What's Daedric Mail? You mean Daedric Prey (morph of curse that makes pets attack stronger) or Bound Aegis (increases maximum magicka and resistance)? Builds from even 6 months ago have become irrelevant right now, let alone the ones from 2-3 years ago. You can find builds on sites like Deltia's Gaming, AlcastHQ and Tamriel Foundry. Pick some that are updated for current patch (Clockwork City).

Flame Reach is an excellent ranged stun in PVP. I rarely use it in PVE.

Here's Alcast's CWC builds, including pet and non-pet options for mag sorcs. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/345793/horns-of-the-reach-builds-for-all-classes-guides-alcasthq-com

Practicing and perfecting a rotation is going to be very important for getting higher DPS.

Is unstable wall of elements still good?
How many attacks do you usually like to have on one skill bar? It seems difficult to repeat the same rotation when sometimes I may need to change where my liquid lightning is for example, because the enemy moved out of its area. Theres also no indicators to tell you when your shields or buffs have expired.
Does Bound aegis still work when you switch skill bars? I know pets dont, which is why I dont use them.

Ok I think I get it. No I dont have a maelstrom staff yet. Im only level 40 with no CP. I guess I can get rid of weakness to elements. Its frustrating how my bf that made a stamina DK 3 weeks after me is already ahead of me and only uses 1 skill bar, no specific rotation, and just kills everything with his 2 handed sword + 7 piece of heavy armour without dying.

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Ok I think I get it. No I dont have a maelstrom staff yet. Im only level 40 with no CP. I guess I can get rid of weakness to elements. Its frustrating how my bf that made a stamina DK 3 weeks after me is already ahead of me and only uses 1 skill bar, no specific rotation, and just kills everything with his 2 handed sword + 7 piece of heavy armour without dying.

One thing to remember, your never stronger than you are when Leveling and wearing set armor, of any kind that benefits your character.

There are two real phases to the game, Leveling, and Post CP160. This does not mean end game content, just means you do things differently during each phase.

It's really more important to get your Classes leveled, your skill leveled to at least morph stage and find Skyshards or do quests so that you get to 150 Skill Points.

In any event, here is my MagSorc set up, all easily obtainable gear too, but you can use Zone Set Drops that help Casters:

5 Piece Julianos
2 Piece Torugs Pack
3 Piece Will Power
All Attributes in Magica, All Armor Glyphs in Magica, 2 Spell Cost Reduction Glyphs and one Spell Power Glyph on Jewelry.

Single Target Bar:
1. Inner Light
2. Power Surge
3. Crystal Frags
4. Crushing Shock
5. Flex, but is usually Boundless Storm or Liquid Lightening or some other skill I want to horse around with

AoE (Multiple Mobs)
1. Inner Light (yes, you need this on both bars)
2. Power Surge (you don't need this on both bars, I just hate bar swapping so its on both)
3. Unstable Wall of Elements
4. Impulse
5. Liquid Lightening usually

I pull 42K Burst and 25K sustained DPS on my single target bar and it depends on how many mobs there are around but 50K to 60K on my AoE Bar. I could do more DPS, as I have gotten to 60K sustained, but it involves Bar Swapping and I have already explained how I feel about that. I do enough DPS to run the content I run, including Vet Dungeons.

I do nothing fancy, I am not all that good at Animation Canceling and none of my gear is "Best in Slot" or "Meta". I just use efficient rotations and good tactics.

Nestor wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Ok I think I get it. No I dont have a maelstrom staff yet. Im only level 40 with no CP. I guess I can get rid of weakness to elements. Its frustrating how my bf that made a stamina DK 3 weeks after me is already ahead of me and only uses 1 skill bar, no specific rotation, and just kills everything with his 2 handed sword + 7 piece of heavy armour without dying.

One thing to remember, your never stronger than you are when Leveling and wearing set armor, of any kind that benefits your character.

There are two real phases to the game, Leveling, and Post CP160. This does not mean end game content, just means you do things differently during each phase.

It's really more important to get your Classes leveled, your skill leveled to at least morph stage and find Skyshards or do quests so that you get to 150 Skill Points.

In any event, here is my MagSorc set up, all easily obtainable gear too, but you can use Zone Set Drops that help Casters:

5 Piece Julianos
2 Piece Torugs Pack
3 Piece Will Power
All Attributes in Magica, All Armor Glyphs in Magica, 2 Spell Cost Reduction Glyphs and one Spell Power Glyph on Jewelry.

Single Target Bar:
1. Inner Light
2. Power Surge
3. Crystal Frags
4. Crushing Shock
5. Flex, but is usually Boundless Storm or Liquid Lightening or some other skill I want to horse around with

AoE (Multiple Mobs)
1. Inner Light (yes, you need this on both bars)
2. Power Surge (you don't need this on both bars, I just hate bar swapping so its on both)
3. Unstable Wall of Elements
4. Impulse
5. Liquid Lightening usually

I pull 42K Burst and 25K sustained DPS on my single target bar and it depends on how many mobs there are around but 50K to 60K on my AoE Bar. I could do more DPS, as I have gotten to 60K sustained, but it involves Bar Swapping and I have already explained how I feel about that. I do enough DPS to run the content I run, including Vet Dungeons.

I do nothing fancy, I am not all that good at Animation Canceling and none of my gear is "Best in Slot" or "Meta". I just use efficient rotations and good tactics.

How do you even know what DPS you have? On PS4 when you look at the character screen nowhere does it state DPS. Just spell dmg, spell critical and max magika.

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even know what DPS you have? On PS4 when you look at the character screen nowhere does it state DPS. Just spell dmg, spell critical and max magika.

I use an Addon. The Training Dummy is your best source on the PS4.

Note, there is a free one if you do the Precursor Quest in Clockwork City. Not a super high health one, but it will still give you a good idea of what you are doing. It also makes pithy comments as you wail on it.

Streak and healing ward are only useful in PvP, not PvE. People must figure out how to PvE and get good at that before venturing to PvP, since they will get easily killed by other players if they don't understand and practice the basics.

Toggle skills like Bound Aegis and pets need to be on both bars, longer duration skills like damage over time and buffs are better cast from the back bar just before they expire. For sorcerer having double lightning staves is probably the best since it has a class bonus to lightning damage and they are easier to channel.

I'll give an example of easy skill setup and rotation for sorcerer (without pets)
Front bar: Mage's Wrath | Force Pulse | Hardened Ward | Inner Light | Bound Aegis || Ice Comet
Back bar: Elemental Blockade | Liquid Lightning | Haunting Curse | Power Surge | Bound Aegis || Elemental Rage

Buff with Power Surge. Haunting Curse -> Light Attack -> Liquid Lightning -> Light Attack -> Elemental Blockade -> Bar Swap -> Force Pulse -> Heavy Attack -> Force Pulse -> Heavy Attack -> Force Pulse. Repeat, reapply Surge every 2nd or 3rd rotation, right before it expires, cast bound aegis when you are taking damage instead of one of the force pulses. Throw your ultimate when it's ready. This rotation can be sustained almost indefinitely with no added recovery from glyphs or consumables. You can stick to dropped potions since you have major sorcery from surge and thus it's very cheap too.

5 Law of Julianos / Armor of the Seducer on the body and head, shoulders, staves from Torug's Pact set, with willpower jewelry, or any arcane jewelry you can find while leveling is a good combo. I use that for a long time while leveling characters.

I am running a lighting build . crit surge hardened ward. Wall of,elements lighting form etc.heavy attack . as soon as off balance hits. Every thing melts.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Streak and healing ward are only useful in PvP, not PvE. People must figure out how to PvE and get good at that before venturing to PvP, since they will get easily killed by other players if they don't understand and practice the basics.

Toggle skills like Bound Aegis and pets need to be on both bars, longer duration skills like damage over time and buffs are better cast from the back bar just before they expire. For sorcerer having double lightning staves is probably the best since it has a class bonus to lightning damage and they are easier to channel.

I'll give an example of easy skill setup and rotation for sorcerer (without pets)
Front bar: Mage's Wrath | Force Pulse | Hardened Ward | Inner Light | Bound Aegis || Ice Comet
Back bar: Elemental Blockade | Liquid Lightning | Haunting Curse | Power Surge | Bound Aegis || Elemental Rage

Buff with Power Surge. Haunting Curse -> Light Attack -> Liquid Lightning -> Light Attack -> Elemental Blockade -> Bar Swap -> Force Pulse -> Heavy Attack -> Force Pulse -> Heavy Attack -> Force Pulse. Repeat, reapply Surge every 2nd or 3rd rotation, right before it expires, cast bound aegis when you are taking damage instead of one of the force pulses. Throw your ultimate when it's ready. This rotation can be sustained almost indefinitely with no added recovery from glyphs or consumables. You can stick to dropped potions since you have major sorcery from surge and thus it's very cheap too.

5 Law of Julianos / Armor of the Seducer on the body and head, shoulders, staves from Torug's Pact set, with willpower jewelry, or any arcane jewelry you can find while leveling is a good combo. I use that for a long time while leveling characters.

This is pretty solid advice. When leveling, your primary goal is to efficiently level your character. Get skyshards, try to level all your class skills to at least morph level, get your destro and resto staff and all armor lines to 50 as well as all their skills. As a mage, you also want to get all the lore books so your mages guild line is maxed as well. By the time you get to CP 160, there will probably be new builds out there. You need to be able to adapt to the meta.

One solid trick which works well, run your essential skills on your back bar and stack your front bar with skills you want to level. For example. Put liquid Lighting, Elemental Blockade, Power Surge and your shield on your back bar, and then equip a lighting staff on your front bar. Cast your back bar skills and then channel heavy lighting attacks with your front bar. It's not end game DPS, but it will handle just about anything you could possibly encounter when leveling. Then you can stack your front bar with anything your want leveled. As long as the skill is on the bar when you are getting experience, it will level as will the skill line. You can even level other weapon lines like sword and shield or resto staff with a lighting staff on your front bar as long as you slot the skills and gain XP.

A technique I use is to level 1-10 at the first zone dolmen until I unlock the basic skills, then 10-50 in nMA, then again run a dolmen circuit, preferably in a zone with good sets so I can later sell any good pieces I find, to train all the skills and morphs I would need later to rank IV. For example on my Magicka DK I leveled:
- all class skills, leveled, morphed and trained to rank IV (in nMA)
- restoration staff skills, leveled, morphed and trained to rank IV (in nMA)
- destruction staff skills, leveled, morphed and trained to rank IV (in nMA and Deshaan dolmens)
- 1H+S skills leveled, morphed and trained to rank IV (Deshaan dolmens)
- 2W to 40 while slotting the 1H+S ult until it hit rank IV also - it trains but you can't use it (Deshaan dolmens)
- incidentally fighter's guild leveled to 10 since half of MA and all dolmens are just daedra, werewolves and undead
The way I did that many skill is that I ignored all passives, and specced only actual skills, as passives can be filled later when you get the skill points. Even without passives nMA and dolmens are easy to clear on a lowbie character.

At the end I did a full respec - cheap at this point, since there were only around 70 points - and filled only what I wanted. In this case, since my character is low priority at this point, I also leveled the crafting skills and left her as maxed out crafter for writs until I decide to play her. My stamina Warden underwent a similar leveling & training process, but she is higher priority and she didn't become a crafter outright, though I give her trash gear every day to deconstruct and level those skills. Instead, she has more combat related passives filled, sufficient to do overland content until she gets more skill points to fill the rest.