You're going to run into plenty of 1-shot mechanics that require you to block, interrupt, or move out of red in group content. Pretty much the best way to counter these things is to block, interrupt, or move out of red in my experience.

Mike0987 wrote: »

Could use the heavy armor skill 'unstoppable'. Just have to train it to 50 skill and its useful even if you're wearing all medium afterwards to increase your resistances. Also you could change some gear to impenetrable trait.

Stamsorc is going to have hurricane.

"While in this form you gain Major Resolve and Major Ward, increasing your Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5280."

When you get into soloing the hard content (veteran dungeons, world bosses, vMA, etc...) you're going to find a lot of abilities like this that require you to be on your toes and never miss a block, interrupt or AoE as you're gonna be dead if you do. This is part of the challenge I like about soloing content meant for groups.

In particular there's a few thing you need to watch out for on difficult mobs:

• Power Attacks -- Indicated by white/yellow lines around the mob. Usually these do a lot of damage, can one-shot you, and stun and have a knockback and/or knockdown that can finish you off. Most are easiest to just block but some are better to roll-dodge out of or just move out of the way.
• Interruptible Attacks -- Indicated by red lines around the mob. Bash or use a spell that interrupts. These attacks have a wide range of consequences from damage that just tickles you to damage that will one-shot you if hit so learn which is which.
• AoEs -- Usually indicated by a red area on the ground but sometimes other colors or none at all and just indicated by visual effects. A large range of different types and damages, some are mostly harmless and others are guarunteed one-shots.
• Mechanics -- In some fights there are "must know" mechanics you have to adhere to in order to survive or defeat the boss.

A good part in learning difficult content, whether solo or group, is learning which effects are dangerous or not and how to deal with them. One reason I actually like soloing dungeons is that I get to know all the boss abilities very well as I have to deal with all of them as opposed to very few or none while in a group.

On my Magplar I basically use 2 setups and am considering a 3rd for soloing difficult content:

• All DPS -- The faster things die the better and with Sweeps the more DPS I do the more I heal. I have 19k health and 900 Magicka Recovery in this setup.
• Survive/Sustain -- For more difficult bosses I swap out my monster pieces and jewelry to give me a little more health (25k) and recovery (1700). This gives me a little more leeway in surviving multiple high damage hits and lets me continually cast healing and shield spells as needed.
• Tanky -- There are a few bosses I can't yet defeat solo so am considering a more tanky setup to deal with these. I haven't actually tried it yet but it would be probably a 1L/1M/5H setup focused on healing modifiers with around 30k health.

Just keep practicing and tweak your build as needed. There are some bosses I had problems defeating the first time but now after dozens of attempts there are relatively easy. vMA is a good example of content that seems impossible at first but becomes much easier after a few dozen completions.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

Just keep practicing and tweak your build as needed. There are some bosses I had problems defeating the first time but now after dozens of attempts there are relatively easy. vMA is a good example of content that seems impossible at first but becomes much easier after a few dozen completions.

Thanks for the tips. I'm getting there, the build I'm trying to do i would probably call "lazy farmer". Decent DPS build, with a good amount of survivability against both several mobs and single hard hitters.

The build is basically based on refreshing Damage shields as often as possible while still doing decent damage, Spamming Brawler, and light attacks, using the damage shield weapon glyph with the infused weapon trait. So far I managed to do most Craglorn content (group dailies) except trials, Banished Cells (up until end boss) with this setup, and curious to see what else i can accomplish once i've perfected the build.

Honestly as a stamsorc you're better off relying on more crit surge procs than on brawler shields. DW+bow is incredibly strong in PVE on a stamsorc. Endless Hail along with Hurricane, poison injection, blood craze, caltrops, rapid strikes, and steel tornado will have you gaining a 3-5k heal every second with complete reliability as long as you keep them hitting something. Dual Daggers and medium armor give you more crit, which makes this even more reliable and increases your DPS output even more. Vicious Ophidian + Night Mother's Gaze + Velidreth is ideal, but there are other options if you don't have VO yet, such as Hunding's + Spriggan or Night Mother's + Leviathan or Viper.

My stamsorc is the only stamina build that I feel confident with in vMA - I even run 16k HP and keep coming close to Flawless Conquerer, if not for occasional mistakes. I'm sure if I respec'd for 18-19k HP it would be even easier.

Interruptible attacks and blockable heavy attacks really need to be mitigated by using the proper mechanic - interrupt or block. Trying to add a bunch more HP or bigger shields to get around these mechanics is going to hurt you in the long run because you're just going to drag out the fights longer, giving you more chances to make a mistake.

Since this is for a leveling / exploration / solo / overland build type, you have a plethora of options.

As a stam sorc, I recommend the first thing you do is to make room for Crit Surge on one of your bars. The amount of healing you get from this single proc is enough to keep you going through most everything, if you play your cards right.

Second, I recommend making good use of blocking. Without any buffs at all, blocking will mitigate 50% of incoming damage. Your physical and spell resistance will kick in too to supplement this mitigation. You should find that by blocking at the appropriate time (which is significantly cheaper than dodge-rolling), along with a minimal amount of healing, will likely solve this problem for you in just about any overland encounter. To be clear, the term "overland" extends to delves as well (open-world content, basically).

Rally is another good option, since you are using 2H. It affords you a steady, moderate heal over time, plus the ability to burst-heal yourself back up. The burst heal is greater the longer the buff is active before you re-cast it, just be sure to re-cast it before it wears off.

Ensure that you are using Hurricane, as it grants a considerable amount of both damage and mitigation, further enhancing your efficiency in clearing content. These two skills (Hurricane and Crit Surge) can be easily offloaded to your secondary bar, so you don't have to change up your primary bar for exploring overland content. Note also that any crit (regardless of whether it is a DoT or a direct-damage attack) can proc the healing component of Crit Surge.

tunepunk wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

Interruptible attacks and blockable heavy attacks really need to be mitigated by using the proper mechanic - interrupt or block. Trying to add a bunch more HP or bigger shields to get around these mechanics is going to hurt you in the long run because you're just going to drag out the fights longer, giving you more chances to make a mistake.

Well, it depends. If you're blocking or dodging you're not really doing any damage. Every second doing that is less DPS. If you keep hammering and mitigating damage your doing more damage than you would be doing if you were blocking or dodging away from the fight. Bash/interrupt might be worth it though.

The only thing you can't do while blocking is weave light attacks or use channel/cast time abilities. Instant abilities can be block casted. When I do VMA on my stamsorc, I use periods of blocking (such as blocking the skulls on 9th round) to reapply dots or buffs since rapid strikes is a channel and I still maintain north of 30k DPS during the final phase. Bash/interrupt just uses a little extra stam and actually adds extra damage if you just weave it.