My preference is to use shock clench with a vDSA lightning staff. Just holding the lightning staff gives you 8% increased damage on Deep Fissure, Winters Revenge, Wall of Elements, and the lightning heavy attack timing works better with Deep Fissure. You can use Clench as a spammable for trash, and go to a no-spammable rotation for bosses.

My no-spammable rotation looks like this:

Netch, swap, Shalk, Swarm, Clench, Shalk, swap, Wall, Winter, swap, Shalk, Heavy Attack, Shalk, swap, Wall, Repeat

Bars look like:
Front: Clench, Shalks, Swarm, Harness, Inner Light, Bear
Back: Winter, Wall, Flex, Netch, Inner Light, Bear

And every other rotation I activate the bear instead of the Netch. This rotation is 12s long, with 100% uptime on Shalks, Winters Revenge, Netch, and Unstable Wall (don’t use blockade with this). It gets 83% uptime on Swarm, Clench, and the back bar berserker enchant.

If you were to use a spammable like force pulse or elemental weapon you would be casting it 3 times per rotation, once in place of Clench and twice in place of the heavy attack. This would be tough to sustain though, and you would definitely need to build more Magicka Regen and less burst damage. Effectively the Shalks are my spammable, since they are the most used skill, they just require waiting 3s between casts (can’t spam this spammable).

Edit: BTW I have found that the only way to effectively use a Master or Asylum staff front bar is to combine it with 3 Willpower, a 5pc Slayer set (Siroria, Moondancer, Architect, or Infallible, any of these work well on this build), and a 2pc Monster Helm (Zaan or Slimecraw work best for DPS, but iceheart can be used for defense).

@jypcy I find that a second 5pc set gives very similar results on a boss or dummy parse. Sustain becomes more difficult without the reduced cost on clench, since it’s cost reduction saves about 100 Mag/s on average, or the equivalent to 200 regen. This can be made up for by building a little more regen at the expense of damage, but it all seems to even out in the end within a few hundred DPS.

The place the Master Lightning really shines is for fights with adds or trash, since it strongly buffs the splash damage on Clench. You can also spam it more, or try to hit each target with one, which makes the cost reduction much more valuable (with pure clench spam it saves over 1200 Mag/s). This can be used to disable many targets, making places like vMA and vDSA trivial, where magwarden would otherwise lack a hard CC.

Cant answer magden-optimization questions, but from what I know:

Staff type affects the damage you’re dealing whether the ability was cast from your current bar or offbar. So if you’re using a lot of aoe, lightning is good for your main bar because it’ll buff all that damage, even if you cast it from a bar with a flame staff equipped. If you focus more on single target abilities, such as using a spammable like force pulse, then a flame staff is good for your main bar. Abilities like the destro ult, clench, and wall also all have staff-dependent effects that should be taken into consideration; these do depend on the staff type equipped when you cast them, not which staff type you have currently active (a blockade of shock doesn’t change to a blockade of fire if you barswap).

VMA builds can be used in vet trials and vice versa, but they typically are built with a different end goal than trial builds are and so won’t necessarily be fully optimized for group content. Again, not saying they can’t do well across contexts, just that a vma build is meant for vma and a trials build is meant for trials.

Idk about BiS but I can hit 40k on my mag warden using 5xSiroria 5xNecro 2xZaan. Siroria inferno front bar, maelstrom inferno backbar. Elemental Weapon is a superior spammable, but if you're worried about heals then spam pigeons since it procs the Bond with Nature passive, same as netch.

The reason I don't bring him in trials is just that 1) I don't like pets and the bear ulti is required for highest dps and 2) why bother when I can cruise control 45k dps on my magblade with no siroria, no Zaan, no pets, superior healing, and superior mobility...

Mag toons most often use thief or apprentice nowadays tmk, and only lover in situations where you might not be able to rely on the debuffs a tank applies (like vMA, vAS, and vCR) but it depends on build. Did you mean that you’re using appentice currently? I would think if you’re using ele drain then you wouldn’t need to use atronach, or vice versa. Especially if you’re maelstrom running, shalks could be a good skill to take ele drain’s place because you can time it to hit right when adds spawn, it’s massive aoe damage, and it debuffs enemies. But when solo, it’s probably good that you use some combination of two of witchmother’s brew, atro mundus, and ele drain just to help you sustain.

Also, have you tried force pulse instead of dive? Unless you’re already proccing ilambris basically on cooldown, I’d think you’d get much better uptime with both of its storms. Even if FP might be a slight single target dps loss over dive (and I don’t even know that it is), I think increasing ilambris and status effect uptimes with FP would be a net dps gain.

Well like said, it depends on the build for which stone you use and I’m afraid I don’t have exact cutoffs for when one would become more effective than the other off the top of my head

None of your sets are giving you crit chance, so I could see thief being effective to help compensate for that. But I guess I’d recommend either doing a few good dummy parses with each stone and see if one gives you better results. Else, just try out the stone and see how you like it compared to the apprentice (less scientific but this is a game, after all).

Also, just wanted to make a plug for the build Innos laid out above, if you have the gear for it. I mocked something up similar to it and gave it a try on the dummy for 37k with trash pots. Took it into vMA (first time on a magden) and got flawless. Granted I’ve been around vma a few times, but it’s definitely a solid build. I haven’t tried any from LZH or the other guy you mentioned so theirs very well could be even better, but I can say from experience that this one works.

I think I set it up something like 20-30 each in spell erosion, staff expert, and thaumaturge, and around 50-60 each in elfborn, elemental expert, and master at arms. I didn’t optimize this, though, so you might very well find a better configuration.

And backbar staff choice depends, especially if you’re planning on using this mostly for solo play. If you’ve got good burning uptime on enemies, then inferno vma is the go to. If you don’t have very much burning uptime (as a rough guess, <40%), and/or have really good concussion uptime (or decent concussion uptime but also have sustain issues) then lightning vma might be better. You don’t need 75 into thaumaturge unless you’re using a lightning vma, and even then I can’t guarantee that that would be a dps increase over better optimizing your cp to not pour so heavily into one star.

(Edit for explanation, if interested: )

If you’re also planning on using this a lot in group play, then I’d just go with inferno vma. Other players can help with the burning uptime on enemies and a tank or healer might cover the lightning vma effect.