Got vMA lightning staff, dps parses lower, what am I missing?

Locriana · October 2018

So, I’ve worked very hard to get reasonably decent at vMA, got my share of lousy drops, and finally got a lightning staff. It dropped in sharpened, i trait-changed it to infused.

Golded out, tested as sharpened before I changed it to infused. My set staves are infused.

I’m on a mag petsorc, who usually parses a solid 32 k solo parse self-buffed with ele drain.
Running necro and infallible aether, illambris Two infused staves, one fire enchant, one lightning.

I switch out the staff on my wall of elements bar to the Maelstrom lightning staff, and my dps parse drops about 1500.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there a rotation adjustment that needs to be made?

Looking at the vMA staff effect of adding a flat “additional 1341 damage to enemies in your wall of elements” from light and heavy attacks, that doesn’t seem like much to make up for the loss of 129 spell damage plus 833 spell crit plus the debuff from infallible aether. Though the debuff could still be done with a heavy attack on the bar that has the infal staff.

I’ve heard the staff attack bonus applies on either bar, tested that and it seems to be true, as long as the enemy is standing in WOE. I weave light attacks between every skill, and do one heavy attack per rotation. But my dps is still lower with the vMA staff.

It seems that the staff might be more useful in Maelstrom arena, where I often need to simplify things in the mechanics heavy environment, and focus on light attacks and WOE.
Seems kind of recursive to work so hard to get a staff that is only good in the place you work so hard to get it...in..
Kinda pointless.
But in vet trials I need a full rotation, and good dps.

Loads of people use vMA staves in trials, seems almost a necessity to get high dps, so what am I missing?

Help with this appreciated.
Thanks.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · October 2018

Are you using the staff as a front bar? The way worded it it seams so. The staff ought to be back bared. With wall there, so you back bar has wall and LL, so most of the time you are only your back bar like 2-3 seconds, most of your light and all of your heavy attacks ought to be on your front bar. And for a pet sorc, double lightning staffs are best. Pet sorcs have basically no single target ablitys.

idk · October 2018

Locriana wrote: »

Looking at the vMA staff effect of adding a flat “additional 1341 damage to enemies in your wall of elements” from light and heavy attacks, that doesn’t seem like much to make up for the loss of 129 spell damage plus 833 spell crit plus the debuff from infallible aether. Though the debuff could still be done with a heavy attack on the bar that has the infal staff

This is where the above poster gets the idea you have the vMA on the front bar.

It should be on the back and you seem to have tested that you still get the buff from basic attacks on both bars. Just make sure your WoE and the vMA is on the back bar.

Also, I think it has always been the case that the target needs to be in the middle of the WoE, meaning not to one side or the other. I have never actually tested this but merely take the word of those smarter than myself.

Locriana · October 2018

Sorry, but all the ‘back bar’ and ‘front bar’ stuff is very relative to perception.
Let’s call it the WOE bar and the Infal staff bar.
I mentioned that my VMA staff is on the wall of elements bar. If this is what most people mean by back bar, then yes, it’s on the back bar. Both WOE and Liquid Lightning are on this bar. Daedric prey and the flex spot usually occupied by shock clench or mages wrath (or sometimes crushing shock if the situation calls for it) are on the bar with the infal staff, where I do my heavy attacks. I also have inner light on this infal bar
Bound aegis on both bars.

And @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO I do use shock staffs with my pet sorc.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · October 2018

Locriana wrote: »

Sorry, but all the ‘back bar’ and ‘front bar’ stuff is very relative to perception.
Let’s call it the WOE bar and the Infal staff bar.
I mentioned that my VMA staff is on the wall of elements bar. If this is what most people mean by back bar, then yes, it’s on the back bar. Both WOE and Liquid Lightning are on this bar. Daedric prey and the flex spot usually occupied by shock clench or mages wrath (or sometimes crushing shock if the situation calls for it) are on the bar with the infal staff, where I do my heavy attacks. I also have inner light on this infal bar
Bound aegis on both bars.

And @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO I do use shock staffs with my pet sorc.

Back bar and front bar are not relative to perception. Front bar= the bar where you spend the most time on. Back bar = the least amount of time. With your set up, literally the only time you ought to be on your back bar is to drop LL and wall. And maybe power surge if you run it. That means you ought to be on your back bar a total of 2 or 3 seconds out of a 8 second rotation. So 25-37% of your time is there. My pet sorc run both pets and actually uses lightning flood and unstable wall, so my time is actually less then yours. I also run maw and if you can believe it, mad tinkerer. And I get the same DPS as you are saying. I feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.

But on topic, do you have a way to record your DPS test? That would be the best way to identify what the discrepancy is.

md3788 · October 2018

feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.

This. I’ve had better results with BSW lightning staff front bar with just a flame enchant and grothdarr to proc BSW

Haquor · October 2018

md3788 wrote: »

feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.

This. I’ve had better results with BSW lightning staff front bar with just a flame enchant and grothdarr to proc BSW

IA was good as a front bar 4 piece option as was moondancer a while back. So the setup with 5x necro, 2x illambris, and 4x IA with jewellery and front bar lightning or inferno became 5x IA when staves became a 2 piece..

I feel people havent adjusted thier builds since then to use a better 5 piece option.

rumple9 · October 2018

VMA weapons are way overrated especially moreso since staves now count as double weapons

Locriana · October 2018

Thanks for the explanation of front bar vs back bar @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
With people I play with this seems to mostly mean front bar= single target (mostly direct damage) abilities, while back bar seems to mean mostly aoes and buffs. Although this varies with builds, and that’s why I said it was a matter of perception ie, the way you think about it.

You said “I feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.”
Would you please explain a little more what this means?
I understand about IA procing minor vulnerability, but not the rest of your statement.

I’m using IA mostly because of the two slots of spell crit along with the trial set extra damage on monsters, and the fact I have all gold jewelry for it. Necro has no spell crit, and I do see some crazy crit numbers for light attacks with the vMA staff (like 10k-12k), so it makes sense to have more crit chance.
But I am open to other sets. Mothers sorrow?

I have another pet sorc who mostly runs Maelstrom, using necro and spinners. She uses Mage stone and two pets, with the emphasis on max magicka. This gives the pets extra damage and makes for a stronger shield. It’s a relatively simple aoe build with buffs.

But my trials build is the one I described previously, and that’s where I’d like the vMA staff to be of use.
I don’t have perfected Siroria nor do I expect to any time soon. I’m working on vanilla Siroria. But I have a number of other sets I could use. They’ve never given me as much dps as IA however..though that was several patches ago.

I would not be averse to running a fire staff on the front (single target) bar, as I know fire staves buff single target damage, while shock buffs aoe damage. In which case BSW might be effective even on a pet sorc. Problem there is that this is where I do my heavy attack, which is a lot more difficult with a fire staff. I could change to heavy attacking on the back bar with the vMA lightning staff, but that would mean spending more time on the back bar, which would, according to the definition, turn it in to a front bar... (I’m getting a little dizzy here,,,lol)

@rumple9 you certainly seem to have a point, but still people seem to rack up the big dps numbers with vMA staves, and i’d really like to know how to do that. I plan to keep running Maelstrom to get a fire staff for my Magblade, but I’d really like to know how to make the vMA staff useful in a build/rotation to know that’s worth even doing.

If anyone has a good magsorc build and rotation to share which achieves 35k or more dps with a vMA lightning staff (and not using perfected Siroria), I’d really like to look at it.

Thanks

WuffyCerulei · October 2018

Are you properly weaving and keeping blockade of storms up at all times?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · October 2018

You said “I feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.”
Would you please explain a little more what this means?
I understand about IA procing minor vulnerability, but not the rest of your statement.

all lighting damage has a chance to proc minor vulnerability. enchants have a base of 20% chance of everytime they go off to proc the status effect that the damage is tied too. (you can read more about these and what they do here -https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Combat#Concussed <that is the status effect from lightning)

Locriana · October 2018

@WuffyCerulei Yup I’m weaving LA between every skill, sometimes twice, and keeping up blockade

@Lightspeedflashb14_ESO Thanks for that info I wasn’t at all aware that concussed proced minor vulnerability! I knew it enabled extra damage, but not that it was a minor vulnerability duplicate.

Vildebill · October 2018

I get between 40-45k depending on crits and how good I do in the rotation. I use 5 necro 5 siroria 2 zaan and maelstrom lightning back bar siroria lightning front bar.

Rotation is (pre buff familiar, start with daedric prey and atro and then from back bar) LA - LL - LA - blockade - bar swap - LA - familiar - LA - daedric prey - 2x HA - daedric prey - restart rotation, and this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime, and next rotation cycle you do as first cycle. This way you get almost 100% prey uptime. From 19% use execute with LA:s instead of 2x HA.

Front bar, execute, bound aegis, daedric prey, familiar, inner light and destro ult.
Back bar, surge (if not using pots, kinda flex spot), LL, blockade, familiar, hardened ward and atro ult.

Staves are infused, front bar spell damage enchant and back bar fire enchant.

Best mundus is probably thief in perfect raid buff environment, but I usually run lover.

swirve · October 2018

Locriana wrote: »

Thanks for the explanation of front bar vs back bar @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
With people I play with this seems to mostly mean front bar= single target (mostly direct damage) abilities, while back bar seems to mean mostly aoes and buffs. Although this varies with builds, and that’s why I said it was a matter of perception ie, the way you think about it.

You said “I feel like IA is a waste on a pet sorc, as you are going to be procing minor vulnerability off cooldown anyways with lightning wall and a infused shock enchantment.”
Would you please explain a little more what this means?
I understand about IA procing minor vulnerability, but not the rest of your statement.

I’m using IA mostly because of the two slots of spell crit along with the trial set extra damage on monsters, and the fact I have all gold jewelry for it. Necro has no spell crit, and I do see some crazy crit numbers for light attacks with the vMA staff (like 10k-12k), so it makes sense to have more crit chance.
But I am open to other sets. Mothers sorrow?

I have another pet sorc who mostly runs Maelstrom, using necro and spinners. She uses Mage stone and two pets, with the emphasis on max magicka. This gives the pets extra damage and makes for a stronger shield. It’s a relatively simple aoe build with buffs.

But my trials build is the one I described previously, and that’s where I’d like the vMA staff to be of use.
I don’t have perfected Siroria nor do I expect to any time soon. I’m working on vanilla Siroria. But I have a number of other sets I could use. They’ve never given me as much dps as IA however..though that was several patches ago.

I would not be averse to running a fire staff on the front (single target) bar, as I know fire staves buff single target damage, while shock buffs aoe damage. In which case BSW might be effective even on a pet sorc. Problem there is that this is where I do my heavy attack, which is a lot more difficult with a fire staff. I could change to heavy attacking on the back bar with the vMA lightning staff, but that would mean spending more time on the back bar, which would, according to the definition, turn it in to a front bar... (I’m getting a little dizzy here,,,lol)

@rumple9 you certainly seem to have a point, but still people seem to rack up the big dps numbers with vMA staves, and i’d really like to know how to do that. I plan to keep running Maelstrom to get a fire staff for my Magblade, but I’d really like to know how to make the vMA staff useful in a build/rotation to know that’s worth even doing.

If anyone has a good magsorc build and rotation to share which achieves 35k or more dps with a vMA lightning staff (and not using perfected Siroria), I’d really like to look at it.

Thanks

Yes, these will get you over 38k with an ok rotation and totally self buffed / sustained).

Illambris / zaan
Siroria normal
vMA lightning

Either

Perfected inferno AS + 3 Willpower Jewellry

Or

5 x Sorrow, BSW, Destruction Mastery.

Simple rotation of:

6xFP / CS (replace with fury on 20% exec)
1xLL
Swap
1xEB
1xHCurse or 1xEledrain (alternate them)
Swap

This is with Attronaut mundus... you can hit higher with other stones but this gives you a strong sustain when combined with witchmothers and potential 1 glyph of rec...

Locriana · October 2018

Vildebill wrote: »

I get between 40-45k depending on crits and how good I do in the rotation. I use 5 necro 5 siroria 2 zaan and maelstrom lightning back bar siroria lightning front bar.

Rotation is (pre buff familiar, start with daedric prey and atro and then from back bar) LA - LL - LA - blockade - bar swap - LA - familiar - LA - daedric prey - 2x HA - daedric prey - restart rotation, and this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime, and next rotation cycle you do as first cycle. This way you get almost 100% prey uptime. From 19% use execute with LA:s instead of 2x HA.

Front bar, execute, bound aegis, daedric prey, familiar, inner light and destro ult.
Back bar, surge (if not using pots, kinda flex spot), LL, blockade, familiar, hardened ward and atro ult.

Staves are infused, front bar spell damage enchant and back bar fire enchant.

Best mundus is probably thief in perfect raid buff environment, but I usually run lover.

Thanks @Vildebill looks like your skill set-up is very close to mine, and skill rotation as well, but you are using daedric prey more and more heavy attacks. I’ll try that.

I don’t have a Siroria lightning staff or a full set of Siroria yet, so until I manage that, what would be a good alt set to run with necro? I also don’t have a Zaan, so I’m using illambris. I suspect one would perform better than the other according to the circumstances of the fight anyway.
I’ve been in Maelstrom so much I miss out on dungeons with my guild, so my newer helmets are lacking (did get Balorghs, but that goes to nightblades...) and am lucky just to meet up with them for CR to farm Siroria...

Thanks

Ps if you don’t mind sharing your blue CP allocation with me, I’d like to look at it. Mine has been carefully managed over time, but I find it often makes a difference when you change up what you are doing.

Locriana · October 2018

@swirve thank you for the non-pet sorc build, I’m planning to try that again at some point, so it helps to see different builds people use.

As I’m not likely to get a perfected asylum inferno staff any time in the near future...what would you suggest as a second set?

GreenHere · October 2018

Not to derail or disregard all the other helpful info in this thread, but wanted to add -- Infallible Aether is a great set for boosting your lightning heavy attacks. People overlook this aspect of it a lot, and only focus on the Minor Vulnerability it applies.

I use IA + Undaunted Infiltrator on my non-pet Sorc with mostly just Liquid Lightning + Blockade + Heavy Attacks galore to get a fairly easy/lazy ~30k dps while still having 19k health before Ebon or Minor Toughness. It's a good setup, imo. Don't let people convince you IA is not useful; it's just not BiS for most setups. It probably is for lazy lightning heavy attack builds, though.

More to the point of this thread, though -- the Maelstrom Lightning Staff buff is instrumental to increasing light/heavy attacks done to enemies in your Blockade. Which, by the way, should be making up a significant portion of your damage, hence are one of the best things you could get buffed. If your dps is dropping while using a vMA staff, your other gear is configured wrong most likely, and that's the issue you wanna work out.

Make sure you're not losing a significant set buff when you switch to the vMA bar. Something like Necropotence or IA suddenly being disabled when you swap to the vMA bar will noticeably gimp your dps. I'd bet you'd see your dps raise by dropping the monster set at that point, and making sure you have 5/5 on both sets at all times. If you really want to hold onto a monster set, consider picking a set that procs (like Infiltrator or BSW), so you have that window of time where you are still getting the buff while you're on the other bar.

That's been my approach, anyway. I'm pretty solidly a mid-tier player, so take all this with a grain of salt. I'm not the best person ever to take advice from on dps, or much of anything really. But I thought it might be worth sharing. Let us know how all this works out for you!

GreenHere · October 2018

P.S. -- the build described above can easily take you over 35k with better timing and more use of spammable abilities like Crushing Shock, Crystal Frags, Haunting Curse, etc. The highest I ever got was 36k, and I am far from ever getting any kind of perfect rotation in order.

And that's using trash pots for sustain when needed, Inner Light only on one bar, using Mage mundus (yeah yeah, not ideal, I know), no source of Minor Force, and most likely not-perfectly-optimised CP allocation. Point is, there's room for improvement, and I find it to be a lot less complicated and anxiety inducing as the standard setup people describe. Plus I don't have to wrangle dumb and ugly pets ;P

Locriana · October 2018

@GreenHere I’m not a fan of the force pulse/crystal frags build, mainly because in many raids, crushing shock is needed, and expected. It’s also tougher to sustain, and I hate waiting for the frags proc, I have bad luck with that in actual situations coming up when I need it. and if you’re gonna do this build, you’re gonna need force pulse not CS to get the best dps. And the sustain issue is real. Don’t see how you get 40k dps with atronach stone...

I may try it sometime though again, see if I experience it differently. Or whether one of my regular asylum staves is good enough to be worth dropping a set and using willpower jewelry.

For now, just got my 1st near 35k solo parses using Mother’s sorrow with Necro.
And of course, I’m always sure necro is on both bars, you don’t want to see a sudden dip in magicka when you flip bars.

Strangely, I got the best parses with apprentice, not lover. And certainly my spell pen is not over cap. Dunno, I don’t think the parses were that different, I have my rotation pretty much the same by now.

Mage stone did worse — i Don’t think that one really shines until you have a two (3) pet build, frankly.

GreenHere · October 2018

@Locriana, I'm with you on not liking Crystal Frags. They're a pain, waiting for (or worse, trying to force) a proc. I don't use them, actually; I use Burning Clench instead. I'm never so far away from my target (in PvE, anyway) that Clench isn't better, and the extra fire damage brings it closer to Frags. But, I have got slightly more dps with Frags on a dummy. I just can't bring myself to fuss with them longterm, though. Clench for me. It takes Frags' place on my Sorc's bar every time since they took the stun away from Frags.

Agreed on Crushing Shock. I never use Force Pulse, since the damage difference isn't enough to give up the utility of a ranged interrupt. Sustaining it can be hard if you spam it too much, but not to sound snarky or oversimplify; the solution is to just not do that. :P I'll throw in one or two when I'm on my back bar if I'm not running low on magicka.

Sustaining is easy, since I'm doing 2 or 3 full heavy attacks almost every rotation. And Off-Balance is assured with all the lightning going out, so those heavies refill my magicka nicely too. Heavy lightning attacks are my top damage ability in Combat Metrics. vMA staff + IA 5-piece + UI 5-piece + 48k max magicka (with no pets) see to that. After heavies, Liquid Lightning, Lightning Blockade, and then Charged Weapon (Infused Shock Glyph procs) are the next top damage producers, I believe. (Going from memory, as I don't parse every day anymore.) Mine is a heavily heavy attack / lightning focused build. For flavor, more than max dps. But, the dps is in the realm of what you asked for above so I felt I should share; the build I actually run day to day is the 36k I referenced. Most parses end up being 34k, due to my mistakes more than anything else.

And for mundus stones, I've had the same experience as you. People always told me, "Thief is best, you're using the wrong stone." "No, you need to be using Lover if you're not near the penetration cap!" "Those guys don't know squat, you obviously need to be using the Shadow stone so all your crits are actually worth a damn!!1one!" People get real opinionated about mundus sometimes. But when I did my own testing, shuffling around CP and changing mundus stones never amounted to very big differences for me. CP allocation and mundus optimization surely matter, I don't dispute that, but... I gave up trying to squeeze more dps out of my build once I broke 35k, honestly. That's why I said there was for sure room for improvement (by someone who'd care to do it). But as far as I can tell, how CP & mundus optimization goes is fairly user-specific, since we all have slightly different capabilities. One setup to rule them all is true; IF you have perfect execution EVERY time, which I definitely do not.

Apprentice was usually on top for me, on a dummy. In actual fights, it was even better. Spell Damage just keeps scaling up and up and up, since more buffs just make you stronger and stronger. Lover scales down. The more penetration your group has on the target, the less benefit you gain. People seem to overlook this. I've never found a magicka setup that I liked that required Lover for the best dps. Thief was ~7 dps different, averaged out for crit variability in parses. Not 7k.... like... seven. Shadow was nerfed too hard, and didn't compete afterwards. Mage was almost as good as Apprentice, and I chose it for 1) when I slot shields in harder fights; it makes my Empowered Ward as large as my entire health bar (prior to Nerfmire, anyway...) and 2) for simple variety. I got tired of every magicka toon running Apprentice. The damage difference just wasn't high enough for me to lose sleep over. Plus, having more max magicka makes your sustain a liiittle bit easier, which is nice.

Sorry for way too many words. I'm bad about that. I hope you find something helpful in that wall of text if you were crazy enough to read it all, haha.

Vildebill · October 2018

Locriana wrote: »

Vildebill wrote: »

I get between 40-45k depending on crits and how good I do in the rotation. I use 5 necro 5 siroria 2 zaan and maelstrom lightning back bar siroria lightning front bar.

Rotation is (pre buff familiar, start with daedric prey and atro and then from back bar) LA - LL - LA - blockade - bar swap - LA - familiar - LA - daedric prey - 2x HA - daedric prey - restart rotation, and this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime, and next rotation cycle you do as first cycle. This way you get almost 100% prey uptime. From 19% use execute with LA:s instead of 2x HA.

Front bar, execute, bound aegis, daedric prey, familiar, inner light and destro ult.
Back bar, surge (if not using pots, kinda flex spot), LL, blockade, familiar, hardened ward and atro ult.

Staves are infused, front bar spell damage enchant and back bar fire enchant.

Best mundus is probably thief in perfect raid buff environment, but I usually run lover.

Thanks @Vildebill looks like your skill set-up is very close to mine, and skill rotation as well, but you are using daedric prey more and more heavy attacks. I’ll try that.

I don’t have a Siroria lightning staff or a full set of Siroria yet, so until I manage that, what would be a good alt set to run with necro? I also don’t have a Zaan, so I’m using illambris. I suspect one would perform better than the other according to the circumstances of the fight anyway.
I’ve been in Maelstrom so much I miss out on dungeons with my guild, so my newer helmets are lacking (did get Balorghs, but that goes to nightblades...) and am lucky just to meet up with them for CR to farm Siroria...

Thanks

Ps if you don’t mind sharing your blue CP allocation with me, I’d like to look at it. Mine has been carefully managed over time, but I find it often makes a difference when you change up what you are doing.

Siroria is really a huge DPS boost, but when the fight is too mobile I usually switch to either 3 ancient grace jewles and one willpower staff or 5 BSW (since I have a lightning BSW staff) but I wouldn't farm for that if I didn't have it at the moment. 5 destruction mastery or 5 julianos would probably work out fine as well, but frankly you wouldn't get the same numbers as with siroria. So I would just bite the bullet and farm some siroria, it's not that bad since 12 peeps can get a lightning staff that probably only you want

You can find PUG:s almost any time of the day in Craglorn or in Summerset that does nCR, so just jump aboard the train.

You mentioned you have 5 piece MS, I haven't tried that one out myself on a pet sorc but it's BiS for many other builds so you could probably run that as well in the meantime farming for siroria.

Ilambris is almost as good as Zaan, Zaan is more ST but requires you to stay close. With Ilambris you can go full ranged and do some good AoE as well, so a matter of preference and circumstances absolutely. I wouldn't loose sleep on that.

My CP looks like this at the moment, and it works well for me:
The Ritual
81 Thaumaturge
The Attronarch
18 Master-at-Arms, 29 Staff Expert
The Apprentice
56 Elemental Expert, 56 Elfborn, 20 Spell Erosion

Good luck!

Locriana · October 2018

Vildebill wrote: »

Rotation is (pre buff familiar, start with daedric prey and atro and then from back bar) LA - LL - LA - blockade - bar swap - LA - familiar - LA - daedric prey - 2x HA - daedric prey - restart rotation, and this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime, and next rotation cycle you do as first cycle. This way you get almost 100% prey uptime. From 19% use execute with LA:s instead of 2x HA.

@Vildebill I have a question.About your rotation here. You do Daedric Prey, 2 HA, Daedric Prey, then next rotation you say “this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime” Does this mean going straight to the 1st HA after familiar?
So Bar swap, LA familiar, HA, Daedric Prey, HA?
So, first rotation, 2 Daedric preys, 2nd rotation one Daedric Prey?
Mind if I ask why varying it would make a difference?

Thanks for all your advice here, by the way. And everyone else’s.

Vildebill · October 2018

Locriana wrote: »

Vildebill wrote: »

Rotation is (pre buff familiar, start with daedric prey and atro and then from back bar) LA - LL - LA - blockade - bar swap - LA - familiar - LA - daedric prey - 2x HA - daedric prey - restart rotation, and this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime, and next rotation cycle you do as first cycle. This way you get almost 100% prey uptime. From 19% use execute with LA:s instead of 2x HA.

@Vildebill I have a question.About your rotation here. You do Daedric Prey, 2 HA, Daedric Prey, then next rotation you say “this time use daedric prey in between the two HAs for maximum uptime” Does this mean going straight to the 1st HA after familiar?
So Bar swap, LA familiar, HA, Daedric Prey, HA?
So, first rotation, 2 Daedric preys, 2nd rotation one Daedric Prey?
Mind if I ask why varying it would make a difference?

Thanks for all your advice here, by the way. And everyone else’s.

Exactly! This is because in the first rotation, you end the front bar with the daedric prey. Then you go back bar, reapply dots, and when you are back at the front bar again the daedric prey is still up after you activate familiar, so you can squeeze in one more HA before daedric prey runs out. Then you have time for one more HA before you need to go to back bar again for dots, and when you come to the front bar next time the daedric prey will run out just when you activate familiar, which is perfect timing to apply it again.

So, this rotation is kind of static since its two "rounds" if you know what i mean. And the difference is that you get almost 100% uptime of prey. I've seen plenty of static sorc rotations that misses out like 40% uptime, and pet does a lot of damage, especially storm atro.

Hope you understand better now