New magicka sorc

Fusker · December 2015

Hello All,

I started a magicka sorcerer and do enjoy it quite a bit. My question is how do you other sorcerers manage your bars? I am new to ESO in general and have noticed buffs do not swap from one bar to the other unless they are both, so how do you.play your sorc, what skills do you use?

I am currently level 24 if that helps. Thank you all! Any advice is much appreciated.

Septimus_Magna · December 2015

Buffs that are on a timer stay active when you swap bars, buffs without a timer (ie toggles) deactive when they're not active on the second bar.

For leveling your bars dont really matter bur try to level all class skill lines to 50.

Aim for the followings skills around vet ranks.

Bar 1 (fire staff) crushing shock, pulsar, liquid lightning, crystal frags, inner light - shooting star

Bar 2 (resto staff) harness magicka, hardened ward, healing ward, power surge, inner light - energie overload

Overload bar: hardened ward, power surge, liquid lightninf, endless fury, inner light

For v14+ it will become useful to have leveled DW because this increases overload dmg.

Fusker · December 2015

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Buffs that are on a timer stay active when you swap bars, buffs without a timer (ie toggles) deactive when they're not active on the second bar.

For leveling your bars dont really matter bur try to level all class skill lines to 50.

Aim for the followings skills around vet ranks.

Bar 1 (fire staff) crushing shock, pulsar, liquid lightning, crystal frags, inner light - shooting star

Bar 2 (resto staff) harness magicka, hardened ward, healing ward, power surge, inner light - energie overload

Overload bar: hardened ward, power surge, liquid lightninf, endless fury, inner light

For v14+ it will become useful to have leveled DW because this increases overload dmg.

Should I be focusing on armor values or armor that gives me plus to magicka?

Sord · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Buffs that are on a timer stay active when you swap bars, buffs without a timer (ie toggles) deactive when they're not active on the second bar.

For leveling your bars dont really matter bur try to level all class skill lines to 50.

Aim for the followings skills around vet ranks.

Bar 1 (fire staff) crushing shock, pulsar, liquid lightning, crystal frags, inner light - shooting star

Bar 2 (resto staff) harness magicka, hardened ward, healing ward, power surge, inner light - energie overload

Overload bar: hardened ward, power surge, liquid lightninf, endless fury, inner light

For v14+ it will become useful to have leveled DW because this increases overload dmg.

Should I be focusing on armor values or armor that gives me plus to magicka?

Go 5 light, 1 Heavy chest and 1 Medium legs for armor imo

Fusker · December 2015

Sord wrote: »

Fusker wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Buffs that are on a timer stay active when you swap bars, buffs without a timer (ie toggles) deactive when they're not active on the second bar.

For leveling your bars dont really matter bur try to level all class skill lines to 50.

Aim for the followings skills around vet ranks.

Bar 1 (fire staff) crushing shock, pulsar, liquid lightning, crystal frags, inner light - shooting star

Bar 2 (resto staff) harness magicka, hardened ward, healing ward, power surge, inner light - energie overload

Overload bar: hardened ward, power surge, liquid lightninf, endless fury, inner light

For v14+ it will become useful to have leveled DW because this increases overload dmg.

Should I be focusing on armor values or armor that gives me plus to magicka?

Go 5 light, 1 Heavy chest and 1 Medium legs for armor imo

Is there an advantage to wearing light armor over heavy and medium for a sorcerer?

Septimus_Magna · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

Sord wrote: »

Fusker wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Buffs that are on a timer stay active when you swap bars, buffs without a timer (ie toggles) deactive when they're not active on the second bar.

For leveling your bars dont really matter bur try to level all class skill lines to 50.

Aim for the followings skills around vet ranks.

Bar 1 (fire staff) crushing shock, pulsar, liquid lightning, crystal frags, inner light - shooting star

Bar 2 (resto staff) harness magicka, hardened ward, healing ward, power surge, inner light - energie overload

Overload bar: hardened ward, power surge, liquid lightninf, endless fury, inner light

For v14+ it will become useful to have leveled DW because this increases overload dmg.

Should I be focusing on armor values or armor that gives me plus to magicka?

Go 5 light, 1 Heavy chest and 1 Medium legs for armor imo

Is there an advantage to wearing light armor over heavy and medium for a sorcerer?

Yes, 5x light will give you spell crit. Each light piece also gives magicka regen, cost reduction and spell penetration.

5x light, 1x medium, 1x heavy is good to level all armor types. When you get high undaunted it also gives 6% extra health/mag/stam.

Fusker · December 2015

Is this inherent bonus to light armor cause I don't see that it says that it gives crit or regen

Trihugger · December 2015

If I may please interject, what you guys are advocating is very correct for endgame, but it is counter productive in the low end leveling scheme. Being only 2 months into the game myself I have a little more unique perspective.

It makes no sense to bother wearing 1 medium and 1 heavy during the leveling process. It actually doesn't make any sense to use them until you have reached a high enough guild level with the Undaunted to receive the passive Undaunted Mettle (This passive increases your max HP, Stam, and Magicka by 1/2% (rank 1 and rank 2 respectively) for wearing an armor type).

They level extremely slow and you lose very potent benefits (6% spell cost reduction) from losing 2 pieces of light armor. If I may, I highly suggest the usage of the addon Wykkid Outfitter which will allow you to save both gear and ability sets to your bars. That being the case, you may craft/find a set of medium and heavy armors with the training trait and simply switch your gear when turning in quests. Once one armor skill line is maxed, simply toss toss the old gearset and replace it with the remaining armor line to level up.

Along this line of thought, it is important to level up all the weapon lines to 50 as well, but as Septimus very correctly pointed out Dual Wielding should take higher priority than most (While dual wielding swords you will do 5% more damage from all skills cast on your dual wield bar through the passive Twin Blade and Blunt at Rank 2 which requires Dual Wield at 50). Through Wykkid I created both a Quest turn in gear set and ability set to switch to for very efficient and rapid leveling of my skills without having to sacrifice skill slots.

Armor values in this game seem to be not all that important outside of tanking (even as a tank you're not really much better off than the rest of the group). Not to completely downplay the importance, as it still matters, but understanding how to block will net you far more benefit than armor stacking. You can't really stack armor as a cloth wearer anyway.

Your focus while leveling should be entirely on max magicka. If you find yourself needing some more HP, health isn't an awful alternative, but sorcs have enough tricks that HP truly should be looked upon as a last resort prior to endgame.

Do also try, in addition to the very useful skills septimus kindly typed out, to level every single combat skill in the game (outside of obviously useless poopoo like soul drain) to be at least morphable, while skill point permitting leveling up what could feasibly be useful morphs. Try to level both morphs of every class skill outside of Crystal Fragments as slotting the other is to your significant detriment in terms of efficiency.

Without trying to spoon feed too much in terms of which skills to use I want to highlight two very important skills, one of which will be replaced by the other when you're able to get it:

Entropy is a mage's guild ability that grants you Major Sorcery, increasing your spell power by 20% while it is active as well as putting a DoT one the enemy that also heals you.

Entropy then is replaced by a morph of surge called power surge in the Lightning tree. It too grants Major Sorcery, but it also heals you for 40% of the damage done by your critical hits with a brief ICD for balance purposes (no invincible sorc aoe'ing). At the point you get power surge you can effectively get away with not needing a restoration staff outside of the most difficult circumstances, and even then you can typically persevere without it.

aLi3nZ · December 2015

I Manage bars and sills by using a defensive and attack bar. I swit to defensive bar when requires and active skill 1 2 and 3 then switching back to attack. Defensive bar also used for building Magika and ultimate. Lack of ultimate build up seems to be a weakness of duel weild sourcer that doesn't actually use the swords. I Sometimes use restro staff and healing ward in defensive bar but trying without atm since restro staff does so little damage

1/ duel weild nirn swords

/crystal frags (morph for instant chance) only use when instant
/Mage light to increase crit chance and Magika
/mages wrath
/curse
/streak for pvp / lighting flood for pve

Bar 2 destro staff nirn

/power surge to increase spell damage and get healing from critical hits
/hardened ward
/boundless storm or annulet depending on situation
/ Mage light
/ rapid momentum or deadric mines

Overlord

/ boundless storm or annulet
/ hardened ward
/ power surge
/ Mage light
/ streak

Trihugger · December 2015

Please also keep in mind that for PvE sustained damage you will rely on the weaving of a medium attack (will be labeled as heavy in the game) along with Crushing Shock. Currently sorc doesn't have anything remotely close to being as potent as this combination as doing this along with proper maintaining of Liquid Lightning will net you around 15k DPS with basic full legendary v16 gear.

The setup that Alien above me has written will work from a burst standpoint in PvP, but it is significantly inferior damage when compared to what Septimus originally recommended for you.

Please don't hesitate to try things though. The game has breathing room to not *need* to be completely gungho and (Cue Pokemon music) be the very best outside a very select few instances of gameplay.

Septimus_Magna · December 2015

@Trihugger you definitely have a good point with swapping out gear/skills when you hand in quests, its really useful to do this constantly when leveling up to max out all skills and skill lines. When I level alts I just run with 5x LA/1x MA/1x HA because it takes quite a while to level-up the armor to lvl 50 just by handing in quests.

For gear its probably easy to run with the following sets:
5x Seducer (light hands, belt, shoes, head, preciese resto staff)
4x Magnus (heavy chest, medium legs, light shoulders, sharpened fire staff)

On your resto staff bar you have 5x Seducer and 3x Magnus, this reduces the cost to buff up by 8% because you dont need extra spell dmg while buffing up.

On your destro staff bar you have 4x Seducer and 4x Magnus so you have the spell dmg bonus from Magnus when doing damage.

Put 2x spell dmg and 1x magicka regen (blue or better quality) enchants on your jewelry and you should be good to go.

Fusker · December 2015

i actually never considered a duel wield build at all, I figured the staff with the range damage would be the best setup, or maybe a bow but then you lose destro staff skills. This is all really good advice, thank you all so much!

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

Just went from lvl 1-50 in 5 days on my magicka sorc so the low lvls are still pretty fresh lol. Im no expert but heres my advice, much of it has already been stated. Even tho PVE is not very challenging overall, I think my sorc definitely makes soloing almost all combat a breeze.

I wouldnt worry about the dual wield until high levels. use destro staff & resto staff. Medium attacks + force pulse are your primary attacks in PVE. velocious curse seems really good also along with liquid lightning until you get better skills. heres my bar setups at lvl 50.

bar 1
force pulse (main dmg)
mages wrath (execute when enemy hp is low)
crystal frags (use when proc'd)
velocious curse (use to start off fights, generally target casters with this)
magelight (increases max magicka 5% and crit chance by 10% keep toggled)

bar 2
daedric mines
streak (used if im taking alot of dmg and need to get away to heal)
power surge (keep active as much as you can, increases dmg and gives you heals off crits)
healing ward (main heal, spam it when you get low on hp)
magelight (keep toggled)

overload (good for taking down bosses, dont use it much tbh tho)
lightning form (use for defense while in overload form)
streak
dark deal (decent heal without needing a staff)
velocious curse
magelight

easiest way to PVE everything solo (including delves & dolmens)

set mines (or liquid lightning if you dont have mines)
set velocious curse
weave med attacks + force pulse
use crystal frags when procd
when u can execute an enemy, hit mages wrath to finish
if you need to heal, switch bars, then streak through the adds and spam healing ward.

This seems to really rock at lower levels (or maybe its just sorcs in general). Hopefully you find something helpful in this monster of a post lol. Good luck.

Fusker · December 2015

All of this is extremely helpful and I'm glad so many can be so informative!

I play with a friend and we are leveling pretty slow. I just hit 29 after a week or so of playing. Is there a secret to leveling? We are just quests and whatever events we find such as the chains and the skull and bones.

Trihugger · December 2015

Enjoy the leveling process. Explore the world. Take the time to read the quest dialogue, much of it is very good. What you're doing sounds to be spot on.

aLi3nZ · December 2015

You are likely correct trihugger. For pvp though all I do is use overlord. 3600 spell damage 55 percent crit rating. It's good for ganking. I do lose against very experienced players. The other skills work good enough for pve. Still 10k-20k. I copied some of the build from kingrichard. Just don't like losing another set item price and 500 spell damage for not using duel weild.

Fusker · December 2015

Saint314Louis1985, I like your suggestions and will probably make my bar setup the same as yours

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

All of this is extremely helpful and I'm glad so many can be so informative!

I play with a friend and we are leveling pretty slow. I just hit 29 after a week or so of playing. Is there a secret to leveling? We are just quests and whatever events we find such as the chains and the skull and bones.

Thats pretty much the way to do it. If you arent already, complete every delve you come across. You get good exp for killing the boss and also every delve has a boss room and a skyshard room.

I kept exp potions on pretty much the whole time for the 50% increase so it definitely sped things up.

Fusker · December 2015

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

Fusker wrote: »

All of this is extremely helpful and I'm glad so many can be so informative!

I play with a friend and we are leveling pretty slow. I just hit 29 after a week or so of playing. Is there a secret to leveling? We are just quests and whatever events we find such as the chains and the skull and bones.

Thats pretty much the way to do it. If you arent already, complete every delve you come across. You get good exp for killing the boss and also every delve has a boss room and a skyshard room.

I kept exp potions on pretty much the whole time for the 50% increase so it definitely sped things up.

I am pretty much copying your bar setup, question though is what ultimate's do you use on what bar?

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

I just used overload on both bars at low level because I didnt have any good ones unlocked. Never really used it in combat a whole lot except against bosses or very large groups of adds. You might try storm atronach i just never got around to using it.

I finally unlocked soul assault in the soul magic skill line and it is pretty good not to mention only costs 85 ultimate. I put it on the destro staff bar but kept overload on the resto bar. Another good one is meteor from the mages guild skill line but i havent unlocked it yet.

Fusker · December 2015

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

I just used overload on both bars at low level because I didnt have any good ones unlocked. Never really used it in combat a whole lot except against bosses or very large groups of adds. You might try storm atronach i just never got around to using it.

I finally unlocked soul assault in the soul magic skill line and it is pretty good not to mention only costs 85 ultimate. I put it on the destro staff bar but kept overload on the resto bar. Another good one is meteor from the mages guild skill line but i havent unlocked it yet.

i saw that the mage line had meteor and all I thought about was final fantasy, I would really like to try it out but its not easy to level the mages guild

- any tips on that other than finding books?

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

I just used overload on both bars at low level because I didnt have any good ones unlocked. Never really used it in combat a whole lot except against bosses or very large groups of adds. You might try storm atronach i just never got around to using it.

I finally unlocked soul assault in the soul magic skill line and it is pretty good not to mention only costs 85 ultimate. I put it on the destro staff bar but kept overload on the resto bar. Another good one is meteor from the mages guild skill line but i havent unlocked it yet.

i saw that the mage line had meteor and all I thought about was final fantasy, I would really like to try it out but its not easy to level the mages guild - any tips on that other than finding books?

think thats the only way. seems like it would take forever

Fusker · December 2015

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

Fusker wrote: »

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

I just used overload on both bars at low level because I didnt have any good ones unlocked. Never really used it in combat a whole lot except against bosses or very large groups of adds. You might try storm atronach i just never got around to using it.

I finally unlocked soul assault in the soul magic skill line and it is pretty good not to mention only costs 85 ultimate. I put it on the destro staff bar but kept overload on the resto bar. Another good one is meteor from the mages guild skill line but i havent unlocked it yet.

i saw that the mage line had meteor and all I thought about was final fantasy, I would really like to try it out but its not easy to level the mages guild - any tips on that other than finding books?

think thats the only way. seems like it would take forever

I am curious how you also manage without a pet tank? It seems that is vital for me as everything pulls in 3's now.

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

i used clanfear at first for the healing and tanking it provides. after a while (after i unlocked healing ward) i used liquid lightning aoe and took advantage of the aoe of velocious curse and mages wrath to maximize dps against a small group. also tryed to use frags against the biggest damage threat to keep them neutralized or kill first (the closest one too you, or the mage in the back burning you with fire, whoever is hitting you the hardest really)

if you do better with clanfear definitely use it. its all about adapting your build to your playstyle. anything i suggested is definitely not set in stone. im still pretty new to the sorc build myself

Fusker · December 2015

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

i used clanfear at first for the healing and tanking it provides. after a while (after i unlocked healing ward) i used liquid lightning aoe and took advantage of the aoe of velocious curse and mages wrath to maximize dps against a small group. also tryed to use frags against the biggest damage threat to keep them neutralized or kill first (the closest one too you, or the mage in the back burning you with fire, whoever is hitting you the hardest really)

if you do better with clanfear definitely use it. its all about adapting your build to your playstyle. anything i suggested is definitely not set in stone. im still pretty new to the sorc build myself

awesome thank you sir. Now that I have that healing spell we get (dark deal), i have found my restoration staff quite useless. Between that spell and a potion, I'm able to survive almost anything. Is restoration staff end game material or should i swap to dual wield / destro staff?

Saint314Louis1985 · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

i used clanfear at first for the healing and tanking it provides. after a while (after i unlocked healing ward) i used liquid lightning aoe and took advantage of the aoe of velocious curse and mages wrath to maximize dps against a small group. also tryed to use frags against the biggest damage threat to keep them neutralized or kill first (the closest one too you, or the mage in the back burning you with fire, whoever is hitting you the hardest really)

if you do better with clanfear definitely use it. its all about adapting your build to your playstyle. anything i suggested is definitely not set in stone. im still pretty new to the sorc build myself

awesome thank you sir. Now that I have that healing spell we get (dark deal), i have found my restoration staff quite useless. Between that spell and a potion, I'm able to survive almost anything. Is restoration staff end game material or should i swap to dual wield / destro staff?

to be honest im still trying to figure that out myself. i think its a topic of heavy debate. i was playing with DW & resto staff last night and it seemed pretty good. i still find healing ward useful. going to run the same area tonight and see how i do in comparison with destro + resto staff. from what ive kinda picked up on, DW is for PVP and destro staff is for pve.

Brrrofski · December 2015

First thing first...

When you get conjured ward, front bar it.

Weapon swap glitches out sometimes. Harder ward is your main survival skill. Having it there at all times help tremendously.

An extra bonus is that if you front bar frags (which everyone does) everytime you shield you can proc it.

Waffennacht · December 2015

Hardened Ward = the best move Sorcs have, I actually run it on every bar.

Dark Conversion = out of combat/PvE resource management, wouldn't suggest using it during PvP combat.

Overload = ok I don't know if this is a glitch or not, but everyone says one of the morphs does more damage than the other. I have pictures that show the damage for both is exactly the same. The only difference is one does more AoE dmg while the other returns magicka. I run magicka version, makes it an excellent finisher and resource manager.

For my PvP build, I focus on instant, utility and damage based attacks.

My stats suffer but I'd rather have a more effective sorc than one I can brag about his stats.

Example front bar, DW:
Crystal Frag
Hardened Ward
Tangling Webs
Shattering Prison
Velacious Curse

Overload

Against melee opponents Shattering Prison is used just to force them into a defensive position. We do our best with our opponents on their heels.

Tangling webs is spammable, instant, and reduces your opponent's mobility. Damage is alright
Velacious Curse s great anti NB, does decent damage, and allows for a strong burst attack

Hardened Ward and Frag are awesome.

I use the rotation to keep constant damage while very consistently procing frags. I get the most out of thermatuge CPs as all attacks are "oblivion" or magic damage.

I put streak on my back up, with resto staff. I switched from combat prayer to blessing of restoration. The 8 second buff for combat just doesn't last long enough to have consistent damage, making the heal more imperative. The minor resist of blessing lasts long enough to be kinda used, and the heal is significantly more to make the switch worth it. In Cyrodiil, when crit, I can get over 5k heal back, that's spammable.

Streak + Ward + dark conversion + blessing makes you insanely difficult to kill. Escape, or gain distance, regain magicka and health. Or i can just streak and dark conversion to go really far.

In the beginning I stayed away from resto staff, in late game and PvP i find it very useful. Not to mention, if in a group, heals can really help a buddy. (Or spam heals for some AP when not doin anythin else)

Some help if it does

Trihugger · December 2015

Power Overload is bugged. It does 3% less damage than Energy Overload and the Unmorphed form instead of doing 3% more.

Alec508 · December 2015

Fusker wrote: »

All of this is extremely helpful and I'm glad so many can be so informative!

I play with a friend and we are leveling pretty slow. I just hit 29 after a week or so of playing. Is there a secret to leveling? We are just quests and whatever events we find such as the chains and the skull and bones.

Don't listen to people who say "enjoy the leveling" if you want to get to 50 , go to cyrodil find good delves, like Cracked Wood Cave, or Blood Mayne Cave. I just gave you info that I'm sure people will be mad about but whatever. You can go from 10-50 in 3-4 days if you go to either of these .

Waffennacht · December 2015

To me, cropsford repeatable quests leveled me more quickly than grinding mobs. I still feel that way grinding IC that the really quick quests are faster.