Always all divines. Magicka recovery glyphs? What? Are you low CP? You should need 0 or 1 of those at the most. Mundus should either be Lover or Apprentice.

Just go full divines, you can run big pieces infused on certain builds, but it's mostly not worth it. Thief does work for Magicka builds, though Apprentice is better, or if you lack penetration Lover.

What is it about people and the Meta. The math on this has been done already, several times. You get more DPS with Infused on Large and Divines on small. In some certain builds it might make sense to go all Divines, but most builds, use the mix. Don't believe me, see this (for those who don't want to watch it, he pulls 1K + more DPS on Infused)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EelWXvJkEmc

Nestor wrote: »

What is it about people and the Meta. The math on this has been done already, several times. You get more DPS with Infused on Large and Divines on small. In some certain builds it might make sense to go all Divines, but most builds, use the mix. Don't believe me, see this (for those who don't want to watch it, he pulls 1K + more DPS on Infused)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EelWXvJkEmc

Testing one time each on the 3 mil dummy isn't exactly the way to get accurate results.

I think everyone agrees that divines is best on gloves, sash, shoes, and shoulders. For the 3 large pieces it really depends on build.

One piece of divines offers 7.5% of the Apprentice Stone (I wouldn't recommend thief for MagDK, even though it does affect spell crit), or .075 x 238 = 17.85 spell damage. This gets multiplies by major, 20%, and minor, 5%, (if grouped with a templar) sorcery for a total of 22.3 spell damage.

Now looking at worst case for infused. One piece gives 20% of 868 Magicka, or 173.6. This gets a 20% multiplier from champion points (assuming CP 300 minimum) for a total of 208.3. Continuing with the worst case theme, let's assume not a Magicka race, with no other boosts to max Magicka. Let's also assume that your build uses a lot of light and heavy attacks (which shifts the max Magicka to spell damage ratio higher to about 14:1). This 208 max Magicka is worth about 14.9 spell damage, much lower than the 22.3 from a divines piece.

Now best case for infused. Again it gives 208.3 after the CP multiplier. On top of this you could have:
- 10% from race (altmer or Breton, 9% for Dunmer)
- 7% from Inner light slotted
- 6% from undaunted passives 5-1-1
- 8% from class skills (sorc, warden, nightblade only)
- 2% from additional Mage's guild skill slotted (like meteor or entropy)
- 10% from Warhorn (good group support gives 100% uptime)
Total 43% multiplier
So the 208.3 becomes 297.9. Now best case for infused would be a rotation with few light or heavy attacks (for a max Magicka to spell damage ratio of 10.5:1), which makes this 297.9 equivalent to 28.3 spell damage. This is significantly higher than the 22.3 from one piece of divines.

Obviously these are extreme scenarios. For most builds there will not be a noticeable difference between the two traits. Personally, I prefer infused since I always try to optimize race, passives, and buffs. Also the bigger shields don't hurt.

Infused is only worth if you want to run Glyph of Prismatic Defense (aka. Tri-Glyph) on your big pieces, which is probably not the case in PvE unless you are a tank, or in PvP if you are a build that wants to block a bit more without sacrificing attribute points for health & stamina (which is quite common for Magicka DK). In both cases you should go with sturdy on small pieces.

But I assume you are taking about a PvE DPS build, in which case you will need to consider that your damage scales more strongly with spell damage, rather than maximum magicka. Why is that? First, most magicka skills scale on a formula based on spell damage + maximum magicka/10.5, which I'll call "spell power". Infused on the big pieces will boost your maximum magicka only, but divines will boost spell damage if paired with Apprentice mundus. Second, base attacks, such as heavy and light attack from a staff scale differently, on spell damage + maximum magicka/40. And those will make up for about ~15% of your DPS because you will need to weave light attack with every skill, and also do a heavy attack every rotation to be able to sustain.

So having 53 more spell damage from apprentice to to the 3 extra armor pieces in divines is slightly better than 520 maximum magicka you would get from 3 extra armor pieces in infused. Also DK doesn't have a multiplier for maximum magicka, like Sorcerer. The maximum multiplier you can get is 1.23: 6% from Undaunted Mettle, 7% from slotting Inner Light and 10% from Warhorn, the latter only available in groups. On the other hand, spell damage will get a higher multiplier of 1.25: 20% from major sorcery (ex. Molten Armaments) and 5% from minor sorcery (ex. having a Stamina Templar cast Power of the Light). Which brings the listed values to 67 extra spell damage vs. 640 extra magicka. Also divines comes with increased flexibility, since you can change your buff by simply changing the mundus: if you need more recovery you can get more from Atronach, if you need more penetration - the Lover etc.

Note that the difference is small in practice. If you can't get that particular piece in divines, you have little reason to fret about it, but if it's part of a crafted set like Law of Julianos, of it's a dropped set like Burning Spellweave and you can change the trait it's worth having it crafted in divines or changing it from infused to divines respectively.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I think everyone agrees that divines is best on gloves, sash, shoes, and shoulders. For the 3 large pieces it really depends on build.

One piece of divines offers 7.5% of the Apprentice Stone (I wouldn't recommend thief for MagDK, even though it does affect spell crit), or .075 x 238 = 17.85 spell damage. This gets multiplies by major, 20%, and minor, 5%, (if grouped with a templar) sorcery for a total of 22.3 spell damage.

Now looking at worst case for infused. One piece gives 20% of 868 Magicka, or 173.6. This gets a 20% multiplier from champion points (assuming CP 300 minimum) for a total of 208.3. Continuing with the worst case theme, let's assume not a Magicka race, with no other boosts to max Magicka. Let's also assume that your build uses a lot of light and heavy attacks (which shifts the max Magicka to spell damage ratio higher to about 14:1). This 208 max Magicka is worth about 14.9 spell damage, much lower than the 22.3 from a divines piece.

Now best case for infused. Again it gives 208.3 after the CP multiplier. On top of this you could have:
- 10% from race (altmer or Breton, 9% for Dunmer)
- 7% from Inner light slotted
- 6% from undaunted passives 5-1-1
- 8% from class skills (sorc, warden, nightblade only)
- 2% from additional Mage's guild skill slotted (like meteor or entropy)
- 10% from Warhorn (good group support gives 100% uptime)
Total 43% multiplier
So the 208.3 becomes 297.9. Now best case for infused would be a rotation with few light or heavy attacks (for a max Magicka to spell damage ratio of 10.5:1), which makes this 297.9 equivalent to 28.3 spell damage. This is significantly higher than the 22.3 from one piece of divines.

Obviously these are extreme scenarios. For most builds there will not be a noticeable difference between the two traits. Personally, I prefer infused since I always try to optimize race, passives, and buffs. Also the bigger shields don't hurt.

Problem I see here, the bolded part is not real life. What rotation doesn't use light/heavy attacks. Whether you are a heavy attack sorc using 2 HAs a rotation or an magic NB that does nothing but light attack, you weapon attack number will always be high your damage report. On my NB, my typical 3 million dummy parse has around 65 light attacks in a sub 80 second fight. My fire attacks (front bar) are generally at the top of my parse, and my back bar is top 5 or 6. On a pet sorc, again, my heavy attack is the TOP of my dps parse on a 3 million dummy and my 20-22 light attacks from my back bar are like 5th. Heavy and light attacks are a huge amount of damage for any end game build. On a 43K pet sorc parse, my heavy and light attacks acount for about 10k (approx 23%) of the damage.

Again, great arguments to be made for infused for solo builds or newer players with less than a great weave that also might benefit from a bigger shield, but at the extreme end of things for an actual real life raid, divines wins. Not by a crazy amount, but it does win. That is the definition of Best in Slot.

True, nobody should really use the 10.5:1 ratio (I've usually been vocal against the accuracy of this "typical" value, especially post-Morrowind). I was just trying to demonstrate the extreme cases (without being too unreasonable like saying 6 Mage's guild skills slotted).

Even on pet sorc, which shifts the ratio low due to pet scaling only off Magicka, the ratio was still 10.8:1 last time I calculated it with my rotation. The funny thing about pet sorc, is that it has access to great Magicka buffs (inner light and bound aegis), and needs them more than any other class, but cannot make use of them due to limited bar space. So pet sorc can really only get a Magicka multiplier of about 1.28 if they want to have active skills. This makes an infused piece worth 266.6 max Magicka, or 24.6 spell damage for my pet sorc build. This is still slightly higher than the 22.3 from a piece of divines, but by an insignificant margin.

Those numbers are assuming raid buffs (minor sorcery and Warhorn) for solo it becomes 245.7 Magicka from infused (22.7 spell damage equivalent) vs 21.4 spell damage from divines.

I don't think anyone can really notice a difference as small as we are talking here. It would certainly be less than a 0.1% DPS difference, and at most 2% difference in shield strength.