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Magicka Sorcerer Non-Pet 35k+ DPS Build Help / Comparisons

amasuriel
amasuriel
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Hello fellow forum trolls.

So here is my deal. I'm a decent but not 1% player on my magicka sorc (Flawless Conqueror, all vet trials except HoF and MoL...did vAS this weekend, no vet HMs except serpent). I have access to most gear but not all. I hate pets :pensive:

I don't like them in terms of feel, I don't like having to swap them out in fights like vAA Mage. I would rather not just practice my Mag NB either :)

Pre-Morrowind I was about 35k self buffed. Took a break, trying to get up there again, could use some advice!


Current Build
Tried a number of different combos, my current best is 30.5k DPS fully self buffed with:

Master Charged fire staff in front (will transmute to infused soon), fire enchant
vMA Nirnhoned lightning staff back, Lightning enchant
2 Ilambris (1 heavy 1 medium, heavy is divines shoulders is infused, also needs a transmute)
5 Julianos (light obviously)
3 Infallaible Aether jewelry (gold, all spell damage enchants)

All gear is gold except the infused Ilambris shouler.
Jewelry enchants are gold, armor enchants are purple (so can squeeze a little more magicka there)

All armor enchants are magicka, all attributes in magicka, health + magicka food, undaunted passives etc.

Usual spell power pots.

Apprentice Mundus, because I'm not switching back and forth with Lover for a dummy test :)

675 CP, 75 Thaumaturge, 50 Elemental Damage, 40 Erosion, 20 Elf Born, 20 Staff Expert and Direct damage (forget the name)

front bar is
Frags, Flame Clench, Haunting Curse, Shield, Bound Armaments, Shooting Star
back bar is
Mages Wrath, Blockade, LL, Shield (replaced with ele drain for test), Bound Armaments, Destro Ultimate

I think I can squeeze another ~2k out of this by tightening the rotation (for example clench and curse uptime are between 70-80% usually), but I'm skeptical I can get to 35+.

So a couple questions:

1) Does someone have a horns of the reach or clockwork city parse with a similar setup (aka no pet, self buffed) that is 35k+ that I can see so I know it's just practice and can maybe see what I'm doing wrong by comparing?

2) Any suggestions for alternate front bars? I tried a number of things, but the only one that did better so far was a scalding rune / tomb setup (because runes empower the tomb), but as most know the mines are not a very realistic setup for real fights, it's super hard to position them reliably. FP I didn't find sustainable, and the extra heavy attacks meant less DPS. As a result I stopped trying to improve it.

The rotation isn't perfect either, usually curse is running out at the same time as blockade, so thinking of moving the execute to front bar and curse back, but that will reduce frag procs, and make execute phase harder.

Also yes, 2 shields, because I'm a scrub and I die a lot more in hard content if I have to barswap to apply shields :) I'll drop the front shield for Mage Light when I'm confident I can do so. I can practice DPS with mage light to see eventual outcome though I guess.

3) Any other gear combo suggestions? Tried willpower in place of IA, it was a wash and all gold is more fun. Tried 5 Juli / 5 Netch, 5 Juli / 5 Elegant, 5 Juli / 5 IA but none was exactly a fair comparison because I don't have a Lightning Master staff, so it was infused Juli staves with lightning and berserker, with a heavy kena head and medium crafted Juli pants. Anyway not quite apples to apples. I don't have IA or Moondancer staves in any trait (I sold the one sharpened lightning moondancer I got for 500k lol), so 5/4/2 with vMA back bar is out of reach until I get lucky.

Also want to try 5 Juli / 5 Spider Cultist / Master / vMA, but need to farm 1 more Arcane ring, which only drops in FG2 :(. I can use the Masters fire for that combo if I don't have another lightning yet.

Sorry this could have been better organized, thanks to anyone who can help!
  • Drummerx04
    Drummerx04
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    You can get maybe another 3-5k with an infused front bar staff, but otherwise you are hitting the limits I've seen on non pet builds. I think you mentioned a mine rotation and shot it down because you don't have 5k mag to waste on one cast.

    That's been the theme of magsorc for since the pet was initially buffed in Homestead. Go pet, or deal significantly less damage.
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  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Drummerx04 wrote: »
    You can get maybe another 3-5k with an infused front bar staff, but otherwise you are hitting the limits I've seen on non pet builds. I think you mentioned a mine rotation and shot it down because you don't have 5k mag to waste on one cast.

    That's been the theme of magsorc for since the pet was initially buffed in Homestead. Go pet, or deal significantly less damage.

    I should have the Transmutation stones this week, so I'll see how much extra DPS it gets me. Can't decide if I should keep it fire for extra Ilambris procs or go Berserker, I guess I'll try both.

    If I can get to 35 self buffed I'll be happy, since I won't have to feel ashamed of my raid parses if I can get >40 reliably :)
  • Betsararie
    Betsararie
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    Consider:

    1) slotting inner light
    2) using 2 infused staffs
    3) all divines pieces
    4) the lover for your dummy parse

    Other than that, make sure all enchants are made with gold glyphs and gold all your set pieces.

    That's all I could pick out of it to improve the dummy parse. Hope that can help.
    Edited by Betsararie on October 31, 2017 1:15AM
  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Blanco wrote: »
    Consider:

    1) slotting inner light
    2) using 2 infused staffs
    3) all divines pieces
    4) the lover for your dummy parse

    Other than that, make sure all enchants are made with gold glyphs and gold all your set pieces.

    That's all I could pick out of it to improve the dummy parse. Hope that can help.

    Is backbar infused better than backbar Nirnhoned by a significant margin? I don't have an infused vMA lightning staff, so I would have to transmute mine. Probably not worth it for a few hundred dps, but if its 1k I will.

    I will for sure transmute the Ilambris shoulders to divine and gold it right after the Master's staff, it's my last non divine non gold peice.
  • Lord-Otto
    Lord-Otto
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    If you say you were 35k pre-Morro, I'm assuming you're struggling with sustain now? If so, use Witchmother's and either put stat points into health or run Skoria instead of Ilambris.

    You won't be proccing Frags often with Clench. Use Force Pulse.

    Curse belongs on your backbar. Put Inner Light on your front for that juicy mag bonus. This also strengthens your shield. Hardened is enough. If you need more shields, you'll run out of magicka. Learn mechanics better or hire an actually competent healer.

    Infused on Maelstrom is more single-target damage, which you're typically looking for. The difference can come close to 1k.
  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Lord-Otto wrote: »
    If you say you were 35k pre-Morro, I'm assuming you're struggling with sustain now? If so, use Witchmother's and either put stat points into health or run Skoria instead of Ilambris.

    You won't be proccing Frags often with Clench. Use Force Pulse.

    Curse belongs on your backbar. Put Inner Light on your front for that juicy mag bonus. This also strengthens your shield. Hardened is enough. If you need more shields, you'll run out of magicka. Learn mechanics better or hire an actually competent healer.

    Infused on Maelstrom is more single-target damage, which you're typically looking for. The difference can come close to 1k.

    Yeah like most people I find the old pulse spam totally unsustainable. The magicka reduction of having to use Witchmothers reduces overall damage significantly, so I don't think that simply using my old build with more regen will work out. It's basically 200 spell damage equivalent and I still cannot just spam 4-5 pulses per front bar like I used to with a heavy every 3 rotations.

    Maybe I'll try replacing frags with Scalding Rune, less theoretical DPS but maybe more practical DPS, since also more Ilambris fire procs.

    Re shields, I tend to run Harness not Ward if I'm not running a pet, since the strength of Harness is plenty for most cases so magicka cost isn't really an issue, but I already said I would swap it for Inner Light when I was more comfortable doing so. My raid teams will not approve if I do 2% more DPS but die more often :open_mouth: Not fair to blame the healers though, plenty of raid situations where you need to shield or heal yourself a bit to survive. Knowing the fights better will come with more runs, but HoF and AS are new to me, and these are most of the runs, so I'm not ashamed to have to play them slightly more conservative.

    If infused vs nirnhoned is 1k difference, it's worth a transmute, but after the Ilambris shoulders and master staff, so probably 3 weeks from now unfortunately.
  • Lord-Otto
    Lord-Otto
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    Oh, you should use Inner Light AND a shield. Harness Magicka is really good when you're taking sustained magical damage. But Hardened is a better panic button, increases your damage a bit and most importantly, gives you the Daedric Protection passive.

    You should be doing three pulses per rotation, anyway. If you run out of magicka, you can always do a heavy attack. That should be enough to sustain. Magicka Steal is also very important. Make sure your healer has a source of it or run Elemental Drain yourself.

    Scalding Rune is very likely to not deal a lot of damage. You can try it, but I'd be surprised if it improved your dps... (^_^)'

    I'm using a heavy lightning attack rotation on my pet sorc to sustain. With Shock Clench. You could do the same, but your dps would definitely go down, I imagine.
  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Lord-Otto wrote: »
    Oh, you should use Inner Light AND a shield. Harness Magicka is really good when you're taking sustained magical damage. But Hardened is a better panic button, increases your damage a bit and most importantly, gives you the Daedric Protection passive.

    You should be doing three pulses per rotation, anyway. If you run out of magicka, you can always do a heavy attack. That should be enough to sustain. Magicka Steal is also very important. Make sure your healer has a source of it or run Elemental Drain yourself.

    Scalding Rune is very likely to not deal a lot of damage. You can try it, but I'd be surprised if it improved your dps... (^_^)'

    I'm using a heavy lightning attack rotation on my pet sorc to sustain. With Shock Clench. You could do the same, but your dps would definitely go down, I imagine.

    Thanks, I appreciate the input.
  • GrigorijMalahevich
    GrigorijMalahevich
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    Inner light is not a bad idea :) crushing enchant on vMA staff will probably do better. For just solo DPS on a dummy lover mundus is good.

    Is flame clench with master staff better than force pulse and additional set item?
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  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Inner light is not a bad idea :) crushing enchant on vMA staff will probably do better. For just solo DPS on a dummy lover mundus is good.

    Is flame clench with master staff better than force pulse and additional set item?

    I don't have a good 4 piece set available, since I don't have an IA or Moondancer destro staff in any trait, so I have to go 5/3/2 or 5/5 with vmA | noset for staves or 5/4/3 or 5/4/2 or 5/5/1 with no vMA. If I get an IA or Moondancer staff I can run a proper 5/4/2 with vMA and it will probably do better than the master staff setup.

    In the meantime, since I did have the masters staff, I though that might be better than a no set front staff, or no vMA back bar. Seems to do better than my 5/4/2 with Julianos staves and no vMA back bar anyway.
  • WrathOfInnos
    WrathOfInnos
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    Inner light is not a bad idea :) crushing enchant on vMA staff will probably do better. For just solo DPS on a dummy lover mundus is good.

    Is flame clench with master staff better than force pulse and additional set item?

    Don't use a crushing enchant as a DPS. The weak crushing proc (1622) will overwrite the strong one that infused crusher tanks (2109) and Torugs infused crusher tanks supply (2741). It is also much weaker than other glyphs for your own DPS, even when solo. Go with spell damage, fire, shock, absorb mag, or prismatic instead.

    Flame clench does slightly more damage and is cheaper than force pulse with a master staff, but the knockback tends to throw enemies out of AoE's and grant them CC immunity. As you pointed out this setup also uses a slot that could be a 1 piece bonus. I don't think it's worth it to use flame clench, but shock clench with a master Destro can be great for splash damage (and stuns enemies while keeping them in AoE).
  • amasuriel
    amasuriel
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    Inner light is not a bad idea :) crushing enchant on vMA staff will probably do better. For just solo DPS on a dummy lover mundus is good.

    Is flame clench with master staff better than force pulse and additional set item?

    Don't use a crushing enchant as a DPS. The weak crushing proc (1622) will overwrite the strong one that infused crusher tanks (2109) and Torugs infused crusher tanks supply (2741). It is also much weaker than other glyphs for your own DPS, even when solo. Go with spell damage, fire, shock, absorb mag, or prismatic instead.

    Flame clench does slightly more damage and is cheaper than force pulse with a master staff, but the knockback tends to throw enemies out of AoE's and grant them CC immunity. As you pointed out this setup also uses a slot that could be a 1 piece bonus. I don't think it's worth it to use flame clench, but shock clench with a master Destro can be great for splash damage (and stuns enemies while keeping them in AoE).

    This is mostly for trials, so for better or worse there is nothing that matters that will get knocked back or CC immune, and the big AOE fights will just be ground dots and heavy attack anyway. I'm not going to swap to front bar and clench something random. Flame clench dot does more damage, vs AOE for lightning, but it's academic for me personally since I don't have a lightning master staff :pensive:
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