Depends

- for large pulls like skyreach you can do heartland body, plaguebreak, velidreth/maw/grothdarr. Just keep up proxy detonation and spam pulsar

- for brp, still heartland body + damage set ( whatever you have that can be reconned to training or bought overland for training + (1pc monster+pale order)/ monster set of your choice (whatever you can recon for 25 transmutes to training).

Crit is king on pve, but heartland provides extra “training” percent, like you have an extra training gear piece so it’s nice for exp runs.

You can ask a guildie to craft you heartland or craft it on a guildhouse. No need for blackwood.

It depends. But the thing is crit chance and crit damage gets better the more you have of both and the higher your Spell Damage and Max Magicka already is. While Spell Damage increase gets worse the more Spell Damage and Max Magicka you have.

Max Magicka equivalent of Spell Damage is 10.5x of Spell Damage.

Lets take 20k Max Magicka and 3k Spell Damage, this will lead into a Magicka equivalent of 51,5k.
If you add 129 Spell Damage (1354,5 Max Magicka equivalent) this leads to a damage increase of 2,6%.

If you add 657 Critical Rating (3%) this leads to a increase of 1,5% (with a Crit Damage of 50%).

This are values that a probable for a bad geared and bad buffed beginner character.

But if we look at a more advanced setup of lets say a Magicka equivalent of 100k then a Spell Damage increase of 129 leads only to a damage increase of 1,4%.

But a bonus of 657 Critical Rating would lead to a Damage increase of 3% (at 100% Crit Damage) and thus more than twice the amount!

For a endgame character Crit usually outperforms Spell Damage (except in a few cases).



To the sets you mentioned. Stuhns Favor isnt needed on a Magicka Character. Also its not that easy to proc on a Sorc, especially a Mag Sorc. Dont use it! (But it is nice for a Stamina Spec in PVP) If you really want more Pen on a Mag Sorc there is the Spinners Garments Set, but I dont recommend this either for PVE.

Red Eagles Fury is ok if you can sustain it and your main source of damage are weapon skills. But I think New Moon Acolyte would be a better choice, because it would also boost skills like crystal fragements (your main single target damage source) and your Pets or skills like orbs or lightning splash for example.

Innate Axiom is good too if your main damage comes from class abilities. In a Single Target Scenario you could build your Sorc to use almost exclusively class skills (Crystal Fragments as spammable) but in an AOE Scenario you will need Destrcution Staff skills and thats why I think it wouldnt be a good option either.

And Combining Red Eagles Fury with Innate Axiom makes no sense at all because you would loose half of the set bonuses of either of the sets in any situation.

My suggestions for crafted sets are:

• New Moon Acolyth, if you are able to sustain it. But you probably wont be able on a Mag Sorc, especially when soloing.
• Law of Julianos, its not the best set available in the game but still a really strong set overall.
• Hundings Rage, same as Julianos but 1 Stamina bonus instead of a Magicka Bonus, still good on a Magicka Character and better than most other crafted sets. If you dont know what to choose else, take this.
• Maybe Oblivion's Foe, but you will be forced into using Soul Magic skills to make it effective.
• Maybe Ancient Dragonguard Set if you can keep your health above 50%.
• Maybe Mechanical Acuity, but it might perform bad if you dont know how to utilize it or pair it with crit sets.
• Maybe Diamond's Victory, but you will have to keep up both supremacies to make it work but it might be problematic to do so on a Mag Sorc and thus this set wont work well, especially without training and a specifically tweaked rotation.

But if you can, you should grab at least a trial Set, because that minor slayer buff is just great on top of already good stats / procs. The best option is Perfected Bahsei (even you have to get used to make it effective). Also perfected False God is good, especially for soloing (it does give you more damage than Mother Sorrow and additionally good sustain). Even the non perfected versions are worth running and easy to farm (even with randoms).

KilianDermoth wrote: »

It depends. But the thing is crit chance and crit damage gets better the more you have of both and the higher your Spell Damage and Max Magicka already is. While Spell Damage increase gets worse the more Spell Damage and Max Magicka you have.

Thanks! That was very insightful. I have to confess I have not really min-maxed the character in question, as I mostly solo, so it's not really competitive with serious players' end-game characters. I must check how her numbers are and do some rough calculations to see if dmg or crit would be more beneficial.

As for AoE and weapon skills, I do spam the destruction staff AoE attack a lot. On the other hand, I use Mage's Wrath as a finisher a lot, too. So maybe it's best to avoid sets that make skill use more expensive. Hunding's could quite helpful, actually, since Dark Exchange is my character's standard healing method. So any stamina increase wouldn't go to waste, whereas I seldom have problems with the magicka pool (outside of boss fights, at least).