Arcanist builds with Velothi Amulet

pauldam29 · June 13

Hi, I just recently got the Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet and got a full set of Deadlystrike so I tested my damage with this set and Velothi and is pretty dull to say (around 25K dps against dummy and in veteran dg) so I thought I could put bigger numbers with this build but maybe I'm doing something wrong or I need to change my set? The skills I have are:
frontbar: escalating runeblades, tentacular dread, pragmatig fatecaver, barbed trap, expert hunter, flawless dawnbreaker
second bar: wall of elements, Vigor, deadly cloak, recuperative teatrise, elemental drain, the languid eye
My CP is 520

Can anyone give me some recommendations?

El_Borracho · June 13

What is you second set? Most go with Ansuul's but it can vary.

Stamina is preferred over Magicka.

Your skills are... interesting. I use a build based on Skinnysheeks which I really like (I use a different CP setup). Front bar is Camo Hunter, Blade Cloak, Barbed Trap, Cephalairch's Flail, and Pragmatic Fatecarver with Flawless Dawnbreaker as the ultimate. Back bar is similar with Elemental Blockade, Vigor, and Languid Eye as the ultimate, but I run Cruxweaver Armor, Inspired Scholarship, and Fulminating Rune.

You biggest miss is using Tentacular Dread over the Flail. I can't figure out why. You are not generating crux with Tentacular, its not a heal, and you are missing out on the execute bonus, which causes more damage to a boss over the whole fight than Tentacular's 20% bump to only Tentacular's damage. Crux is the key to the Arcanist's damage as it all goes into the beam and your beam is the primary damage skill. There is a big difference in damage with 3 crux and zero crux with the beam.

I am not a fan of Escalating Runeblades, but others are. I think they weak, but whatever. I prefer Inspired Scholarship over Recuperative as it ups the frequency of damage of your class skills, which are primarily the Flail and beam. Plus, Recuperative doesn't generate more than one crux. You need 3 crux for full damage. Elemental Drain should be used by the healer in your group, so you are missing out on damage and group damage from Rune. But altogether, using Tentacular over Flail and Recuperative over Inspired is primarily why your damage is where it is.

Its not the amulet, its your setup. With a better setup, the amulet will shine. Last thing, its not a normal LA rotation as on other classes. You LA enough so that you generate ultimate, which means you do not need to LA between every skill, but enough to restart the timer for ultimate building.

Good luck!

fred4 · June 13

El_Borracho wrote: »

Front bar is Camo Hunter, Blade Cloak, Barbed Trap, Cephalairch's Flail, and Pragmatic Fatecarver with Flawless Dawnbreaker as the ultimate.

Yep. It's almost impossible to get around this front bar (and around playing stamina). You need dual-wield and you need Blade Cloak. Enchants can proc every 4 seconds. Fatecarver lasts longer than that. You need Blade Cloak to auto-proc your enchants while your are beaming.

If you are playing solo / dungeons and you are, therefore, testing on a normal target skeleton, then front-barring the Arcanist damage ult is actually the same or slightly more damage than Flawless Dawnbreaker, because skills from that skill line add penetration. Flawless Dawnbreaker on the front bar is a trial setup.

As to the other skills. Flail builds crux and is all around hard to beat for being AOE and the other buffs it gives. Camou Hunter, besides the crit, adds weapon / spell damage from a Fighter's Guild passive. So does Barbed Trap. It's all about getting the most out of the beam. Always only beam at 3 crux, by the way.

Further standard / meta details include 1x Nirn gold (main hand) and 1x Charged or Precise (off hand) dagger with differing enchants on those front bar weapons, probably fire and poison. Thief mundus. An Infused weapon / spell damage enchant on the back bar weapon and the obligatory back bar ground AOE weapon skill, such as Unstable Wall, Endless Hail, or Stampede. If you have a Maelstrom fire staff as the back bar weapon, this tends to add significant damage.

The only other thing is that you will gain more damage with CP up to ~1300 CP. How much difference that makes is hard to say. Set wise, if you don't have trial sets for the final set, then Pillar of Nirn should still be a good bet. Some people use Aegis Caller. Order's Wrath should also work.

I'm full CP, but not super competitive, meaning that I don't load up my back bar with all damage skills. I use Fulminating Rune and Elemental Blockade. That's it. With Ansuul / Deadly / Velothi / 1x Slimecraw / vMA fire staff back bar, I get ~92K on the trial dummy. On a normal skeleton it's been anywhere from 40K to 48K, but that might have been prior to the Arcanist nerf this spring. At any rate, Elemental Susceptibility is useful in that case. Wearing something like 1x Skoria for the pen may also be better than 1x Slimecraw on a normal skeleton and in solo play. In a dungeon, though, the tank should provide the pen and I'd wear Slimecraw.

fred4 · June 14

I forgot to mention Bloodthirsty jewelry with all weapon / spell damage enchants is another must have.

Zodiarkslayer · June 14

META is not for SOLO. You don't get enough penetration. So no Meta Daggers, it's Maces when you are alone!
You have to get as close to 9.1k pen as possible, everything else is covered by minor/major breach, which the Stamina Arcanist is lucky to have access to.

Inspired Scholarship is also a nono. It is a bit more damage, but Recup gives back so many needed ressources, that it out performs scholarship.

fred4 · June 14

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

META is not for SOLO. You don't get enough penetration. So no Meta Daggers, it's Maces when you are alone!
You have to get as close to 9.1k pen as possible, everything else is covered by minor/major breach, which the Stamina Arcanist is lucky to have access to.

Inspired Scholarship is also a nono. It is a bit more damage, but Recup gives back so many needed ressources, that it out performs scholarship.

Last I looked my meta trial stamina / medium armor Arcanist had something like 5K pen on it's own. Velothi gives you some. So does Ansuul. Arcanist DD skills do too. 700 from CP. A perfected vMA destro gives even more on the back bar. So, you're right, but I'm not sure you need 2 sharpened maces depending on your other gear, e.g. if you're wearing Ansuul. Between Sharpened Daggers, Precise Maces and 1x Slimecraw or Skoria, you would shoot past 9.1K if you chose the penetration option in every case, trading crit for pen. I guess if Charged and/or 1x Nirn weapon is optimal, then maybe you need maces. Luckily the UESP build editor helps. You're right to shoot for 9.1K solo, but only the OP knows their exact gear and will need to do the math on how many maces and/or sharpened weapons they require.

El_Borracho · June 14

@Zodiarkslayer I've never had issues with sustain with the build I'm using so I go with Inspired. I suppose if you did, you're right about Recuperative. I was also under the impression he was doing group stuff, like vet dungeons. At the same time, I've run that build through VMA and Vateshran without issues. To the point I wouldn't consider using another build or class in there.

Zodiarkslayer · June 15

@pauldam29 I suspect your low damage comes from small mistakes adding up. A lot of pebbles make an avalanche. My bets are on:
Escalating runeblades (it's bad)
Tentacular Dread (that's worse)
Casting Farecarver at 0 crux (worst 😉 )
Deadly Cloak on Destruction Staff backbar (?)
Not nearly enough penetration
Wrongly allocated CP; with a little over 170cp for warfare tree, I'd go with:
10 precision
10 piercing
50 Wrathful Strikes
50 Thaumaturge
50 Biting Aura
Is your equipment gold or purple?
What is the second set?

Anyway, these are just some thoughts...

@fred4 You are right ofc.
Changing to maces allows for a more convenient transiton between SOLO action and group action. You just swap weapons. And done. No shuffling of skills to optimise pen and weapon damage. No adaptation of your rotation. No need to upgrade more armor pieces (you avoid using dreugh wax).
Personally, I use Nirn and Precise on my maces, because I use only two Arcanist skills on the frontbar. And I am unwilling to change my frontbar. In groups I use Nirn and Precise daggers.
This way I sit at 9184 pen Solo, plus Maj/Min Breach.

@El_Borracho I meant the off ressource sustain. I dare say it's very important on Arcanists with an Inferno backbar. The 600 Magicka every 5 secs make the difference. For me at least.

pauldam29 · June 15

Thanks a lot for your advices I changed my skills and rotation and now I`m able to pump 35K-40K dps which is a huge increase in dmg.

I still need to work in my set but now I happy to see that arcanist with Velothi do pretty good dps.

Stump · June 16

Not that big of a difference between Inspired vs. Recip. its just a damage boost vs. regen. I personally like recip better and still do fine in end game. Your BIG mistake here is Tentacular dread, That skill consumes crux and Cephalairch's Flail generates crux. Most use Cephalairch to build 3 crux and then blast fatecarver. Tentacular dread is the opposite, and people would use escalating runesblades to build the crux and then hit with a 3 crux tentacular dread for max power, more of a magicka based spammable instead of the long beam. Sounds like you are trying to do both in your build and Dread is using your crux and then you are hitting with either multiple weak tentacle punches (tentacles tickles lol) and no crux fatecarvers.

Malprave · June 18

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

META is not for SOLO. You don't get enough penetration. So no Meta Daggers, it's Maces when you are alone!
You have to get as close to 9.1k pen as possible, everything else is covered by minor/major breach, which the Stamina Arcanist is lucky to have access to.

Inspired Scholarship is also a nono. It is a bit more damage, but Recup gives back so many needed ressources, that it out performs scholarship.

This is terrible advice. Don’t go around spouting this stuff.

Necrotech_Master · June 18

my arcanist is stam setup

im using deadly + velothi + perfected yandir + 1pc slimecraw

because of personal choice i also went with a bow/bow setup (im using the masters bow on back bar)

it feels like it works well for me, im sitting at like base 52% crit chance, i use some cost reductions to make the beam 100% free to cast so i dont have to worry about sustain much unless im using a lot of ccbreak, block, dodge, or flails

master bow and yandir actually adds a fairly significant amount of raw dmg, and the beam makes it easy to build yandir stacks (i dont really see the point in heavy attacking to get the stronger yandir buff because the heavy attack is nerfed so much with velothi)

i also have like 5-7k pen, mostly due to the arcanist passives

Zodiarkslayer · June 19

Malprave wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

META is not for SOLO. You don't get enough penetration. So no Meta Daggers, it's Maces when you are alone!
You have to get as close to 9.1k pen as possible, everything else is covered by minor/major breach, which the Stamina Arcanist is lucky to have access to.

Inspired Scholarship is also a nono. It is a bit more damage, but Recup gives back so many needed ressources, that it out performs scholarship.

This is terrible advice. Don’t go around spouting this stuff.

Care to explain?