Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Cheatingdeath23 wrote: »

Example: Magicka focus, everything would cost more but deal more damage due to the scaling.

I believe magicka/stamina cost is scaled to character level, while damage is scaled to spell/weapon power and max magicka/stamina. That is why a magicka character gets iffy performance from Silver Bolts. They have a high character level, so high stamina cost, but little investment in max stamina, so mediocre damage. At least, when I eat a stew that gives me more max magicka for 35 minutes, it does not seem to make my spells cost any more. But it does seem to make spells do more damage.

Good to know the skills scale to your level.
Your skill's rank also effects it's damage, though to a lesser degree.

Also:
Any skill from a weapon uses weapon power in determining it's potency (even restoration staff skills)
All other skills use magic power.

I love it , love the twocking sound and visual animations. love that its my one stamina spell . love the morphed version to hit more than one, by the time they are near .. one is dead the others at low health for easy clean up.

I slot this only when I'm expecting to fight daedra / undead, and I think it's pretty awesome.

Silver Shards rocks when used as a stam power for a ranged caster build. Simply keep your stam up as high as you can which is easy at later levels while still keeping magicka near, at or beyond overcharge. It also works with Master Assassin passive out of stealth. Like any ability you have to rank it up with use.

As someone has mentioned the Silver Shards morph still hits the primary target for full damage while offering roughly half for up to 2 other targets. Higher ranks slightly increases the damage to the other targets (1% per rank or something). It is vastly superior to Bolt. Seeing how everyone simply aoe spams in this game it is worth taking.

Damage scales form stam and as mentioned is easy to raise to a decent level even based on a magicka heavy caster build. It is the only stam power one needs for a caster build as stam is used for many other things in this game. When at range you do not have to waste stam on block and dodge often so spamming this power (between light attack twisting of course. I use resto staff and only use heavy attack when I need to regen or manage magicka better) often contributes the greatest single portion to my dps at times in aoe situations (minus Impale spam for finishers and to proc Executioner which is critical for magicka management).