Nirnhoned weapon

Xenofex · April 2018

Hello,
I have not been playing for many months.
When I played everybody used sharpened trait in destruction staffs. I have noticed now that SHARPENED trait on weapons now have 2752 (legendary) (nerfed by approx 50%) and NIRNHONED now increases damage of weapon by 15%.
So my question is - in most DPS sorcerer builds now the best weapon trait is nirnhoned?

Many thanks!

Danksta · April 2018

I use infused on both bars for PvE. I'm not sure what's BiS for PvP.

Nestor · April 2018

The last testing I saw, which was a few months ago, gave Sharpened, Precise, Nirn and Infused with a weapon damage enchant all withing 1% of each other.

So, choose the trait based on your build and you will do just fine. In other words, your a Critical Build, go Precise, your a max attribute/damage build, go Infused, if you build to Penetration, use Sharpened (up to like 18K total), if you don't weave LA or HA to proc the enchant, then go Nirn.

PvP uses a lot of Impen, so that will drop Precise from Favor and Sharpened I don't think works on Shields. So that is something to keep in mind.

davey1107 · April 2018

Right now nirnhoned is popular for a couple of reasons.

Dps test: precise vs sharp vs nirn

In tests, all three perform reeeeeeally close to one another. Sharp and Nirn tested 0.34% different in the most recent test I’ve seen. That’s essentially a tie.

The shield factor

A problem with sharp is that it doesn’t help pushing through shields. It is calculated when it hits a player’s armor, AFTER you take down their shield. Nirnhoned, on the other hand, is calculated at the origin of the attack. It will hit a shield harder, taking it down faster.

This benefit is lost in test dummy dps tests because they don’t use shields. If you’re going to be doing PvP, where many, many, many players do use shields, then nirnhoned pulls ahead a bit.

The heal factor

Nirnhoned also affect heals, where sharp does not. How much this help/hurts depends on how much you heal. I personally use a lot of back bar HoTs, so when I cast those then swap I’m getting a bit of a boost in heals on my nirnhoned bow.

Back bar

The current meta is infused, with a weapon/spell damage glyph on the front bar. The thinking is that the infused timer is running all of the time, causing the damage glyph to proc frequently and more powerfully.