I started this game with a Stamina Nightblade. I have done everything in the game except craglorn and group dungeons with her. I just can't do it.... tried so many different things..... I eventually gave up - she is now my crafter.

Now I have played a sorc for the last year and trying hard to get the 30-40k DPS that is talked about - I have come to the conclusion that there are many things that can make a difference.

I use 5x necro, 2x lambris and 3x willpower jewelry and a sharpened Julianos lightning staff (Julianos Resto staff on back bar cos I solo group dungeons)

1: Ping - I live in New Zealand and have 250-300 ping - I will NEVER get the best DPS possible. - because of this a pet helps me even though I dislike them. This also means I can't spam skills. I actually have to be carefull and make sure my dang shields go back up BEFORE they come down or I could die due to ping.

2: Rotation - it does matter which order you use your Damage over Time (DoT) skills. Follow the advice given here about laying down those DoT's and get into practise so your fingers remember (muscle memory) which buttons to press...

3: Your Gear - it can matter - I recently tried your gear setup (must have found the same build on the net) and it makes very little (about 1-3k less) difference to my DPS

4: Staff - Make it Gold As Soon As Possible - even if your gear is purple (and it really needs to be purple with a minimum of purple glyphs and preferably gold)

5: Be VERY VERY carefull what you read on the internet regarding this game. There have been many major changes to the game and the mechanics behind it.

Don't give up - ignore the min/max'ers - look at builds and try them - then adjust them to your own style of play

Most importantly - have fun

I am far from the best player. But then, I'm old enough to be a grandfather and didn't have great reflexes when I was young. And so I've rarely beaten 20K self-buffed on a test dummy.

Here's some context for the comments above.

• It is approximately the case that damage is directly proportional to (Max Magicka) + 10.5 * (Spell Damage).
• That figure is likely to be in the range of 60,000. Thus, adding 1000 Max Magicka without changing anything else would add around 1.5% to damage. Adding 300 Spell Damage would add around 5% to damage. Etc.
• If you do the arithmetic, most reasonable gear sets are going to be within 10% or at most 20% of the damage of each other. Most individual gear choices will have a lot less impact than that. In particular, a choice that was optimal a few months ago is very unlikely to be "useless" now.
• The best gear sets include pieces that drop only in trials or arenas. If you don't have access to those, then 5/4/2, where the 2 is a monster set, and 5/5/1, where the 1 is a monster piece, and 5/3/3, where one of the 3s is Willpower are ALL reasonable choices.
• You always want to use at least one dropped set, for jewelry.
• You also want to use at least one crafted set, for weapons ... unless you're fortunate enough to have already gotten a great pair of dropped staves.
• Elemental Blockade belongs in almost any magicka character's rotation.
• Liquid Lightning (or the other morph, but LL is usually better) belongs in almost any magicka sorcerer's rotatiion.
• In most good magicka sorcerer rotations, you use either both Force Pulse (a little better than the other morph) and Crystal Fragments, or else neither.
• In most good magicka sorcerer rotations, you don't use Impulse (either morph). Instead just do a Lightning Heavy Attack for whatever damage it gives you while restoring your magicka.
• The Twilight Matriarch does strong single-target damage, but no AoE. If you like the utility of the heal well enough, it's good to equip, but of course if you heal you aren't doing damage.
• Utility skills to consider taking are mainly Twilight Matriarch, Power Surge, Hardened/Conjured Ward (either morph can be good) and Elemental Drain. Of course, taking and using utility skills interferes with pure damage dealing, although Twilight Matriarch and Power Surge both also contribute to DPS.
• It is optimal to chug potions. Crafted ones with three benefits are ideal, but dropped magicka potions are a lot better than nothing.
• Blue CP 150 magicka/health food is assumed. Few people think other choices are better; nobody thinks that another choice is better by a lot.

@Octopuss
That's a pretty good distribution, actually. Again, I want to discourage you from putting so much focus on crit. Crit is only good when you already have high base damage. If you have low base damage, your first priorities are increasing that base damage and increasing spell penetration (only to 9.1k for overland content).

Octopuss wrote: »

dpencil1 wrote: »

@Octopuss
That's a pretty good distribution, actually. Again, I want to discourage you from putting so much focus on crit. Crit is only good when you already have high base damage. If you have low base damage, your first priorities are increasing that base damage and increasing spell penetration (only to 9.1k for overland content).

It's just that I am so used running 60% or more crit it makes me uncomfortable knowing it will go down to 43% (I've just recalculated it). I am debating whether to keep my secondary staff precise, or to make a new one that's sharpened. Right now my spell penetration is 6800-something. That will obviously get a bit higher if/when I put more points into Spell Erosion.

@tommalmm
What is a parse?

Seriously dont worry about the crit. It is NOT your most inportant stat. I have 46% crit or something like that and use no precise staves and apprentice stone.


A parse is a screenshot of your combat metrics log after you kill a dummy by yourself. It would be useful for us to see such a screenshot of you lilling 3mil skeleton by yourself with no help save for someone applying ele drain.

I will second here crit on a mag sorc is not the most important stat currently my guy is at 2.5k dmg, 32% crit and 11k pen I am not willing to sacrifice my pen just to get the crit.

A lot of the advice given to the OP is well-meaninged, but too much of it is overly technical, full of jargon, and forgets the basic problem is the OP need to learn how to walk before they can run at max speed.

Tossing out terms like BiS, LL, or even "weave" is not going to help someone pulling 6K DPS because it's speaking a different language. And the OP isn't going to acquire Moondancer gold jewelry anytime soon.

The OP is not asking to min-max, rather asking to make a meaningful contribution to completing an AA run. Yes, a sorc will pull better DPS running a pet, but it is not something the OP wants to do or has to do to beat Atherian Archive. Not everyone wants to dump their characters and grind up new ones just to chase the FOTM of Wrobel's whims and desires.

6K DPS and 1255 spell damage are things that should not happen, but are easily correctable.

• Coming from your situation, the only thing that gold legendary quality matters is your weapon. That's it. Save your tempers until you get to 25K DPS consistently and then look to take the marginal improvements golding out other stuff. With a gold 160 CP weapon, we're at 1335 spell damage with just that.
• The crafted Julianos set is a very good and very versatile magicka DPS gear. It works well in every instance. It doesn't require a pet, doesn't require a specific element, doesn't require conditions, it's always a strong performer. I would feel very comfortable crafting (or having someone craft this for you, I'd do it for you) purple quality gear.
• As far as armor traits, for the "small" pieces [feet, hands, shoulders, belt], divines is unquestionable the best PvE DPS trait. For the "big" pieces [hat, chest, legs], it's close enough between Infused and divines that you can't generally go "wrong" with one or the other. I prefer infused because the "big" pieces offer a strong magicka bonus, but that's just me.
• You noted before that monster sets don't interest you. They aren't necessary to run, but they are very efficient. Even though most don't provide raw spell damage, the bonus many of them provide are overall stronger. If you don't like them, then you don't like them. But if you don't like them because you thought they were weak, this was a mistaken impression.
• With that being said, I'd recommend using a 2 piece monster set. This couple with 5 piece Juilianos means you have 4 armor piece bonuses left to use. The easiest thing to do is to acquire 3 piece Willpower jewelry (a very efficient set), have your crafted julianos feet, legs, chest, gloves, belt, and craft generic staff (which on one you'll make infused and put a weapon/spell damage glyph on, and the other you'll make nirhoned and put a shock glyph on). For low 200 CP person just trying to improve, it's easy to get and does the job.
• As for what monster set to use, that depends. You should have at least 17,500 health and that's going to be hard to get with your low CP if you run what most sorcs run, Illambris. You've got to get that health from somewhere, so why not get it from a monster set that is easy to farm and performs well now: Infernal Guardian (the one that spawns a Daedroth)? What I like about this set is that is procs a lot when you use a lightning heavy attack, which you will be using a lot because you have low CP and not much resource sustain. Valkyn skoria, a set that sorcs usually dont think of, is also a legit option for you because it gives the health bonus, and much of your damage is going to be DoTs (lighting heavy attack counts).
• What people have been saying about rotation is absolutely true. By far the best and most efficient DPS skills you have are your ground AoE DoTs, liquid lightning (absolutely take this morph) and Elemental Blockade (ditto). As soon as they expire, but not before, replace them immediately. Just by putting down these DoTs consistently and heavy attacking should at least double your DPS.
• The other thing about rotations that are important is to "weave" in a light attack before using a skill. It sounds harder than it is. It's easy. I'm the least coordinated person I know and I got the hang of it is about 2 weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZYoEztDilE
• You won't have the resource management to have a complex rotation using a lot of different "spammable" DPs skills so don't go that route. Force Pulse, Lightning Touch, and other instant cast skills are expensive and if you are using them and don't have the magicka to maintain your ground DoTs, then you're actually lowering your DPS. Until you get more CPs, I suspect you'll be better off heavy attacking at least 50% of the time in-between you Liquid Lightning - elemental Blockade routine. The one spammable you definitely want to use is Mage's Wrath: but only use this when enemies are below 20% health.
• I would use a Lightning Staff for my "main" DPS bar and I'd always try and heavy attack with this one.
• You could lso use a Lightning Staff for your "off" bar, the one with your DoTs. Inferno also works. Both have pros.
• Get 17,0000 health somehow. You want to put all 64 of your attributes into magicka. then you got to find the rest from somewhere. Undaunted passives and wearing 5 light, 1 heavy, 1 medium helps. A monster set with health bonus helps. Using blue max magicka + max health helps a lot. If you use the Witchmother's Brew drink, you will have more magicka resources, but will need to find even more health so it might not be worth it.
• You probably should go for the Apprentice Mundas Stone. Like julianos, it's always solid and not dependent on having a specific set of situations.

At the end of the day, gearing questions are not nearly as important as just getting the hang of a consistent rotation. Your Ground DoTs need to always be down and you really want to make it so you reapply them just as they are running out. ZoS put in buff tracker, so use it! Find the right balance between heavy attacking and instant casts, with your low CPs, Id recommend lots of heavy attacking. With the heavy attacking, you can put spell damage glyphs on your jewelry and run the blue max magic and health food, which gives high stats.

Octopuss wrote: »

That's a great post, thanks.
With the armour reccomendations, are you saying I'd be better off ditching Netch's touch? That bonus to shock damage seems to be huge to me.

I made the Julianos set, put 2/3 damage glyphs on jewellry, made me a gold staff, and put magicka enchants on the armour (except for helm, which I might swap for monster helm if I get one).
As it is, I am sitting at 43% crit, 2536 spell damage, 33k magicka, and 16300 health (that's only CP100 food or lower).
I have 52 points in magicka and 12 in health.

OK those stats sound a lot better. Netch is good is all your attacks are Lightning, if you go this route, then by all means it can work. Julianos just allows for more options and versatility. With 160 food, your health should be high enough. At this point it's just getting down your rotation I think. Keep the DoTs up, e=weave your attacks, and don't go crazy spamming skills (i.e. get those lightning heavy attack in) and I think you'll be fine.

SirAndy wrote: »

pdebie64b16_ESO wrote: »

spell damage on your jewelry (golden)

Just want to throw in here that the difference between purple jewelry (easy to get for a newbie) and golden jewelry (hard to get for a newbie) is minuscule.

Judging from the OP's post, i don't think he needs to chase after golden jewelry for quite some time and will do just fine without it for now.

He is clearly talking about the glyph itself being golden. Context.