Returning Player/Sorcerer in need of some life-saving advice

Mageling · February 2017

I'll try to be as concise as I can.

I had almost 2 years away from the game. A LOT has changed. I just reached CP162 and tried taking the step-up to Veteran dungeons today and following my experiences I'm feeling a bit lost and underwhelmed.

Firstly, getting into a random group seems impossible because my CP160 is "too low". I've tried guild runs and I'm running out of magicka 3-4 times per boss fight even with potions. I'm using the Combat Metrics add-on and I presume the figure it shows in brackets in-game is (Your DPS/Total DPS of Group)? If so, my DPS in fights is averaging 8000-10000, which feels really really poor.

At the moment my gear looks like:

Head - Overwhelming Hat CP150 (+Magicka)
Shoulders - Valkyn Skoria's Epaulets CP160 (+Magicka)
Chest - Jerkin of the Scathing Mage CP150 (+Magicka)
Hand - Gloves of the Scathing Mage CP150 (+Magicka)
Waist - Sash of the Scathing Mage CP150 (+Magicka)
Legs - Magnus Breeches CP160 (+Magicka)
Feet - Shoes of the Scathing Mage CP150 (+Magicka)
Neck - Commodore's Medal CP150 (+Mag Regen)
Ring 1 - Ring of Willpower CP150 (+Mag Regen)
ring 2 - Ring of the Scathing Mage CP150 (+Flame Resistance)

Staff 1 - Magnus Inferno Staff CP150 (Absorb Magicka)
staff 2 - Magnus Lightning Staff CP140 (Weapon/Spell Damage)

I currently have 40 points in Magicka and 24 in health.

Unbuffed my stats are Magicka 26082. Magicka Recovery 1363. Max Health 13905. Spell Damage 1094. Spell Crit 59.8%. Spell Resist 10636.

Spell Bar 1 (Fire Staff) is - Haunting Curse/Force Pulse/C-Frags/Inner Light/Bound Aegis (Shooting Star Ultimate)
Spell Bar 2 (Lightning Staff) is - Liquid Lightning/Blockade of Storms/Mages Wrath/Inner Light/Bound Aegis (Energy Overload Ultimate)
Spell Bar 3 is - Boundless Storm/Power Surge/Hardened Ward/Dark Conversion/Bound Aegis

My rotation is normally Boundless Storm+Power Surge at the start. Liquid Lightning, then Blockade of Storms (keep both up when they expire). I then place a Curse (keeping it up when it explodes). I then activate C-Frag procs with Force Pulse in between. I try to do light attacks in between each cast however after having 2 years out of the game, this is something that I know I definitely need to work on.

So I ask you please for you help fellow sorcerers. I am used to to playing end-game stuff and being pretty good at it so I'm feeling really disillusioned at the moment for being so rubbish.

FriedEggSandwich · February 2017

If you're cp 160 then you can eat top level food. So put all attribute points into magicka and eat blue food that buffs hp and magicka. You should end up with 15k hp which will be enough for all pve content except trials and HM vet dungeons. You got the right idea with casting surge first, that is your heal so it's important you also don't let it run out. Your surge heals rely on crits so you should aim for high crit chance. You get 12% more crit when you spend 30cp in the first blue tree, but until then you will have to make do with whatever you can get from sets and inner light. You should be aiming for 60-70% crit eventually. Use inner light on both bars to keep your crit up. Wear a set like Julianos for more crit, and spinners for more spell penetration. The sets you have listed seem to be a bit mismatched which won't help.

You also got the right idea with using dots, but I think you should drop boundless storm and (gasp) curse too until you're familiar and comfortable with your rotation and survivability. You should be buffing up with surge, dropping liquid lightening and wall of elements and then force pulse weaves until frag procs or buffs/dots need a refresh. Bound aegis and inner light on both bars. Once you're down with your rotation you can add complexity by including curse, it should replace inner light on your back bar. You don't really need to consider regen if you're mostly dealing with trash because the destro passive that returns magicka when you kill something with a destro skill will keep your magicka topped off as long as you keep killing stuff. This stops working as soon as you have a boss with 6m hp to burn, cos obviously you're not continuously killing stuff to get the magicka return. When solo I chug pots or switch to overload if I run out of magicka.

10k dps is not actually too bad considering your level and mismatched gear. With the same rotation at cp 600 I can hit 24k dps self buffed with no ulti on my target dummy. Group buffs and ulti use would obviously push that number up.

Edit: cp160 might be a bit low for vet dungeons, but will be fine for everything else. You should even be able to solo normal dungeons. My cp220 toon on na can solo normal dungeons with 5x elegant and 5x spinners, and has been able to for a while.

Mageling · February 2017

Thank you very much for your thorough reply. I really appreciate it.

Having Surge on my 3rd bar meant that I was only putting it up at the beginning of the fight or when I went into to recharge my Magicka via Dark Exchange, so it had very little up-time.

What sort of level would you recommend starting Veteran dungeons? Is there a minimum expected DPS for them?

After making a couple of changes, my crit is up to 66% on bar 1 and 60% on bar 2. I'm just researching the last item so I can build myself the full Julianos Set too.

FriedEggSandwich · February 2017

Mageling wrote: »

Thank you very much for your thorough reply. I really appreciate it.

Having Surge on my 3rd bar meant that I was only putting it up at the beginning of the fight or when I went into to recharge my Magicka via Dark Exchange, so it had very little up-time.

What sort of level would you recommend starting Veteran dungeons? Is there a minimum expected DPS for them?

After making a couple of changes, my crit is up to 66% on bar 1 and 60% on bar 2. I'm just researching the last item so I can build myself the full Julianos Set too.

Difficult to say what sort of level to start doing vet dungeons, you could in theory do them now but you would need an understanding group. If you want to minimise risk of getting kicked from pugs then definitely over 300cp. The reason is just that most people want a smooth run and when people see low cp they see low survivability and don't want to be scraping you off the floor every time a boss does an aoe. You can improve your chances of survival in a vet dungeon by just knowing the mechanics and where to stand, and you can learn this from the normal versions of the dungeons. Minimum expected dps is said to be 20k but you could easily get away with less tbh, people are more concerned by how squishy you are really.

Incidentally, when it comes to survivability and cp allocation for pve I recommend that you put zero cp into Bastion, choosing instead to put your red cp into Hardy, Elemental Defender and Thick Skinned. You might see other players recommend you stack all cp into Bastion first because it increases shield size. Well it does increase shields size by up to 25% if you have the full 100cp there. Trouble is 25% of a 20k ward is only 5k, and that 5k extra ward just cost you 100cp. If you spend those cp in Hardy, Elemental Defender and Thick Skinned instead you can reduce all incoming damage by up to 20% at current cp cap (assuming 72cp each in both hardy and elemental defender), and this damage reduction applies to your wards too, so works with ward up or down. Bastion only works for you when you have your ward up and your ward should only be up in a panic or if you anticipate bid unavoidable damage; most of the time you should be relying on surge to stop you from dying.

With 44k magicka and zero cp in bastion you should have a 21k hardened ward, which is plenty big enough considering it only lasts for 6s, it's an emergency measure only in pve, and especially considering that any cp you have spent in hardy, elemental defender and thick skinned will reduce the damage it takes anyway.