Hi, I need help elemental weapon vs force pulse

Gulnagel · September 2020

So I've been playing around with both force pulse and elemental weapon as a spammable for my sorc.

But in terms of feeling I like the force pulse more, I know elemental weapon does a bit more damage thanks to always applying a status effect and you alsi get a proc from the passives, but it's easier to mess up the animation canceling in an actual fight, mening I only lose magica and dont do damage, but with force pulse atleast the abbility goes of and do damage if i mess up my weaving.

I don't know, to you more experienced players, what do you use between theese two and why?

How much of a dps loss is it actually to not use elemental weapon?

zvavi · September 2020

I mostly keep up with force pulse cause of the cleave (aoe dmg) which is important in most dungeons/trials, I do occasionally swap to elemental weapon in single target fights though (like yolnakrin)

Somewhere · September 2020

I think I tend to prefer force pulse as well. Back when elemental weapon was the cheaper skill there was no question which is better. Now, elemental weapon should net you higher dps, but only slightly. Maybe about 1k on a trial dummy. I think force pulse is better because it seems a bit more responsive when the game is lagging.

Especially in trials sometimes the game can lag enough that your light attack will fail to fire,and it can difficult to tell which target in a group your elemental weapon is hitting unless you're watching your light attack very carefully. Force pulse is a pretty obvious beam so it's not hard to tell at all. Plus, it has that pretty strong cleave.

Basically if your fight has a decent amount of adds clustered around your main target, use force pulse. Otherwise, use elemental weapon. Or don't, the dps difference will be largely unnoticeable.

Everest_Lionheart · September 2020

Weave ele weapon more like a heartbeat. That lines up better with the timing on the channel for it. LA>EW synch it up with a metronome app to feel the tempo and go practice only that heartbeat feel on a dummy. Global cool down is going to limit you to that every second max so set your metronome slightly under 60bpm I like 56bpm for ele weapon practice because the channel and LA line up really nice.

Downside to ele weapons is you cannot block cancel it. I believe you can bar swap cancel the animation though but that’s adding unnecessary actions to your rotation.

Anyhow try that heartbeat pattern out and see if it helps. It helped me a lot on my magplar and got me away from seeeps and that long channel time which can cause pots and synergies to flake out.

Vevvev · September 2020

Elemental Weapon does deal more raw damage thanks to the spell orb passive and guaranteed status effects, but it only deals one status effect at a time. It can be used with sets like War Maiden since it deals magic damage instead of elemental damage.

Force Pulse does not deal magic damage but instead a combination of flame, lightning, and ice damage. It does have that AOE component to it but it deals less raw damage than Elemental Weapon with a slight twist to it. Force Pulse benefits from Elemental Force which Increases your chance to apply the Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%, Penetrating Magic which allows your Destruction Staff abilities to ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance, and Destruction Expert where when you kill an enemy with a Destruction Staff ability, you restore 3600 Magicka.

Force Pulse is amazing against heavily armored targets or when you have low spell penetration while Elemental Weapon is a brute force ability. Now slotting Elemental Weapon does give you a damage shield when you block, but you can't use it while blocking without dropping it to light attack. It depends on the situation really but I prefer Force Shock in PVP and Elemental Weapon in PVE.