Sure you can make them work in certain situations. But you need more details. What's your stats, what content are you trying to do? If you top up penetration with CP and say Spinners / Spriggans you may be ok. Also CP distribution post MW may make Pen less of a thing. But your question is pretty broad. Precise is second best to Sharp in general, but with some.changes not completely far off

Replace BSW with spinner. Next patch you can put 10 points in spell erosion and get that 1k penetration back. Basically the same as if you ran Mothers sorrow and sharpened staffs. I've been doing that for a long time on alts because I don't want to move my staffs around all the time and it keeps your damage within 5% of BiS.

Oh and BSW got nerfed and Necropotence will likely get nerfed too. So TBS and Julianos will likely make a Comeback, as going with 7 light will be needed for sustain.

I cant for the life of me understand how ZOS is ok with one trait being so supreme over all the others.

olsborg wrote: »

I cant for the life of me understand how ZOS is ok with one trait being so supreme over all the others.

They're probably not, but right now the adjustment isn't a priority.

FYI I heard the difference for sharpened is more around 10% than 3%

Masel92 wrote: »

Replace BSW with spinner. Next patch you can put 10 points in spell erosion and get that 1k penetration back. Basically the same as if you ran Mothers sorrow and sharpened staffs. I've been doing that for a long time on alts because I don't want to move my staffs around all the time and it keeps your damage within 5% of BiS.

Interesting, I think I may try that out especially since I'd only need to collect body pieces. My only gripe with that is that I'm basically using a set to just "replace" my sharpened staff, and that I'd have to forgo the increase in spell damage from BSW, even with the nerf.

All in all, if it doesn't work out I'll just farm CoA1 for some sharpened staves and slap on a moondancer body piece. Or I'll try out necropotence, though I've heard they are not welcomed in dungeons and trials due to pet aggro but I could be wrong.

RT_Frank wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

Replace BSW with spinner. Next patch you can put 10 points in spell erosion and get that 1k penetration back. Basically the same as if you ran Mothers sorrow and sharpened staffs. I've been doing that for a long time on alts because I don't want to move my staffs around all the time and it keeps your damage within 5% of BiS.

Interesting, I think I may try that out especially since I'd only need to collect body pieces. My only gripe with that is that I'm basically using a set to just "replace" my sharpened staff, and that I'd have to forgo the increase in spell damage from BSW, even with the nerf.

All in all, if it doesn't work out I'll just farm CoA1 for some sharpened staves and slap on a moondancer body piece. Or I'll try out necropotence, though I've heard they are not welcomed in dungeons and trials due to pet aggro but I could be wrong.

I did vMoL HM on that setup. 39k magblade parse, 36k on heavy atatck DK. on live though. ON the PTS it got reduced like basically every setup.

I runned spinners, illambris, 3 IA and nirnhoned vmsa imferno and made ~37k on the AA and HR bosses, not the best buff uptimes but atleast an alkosh tank
So I guess it really isn't too bad. I stoped grindig the vma, since it really is a fun killer.

Thats on a maxed dunmer magblade.

Ive done some dps tests with the sharpened vma staff, it only gives you 2 maybe 2.5k more dps than a normal sharpened stave. Its definitely not worth using a precise, people think before they get one its a god like weapon but it only increases your damage per second a bit but over time that counts for a lot. Blockade does a lot of damage so its important the stave is sharpened. 5k penetration is more than youl ever get from cp.

Lots of outdated and some outright useless information here. I do ~35k solo sustained (i.e. robust target skeleton) DPS on live, and I run an infused vMA lightning staff.

Morgul667 wrote: »

It is said that non sharpened vma staff are useless compared to sharpened crafted,

didnt test it myself though but got the information from pretty good players and theorycrafter

I've heard this a lot, but this is terrible advice. It should be obvious to anyone that this sort of thing depends on your build/setup. For instance, heavy attack builds will really, really, really miss not having a vMA staff (and actually, they might have a better time with infused than sharpened).

RT_Frank wrote: »

I'm too tired of farming botched versions of vma and maw on Xbox so I've settled for my precise vma lightning staff and precise moondancer inferno staff. Could these staves outperform, or at least have similar performance, to my crafted sharpened staves or are they just deconstruction material?

Currently, you want at least one staff to be sharpened (and the sharpened staff bar is the one you want to spend most of your time during combat). Having both be sharpened is ideal, but only in the sense that you have a little more bar flexibility this way.

In Morrowind, Precise looks like it will be comparable, and almost definitely (slightly) better in raid environments (if the tank is keeping up infused crusher and someone is running Alkosh at least some of the time). Precise Moondancer is very likely to become the new sharpened Moondancer, but infused vMA staves are likely better than sharpened (if blockade is a backbar thing on your build). You'll still want sharpened for PvP though.

mcb123 wrote: »

Ive done some dps tests with the sharpened vma staff, it only gives you 2 maybe 2.5k more dps than a normal sharpened stave. Its definitely not worth using a precise, people think before they get one its a god like weapon but it only increases your damage per second a bit but over time that counts for a lot. Blockade does a lot of damage so its important the stave is sharpened. 5k penetration is more than youl ever get from cp.

Okay, it's getting worse. Stop it.

Blockade takes its penetration from the current bar you are on when the damage tick happens. If you're casting blockade through a vMA staff on your backbar and you don't stay on that bar except to cast blockade (and maybe cast a buff every 20-30s), you're more than fine. You lose, what, 500-ish damage for that one tick? You'll more than make it up with the bonus to light/heavy attacks.

Whether abilities calculate their penetration based on the active (current) bar or the bar they were cast from depends on the ability: e.g. liquid lightning takes its penetration from the bar it was cast from, while blockade takes it from the active bar.

With Morrowind, it's extremely easy to get penetration from CP. They did a really good job on this; basically all traits (except training) are worthwhile now. The only catch is that having one sharpened bar with one non-sharpened bar might not be great; but if you have two non-sharpened bars, you can allocate CP (very easily) to make up for the penetration.

Masel92 wrote: »

Oh and BSW got nerfed and Necropotence will likely get nerfed too. So TBS and Julianos will likely make a Comeback, as going with 7 light will be needed for sustain.

source ? please .

Masel92 wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

Oh and BSW got nerfed and Necropotence will likely get nerfed too. So TBS and Julianos will likely make a Comeback, as going with 7 light will be needed for sustain.

source ? please .

Necropotence and Pet/Liquid Lightning Damage needs to be tuned down or other class's DoTs need to be brought up. I know for a fact that ZoS is aware of the issue with overperforming sorcerers and that they just haven't settled for how exactly they handle it.

I prefer this .

Some do really well with infused. For instance, An infused weapon with a nice glyph and torug's pact armor "can" put out some nice damage.