Drop seducer and use a utility back bar set like riposte or lich (not sp good anymore tho), so that you can use undaunted (blood spawn, engine guardian, slime etc.).

But most importanrly gold out your weapons or your burst won't be strong enough to put enemy on execute range... You can also transmute spinner staff into nirnhoned for more overall damage. (Also Infused resto staff with weapon damage glyph helps a lot: remember to LA and switch to destro bar before curse/frag)..
As for Shield, the first one you cast is the first that goes down when you take damage: so, for instance, if you are low always cast healing ward last to get the full heal...

Also, stamina for magsorc is extremely valuable (well, it is for any other magicka class): running ~ 1k recovery or a high stamina pool will save your life a lot...

Sidenote: sorc is very mobile so it will take little time to farm lorebooks if you can use the lorebook addon


Gl! Hf!

Your setups looks like you haven't fully committed to a build yet (which is expected). I would suggest you add some more stamina and see what difference it makes. You could swap out Seducer for Shacklebreaker or go Serpent mundus with Triglyphs or 1 Bloodspawn with Trifood, something along those lines.

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Hardened->Harness->Curse->Pulse->(Meteor)->Cage->Frag->Repeat.
When target is low enough, Fury instead of Pulse.

It's probably not so much that you're playing wrong, sorcs are just typically very polarized.
Godly against potatoes, very predictable against experienced players.
They lack gimmicks in duels, unless you go full pet, which is broken.
They are highly mobile in open world, until that first gap closer connected, then you're permasnared and gapclosed.
Shields make you a walking tank until two decent damage builds focus you and you evaporate.

The bottom line is that sorcs are actually not as OP as forum potatoes want to sell them for.
(^_-)
Just keep practicing, you'll get more routined!

Pretty much this. You'll find very quickly that sustained pressure builds are very dangerous, while strong burst builds ironically kind of aren't. So the average stamblade for instance can usually be predicted and you can shield all of their burst, but an average stamplar will have you permasnared and beat the crap out of your shields until you run out of mag.

As pointed out before, magsorc eats bad players for breakfast. Their shields make casual damage sort of irrelevant, and a couple of the attacks trigger automatically or can't be dodged which gives sorc a really bad rep. The downside is that seeing a magsorc pretty much means you know exactly what to expect, and the loss of the frag stun removed a pretty significant portion of the passive threat a sorc generates in open world, and Rune Prison is not actually that commonly encountered because often you are sacrificing something just to fit it on the bar.

As such I have a couple general advice points:

• If you are ever just spamming shields to stay alive without finding time to attack, you've lost already
• Be a little patient. Get in a heavy resto or two to keep your mag in good shape.
• Resist the urge to cast frag immediately upon proc. There's a good chance your opponent will dodge and waste it if you were just applying good pressure.
• If you don't stack shields, then they won't be strong enough to actually protect you against a good opponent. Usually hardened+healing is enough. Harness is more of an open world shield.
• Get a feel for when curse explodes. Heals on other classes is so high, staggering your damage often means you'll never win.