Valkyn Skoria and Sorcerer Uselessness

magnusthorek · November 2015

I tested all four most used attacks against the same type of enemy (V2 Strangler) with, respectively, the same two Galatite Swords and the 2h Greatsword in the back bar, again, no enchantments, upgrades or traits.

The main gun was my VR16 Legendary Nirnhoned Lightning Staff of Torug's Pact I use daily. The results, respectively, Damage / DPS / Critical % / Average / Maximum were:

DW

Light attack = 19.816 / 3.339 / 25% / 2.477 / 3.317
Heavy Attack = 13.274 / 2.187 / 16.7% / 2.212 / 3.079
Force Pulse = 20.262 / 9.393 / 22.2% / 2.251 / 3.122
Crystal Fragments = 24.339 / 4.860 / 0% / 8.113 / 8.113

2h

Light attack = 20.936 / 3.245 / 37.5% / 2.617 / 3.317
Heavy Attack = 14.314 / 2.512 / 33.3% / 2.385 / 3.079
Force Pulse = 14.196 / 12.893 / 60% / 2.839 / 3.122
Crystal Fragments = 28.477 / 4.685 / 33.3% / 9.492 / 12.251

And it seems to me that 2h Greatsword was indeed better. Slightly better damage when light / heavy attacking. When using Force Pulse, it resulted in less power, but that's because it tripled the critical and thus the side effects were applied more often, so I believe in this case less is more. And finally Crystal Fragments, no only resulted in more damage but also had critical.

failkiwib16_ESO · November 2015

O.o

But the greatsword and dw should not affect the skills on the bar, where your destro staff is, should they? I never noticed them affecting the oposite bar. Please do share how you manage that, now you've really cought my attention

magnusthorek · November 2015

That's precisely the reason why I can't understand why a magicka sorcerer should even consider using any weapon other than staves.

If DW/2H affects the effectiveness of a non-staff ability like, hypothetically, a 2H buff makes my shields stronger, then sure, it makes sense. Other than that, I just can't comprehend and until that, I won't waste a Potent Nirncrux.

What I did was pretty straightforward: Geared up the weapons in second bar, one of a time, changed to first and used one single type of attack on each enemy around Fisherman's Island in Grahtwood and record the numbers. Maybe it's random, maybe it's not.

I've been reading a lot of articles and posts and everyone says the same thing: Stamina abilities and non-staff weapons scale off Weapon Damage and Maximum Stamina. Magicka abilities and staves scale off Magicka and Spell Power. I'm very aware of that, but I've never seen ANYONE explaining the reason why should a magicka sorcerer use weapons other than staves.

Erraln · November 2015

magnusthorek wrote: »

I've been reading a lot of articles and posts and everyone says the same thing: Stamina abilities and non-staff weapons scale off Weapon Damage and Maximum Stamina. Magicka abilities and staves scale off Magicka and Spell Power. I'm very aware of that, but I've never seen ANYONE explaining the reason why should a magicka sorcerer use weapons other than staves.

Hi again thorek, I'll try to explain it clearly this time. When people say that 'x weapon uses magic' or 'x weapon uses stam', they're talking about the abilities and light/heavy attacks. Despite this, all weapon types give both types of power, Weapon Damage and Spell Damage, equally. Examples: Staff, Greatsword, and Dual Swords. You can see that my Weapon and Spell Damage scores are the same, except for the dual sword shot; they have 129 additional spell power there, due to the Torug's Pact set line activating.

At VR16, Staves have 267 less base power than Dual Wielded weapons of the same quality, before set effects.
Dual Wield gives 20% increased spell and weapon power to the items you are holding. 1335*1.2+129= 1731 Spell power, as shown. Since that's a pretty big difference, people try to imagine build setups where using it will help their damage output. When you wear DW for that purpose, you are giving up long-range light and heavy attacks. You give up Staff skills and passives, and you give up being able to use your weapon enchantments for damage at range. Enchantments don't go off unless you use a weapon skill, or a light/heavy attack.

When can it be worth it, then? Well, when you cast a non-weapon ability, it doesn't care what you're wielding. So, you can cast infrequently applied abilities like Liquid Lightning, Boundless Storm, Entropy, etc. from a Dual Wield back bar, and switch away from it afterwards. Execution skills and Ultimates can also be cast with DW, and benefit from the added power that it has. As a magicka Sorceror, when a large target is below 20% you should be casting Mage's Wrath and little else. Since even using light attacks during such an execution phase slows you down a bit, there's no reason you need to execute with a staff on hand.

What this all adds up to is that some people (like me) wear a staff on their front bar for ranged attacking, and swords on their back bar for stronger ultimates and execution. It's a different style of play than wearing two Staves, but if a player learns how to use it well they will achieve higher damage scores. To get the most out of this setup, you need to have both points of the Dual Wield passive Twin Blade and Blunt invested. Your swords will then grant you 5% additional damage. This Lv.50 perk, along with the above mechanics, creates enough of a power difference to be worthwhile.

If you've seen information saying that Greatsword is better than Dual swords for casters, it's outdated. Some of the math for weapon passives was changed with Wrothgar, eliminating the situational benefit Greatswords once had.

magnusthorek · November 2015

Perfectly explained, when I grow up, I want to be a player like you

magnusthorek · November 2015

I finally gathered all materials to craft a full set of Julianos:

Sometimes without reason my Spell Damage raises to 3.3k, sometimes to 3k. I can't explain why in this picture it's lower than that.

I tested it yesterday in Imperial City Prison, for the first time ever, and most of the times my DPS was between 11~15k with some peaks of 23k once in a while. It's not even close to what I see in Nightblades' videos (112k)

Against the first boss, Overfiend, with +/- 960k of HP, I took out 736k, but even so, I died once because I didn't know his moves, and because of this, I was ridiculed again and I quote "all I see was you dead". Right...

Today I raised the subject in one of my guilds and someone decided to help. OK, the team wasn't so great, half of it looked like a PUG, but I'm speaking about my performance which is the sole purpose of the topic (and my angry).

Against the mobs, 11~15k like before, bosses it dropped a bit, but we managed to reach Valkyn.

3 freaking hours after and we couldn't beat him, again. My DPS dropped monstrously back to 4~5k just like with the old gear.

It's hopeless, I won't try anymore or maybe only after leveling ANOTHER character to some VR levels and get +/- 100 more CPs (or more).

People keep saying Valkyn was nerfed, but I doubt it. I'm not a bad player, I have an awesome gear now, but it's not working.

And I see people saying they spent 1.5h in WGT or 7h in Maelstrom Arena. This is a content for elite players or at least healthier players, I know the limits of my my brain, heart and muscles. It hurts, but I'll have to live without this helmet (which is just an extra) or even these achievements, which is what I value the most.

Thank your for all your help and sorry to bother you.