Magsorc dps: what am i doing wrong?

Kashiwagi · April 2017

Hello everyone!
I have a cp503 breton sorcerer, and recently I have bought a training skeleton to finally find out my dps (I'm on a console, so no addons). It was 14.8k at best. And yet I constantly read about people pulling around 30k. I understand that I still have 97cp to earn, no vma weapon, gear is purple not gold, etc, but still... 2 times lower than max? Upgrading the gear to gold will give me 1 percentage point of trait bonus per piece and 30-60 magicka points per piece. 97cp definitely won't double my perfomance. So what should I do? I don't even know where is my room for improvement.

My build:
Mundus: Apprentice
Weapon: inferno (main bar) and lightning (back bar) staves of necropotence, both infused, both absorb magicka enchantment
Jewelry: Ancient grace, all arcane, gold spell damage enchantment on all 3.
Head and shoulders: Ilambris with stupid traits like sturdy and well-fitted. I'm working on getting better versions. They are medium and light, so no full undaunted passive yet, unfortunately.
The rest of the armor: necropotence with magicka enchantment, divines.
That means I have 6 pieces of necropotence, but I'm using staves, so there are only 11 slots, and I didn't want to give up Ancient grace. Maybe monster set isn't worth it? I also tried using infused armor and setting Mage as mundus, but dps dropped to 10-11k, so spell damage seems to be more valuable than max magicka.

Champion points:
83 magician, 10 tenacity (for plentiful harvest), 35 tumbling, 40 shadow ward (for treasure hunter)
100 elemental expert, 67 elfborn
60 spell shield, 60 resistant (for perks), 38 light armor focus, 10 quick recovery (for field physician)

64 attribute points in magicka. On main bar with pet and food active I have 48k magicka, 1987 spell damage and 41.9% spell critical.

Inferno bar: endless fury, twilight matriarch (for healing and set bonus), inner light, flame clench, crystal fragments
Lightning bar: elemental drain, twilight matriarch, power surge, liquid lightning, haunting curse
Ice comet ult on both

I start with lasting spells from lightning bar, then spam clench and use frags whenever they become instant. Spells from lightning bar are reapplied when needed. When enemy falls below 20% health, I use endless fury instead of clench.

I don't have enough magicka for the whole fight with target skeleton and sometimes need to use lightning staff attacks to replenish it. Maybe that is the problem?
I use Solitude salmon soup (4936 mana + 5395 health. I need health bonus not to be squishy, so mana-only food is not an option) and potion that restores 7582 magicka and gives major sorcery, but still run out of magicka for the first time when skeleton has 70% health left.

Any advice how to get better dps?

GrigorijMalahevich · April 2017

Trait sharpened on weapons, enchant spell damage, mundus thief, make weapons gold as a priority. This should get you to easy 22k and then swap ancient grace for willpower or moondancer.

Because you have 6necro - try to get VMA staff or moondancer x4 or aether x4

XGCAlbatr0ss · April 2017

^^^^^ this.

Trinity_Is_My_Name · April 2017

Kashiwagi wrote: »

Hello everyone!
I have a cp503 breton sorcerer, and recently I have bought a training skeleton to finally find out my dps (I'm on a console, so no addons). It was 14.8k at best. And yet I constantly read about people pulling around 30k. I understand that I still have 97cp to earn, no vma weapon, gear is purple not gold, etc, but still... 2 times lower than max? Upgrading the gear to gold will give me 1 percentage point of trait bonus per piece and 30-60 magicka points per piece. 97cp definitely won't double my perfomance. So what should I do? I don't even know where is my room for improvement.

My build:
Mundus: Apprentice
Weapon: inferno (main bar) and lightning (back bar) staves of necropotence, both infused, both absorb magicka enchantment
Jewelry: Ancient grace, all arcane, gold spell damage enchantment on all 3.
Head and shoulders: Ilambris with stupid traits like sturdy and well-fitted. I'm working on getting better versions. They are medium and light, so no full undaunted passive yet, unfortunately.
The rest of the armor: necropotence with magicka enchantment, divines.
That means I have 6 pieces of necropotence, but I'm using staves, so there are only 11 slots, and I didn't want to give up Ancient grace. Maybe monster set isn't worth it? I also tried using infused armor and setting Mage as mundus, but dps dropped to 10-11k, so spell damage seems to be more valuable than max magicka.

Champion points:
83 magician, 10 tenacity (for plentiful harvest), 35 tumbling, 40 shadow ward (for treasure hunter)
100 elemental expert, 67 elfborn
60 spell shield, 60 resistant (for perks), 38 light armor focus, 10 quick recovery (for field physician)

64 attribute points in magicka. On main bar with pet and food active I have 48k magicka, 1987 spell damage and 41.9% spell critical.

Inferno bar: endless fury, twilight matriarch (for healing and set bonus), inner light, flame clench, crystal fragments
Lightning bar: elemental drain, twilight matriarch, power surge, liquid lightning, haunting curse
Ice comet ult on both

I start with lasting spells from lightning bar, then spam clench and use frags whenever they become instant. Spells from lightning bar are reapplied when needed. When enemy falls below 20% health, I use endless fury instead of clench.

I don't have enough magicka for the whole fight with target skeleton and sometimes need to use lightning staff attacks to replenish it. Maybe that is the problem?
I use Solitude salmon soup (4936 mana + 5395 health. I need health bonus not to be squishy, so mana-only food is not an option) and potion that restores 7582 magicka and gives major sorcery, but still run out of magicka for the first time when skeleton has 70% health left.

Any advice how to get better dps?

Whew....well, I run four Mag Sorcs and do fairly well with them. Just ran Banished Cells 1 in Normal yesterday on my level 27 Mag Sorc Solo and completed it. Think I died 5 times. Video is on youtube.

To me there is quite a bit you can do to improve your build. Some has already been covered by others such as changing Mundus stone to Thief. If you really want to keep your monster set that's fine but you can combine Necropotence with some other set and see what happens. A good set to combine it with is Elegance. You can run 5 Necropotence (All Divines if possible if not all Divines then get Infused) with 5 Elegant (yes, you will not be able to use the Undaunted Mettle passive with this setup). If you can get two Elegant Destro staves that would be very nice. Sharpened staves are extremely expensive so try for Precise or Infused or whatever you can get...lol. So, 5 Necropotence armor pieces, 2 Elegant Armor pieces (Divines if possible). Now you can get two Elegant pieces of jewelry and one odd piece to fill the gap. You can also run 5 Necropotence, 1 Elegant armor, 3 Elegant Jewelry, 1 Elegant weapon and then a Monster piece to give either Max Magicka or Spell Crit depending on which Monster piece you choose. Of course Willpower can also be used if you decide to keep your Monster setup and if so you can get Sharpened Willpower Staves fairly cheap.

One of the biggest issues I see is with your Champion points. Forget about Treasure Hunter perk if you want to DPS. Change your CP for max DPS. Put as many pts as possible into Magician for lowered spell costs, no more than 10 in Tumbling. None in Shadow Ward....why???. None in Light Armor. Put around 30 points into Bastion for increased shield strength.Put at least 10 points into Staff Expert. More if desired. I highly suggest looking at build videos from both Alcast and Deltia or anyone else that's been around for a while. Thelon has an excellent build for Pets. Tops! If you are going to run a Pet build then you need to change Haunting Curse to Daedric Curse/Prey. It gives your Pet 55% more Damage while the curse is active. Also, are you activating your Pet every 8 seconds for it's Synergy? If not, your DPS will suffer immensely. Ok, I didn't want to go read through your post again so I am assuming you have just one Pet? The Twilight Matriarch? If so, get rid of it. Or unlock the Familiar. The Volatile Familiar does the highest DPS. You won't need any healing from the flying bird critter if you are running your build efficiently with Power Surge. So use the Volatile Familiar for max DPS and always keep it's Synergy active and use it with Daedric Curse/Prey.

Good luck!

dpencil · April 2017

Flame Clench spam? That's the primary problem right there. Force Pulse is the proper skill to spam for Crystal Frag procs. It's 3 chances to proc for every cast and much stronger.

Edit: And no Elemental Blockade?? Another necessary skill not present.

Trinity_Is_My_Name · April 2017

dpencil wrote: »

Flame Clench spam? That's the primary problem right there. Force Pulse is the proper skill to spam for Crystal Frag procs. It's 3 chances to proc for every cast and much stronger.

Edit: And no Elemental Blockade?? Another necessary skill not present.

True!

dpencil · April 2017

Try this for a skeleton parse:

Front bar: Crystal Frags, Force Pulse, Volatile Familiar, Daedric Prey, Endless Fury, Shooting Star
Back Bar: Liquid Lightning, Blockade of Storms, Volatile Familiar, Power Surge, Elemental Drain, Shooting Star

There are other ways you could set up your bars, but this will be the simplest way to get all the big stuff you need.

Drop Ele Drain for Hardended Ward when playing with a healer.

WarpigFunk · April 2017

Kashiwagi wrote: »

Hello everyone!
I have a cp503 breton sorcerer, and recently I have bought a training skeleton to finally find out my dps (I'm on a console, so no addons). It was 14.8k at best. And yet I constantly read about people pulling around 30k. I understand that I still have 97cp to earn, no vma weapon, gear is purple not gold, etc, but still... 2 times lower than max? Upgrading the gear to gold will give me 1 percentage point of trait bonus per piece and 30-60 magicka points per piece. 97cp definitely won't double my perfomance. So what should I do? I don't even know where is my room for improvement.

# 1: Your destruction staffs (staves?) should be golded out first. Don't worry about armor pieces for now - priority is GOLD weapons. Also BOTH front bar and back bar destruction staffs should have the Sharpened trait.

My build:
Mundus: Apprentice
Weapon: inferno (main bar) and lightning (back bar) staves of necropotence, both infused, both absorb magicka enchantment
Jewelry: Ancient grace, all arcane, gold spell damage enchantment on all 3.
Head and shoulders: Ilambris with stupid traits like sturdy and well-fitted. I'm working on getting better versions. They are medium and light, so no full undaunted passive yet, unfortunately.
The rest of the armor: necropotence with magicka enchantment, divines.
That means I have 6 pieces of necropotence, but I'm using staves, so there are only 11 slots, and I didn't want to give up Ancient grace. Maybe monster set isn't worth it? I also tried using infused armor and setting Mage as mundus, but dps dropped to 10-11k, so spell damage seems to be more valuable than max magicka.

# 2: Again SHARPENED is the trait you want. Not infused. Also you'll want to enchant your staffs with legendary weapon glyphs "Weapon damage - increase weapon/ spell damage by 348 for 5 seconds"
Use 5 pc Necropotence - get yourself 2 sharpened random staffs.
Use THIEF Mundus to get your crit up, since your crit is low with Necropotence anyway. In most cases DPS magsprcs run Thief, there are a few builds that dont - but for you- THIEF Mundus.
Keep your ilambris for now - but work on farming up 1 heavy / 1 med - both divines, or head can be infused if you find that first.
Jewelry - get yourself 3 pieces of WILLPOWER jewelry - all with the arcane trait - enchant all pieces with Legendary spell power jewelry glyphs. (increase spell power by 174)

Champion points:
83 magician, 10 tenacity (for plentiful harvest), 35 tumbling, 40 shadow ward (for treasure hunter)
100 elemental expert, 67 elfborn
60 spell shield, 60 resistant (for perks), 38 light armor focus, 10 quick recovery (for field physician)

64 attribute points in magicka. On main bar with pet and food active I have 48k magicka, 1987 spell damage and 41.9% spell critical.

#3: Champion Points:
84 Magician / 84 Arcanist
100 elemental expert / 25 elfborn / 42 Thaumaturge (put next 33 points into Thaumaturge as you level)
70 Hardy / 70 elemental defender / 28 thick skin

Inferno bar: endless fury, twilight matriarch (for healing and set bonus), inner light, flame clench, crystal fragments
Lightning bar: elemental drain, twilight matriarch, power surge, liquid lightning, haunting curse
Ice comet ult on both

I start with lasting spells from lightning bar, then spam clench and use frags whenever they become instant. Spells from lightning bar are reapplied when needed. When enemy falls below 20% health, I use endless fury instead of clench.

I don't have enough magicka for the whole fight with target skeleton and sometimes need to use lightning staff attacks to replenish it. Maybe that is the problem?
I use Solitude salmon soup (4936 mana + 5395 health. I need health bonus not to be squishy, so mana-only food is not an option) and potion that restores 7582 magicka and gives major sorcery, but still run out of magicka for the first time when skeleton has 70% health left.

#4: Lose clench - you want force pulse as your primary spammable. Lose the Matriarch, you don't need the heals - use power surge when soloing and keep hardened ward or harness magicka up, and you'll get all the self healing you could need.

For skelly parsing -
Front bar:
force pulse / haunting curse / crystal frags / volatile familiar / bound aegis - shooting star
Back Bar:
liquid lightning / ele blockade / mage's wrath / volatile familiar / bound aegis - elemental rage

Keep dots and pet up at all times - use pulse as your primary spammable - apply curse and reapply after every second explosion - use frags every time it procs. use ulti's when they are available - use spell power potions throughout your rotation to sustain magicka - if necessary full charged heavy attack or two to gain back some magicka. light attack weave everything. At 20% - keep your dots up and light attack weave your execute.

Kashiwagi · April 2017

Thanks a lot for help, everyone! A lot of work for me this evening)

Beardimus · April 2017

All good suggestions there ^ also don't drive yourself too crazy on the numbers alone. I run vMSA with a setup for about 16-17k on dummy as its high burst but suffers sustain on a longer fight. So yes score is helpful and you def need some changes as above but as long as you can kill the stuff you need to in the game that's the main thing. Dummy is very relevant for Trials etc. (just My opinion as alot of stressed people re dummies / scores vs those floated about on forums)

aLi3nZ · April 2017

I have done a bit of practice on the 3m training dummy.

My top build as per below gave me a 28k dps score. I am not actually sure what sets are better then this for mage sorc.

51k+ Max Magika with this build

Astronaunch for magika recovery
Blue food for max magika and health
Sustain is good enough when considering Astronaunch + elemental Drain + 6 light Armour pieces.

5x BSW
5x Necropotence
1x Infernal Guardian for more Max Magika

The greater storm astronaunch + deadric pray seems to do better then any other ulti I have tried for increasing dps.

Running these skills:

Front Bar: Sharpened Inerno Necropotence Staff

Frags, mage light, force pulse, deadric pray, volitile familiar. Ultimate: Meteor

Back bar: Sharpened random inferno staff

Wall of elements, liquid lightning, elemental drain, power surge, volitile familiar. Ultimate: Greater storm astronuanch

Lexifer452 · April 2017

Gold weapons, sharpened trait on staves and getting your frit chance up to at least 55%-60% will help greatly.

Keep surge up at all times, keep ele drain active on target. Reapply liquid lightning and lightning blockade when they expire. Don't over cast volatile familiar's damage pulse. Force pulse medium weave, casting crystal drags when proceed, rinse, repeat everywhere else. I run five julianos and five infallible aether. I also run bound aegis, inner light on both bars and keep boundless storm and surge active at all times. Lightning elemental rage and overload on secondary bar but overload doesn't really get used. Just use it for an extra bar for things like haunting curse and daedric mines. All gold gear but for damage purposes only your weapons are super important to upgrade. Do that asap if you haven't. I've managed to get my test as high as 26k so far. Always tweaking rotations though and I don't run crystal frags more often than not. No room for it. My dps drops considerably when I run five necropotence five infallible and double slot the familiar on top of inner light and bound aegis.

I do like the necropotence pet build for magicka stacking damage shields as it did get me my first few vma completions, so i'll always be grateful for it. I've since stopped running it though as I'm now comfortable enough in there with a more standard dps, non-cheese, gear setup. The familiar's pulse can still be good even when not running necropotence but I am more comfortable running with julianos infallible on my sorc. Burning spellweave is great also but I like mine better for my magdk. Screws up my rotation on my sorc trying to proc it. Plus it forces me to run inferno elemental blockade instead of lightning and that means concussed/off balanced status effects get applied far less often which is a pretty big part of a shock staff sorc build.

I've been working on a way to incorporate crystal fragments in to my rotation but i'd likely have to stop double barring inner light and that's not something I'm comfortable with. Liquid lightning and elemental blockade are not an option and neither s force pulse. Need bound aegis also. Just too many good buffs not to double bar. Doesn't leave much room so inner light would be the slot but I don't like my crit going lower than 60%. Not when I rely on surge for primary healing anyways. Maybe if I started running precise staves I could lose inner light but that'd be a dps loss. Not sure whether frags would compensate for it or not. But I'm rambling. Hope you get some useful tips out of this thread and good luck.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2017

You are pretty far from the meta if that is what you are asking. Problems (in no particular order):

1. Clench is a DOT, why are you using it as a spam skill? Change to Force Pulse.
2. Weapon Traits, you can make arguments for funny traits on your back bar, but get a sharp staff on your front bar. It's a pretty noticable difference.
3. Purple Gear, well the armor is not as big a deal, but the weapons should be gold (just not the infused ones).
4. You are using the wrong pet. If you are trying to deal damage, you want the unstable familiar. The clanfear is garbage for damage. Dont worry, the target skeleton wont kill you.
5. Mundus: Thief is better for PVE DPS.
6. Jewelry: I havent tested ancient grace, but I am not sold its better than willpower, and almost positive its not better than the more traditional Moondancer or Infalible, even on a magic stacking build like you are doing.
7. As a general rule, Double fire will give you the most DPS. The big exception is if you are by yourself, then a back bar lightning can be a touch better, but only if you have 75 into thuamaturge (exploiter passive) and you are running lighting blockade, you are doing neither.
8. Which brings me to my next point, you need blockade. Typically, it is a back bar skill on a sorc.
9. Sustain, it is hard to judge a parse when you are running out of magic. The simplest way is to have someone else run drain for you, and perhaps toss you an orb or 2 if you need it. If you are really trying to go for a solo parse, well, I would drop something other than blockade to make room for ele drain.
- Something like Front: Force Pulse, Frags, Mages Wrath, Inner Light, Volatile Familiar, Shooting Star--Back:Blockade, LL, Curse, Volatile Familiar, Ele Drain, elemental Rage

10. Shooting star is a better morph than Ice Comet as a general rule. The ulti return means you can cast it again faster. The Destro Ult it better on your back bar. If you have it up at the beginning of the fight, its a better opener.
11. 6 pieces of necro. Well, obviously there is no reason for this. Your staff will typically be a dead spot until you get VMA or Moondancer weapons. I would craft some sharp staffs. It doesnt really matter what set, but julianos is useful for other builds if you want to go that route.
12. Weapon enchants: I would put the spell damage enchant on your front bar staff.

Sorc Rotation: Curse, LL, Blockade, Pet, Swap, Force pulse/fragsx6-7, repeat with a light attack between everything.

Edits:
13: No reason to run power surge in a DPS test if you are running pots. The only place I run Surge in PVE is VMA or farm runs where I want to save on potions. If trying to push DPS, you want spell power potions.
14: CP, really only your blue CP is affecting DPS. You want to get some points into thaumaturge, and I like to put 1 into staff expert. You probably dont have enough CP to make it viable, but the current meta is 75 into thaumaturge. You do this with your healers running lightning blockade to make use of the exploiter passive. If by yourself, you can run lightning blockade yourself. At your CP level, I would probably move 20-30 out of elborn and put them into thaum.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2017

Lexifer452 wrote: »

Gold weapons, sharpened trait on staves and getting your frit chance up to at least 55%-60% will help greatly.

Keep surge up at all times, keep ele drain active on target. Reapply liquid lightning and lightning blockade when they expire. Don't over cast volatile familiar's damage pulse. Force pulse medium weave, casting crystal drags when proceed, rinse, repeat everywhere else. I run five julianos and five infallible aether. I also run bound aegis, inner light on both bars and keep boundless storm and surge active at all times. Lightning elemental rage and overload on secondary bar but overload doesn't really get used. Just use it for an extra bar for things like haunting curse and daedric mines. All gold gear but for damage purposes only your weapons are super important to upgrade. Do that asap if you haven't. I've managed to get my test as high as 26k so far. Always tweaking rotations though and I don't run crystal frags more often than not. No room for it. My dps drops considerably when I run five necropotence five infallible and double slot the familiar on top of inner light and bound aegis.

I do like the necropotence pet build for magicka stacking damage shields as it did get me my first few vma completions, so i'll always be grateful for it. I've since stopped running it though as I'm now comfortable enough in there with a more standard dps, non-cheese, gear setup. The familiar's pulse can still be good even when not running necropotence but I am more comfortable running with julianos infallible on my sorc. Burning spellweave is great also but I like mine better for my magdk. Screws up my rotation on my sorc trying to proc it. Plus it forces me to run inferno elemental blockade instead of lightning and that means concussed/off balanced status effects get applied far less often which is a pretty big part of a shock staff sorc build.

I've been working on a way to incorporate crystal fragments in to my rotation but i'd likely have to stop double barring inner light and that's not something I'm comfortable with. Liquid lightning and elemental blockade are not an option and neither s force pulse. Need bound aegis also. Just too many good buffs not to double bar. Doesn't leave much room so inner light would be the slot but I don't like my crit going lower than 60%. Not when I rely on surge for primary healing anyways. Maybe if I started running precise staves I could lose inner light but that'd be a dps loss. Not sure whether frags would compensate for it or not. But I'm rambling. Hope you get some useful tips out of this thread and good luck.

No reason to double bar IL any longer now that they fixed it, assuming you are running spell power pots. It gives a nice flex spot on your back bar. The two obvious options for the flex are shield or power surge.

Sorc Bars are generally pretty straight forward this patch, but there are a few ways you can mess with them.

Front: Force Pulse, Frags, Mages Wrath, Flex, Flex, Shooting Star
Back: Curse, liquid Lighting, Blockade, Flex, Flex, Elemental Rage (or overload if you want a third bar).

These are the core to any sorc PVE DPS build (not counting a heavy attack cheese builds, or solo VMA builds). The 3 skills and the ultimate are basically spoken for on both bars. You have some options for your last 2 spots. The most classic way to do it is:
-Front: Inner Light, Bound Aegis
-Back: Shield, Bound Aegis (here your shield can also be power surge for farm runs where you dont need a shield)

This leaves you with:
Front: Force Pulse, Crystal Frags, Mages Wrath, Inner Light, Bound Aegis, Shooting Star
Back: Curse, liquid Lighting, Blockade, Shield, Bound Aegis, Elemental Rage (or overload if you want a third bar).

This bar setup will take you right through VMOL HM and everything else on the way. It can easily pull 40k+single target and 50K+ on boss fights.

Another very common approach is to swap your pet (volatile familiar) for Bound Aegis. This works well as both are toggles. If running the necropotence set, then this is what you want. It's important to note that some fights simply dont allow for a pet, as certain mechanics will one shot it. That is why you want to be able to do both.
-Front: Force Pulse, Frags, Mages Wrath, Inner light, Volatile Familiar, Shooting Star
-Back: Curse, liquid Lighting, Blockade, Shield, Volatile Familiar, Elemental Rage

The max DPS approach you run both toggles:
-Front: Force Pulse, Frags, Mages Wrath, Bound Aegis, Volatile Familiar, Shooting Star
-Back: Curse, liquid Lighting, Blockade, Bound Aegis, Volatile Familiar, Elemental Rage

This leaves you without a shield and you are dependent on potions for not only your spell power buff, but also your spell crit buff. Not really recommended unless on dummy or on fights where you are sure you wont need a shield.

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Magsorc dps: what am i doing wrong?

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