You don't hard cast Crystal Frags, right? :P

I'm not much of a one for dungeons - but for general mechanics, the damage done by your abilities that cost magicka is based on a combination of spell damage and Max Magicka. 1 point of spell damage is equivalent to roughly 10.1 points of max magicka.

So, where you can get a set bonus for 933 magicka - or 129 spell power, the spell-power will yield a higher damage increase. But that being said, there are certain things that don't benefit much from spell damage, only max magicka - ie pet dmg/heals, dmg-shield strength etc. Also with mag, you have a bigger pool so it takes longer to run out.

There are other factors too. Penetration, crit chance, crit damage... Having a gold sharpened weapon is probably one of the single biggest things you can do to increase your damage done early on.

So for your part, its worth knowing that CP aslo gives a small % bonus to your max mag/stam/health stats - which does add up o become quite significant as the CP's ramp up. So, at low-cp, I think from a pure damage perspective, you are better off relying on spell-damage rather than max mag. At higher cp's, max mag becomes more attractive - but only on certain builds.

For my part, I've always preferred max mag builds - but that's from a PVP perspective where more mag = bigger shields. I probably do less damage than a spell-dmg focussed setup(though still hit hard), but the survivability is more than worth the trade-off.

pkuronen wrote: »

Yes definately more factors. I run out of magic if I only boost dmg. I die easier if I only boost magic. I can enchant elemental dmg to weapon or build ultimate.

IzakiBroterSs: I am an newbie and I have no idea what is hard casting. Opposite of soft casting? Whatever that may be.

Biro123: sounds reasonable. They've made a science out of playing sorc.

Did you men regen there when you say magic? Otherwise I'd expect the opposite.

But yeah, mag regen is a factor too. Solo or PVP, it is pretty important. For dungeons, I understand that with a good group setup, buffs provided by others should provide you with enough mag recovery - but unless you have a particular group of friends for dungeoning, you probably can't rely on that.

In terms of getting the most 'bang for the buck', getting the mundus for crit-chance generally provides more benefit than any other when compared to the equivalent bonuses from gear sets. Golding your weapon provides a pretty good weapon/spell damage bonus. Golding anything else gives only a tiny boost. Cost reduction is generally more efficient than recovery to a point. Sharpened is the best offensive weapon trait. period. Make sure you have a spell damage enchantment on at least one of your weapons.
In terms of abilities for dungeon, liquid lighting and wall of elements are a must (can never remember which morphs are best though).. Look at inner light on the mages guild - that's a decent damage booster too. Probably worth running hardened ward too if your teammates are an unknown - just don't spam it or you'll struggle for mag.
Don't forget resto heavy attacks can return resources quite well in a pinch too.

pkuronen wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

pkuronen wrote: »

Yes definately more factors. I run out of magic if I only boost dmg. I die easier if I only boost magic. I can enchant elemental dmg to weapon or build ultimate.

IzakiBroterSs: I am an newbie and I have no idea what is hard casting. Opposite of soft casting? Whatever that may be.

Biro123: sounds reasonable. They've made a science out of playing sorc.

Did you men regen there when you say magic? Otherwise I'd expect the opposite.

But yeah, mag regen is a factor too. Solo or PVP, it is pretty important. For dungeons, I understand that with a good group setup, buffs provided by others should provide you with enough mag recovery - but unless you have a particular group of friends for dungeoning, you probably can't rely on that.

In terms of getting the most 'bang for the buck', getting the mundus for crit-chance generally provides more benefit than any other when compared to the equivalent bonuses from gear sets. Golding your weapon provides a pretty good weapon/spell damage bonus. Golding anything else gives only a tiny boost. Cost reduction is generally more efficient than recovery to a point. Sharpened is the best offensive weapon trait. period. Make sure you have a spell damage enchantment on at least one of your weapons.
In terms of abilities for dungeon, liquid lighting and wall of elements are a must (can never remember which morphs are best though).. Look at inner light on the mages guild - that's a decent damage booster too. Probably worth running hardened ward too if your teammates are an unknown - just don't spam it or you'll struggle for mag.
Don't forget resto heavy attacks can return resources quite well in a pinch too.

Yes regen or more like magicka pool that not runs out with max/regen/cost modification. If I want to bang my crystal shards (is that a bad idea?) all the time then I have to invest in max/regen.

You say sharpened is the best offensive for weapon. What about infused? It sounds good as I can get 40% extra elemental damage. And Nirnhoned? That is the last trait I have under research.

I have totally missed liquid lightning. I tried it on the beginner levels and discarded it in favor of fury/shards due to worse damage. Wall of elements has been a question mark but I will try it too then.

Thanks for ideas. I will eventually optimize my sorc to the max

Spamming crystal shards is an bad idea, it does plenty of damage but is slow to cast, and use lots of magic.
use the morph who give an chance to instant cast it cheap then use force pulse to until it activates and you cast it.
Hard cast is casting then you don't have the cheap instant cast option, you can hard cast as first strike on an enemy doing it else is an bad idea.

use the wall of elements and the lighting spell on groups or enemies, also on bosses if you have magic for it.
if you have problem with strong enemies the clanfear is very nice, he can also heal you

Stannum wrote: »

Shard spam is not a good idea for high dps. Now one of the sorc meta - pet build with necropotence (you can google it easily). As for me i wanted to make totally lightning build for sorc (without pets).
Overhelming set (5)
Netch's touch (5)
Infallible Mage (5)
Lightning maelstorm staff or 1 Kena(if you have no maelstorm)

Best combo - Netch(5) + Infallible(5)+maelstorm
If you have no Infallible - Overhelming
If you have no Maelstorm - 1Kena

All jewellery enchanted for spell dmg (you will use heavies very often so you will not have problems with magika regen)
The idea is to put blockade, lightning flood, lightning form and then channel heavies. Destro ulty on CD. On off hand - lightning staff with spell dmg enchant, clench and mage fury for execution phase.
So you will have very easy rotation with good DPS output and no any problems with sustain and you have room for inner light and bound armor both on your bars that will boosts your magika pool.

I could try out maelstrom. Is it something I can try and return back at later lvl if I cannot do it?

Why Netch? How do you get your critical % up? Mothers gives me 3019.

pkuronen wrote: »

I could try out maelstrom. Is it something I can try and return back at later lvl if I cannot do it?

You can still go without maelstrom with 1 Kena as i've written. But with mealstrom you will do really powerfull.

Why Netch? How do you get your critical % up? Mothers gives me 3019.

Cause you get more then 500 to spell damage (in fact on char screen it will be displayed lower but all your dmg is shock anyway) and you will have about 55-60% spell crit anyway with CP and inner light comletely enough for surge healing. You can still try Mother's instead it's hard to say when dmg output will be better.

Lightning flood is not good when fighting solo? Seems to do very little dmg.

edit: now that i tried it seems handy to launch the flood with wall of elements and continue stave attack. All of them together start to stack up pretty well.