Help - PvE Sorcerer Survivability Build Management

BrotherSpark · September 2015

Hey all,

I've been running a sorcerer for my third character playthrough and for the most part I really enjoy it. I am discovering however that a sorcerer isn't as straightforward as my Templar and Nightblade builds. On Nightblade, I harassed mobs with bows, and when they got close, switched to Dual Wield and spammed attacks, going invisible and doing a surprise attack when possible. For Templar, I ran Aedric Spear attacks with sword and board, then when health is low, switched to Resto staff and heal/buff/tanked until I was in good shape again.

For sorcerer.... well frankly I have a ton of great abilities that work well in unison but I can't for the life of me figure out how to organize them between my two (or three with Overload) bars. It's like I can't cram enough into a single bar and end up switching too much. My plan was similar to my Templar; I would do DPS with Destro and switch to Resto for buffs and health management. Often though, I get mobbed by baddies and can't switch fast enough. I think I am missing something or other that I can be doing to alleviate this problem and make the gameplay a little more fluid.

This is my bar setup. It's constantly in flux, but this is what it looks like now:

Bar 1: Destro Staff
Force Pulse, Clench, Elemental Ring, Power Surge, Unstable Clannfear, Power Overload

Bar 2: Resto Staff
Rapid Regen, Blessing of Protection, Illustrious Healing, Boundless Storm, Unstable Clannfear, Greater Storm Atronach

Bar 3: Overload
Endless Fury, Crystal Fragments, Liquid Lightning, Boundless Storm, Unstable Clannfear, Power Overload (to turn it off)

I make use of any passives that apply generally to magicka, ultimate, spell crits and defenses, etc. One frustrating thing is my Clannfear. I need the little guy to tank for me much of the time, but in order to use him effectively (and get the sweet bonus from Daedric Protection) he has to take up a space on all 3 bars. Without him though, I can't solo without fear of being ganged up on and slaughtered.

Generally I use the Destro staff, often buffing with Resto before a fight or when I need some heals. I pop Bar 3: Overload when I'm desperate and need to mess a whole bunch of guys at once, or when I'm soloing a boss. I drop the Atronach if I need a distraction to get my act together and heal. Bar 3 is also useful as a backup bar when I can get the jump on guys at a distance. It seems to work in my head, but in play it gets so dang messy.

Please help! Any suggestions are welcome. I'm new to the sorcerer so I welcome all input. Thanks!

BrotherSpark · September 2015

I want to add a few things.

When this build works, it works. I guess I have some questions about the efficacy of certain things.

I feel like Boundless Storm is an excellent ability and increases my survivability greatly. On bars 2 and 3, I am constantly popping it. For bar 1, I pop it on bar 2 and switch to bar 1. Is it worth having it on all three bars or is that a waste?

Also - Surge. Is 20% damage bonus worth a whole slot? Or should I worry more about survivability, since I am playing solo most of the time?

JimbobMarley · September 2015

I am probably about to look really stupid here but how do you get a third bar ? I only have two .

BrotherSpark · September 2015

It's not stupid at all. I didn't realize it for a long time.

Pop Overload, go into your skills menu, and you can spec an entirely new third bar. Your Overload only expires from doing light and heavy attacks, so this third bar will last indefinitely if you stick to using spells and keep your fingers off the attack buttons. I use it for my lightning abilities, so I can go all DPS on groups of enemies at once.

JimbobMarley · September 2015

BrotherSpark wrote: »

It's not stupid at all. I didn't realize it for a long time.

Pop Overload, go into your skills menu, and you can spec an entirely new third bar. Your Overload only expires from doing light and heavy attacks, so this third bar will last indefinitely if you stick to using spells and keep your fingers off the attack buttons. I use it for my lightning abilities, so I can go all DPS on groups of enemies at once.

Unbelievable lol ,I have got to v14 and had no idea . How do I get on to the overload bar ? Can I put all dark magic spells on this overload bar if I dont press the normal attack button ? or have I misunderstood ?

Thelon · September 2015

You have too many healing skills on your back bar. Drop one and replace it with Hardened Ward, the last skill in the Daedric Summoning tree. It will improve your survivability and that of your Clannfear.

You only need boundless storm on one bar. It has a long duration so you'll only have to re-apply it once or twice for most pulls.

Replacing Surge with Structured Entropy will increase your health, give access to the Might of the Guild passive and still provide your spell damage and Crit buffs.

Crystal Frags is too good to be slotted only on your Overload bar. Put it on your main bar instead of Clench.

Waffennacht · September 2015

Yeah you need a ward at least. Sorcs of any kind can't survive without a ward... kinda why we have em cough cough sb cough...

Anywho yeah, hardened will help you immensely

.

I could not get my overload bar to pop up on console last night. Its been buggy ever since the update for xbox.

Crystal Frag is awesome,

jasonburkart90 · September 2015

Is this strictly pve and not IC?
If so the bar 1 use
master inferno staff (sharpened): elemental ring or curse, crystal frags, crushing or force pulse, inner light, bound aegis, and shooting star (ult)

Bar 2 2h great sword (sharpened): mages fury, liquid lightning, hardened ward, inner light, bound aegis, and power overload (ult)

This setup works wonders for me and if I'm by myself I use resto (defending) on bar 2 and swap mages fury for healing ward. If you're not chugging spell pots switch elemental ring for entropy. Hope this helps

seebsdude · September 2015

run heavy armour dual wield dawnbreaker duh

BrotherSpark · September 2015

JimbobMarley wrote: »

Unbelievable lol ,I have got to v14 and had no idea . How do I get on to the overload bar ? Can I put all dark magic spells on this overload bar if I dont press the normal attack button ? or have I misunderstood ?

Pop the Ultimate ability and go to skills in your main menu. Edit the bar there.

As long as you don't use your attacks and drain the ultimate, you can keep the bar up indefinitely. I walk around through whole dungeons with the bar up sometimes.

Using any weapon ability will drop the bar. Spec it strictly with spells.

BrotherSpark · September 2015

Thelon wrote: »

You have too many healing skills on your back bar. Drop one and replace it with Hardened Ward, the last skill in the Daedric Summoning tree. It will improve your survivability and that of your Clannfear.

You only need boundless storm on one bar. It has a long duration so you'll only have to re-apply it once or twice for most pulls.

Replacing Surge with Structured Entropy will increase your health, give access to the Might of the Guild passive and still provide your spell damage and Crit buffs.

Crystal Frags is too good to be slotted only on your Overload bar. Put it on your main bar instead of Clench.

I've got a little ways to go to get Conjured Ward on the Summoning tree, but I will try it out as soon as I get there. Thanks for the suggestion.

Waffennacht · September 2015

On xbox? Yeah I popped it, went to my skills and there was only what bar was on before. I had done the overload bar a few weeks ago but since the update I don't get it.

Also the animation for it wont show and my skill bar completely (including the ult meter) disappears on me when I activate it.

I've just been avoiding it for now.

BrotherSpark · September 2015

Do wards stack? For instance, will Hardened Ward stack with Boundless Storm? Hardened Ward doesn't grant a buff like Boundless Storm, it summons protective spheres, so this should stack fine, correct?

jasonburkart90 · September 2015

BrotherSpark wrote: »

Do wards stack? For instance, will Hardened Ward stack with Boundless Storm? Hardened Ward doesn't grant a buff like Boundless Storm, it summons protective spheres, so this should stack fine, correct?

Wards do stack, but boundless gives armor and spell resist buffs. The skills don't synergize because sheild don't take armor in account when you use them so you're pretty much using boundless for the mobility and dot while using a sheild.

Bkella · September 2015

Your Overload bar defaults to the skills that are on the bar that Overload is slotted on, but you can change them and have the third bar.

Along with what everyone else said ........CFrags is a must have on your first bar. I also liked having Velocious Curse on my DPS bar. Open up with throwing a curse, weave pulse and staff, proc frags and boom. Curse and Frags hitting at the same time is a knockout.

I also dont keep 3 resto abilities on the back bar unless it was a group session and I was healer, but eventually you won't be the healer anymore. Slot some AOE abilities like liquid lightning, or the finisher mages wrath. And then when you get into Vet and get bored, respec to stamina like I just did. Pretty fun so far.

AEAltadoonPadhome · April 2016

The reason why sorcs have actually great survivability in solo/pve is because of Hardened Ward, and Power Surge.
By usng no heals and only those two for survivability, you can spend the rest of your slots to increase your damage. I would focus on crit chance and crit damage to increase the surge heals. If you have these high (crit chance about 50-60%) you only have to do damage or spam impulse to get auto-heals and do great damage meanwhile. This means the more damage you do, the more you heal.

Therefore, my bars are:
destro: Force Pulse/Frags/Impulse/Inner Light/Bound Aegis/Meteor
Dual Wield: Power surge/Liquid Lightning/Hardened Ward/Inner Light/Bound Aegis/Overload
Overload: Power surge/Mages' wrath/Flex slot(dark exchange, Liquid, Boundless, or Ward)/Light/Aegis.
If you just focus on having high spell damage and max magicka, you will have great damage output and high wards while gaining a lot of heals. Using all-divines Twice-born star set with Thief and Shadow will make your crits even more effective, though Julianos with thief sign is also fine.

Septimus_Magna · April 2016

Harness Magicka + Hardened Ward + Healing Ward

Once you get more dmg/crit you can rely solely on Hardened Ward and Power Surge for health sustain.

Reorx_Holybeard · April 2016

I'm still leveling up my Sorcerer (almost v11) but am having great fun and success with her so far with the following bars:

Bar 1 (Inferno Destruction)

Crystal Fragments
Crushing Shock
Flame Pulsar
Bound Aegis
Inner Light
Ultimate: Overload

Bar 2 (Dual Wield)

Flex Slot (usually Rapids when exploring)
Power Surge
Endless Fury
Bound Aegis
Hardened Ward
Ultimate: Shooting Star

Basic rotation is:

Buff with Power Surge/Ward
Animation cancel with Crushing Shock + Light/Medium Attacks
Fire Crystal Fragments when available
Execute with Endless Fury

Even with horrible gear she's been able to do everything in PvE far easier than my previous characters. With Power Surge and the Dark Magic healing passive you can usually keep full health pretty easily even without Ward. If you do get low just pop ward and AE/hit a bunch of things to get your health back up.

There's some room for improvement with this but I'm waiting to reach v16, get some decent gear and then try and test things to see what works better.

Waffennacht · April 2016

The real question is is @BrotherSpark even still on the forums?