1) dont worry to much about gear until you get to CP160. I am not a fan of the whole " use training gear for XX levels before you switch if you switch" because as you level out of your gear its becomes less effective which makes it harder to level solo and running group your basically being carried through because your doing like 2k dps on a good day. So training gear only works in my opinion if you have someone to carry you or you constantly switch out as it gets old.

2) I use a lightning staff front bar and a resto back bar. I heal in dungeons because i can get groups quickly. Alcast builds are meant for end game content. If your not running endgame content, dont worry to much about it. Cart before the horse and all that. Alcast usually puts a beginners build that uses mostly or all purchasable sets( crafted/dropped) or uses otherwise easy to acquire sets. It is the second gear set down usually.

Remember those builds are "meta" for a specific purpose with a specific setup and with specific support( a trial group or a very good vet dungeon group). I dont consider the builds, as is, to be that great for the average player or a new player. I always recommend using such builds as a general guide but make the build your own to fit your playstyle, your uses for it( content you run), and your abilities as a player( your personal skill level not the skill level of your characters). IE: Most players will need more health than what is recommended. You will also need other survival skills. And outside of long boss fights that take at least a minute or two, the rotations probably arent going to be as useful. Make the build your own, you will also learn how to build, rather than how to imitate.

3)I assume you are using the "mystic" build. For beginners he recommends julianos x5, will power x3, monster set, random staffs. I would skip the monster set starting out( you have to farm vet dungeons for helms which probably isnt going to happen for quite some time after you reach CP160 Cp300. Instead i would do one of the following:

A) Replace monster set with burning spellweave( i would farm this first and then fill in my missing pieces with the much easier to get julianos) so you have 5x julianos, 3x willpower,3 burning spellweave.

B ) Do pledges to get undaunted keys to get monster shoulders. And run monster shoulders,, 5 julianos, 5 burning spellweave. Burning spellweave can be farmed in the city of ash I and II.

EDIT:

driosketch wrote: »

CP gear levels are CP 10-30, 40-60, 70-80, 90-140, and 150-160. I haven't had to craft in this tier since VR was a thing. The equivalent I did was 30, 60, 90, 120 or so. It gets a little fuzzy on the last one because that when level cap raises were still a thing. It's scaled now, so you're probably going to blow through the first 30 CP pretty fast. I'd recommend waiting to craft a new tier till you get to the point that CP gains seem to start slowing down. Then about every 30 CP after or so.

This build seems to be based more on the idea that you will kill stuff faster that it can kill you. Even harness magicka and bound armor are as much about sustain and resource boost as defense. You can swap lighting flood for surge if you need to, or elemental blockade if it's fire. You can also swap blockade and lightning flood, as well as the two ultimates, and put the restro staff back on your second bar for heals if you still need survivability help.

I think up to about 100 i could pretty much get like 7-10 CP, with enlightenment per normal random dungeon run( no training gear), After that it dropped to like 3-5 up to CP 160 per run with enlightenment so its very fast, faster than anything before cp or after cp160

Let me look at alcast’s build and see if I see any obvious notes for a new vet sorc...hmm.

- Now that you’re a vet you can upgrade your gear less frequently. The name of the game at first is just to get to cp160. If you only burn enlightenment xp that takes about three weeks. If you grind a little more intensely, it’ll be pretty fast. Honestly, you could probably just grind dailies and public dungeons and get to 160 on one set of gear...it’s not imperative to make tons of cp sets.

- once you get to cp160, you can start investing in better gear that will be more permanent. At this point, I recommend finding a setup you like, then investing in purple gear and (when you can) gold weapons. Gold armor isn’t a big jump, but weapons are.

- aside from your fighting gear, you might consider investing in a grinding set if you think you’ll do any significant work at grinding CPs. When I was working my CPs, I kept a set of willows path in training. The xp boost is significant from training traits, and I used willows so I could endlessly loop public dungeons without resource problems.

- another tip for grinding CPs is to develop a dailies route that works for you...a bunch of quests you can run in a row that are fun to you. I always start a character run with the Gold Coast world boss daily...that takes like 5 minutes for 100k enlightenment xp. Then I might grab a mage guild daily and bogrul delve daily and run those real quick. I’m doing vvardenfell delve dailies now because the Morag tong motifs are valuable. The point being that you can work out a route that fast and rewards huge xp, and sometimes other valuable stuff.

- speaking of which, the towns in Cyrodiil are good xp farm spots. You can pound out all ten in like 20 minutes for ~120k xp unenlightened...480k enlightened!

Gear sets

Magic characters are pretty versatile with sets. Until you’re ready to tackle vet end game content, you don’t have to worry about trial sets and maxing the character (but you can if it’s fun for you).

Julianos is a good base set to start with. It’s all about power. It will perform better than seducer unless you just have crazy resource management issues. Because Julianos can work so well on so many builds, that’s usually what I make my weapons because gold weapons are kinda spendy, and this way I can control the trait. One tip that works for me is that on my vet magic characters, I just go ahead and make every dang piece in Julianos. Then as I play, when I’m collecting other sets I don’t have to worry about which stupid piece to farm. If I’m switching between Julie plus moon dancer and julie plus war maiden I don’t have to collect specific pieces of those because my base set is there in every piece.

War Maiden is a decent secondary set to play with. It’s a power set too. You can definitely try any magic based drop set. When Summerset hits you can pair with any craft set once you can make the jewelry. But for now I wouldn’t stress about which two sets because you have a couple of months of grinding to get the CPs up where they’re really paying off, amd honestly any magic sets will serve you fine for a while.


Monster sets

With Summerset, you’ll be able to go 5/5/2, which should be great for Sorcs. After you get to cp160, start farming undaunted gear. You can get shoulders easy running normal dailies. It might be a while before you are comfortable farming masks in vet content...in the meantime watch the weekend golden in Cyrodiil. If she carries a good monster helm, paying for it and transmuting it is a good option. I recommend watching this every week because if Illambris or Valkyn comes around you’re probably gonna want to grab one.

In the meantime, you could farm a single monster shoulder and wear that. Or just a random non-set piece, or a sixth piece of Julianos. Having a wasted slot isn’t the end of the world while you work on CPs and farming stuff.


Weapons

Alcast’s double destro build is definitely for advanced players. Not just because it’s double destro. He also doesn’t use heals or exchange or a lot of other stuff you might be using. He’s set up for trials, where he’ll have a healer helping him.

You can go double destro if you want...but there’s no problem with the classic destro/resto either. Either way, you might want to start with a more classic offensive front bar and defensive back bar until you are specializing like Alcast is. For me, I use a back bar with harness magic, exchange, power surge, etc...more of a defense bar, which works in solo and lighter dungeons.


More help

I checked, and if you google sypher pk he has some relatively up to date mag sorc builds. His videos might help you because he walks through the skills he chooses and why. His builds are for PvP, but they’re fine for PvE too and helps Illustrate a more classic sorc set up than alcast’s trial setup.

I would replace netch with Spinners, And use Julianos staffs.

When you start doing dungeons( which you should of been doing before you hit CP) you go to the main city of your alliance to the undaunted tent. You pick up the dungeon pledges and run the dungeons for undaunted keys. There is always an easy dungeon, a little bit harder dungeon, and the harder dungeons from 3 different quest givers. Completing each one gives you a key. So 3 keys a day. You use the keys on a certain chest( depending on the armor you want) and get random monster shoulders. You should be getting at least 1 monster shoulder a day until you have the ones you want.

Then you replace your julianos shoulders with monster shoulders which has a 1 item set bonus. The julianos staffs will let you keep the 5 set julianos bonus. So you have 5 julianos, 5 spinners, 1 monster shoulder. Then farm whatever gear you want.

Dont use the undaunted keys until you hit CP160.

sanzz18 wrote: »

Thanks! How does the dungeon finder work for the pledges? I got into a dungeon today using random dungeon finder but choosing a specific one just doesnt seem to work on xbox.

I dont know how it works on xbox. On PC when you open dungeon finder there is a drop down on the top right of the popup( where you select dungeons, battlegrounds, etc.) It will say random dungeon. Click on it and it allows me to select specific dungeon. Then i check the dungeons i want.

When you reach the right levels you will have to constantly switch back to normal dungeons as it sets vet as the default dungeons. I wouldnt bother farming vet dungeons for gear unless its monster helm.