Septimus_Magna wrote: »

First off, you want to make sure you dont die if you build a lot of stacks so you need to invest into health. Simply multiplying normal 18k health with 40% increase dmg indicates that you roughly need 25k health. To start I would probably go for the Arthaeum max health+magicka buff food to get your health up, after that it might be a combination of attribute points and/or max health enchants on your gear.

You're getting a lot of spell dmg from the TS gloves so you want to have enough sustain to fuel the outgoing dmg. I would probably run something like FGD and ideally pick Breton for extra sustain. Going with two other spell dmg sets means you quickly run out of magicka which usually results in a loss of dps.

Focusing the remaining set pieces to increase spell crit seems like a smart move because its generally the easiest way to increase your dmg. So precise MS inferno staff on the front bar and the vMA inferno on the back bar.

There is one remaining slot for a (heavy) monster piece, the best 1 piece bonus for dmg is spell crit but you could also go for a set that gives health.

1x TS gloves (light)
5x MS (front bar+jewelry)
5x FGD (body)
1x Zaan helmet (heavy) or 1x Scourge Harvester helmet (heavy)
1x vMA inferno (back bar)

There is indeed something I have failed to realise there, specifically in the second paragraph. Does magicka cost of abilities scale with spell damage? Or do I misinterpret?

Edit: And in that case, can't one imagine the 6/5/2/1 schema of Build 3 except instead of Spell Strat there is a sustain set like Lich?

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Almsivife wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

First off, you want to make sure you dont die if you build a lot of stacks so you need to invest into health. Simply multiplying normal 18k health with 40% increase dmg indicates that you roughly need 25k health. To start I would probably go for the Arthaeum max health+magicka buff food to get your health up, after that it might be a combination of attribute points and/or max health enchants on your gear.

You're getting a lot of spell dmg from the TS gloves so you want to have enough sustain to fuel the outgoing dmg. I would probably run something like FGD and ideally pick Breton for extra sustain. Going with two other spell dmg sets means you quickly run out of magicka which usually results in a loss of dps.

Focusing the remaining set pieces to increase spell crit seems like a smart move because its generally the easiest way to increase your dmg. So precise MS inferno staff on the front bar and the vMA inferno on the back bar.

There is one remaining slot for a (heavy) monster piece, the best 1 piece bonus for dmg is spell crit but you could also go for a set that gives health.

1x TS gloves (light)
5x MS (front bar+jewelry)
5x FGD (body)
1x Zaan helmet (heavy) or 1x Scourge Harvester helmet (heavy)
1x vMA inferno (back bar)

There is indeed something I have failed to realise there, specifically in the second paragraph. Does magicka cost of abilities scale with spell damage? Or do I misinterpret?

No, magicka cost will not change based on spell damage*. But with such a strong emphasis on spell damage and spell crit, I think they mean you will have a small magicka pool. So how do you avoid burning through your small magicka pool quickly? Especially since recovery food/drink would be very risky as those have lower health than food/drink that does not give recovery, and you will need all the health you can get to avoid being one-shot by stuff hitting 40% harder.

*It will change based on how many pieces of light armor you wear. So the 7/0/0 setup will have lower costs and higher recovery, but less max magicka than 5/1/1 due to Undaunted Mettle.

Right. That makes sense. As for how to avoid burning through my magicka pool quickly I'll point to the edit of my previous reply.

The 3k (actually 3750 with major + minor sorc) spell damage bonus you get with stranglers clearly outweighs the downside and makes this the best set ever. It is 10x the power of a 5th item set bonus. The text seems to indicate that this bonus is persistent essentially until you decide to turn it off unless you are in PVP and need to crouch / cloak as well.

The way I figure it, you have 2 real choices to offset the extra damage taken. You can increase armor, or just stack more health. Frankly, I'm inclined to just go +40% health. That is 30k not 25k if you want the equivalent of a current 18k for the dude who's maths was from the school of ZOS earlier. In the case of the just add health solution, you just swap around some attribute points and go with whatever damage sets you were running - the two piece monster. That is MS, PFGD, 1 pc crit monster, and vMA inferno back for me.

The other way you could go is to switch to heavy armor. We know from the fact virtually every experienced player uses it in PVP that heavy armor is on balance much stronger than light or medium. Previously, this did not really matter for PVE because almost every fight is a dps check not a survivability check and so even if we don't get much dps from going light, you are still going to do it because dps is worth more than everything. You simply don't die from mechanics that don't happen. So, you run the min on health and max on dps. With 40% more damage taken, you will have to invest some in survivability though. Going heavy may well be a good option and should add roughly 40% resistance while also upping your health some. Because of this, you will be able to put more attributes in magica and paradoxically end up with more magic than if you were wearing light. My initial thought on this build would be to go:
TS gloves
PFGD jewelry and staff (front bar)
5x heavy crafted head, legs, chest, sash, shoes (perhaps seducer to get back sustain)
1x medium crit monster shoulders
vMA staff back bar

Really, the TS piece is just so crazy OP that you are 100% going to need it to be relevant. It is just a question of how you work in some damage mitigation or extra health. I think that, in the end, some from of heavy armor load out will be BIS but it will obviously take more work to figure that out exactly how to build with it than just adding 40% health takes. I also expect this will be one of those things where you spend 100's of hours trying to farm the TS piece only to have them decide give it the old ZOS decimal place nerf and it will do 300 instead of 3000 damage rendering it useless. It certainly looks crazy OP to me right now.

Cellentel wrote: »

Remember that you need to deal the killing blow on 20 things in the instance to get the full buff from stranglers. This is probably feasible in dungeons but would be challenging to do reliably in trials.

If everyone is wearing stranglers, then in trials with large add pulls it might spread the stacks out well enough. However, if you go in wearing heavy armor and/or a bunch of health glyphs assuming you'll be getting full stacks, if you get unlucky with the killing blows you could end up with a wet noodle.

Does death remove the stacks? Because if all it takes is one death to a boss to completely negate the item for rest of that fight, I am not sure how useful this is. It is not like you can run back one room and re-kill the trash in a dungeon or Trial. Dead mobs stay dead in there. Maybe for the handful of top players who blaze through no-death + hard-mode + speed-run of everything, this will be BiS, but for mere mortals, I feel like this is just going to lead to more deaths and less DPS.

Cellentel wrote: »

Remember that you need to deal the killing blow on 20 things in the instance to get the full buff from stranglers. This is probably feasible in dungeons but would be challenging to do reliably in trials.

If everyone is wearing stranglers, then in trials with large add pulls it might spread the stacks out well enough. However, if you go in wearing heavy armor and/or a bunch of health glyphs assuming you'll be getting full stacks, if you get unlucky with the killing blows you could end up with a wet noodle.

Don't forget that killing critters work. You can gain a stack in the waiting room before a trial lol.

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

Does dueling build stacks? If so w ed could literally take turns building stacks on the healer lol.

Healers ar ed going to hate this set.

You can't duel in PvE instances afaik.