Avoiding pets would be a completely different setup, approach and play style.
The first (with pets) focusses on high Max mag.. Huge shields and huge burst heals letting you stay up-front, while you burst hard and often, killing potatoes quickly and keeping others on the defence. But there are hard counters and you lack mobility to escape when overwhelmed.

Another setup I like at the mo focusses on more mobility, resists and a good combination of buffs. With burst and sustain. It still lacks a hard cc as of the last patch, but it does well.

Spinners, lich, bloodspawn destroyed/resto. Atro mundus, tri-stat food.

Its the skills that ate important. For your heals, surge and combat prayer are enough for most situations. good resto ult uptime is there when more pressured.
You can survive shields dropping with boundless storm, bloodspawn and buffs from combat prayer.
Combat prayer and resto ult also buffs your offence..
I drop wrath but use force pulse/frags/curse/frequent meteors offensively.

Highly mobile with boundless and streak.

Your stamina regen will be not enough to sustain any normal fight for more than 60 seconds due to immovability potion having immovability, spell crit and magicka - you already have inner light, why bother with spell crit? And without any source of stamina regen you will stop to exist againt magdk or any nightblade in less than 60 seconds.

you don't have surge (and no major sorcery source) no idea what glyphs on jewellery you run, but if any of them is spell damage then you need surge.
you don't have spammables on main bar to proc your frags (fury is a spammable in zerg surfing and then you don't need your frags)
you have a lot of magicka on main bar, but your shields are on back bar... swap curse on back bar and put hardened on main - minimum.
You run lightning staff main bar, but you have only one skill that does AOE damage (which is buffed by lightning staff) and one Ultimate... For Zergsurfing that is ok, for solo play or small scale that will be useless. If you don't want to swap lightning staff then I would choose destro ult if I was you.


Resto staff:
Streak
Frag/Dark exchange?
POWER SURGE - that is not even a question.

if you don't run master inferno staff then you can run lich on back bar and have a proper monster set. Because you have matriarch for heals, you can use 5 necro body, master inferno staff, 3 lich jewellery and lich sword and board on back bar, still have space for proper monster 2piece set and use s&b ult on back bar.

You will have stats similiar to this:


without surge, without berserk proc from back bar infused, without shadowrend proc...

Totally 49k magicka, 24k health, 16.5k stam, 2400 sd and you can see proced recovery from Lich which is a massive overkill, but I run only hardened ward

Good luck.

Valera Progib wrote: »

you have a lot of magicka on main bar, but your shields are on back bar... swap curse on back bar and put hardened on main - minimum.

Why do I want to swap these? Legit wondering.

Great answer. Thank you.

@Valera Progib How do you get your stam pool that high? I might have missed that somewhere. Is it shacklebreaker?

Biro123 wrote: »

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Thanks for the tips! So taking that into consideration.... here is my new draft build:

5 Shacklebreaker
5 Spinners
2 monster maybe bloodspawn
Infused on big, well-fitted/impen on small

Mage mundus
Witchmothers potent brew
Essence of Immovability
(Immovability, Spell-Crit, Magicka)

2H Sword/DW:
Frags
Rune Cage
Fury
Curse
Streak
METEOR

Resto staff:
Surge
Boundless Storm
Harness
Hardened Ward
Dark Conversion
RESTO ULT

Any thoughts?

DW without inner light loses too much burst IMHO.
Also, for this setup to work you would need 2 spinners swords. Expensive.

Trust me, for a DW setup with shacklebreaker and witchmothers brew, you have enough sustain to not need dark conversion (and don't really have the stam to power it). It takes too long to cast and is too interruptable to use as your main heal. Seriously, look at combat prayer and the buffs it provides (I'm not a fan of healing ward)

I don't mean to be too harsh, but I always look suspiciously at Sorcs who advise the use of Combat Prayer over Healing Ward.

There's a very good reason why no top-tier PvP build uses it. Not Mageblades, not MagDKs, not Magdens, nobody runs the skill outside of PvE healers. Let alone Sorcs who put 60+ on Bastion and Healing Ward becomes massive. The only scenario where you really need a direct heal is to counter shield breaker spam, and you'd be far better off slotting Rapid Regen for that scenario. And good luck saving a friend if you're not directly facing him or if he's standing 2m meters above or below you.

And yes, every flipping sorc that knows what they're doing is using Dark Conversion outside of duels. Streak 2-3 times to find LOS protection, get your health and magicka up and you're ready to go again. You'll have plenty of stam sustain with Shackle and some tri-glyphs if you're using tripots.

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Thanks for the tips! So taking that into consideration.... here is my new draft build:

5 Shacklebreaker
5 Spinners
2 monster maybe bloodspawn
Infused on big, well-fitted/impen on small

Mage mundus
Witchmothers potent brew
Essence of Immovability
(Immovability, Spell-Crit, Magicka)

2H Sword/DW:
Frags
Rune Cage
Fury
Curse
Streak
METEOR

Resto staff:
Surge
Boundless Storm
Harness
Hardened Ward
Dark Conversion
RESTO ULT

Any thoughts?

DW without inner light loses too much burst IMHO.
Also, for this setup to work you would need 2 spinners swords. Expensive.

Trust me, for a DW setup with shacklebreaker and witchmothers brew, you have enough sustain to not need dark conversion (and don't really have the stam to power it). It takes too long to cast and is too interruptable to use as your main heal. Seriously, look at combat prayer and the buffs it provides (I'm not a fan of healing ward)

I don't mean to be too harsh, but I always look suspiciously at Sorcs who advise the use of Combat Prayer over Healing Ward.

There's a very good reason why no top-tier PvP build uses it. Not Mageblades, not MagDKs, not Magdens, nobody runs the skill outside of PvE healers. Let alone Sorcs who put 60+ on Bastion and Healing Ward becomes massive. The only scenario where you really need a direct heal is to counter shield breaker spam, and you'd be far better off slotting Rapid Regen for that scenario. And good luck saving a friend if you're not directly facing him or if he's standing 2m meters above or below you.

And yes, every flipping sorc that knows what they're doing is using Dark Conversion outside of duels. Streak 2-3 times to find LOS protection, get your health and magicka up and you're ready to go again. You'll have plenty of stam sustain with Shackle and some tri-glyphs if you're using tripots.

Would slotting Healing Ward on your resto bar remove the need for Harness?

Depends how you intend to play your Sorc really.

It's definitely playable without Harness, my BG build is without it since I use Boundless Storm for mobility instead. However, if you go up against another magicka build you're at a distinct disadvantage since Harness feeds soooo much Magicka when used against them. Templar Sweeps/Vampire's Bane, MagDK DoTs and Sorc/NB light attack weaving... they just become free magicka for you. Basically I think a Sorc without Harness is not the best in 1v1s (there are duel specs that can manage without Harness but they use Ele Drain for sustain instead), so your role is slightly altered.

If your playstyle is moving across the battlefield and picking off targets to blow up, then you won't have a problem without Harness. If you'd like to hold ground (like flags and so on) and tank with your shields, or want to be able to fight 1v1s against a wider range of opponents, then you're gonna need Harness.

EDIT: In other words the meta for the Triple-H shield stack is far from dead. It's still the most useful of selection skills.

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

That's crazy, 3 shield meta. It's as bad as the permablockers... except you can keep doing damage while shields are up. N wonder people say magsorc is broken.

Well, no it's not. A tank build can survive 2-3 people (of decent skill) spanking it for quite a long time, especially one with high ulti sustain like a stam warden or a strong heal spammer like magplar. A Sorc being battered by 2-3 players will need LOS much much sooner. Stam builds don't feed you magicka via Harness and being pressured by more than two of them would end in your demise quicker. Also there's a complete counter build with Shield Breaker. These are not problems that tank builds have.

But play your Sorc and you'll find these out.

Maulkin wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Thanks for the tips! So taking that into consideration.... here is my new draft build:

5 Shacklebreaker
5 Spinners
2 monster maybe bloodspawn
Infused on big, well-fitted/impen on small

Mage mundus
Witchmothers potent brew
Essence of Immovability
(Immovability, Spell-Crit, Magicka)

2H Sword/DW:
Frags
Rune Cage
Fury
Curse
Streak
METEOR

Resto staff:
Surge
Boundless Storm
Harness
Hardened Ward
Dark Conversion
RESTO ULT

Any thoughts?

DW without inner light loses too much burst IMHO.
Also, for this setup to work you would need 2 spinners swords. Expensive.

Trust me, for a DW setup with shacklebreaker and witchmothers brew, you have enough sustain to not need dark conversion (and don't really have the stam to power it). It takes too long to cast and is too interruptable to use as your main heal. Seriously, look at combat prayer and the buffs it provides (I'm not a fan of healing ward)

I don't mean to be too harsh, but I always look suspiciously at Sorcs who advise the use of Combat Prayer over Healing Ward.

There's a very good reason why no top-tier PvP build uses it. Not Mageblades, not MagDKs, not Magdens, nobody runs the skill outside of PvE healers. Let alone Sorcs who put 60+ on Bastion and Healing Ward becomes massive. The only scenario where you really need a direct heal is to counter shield breaker spam, and you'd be far better off slotting Rapid Regen for that scenario. And good luck saving a friend if you're not directly facing him or if he's standing 2m meters above or below you.

And yes, every flipping sorc that knows what they're doing is using Dark Conversion outside of duels. Streak 2-3 times to find LOS protection, get your health and magicka up and you're ready to go again. You'll have plenty of stam sustain with Shackle and some tri-glyphs if you're using tripots.

If you think...

Alright..

As far as the build goes, you get 3 tiers of healing.. Surge, combat prayer and resto ult.

You also get 13k of resist buffs.

So what gets through your shields is either marginal (dealt with by surge), letting you stay on the offence. Or a big burst, meaning that once you re-shield, you are instantly taken out of execute range with a single combat prayer (and rebuffed) - and put back into a safe zone with just one more cast (surge can do the rest).
Or if under heavy sustained pressure, you have VERY good uptime on resto ult which usually gives enough leeway (along with your decent resists and multiple offensive buffs) to either take down one of the attackers or to los/escape.
I've also used combat prayer to keep groups of friendlies alive in destro ults/choke points etc. (While also buffing them)

But healing ward... Doesn't get you out of execute range for another 6 seconds. Can lose all your health to shieldbreaker in that 6 seconds, can heal for nothing if its shield gets taken down, and can all too often cast on another player instead.

My take on dark conversion.. Its great when you can drop behind friendlies to use it. But what is the benefit? Spell-dmg - because you sacrifice recov for spell-dmg, making up for it with dark-exchange. If you didn't make this sacrifice, you wouldn't need dark exch and can free-up a skill-slot.
So to get the benefit, you are leaving a hole in your build (recov).. A huge weakness when constantly interrupted by, say, force pulse spam, will leave you in a bit of a pickle.
I mean yeah, you could streak a few times combined with boundless/sprint to get to a safe place to use it, but its never a guaranteed escape (esp. With multiple enemies), and the resources you have to burn to do that - both stam and mag??
Makes it all not worth the slot space it takes IMHO.