I mean, it’s not a terrible idea... front bar 2h for the increased spell damage and slot melee skills, back bar destro staff for the effective abilities from that skill line. I guess I’d caution what kind of challenge you’re looking for here though haha. I can’t say playing such a build would be particularly hard, but it’s more or less taking a stamina based skill line that’s not optimal for pve and putting it with a magicka based build that’s not especially great in pve rn. If you’re looking for a build that’s challenging to play, I’d go with magblade. If you’re going with an intentionally unoptimized setup just to see what you’re able to do with it, then you’re right on the money!
Re: skills: power lash, burning embers, and engulfing flames are all close quarter skills and bread and butter for magdk dps, so I recommend putting these on your 2h bar. Rearming trap is close range, will buff all of your critical damage, and make your light/heavies with the 2h hit for a pittance more. Then flames of oblivion so you get additional weapon critical. Backbar could be eruption (another staple for magdks), inner light, elemental blockade (staple for all magdps), harness magicka, and igneous weapons for the major brutality on front bar. I’m guessing ults would be a toss up between elemental rage/shooting star/standard of might.
Re: cp: still treat it like a magicka build. I wouldn’t put any into staff expert, but instead any from there into master at arms to buff your 2h hits too. Otherwise yeah, elfborn, thaumaturge, elemental expert for blue. Red and green are basically gonna be the same for any mag class. You shouldn’t need any in mooncalf since you only have one stamina sink.
<<Edit: I’m also guessing you’d want to run the lover Mundus stone with this since it benefits both physical and magical damage, as opposed to either the apprentice or warrior which only benefits one, so you probably don’t need any into spell erosion if your group is applying major breach and you’re in 5 pieces light armor>>
If you get good results from your build, let me know! I like wonky theorycrafting, but I’m still a little skeptical here haha
Thank you so much for this excellent advice. Yes I’d say I like trying wonky as I play a lot of solo and dont really aim for top tier as such. You get an awesome for your time and one of these...
I guess the question is...why? You could do dual wield and get another set piece. You can run two 5 piece sets and a monster set using dual wield. With dual wield swords the twin blade & blunt passive is pretty good too.
Thanks Joe. I guess I just feel like giving it a try while I’m questing and grinding cp. I am obviously realistic about it’s long term use and will probably end up dual wielding on an alt as you suggest.
Yeah, 2h will grant you slightly higher spell damage on front bar and a bit of splash damage, but with dw you can have two full 5pc set bonuses and a full monster set active, along with two enchants (and two weapon traits). Imo dw is the way to go performance-wise, but if your goal here is to be a flame mage swinging around a huge sword, you can definitely play overland content and probably most base game dungeons that way.
If you dont mind one missing set piece you could get, then 2h surely is viable. 2h provides same damage (also the passives are the same) as dual wield. 2 dual wield was more than viable on melee magicka classes with higher base spelldamage. But you will miss the higher weaving damage and penetration (and other destro passives). But as said, you will get quite good numbers with that setup, i am sure of that. Good to hear there are still people who want to combina roleplay and playing content.
For pvp, there is a rising number of magdks using 2h to stay mobile. So you may bring your build also into pvp with similar sets and skills.
Opens up new set combo possibilities for you but I wouldn’t see that really changing your skill loadout or cp distribution. Dw would still enable you to have two enchants rather than 2h’s single one (unless that also changes), but as this is a “play your way” type build, that shouldn’t matter.