Nirnhoned on weapons is still the best for magicka users.

Nirnhoned on armor sucks and is useful only for acquiring enough traits to craft high-trait-count gear. If you're going to use TBS, every piece should be Divines.

In most cases, Julianos (or Hunding if you're stamina) will be better than TBS.

Nestor wrote: »

Amorpho wrote: »

Bear in mind I'm a magika sorc and I currently feel that 5 Julianos + 3 willpower + 3 Torug or Twilight embrace is the best way forward. But maybe I am wrong? Can anybody enlighten me?

Pretty much, see this

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/236313/can-someone-please-show-build-math#latest

This doesn't really say anything about Twice-born Star and Nirnhoned. I want to know if I can achieve higher Spell Damage and Spell Critical with TBS or not. Also, why is Nirnhoned not viable in pvp anymore? I know it has been capped but should it not reduce spell damage of quite a bit? Can somebody tell me the numbers? 20%?

SirDopey wrote: »

Personally I think TBS will only be slightly more useful than Julianous if you have 7 legendary divines traits (my current setup). Considering that the main point of using TBS is for the 2 mundus you want to increase these effects as much a possible. Nirn armour only increases spell resistance by 20% if you have it on everything and everything is legendary (it does not stack like it use to). You would be better off running 7 pieces of impenetrable if you wanted to be more "tanky".

Here's some more information which you will probably find really helpful.

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

Over at Tamriel Foundry there is a Sorcerer Arithmagic thread that does all the work for us. The results were that Julianos performs insignificantly better (~1%). The main difference is that TBS has an additional Health and Stamina bonus, while Julianos has spell damage (both have max Magicka). If you include that damage shields cannot be critted then TBS is better for PvE and Julainos has a slight edge in PvP (note that this is my conclusion of the data).

I'd encourage you to head over there and read the entire thread though as it contains a ton of information. Similarly, there is an Aedric Warrior thread that covers only magicka Templars and uses much of the same information. Note that Burning Light may skew the Templar's damage for PvE as well so TBS may be the superior set for everything except damage shields. Enjoy.

EDIT: It is also worth noting that if you frequently switch sets then you would have to reacquire the second mundus stone each team you reequip TBS. I don't know if this is a deal breaker for you but considering how long loading screens are currently this may be a ~10 minute process.

EDIT_2: There are also reports that any crit chance over 50% is currently glitched. I do not know the sepcifics of this issue but I do know that ZOS has not commented on it, nor is it listed as a current issue. In this case Julianos would perform better as well. Hopefully someone else can provide more information on this issue.

This is really useful, thanks. What about Nirnhoned on your weapons? Is it better than Precise? It's a shame that Nirnhoned has been nerfed so much. They took one of the most valuable traits in game and rendered it absolutely useless, screwing up its value altogether. The only reason to have it now is for TBS, but even then Julianos (at least for Magika Sorcs) is such a valid contender. And yeah, between PVE and PVP I'd rather give priority to PVP. I'd have TBS for PVE but the fact that it doesn't have so much edge over other sets, makes you feel like not making the efforts to research and craft it...

Nirnhoned can still be useful on armor if you have the correct race/passives. A few weeks back I had my Breton sorcerer in 7 pieces of nirnhoned. Couple that with the Breton resist passive and a few CPs, you will have close to 30k spell resist (after buff). Not as handy on a shield stacker, but this can be very good on other classes. Just a thought.

SirDopey wrote: »

Amorpho wrote: »

SirDopey wrote: »

Personally I think TBS will only be slightly more useful than Julianous if you have 7 legendary divines traits (my current setup). Considering that the main point of using TBS is for the 2 mundus you want to increase these effects as much a possible. Nirn armour only increases spell resistance by 20% if you have it on everything and everything is legendary (it does not stack like it use to). You would be better off running 7 pieces of impenetrable if you wanted to be more "tanky".

Here's some more information which you will probably find really helpful.

Hiero_Glyph wrote: »

Over at Tamriel Foundry there is a Sorcerer Arithmagic thread that does all the work for us. The results were that Julianos performs insignificantly better (~1%). The main difference is that TBS has an additional Health and Stamina bonus, while Julianos has spell damage (both have max Magicka). If you include that damage shields cannot be critted then TBS is better for PvE and Julainos has a slight edge in PvP (note that this is my conclusion of the data).

I'd encourage you to head over there and read the entire thread though as it contains a ton of information. Similarly, there is an Aedric Warrior thread that covers only magicka Templars and uses much of the same information. Note that Burning Light may skew the Templar's damage for PvE as well so TBS may be the superior set for everything except damage shields. Enjoy.

EDIT: It is also worth noting that if you frequently switch sets then you would have to reacquire the second mundus stone each team you reequip TBS. I don't know if this is a deal breaker for you but considering how long loading screens are currently this may be a ~10 minute process.

EDIT_2: There are also reports that any crit chance over 50% is currently glitched. I do not know the sepcifics of this issue but I do know that ZOS has not commented on it, nor is it listed as a current issue. In this case Julianos would perform better as well. Hopefully someone else can provide more information on this issue.

This is really useful, thanks. What about Nirnhoned on your weapons? Is it better than Precise? It's a shame that Nirnhoned has been nerfed so much. They took one of the most valuable traits in game and rendered it absolutely useless, screwing up its value altogether. The only reason to have it now is for TBS, but even then Julianos (at least for Magika Sorcs) is such a valid contender. And yeah, between PVE and PVP I'd rather give priority to PVP. I'd have TBS for PVE but the fact that it doesn't have so much edge over other sets, makes you feel like not making the efforts to research and craft it...

If you a magicka Sorc then Julianos is better than TBS as you substitute the health for shields, for non sorc classes TBS MAY be a better option than Julianos. The best way of looking at whats best for you is knowing what your personal minimum health is. Some people can be magicka NB and run around with 16k health just fine, other's may need 20k to play the class without getting constantly wreck. If your minimum health needed to be effective and enjoy the character is 20k+ then TBS will suit you better, if you know you're build well enough to be running on or close to minimum health then go Julianos

Oh course, disclaimer, this is just my opinion

The recommended HP in PVP is 20k. But I was thinking of raising that with the prysmatic glyphs

Unrelated but just a note: don't make a weapon part of your Twice-Born Star 5 piece or the 2nd bonus randomly disappears after a while of playing.

Nestor wrote: »

As for Nirn, put it on your weapons and not much else. Although a piece or two on Armor still helps your Magic Resist, so it can be useful to swap out a couple of Divines for it on the smaller pieces.

No, nirn on armor is trash, and I would never recommend it.

IIRC, at gold quality, nirn is something like 22% extra spell resist for that armor piece. Reinforced is something like 16% extra spell resist and 16% extra physical resist for that armor piece.

First, this is why you don't use nirn (or reinforced) on a small piece like hands or waist: The base resistance of those pieces are too small and it's a waste to use either nirn or reinforced on a piece with such a low base value (if you must, use them on a "medium" piece like shoulders and feet, as those have the same base resist values as legs/head, but aren't considered "large" for enchantment purposes).

Second, the real comparison isn't nirn vs. divines, but rather nirn vs. reinforced. If you use nirn instead of reinforced, you gain 6% extra spell resist contribution from that piece, but lose a 16% extra physical resist contribution. This is a horrible tradeoff. First, because spell resist is easier to come by in general (DK passives, Breton passives, etc.), and second, because of champion points.

Between Hardy and Elemental Defender, you cover all the type of damage that spell resist can mitigate. Except they are far, far better than spell resist (this is why nobody recommends putting more than one point in the spell resist star in CP--any points you want for spell resist should be split between Hardy and Elemental Defender). And to make matters worse, the only boost to physical resistance is split among three different stars for the three different armor types (and it's nowhere as effective in potency as what H/ED can do for spell damage). There is a reason why stamina builds dominate PvP: Because it's so hard to stack physical defense.

For both PvE and PvP (and esp. for PvP), I just cannot recommend nirn over reinforced. It's a trash trait, whose one and only use is to boost your learned trait count for crafting high-trait gear. Oh, and unless you're a tank, I wouldn't recommend reinforced, either, simply because the amount of mitigation you get is just so underwhelming (e.g., for an armor piece with a 2000 resist value, reinforced will add 320 extra resist, which, at VR16, translates to around 0.5% extra mitigation). And, as a tank, I personally prefer infused on my large pieces over reinforced because larger resource pools are important, too.

What about nirnhoned armor and weapons? Do they drop in craglorn too? I managed to find few nirncruxes there but no nirnhoned gear yet

You can get potent nirncrux (for weapons) and fortified nirncrux (for armour) from harvesting nodes in Upper and Lower Craglorn. You only get one nirnhoned gear from a quest in Craglorn. I think it is the final quest of the Craglorn main quest series. You'll need to buy nirnhoned gear from other people for research.

You need to check out @Asayre threads on tamriel foundry, loads and loads of useful information, I play magic sorc and go 5 Julianos, 3 Willpower, 1 Kena, 1 torugs and torugs weapons. Will be swapping the torugs armour piece for a kena helm if it ever wants to drop for me.