WhyMustItBe wrote: »Alcast parses always have someone putting elemental drain/Major Breach/Fracture on the dummy to increase sustain/penetration. Dummies have just over 18k resistance (physical and magic) like most raid bosses, so if you are under that for penetration missing the major breach/fracture buff will make a significant difference.
Having more CP specifically in staff/weapon expert in the blue tree and Master at Arms will increase your light attack damage quite a bit, though not more than 20%.
Also many alcast builds use the Psijic ability that buffs your next light attack. I don't know how damage meters handle this, but it could just be showing up as flat light attack damage and if you aren't using that ability in your rotation as the spammable, it could account for the huge discrepancy.
I am assuming you are drinking potions to keep the major Crit/Spellpower buffs up?
WrathOfInnos wrote: »Yes, the light attack damage is primarily from the Maelstrom Staff effect.
For Funnel Health, you may be comparing to an old build. It’s damage was cut in half a few months back. Swallow Soul is now the DPS morph, Funnel is just for healers. You’d actually be better off using Elemental Weapon in most cases though.
The 200 CP isn’t a big deal, and will affect your DPS by less than 10%. If I had to guess more specifically I’d say it’s most likely close to 7% that you stand to gain by getting to Max CP.
Your Crit rate seems a little low. Are you using good potions (20% Spell Damage, 10% Spell Crit, and Restore Magicka)? You should have the following Crit bonuses:
- 10% base
- 9% from CP’s
- 10% Light Armor passive
- 10% Major Prophecy (inner light or potions)
- 16.4% Mother’s Sorrow
- 3.8% Burning Spellweave
- 3.8% Zaan or Slimecraw (or 7.6% of you mix 2 different crit monster sets)
- 2-4% from Assassination passives
- 7% Precise weapon (front bar only, infused Berserker is best on back bar)
Total 70-76%
This high crit synergizes well with the Shadow Stone (which I assume you’re using) and 7 divines is best.
Beyond that it most likely comes down to practice and rotation.
I'd guess all these things combined could do it. When I got maelstrom staff, fixed the traits on one item, and upgraded a couple items, I saw my dps go up like 7k. 200cp is not really small potatoes either. That's another 66 points in the blue damage tree, which can do a decent amount. Plus yeah the major fracture/breach, if your not using that, could do it.
Ectheliontnacil wrote: »One suggestion is that you take out all your cp from the blue tree and then do a couple of 6mil parses.
Analyse your damage report (with combat metrics), figure out how much light attack, dot and direct damage you do and look at your average crit rating. Then plug those values into a cp optimizator.
Also specify how much penetration you have (on dummy parses this is lower than in trials). And enter how many offensive cps are available to you.
http://asayre.mygamesonline.org/MorrowindCPOptimisation/CPOptimisation.html
This is the link.
I don't believe elemental weapon increases light attacks, it adds it's own damage on the parse.
WhyMustItBe wrote: »Alcast parses always have someone putting elemental drain/Major Breach/Fracture on the dummy to increase sustain/penetration. Dummies have just over 18k resistance (physical and magic) like most raid bosses, so if you are under that for penetration missing the major breach/fracture buff will make a significant difference.
Having more CP specifically in staff/weapon expert in the blue tree and Master at Arms will increase your light attack damage quite a bit, though not more than 20%.
Also many alcast builds use the Psijic ability that buffs your next light attack. I don't know how damage meters handle this, but it could just be showing up as flat light attack damage and if you aren't using that ability in your rotation as the spammable, it could account for the huge discrepancy.
I am assuming you are drinking potions to keep the major Crit/Spellpower buffs up?
My penetration is around 12k with elemental drain I believe. I'm not running potions as I already have those buffs up, maybe a little less crit.
I don't believe elemental weapon increases light attacks, it adds it's own damage on the parse.
SidraWillowsky wrote: »WhyMustItBe wrote: »Alcast parses always have someone putting elemental drain/Major Breach/Fracture on the dummy to increase sustain/penetration. Dummies have just over 18k resistance (physical and magic) like most raid bosses, so if you are under that for penetration missing the major breach/fracture buff will make a significant difference.
Having more CP specifically in staff/weapon expert in the blue tree and Master at Arms will increase your light attack damage quite a bit, though not more than 20%.
Also many alcast builds use the Psijic ability that buffs your next light attack. I don't know how damage meters handle this, but it could just be showing up as flat light attack damage and if you aren't using that ability in your rotation as the spammable, it could account for the huge discrepancy.
I am assuming you are drinking potions to keep the major Crit/Spellpower buffs up?
My penetration is around 12k with elemental drain I believe. I'm not running potions as I already have those buffs up, maybe a little less crit.
I don't believe elemental weapon increases light attacks, it adds it's own damage on the parse.
Spell Power Potions. Up 100% of the time when you parse. No exceptions. Level up your Medicinal Use in the alchemy tree too.
Oh, and if you don't have it, get the Grim Focus Counter addon. Single most important addon for nightblades who run Grim Focus.
Could it be 5900 average? Cause average takes Crit and regular both into account. With the current shadow Mundus meta you might get better dps running Siroria/mother’s sorrow to get more crits.MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
I'm really perplexed, I manage at a push to do 30k dps, but mostly average around 25 or so.
I've been working and working on my rotation on the dummy, tightening it up as much as possible and I just can't get anywhere near 60k dps alcast's build is supposed to deliver.
I'm aware of a couple shortcomings I have, I am only 610cp and also don't have the maelstrom staff for my Magblade. I'm running mother's sorrow with bsw. Staves are gold, everything else purple with the suggested traits. My CP distribution is according to alcast's magblade build.
I'm at just over 40k mag with close to 3k spell power, 64% crit rate and 79% crit damage.
If I compare my stats to some of those folks that have posted their 60k parses, I'm not too far behind, yet they manage to do incredible damage.
I've compared my parses to theirs and I see startling differences on a few things.
1: their light attack damage is more than twice mine per hit.
2. Their skill damage on funnel heath for example is almost twice mine per hit according to their parses. This one for the life of me I can't explain.
Is there such a vast difference between maelstrom staff light attacks that explains point 1?
Does my being short of 200 cp explain the massive differences in certain skill damage per hit ? I can't see it.
Could someone be so kind as to possibly explain the difference between my light attacks and funnel heath spam only doing half the damage on a dummy compared to their parses, this is per hit.
Thank you
MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
Interesting, especially with same gear and cp, I take it his parse lists his crit, and crit damage and spell power and all his buffs? Could it be penetration? De buffs on the dummy?

This ^^^cjhhickman39 wrote: »Buffs and debuff?
MartiniDaniels wrote: »MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
Interesting, especially with same gear and cp, I take it his parse lists his crit, and crit damage and spell power and all his buffs? Could it be penetration? De buffs on the dummy?
Well, I looked into his video, it's probably fire enchants which cause much longer periods of burning and so all fire damage receive a considerable buff. Btw, I was wrong about same gear, he used siroria+spellstrat and I used siroria+mothersorrows atm, so from screenshot my stats are even way better (much higher crit chance and crit damage)
And even with hilariously lucky crit on my impale, my impale crit was for 54k and his for 77k. How???
WrathOfInnos wrote: »MartiniDaniels wrote: »MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
Interesting, especially with same gear and cp, I take it his parse lists his crit, and crit damage and spell power and all his buffs? Could it be penetration? De buffs on the dummy?
Well, I looked into his video, it's probably fire enchants which cause much longer periods of burning and so all fire damage receive a considerable buff. Btw, I was wrong about same gear, he used siroria+spellstrat and I used siroria+mothersorrows atm, so from screenshot my stats are even way better (much higher crit chance and crit damage)
And even with hilariously lucky crit on my impale, my impale crit was for 54k and his for 77k. How???
The difference in max Impale sounds like Bloodthirsty for an extra 30% damage. His parse also had Minor Berserk (removed with Elsweyr) for another 8% damage on all skills.
Also keep in mind that Spell Strat does not show up in CMX or character sheet Spell Damage. It is hidden, and about 600 more after Major Sorcery. I think Siroria + Sorrow is better now, so I wouldn’t rush off to buy Spell Strat, but that also helps explain the higher max hits (higher peaks, but fewer of them than Sorrow).
That's the problem with the damn combat team. They balance everything around what alcast and liko can pull and *** all for everyone else. Just find a new game like a lot of us who played mageblades are doing.
That's the problem with the damn combat team. They balance everything around what alcast and liko can pull and *** all for everyone else. Just find a new game like a lot of us who played mageblades are doing.
Balancing has to be done at the top end because the Liko’s of the world are going to push any class to its limits. So if they make it easy for you they make it even easier for Liko. Then we end up with a mono class meta.
Even with that said Magblades are arguably the worst mag class now so I don’t think ZOS balanced anything.
MartiniDaniels wrote: »WrathOfInnos wrote: »MartiniDaniels wrote: »MartiniDaniels wrote: »Op, I agree with you. I can't get it why my self-buffed blockade with 98% uptime is doing 4000-4500, while Lico's blockade in literally same gear does 5900.
Interesting, especially with same gear and cp, I take it his parse lists his crit, and crit damage and spell power and all his buffs? Could it be penetration? De buffs on the dummy?
Well, I looked into his video, it's probably fire enchants which cause much longer periods of burning and so all fire damage receive a considerable buff. Btw, I was wrong about same gear, he used siroria+spellstrat and I used siroria+mothersorrows atm, so from screenshot my stats are even way better (much higher crit chance and crit damage)
And even with hilariously lucky crit on my impale, my impale crit was for 54k and his for 77k. How???
The difference in max Impale sounds like Bloodthirsty for an extra 30% damage. His parse also had Minor Berserk (removed with Elsweyr) for another 8% damage on all skills.
Also keep in mind that Spell Strat does not show up in CMX or character sheet Spell Damage. It is hidden, and about 600 more after Major Sorcery. I think Siroria + Sorrow is better now, so I wouldn’t rush off to buy Spell Strat, but that also helps explain the higher max hits (higher peaks, but fewer of them than Sorrow).
Yep, I forgot that spell strat is not shown in CMX. About bloodthirsty I have 2 gold rings with it and one arcane.. on the other side twisting path and grasp are literally the same, blockade higher due to burning.. so only question left is about hilarious difference in impale damage.
Why lie when we all know that isn't true?WrathOfInnos wrote: »The 200 CP isn’t a big deal, and will affect your DPS by less than 10%.