My two cents, much of which has already been said. If any class can go straight glass cannon in here, it is a Sorc. I personally would ditch the engine guardian and replace with Kena (best choice) or nerien'eth (solid choice) or 1 piece Kena 2-3 torugs pact (how I got my first clear). The last might be your best option, just make a torugs shoulder until the kena drops for you. All praise RNGesus.

I run 5 Julianos, 2 Kena, 3 Willpower, 2 Torugs Swords, 1 VMA staff (used to run a random nirn staff). I put Magic and Spell Damage on everything. I sit at 16809 health and right around 43K magic with double toggles. My shield is about 25k with 100 into bastion. Gold gear is not required, but it certainly makes things easier. DPS is so gear dependent. At least make sure your weapons are v16 and gold. This place is not to be undertaken without appropriate gear, CP, and resources (pots and repair costs). It will be a miserable experience.

Here is the thing. Sustain is definitely a real issue, but it cuts both ways. If you kill stuff faster, it takes less magic. If you kill stuff slower, you need more regen. I find the first one works better. The only time sustain is an issue for me is if I find myself playing more defense than offense or spread my DPS around too much. 2 crushing shock weaves and a frag will kill almost everything in the arena. Make sure you dont spread your damage around or try to AOE everything. Use your tab target and focus a target until it is dead. If it starts getting healed from somewhere, stop what you are doing and kill the healer (always solid advice). Burning an add for 10 seconds while it is getting healed is the best way to run out of magic. I just use cheap magic pots at this point, and that seems to be enough to keep my magic up.

The other thing to consider is that the more magic and spell damage you have, the bigger the shield. My total "health" (max health+shield) is actually higher if I run absolutely nothing into health. My health pool is lower, but my shield is bigger. Blue food is the way to go, the only place that purple food is potentially handy is the lost boss, but its really not necessary.

I think the definitive bar setup for a sorc speedruns is as follows:

Destro: Crushing Shock, Crystal Frags, Elemental Drain, bound aegis, Inner Light, Overload
DW: Surge, Liquid Lightening, Hardened Ward, bound aegis, Inner Light, Overload
Overload Bar: Exact same as DW bar.

I run a slight variation on this. First, I generally dont run Ele Drain and run Hardened Ward on both bars. This is safer because you dont have to bar swap, but is less DPS and can cause resource issues if you overcast your shield. Elemental drain not only gives resources (fixes the sustain problem), but also gives Major Breach, which is really handy on mini-bosses/bosses.

Second, I slot Rune Cage instead of Liquid lightening in a handful of situations (mostly round 9, but also handy on rounds 5 and 7, especially those archers). I need it less and less as I get better with spawns, but its handy to lock down and add for bit. If you really feel like you need more skills, you can always drop bound Aegis. This frees up 2 slots, but lowers your overall DPS because your magic pool is lower. It might seem trivial, but it is a noticeable DPS loss. I learned the Arena that way, but once I got comfortable, I found simple (high DPS) works best.

FloppyFrank wrote: »

Thanks for all the insight @Oreyn_Bearclaw. I would go with a vet 16 gold torugs pact staff, but I feel like it would cost a *** and my vet 16 gold willpower staff has been doing me well. Also, is nerieneth that much better than engine guardian? Maybe its because I play on xbox so there is no combat text, but is there that much of a noticeable damage difference? I really like the sustain provided by engine guardian but if nerieneth is really that much better I must just have to go with that.

Are you running 3 willpower Jewelry or do you actually need the staff to make the 3 piece set work? The first place to drop gold is on getting all Willpower jewelry in Arcane. I would also work to craft a gold v16 torugs staff in Nirn if you can. They arent cheap, but prices on v16 wood and rosin have dropped a lot recently. The most expensive part will be a potent nirncrux, but that can be farmed in craglorn.

Think about it this way. Your jewelry is an obvious place for a 3 piece, which CANT be crafted, and willpower jewelry is currently best in slot for that. A 4th piece of willpower (your staff), doesnt really help anything. You have 2 armor pieces left (head and shoulders) after you make your 5 piece Julianos and 1-2 weapon slots depending on your bar.

So really, you are trying to figure out how to maximize 3-4 slots (3 jewelry and 5 pieces of armor are spoken for). You have a few options:

- a 2 piece monster set (Engine, Kena, nerien'eth) and 1-2 pieces of another set. Torugs is a really obvious choice here because its 2 piece bonus is spell damage. With this setup, your set on your staff is irrelevant, but Torugs is still what I would craft because you could use it elsewhere (I have made like 6 of these damn things). Ideally, you use a Maelstrom staff here, but that is putting the cart before the horse. Your swords will both be torugs so you get the spell damage bonus for your overload bar. Again, v16 gold torugs swords in gold is something you should work towards. This is the best option IMO.

- a 1 piece bonus like Kena, and 2-3 of another set. This is prob what I am suggesting for you in the meantime. This way you get the spell damage from kena AND the spell damage from torugs on both weapons bar. The 3rd torugs bonus when on your overload bar just makes you a little tankier, which isnt the worst thing.

- Finally, you could make 3-4 pieces of Magnus. This is also not a terrible option. You basically get extra magic and magic regen on both your bars and extra damage on your DW bar. Problem here is that if you are going to go all in and craft 2 Gold Nirn swords, I would make the Torugs swords first. They are more useful overall IMO, and once you get a kena shoulder, I would hate for you to have to recraft 2 very expensive pieces.

In terms of which Monster set to use, there are really only 3 to consider. Engine Guardian, Kena, Nerienth (maybe Skoria if it is finally fixed next patch0. They are all very different in what they do. There is not a right answer.

-Engine Guardian does NOTHING for DPS, but it is wonderful for sustain. If you are constantly running out of resources, this might be the best set for you, but kind of the whole point of my posts is that sustain is not that much of an issue if you do it right.

-Nerienth (and Skoria) are both passive DPS sets. Meaning that you can equip and forget. Just wearing them is going to boost your overall DPS. Nerienth is no joke. The procs hit very hard, especially in AoE situations. Most of the bosses are pretty static in here so a high number of your procs should land.

-Kena is king for DPS, especially on sorcs. When you overload, you will automatically proc Kena. This makes your overloads hit REALLY hard, and it doesnt take any extra effort on your part. Sorcs are arguably best in the arena and it is for 2 reasons. We have shields, and we can Overload the bosses. When you arent overloading, you can also use this to burst down some higher threat targets that might not be worthy of spending ultimate, but you must actively do this by using 2 Light attack weaves in a row. It's really a win win. As people push times on this arena further and further, it wouldnt shock me to see people running Kena on boss rounds, and nerienth on trash heavy rounds, but that is over my head.