So... I'm crazy for playing this?

vivimo

Hi, first of all nice to meet u all!

I'm a new player - 4 months in the game, I got the Oakensoul ring and did a one bar no pet magicka sorcerer build with the following configuration

Head. Shoulders: Iceheart
Rest of the equipment: Necropotence
Necklace, left ring: Mother Sorrow
Right ring: Oakensoul
Weapon: Mother Sorrow

CP: 531
Precision: 20
Fighting Finesse: 10
Piercing: 20
Thaumaturge: 50
Eldritch Insight 20
Quick Recovery: 10
Preparation: 20
Bitting Aura: 27
Boundless Vitality: 50
Tumbling: 15
Mystic Tenacity: 10
Hero's Vigor: 20
Shield Master: 10
Bastion: 50
Siphoning Spells: 20
Fortified: 2


Skills:
I usually had Crystal Fragments, Daedric Prey, Hardened Wall, Critical Surge and Greater Storm Atronach
but this config lacks of AOE attacks, so I changed Cristal Fragments and Daedric Prey into Unstable Wall of Elements and Mystic Orb.

I usually do open world content and some dungeons... but I still feel that I could do more damage, maybe i should discard Oakensoul and go 2bars? I know i could use pets but tbh i dont like them very much... in fact I had done little Veteran dungeons cos I dont feel my build is good enough...

WrathOfInnos

Get rid of Necropotence. It only works with pets, and it is weak for any build. Add another piece of Mother's Sorrow to complete the 5-piece bonus. Ideally drop either the helm or shoulders to make room for another 5-pc set (best would be a trial set like Whorl of Depths, but something easy to get like crafted Order's Wrath is fine). This leaves 1-pc Iceheart for crit and no automatic shields so be careful what you stand in and bring a healer friend. If you want slightly more crit go with slimecraw instead of iceheart.

CPs are a little off. Prioritize blues in Wrathful Strikes, Fighting Finesse and Master at Arms, then maybe Deadly Aim.

Not sure what the rest of your build looks like, but some common low damage issues are:
- Recovery enchants on jewelry instead of spell damage
- Weak or missing mundus stone, go for Thief with 7 divines
- Gold quality weapons, purple is fine for most armor
- Food that gives max magicka (plus max health, mag recovery, or both situationally)
- Neglecting potions, they should be used often to help sustain

Oaken isn't the best damage mythic, but I don't think it's bad. Certainly other ways to improve if you like the one bar setup.

boi_anachronism_

You could also sub pillar of nirn instead of whorl. Comes from falkreath. Tbh you can still hit some really good numbers with orders wrath and it will be the most consistent damage boost for a newer player because it is flat stats. It's definitely plenty for most vet dungeons. I have friends who have completed dungeon trifectas with OW slotted.

Nestor

Sure, you can do more with a 2 Bar Build, but you can do more than enough with a 1 Bar Oakensoul Build. BTW, I ditched the Pets and use a different rotation that melts the mobs.

What is probably most critical is to learn a smooth Animation Cancel with Light Attack Weaving. Even through in some Heavy Attacks in between the skills. This will carry over to a 2 Bar build when you are ready for that complexity.

vivimo

Thank u for all the advice, will look after changing my gear and learning to do the animation cancel thing!!

dmnqwk

Oakensoul offers higher burst in pve, so you'll do fine overland at killing mobs of low hp quicker - but anything that takes over 30 seconds to kill will see you fall to around 80% of the damage output of a two bar setup.

As a DD you want:
Armor Pen of around 7k in most places
Crit and Crit damage to be balanced
Spell damage to be high

Crit and Crit Damage:
With a base of 10k damage:
10% crit 90% crit damage makes it do 10.9k damage
90% crit 10% crit damage makes it do 10.9k damage
50% crit 50% crit damage makes it do 12.5k damage

You begin with 50% crit damage, so you're already skewed towards wanting to stack the crit to get the most out of it... except:
The Thief Mundus Stone (with full divines) is 9% crit
The Shadow Mundus Stone (with full divines) is 17% crit damage
In trials you will reach Crit damage cap, but in 99% of other places you'll come close but not quite touch it. So when you read a guide and it says 'Do this' it really says 'Do this when you're in a well optimised trial group'.

If you're sitting on 40% crit and 70% crit damage (which is a fair number you could be on) you'd want Shadow, not Thief.
Base 10k damage. 40% crit/70% crit damage turns this into 12.8k damage
With Thief you're 49/70 and you do 13.43k
With Shadow you're 40/87 and you do 13.48k

My recommendation for gear to start:
Mother's Sorrow (because you already have it on and it'll do for now I guess)
Order's Wrath (crafted set)
Stormfist (monster set from tempest island)

Then work on farming Falkreath Hold for the Pillar of Nirn set (yes you will end up wearing a medium armor piece to accomplish this if you wanna keep 1 bar, but it's fine. 5 light 2 medium is perfectly okay)
Mother's Sorrow will be replaced by Nirn so you'll wear Nirn + Order's Wrath for a bit until you feel brave enough to do a Trial and obtain Whorl of the Depths from Dreadsail Reef. If you never feel that brave it isn't the end of the world.
Stormfist is a strong and easy to obtain set that will help fix your aoe weakness, especially alongside Pillar of Nirn (both are aoe procs after all).

Concerning Abilities
Crystal Fragments as you said is great. Provides healing as well through passives.
Daedric Prey could be replaced with Haunting Curse. It's more expensive but it'll tick after 3.5 seconds and you can refresh it then, or leave it to run the full course on bosses.
Crystal Surge isn't really needed here with Oakensoul. I know it provides strongish healing but you'd be better off replacing it with Vigor. U34 changed abilities to scale off your highest damage stat, not just what you use to cast it. It can be up to 30k/5 seconds healing, and gives minor resolve.

You only named 4 skills and 1 ultimate, not 5 skills and 1 ult btw. But here's what I recommend you give a go to:
Mages Wrath - an execute to finish them off.
Crystal Fragments - Your spammable
Hurricane - Strong Aoe dot
Lightning Flood - Strong Aoe dot
Vigor - on demand healing plus minor resolve.
With the same ult of course.

Lacking a direct AoE shouldn't be too much of an issue because Mages Wrath has splash damage, plus you're running 2 dots on top of it. If you find yourself missing a spammable AoE, replace one of the two dots with Pulsar if necessary (but it shouldn't be needed).

Somber97866

Listen to Wrathofinnos. He knows the biz , trust me.

vivimo

Hi, I updated my build according to @WrathOfInnos and @dmnqwk advice
- Changed Necropotence gear to Order's Wrath
- Changed CP to increase Wrathful Strikes, Fighting Finesse and Master at Arms
- Changed the skills, using the ones @dmnqwk suggested
- Aldeady have Thief mundus stone, gonna check about Shadow one.

I have to do more tests but I went to public dungeon and i feel i kill things WAAAY faster, so the changes are working.

Thank u everyone!!!

Elendir2am

Using oaken Sorc without pets is lost opportunity. Anybody else pays for oaken soul with 5 bar skills, but ful pet sorc pays only 3. You can go with matriarch to have self heal (instead vigor) and with unstable familiar as AoE damage.

CGPsaint

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

You could also sub pillar of nirn instead of whorl. Comes from falkreath. Tbh you can still hit some really good numbers with orders wrath and it will be the most consistent damage boost for a newer player because it is flat stats. It's definitely plenty for most vet dungeons. I have friends who have completed dungeon trifectas with OW slotted.

I got Spirit Slayer yesterday on my OakenSorc build using Order's Wrath.

Finished with a score of 241,031 with a total time of 33:26. Ran it back and shaved about 25 seconds off my time.

jaws343

I was having decent success with my Oaken heavy attack build using: 2 piece Maw, 5 piece Grave Inevitability, 1 lightning maelstrom destro, 2 piece trainee. Hitting around 70-75K with that.

You definitely do not need frags. But I found having crit surge for passive healing was a must for solo play at least. My bar setup on the sorc was WoE, Daedric Prey, Crit Surge, Tormentor, Scamp, Storm Atro.

Used heavy attacks as a spammable.