Shock enchantment vs flame enchantment?

pteam · November 2017

I’m a Magicka dk. I’m currently using a lightning staff with a shock enchantment because I like the ease of use with lightning staff and aoe damage. Also elemental blockade with lightning staff seems to set them off balance a lot in pve.

Should I keep the shock enchantment on it or put a fire enchantment? What does each one do?

jkolb2030 · November 2017

Many magDK will do an inferno staff on their front bar because their big damage dealer is whip and claw (single target) and the inferno gives you more single target dps. They will then run a lightning staff on their backbar moreso for the heavy attack and splash damage you get from the lighting staff heavy attack. So you can hit multiple enemies with a heavy attack and restore magic.

You can run wall on whichever bar you want, but in a trials setting I believe you'd want to go with an inferno wall.

Inferno staves increase single target DPS
Lightning staves increase damage of AoEs

Fire enchantment dmg will scale higher if you are a dark elf because of their passives - will also cause burning.
Lightning enchant will scale with Sorc passives and will cause concussion

Concussion - Applies Minor Maim i.e. reduces damage done by 15% for 4 sec. Animation: electric sparkles. Chance to proc from any lightning damage (sorcerer storm calling spells, lightning staff and shock enchants).
Burning - Flame damage over time for 3 sec (tics 3 times, every 1,5sec). Chance to proc from any flame damage (dragon knight ardent flame skills, flame staff and flame enchants).

Nestor · November 2017

It all depends on your passives really. If they boost fire damage, then use the Flame Enchant, if they boost Elemental, then use the Lightening Enchant on your Lightening Staff.

I tend to use one bar for AoE and one for Single Target/Bosses. In that case, I would go with Lightening/Lightening on the AoE bar, and Inferno/Fire on the Single bar.

Of course, unless your new to the game, runes should be in abundance, so it is easy to test this. Even if you use Purples for testing then make a Gold once you find out what performs best for your playstyle.

pteam · November 2017

jkolb2030 wrote: »

Many magDK will do an inferno staff on their front bar because their big damage dealer is whip and claw (single target) and the inferno gives you more single target dps. They will then run a lightning staff on their backbar moreso for the heavy attack and splash damage you get from the lighting staff heavy attack. So you can hit multiple enemies with a heavy attack and restore magic.

You can run wall on whichever bar you want, but in a trials setting I believe you'd want to go with an inferno wall.

Inferno staves increase single target DPS
Lightning staves increase damage of AoEs

Fire enchantment dmg will scale higher if you are a dark elf because of their passives - will also cause burning.
Lightning enchant will scale with Sorc passives and will cause concussion

Concussion - Applies Minor Maim i.e. reduces damage done by 15% for 4 sec. Animation: electric sparkles. Chance to proc from any lightning damage (sorcerer storm calling spells, lightning staff and shock enchants).
Burning - Flame damage over time for 3 sec (tics 3 times, every 1,5sec). Chance to proc from any flame damage (dragon knight ardent flame skills, flame staff and flame enchants).

Thank you for that.

So if what I think I’m reading is there is no reason to run a shock enchantment on my lightning staff? I’m a magicka dk dark elf. It seems that my wall of elements staff skill can set enemies off balance all by it self. So should I switch to a flame enchantment on my lightning staffs?

dickeybarret · November 2017

Actually the status effects for lighting is wrong. Chilled (ice staves) give minor maim. Concussion gives minor vunerability, increasing damage taken. Same debuff as infallable ather.

pteam · November 2017

dickeybarret wrote: »

Actually the status effects for lighting is wrong. Chilled (ice staves) give minor maim. Concussion gives minor vunerability, increasing damage taken. Same debuff as infallable ather.

So would U say a shock glyph or flame glyph would be better for me ?

Ankael07 · November 2017

Elemental blockade alone is not enough to keep minor vulnerability up for a long time. The proc chance is something like 1% for AOE DOTs. 2% with the passive.
Also you might wanna double check the side effect of the lightning blockade. It either gives disorient (which is useless for a DOT skill since the next tick will consume it) or it gives off balance but its bugged and nothing happens.

Sixty5 · November 2017

Shock enchant front bar is optimal in most situations for higher off balance uptime, especially if you are using power lash.

In a properly co-ordinated trials group, flame is better for the DPS.

Qbiken · November 2017

Sixty5 wrote: »

Shock enchant front bar is optimal in most situations for higher off balance uptime, especially if you are using power lash.

In a properly co-ordinated trials group, flame is better for the DPS.

Personally I would go with a shock enchant 7 days a week. It will help you with sustain (since you´re forced as a magicka DK to run powerlash. And for powerlash to proc you need off-balance support. Shockenchant helps with that a lot, since no sustain = 0 dmg.)

To OP: A safe bet is to run Lightningstaff backbar with increase weapon/spelldamage enchant and Flamestaff on frontbar with shockenchant. The DPS difference between using a flameenchant and shock enchant won´t be huge, so choosing something that offers you more/better possibility to sustain yourself will be better.

Insanepirate01 · November 2017

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Qbiken · November 2017

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Is that on a 3 million dummy? How is the sustain with that dps on a 6 million dummy?
Last time I tried I managed to get around 35-36k (I know I´ll probably get another 3-4k extra dps if I practice my rotation.)

Insanepirate01 · November 2017

Qbiken wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Is that on a 3 million dummy? How is the sustain with that dps on a 6 million dummy?
Last time I tried I managed to get around 35-36k (I know I´ll probably get another 3-4k extra dps if I practice my rotation.)

Ye that's on the 3 million dummy sustain is a breeze on it. Even the 6 million dummy my highest parse was 37k and the sustain on it is pretty good. I had to replace 2 lashes with a heavy attack a couple times but with inferno I find I'm heavy attacking a lot more and 35-36k is pretty darn good I started hitting 39k after perfecting the rotation could probably bump more if I could cancel everything perfectly too. That's with a vma lightning staff as well on the back bar by the way. Don't think those numbers can be hit without one.

jkolb2030 · November 2017

Ahhh yes, my mistake - what I posted was from a post back in the day before the morrowind updates to all of the status effects.

jkolb2030 · November 2017

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Is that on a 3 million dummy? How is the sustain with that dps on a 6 million dummy?
Last time I tried I managed to get around 35-36k (I know I´ll probably get another 3-4k extra dps if I practice my rotation.)

Ye that's on the 3 million dummy sustain is a breeze on it. Even the 6 million dummy my highest parse was 37k and the sustain on it is pretty good. I had to replace 2 lashes with a heavy attack a couple times but with inferno I find I'm heavy attacking a lot more and 35-36k is pretty darn good I started hitting 39k after perfecting the rotation could probably bump more if I could cancel everything perfectly too. That's with a vma lightning staff as well on the back bar by the way. Don't think those numbers can be hit without one.

I can hit a 38.4 w/out vma staves on my magdk, but thats with someone else providing the off balance.. You're saying the lightning enchants and your own wall you are able to solo parse it? That's impressive in itself.

Qbiken · November 2017

jkolb2030 wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Is that on a 3 million dummy? How is the sustain with that dps on a 6 million dummy?
Last time I tried I managed to get around 35-36k (I know I´ll probably get another 3-4k extra dps if I practice my rotation.)

Ye that's on the 3 million dummy sustain is a breeze on it. Even the 6 million dummy my highest parse was 37k and the sustain on it is pretty good. I had to replace 2 lashes with a heavy attack a couple times but with inferno I find I'm heavy attacking a lot more and 35-36k is pretty darn good I started hitting 39k after perfecting the rotation could probably bump more if I could cancel everything perfectly too. That's with a vma lightning staff as well on the back bar by the way. Don't think those numbers can be hit without one.

I can hit a 38.4 w/out vma staves on my magdk, but thats with someone else providing the off balance.. You're saying the lightning enchants and your own wall you are able to solo parse it? That's impressive in itself.

A 3 million dummy is more like a burst test, and if you´re lucky with the off-balance proc (since it´s actually RNG involved there) you can have a good uptime and have little to no trouble with sustain. However as Insanepirate says, on a 6 million dummy the need to do a few heavy attacks is a must in order to sustain.

Without a lightning enchant on the frontbar the you´ll very rarely proc off-balance on your enemy, that enchant is the difference between a good parse and a non-sustainable parse. When you think about it, it´s pretty awful that magDK´s are forced into the off-balance playstyle in order to be available. It´s one thing if something is BiS compared to another setup, that I´m totally fine with. But there´s no way you can run the other morph of whip at the moment on a magDK and sustain it. ZOS screwed magDK over with Morrowind.....

Insanepirate01 · November 2017

jkolb2030 wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Insanepirate01 wrote: »

I concur with the statement above ^^ I've tried different setups and was able to get up to 39.5k dps using an increase weapon/spell damage enchant on my lightning back bar and a shock enchant on my inferno front bar. The amount of off balance and free whips you proc is invaluable.

You can get through a parse without even coming close to running out of Magicka with zero heavy attacks which is nice. This was proving more difficult with fire enchant. The sustain is pretty good with power lash, no recovery enchants needed.

Is that on a 3 million dummy? How is the sustain with that dps on a 6 million dummy?
Last time I tried I managed to get around 35-36k (I know I´ll probably get another 3-4k extra dps if I practice my rotation.)

Ye that's on the 3 million dummy sustain is a breeze on it. Even the 6 million dummy my highest parse was 37k and the sustain on it is pretty good. I had to replace 2 lashes with a heavy attack a couple times but with inferno I find I'm heavy attacking a lot more and 35-36k is pretty darn good I started hitting 39k after perfecting the rotation could probably bump more if I could cancel everything perfectly too. That's with a vma lightning staff as well on the back bar by the way. Don't think those numbers can be hit without one.

I can hit a 38.4 w/out vma staves on my magdk, but thats with someone else providing the off balance.. You're saying the lightning enchants and your own wall you are able to solo parse it? That's impressive in itself.

Thank you and yes that's the lightning enchant on the inferno staff and my own lightning blockade procing off- balance. I think the enchant proc chance for concussion is 20% so with light attack weaving and lightning blockade I get a lot of off-balance.