner Light (+7%) and some class / skill passives, for example +8% magicka from slotting a Siphoning skill as a nightblade, and you easily got to +35% magicka in CP. This beat the multiplier you could get for spell damage, which for most classes is just 20% (Major Sorcery). The exception is and always was templar, which also has access to Minor Sorcery (another +10% weapon / spell damage). In other words: On every magicka class, but templar, you could easily get a better magicka multiplier than spell damage multiplier.

By the way, the coefficients differ a bit per skill, but generally 10.5 magicka or stamina is worth the same as 1 spell or weapon damage. For example, if something gives you +100 spell damage, this increases the damage of your skills roughly the same amount as something that gives you +1050 magicka.

Will i miss out on spell damage or is that covered with the insane high amount of magicka ?

So, yes, having an insane amount of magicka will compensate for a lack of spell damage. However the +20% multiplier from CP is gone. With CP 2.0 we only get flat resource buffs. This means that spell damage now generally outperforms magicka, because we can still get +20% spell damage from Major Sorcery. You can't match that multiplier for stacking magicka, however as a sorc you are stuck. Your class relies on shields in PvP. You have to stack magicka, because that's how the class works. This is OK, because magsorcs have historically been OP, the best-performing magicka PvP class in tier list after tier list.

Things have always been different on the stamina side, by the way. You get +20% weapon damage from Major Brutality. If you are a DK you also get another +10% from Minor Brutality. Wearing medium armor granted you another +15% in the past and, today, still +14% in 7x medium. It was always better to stack weapon damage on a stamina class, with the possible exception of werewolves who got a stamina bonus (I forget whether it was %-based in the past), stamplars, because Power of the Light scales with max stamina (will be changed next patch), and DKs, because in the distant past their ultimates restored resources based on % of max resource. At that time sets like Hulking Draugr were meta for DK.

Does a proc like the one from flame blossom ONLY scale off to spell or weapon damage ? It says so in the tooltip , as it is not mentioning the max magicka… can that be true ?

Yes, that is correct. Welcome to today's patch / meta, where procs have been adjusted thus. This is one of the reasons I'm saying sorcs have very hackneyed builds. You have to stack magicka and you can't use procs. Unless you want to try something that is probably very off-meta and likely won't work well, procs are out for a sorc. Again, sorcs have always been the strongest magicka class in PvP, so this part of ZOS' balancing I agree with. I believe magsorcs are still decent, but probably not great anymore. Still at or near the top of the magicka classes, but not as competitive with stamina as they once were. That said, Streak is still an extremely strong PvP skill and Overload still hits hard.

I also never invested in penetration and stuff like that.

Welcome to PvP. PvE bosses have a maxium of 18.2K resistances. Players can have up to about 40K. By the way, 33K resistances put you at cap in PvE (50% damage mitigation), however penetration gets deducted from a player's resistances. For example if a player with 40K resistances faces an opponent with 15K penetration, then their effective resistance is 25K in that matchup, e.g. it is underneath the cap.

[EDIT: The following is my original reaction to chuckythexii's comment. Please also see my reply to him. He is on to something. However as a rule of thumb I still think Sharpened is a good recommendation.] What chuckythexii has said about tanks is nonsense. Unless you're running a skill such as Corrosive Armor or Onslaught, which negates all ressistances, more penetration is always good in PvP. You especially need it against tanks [with caveats, see next post], but even a buffed light armor build has 15K to 20K resistances (and typically more spell resistance than physical). It is hard enough to get your penetration into that range (15K to 20K) unless you count a Balorgh proc (a set you won't be using as an overloading magsorc).

Armor resistances are the single biggest factor (up to 50%) in ZOS' damage mitigation formula other than blocking (55% at base, I believe) and Mist Form (75%). The next biggest factor has been Major Protection in the past, when it was 30%. All these other forms of mitigation have been nerfed. Major Protection sits at 10%, down from 30%. Minor Protection at 5%, down from 8%. Minor Maim - only 5% now. Blessing of Potentates - anyone remember that set? - down to a measly 3%. All forms of mitigation are also multiplicative, by the way. You can't get 100% mitigation, because of that.

Stacking armor tends to feel better and better the more you stack. This is not just because you start to have substantially more of it than the opposing player's penetration. It is because adding to armor is, well, additive. The math works out such that adding, for example, 10% armor (6.6K) to an existing build is more damage mitigation than wearing a set like Buffer of the Swift (10% on paper also). This is why shredding armor is so effective.

Maybe I'm missing something [EDIT: Yes, see below, however for average encounters, maybe not]. From all I know, from practical experience and from watching duels on Twitch, penetration is one of if not the biggest damage-enhancing factors in PvP. Certainly when it comes to Sharpened vs. Nirnhoned, I believe Sharpened to be a no brainer at current values, except if your objective is to strike a balance between damage and also buffing your front-barred heal.

If i have a lot of magicka and high damage shields …. Would it then still be important to go impen ??

Yes.

I was thinking of doing my large pieces into infused and prismatic defense

That may or may not be a good option on a magsorc. Watch Malcolm. He plays magsorc. I don't. He is more likely to tell you where the best tradeoff is, although we're probably getting into subjective territory here. Personally I don't use Infused armor. I am more likely to go Impentrable or Well-Fitted. I like dodge rolling. Be sure to invest into Arcane Alacrity CP as a magsorc, by the way.

… … but what can i do with my other gear ? Would that best be impen or can it be divines or even invigorating ?

Impen or Well-Fitted. Divines probably only (a) if you share the pieces with your PvE build and you want to be cheap or (b) if you're using the Shadow mundus. Invigorating? Huh? What's that? (Rhetorical question. I know what it is. It's just that no one uses Invigorating. In any build. Ever. )

fred4

eMKa8 wrote: »

You mentioned mist form and just looked it up … Wow , that sees like an insane good skill … and apparantly it does NOT cost a thing ? How does that work exactly ? Can i cast skills when under mist form? Or can i heal when in mist form ?

You can't cast skills and I believe all your regen is cut off now (they keep changing this - you'll have to try). It is a toggle. While it's toggled on you gradually lose magicka. If you want to be a troll, you can sustain Mist From infinitely by wearing some set that gives you magicka from being attacked, such as Desert Rose, and probably some set that heals you from being attacked. By the way: Don't use Mist Form on a sorc. You have Streak. No one uses Mist Form on a sorc.

Just seen that there is such a thing as “escapist Poison” which is ideal to kill stealthy nightblades 🥷🏻!!

Malcolm uses those. They help your mobility. They do not help you kill nightblades. For that you want detection potions.

Are there any potions you can recommend when being attacked by an invisivle nightblade ?

Spell Power, Detection, Magicka or Immovability, Detection, Magicka (Corn Flower, Wormwood and either Lady's Smock or Columbine).

For what it's worth, I put together a sorc in the UESP build editor. I don't play magsorc right now ... Malcolm or A.N.Other has the better experience ... so don't necessarily run this, but it will give you an idea how I would prioritise:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=369047

1. Priority number one: Magicka, magicka, magicka. 56K on the back bar, in CP, on this build. That's why we are using 1H + Shield (extra mag from Infused Shield). That's why Bound Aegis. This will be purely for passive use, e.g. magicka and minor resistance buffs. That's also why Meteor (another 2% from Mage's Guild passive), although it is also a good ultimate to use. That's why Inner Light on the front bar, also mostly passively.
2. No Crit Surge. Crit is just hard to come by, so forget it. No resto staff either, but the Twilight is a monster heal.
3. Only one shield for you and the Twilight. Just no room for two in this build, but you have a monster heal and monster magicka. Having played magsorc in the past, I find that you cannot always cast two shields anyway, because they are expensive. Well, this skirts around that problem.
4. Boundless Storm ... armor skills are a no brainer on any class. This one is no exception. Speed and nightblade esposure from this skill.
5. A mix of stamina and magicka sustain on the jewelry. I wanted to get to 2K mag recovery. Hope the stamina recovery is enough. If low on stamina: Streak.
6. High elf ... for the stam recovery the class gives you (among other things).

Again: This will be rough. I just know it. You can't entirely theorycraft a build and expect it to work. I do, however, know roughly what I want ... how much stam, how much sustain, and what has worked for me in the past. Take it as that. See what I prioritised. Crit and pen were hard to get, so I forgot about them, but look at the tooltips. I think this build will hit hard. Using the pet, some passive skills and only one shield also makes for a relatively easy rotation ... if it works. Due to no Crit Surge you will need Spell Power potions. Due to Inner Light on the front bar you can make that Spell Power, Detection, Magicka potions.

chuckythexii

eMKa8 wrote: »

@fred4 @chuckythexii

If i only use sharpness on my frontbar , an no extra pen on my armor , would that then be good ? Or do i need to go all in with the pen or not at all to make it count ?
I guess an additional 3K pen can already do somzthing right? Or is it worthless if i dont overtop
some crit resistances ?

You mentioned mist form and just looked it up … Wow , that sees like an insane good skill … and apparantly it does NOT cost a thing ? How does that work exactly ? Can i cast skills when under mist form? Or can i heal when in mist form ?

Just seen that there is such a thing as “escapist Poison” which is ideal to kill stealthy nightblades 🥷🏻!!

Do you guys use poisons a lot or do you prefer enchantments ?

Are there any potions you can recommend when being attacked by an invisivle nightblade ?

About impen and well fitted. I thought infused on bigger pieces with tristat prismatic defense might make it more tanky on all stats … thus bigger shields and better overall stats. I guess i wont need that much wel fitted then because i have more staminaW
Would it be a good idea to go 3 big pieces all infused and then all other impen … for that reason ?

You guys truly give a lot of explanation ! Grateful for it. Been playing this game for 2 years now and still am completely perplex with the complexity of it all !

Ok so this isn't really an answer I can just say yes or no on, you need to figure out how it works with your own build.

The reason why penetration is generally more effective than damage is that mitigation does not scale linearly while damage increase does. Every 660 mitigation provides 1% damage reduction, a character with only 660 resist therefore has an increase in effective hit points of 1%. However, a character at max resist of 33200 has a 50% damage reduction this translates into a 100% increase in EHP. To visualize this, if I have 100hp with 1% reduction of damage it takes 101 (101.1repeating technically) points of damage to kill me. If I have 100hp with 50% reduction it takes 200 points of damage to kill me.

Now the decision of whether or not Nirnhoned or sharpened is better is also not that straightforward. Sharpened with a penetration of 3200ish is about equivalent of a 10% damage buff against a target at exactly 33200 resist which is its most efficient. if the targets resist is 34400 (only1200 over cap) it is only a 6% buff, as you can see penetration benefit falls off dramatically if the target is not in the sweet spot for you. It is much less dramatic if the resists are under but still falls off, to give an idea at about 20k resist 1% penetration is equal to about 1.5% damage increase so a 1/1.5 ratio instead of 1/2 at max mitigation.

From this it would seem Nirnhoned is probably the best option but its also not that simple. Nirnhoned increases the weapons damage by 15%, while sharpened will affect all of your weapon damage, so you need to consider where most of your base weapon damage comes from, you get 1000 base plus potentially jewelry/passive skill bonuses that will not be affected by the Nirnhoned trait. An Orc using a greatsword will get racial and weapon passives that are not benefitted by Nirnhoned but will benefit from sharpened, A Nord with an Axe will not get such passives. Sets that add weapon or spell damage will also not benefit from Nirnhoned. You need to figure out what percentage of your base spell/weapon damage comes from your weapon then multiply that by the 15% of Nirnhoned to get the actual number you should compare to the penetration. EG if half of your damage is your weapon then 15%*.5= 7.5% overall damage bonus.

Now this all changes when you start to consider team play, the amount of penetration you need to deal with someone at 40k resist may not be efficient for you to build personally but if your are teamed up with someone like my tank that applies major/minor breach, tremorscale, and infused crushing weapon (~16k resist reduction) with a single spammable taunt then it does become efficient for you to use personal penetration buffs because that will bring even the tankiest 50k resist pariah's into your "sweet spot".

Now I know I've gone on a lot about the variance between the two but I'd actually suggest defending trait with F. Brass on your armor as you learn PvP. The reason is pretty simple, you need to focus on staying alive developing a good bar(s) you are comfortable with using, resource management, and generally getting a feel for PvP. You will be much more useful to your team doing moderate damage alive than a dead min/maxer, as technically, a living player does an infinite percent more damage than a dead one. I would suggest a different setup than most do, I think most use damage on front bar with sustain on back bar which I gather to mean primary/back-up. Instead you should do sustain on front bar, that is one damage spammable with your buffs/heals, focus on keeping those up and staying alive LA weaving your spammable, manage your resources, while looking for an opportunnity, once one presents itself switch to damage bar burst a combo then go right back to not dying mode. Rinse/repeat.

As for the other questions

If you use block or dodge roll effectively get the respective armor traits for them, if you don't impen.

For glyphs Tri stats are expensive and I wouldn't bother with them until I found a build I was gonna keep for a while, most of my toons right now are running around with purple gear its not that big a difference. Finding the right build you are comfortable with will do way more than min/maxing will.

poisons are generally more potent than enchants however comma they are randomly applied which makes it harder to time bursts with them. If you use a set up like I suggested it would do well on a front bar then do your burst when it procs if you aren't under pressure yourself. I use enchants mostly because I'm cheap.

Dealing with cloaky nightblades requires either slotting detect skills or pots, I think flare is the detect one for Magic users, I think it is getting a major protection buff next patch I think making it perfect for the front bar of set up I suggested. Not sure tho I think its something I read on forums but that might also be dated. Otherwise just try and survive their burst and they are actually pretty easy to kill. lots of times they get tunnel visioned and won't run away allowing you to kill. keeping on a primary "don't die" bar makes this a lot easier to accomplish as Break free->dodge roll->block/burst heal/shield is easier to accomplish than break free->bar swap-> same thing. You can also break free-> counter cc to mess up their burst.

Mist form does have a cost it drains magicka fast, and you can't heal. Its more of an escape skill. It's good for that but probly not much else. A stam character might be able to try using it offensively to nuke someone real quick before they ran out of gas but that's beyond me.

As for what skills you should use, ask Fred. I don't really use magic so I can't tell you what destro/resto stuff to use to accomplish all that.

fred4

eMKa8 wrote: »

LOL

Ok i wont use mist form.
Small question though with your set up…

I always heard that you should have infused on the backbar if you want your weapon/spell damage enchant to still work while going back to frontbar …

Is that correct ?

Or does it also come to frontbar if you are not using the infused bar ?

I actually dont use wall of flames or stuff like that so its not that the infused part will continue proccing when on front. But i just thought you NEED infused if you want to have those stats with you when changing bars …

Would damage enchant and defending be a better choice?

An Infused weapon enchant, the weapon / spell damage enchant, can proc every 5 seconds for 5 seconds. That will carry over to the other bar. If the weapon is not Infused, that will also carry over to the other bar, but it can only be procced every 10 seconds for 5 seconds.

You have to make sure you hit someone with a light attack, heavy attack or weapon skill (not class skill), while you're still on the back bar. That won't happen when you're running 1H+Shield on a sorc, because you will generally be at range, so in my build the back bar enchant basically won't proc at all. It's just that, from experience, 1H+Shield makes you feel tankier than a resto staff, if you have a good class heal (the Twilight). I know Malcolm says blocking does nothing when you shield, which was very interesting to hear and something I did not know. I am also a dodge rolling player by nature, not so much blocking, much like him. Nonetheless I find that block casting a strong heal, the Twilight heal, is a strong defensive playstyle, something you do on magicka templars. That's the idea behind my build.

eMKa8

2 more questions in general .

Is it better in pvp yo use a flame enchant or a shock enchant ?
I guess the only difference between both is the effect they have while proccing right? The damage from shock or fire is the same isnt it ? And the only difference is the status effect burning versus concussion ?

Frontbar inferno staff for pvp . Is it better to have it precise , nirnhoned , infused or sharpened ?

I already have backbar infused with spell/weapon damage enchant

eMKa8

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

At least in BGs, I find that a sharpened frontbar weapon seems to make a huge difference (in a good way). That might shift depending on where you play though. What works in PvP can often depend somewhat on your local meta (which can change based on platform, server, game mode, campaign, MMR, etc.).

Does the additional penetration make more indirect damage then having a precise or infused trait then which deals supposedly more damage ?

I have no clue about impen and sharpened because i never played pvp before . But i seem to be quite good at it LOL ;-)

I usually suck but i just had a 19-8 kill death ratio

fred4

eMKa8 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

At least in BGs, I find that a sharpened frontbar weapon seems to make a huge difference (in a good way). That might shift depending on where you play though. What works in PvP can often depend somewhat on your local meta (which can change based on platform, server, game mode, campaign, MMR, etc.).

Does the additional penetration make more indirect damage then having a precise or infused trait then which deals supposedly more damage ?

Yes. Substantially. I mean, it depends what sources of penetration you are comparing and what content you are playing, but for PvP and when comparing weapon traits, then yes. The exception would be builds that specifically try to capitalise on enchants, such as Heartland Conqueror / Torug's Pact builds or maybe some build that's using the Charged trait. Those are exceptions, though. The rule of thumb is that Sharpened is best.

I have no clue about impen and sharpened because i never played pvp before .

You generally can't have enough of both.

But i seem to be quite good at it LOL ;-)
I usually suck but i just had a 19-8 kill death ratio

A BG? Congrats! Be aware, however, that BGs use something called MMR - match making ranking. It means that beginners are paired up with other beginners and that, if you queue solo, you are matched against other solo players, not coordinated groups.

eMKa8

fred4 wrote: »

Mother's Sorrow in PvP? No. It's a PvE set. You're trying to burst people down, not do consistently high damage. The PvP equivalent of Mother's Sorrow is called Mechanical Acuity . Crit chance can be useful on some builds, but I wouldn't say you need more than 40% in PvP. Hard enough to get, these days, but you don't need full Mother's Sorrow if you slot Inner Light. You are not looking to do consistent damage. Instead you are hoping for a succession of random crits when it counts. That can even happen on a build with base crit chance. Like I said, 40% is about as much as I'd push for. The only class where I'd maybe, just maybe use Mother's Sorrow in PvP is a magplar. That's due to Sweeps not being burst. It being 4 hits that individually crit, or not, means you're actually only trying to apply pressure on a templar and the reason why Sweeps / Jabs does so much damage as per tooltip. It's not a bursty skill. In general, if you're looking for a "standard" damage set in PvP, Spinner's beats Mother's Sorrow, but there's also Stuhn. Both classes that have crit bonuses, nightblade and templar, also have skills that can reliably proc Stuhn.

In general your enchants have to be in service of generating burst. The general thing, the thing that practically every PvPer does, is use an Increase Weapon / Spell Damage enchant on the back bar. Sometimes on the front bar, but commonly on the back bar when the back bar is ranged. It's easy to initiate combat that way, then swap to your front bar. The back bar trait may be Infused. It may even be Infused + Heartland Conqueror and / or Torug's Pact, which will up your weapon / spell damage substantially over the +348 base value of the enchant. You then have 5 seconds to bar swap and try to burst your opponent. However Defending or Powered back bars are also common, especially since damage is so high right now and you also need to defend.

For the front bar Sharpened is best, hands down. I believe the best enchant is Shock by popular agreement, e.g. for the chance to proc Minor Vulnerability. Depends on build, though. Some classes already have Minor Vulnerability in their toolkit.

The only reason I have gone Infused on the front bar is out of sheer desperation in the past, e.g. to run a "deal magic damage and restore health" enchant and improve my healing while dealing damage. There were good Infused weapon options in the distant past, such as Oblivion enchants and Prismatic enchants, but they're all nerfed.

Nirnhoned is also "so yesterday". It's less damage than Sharpened and the only good reason to run it is as a compromise when you're front-barring a heal, such as Rally. Since Sharpened was buffed again fairly recently to it's current values, Nirnhoned is generally out.

Precise may be worth trying as a healer or in specific builds. If you are a nightblade, one approach is to build heavily into crit, since nightblade has +10% crit damage from a passive and another +10% from Grim Focus. Add Race Against Time (Minor Force), CP, Khajiit and Shadow Mundus and you're pushing a crit modifier well beyond 200%. In that case and probably only then is it a good idea to run something like a Precise Maul, possibly with the Heartland Conqueror set (+14.4% crit chance).

By the way, two destro staves? Unless one of them is an ice staff, no, just no. You're not a PvE DD. You're a PvPer now. You need defenses. Your back bar should be resto, 1H+Shield, a bow or an ice staff. Maybe, just maybe dual-wield, if you have an arena weapon that gives you a defensive buff. Double fire staves? Only if you're trying to prove some sort of point . Should you use an ice staff back bar, be aware that it's light attacks are really slow. Activating the back bar enchant into a bar swap will only work if you are quite close to the target, maybe 10m, not from a greater distance.

Loooool, proving a point with 2 inferno staffs … 🤦🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️. Not at all , i just realise i must truly S*** at this game … although i have become better when looking at my stats in BG.

Honestly you gave me a lot of insights ! I have been playing for 1,5 years now and am only level 30 for resto staffs , i thought that was only for healers 🤭.

A lot of pvp builds focus heavily into max magicka instead of spell power or crit. Will i miss out on spell damage or is that covered with the insane high amount of magicka ?

Does a proc like the one from flame blossom ONLY scale off to spell or weapon damage ? It says so in the tooltip , as it is not mentioning the max magicka… can that be true ?

I also never invested in penetration and stuff like that.

If i have a lot of magicka and high damage shields …. Would it then still be important to go impen ?? I was thinking of doing my large pieces into infused and prismatic defense … … but what can i do with my other gear ? Would that best be impen or can it be divines or even invigorating ? What would be good for pvp ?

I learned a lot today already … Thank you !

fred4

chuckythexii wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Nirnhoned is also "so yesterday". It's less damage than Sharpened and the only good reason to run it is as a compromise when you're front-barring a heal, such as Rally. Since Sharpened was buffed again fairly recently to it's current values, Nirnhoned is generally out.

So this is not entirely true, penetration effectiveness is on a bell curve. It is relatively ineffective against light armored targets which haven't got much resist to penetrate, it is also ineffective against heavy armor players that over-buff their resists because they know people are using penetration. It is most effective against medium armor users where you get the full value of penetration without over-penetrating.

So against light/tanks damage increase is better, against medium/bruisers penetration is better.

Penetration also has no effect on other forms of damage mitigation like protection or CP reductions. It also does not benefit as much from damage enhancement like brutality or crits.

Also if you don't think people are running around with extra resists go ahead and look up the multiple tank/WW complaint threads.

@eMKa8, please also read this.

Hmm. OK, so despite what I've said in my looong reply to the OP, I am beginning to see your point. If you're facing a light armor build you may be overpenetrating. Even if you're not, their effective resistances may be so low that other factors, such as Buffer of the Swift, weigh more heavily in the mitigation formula. That won't worry me much, though, because I'll kill a squishy build either way, unless they were shielding a lot. Like a sorc. Hmmmm.

With a high resistance build that is, in fact, over cap, I can now also see how some of your penetration will be wasted. If your pen only brought their effective resistances down to cap, then pen does exactly zilch. It's just, I was watching The Real Godzilla on stream when he specced his mag DK all into pen for the first time an duelled with it. He absolutely decimated everyone and has been swearing by pen ever since. I suppose people would not be outright tanks in duels. You're giving me something to think about. Stacking very high weapon damage or a very high crit multiplier may be good alternatives.

chuckythexii

fred4 wrote: »

chuckythexii wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Nirnhoned is also "so yesterday". It's less damage than Sharpened and the only good reason to run it is as a compromise when you're front-barring a heal, such as Rally. Since Sharpened was buffed again fairly recently to it's current values, Nirnhoned is generally out.

So this is not entirely true, penetration effectiveness is on a bell curve. It is relatively ineffective against light armored targets which haven't got much resist to penetrate, it is also ineffective against heavy armor players that over-buff their resists because they know people are using penetration. It is most effective against medium armor users where you get the full value of penetration without over-penetrating.

So against light/tanks damage increase is better, against medium/bruisers penetration is better.

Penetration also has no effect on other forms of damage mitigation like protection or CP reductions. It also does not benefit as much from damage enhancement like brutality or crits.

Also if you don't think people are running around with extra resists go ahead and look up the multiple tank/WW complaint threads.

@eMKa8, please also read this.

Hmm. OK, so despite what I've said in my looong reply to the OP, I am beginning to see your point. If you're facing a light armor build you may be overpenetrating. Even if you're not, their effective resistances may be so low that other factors, such as Buffer of the Swift, weigh more heavily in the mitigation formula. That won't worry me much, though, because I'll kill a squishy build either way, unless they were shielding a lot. Like a sorc. Hmmmm.

With a high resistance build that is, in fact, over cap, I can now also see how some of your penetration will be wasted. If your pen only brought their effective resistances down to cap, then pen does exactly zilch. It's just, I was watching The Real Godzilla on stream when he specced his mag DK all into pen for the first time an duelled with it. He absolutely decimated everyone and has been swearing by pen ever since. I suppose people would not be outright tanks in duels. You're giving me something to think about. Stacking very high weapon damage or a very high crit multiplier may be good alternatives.

Metas be like that. I also used to swear by penetration, depending on how much you have it is the most effective when the target is about 20k-40k resist (the upper window closes as you have less). The thing is once a streamer makes something popular, everyone starts to build against it, then a new build comes along to take advantage of those builds and so forth. There are now 50k resist builds out there. Right now I mix moderate weapon damage with 6-9k pen depending on flanking and moderate crit bonuses again depending on flanking. Given the random nature of opponents in BG which is where I do most of my PvP more well rounded builds will perform better.

Cyro I think is different because you have more ability to choose who to engage and when so you can specialize more.

eMKa8

@fred4 @chuckythexii

If i only use sharpness on my frontbar , an no extra pen on my armor , would that then be good ? Or do i need to go all in with the pen or not at all to make it count ?
I guess an additional 3K pen can already do somzthing right? Or is it worthless if i dont overtop
some crit resistances ?

You mentioned mist form and just looked it up … Wow , that sees like an insane good skill … and apparantly it does NOT cost a thing ? How does that work exactly ? Can i cast skills when under mist form? Or can i heal when in mist form ?

Just seen that there is such a thing as “escapist Poison” which is ideal to kill stealthy nightblades 🥷🏻!!

Do you guys use poisons a lot or do you prefer enchantments ?

Are there any potions you can recommend when being attacked by an invisivle nightblade ?

About impen and well fitted. I thought infused on bigger pieces with tristat prismatic defense might make it more tanky on all stats … thus bigger shields and better overall stats. I guess i wont need that much wel fitted then because i have more staminaW
Would it be a good idea to go 3 big pieces all infused and then all other impen … for that reason ?

You guys truly give a lot of explanation ! Grateful for it. Been playing this game for 2 years now and still am completely perplex with the complexity of it all !

eMKa8

LOL

Ok i wont use mist form.
Small question though with your set up…

I always heard that you should have infused on the backbar if you want your weapon/spell damage enchant to still work while going back to frontbar …

Is that correct ?

Or does it also come to frontbar if you are not using the infused bar ?

I actually dont use wall of flames or stuff like that so its not that the infused part will continue proccing when on front. But i just thought you NEED infused if you want to have those stats with you when changing bars …

Would damage enchant and defending be a better choice?

moo_2021

chuckythexii wrote: »

So this is not entirely true, penetration effectiveness is on a bell curve. It is relatively ineffective against light armored targets which haven't got much resist to penetrate, it is also ineffective against heavy armor players that over-buff their resists because they know people are using penetration. It is most effective against medium armor users where you get the full value of penetration without over-penetrating.

So against light/tanks damage increase is better, against medium/bruisers penetration is better.

How much target resistance or base penetration would make it marginally irrelevant?

I'm trying it in UESP build editor, with 50k target resist, 47% crit and 90% crit damage, and a base of 11k penetration, choosing The Lover mundus stone still gives better effective weapon power than other options.

But target mitigation is only 24% because from the formula only 33k resist is used for calculation. Is it outdated??