Quethrosar wrote: »

you know what i don't understand from all this talk and people's videos?
parses where the skill sais 10k dps but the skill never procs that high. and i have 73% crit rate and minor force.
shard, the biggest hit i remember is in the 40ks, most of the time it's in the 30s. but I can see videos where this was over 50k. Maybe they are old videos.
All i know is it feels like even though i run good stuff, the correct stats, blood thirsty, spell damage enchants, divines, etc...
skiils seem to never be as good as you see in the videos.

in vet dungeons i can be anywhere from 30 to 50% of dps.
in nss trial i was either 9 - 12% depending on which of the 3 times i went.

i don't use daedric prey or haunting curse because i use the dot that heals me, forget the name since most of my life is pug.

Have you ever tried a trial dummy? Because this dummy (and only this) gives you plenty buffs you would get from an organized group in a trial. So you can compare builds and how they would perform in such a group. But those buffs will about double your damage and cant be compared with parses without those buffs. Such parses on other dummies are good to test solo builds or builds for very unorganized groups not so for organized group play.

With all the buffs and an optimal build skills can really be hard hitting. I think my crystal fragments are hitting for about 80k - 90k (at least were before patch 35) on a trial dummy and about half of that on a non trial dummy. I even experimented with vateshran daggers and the shrouded dagger skill which was even hitting for more than 150k at max (not sure how much it was exactly, maybe even > 200k) single target, per hit.

Here you have an example parse (actually the only public one) for the update 35: https://www.esologs.com/reports/rh1waPK4bqFDQzWL#fight=1&type=damage-done&source=1
118k total DPS and crystal fragments that hit for up to 88,6k per hit.

You have to consider that tool tip damage is without considering crit and plenty of buffs / debuffs that get active on a real hit (like bloodthirsty jewelry for example which isnt included in tooltips). Also you reach such high damage only by combining as many multiplicative sources (high base stats like magicka+spell power, high crit chance, high crit damage, flat damage increases like those from cp, executes, daedric prey and such) and buffs as possible. Also you have to find an optimum. If one of those numbers is low your total will be low. You have for example 10 points to spend which of this will yield the highest:

1 * 1 * 1 * 7 = 7
1 * 2 * 3 * 4 = 24
3 * 3 * 2 * 2 = 36
2,5 * 2,5 * 2,5 * 2,5 = 39

You see that distributing equally yields the highest output even if the last line looks like low numbers (at least lower than the line before) at first look and worse than some of the other lines. But the thing is that it isnt so easy ingame because investing in one factor will yield a lower numerical increase than investing into other. So that the optimum wont be equal numbers but still a distribution instead of single high stats and depending on how optimally this distribution is the damage will differ. But if you are even missing some parts (like buffs from your group / the trial dummy) it will be greatly lower.

Btw. I have even reached > 50% (sometimes even > 60%) of damage in nSS 🤣 the last time I did it. I even often do > 50% of damage in dungeons (it even happend that I had > 80 or 90% of the damage). But I still recently had a tank that complaint about low damage (and finally rage quitted), he wasnt even able to provide major and minor breach (which are huge debuffs and have a huge impact on damage output!)

Petoften wrote: »

So, I've got my Order's Wrath Armor, and the maw monster set per recommendations. Now for the jewelry and weapon...

If you dont want to use trial gear (yet),
use one of this (with barbed trap skill): Pillars of Nirn or Mother Sorrow.
or this (without barbed trap skill): Tzogvin or Medusa

And on backbar: maelstrom greatsword or maelstrom destruction staff

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I read it above, but can someone note what would be better that is achievable by a casual player (some dungeons, but not a lot, though I do buy helms in Cyrodiil as they come up).

I am using Mother's Sorrow and Necropotence now on my pet sorc.

As I wrote before Necropotence is one of the worst sets you could wear: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7679732/#Comment_7679732

Mother Sorrow is good (not the greatest, but good). If you dont use barbed trap then replace it with Tzogvin / Medusa on weapon + jewelry (both drop from dungeons and Medusa even from a really easy base game one). If you use barbed trap. Its fine.

Get Orders Wrath (its craftable / buyable even if you dont have high isle).

Petoften wrote: »

What trait on the inferno staff(s)? Probably precise or sharpened?

Sharpend only if you need penetration. If you are useing light armor you dont need penetration. Tanks provide about 11k or even more penetration (at least they should). Enemies in dungeons have 18,2k resistances so about 7k are remaining for you (its ok to be slightly below this). Enemies in overland have only about 9k resistances but no matter what they still die very quickly. Solo arenas and soloing dungeons (as also PVP) are the only things where you should have more penetration than this, because going with the penetration higher than the enemies resistances is completely wasted. You get exactly 0 damage increase if doing so.

Precise is good. But if you have different sources of damage (especially flame, bleeding and poison) charged is a really strong trait (in some cases stronger than precise). Also charged is strong if you use multi hit skills like force pulse (which triples the chance that is greatly increased by the charged trait which is further increased by the destruction staff passives).

Every application of a status effect deals instant damage + some of them add an additional dot (burning, poisoned, hemorrhaging).