Looking for a little build help on a Magic Sorc

perogwin_ESO · October 2016

So I am playing a Magic Sorc (50/186 Currently) and have recently started doing the Vet Dungeons, my usual load out still seems to work fine till the last boss (especially if the team uses the scroll) where I just cant seem to put out enough damage. I am looking for a single bar load out to be used in those situations. I not here to have people disparage my play style just offer constructive ideas.

The 411:

Stats: 40/14/10 (anyone have a better point spread)

Weapon: Lightning Staff (non negotiable)

Armor: Heavy (yes I know its not optimal but its what I want)

Normal Load Out: Destructive Reach, Elemental Blockade, Boundless Storm, Volatile Familiar, Twilight Matriarch - Elemental Rage (use to be Greater Storm Atronach before weapon ultimates).

I mainly Solo and never PVP so this load out is perfect and seems fine in normal mode dungeons and non boss parts of Vets, but I need a second load out for the bosses that has more damage to it. Also I prefer to stay as far away from the boss as the area and spell range will allow me to

Limitations : I have all staff and all class but Daedric Mines Available, I do not have the PVP Abilities, Also only level 4 in Mage Skill line, 5 in Undaunted, and 8 in Fighter, and I have a really hard time with depth perception when it comes to small area targeting rings (IE Lightning Splash is a no go since I can never get it to land where I intend it to be but the big circles like Elemental Rage are no problem)

I am looking for a idiot proof (IE : me) 4 power (5 spot taken with boundless storm) Rotation + Ultimate (if there is a better choice then Elemental Rage)

Also looking for a suggestion for a useful Proc Heavy Armor set (dungeon farmable, not trial) and a Monster Set that would work with either Load out (I am leaning towards the COH lIiambria <sp> head/shoulders - but open to other options)

I know its a lot to factor in, but your help is appreciated.

DRXHarbinger · October 2016

Riiiiight.

Drop pets. They are shite.

Use infernal guardian, twice born, willpower if you don't want to farm for aether in trials.

Seriously don't use heavy armor. Having the biggest shield in the game makes it pointless.
Bar 1. Crushing shock, ward, inner light, frags, aegis, ulti.
Bar 2. I use swords. Fury, dark deal, liquid, surge, aegis (needs to be slotted on all bars) overload.

Job done. But drop lit staff on a sorc. They slow you down. Use inferno. Up to you if you think it's crap. Got me flawless on mine 5 times in a row and I care not for defense and all this heavy armor crap. Kill quicker means you die less.

perogwin_ESO · October 2016

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Riiiiight.

Drop pets. They are shite.

Use infernal guardian, twice born, willpower if you don't want to farm for aether in trials.

Seriously don't use heavy armor. Having the biggest shield in the game makes it pointless.
Bar 1. Crushing shock, ward, inner light, frags, aegis, ulti.
Bar 2. I use swords. Fury, dark deal, liquid, surge, aegis (needs to be slotted on all bars) overload.

Job done. But drop lit staff on a sorc. They slow you down. Use inferno. Up to you if you think it's crap. Got me flawless on mine 5 times in a row and I care not for defense and all this heavy armor crap. Kill quicker means you die less.

I appreciate your input, but this is exactly what I did not want, My play style works for me, it might not be your style and that is fine.

I am looking for some help for a load out within my playstyle parameters not to have to completely change my style or min/max. Also I am using mouse and keyboard so switching between 2 bars constantly is not something I want to have to try to do. I am also old so my hand eye co ordination makes it difficult to switch on the fly. So I need it set to 1 bar for normal mobs and 1 bar for bosses.

I still appreciate you taking the time to answer - which Dungeon has the Infernal Guardian and Twice born set?

xericdx · October 2016

The "within your playstyle" is difficult to define...and so it is difficult to give advice.

Maybe a few changes could be :

- If you don't want to put all your attributes on magicka like we almost all do, at least I would take some of them out of stamina. Don't really need much in dungeons.
- You have no spammable abilities. Destructive reach has a DoT so you don't want to spam it too often. Try Force Pulse instead.
- Take out Boundless storm. If you really want to keep the heavy armor (which set?), no need for the extra proection (that does not apply to shields anyway, ssame for the heavy armor, 0 extra protection on shields). If you want pet, you could slot Daedric prey instead to have the extra damage.

Hope it helps.

PS: Twice Born Star has to be crafted, Infernal Guardian drops in City of Ash 1 (easy dungeon).

perogwin_ESO · October 2016

The Spamable thing is where I see the issue as well, I was thinking for the "Non-Solo" Load out something like

Force Pulse, Mage's Wrath, One of the Entropies (not sure which), then either Velocious Curse or Crystal Blast (I am just not sure which), and Boundless Storm - with Elemental Rage still as the ultimate and just forgo pets when not solo (will just hope the other team members do as well as my pets do for me solo).

xericdx · October 2016

Crystal fragment is better, just have to learn to use it only then it procs (sound + violet glowing on your hands). Against bosses the other morph won't help.

Structured Entropy is better if you never swap weapon (you loose health if you are at max when you swap). If you swap weapons, then Degeneration.

If you don't want to have too many skills to use you can replace the pets with one or two toggles : Bound Aegis and/or Mage light.

Also, if you don't use shield, you don't want the Infernal Guardian.

Snootking · October 2016

Limiting yourself to only one bar seriously reduces the DPS you can put out due to the fact that you can't fit all your buffs, shields, AoE and single target attacks on a single bar.

Also heavy armor massively limits you due to not having the 5 piece light armor passives.

I'm sorry but if you want higher dps I think it's more the case of learning a new playstyle than trying to maximise your current one.

That being said I main a magsorc using double destro and no overload and I think my playstyle is quite idiot proof. Aegis on both bars and inner light on the front so theres actually only 3 buttons to think about on the front and 4 on the the back (one of these being a 20 second buff).

If you are interested in adapting and learning a new playstyle then let me know and I can post my skill set-up and rotation.

Edit: 64 points into magicka is a must.

greylox · October 2016

64 points in mana. Get rid of destructive reach and use crushing shock or force pulse, both have merits.

Pets are fine and even better for solo play, I use them extensively and you have a good mix of the morphs there.

I'd swap boundless storm for hardened/empowered ward if you're only using 1 bar, this also shields pets. (I mapped my bar change to 'c' as it's where my thumb naturally rests so I find swapping second nature now).

Also if you want to use heavy, use at least 2 light pieces.

If I had to use 1 bar I'd have lightning flood, wall of elements, hardened ward and the 2 pets and use heavy attacks with lightning staff for single target DPS.

My toon smokes for instance:. Bar 1 volatile familiar, lightning flood, elemental blockade, twilight aggressor bound armour

Bar 2: familiar, empowered ward, daedric prey (very good for pet build), twilight, armour.

Ults are eye of the storm and charged atronach. Double lightning destroy staff. 5 light 1 med 1 heavy

Sludge04 · October 2016

I have found the below bars to be the most efficient in killing single targets and works pretty well in mob situations too:

7 Light, all divine, crit boon. Julianos x 4 and 5 x Infallible Aether - I think there's an equivalent in Craglorn for this set now.

Bar 1 - Defense
Flame Staff
Force Pulse
Boundless Storm
Hardened Ward
Harness Magika
Dark Exchange

Bar 2 - Offense
Lightning Staff
Force Pulse
Liquid Lightning
Crystal Fragment
Mage's Fury
Inner Light

Bar 2 is all spammable quick attacks and when you use the frags upon procs then the rotation does quite a fair bit of damage costing not a great deal of magika. When you have to, flip to bar 1 and put your shields up and restore your health and magika.

This is a Spell Crit build, there's many more alternatives and set ups but this one works for me, I stay alive predominantly and deliver persistent high damage.

Tyrion87 · October 2016

OP, one thing before any other players give you advice: why do you insist on sticking to your build when at the same time everybody tells you that your build is flawed at its basics and there is no way to be able to do good dmg in vet dungeons with this build. You put too many limitations (things you dont want to give up) that nobody can help you to be honest. Your build is maybe fun for your solo gameplay, and maybe it's enough for normal dungeons. But believe me, nobody wants such DD in their groups for vet dungeons. When you say you can deal with trash mobs in vet dungeons, then I can tell you that it is the other DD who handles with them more than you do.

As for the build, well you can keep one pet on the bar if you want it that much (familiar morph can be nice for its pulse aoe dmg), you can use lighting staff if you want it (provided that it's sharpened or at least precise), but you just need to:
- stop using all heavy armor pieces (if you dont have undaunted mettle passive yet, use all light for its passives),
- start using the second bar (you need to place your buffs/defences/dot's on it),
- put all your attributes into magicka,
- craft a decent dps gear like Julianos (make it all purple at least, with divines traits),
- start using more efficient skills rotation including dot's like liquid lighting/elemental blockade, and better spammable dps skills like force pulse/crushing shock (crystal frags when procced, but never destructive reach! it can be good and fun for solo playing, but there is no use for it in the group dungeons),
- slot also some toggles like inner light and/or bound aegis for their bonuses.
You can buy willpower jewelry from guild traders (they are rather cheap nowdays, with arcane trait and preferably all with spell dmg enchant) and you can farm a good monster set like Ilambris (all armor pieces with magicka enchant of course). CP's distribution is the other story, but at first you need to take care of the basics of the build. The Thief mundus stone is not mandatory but it helps a lot (if you just don't want it, try the one giving you magicka or spell dmg).

As you can see, there are many things you can still choose for yourself but some are just must-have. If you don't want to adapt for vet dungeons, just don't do them (especially the dlc ones).

Tremors · October 2016

Ok man lets try this -

All attributes into magicka

1 bar only (any sharpened lightning staff with spell damage enchant).

Elemental Blockade, Crystal Frags, Velocious Curse, Inner Light, Power Surge, Destro Ultimate.

5 pieces elegant (3 jewellery, 2 on body, jewellery enchanted with spell damage glyphs). [farmed in auridon]

5 pieces storm knight (5 on body with max magicka enchants). [farmed in stormhaven].

Divines on all 7 armour pieces.

Mundus stone - Thief

CP (for now) - Green Tree go all into reduced magicka cost of spells
Blue Tree go all into elemental expert
Red Tree go an even split between hardy and elemental defender

Rotation -

Apply power surge every 30 seconds

Elemental Blockade, Curse, 2 x full charged lightning staff Heavy attack, Curse, 1 x full charged heavy attack (throw a crystal frag only when it procs your hands purple so you can instant cast, and only throw it when this happens).

Rinse and repeat this rotation.

Heavy attack is your main spam ability here, so it will affect all trash pulls and do a lot of damage single target. I set your CP so basic because I wasn't sure exactly how many you have.

EDIT - Even better would be if you could get 1 x storm knight lightning staff sharpened with a spell damage enchant and then run 1 x medium grothdar, illambris or infernal for the maximum magicka. Then you aren't wasting a slot.

Hope this is sort of what you're looking for.

Masel · October 2016

If you want to keep the lightning staff and heavy armor, here's what I'd suggest: 5 pieces infallible aether (5 armor) 1x kena (heavy) 5x Sergeant's mail (1 heavy body piece, three jewelry and sharpened lightning staff on main bar and inferno on back bar) this way, you keep light armor passives, keep two heavy armor pieces and get nice deeps by heavy attacking with your staff.
If you have vMA Staves get rid of kena and use another Sergeant's mail instead, preferably body and legs/shoulders/head. Put down blockade, liquid lightning and heavy attack = boom,melt everything.
If you accept 7 light armor, use elegance instead of Sergeant's for overload buff. Run normal trials until you get five aether pieces and build the rest around it.
Bars would be as follows:

Surge, liquid lightning, blockade, inner light, aegis, shooting star

Ward,velicious curse, flex spot(mages wrath for me), inner light, aegis, overload

Overload bar: ward, surge, liquid lightning, inner light, aegis

You can use this for all content in the game, I used this with elegance for everything in the game, including vet trials, flawless vMA etc. Trick is that aether and sergeant's mail biff every tick of heavy lightning staff attacks. I use this in pvp too, it's a nasty build. Overload just onehits people, especially stamina builds.

Edit: saw that you don't want to use trial gear: you can combine sergeants mail and elegance in the same way, but aether is just too powerful to pass by in my opinion (8% group dps, crit etc.)...if you want only one bar, go for surge, liquid,blockade, inner light and bound aegis, with either overload or destro ulti if you want to keep that. Don't limit yourself mate, try to get used to two bars because it rather makes your life easier than harder!

Masel · October 2016

RedVyperOfDorne wrote: »

Ok man lets try this -

All attributes into magicka

1 bar only (any sharpened lightning staff with spell damage enchant).

Elemental Blockade, Crystal Frags, Velocious Curse, Inner Light, Power Surge, Destro Ultimate.

5 pieces elegant (3 jewellery, 2 on body, jewellery enchanted with spell damage glyphs). [farmed in auridon]

5 pieces storm knight (5 on body with max magicka enchants). [farmed in stormhaven].

Divines on all 7 armour pieces.

Mundus stone - Thief

CP (for now) - Green Tree go all into reduced magicka cost of spells
Blue Tree go all into elemental expert
Red Tree go an even split between hardy and elemental defender

Rotation -

Apply power surge every 30 seconds

Elemental Blockade, Curse, 2 x full charged lightning staff Heavy attack, Curse, 1 x full charged heavy attack (throw a crystal frag only when it procs your hands purple so you can instant cast, and only throw it when this happens).

Rinse and repeat this rotation.

Heavy attack is your main spam ability here, so it will affect all trash pulls and do a lot of damage single target. I set your CP so basic because I wasn't sure exactly how many you have.

EDIT - Even better would be if you could get 1 x storm knight lightning staff sharpened with a spell damage enchant and then run 1 x medium grothdar, illambris or infernal for the maximum magicka. Then you aren't wasting a slot.

Hope this is sort of what you're looking for.

What's the benefit of stormknight here? Just out of interest, for keeping the heavy armor? Sergeants Mail seems just a lot better than that!

Tremors · October 2016

Masel92 wrote: »

RedVyperOfDorne wrote: »

Ok man lets try this -

All attributes into magicka

1 bar only (any sharpened lightning staff with spell damage enchant).

Elemental Blockade, Crystal Frags, Velocious Curse, Inner Light, Power Surge, Destro Ultimate.

5 pieces elegant (3 jewellery, 2 on body, jewellery enchanted with spell damage glyphs). [farmed in auridon]

5 pieces storm knight (5 on body with max magicka enchants). [farmed in stormhaven].

Divines on all 7 armour pieces.

Mundus stone - Thief

CP (for now) - Green Tree go all into reduced magicka cost of spells
Blue Tree go all into elemental expert
Red Tree go an even split between hardy and elemental defender

Rotation -

Apply power surge every 30 seconds

Elemental Blockade, Curse, 2 x full charged lightning staff Heavy attack, Curse, 1 x full charged heavy attack (throw a crystal frag only when it procs your hands purple so you can instant cast, and only throw it when this happens).

Rinse and repeat this rotation.

Heavy attack is your main spam ability here, so it will affect all trash pulls and do a lot of damage single target. I set your CP so basic because I wasn't sure exactly how many you have.

EDIT - Even better would be if you could get 1 x storm knight lightning staff sharpened with a spell damage enchant and then run 1 x medium grothdar, illambris or infernal for the maximum magicka. Then you aren't wasting a slot.

Hope this is sort of what you're looking for.

What's the benefit of stormknight here? Just out of interest, for keeping the heavy armor? Sergeants Mail seems just a lot better than that!

Not a whole lot really man, he asked for a heavy armour set and a proc set and the extra shock damage should be nice with the sorc passives, etc. Doesn't really matter here as it's not an endgame build he's after haha.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · October 2016

You don't want a meta build, that is fine, but you are on the forms looking for more DPS. Well that is what a meta build does, it maximizes DPS. It might make sense to start there and see what you can adapt to better fit your playstyle, knowing that basically every change is a DPS loss. Some are bigger than others.

Play the way you want is one of the great things about ESO, but you are talking HM vet dungeons. If you can't meet a certain DPS threshold, you shouldn't be doing them.

Obvious problems with your build that are making it hard to pull passable DPS:

You need to consider multiple bars. The big thing is that sorcs typically run passive skills like inner light and bound aegis to boost their stats. High stats are a sorcs greatest strength, play to it. To be frank, I would vote kick someone I knew was only using one bar in veteran group content. You won't have enough skills to do reasonable DPS.

Don't spread your stats around. A few (5-10) in health is okay, but you should go all in on magic.

Enchant with magic and spell damage only, and the only traits should be divines on armor and sharp weapons. Magic proc sets are terrible. Look for gear to boost spell damage, spell crit, and max magic.

You should strongly consider light armor. If you want the heavy look, go 5 light and 2 heavy with your chest and pants being heavy. This is one of your biggest issues right now.

You need a spam skill in your rotation. It's not wonder you aren't doing any damage. Use force pulse for single target and your lightening staff heavy attacks for AOE. Otherwise your two most powerful DOTs are liquid lightening and Blockade. Consider turning on the one click for ground DOTs in settings. Makes LL much easier to use. Your other powerful damage skills are curse and frags. A Sorc without frags is kind of sad. You also need to get major sorcery from somewhere. I recommend power surge. It last 30 seconds so easy to put on back bar. Max out your mages guild. Meteor and innerlight are too good to pass up.

40k+ DPS meta bars look like this. Do with it what you will:

Lightening staff: force pulse, crystal frags, velocious curse, bound aegis, inner light, Shooting star.
Fire staff: blockade, liquid lighting, mages wrath, bound aegis, inner light, elemental rage.

One place we agree is that Llambris is best in slot for sorcs. That being said, you must do both lightening and fire damage to get the full benefits of this set.

Izaki · October 2016

Snootking wrote: »

Limiting yourself to only one bar seriously reduces the DPS you can put out due to the fact that you can't fit all your buffs, shields, AoE and single target attacks on a single bar.

Also heavy armor massively limits you due to not having the 5 piece light armor passives.

I'm sorry but if you want higher dps I think it's more the case of learning a new playstyle than trying to maximise your current one.

That being said I main a magsorc using double destro and no overload and I think my playstyle is quite idiot proof. Aegis on both bars and inner light on the front so theres actually only 3 buttons to think about on the front and 4 on the the back (one of these being a 20 second buff).

If you are interested in adapting and learning a new playstyle then let me know and I can post my skill set-up and rotation.

Edit: 64 points into magicka is a must.

Just jumping in real quick: No one uses Overload outside of 4-man and vMA, in trials everyone runs double destro :P

WuffyCerulei · October 2016

Alright! Here's my current build for magicka sorc:

Race: Khajiit (personal preference)
Attributes: All 64 in magicka
Mundus: Theif, Shadow, Apprentice, Mage, or Atronach (theif is better for that crit tho) - Currently using Atro for magicka recovery
Food: CP 150 blue max health and magicka
Equipment: 2 Arcane Willpower rings, 3 Shadow Dancer (2 light armor, 1 arcane neck), 5 Julianos (3 light, 1 medium, 1 weapon(both bars are staves), and 1 heavy shoulder (Illambris or Infernal Guardian for max magicka) - Dual sharpened destro staves for pve (lightning for aoe, fire for single target) - powered resto and sharpened destro for pvp - Spell damage enchants on jewelry, magicka on all armor, and weapon/spell damage enchants on staves
PS: If you want a full monster set, drop a piece of Shadow dancer. You have a little less magicka, but nothing terrible.

Fire staff bar (single target): Endless Fury, Crushing Pulse, Inner Light, Velocious Curse, Crystal Fragments; Ultimate: Shooting Star (Mage's guild ultimate)
Lightning Staff (aoe): Pulsar, Elemental Blockade, Inner Light, Power Surge, Liquid Lighting; Ultimate: Elemental Rage (morph of destro ultimate)

Restoration staff bar (pvp): Mutagen/Healing Springs, Healing Ward, Inner Light, Hardened Ward, Defensive Rune; Ulti: Light's Champion (morph of resto ulti)

With this build, I'm pulling 40k magicka, 50+% crit, 1.2k regen, and 2.7k spell damage (with power surge up). You don't have to be a major min/maxer or use a cookie-cutter build with expensive jewelry and twice-born star while using overload and being an altmer. This build is custom.

Also, biggy with dps in dungeons: USE LIGHT ARMOR. All the light armor passives are toooo good to pass up.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · October 2016

Snootking wrote: »

Limiting yourself to only one bar seriously reduces the DPS you can put out due to the fact that you can't fit all your buffs, shields, AoE and single target attacks on a single bar.

Also heavy armor massively limits you due to not having the 5 piece light armor passives.

I'm sorry but if you want higher dps I think it's more the case of learning a new playstyle than trying to maximise your current one.

That being said I main a magsorc using double destro and no overload and I think my playstyle is quite idiot proof. Aegis on both bars and inner light on the front so theres actually only 3 buttons to think about on the front and 4 on the the back (one of these being a 20 second buff).

If you are interested in adapting and learning a new playstyle then let me know and I can post my skill set-up and rotation.

Edit: 64 points into magicka is a must.

Just FYI. Inner light is bugged. If you are running pots and don't have IL on your back bar, you lose the buff when you swap. Not a big deal if your back bar is just DOTS and Buffs, but if your execute is there, it's a problem.