I was used to run trials with magsorc, where all pets are mandatory.
I build damage on critical damage (Mother Sorrow (MS), Julianos, Medusa, Tzoving + Trial gear), not on max magicka.

Easy to get
MS+Julianos = bouth easy to get and you have very good (not meta) gear for trials. You should use some source of Major Savagery and Prophecy, Minor Force and Major Brutality and Sorcery.

manaSorc
MS+ Bashe Mania/Siroria/False God, Second options are trials sets, you need to farm in trials. Normal version is a little better then Julianos. Perfect version is best PvE gear then. You should use some source of Major Savagery and Prophecy, Minor Force and Major Brutality and Sorcery.

stam Sorc is now stronger then mana sorc
Leviatan+ Coral/Relequen, Leviatan is stamina version of MS and you can use MS as well, Other 2 are trials sets, You should use some source of Major Savagery and Prophecy, Minor Force and Major Brutality and Sorcery.

manaSorc - best
Medusa/Tzovign + perfect Bashe mania, you dont need another source of Minor Force, more space on your bar.

stamSorc - best
Tzovign/Medusa+perfect Coral, you dont need another source of Minor Force, more space on your bar.

One of the strongest not trial sets "Kinras's Wrath" isn't used by pet sorc because space on bar (Minor Force)


Twilight Tormentor vs Twilight Matriarch

Matriarch is powerful source of healing and do some damage. If you travel alone, she could be very useful.
Tormentor do more damage then Matriarch. Not so much more, but still more. In group with dedicated healer, healer will heal you and you should focus on doing as much damage as possible.

Tormentor If there is dedicated healer. Matriarch if you need heal yourself.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not quite sure what to make of some of them. Part of the issue is wanting to go pets as a character theme, not only min/max.

So it's about understanding things like how much am I giving up if I go for max magica over spell damage, are there activities that's a problem for, and what are the tradeoffs using one pet for heals versus the other.

I don't know why a guide advised morphing pets the opposite way or the tradeoffs of keeping 'flappy' as healer going against the guide. I also prefer 'easier' rotations. Right now it's hit a few keys every so often, spam crystal shards, heal.

I'd go with the healing matriarch UNLESS most of your play is done in the company of a very good healer. The matriarch is better than her number looks as a healer because she is so easy to use. Since you have to double slot her, it doesn't matter which bar you're one when someone needs a heal. Also, her heals are smart - you don't have to aim them. If you see a troublesome health bar anywhere around you, just smack the matriarch key regardless of which bar you are on.
Magicka. Yes your pet damage scales from it but a pet sorc should be able to use plenty of heavy attacks so sustain is not a problem.
Spell damage. Good because it boosts both damage and healing.
Penetration. Very good but depends on what you fight and who you have with you. I like running solo and doing bosses so I run with close to 18k pen (including my own major breach).
Crit chance. Not only perhaps the best bang for the buck but especially helpful on sorcs since it procs critical surge for your personal healing.

It's not meta but it's also hilariously funny to run a two pet stamsorc with defiler, daedroth (maw of the infernal) and aegis caller, with the storm atro ulti plus a large annoying cosmetic pet (the my little pony pet is great) and in PvE companion.

It turns you into a kind of rolling combat circus.

Mad tinkerer is very very effective for solo. If you mix tinkerer and mother's sorrow/leviathan plus exploding wall or titanic cleave (trickier to get to do the stamina version but very very effective) you get something resembling a lawnmower for trash. If you are weak on heals you can also trade some damage down by using winter's respite plus tinkerer but for a pet sorc you really shouldn't need to do that.

In organized groups avoid tinkerer though unless your tank is good with it.

Thanks for the very good replies. The big point I saw is that my info from early in ESO about max magicka apparently has changed to now other stats also buffing pets and max magicka being ineffective versus spell power and crit.

Lots of other info also. This is only PvE. I lean toward preferring magicka as a char preference though I see the info why stam can be better.

I see the info that the healing 'flappy' is agreed to be great for healing but that some make a case it can be replaces with damage with skills doing healing. It wasn't as clear about the other pet morph tradeoffs.

I got the amor set picks, and even think I own a lot of most of them so that's a thing to look at, as if I find a set I think is good as a keeper I can upgrade it to yellow quality. Then there's finding an easy but good set of skills/rotation.

Currently, it's hitting several occasionally and spamming crystal fragments, several being Daedric Prety and Empowered Ward front, and unstable wall of fire, surge, and boundless storm back for harder fights.

I'd guess a lightning or fire staff is best, does it matter?

Why is lightning better for solo, when fire is better on single targets? Is it just that you prefer a a build better at AOE with ligtning?

KilianDermoth wrote: »

... So for solo it doesn't matter that much for group a flame staff is better. It's more a personal thing that I prefer shock for solo.

That's the point. A personal decision to run something for roleplay reasons. For lack of a better word. 😉

Inferno Staffs gives bonus to all single target abilities of your character. I always look at what I have on that particular bar and decide.

Crystal Frags: Single Target
Bumpy: Single Target
Flappy: Single Target
Force Pulse: Single Target
Inner Light: Barbuffer
Greater Attro: 1 AoE, 27 Single Target attacks
Conclusion: Use Inferno Staff... 🥳

Magicka vs stamina

Stamsorc is much stronger DD at present time. All leaderboard and progress group avoid of using magsorc now.
However, magsorc was very strong DD last year and they were regular parts of portals group then.
So, I advice ignoring "stamsorc stronger than magsorc" because it can change in future.

Fire vs. Lightning

Trials group - Fire/fire only (Boss fights with one target, special buffs from DK tanks,..)
exception? I tried use lightning staff (front bar with pulsar as spamable) on trash fights in AoE setup. But it had only one pet, Volatile Familiar. Lightning staff has potential to overpower fire staff, but it depends a lot on number of trash and tanks ability to stack them all.

Absence of special fire buffs and mostly AoE setup on sorc is stronger with lightning staff. AoE setup is very sitational setup.
I would see fire/lightning setup reasonable with single targets on front bar and AoE on back bar.

Bumpy - I guess that it is "Unstable Clannfear"
Force Pulse has actually nice cleave damage. It is nice semi AoE skills. I used it on Triplets in vHoF as AoE for example.

Pelanora wrote: »

Until I got strong enough to not need him, Bumpy was my guy. And he healed me just fine.

You can use Unstable Clannfear or Twilight Matriarch, but using both don't give you anything more then using only one.
Combination of Twilight Matriarch and Volatile Familiar is better.

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Er, after the patch.

Max mag was basically relegated to healers. The healing proc sets scale off max resource and not spell power and vice versa for DPS proc sets. Spell damage is also a lot more efficient. Not sure what 1 spell damage is worth in mag now, but that value I saw once and always has used is 10.5 mag to 1 spell damage. You get more per stat line of spell damage than mag using this conversion and if you looked at like blood thirsty or infused vs arcane with that conversion the difference is a bit mind blowing especially for blood thirsty.

When I saw unleashed ritualist from the cauldron back when blackwood came out I was like "wow maybe that'll be a good set for pet sorcs". I'm not surprised it's not though. 3 lines of max mag and only a 15% increase to pet damage. Like sure... Or I could run kinras which gives me a 10% boost to ALL damage and not just 15% to 2 skills. Kinras also has 2 lines of spell damage and 1 crit line. Honestly if they changed unleashed ritualist to like 1 or 2 lines of crit and 1 or 2 lines of spell damage and buffed the 5 piece from like 15% to 50% or even higher it might be worth using or at least trying compared to kinras or any other meta proc set. It would be cool if they gave mag sorc a set like that that is uniquely viable to them over other classes. Similarly to frostbite for magden or deadlystrike for magplar. I completely understand why they wanted to do the mag on the set too. Every viable set basically just being the 2-4 piece being spell damage and/or crit is kinda boring. But unless they buff max resource to bring it in line with spell damage you'll probably want to avoid as many lines of max mag as you can if your goal is high DPS. Like sure zos; I could use the 877 mag from arcane on gold jewelry.. or I could use bloodthirsty which gives me 3675 mag worth of spell damage when they're below 90% hp.

Sorcerer and execution phase.

Although Mages' Wrath isn't as good as Radiant Oppression or Assassin's Blade morphs, I wasn't so far behind my templar and nightblade friends at trial's logs (DMG in execution phase).

Execution phase is also most tricky phase of combat and higher damage is good to make it shorter.
But it is about boss fights. Bloodthirsty isn't probably so great in trash fights like iz is in boss fights.