Is now magicka DPS with 2H/DW feasible?

Athan1 · November 2020

Following the recent changes to LA/HA, is it now feasible again to DPS as a magicka toon with physical weapons? Or to DPS as a stamina toon with magical weapons? I'm not asking if it's BiS, but rather feasible - damage before U28 changes was negligible to non-existent.

Haven't had the time to test this yet so I was wondering if it'll be worth respec'ing.

zvavi · November 2020

Athan1 wrote: »

damage before U28 changes was negligible to non-existent.

Definitely disagree. You would lose at most 20% of your damage with 2h frontbar instead of a fire staff. But if this number is enough for you to count damage with it non-existent, I don't think you will like it this patch either.

YandereGirlfriend · November 2020

To answer your question as it was asked: yes, it is totally feasible* to swap to off-stat weapons, assuming that the rest of your build is solid.

Your main issues will be CP and Penetration, but you can re-arrange some of the highly diminishing-returns stars to scrounge up points to put into Physical Weapons Expert, etc. And Penetration is so high this patch that your damage mitigated due to enemy armor will be substantially less than it would have been before.

I would imagine that DW Swords on Magicka would be better than 2H, likely in a Nirnhoned + Sharpened pairing.

And, of course, your mileage will go farther on a class with a mix of AoE and single-target abilities (such as magPlar) that uses a preponderance of class skills.

*Feasible as defined as you did, not BiS but good enough for most content.

zvavi · November 2020

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

likely in a Nirnhoned + Sharpened pairing.

Definitely not sharpened, in pve mag are over pen cap by a lot.

Sanguinor2 · November 2020

Possible? Yeah. I´d wait tho until twin blade and blunt/heavy weapon passives apply to mag too, especially for dual wield with dagger/axe.

YandereGirlfriend · November 2020

zvavi wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

likely in a Nirnhoned + Sharpened pairing.

Definitely not sharpened, in pve mag are over pen cap by a lot.

I was thinking more for your Light Attacks which will still be Physical Damage type and subjected to your Physical Penetration that won't be at the Penetration Cap.

But you're still probably right that you'd get more mileage out of Precise since it would be applying to the larger share of your overall damage.

Athan1 · November 2020

Oh I see so penetration is still applied from the weapons. That's a shame then. I guess the main thing going for physical weapons is that they have higher damage than an equivalent staff. Still it doesn't ideal but doable.

WrathOfInnos · November 2020

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

likely in a Nirnhoned + Sharpened pairing.

Definitely not sharpened, in pve mag are over pen cap by a lot.

I was thinking more for your Light Attacks which will still be Physical Damage type and subjected to your Physical Penetration that won't be at the Penetration Cap.

But you're still probably right that you'd get more mileage out of Precise since it would be applying to the larger share of your overall damage.

I’ve been playing around with Nirn main hand and Infused (Flame) offhand. The 1h enchant doesn’t do much damage, but the increased proc frequency results in more Burning uptime. You could also do Precise off hand, but I’ve been running dual wield with Acuity, so 27% of the time that Precise trait would be useless to me.

Testing on a dummy, dual swords on front bar results in about 1k DPS loss compared to Inferno Staff on a Magicka build. In trials where melee is an option I’ve been getting better results with swords due to the staff light attack delay bug. Next week I expect staff will pull ahead again, but swords are definitely a viable option if someone prefers to look or feel.

I actually have a public log of vSS using a dual wield mag sorc (no prey because it is also broken): https://www.esologs.com/reports/ZBtvamcJF1YKzAxp#fight=11&type=summary&source=7

Dracane · November 2020

I asked myself the same question yesterday, mainly for pvp purposes.

A sharpened 2 handed sword would give me 302 spell damage after buffs over a fire staff. I trade this for 2% damage of the staff though.

It buffs abilities by a significant amount against mobs. My crystal fragments did like 1900 damage more. But my light attacks went from 5400 damage with the staff to 3200 even with the new combined breech debuff. This alone makes it inferior for pve. And in pvp, after all those mitigations, my fragments did a mere 120 additional damage against my boyfriend.

Not worth losing better light attacks and some range. My main reason for this test was that destruction staff passives are utterly useless other than ancient knowledge.

WrathOfInnos · November 2020

Dracane wrote: »

I asked myself the same question yesterday, mainly for pvp purposes.

A sharpened 2 handed sword would give me 302 spell damage after buffs over a fire staff. I trade this for 2% damage of the staff though.

It buffs abilities by a significant amount against mobs. My crystal fragments did like 1900 damage more. But my light attacks went from 5400 damage with the staff to 3200 even with the new combined breech debuff. This alone makes it inferior for pve. And in pvp, after all those mitigations, my fragments did a mere 120 additional damage against my boyfriend.

Not worth losing better light attacks and some range. My main reason for this test was that destruction staff passives are utterly useless other than ancient knowledge.

Yeah, in PVP the difference may be higher. You don’t have all the debuffs for Physical Resistance, or buffs for Physical Penetration, so Light Attacks will be partially resisted. In PVE you have tanks with Alkosh, Pierce Armor and Crusher. Also in PVE Light Attacks are buffed by a Maelstrom Staff back bar, and it increases them by a flat value (not a % of the unbuffed hit), so the gap between dual wield and Inferno Light Attacks is much less than the 40% you observed. I believe my average Light Attack dropped from around 21k to 18k (~15% reduction), while other skills increased in damage with dual swords.