Magblade: with or without staff

Hauztein · April 2016

The question is simples:

IF my magicka NEVER runs out, and considering the same gear and build, what of the alternatives has more DPS potential in PvE?

1. A Swallow soul spam (maintaining crippling grasp and dark shades) wearing dual swords?
2. A Swallow soul, crippling grasp and staff weaves rotation?
3. other option?

Mojmir · April 2016

i use DW for aoe sap bar,staff is for distance/single/executes
i switch out resto/destro accordingly

based on this build

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pve-magicka-dps-by-iwm/

code65536 · April 2016

The DPS that you gain from your staff attacks outweigh the DPS that you'd gain from the DW spell power.

Your staff weaves help you build ultimate.

Your staff weaves proc Assassin's Will from Merciless Resolve.

aLi3nZ · April 2016

I haven't played mageblade enough to confirm what gives more dps.

What does suck is losing a set bonus like 126 extra spell damage set bonus you get from 2x tourges pact swords.

Also you like will have to have Assasins will on your main bar to make the most of it and just spending time looking and waiting for the proc and refreshing asssins will cost you dps. Personally I prefer duel weild since unless you are using neinreith monster helm and trying to get it to proc more by substituting swallow soul for force pulse there is no staff abilities worth using in comparison to the nb tool kit.

code65536 · April 2016

In PvE, you need to use a staff.

The spell damage from dual-wield and the 129 from Torug's Pact is not going to come anywhere close to making up for what you lose by not using a staff.

What the staff gives you is the weave. A free light or medium attack with every cast of Funnel. Even if you do nothing else, just weaving will get you more DPS than straight-Funneling from your DW bar.

But that weave gets you so much more. It procs Assassin's Will. Even with expending one GCD to recast Merciless after firing your spectral bow, it's still worth it because it hits harder than two Funnels--I've seen my Assassin's Will hit for as much as 46K. And you do have to keep Merciless up anyway for that 8% damage buff. If you're on PC, the Srendarr addon will helpfully sound a ping every time it your Assassin's Will procs, which makes it much easier to use.

Weaving builds ultimate.

If you have Siphoning Attacks up, it means that every weave will proc a guaranteed SA return of both magicka and stamina.

And there is one staff ability that you should use: Elemental Blockade. With the buff it received in TG, it's now one of the best DoT abilities in the game.

Anyway, the standard magblade front bar is a staff with the following: Funnel, Crippling Grasp, Blockade, Merciless Resolve, Inner Light. You can leave Impale and Sap on your dual-wield bar since you don't weave those.

Flameheart · April 2016

code65536 wrote: »

In PvE, you need to use a staff.

The spell damage from dual-wield and the 129 from Torug's Pact is not going to come anywhere close to making up for what you lose by not using a staff.

What the staff gives you is the weave. A free light or medium attack with every cast of Funnel. Even if you do nothing else, just weaving will get you more DPS than straight-Funneling from your DW bar.

But that weave gets you so much more. It procs Assassin's Will. Even with expending one GCD to recast Merciless after firing your spectral bow, it's still worth it because it hits harder than two Funnels--I've seen my Assassin's Will hit for as much as 46K. And you do have to keep Merciless up anyway for that 8% damage buff. If you're on PC, the Srendarr addon will helpfully sound a ping every time it your Assassin's Will procs, which makes it much easier to use.

Weaving builds ultimate.

If you have Siphoning Attacks up, it means that every weave will proc a guaranteed SA return of both magicka and stamina.

And there is one staff ability that you should use: Elemental Blockade. With the buff it received in TG, it's now one of the best DoT abilities in the game.

Anyway, the standard magblade front bar is a staff with the following: Funnel, Crippling Grasp, Blockade, Merciless Resolve, Inner Light. You can leave Impale and Sap on your dual-wield bar since you don't weave those.

This.

I may add that weaving staff attacks and using Elemental Blockade with a fire staff will be even more efficient if you use a Dunmer NB (you may call the Dummer the "meta race" nowadays for magicka NB PvE builds).

Septimus_Magna · April 2016

Staff: sustain dps
DW: burst/AOE dps

Sunburnt_Penguin · April 2016

aLi3nZ wrote: »

What does suck is losing a set bonus like 126 extra spell damage set bonus you get from 2x tourges pact swords.

@aLi3nZ
Yeah that does suck but adding 126 spell damage only boosts all of your attacks' tooltip by ~110. I'm not sure on the actual spell damage increase from using two swords but let's say that's ~200 because that seems ball-park to me.

Assuming the ~200 is correct:
If you're at range, weaving a Destro will give you ~3k-10k free damage (I'm not sure on the figures so I'm just going to assume it's comparable to what I can recall my StamNB's light-heavy attacks hit for) without any lost DPS compared to DW without any spell damage boost.

When you add in the spell damage boosts of ~310 on all of your tooltips, and considering non-crit attacks only.. You're going to have to do 10 attacks for every 1 light Destro weave to just make up the lost DPS.