Nos's Highly Improbable but Possibly Workable Sorc Build

Class:

There are two good options for race choice, as of the making of this build these are the rankings:

1. Altmer – most well rounded setup

3. Breton – Best for sustain, but you are losing DPS compared to the other races.

Attribute Distribution:

All in Magicka. As of this expansion there is no need to points into health.

Food:

Health and Magicka

Mundus Stones:

Thief and Shadow

Champion Point Distribution:

As per @Asayre ‘s Calculator you will be running 100 in Elemental Expert, 22 in Elfborn, 41 in Spell Erosion and 4 in Thaumaturge in the blue constellations.

In the green tree you will max out reduce cost first and then regen later. the reasoning behind this is that in PvE the primary strain on resources occurs in high intensity fights from which you can’t run away to regen resources, thus I have 100 points in reduce cost and 67 in regen. Additionally you do not have any regen on gear, which further devaluates the CP tree.

In the red tree I distribute points evenly across Hardy, Elemental Defender and Thick Skinned. (Or Bastion for certain cases)

The Setup:

5 light/1 Medium/ 1 Heavy

3 Moondancer Jewelry – Arcane with Spell Damage Enchants

2 Moondancer Armor Piece – Divines with Magicka Enchant

2 Piece Torug’s Pact Swords Precise with Fire and Lightning Enchants (use if Roar of Alkosh is up in the group)

2 Piece Torug’s Pact Swords Nirnhoned with Fire and Lightning Enchants (use if Roar of Alkosh is not up in the group)

5 Piece Twice Born Star Armor Divines with Magicka Enchants

1 Precise Maelstrom Inferno staff

Bar Setup:

Dual Wield bar: Inner Light, Crystal Blast, Boundless Aegis, Velocious Curse, Mage’s Wrath. Ultimate: Overload

Staff bar: Inner Light, Boundless Storm, Bound Aegis, Liquid Lightning, Elemental Blockade. Ultimate: Shooting Star

Overload Bar: Inner Light, Boundless Storm, Bound Aegis, Liquid Lightning, Velocious Curse

Rotation:

Single target Overload Phase:

Step 1: Overload Bar>Boundless Storm

Step 2: (Liquid Lightning>Velocious Curse>Overload Light Attack x 3> Velocious Curse> Overload Light Attack x 3) x2

Step 3: Boundless Armor> Repeat Step 2

Once overload runs out:

Step 1: Boundless Armor

Step 2: (Liquid Lightning>Elemental Blockade>Velocious Curse>Crystal Blast>Medium Weave>Crystal Blast>Velocious Curse>Crystal Blast>Medium Weave> Crystal Blast) x 2

Once you go out of magicka switch back to Overload Phase. The Medium weaves should be charged during the cast time of Crystal Blast.

Execute Phase

Once target reaches 19% health, switch to Mage’s wrath spam.

Reasoning:

Why did I even bother reading this far? A sorc without a staff on the main bar??? Well this is what I thought as well, but then I started thinking. We only use a staff on the main bar, because our main spammable is a staff ability (Force Pulse/Crushing Shock). This spammable doesn’t hit that hard, which is why pre-overload our dps is not as high as other classes. Well what if there was a way to not use this skill and still pull competitive DPS? So now hear me out, with a staff you will be using Force Pulse/Weave and with a dual wield setup it will be Velocious Curse and Crystal Blast, Elemental Blockade will still be present, but will be on out buff bar. So what we have to establish is whether Force Pulse+Weave is better than Velocious Curse and Crystal Blast.

The current BiS Setup for Sorcs in single target boss fights is:

2 Molag Kena

5 Twice Born Star (With the recent changes to how major force is applied TBS is better than Julianos with a back to back Warhorn rotation)

3 MoonDancer

1 Sharpened Maelstrom Inferno staff

The setup I am proposing above gives you 9001 ability power (100% moondancer uptime), while this BiS setup gives you 8257 (100% kena uptime). Note that these uptimes are not accurate since it is impossible to keep them up indefinitely, but for theoretical reasons I will show the theoretical maximum of both sets.

Ability Power is (Total Magicka (with Warhorn) / 10.46 + Total Spell Power) x additional buffs. Since both setups benefit equally from CP and the Mundus effects applied by TBS, we can negate these in our calculations. This leaves us with only the Moondancer buff, the Dual Wield Buff, the Altmer buff and the Sorc lightning damage buff. When calculating these coefficients I already had the Altmer buff and the Sorc lightning damage buff included.

The coefficients below were taken from @Asayre‘s sheet.

The ability coefficient for Force Pulse is 1.012 combined damage / Ability power

The ability coefficient for Crystal Blast is 1.568 damage/Ability Power

The ability coefficient for Velocious Curse is 1.392 damage/Ability Power (over 3.5 seconds)

Assuming that the Ideal rotation for the current meta is Boundless>Liquid Lightning>Elemental Blockade>7 Force pulse+weave, and assuming that the weave will never exceed 50% of total Force Pulse damage we get 6 Force pulses + (.5x 6) Weaves = 9 Force Pulse equivalent damage. 10.5 x 1.012 x 8257 = 75204 total unbuffed damage.

Assuming The same rotation, but instead of Force Pulse weave we do (Velocious>Crystal Blast x 2) x 2 rotation we get the combined damage from these two sources to equal 81513 unbuffed damage.

Now what is missing from these calculations is the the medium Light/Medium weave contribution to damage from weaving Crystal Frags AND Elemental Blockade as well as the Crystal frags Proc. What is also missing is the insane boost to your DoT’s by almost 800 spell damage (equivalence) from this build versus your BiS setup. I believe that this build will offer a chance to do superior DPS to the meta, especially since during execute or overload phase there is no need to do anything extra (such as proccing Kena).

Finally, since each skill in your single target rotation is also an AoE skill, you literally do not have to change up your rotation at all. Just keep executing the rotation provided above and ALL of your skills will damage not only your primary target, but also the other targets adjacent to it.

Possible issues:

1. Sustain:

So sustain is a big issue and while you gain damage to all of your attacks, you lose the elemental drain bonus from Force Pulse AND your Staff weaves (which are also free and thus generate magicka). The counter point is that Kena’s activation drains resources more so than the rotation/gear proposed above. By switching away from Kena, you will actually improve sustain. Keep in mind that you should still gain magicka back from Siphon Spiritas well as the Elemental Drain ticks from your three elemental DoT’s on the target.

2. Lowered Mobility:

Because Crystal Blast is channeled, casting it will lower your ability to move around quickly.

Well, this is it, please tell me if I am just insane for even considering dropping a staff and please let me know any errors that I have made in terms of my predictions. Also keep in mind that this is all purely theoretical.

Special thanks to @Asayre for analyzing my build and letting me know that I am not crazy.

Also special thanks to @Yolo-Wizard and multiple others for providing parses for me to analyze.