MagSorc: glass cannon without the cannon? Need help!

Anacario · October 2016

So, I've been playing ESO with my main for a long time now, and I've just recently completed all the quest and exploration achievements for all three alliances with him. With that done, I decided to start getting serious with my stats and try out some dungeons and trials and stuff. However, I feel that my damage output and resource recovery are all sub-par, despite trying to do what expert players tell me to do.

Stats /w Bound Aegis IV and blue CP160 food on:

Gear:
All divines
All light
All CP160 gold max magicka glyphs
All purple, saving up for enough dreugh wax
x5 Julianos (chest, waist, legs, gloves, feet)
x3 Torugs (head, shoulders, staff)/x4 Torugs (head, shoulders, two swords)
x3Elegant (jewelry)

CP (424):
100 Elemental Expert, 41 Elfborn
71 Hardy, 70 Elemental Defender
100 Magician, 41 Arcanist

Main Bar: Force Pulse, Crystal Frags, Blockade of Storms, Power Surge, Bound Aegis, Thunderous Rage

Second Bar (as suggested in YOLO's overload burst build): Mage's Wrath, Power Surge, Liquid Lightning, Inner Light, Bound Aegis, Power Overload

Until I get two elegant swords to complete a semi-proper overload build, my rotation is currently Power Surge -> Blockade of Storms -> Force Pulse spam until -> Crystal Frag proc -> Continue Force Pulse spam, use Thunderous Rage whenever it's ready, refresh Surge and Blockade when needed.

So, what's the secret ingredient I'm missing? With this setup, I barely manage to maintain 10k single target dps. Does the 137 CP I'm missing really make THAT much of a difference? I don't intend to be able to nuke vMSA, but I hear that 10k is the bare minimum the worst players in the game should be doing, and I can barely hold that. Anyone have any suggestions?

dpencil · October 2016

Why do you have Power Surge on both bars??

And you don't seem to mention Liquid Lightning in your rotation.

Anacario · October 2016

dpencil wrote: »

Why do you have Power Surge on both bars??

And you don't seem to mention Liquid Lightning in your rotation.

I don't touch my second bar much right now, once I get two elegant swords it's gonna be dedicated to Overload, but right now I rarely ever switch to it.

dpencil · October 2016

10k is bad. You'd be better off with something other than Torgue's. Julianos is good. Willpower jewelry would be relatively easy to buy, you could buy non-arcane to start if you are broke. A 3 piece of Vicious Death would be pretty easy to get as well. That would be a nice high dps setup until you can get the Ilambris monster set.

Most likely, you are not weaving or animation cancelling, and you may not be keeping your dots up 100% of the time. These are usually the things that reduce dps. Deltia just came out with a new build video for the magicka sorc. Go watch it. There's some good info there for you.

dpencil · October 2016

Anacario wrote: »

dpencil wrote: »

Why do you have Power Surge on both bars??

And you don't seem to mention Liquid Lightning in your rotation.

I don't touch my second bar much right now, once I get two elegant swords it's gonna be dedicated to Overload, but right now I rarely ever switch to it.

So you have Liquid Lightning sitting there and never use it? Of course you are going to have terrible dps if you only use the skills on your front bar. Do you understand that you have access to a 3rd bar when overload is active? You really need to watch Deltia's video.

Obi · October 2016

Liquid lightning and wall of elements should be up all the time. Crit surge on back bar only! And put all your attribute points into magika! You can slot thundering presence or harness magika on your back bar for survivability. Meteor on the front bar

Waffennacht · October 2016

Your stats are fine, your regen maybe a little low, but an experienced player can make that work.

Your gear is fine, you could do better as the above mention, but it's not the problem.

It looks like you followed guides on how to build but not how to use.

For example, you say you rarely switch bars, well not only are you missing out on backbar abilities, you're missing out on bar switch animation cancel.

What I do is put the longest losting buffs and abilities backbar, so Surge, LL, Boundless come to mind. The shortest duration in that line up is LL at 10 seconds. If you wannabe lazy (like me) you can switch, hit all 3 (sure you'll refresh surge and boundless more often and waste magicka, but .... who's gonna know? And I won't tell if you won't lmao) minimizing the frequency of switching bars.

Get in the habit of using both bars and you'll be fine

Foxic · October 2016

dpencil wrote: »

Anacario wrote: »

dpencil wrote: »

Why do you have Power Surge on both bars??

And you don't seem to mention Liquid Lightning in your rotation.

I don't touch my second bar much right now, once I get two elegant swords it's gonna be dedicated to Overload, but right now I rarely ever switch to it.

So you have Liquid Lightning sitting there and never use it? Of course you are going to have terrible dps if you only use the skills on your front bar. Do you understand that you have access to a 3rd bar when overload is active? You really need to watch Deltia's video.

Deltias guides are OK for leveling. But please do not use him as an end game resource. I watched his newest sorcerer video and the amount of misinformation in the first few minutes made me turn it off.

First of all, do not front bar overload, currently except for vma there is no reason to slot overload.

Secondly, you cannot empower meteor with magelight. It's been tested time and time again. The fact that he ignorantly tells new players to do that astounds me.

Third he says that the destro ultimate is almost always better than shooting star. Which is just wrong. They are both good, should both be slotted, and you need to know which is best in which situation.

He was also double barring vma staves, why tf would you do that.

These are all things I found in the first few minutes of the video. I'm sure there's a bunch more

dpencil · October 2016

@TotallyNotVos I appreciate if you don't think Deltia is the best for endgame, but come on. Did you see where the OP is right now? No one else is going to hold a player like this's hand better than Deltia. Also, I think it's horribly rude to discount his video when you don't even watch the whole thing. That's like if I were to have replied to your post with "I stopped reading after you said you didn't watch the whole video."

He does mention running 4 Infallible instead of 2 Destros later in the video. Overload is good to give access to a third bar whether you use it or not. He does say there are better times for Meteor than the destro ulti. So the only thing of substance you sited was misrepresenting empowering Meteor, which is an understandable mistake to make.

How about you offer your own advise or preferred tutorial video instead of taking pot shots at a guy who tries really hard to help the ESO community?

Lukums1 · October 2016

This is what you need to do.

Bar 1. Get rid of power surge and put inner light you're missing so much crit it's not funny. DO it NOW!

Gear. Julianos is fine, running 3 elegant... is a waste if you're not willing to buy ANY elegant in dual wield which is dumb because you're missing out on 20% more damage LOL... sorry that sounded rough but it's true dump the torug pact.
Valk skoria helm/shoulders don't have it? Farm it. 100% hands down best magic set STILL Labris still in my eyes doesn't compete with the HEAT SEEKING MISSILE OF DEATH.

Summary.

Inner light on front bar - you should be punished for not having it there (not kidding)

Julianos 5 piece, 5 elegant piece, monster helm - RANDOM sharpen flame staff.

Everything else is fine you're ahead of others trust me.

Good Luck

Foxic · October 2016

dpencil wrote: »

@TotallyNotVos I appreciate if you don't think Deltia is the best for endgame, but come on. Did you see where the OP is right now? No one else is going to hold a player like this's hand better than Deltia. Also, I think it's horribly rude to discount his video when you don't even watch the whole thing. That's like if I were to have replied to your post with "I stopped reading after you said you didn't watch the whole video."

He does mention running 4 Infallible instead of 2 Destros later in the video. Overload is good to give access to a third bar whether you use it or not. He does say there are better times for Meteor than the destro ulti. So the only thing of substance you sited was misrepresenting empowering Meteor, which is an understandable mistake to make.

How about you offer your own advise or preferred tutorial video instead of taking pot shots at a guy who tries really hard to help the ESO community?

OK you got me this time. I watched the entire video and I will concede that it is a good guide for a player learning the sorcerer class. Though I maintain that he is not a good resource for any end game advice. But I'm not going to cite past examples as that doesn't have anything to do with his sorcerer guide.

Foxic · October 2016

Lukums1 wrote: »

This is what you need to do.

Bar 1. Get rid of power surge and put inner light you're missing so much crit it's not funny. DO it NOW!

Gear. Julianos is fine, running 3 elegant... is a waste if you're not willing to buy ANY elegant in dual wield which is dumb because you're missing out on 20% more damage LOL... sorry that sounded rough but it's true dump the torug pact.
Valk skoria helm/shoulders don't have it? Farm it. 100% hands down best magic set STILL Labris still in my eyes doesn't compete with the HEAT SEEKING MISSILE OF DEATH.

Summary.

Inner light on front bar - you should be punished for not having it there (not kidding)

Julianos 5 piece, 5 elegant piece, monster helm - RANDOM sharpen flame staff.

Everything else is fine you're ahead of others trust me.

Good Luck

Skoria is lower dps than groth, ilambris, and kena for a magicka sorcerer. It really only has uses in some pvp builds

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · October 2016

You do not need dual swords, the passives from dual wielding do not work in overload, so stop worrying about them.

A lot of good info has been posted already so all I can recommend is a way to get elegant on the overload bar.

Since you are using the jewelry, get one piece of armor, divines, and one sharpened one handed weapon, it really doesn't matter what kind, any will do, I use a mace. Then make a julinanos staff and one handed weapon, so you get the five piece on both bars, this can be a sword, you do gain 2.5% extra damage per but as a sorc, you really don't spend a lot of time on thos bar, maybe for the execute but that is it. Then use your torags helm and shoulders till you get illambris, the monster set is amazing an d truly BiS for sorcs.

Lukums1 · October 2016

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Lukums1 wrote: »

This is what you need to do.

Bar 1. Get rid of power surge and put inner light you're missing so much crit it's not funny. DO it NOW!

Gear. Julianos is fine, running 3 elegant... is a waste if you're not willing to buy ANY elegant in dual wield which is dumb because you're missing out on 20% more damage LOL... sorry that sounded rough but it's true dump the torug pact.
Valk skoria helm/shoulders don't have it? Farm it. 100% hands down best magic set STILL Labris still in my eyes doesn't compete with the HEAT SEEKING MISSILE OF DEATH.

Summary.

Inner light on front bar - you should be punished for not having it there (not kidding)

Julianos 5 piece, 5 elegant piece, monster helm - RANDOM sharpen flame staff.

Everything else is fine you're ahead of others trust me.

Good Luck

Skoria is lower dps than groth, ilambris, and kena for a magicka sorcerer. It really only has uses in some pvp builds

I .. and listen to this one... COMPLETELY disagree.

Let me explain why.

The sets you explained require you to be within range, skoria doesn't.
Kena can't be sustained with a max dps build, I'll disagree to the cows come home with whomever saids it can.
Lambris requires you... kinda on top or very close to.

I'd prefer the BUFFED skoria over these sets.

In maelstrom I can't explain how many times skoria has SAVED me from d-droths or an atro on round 6.

It's situational I agree but man oh man I wouldn't run anything else, especially with the buff as I mentioned with one tamriel.

Agree to disagree I suppose.

FriedEggSandwich · October 2016

OP your spell penetration is only 4984, this could be one reason your damage output sucks.

For vma I run 5x elegant, 5x spinners, 1x sharpened vma staff on front bar and dual sharpened torugs swords on back bar. I used to use 5x julianos instead of elegant but for vma I get better scores with elegant. Julianos gives you about 150 more spell damage and 6% more crit but about 2k less magicka and doesn't boost your light/heavy attacks by 20%. Julianos is better whenever you don't use overload. I know I said this was a vma build but it can be used for any pve except maybe trials or carefully constructed dungeon groups. Basically this build works in most pve situations you solo or pug.

Anyway whether you use elegant or julianos is largely irrelevant to my point; the important bit is spinners! The fact you only have 4984 penetration tells me you probably don't even have a sharpened staff, I imagine the penetration you do have comes from light armour passives. Most pve mobs have between 12-18k resistances and most pve bosses have about 25k resistances I believe. So you can penetrate up to about 18k without wasting penetration. Just adding a sharpened staff would increase your penetration to about 12k and then adding spinners to that would put it up to about 16k. Now you're ignoring 16k worth of enemy resistances which would noticeably boost your dps. You can increase penetration further with cp but unless you're at cp cap there's little point in doing this.

So to sum up; if you do nothing else get a sharpened staff, but also do look into making spinners your main 5 piece for most (solo) pve situations.