Magsorc good or bad?

LvDPrankWars · November 2017

Im really struggling with it i find i lose most pvp encounters due to being so squishy and i also find the pvp build are so strict that youre terrible in pve, can someone maybe help shed some light as i really dont wana make a new char

Sixty5 · November 2017

Run Destro/Resto in PVP, and stack Hardened Ward and Healing Ward. 20k worth of shielding is your defense. Throw in some Mines, and liberal use of Streak, and you'll have yourself a pseudo tanky, kiting god.
As far as kills go, get a frag proc up, then use Curse, Mages Wrath, Rune Prison, Frag. That will kill about 80% of opponents outright if you have the right build.

Apart from that, running a PVP build in PVE tends to be a no-no. You can have some crossover, but sets that are good in one, tend not to be as effective in the other.

Mag sorc is actually in a pretty decent spot all round, despite what people here say. You have counters, but you will need to learn how to play around them, and you don't have the disgusting tankiness and burst of something like a stam warden.

Honestly, just look up a few guides and stick with the class. I'd say 90% of PVP is learning how to play your class in each situation.

LvDPrankWars · November 2017

So how does someome do maelstrom arena and dungeons ect while wanting to participate in pvp content too?

also the issue i have with the shields is they only last 8 seconds

Vapirko · November 2017

Sixty5 wrote: »

Run Destro/Resto in PVP, and stack Hardened Ward and Healing Ward. 20k worth of shielding is your defense. Throw in some Mines, and liberal use of Streak, and you'll have yourself a pseudo tanky, kiting god.
As far as kills go, get a frag proc up, then use Curse, Mages Wrath, Rune Prison, Frag. That will kill about 80% of opponents outright if you have the right build.

Apart from that, running a PVP build in PVE tends to be a no-no. You can have some crossover, but sets that are good in one, tend not to be as effective in the other.

Mag sorc is actually in a pretty decent spot all round, despite what people here say. You have counters, but you will need to learn how to play around them, and you don't have the disgusting tankiness and burst of something like a stam warden.

Honestly, just look up a few guides and stick with the class. I'd say 90% of PVP is learning how to play your class in each situation.

Id just add that you should stick with it for a while, if you still really don't feel it try a different class. They all play differently and honestly some of them just don't work for certain people and maybe one will just click. Shields are weird to use against players in my opinion. I much prefer relying on armor and not having to cast shields in my rotation.

On a side not its amazing how many people quit playing sorcs after frags lost its cc.

Biro123 · November 2017

Shields give you time to set up your burst. But they can't handle focus-fire well at all, so keep your distance and use ball of light and boundless to help with that.

IMHO, the key to learning a class in PvP is to first learn to survive with it. So..

Here's a good build for you to try for survivability..

5 lich (resto - infused, power glyph)
5 spinners (destro,)
2 bloodspawn
Tri-stat food,
Atro mundus

Front:
Cs, frag, hardened, inner light, surge, meteor
Curse, boundless, harness, combat prayer, ball of light, lights champion

This gives you reasonable magica (for DMG and shield strength - about 42k on front bar). Decent spelldmg from jewellery enchants mostly since sustain comes from lich/atro.

And great defence.... You get:
2 shields
Major and minor resolve and ward from boundless and combat prayer + a bloodspawn proc, giving you an extra 13k resists. Fow when shields drop.
Background heals and spammable heals which are enough for most encounters behind your shields.
Resto ulti - your 'oh dear' button, but with great uptime due to bloodspawn.
And great escape/repositioning tools with boundless and bol.. The trick is learning when to use them.

Offensively, your buff from combat prayer is the same as having slimecraw equipped, and lights champ is also giving an offensive boost too.

Trashs1 · November 2017

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Sacredx · November 2017

Mag sorc is a solid pvp class, don't need to remake. I would recommend getting into a pvp guild and go from there, the people in the guild should be able to sort out your build.

MrTtheDK · November 2017

LvDPrankWars wrote: »

Im really struggling with it i find i lose most pvp encounters due to being so squishy and i also find the pvp build are so strict that youre terrible in pve, can someone maybe help shed some light as i really dont wana make a new char

You have to have two different sets of armor and even different food when your running PVE vs PVP. PVP really requires impen (Even though Sorcs run shields, foes will hit your health). Divines PVE. CP allocation needs to be adjusted as well.

Biro123 · November 2017

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Yeah.. I went back to it recently. They key part is the combination of resist buffs/ulti recov with skills that are giving solid offensive buffs too - and to fit in a monster set with staves.. lich/spinners is still solid. Esp. with the sharpened nerf.

But then I'd never build around the asylum staff. I'm a PVPer - I don't do trials.

Qbiken · November 2017

Biro123 wrote: »

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Yeah.. I went back to it recently. They key part is the combination of resist buffs/ulti recov with skills that are giving solid offensive buffs too - and to fit in a monster set with staves.. lich/spinners is still solid. Esp. with the sharpened nerf.

But then I'd never build around the asylum staff. I'm a PVPer - I don't do trials.

I´ve found that building around off-balance/concussion will gain more dmg increase than spinner (the difference isn´t big, like 2-3% or something). Think spinner in general will give you a 6% dps increase while off-balance/concussion will give you 8% increased dps. You literally just have to use the charged trait and you´ve an asylum destroy staff

kylewwefan · November 2017

You have to completely change build for PvE and PvP. For every character. Sux, but that’s just the way it is. Many are just hard to get the hang of.

For me, I have banished a few toons to Cyrodil after I can’t do anything with them in PvE. Though, I also still take toons in legendary trials BiS PvE gear to Cyrodil. They do t do so good against players, but can wreck npc.

Biro123 · November 2017

Qbiken wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Yeah.. I went back to it recently. They key part is the combination of resist buffs/ulti recov with skills that are giving solid offensive buffs too - and to fit in a monster set with staves.. lich/spinners is still solid. Esp. with the sharpened nerf.

But then I'd never build around the asylum staff. I'm a PVPer - I don't do trials.

I´ve found that building around off-balance/concussion will gain more dmg increase than spinner (the difference isn´t big, like 2-3% or something). Think spinner in general will give you a 6% dps increase while off-balance/concussion will give you 8% increased dps. You literally just have to use the charged trait and you´ve an asylum destroy staff

I've honestly never tried charged. Aren't the chances to proc status effects still really low (except from glyph) - in which case (never really tried it) - but wouldn't infused with a shock enchant give almost as much chance of granting charged as charged (due to more frequent procs)? - but also more direct dmg from the glyph procs?

Qbiken · November 2017

Biro123 wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Yeah.. I went back to it recently. They key part is the combination of resist buffs/ulti recov with skills that are giving solid offensive buffs too - and to fit in a monster set with staves.. lich/spinners is still solid. Esp. with the sharpened nerf.

But then I'd never build around the asylum staff. I'm a PVPer - I don't do trials.

I´ve found that building around off-balance/concussion will gain more dmg increase than spinner (the difference isn´t big, like 2-3% or something). Think spinner in general will give you a 6% dps increase while off-balance/concussion will give you 8% increased dps. You literally just have to use the charged trait and you´ve an asylum destroy staff

I've honestly never tried charged. Aren't the chances to proc status effects still really low (except from glyph) - in which case (never really tried it) - but wouldn't infused with a shock enchant give almost as much chance of granting charged as charged (due to more frequent procs)? - but also more direct dmg from the glyph procs?

Hmm, worth testing I guess. I´ve just tried charged on my magicka warden together with forcepulse + wall of elements (with a charged destrostaff). I basically get an AoE version of the asylum staff

, and with charged trait + shock/fire/frost glyph you´ll proc it very fast.
Charged is probably one of the most underrated traits in the game, even though it´s been more common the last few patches.

With the build I´m currently testing I can get all 3 status effects on multiple enemies within 1-2 seconds. The build isn´t superstrong for soloplay but in a group that support is amazing.

Lord-Otto · November 2017

You're both wrong, NIRNHONED is your best front trait.

As for OP, sorcs are in a good place. Strong, but with weaknesses. They are balanced in the grand scheme of things.
You have two setups on any class, one for PvP and one for PvE. That setup includes gear, morphs and champion points. Sorcs perform just as well in PvE as in PvP.

Biro123 · November 2017

I honestly think its so close with traits that I deliberately didn't mention it originally

catalyst10e · November 2017

Just to add to everyone else; I'm a PVPer who has been occasionally dipping into PVE (especially with the PVP load screens) and you really do need 2 completely different set ups.

In PVP I'm still running spinners/lich with engine guardian, but since spinners can be a bit expensive and lich is behind a dungeon, You could honestly do alright in pvp with seducers/shacklebreaker/willpower
My front bar is inferno staff : Wrath / Frag / force shock / curse / hardened ward // meteor
with a Back bar of Resto Staff: Rune Cage / power surge / streak / healing ward / harness magicka // negate

keep it simple, have power surge up, open with curse, weave medium attacks with shock until a frag procs, finish with a wrath. When you need to be defensive you've got your shields, or streak, and if you're in a group, rune cage + negate on the enemy healer or sorc is amazing.

In PVE I run lich/necro with maw of infernal It's more of a joke setup that's ended up working ok for PVE it's not max damage and wont win you any DPS test but it does ok
Front bar: Lightning staff: volatile familiar / frag / elemental blockade / Twilight matriarch / hardened ward // greater Storm Atro
Back bar: Resto staff: Volatile familiar / curse / liquid lightning / twilight matriarch / harness magicka // Reviving Barrier

If you can't be good at PVE might as well be a 1 man army. This summoner build just summons pets, curse, drop a liquid lightning and blockade, activate familiar heavy attack till maw shows up, drop the atro. use your twilight to heal, hardened ward to keep you and your pets alive, and a barrier is always nice to help out. Again, it's not the best but wont requie you to change your CP or anything just to do some PVE it can solo normal dungeons and at least carry you through veteran ones even with a fairly bad group (we're all PVPers and still make it through fine)

even just doing a skill swap you could be successful. hope this helps

Subversus · November 2017

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Lich > riposte imo, sustain is much needed. Also cwc staff is trash unless it's perfected (even then meh) and gl with getting that.

FrancisCrawford · November 2017

catalyst10e wrote: »

Just to add to everyone else; I'm a PVPer who has been occasionally dipping into PVE (especially with the PVP load screens) and you really do need 2 completely different set ups.

In PVP I'm still running spinners/lich with engine guardian, but since spinners can be a bit expensive and lich is behind a dungeon, You could honestly do alright in pvp with seducers/shacklebreaker/willpower
My front bar is inferno staff : Wrath / Frag / force shock / curse / hardened ward // meteor
with a Back bar of Resto Staff: Rune Cage / power surge / streak / healing ward / harness magicka // negate

keep it simple, have power surge up, open with curse, weave medium attacks with shock until a frag procs, finish with a wrath. When you need to be defensive you've got your shields, or streak, and if you're in a group, rune cage + negate on the enemy healer or sorc is amazing.

In PVE I run lich/necro with maw of infernal It's more of a joke setup that's ended up working ok for PVE it's not max damage and wont win you any DPS test but it does ok
Front bar: Lightning staff: volatile familiar / frag / elemental blockade / Twilight matriarch / hardened ward // greater Storm Atro
Back bar: Resto staff: Volatile familiar / curse / liquid lightning / twilight matriarch / harness magicka // Reviving Barrier

If you can't be good at PVE might as well be a 1 man army. This summoner build just summons pets, curse, drop a liquid lightning and blockade, activate familiar heavy attack till maw shows up, drop the atro. use your twilight to heal, hardened ward to keep you and your pets alive, and a barrier is always nice to help out. Again, it's not the best but wont requie you to change your CP or anything just to do some PVE it can solo normal dungeons and at least carry you through veteran ones even with a fairly bad group (we're all PVPers and still make it through fine)

even just doing a skill swap you could be successful. hope this helps

Sounds like your PvE build could use a different Curse morph than your PvP one.

ToRelax · November 2017

Biro123 wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Trashs1 wrote: »

what? lich backbar? spinners froont? are we back at homestead? xD

i would change it into wizzards riposte back bar, shacklebreaker, 1 domi and the cwc asylum destro staff for a modern today sorc build.

Yeah.. I went back to it recently. They key part is the combination of resist buffs/ulti recov with skills that are giving solid offensive buffs too - and to fit in a monster set with staves.. lich/spinners is still solid. Esp. with the sharpened nerf.

But then I'd never build around the asylum staff. I'm a PVPer - I don't do trials.

I´ve found that building around off-balance/concussion will gain more dmg increase than spinner (the difference isn´t big, like 2-3% or something). Think spinner in general will give you a 6% dps increase while off-balance/concussion will give you 8% increased dps. You literally just have to use the charged trait and you´ve an asylum destroy staff

I've honestly never tried charged. Aren't the chances to proc status effects still really low (except from glyph) - in which case (never really tried it) - but wouldn't infused with a shock enchant give almost as much chance of granting charged as charged (due to more frequent procs)? - but also more direct dmg from the glyph procs?

Charged will get you much higher uptime than infused, but I find it very lackluster because it only works against the person you actually proc it on, plus the chance to gain bonus damage is much smaller when bursting someone down quickly.

DHale · November 2017

Sorcs get a lot of forum warrior attention but very few sorcs are any good on my platform or server. There are like three sorcs (left still playing) that can actually one v x. At present and in the recent past German, Irylias, youyui, Force Siphon, Sypher, Micah, are or were the the best no exception then there is a steep decline. I may have forgotten one or two but that’s is it. Less than 10 players do not make a class powerful let alone OP. Sorc has a big weakness ... as in any stam user with a two hander.

catalyst10e · November 2017

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

catalyst10e wrote: »

Just to add to everyone else; I'm a PVPer who has been occasionally dipping into PVE (especially with the PVP load screens) and you really do need 2 completely different set ups.

In PVP I'm still running spinners/lich with engine guardian, but since spinners can be a bit expensive and lich is behind a dungeon, You could honestly do alright in pvp with seducers/shacklebreaker/willpower
My front bar is inferno staff : Wrath / Frag / force shock / curse / hardened ward // meteor
with a Back bar of Resto Staff: Rune Cage / power surge / streak / healing ward / harness magicka // negate

keep it simple, have power surge up, open with curse, weave medium attacks with shock until a frag procs, finish with a wrath. When you need to be defensive you've got your shields, or streak, and if you're in a group, rune cage + negate on the enemy healer or sorc is amazing.

In PVE I run lich/necro with maw of infernal It's more of a joke setup that's ended up working ok for PVE it's not max damage and wont win you any DPS test but it does ok
Front bar: Lightning staff: volatile familiar / frag / elemental blockade / Twilight matriarch / hardened ward // greater Storm Atro
Back bar: Resto staff: Volatile familiar / curse / liquid lightning / twilight matriarch / harness magicka // Reviving Barrier

If you can't be good at PVE might as well be a 1 man army. This summoner build just summons pets, curse, drop a liquid lightning and blockade, activate familiar heavy attack till maw shows up, drop the atro. use your twilight to heal, hardened ward to keep you and your pets alive, and a barrier is always nice to help out. Again, it's not the best but wont requie you to change your CP or anything just to do some PVE it can solo normal dungeons and at least carry you through veteran ones even with a fairly bad group (we're all PVPers and still make it through fine)

even just doing a skill swap you could be successful. hope this helps

Sounds like your PvE build could use a different Curse morph than your PvP one.

True, but I pvp more than PVE so I typically dont want to keep changing the morph. it's honestly my flex spot so sometimes I throw on boundless or combat prayer.

Biro123 · November 2017

Flex? I cannot ever imagine playing magsorc in pvp without curse.

Neloth · November 2017

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Subversus · November 2017

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Frags, finisher, spammable, cc, hardened and use curse backbar. Or you can use a master staff + reach but that's a bit tricky to build since you probs won't be able to use one of the 3 sets.

Lord-Otto · November 2017

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Good, but the pet is iffy. Unreliable. I've had fun with that setup, but got frustrated with Shadowrend running off.
Also lacks stam sustain.

ToRelax · November 2017

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Good, but the pet is iffy. Unreliable. I've had fun with that setup, but got frustrated with Shadowrend running off.
Also lacks stam sustain.

Well you can always use Serpent if needed.

Lord-Otto · November 2017

ToRelax wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Good, but the pet is iffy. Unreliable. I've had fun with that setup, but got frustrated with Shadowrend running off.
Also lacks stam sustain.

Well you can always use Serpent if needed.

I guess now you can, but I don't wanna miss out on Mage, if possible.

Biro123 · November 2017

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Can go necro/shackle/shadow DW - still only has necro on the front bar - but then you won't have full uptime anyway if relying on shadowrend.

LittlePinkDot · November 2017

LvDPrankWars wrote: »

Im really struggling with it i find i lose most pvp encounters due to being so squishy and i also find the pvp build are so strict that youre terrible in pve, can someone maybe help shed some light as i really dont wana make a new char

This is why I made a nightblade before I have even finished with my magsorc. I found magsorc to be squishy, clunky to play. And the difference between a pve set up and a pvp is so different that it might as well be a whole different character.
I started a stam blade and its so much fun and the skills just go off quickly and smoothly unlike the sorc that has annoying long animations.

Neloth · November 2017

Lord-Otto wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Good, but the pet is iffy. Unreliable. I've had fun with that setup, but got frustrated with Shadowrend running off.
Also lacks stam sustain.

Well you can always use Serpent if needed.

I guess now you can, but I don't wanna miss out on Mage, if possible.

Maybe I'm a potato, but I can't sustain that without atro mundus against a good stam player

Lord-Otto · November 2017

Neloth wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

What you guys think about think Lich + necro + shadowrend set up?

It maims your opponent, have great sustain, and buffs you burst nicely when the pet procs.

The only problem is that I have 5 piece necro only in the front bar, and I can't fit hardened on it since CC changes

Good, but the pet is iffy. Unreliable. I've had fun with that setup, but got frustrated with Shadowrend running off.
Also lacks stam sustain.

Well you can always use Serpent if needed.

I guess now you can, but I don't wanna miss out on Mage, if possible.

Maybe I'm a potato, but I can't sustain that without atro mundus against a good stam player

Oh, beating a stam player's lower ability costs requires some work. Doesn't make you a potato, it's normal.

With Lich, you gotta be really careful when to proc it. You want to have it shortly before being pressured. If you proc it just when you're on your back heel already, chances are you'll die to missing resources before Lich could run its full duration.

Also gotta throw a heavy attack now and then, and that early. Stam builds can easily block or dodge heavies, denying you the resource gain when needed. So throw heavies in advance.

If you have a bit stamina spare, Dark Conversion is a mag sorc's sustain tool. Just use it now and then, when you're not already out of magicka and a bash interrupt could spell your doom.