What is actually killing you? Being outnumbered or just very strong individuals (bosses)? To solo content you need to be using cc (shattering prison and streak), aoe (wall of elements or pulsar), and just have your wits about you. Block white sparks, bash red sparks and don't stand in the red. Make use of wards, and heals from resto staff skill line. Crushing Shock is good for interupting casters at range. Also make sure your armour isn't broken.

Another bar setup could be bar 1 for single target skills and bar 2 for aoe skills. This is a bit harder to pull off because it requires 2 destruction staves, so you lose the heals from having a resto staff on bar 2, and without being mean it sounds like you ned the heals.

There is a way for a sorc to heal without a resto staff though, but it involves doing damage, the more you do the more you heal. The skill Critical Surge will return some of the damage you do while it's active as health. So to deal with large groups of mobs you just cast Hardened Ward, then Critical Surge, then wade into the middle of the group spamming Impulse and holding block. This technique used to be more effective and didn't even require Hardened Ward, but the heals from Critical Surge got given a cool down in 1.6. It's still an effective strat though as long as you keep Hardened Ward up at all times and continue to do damage.

Sorry for the multiple posts, wrote this at work.

What's your gear like? A jump up in defence specs could be all you need to give you an edge

Solitude wrote: »

What's your gear like? A jump up in defence specs could be all you need to give you an edge

I've ranked up my blacksmiths g and other skills by dismantling stuff I find

I hardly ever found any sets that let me recover Magicka, so I try to wear armor that gives me more Magicka

I scouted a few guild shops and I found 2 pieces of Warlock set, 1 is actually a vr1 chest plate, and a ring

outside of that, it's usually a blue, or green, add Magicka armor (usually I did not care if it was light, heavy, or medium - all these armors are at either lvl50 or just about)

up till I picked up a Warlock chest it was usually 2-3 heavy oieces, a medium, and a light, but always went for "add Magicka" bonuses

I really haven't found any of the set pieces to Lear them to make my own armor that let me regenerate armor, yesterday I went back to my lvl15-20 zones to see maybe something will drop me low level gear, but I wasn't getting any drops, so I went back to my vr1 zone fighting mobs

I have a lot of treasure maps, so maybe I'll try and hunt some of the treasures down, see if I can pick anything good up from one of those chests

the really main thing I need is a good rotation, for me it seems weapon swap takes too long and I die because I get rushed, I've been using the Ward a lot and that lets me survive a lot better actually

but I'm still "stuck" at the end of that quest line because I can't take out 3 bosses at the same time, even with a CC that holds them in place for my pets to attack them

i try to help you from a to z, hoping you enjoy the sorc, my favorite class.

the following is what i do and i am almost unkillable in pve

armor and weapon
- armor 5 light, 2 medium (get all the liht armor passive and the dexterity (crits) from the medium)
- armor trait: i use exploration untill v14, but i suggest you a mix of divines and infused
- weapons trait: always precise
- armor enchantment: magicka
- weapons enchantment: magicka damage and restore magicka
5 pieces warlock full set: head (infused), robe (infused), 2 signet (ring), focus (neck)
3 pieces willow's path (spell crit): shoulder (divine), hand (divine), waiste (divine)
3/4 pieces night mother gaze: foot (divine) , leg (infused) , weapon (precise) (wepon crit + spell crit) + 1 more weapon (precise) if dual wild or sword and shield (weapon crit)

mundus stone: thief (more criticals)

attributes: if you have survivability problem, put all on health, the items above will do the best to ensure you a decent magicka pool for pve soloing

bar 1 survivability with restoration staff:
- ultimate: greater atronach
- healing ward (resto)
- harness magicka (light armor)
- summon twilight matriarch (becouse she going to save your as*) ****
- shattering prison
- boundless storm

trick:
- set up: harness magicka + healing ward + boundless storm (mobility and dot if in range)
- combat: shattering prison + 2 heavy attack, repeat until your mobs are killed. move from archers view and block the spell. take it easy! shattering prison have only few immune bosses.

bar 2 dps with destruction inferno stuff
ultimate: energy overload (look belove for the 3th bar setting)
- crystal fragment
- daedric minefield
- summon twilight matriarch (you need here, otherwise swapping the bar she will die) ****
- power surge
- crushing shock (destro) or if you become familiar using heavy attack use endless fury.

trick:
- setup: daedric minefield + power surge (you have great defence plus major brutality and major sorcery)
- kill them all with multiple cfrag and cruchin shot, that are bot dps and stun skill

bar 3: energy overload
- crystal fragment
- empowered ward
- summon twilight matriarch ****
- power surge
- unstable clannfear

trick:
- as soon as you in energy overload, power surge + summon the unstable familiar (it will distract your enemies from your destructive power) + empowered ward (very important)
- now you have all time (20 secons) to kill the infedel with cfrag and light or heavy attack. you will see the destructive power of energy overload, and it will regenerate your magika too

**** when you become familiar with swapping and comboes, you may change summon twilight matriarch with mobility streak and/or dark conversion (this ensure you to survive in almost all very bad situation)

passives:
all from the destruction staff
all from all the light armor
all from all the classes
the chemistry medicinal use from alchemy

food: use the blue v1 magicka and health buff
potion: spell power (major sorcery + major prophecy + restore magika)

good night, good luck!

Wait. You went to your silver zone, and then directly entered Reaper's March, which is the 5th and last area of your silver zone (tailored for Veteran 5 players), without even gearing up with class appropriate sets? I think I can see the reason for your frustration.

Seriously, 1 veteran rank is equivalent to 5 levels power wise, if you include gearing. Do it in the order prescribed, get some crafted sets, upgrade to blue, and you should be good.

As to inner light, it needs to be recast on every zone change, but whether it works or not is not related to the glowing orb. It's one of those bugs that are apparently too hard to fix, since it has been there for ages, but you should still get the crit bonus, magicka bonus and passive bonus (magicka and magicka regeneration for each mage's guild ability slotted).

Well. Here is my sorc v10.
http://i6.5cm.ru/i/cgWu.png

I use 5 light pieces of Seducer with divine trait (infused for legs) and 5 Warlock's
I use magicka\health food.
2 Destro Fire Staves with sharpened\precise trait.

First bar - 2+ opponents\trash:
1.Fire Ring\Fire Pulsar - yet don't know what's better
2.Lighting Flood\Liquid Lighting - it gives you Empower buff to next spell
3.Shattering Prison to prevent mobs from escape.
4.Hardened Ward
5.Inner Light from Mage's Guild.
Ult:Power\Energy Overload

Second Bar - single target:
1.Force Pulse
2.Crystal Fragments
3.Lighting Flood\Liquid Lighting - remember Empower?
4.Boundless Storm - just for quick moving
5.Inner Light.
Ult: Power\Energy Overload

Overload bar, just for bosses
1.Clannfear for taunt
2.Liquid Lighting\Lighting Flood empower
3.Structured Entropy - empower + 20% spell damage + some healing + 8% HP boost
4.Hardened Ward
5.Inner Light

Some noobish video from 2.0.1, when i was VR3 like you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NGEYJM-IIA

Using weapon swap effectively will probably make the biggest difference to your game. As others have alluded to, a good place to start is by setting up one bar as your 'offensive' bar and the other as your 'defensive'.

Practice alternating these two modes of play and get it down pact.. You can think of it like basketball, you have the ball so you go on the offensive (dump dps on the enemy), the other team gets the upper hand you go on to defense (heal, mitigate, shield yourself). If that's still not enough you're a sorc, use ball of lightning to pull out of range for a few seconds then go back in. There's an ebb and flow to the game and its the same for every class. Work on this and adjust your gear/skills a bit and you should be fine..

LameoveR wrote: »

Double power compare to inner light?

follow this poll:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/189381/sorc-power-surge-vs-inner-light

you may be right, and i'm curious.

tist wrote: »

Sorcs are very squishy and require good bar maintenance and swapping weapons to be effective. Shields need to be used, no way around it. If you want to faceroll, start a DK.

just to clear out, I did not rush through content, while going from main quest lines I have done a lot of side quests, dolmens, world bosses, but I haven't done any dungeon as a group because I play solo

I do not know if there's matchmaking within game?

I got to vr3 by using a lvl44-48 purple Magicka chest piece, boots, and head piece, with a purple staff that Emperor/Prophet gave me

thank you for some suggestion, good thing is. have a lot of these skills and morph already unlocked, so they only cost me some money to use

I want to find skill that makes people weak to element, use a skill for healing, use a skill for damage - crystal fragment is used and suggested a lot, and it staggers

I've used Daedric mines and they are fun, but AI always makes them stop before mine or wait until it breaks

also don't want to sound like ass, but I did get to VR3

I'm just being outmatched trying to find good synergy between all skills I unlocked

so many I can't decide which is good to open, which is good to CC, which is good finisher

everyone has all these different things they prefer

I mainly used pets with prison, curse, mines, and destruction staff, got me to vr3 pretty easy - now that I'm at a point where I can use a lot of things, and I'm trying them all out, I can't find a good balance and rotation with everything I have available, so I end up using pets with a Ward, but I lack offensive, so I end up getting wrecked

pcar944 wrote: »

got to VR3 as part of Daggerfall Cov using Imperial Sorcerer

got there by using only stuff I find

beat main story and got sent to Aldmeri dominion, got to the Reapers March, there's a quest to stop some ritual - all enemies are VR5 - I've been stuck here for a week now

so I decided I'll try out other people's builds - downed $50k in gold respec - now I sit here with a bunch of skills leveled up, no gold, and still not able to solo this part of the quest

so I decide to do some of the public events that drop Daedra, die 3 times in a row, wtf?

seems like in my case the only way I can survive is by using pets, which is so boring

also, I can't get the cast of Inner Light to work for the life of me, if I enter a building and come back out, the light around me goes away, I try to re-cast and it doesn't work, unless I log out and log back in

can't get a hang of weapon swapping and when's the right time to do it, since most videos on YouTube are like "this is awesome, does so much damage, just out it on and forget it" - but they never show their openers or how they time their finishers

I'm just about to give up on this guy and start leveling a different class

I'm leveling a sorc right now, actually out of all of my toons, this guy seems like he is the easiest to play with. I craft all my armor and replace it every 2 VR ranks. I run all light armor with a destro staff - 4 piece magnus, 2 piece torugs, 2 piece willow's path. With this setup I solo ALL dolmens, all world bosses and NEVER have any issues. Run Inner light, Thundering presence, restoring twilight, force pulse and bound aegis. I have atro on the ultimate. If you are running stam, just look up best sets in terms of weapon damage and get them crafted. focus on plus stam and plus wep damage gear and you should be wrecking things.

BrassRazoo wrote: »

Sorcerers are *** in PvE because of all the PvP crybabies that were awarded nerf after nerf.

I have the feeling you are going to be very disappointed when the new update comes out...

that is very good info

right now, I stopped progressing further, I'm trying to get my crafting skills up, so I can make gear at my level, unlocking traits, and hunting treasure maps

this is not my first grinds, gear dependent game, but it's first when I get so stumped

that video is good in describing his build, but for me new to ESO, how do I out skills on the 3rd bar, does it mean I have to have 3 weapons equipped?

and during fight I was trying to watch when he switch bars and I didn't see it, he just all damage, barely loosing health, when I'm in a middle of mob, my health drops crazy inner light or not and crit surge or not

I feel like I am missing something important, I pick up all passives from dark Magick where I take a skill from, all passive from mages guild I have unlocked, I was not using any off mages Light Armor, but honestly, trying to solo dolmen yesterday again, one I solo with pets, I was dead in 2 hits again, with Ward up, or with Bound Armor up

do skills like Inner Light and Surge actually stack? do I have to not do heavy attack? does Storm that buff your armor stack with Bound Armor (what I have right now, no morph yet) or with Ward (Ward from Summon tree, correct?)