What would give me better results (the most spell damage)?

Sandmanninja

What would give me better results (the most spell damage)?
7 pieces (golded) - Truly Superb Glyph of Magicka (gold) // Lightning Staff (gold):
* Armor Trait: Divines (increase Mundus) or Infused (increase Armor Enchantment)
* Weapon Trait: Nirnhoned (15% additional damage) or Precise (increase Spell Crit) or Sharpened (increase Spell Penetration)
* Mundus: Thief (increase Critical Strike rating) or Apprentice (increase Spell Power) or Lover (increase Spell Penetration) or Infused (increase armor enchantment) or Divines (increase Mundus)

This is for a DPS (PVE) build.

Thank you

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Sandmanninja wrote: »

What would give me better results (the most spell damage)?
7 pieces (golded) - Truly Superb Glyph of Magicka (gold) // Lightning Staff (gold):
* Armor Trait: Divines (increase Mundus) or Infused (increase Armor Enchantment)
* Weapon Trait: Nirnhoned (15% additional damage) or Precise (increase Spell Crit) or Sharpened (increase Spell Penetration)
* Mundus: Thief (increase Critical Strike rating) or Apprentice (increase Spell Power) or Lover (increase Spell Penetration) or Infused (increase armor enchantment) or Divines (increase Mundus)

This is for a DPS (PVE) build.

Thank you

First and foremast, the most spell damage does not equal the best results as a DPS. Assuming you are a magic DPS (or at least that you stack into magic and spell damage), there are really 4 or 5 variables that determine how hard your skills will hit.

Max magic, Spell damage, Spell penetration, *Crit Chance, and Crit damage modifier.

*Crit chance doesnt technically impact how hard something hits, just how often hit hits extra hard.

As a general rule to get the most DPS (things could change with any given patch), you want all your resources into one stat. So if stacking magic, go all in with your glyphs, attributes, food, etc.

Precise is generally the best pure DPS trait for your front bar, and infused is the best trait for your back bar. You run an infused back bar with a weapon spell damage glyph. As long as you keep a weapon ground DOT (Elemental blockade as an example) on your back bar, and keep it up, you will have 100% uptime of the back bar damage enchant. Precise front bar is obvious, its to boost crit chance.

For mundus, again, generally thief is best, at least in a group setting.

A few things you need to understand:

First, most enemies have 18.2k armor in PVE, so the first priority is to get to 18.2k spell penetration. If you arent there, it is almost always your best source of damage. If solo, you almost always run more pen than in a group (sharp staff over precise may give better solo results), that is because most tanks will give you a lot of penetration. Any good raid leader will tell you how much pen you need, and you can adjust accordingly.

Second, there is a crit damage modifier cap of 125%. You want to strive to get there, again, your group can help with this.

Third, once those are out of the way, generally, crit chance is king and should typically be prioritized over spell damage and max magic. 1 pt of Spell damage is roughly equal to 10.5 pts of magic in terms of how it impacts your DPS abilities. So when it comes to tradeoffs, generally take crit chance. There are upper ends where you get diminishing returns, but unlikely you hit them.

All that said, my advice always is to focus on results, not the nuances of the math behind it. People will often ask me what my spell damage is on my DPS, and I don't have a clue. If you want High DPS, run meta sets or close to them and focus on your rotation. Your damage rotation is infinitely more important than your gear, assuming your gear at least passes the smell test. Your stats will be what they will be. We have never had more options for gear that are close to meta than we have right now.

Zodiarkslayer

That was comprehensive...👍

It makes a difference what class it is, though. Templars and Sorcerers make better use of higher spell damage than all other classes because of the class passives that boost spell and weapon damage with a percentage.
The class minor buffs have impact, too. Again, if you are Templar and have 100% uptime of 10% more spell damage, stacking spell damage over crit chance becomes really sexy at some point. 😁

Addendum: It is my experience, that having two frontbar weapons really pays off. One in sharpened and one in precise.
Sharpened for SOLO and pug groups or in rnD runs, and if your Tank provides and pushes you beyond 18200 penetration, you have the precise weapon.
This way you can just keep the Thief mundus at all times and don't have to switch to Lover when you do Solo stuff like grinding.

mocap

i think his "spell damage" is not a reference to SPD stat. More like max damage of magicka abilities.