Max Magica MagSorc in Heavy Armor [video]

divnyi

https://youtu.be/RJjk9gIsvyE

malistorr

Seems like it wouldn't be a good thing to me (mag toon in heavy armor) since you're missing all the huge buffs to both defense against magical attacks and your offensive buffs that you get from wearing light armor. I'm sure the high max mag is great though and I'm sure you do well in this setup simply because you're a good player. I wonder if you've tried 5x1x1 with 5 light armor to get the undaunted passive and more offensive buffs. Then use a set besides Spectre's Eye like Pariah if you need defense or Spinner's or Bright-Throat if you want even more mag and offense?

divnyi

@malistorr I'm surely not missing anything on magical resistance front - heavy armor gives flat out more resistance then light armor. You can see that I'm capped in CP and it's not golden gear and not all armors are nirn/reinforced (this would probably cap physical too).

Sure, I miss some damage for not wearing light armor, but I'm missing damage for not using curse->fury->shards too, but I'm okay with this. More HP and more armor and more heals compensate me the lack of offensive, which is honestly absolutely not bad for this amount of survivability.

Pariah require to be double-barred, Spectre is backbar set with magica & armor on 2-3pc for frontbar - just like I need. Maybe it doesn't sound very impressive, but evasion is unavailable for this build in any other form, and it cuts a lots of heaviest burst damage hitters.

Lastly, if I go Pariah, it won't be max magica build. My damage and my shields both scale with magica, and it's +5% inner light +4% mages guild passive +8% bound armor +6% undaunted = +23%, which is better scaling than Major Sorcery for SD.

malistorr

Ah yes I see now (after looking it up) that armor gives protection against physical and spell attacks. I don't know why but I was under the impression that it only protected against physical/poison/disease damage. I was getting it confused with physical resistance. So I learned something .

I had a setup similar to yours in No CP Cyrodiil with a mag sorc but was mostly light armor and died way too easily. I thought about using Rattlecage but in no CP you really need more max mag and recovery so I never tried it. I did try Gaze and Domi shoulder and Grace of the Ancients and Trainee with Spinners but still died too much. Part of my problem is not having a good rotation or at least not being good enough to get it all off before the other player has interrupted/stunned me in some way. I suppose if I was a better button masher and had younger hands I'd be much better. I was not level 3 vamp yet either. Maybe I'll go back and try it again with vamp level 3 to see if I survive better.

I have a stamblade with gaze, pariah, Sword-Singer and level 3 vamp and feel like I survive pretty decently even with Stamblade's lack of good heals (no resto staff currently). But offense is a bit lacking and so is sustain in no CP. So I'll try changing Gaze to Torc of Tonal and/or change Pariah to a set like Spriggan's or Bone Pirate's and see if that helps. I'd like the penetration of Spriggan's but may need the recovery in Bone Pirate if I stick with Gaze as my mythic. Decisions decisions.

katorga

Spectre's Eye is a sleeper. 100% uptime, back bar set, and soooo much aoe damage these days. No downsides like Ironblood.

malistorr

I guess in close-quarters fights that would work, so BGs. In Cyrodiil I don't see much AOE damage happening or maybe I just don't notice it. My problem with the set is that it only protects against AOE so in Cyrodiil I feel like it wouldn't work as well. And the only offensive buff is the 1 line of max mag. You must get a lot of max mag from CP because in no CP Cyrodiil you'd really need to be using something like Crafty just to get more max resources. It's hard to get much over 35K primary resource in no CP Cyrodiil without a big sacrifice to speed and defense. Personally I'd go with Pariah for defense or something like Spriggan's or Bone Pirate for offense for a stam toon (or Spinners/Bright Throat for mag) in no CP Cyrodiil at least. I'm probably not familiar enough with other viable hybrid sets if there are any since I play no CP. I'm a bit rusty keeping up with sets that won't work where I play. I feel like it's incredibly hard to build for no CP. You need all the things you need for CP and BGs but are just gimped trying to get there. You need max resources, speed, defense, and recovery at a minimum without any CP boosts and it's very difficult to do. The only positive is that other players are in the same boat

And on another note: There needs to be a set like Grace for stam toons and a set like Trainee where the 3rd-piece bonus is stam instead of mag. Mag toons definitely have better 3-piece set selection. Agility is not as good for a stam toon as grace is for a mag toon for no CP at least. You can't really build for spell or weapon damage vs. just max resources in no CP or else Rattlecage would be getting much more usage I'm sure.

OBJnoob

@malistorr Does bone pirate work in no cp cyrodiil? I feel like it doesn’t. If it does I’ll be super happy I’ve got a gold set that used to be my favorite but haven’t used it in a while.

malistorr

I guess I assumed it would work but apparently neither Bone Pirate or Bright Throat work since they are based on a proc that happens when drinking something. At least that's what I see on the lists found online for what does work. Shame. Now there are even less options for sustain in no CP than I thought

divnyi

@malistorr that's 49.7k magica in noCP. Just to clarify I do not play IC/Cyro in noCP, I play BGs in noCP.

Yeah you need to build sustain in noCP, and I personally like it. CP red tree gives insane amount of sustain for free, I never felt like it was balanced in any way. So this build has regen enchants and atronach mundus, and Breton race.

This build suffers sustain issues a bit because of heavy - you need to spend time converting stam to mag and heavy attacking resto if you can. But it takes very considerable amount of combat to get you out of resources, and your defenses allow you to take time and recover almost always.

As for stamblade.. check my previous vid. It features BASHBLADE, hell yeah, bashblade. It has everything - sustain, toughness, DPS, burst. Well maybe not the top-tier burst, but I kill those 20k squishies in 2 GCD alright.

Edit1: about AoE - Idk what you mean you don't notice big AoEs. Dawnbreaker, blastbones, subterrenean, leap, jabs, destro ultis, permafrost, meteor.. easier to name hard-hitters that don't AoE.

malistorr

Guess I'm just not familiar with the popular classes skills. Seems like magplar and possibly magdk have a huge advantage over all other classes right now but I'm not going to jump on the boat. It takes way too long to level another toon after I just did this stamblade during the last event. Nevermind the hundreds of thousands of gold to upgrade all the gear. I've only ever played a mag sorc and now stamblade only recently and neither class seems to have any viable AOE skills other than wall in mag sorc and I didn't think people even used that in Cyrodiil. Mag sorc and Stamblade seem to be just about all single target skills from what I've noticed. At least skills that I've seen/heard about people using regularly in Cyrodiil PVP. For any AOE people can get out of it within a second or less unless you're in a very tight spot like a small part of a tower. In no CP Cyrodiil there is far too much open area/world fighting and I don't personally notice AOEs on the ground. I guess I either dont' know what to look for, am too busy worrying about staying alive, or people just don't use them against me. Maybe some day if I have time I'll go read about other classes skills. At least I'll know what's killing me. For now I'll stick with my stamblade since I'm not about to level another toon any time soon and I think I'll switch from pariah and sword-singer to spriggan's and draugr hulk since bone pirate's isn't an option. I guess I'll have to get sustain from possibly serpent mundus, food/drink, and jewelry glyph. I'll go more robust jewelry instead of swift or infused. Just need to figure out where to get speed from then lol.

Anyway, I can see the OP is a very good player and does great with his build. Just trying to learn and get better every day since my experience with PVP is low compared to many and my hands aren't as great as they once were.

malistorr

I think I'll avoid the bashblade. It just doesn't seem like how I'd want to play. Seems like it works great for you though. I haven't really tried too many of the Stamblade class skills because many of them are mag skills that have no stam alternative and their descriptions the damage just seems horribly underwhelming. It seems I probably just made a bad decision on which class to pick this time around (at least for the current game). Maybe some day ZOS will do better with class balance. I'm glad they toned down sniping with bow so ganking is harder but the whole nightblade class seems nerfed too much compared to magplar and magdk at least. Those classes seem to have better healing and better damage in no CP. I don't mind losing to better players but it just seems like it's not a fair fight right now. It's almost like magplar or go home.

EmperorIl

katorga wrote: »

Spectre's Eye is a sleeper. 100% uptime, back bar set, and soooo much aoe damage these days. No downsides like Ironblood.

I mean it does have a downside, it only works against AOE damage.

gariondavey

Interesting build as usual! Have you considered magsorc but in 5 medium with armor master backbar with shuffle/elude? No penalties in medium, and you get mad dodge roll reduction. You probably also have more armor as medium + armor master with major evasion in a skill slot than spectre's eye back bar in heavy armor

Let me know what you think, @ me if you reply

divnyi

@gariondavey I've once tried this set long long time ago, and on medium too. Several issues here: duration is very low for something as essential. HP% boost is also only on one bar.

This build doesn't stack SD, neither I need stam sustain, so medium would be mostly wasted. Heavy armor passives are actually really nice here - 30k HP is 64 in magica and tristat food. Medium, it would be at least 3-4k lower. Healing received too.

gariondavey

divnyi wrote: »

@gariondavey I've once tried this set long long time ago, and on medium too. Several issues here: duration is very low for something as essential. HP% boost is also only on one bar.

This build doesn't stack SD, neither I need stam sustain, so medium would be mostly wasted. Heavy armor passives are actually really nice here - 30k HP is 64 in magica and tristat food. Medium, it would be at least 3-4k lower. Healing received too.

Ah I see. Figured the increase in SD would increase the healing but I guess not enough. You are running 2 tri regen glyphs on jewels, right?

My magsorc is high elf. I run matriarch for big heals but it dies often. Might try this out, but I imagine I'd need the sd jewelry glyph to be mag recovery or something due to not being Breton like you.

divnyi

@gariondavey go for tripple magrecovery. I find myself out of mag more often than out of stam. Besides, high elf has sustain passive that will give you resource you lack more.

malistorr

I was considering trying the torc of tonal mythic for help with recovery in no CP Cyrodiil since I heard it actually works there. I'm a nightblade and have 2 healing abilities that use magic instead of stam. So since my mag pool is very low and I'll use mag constantly to heal it should trigger the increased stam recovery. And when my stam gets low from using abilities it will trigger the increased mag recovery. I'm surprised this mythic works in no CP since it seems to have a proc/trigger condition but I will farm it and test it out. Seems like it could be a very good and efficient way to getting the recovery I need without using all the jewelry enchants and mundus. I'll see how it goes. I'd prefer to use the jewelry enchants for weapon damage or even more protection if possible. Or go even further for sustain and do a reduced cost. And mundus I want penetration because one can never have enough right?

gariondavey

divnyi wrote: »

@gariondavey go for tripple magrecovery. I find myself out of mag more often than out of stam. Besides, high elf has sustain passive that will give you resource you lack more.

Coolio. Oh also, something to throw on your radar: magsorc with bow (magsorc has massive offensive stats typically, ballista scales veeery hard for magsorc). Would love to see something!

katorga

EmperorIl wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Spectre's Eye is a sleeper. 100% uptime, back bar set, and soooo much aoe damage these days. No downsides like Ironblood.

I mean it does have a downside, it only works against AOE damage.

True but the much of pvp is aoe these days. My impression is that the larger the group, the greater the proportion of aoe skills being used. Ball groups seem to be almost all aoe damage. Even solo builds have a heavy reliance on AOE burst skills like Dragon Leap, Dawnbreaker, spin2win, blastbones, sharks.

Many players rely of AOE skills to paper over weaknesses in being able to target opponents whether they are grouped or not.

But yeah you do run into the 2H dizzy builds, single target NB's and sorcs.

malistorr

I tried taking off my Pariah last night in no CP and replaced it with a damage set and I think I noticed a big difference in my ability to survive, even when attacking resources/NPCs. I'll do a bit more testing but may need to keep Pariah if I find I'm dying way too much. It keeps me alive in big group fights and even with stage 3 vamp and Gaze I may be finding it pretty necessary. Maybe once I'm more practiced at my class and have a better rotation/kill combo and better muscle memory and can take people out more realiably I'll switch to 2 offensive sets.