Replies: 81
EDIT:
4/1/16 – Modified the rotation slightly as per @Mashinate‘s suggestion.
4/3/16 – Modified gear.
4/4/16 – Modified rotation slightly as per @liv3mind‘s suggestion as related to maximizing Nerieneth and Scathing procs.
4/7/16 – Added Force Pulse VS Swallow Soul comparison as tested by @rokrdt05
4/29/16 – Improved the rotation as per @rokrdt05‘s suggestion, adjusted best race suggestion and changed up bars.
Hey guys, got through with Templar and Sorc, now onto Nightblades:)
First and foremost I would like to acknowledge that this build borrows heavily from @Mashinate‘s build (thank you for all your hard work), but I do believe that the difference in gear as well as a strict and specific rotation set it apart enough to warrant a separate forum post.
Class:
1. Altmer – Due to our main spammable being Force Pulse, altmer is the best class for this.
2. Dunmer – also good damage but slightly less.
3. Breton – offers the highest sustain, but the lowest damage boosts.
Attributes:
All in Magicka
Food:
Health and Magicka
Mundus:
Thief if not Twice Born Set
Thief and Shadow if Twice Born Set
Champion Point Distribution:
Blue tree:
My DoT’s account for around 35-40% of my damage, while staff weave is closer to 20%. By inputting these ratios into @Asayre‘s worksheet I got the following spread:
TBS(Not Precise): 100 in Elemental Expert, 9 in Thaumaturge, 1 in Staff Expert, 18 in Elfborn and 39 in Spell Erosion.
TBS (Precise): 100 in Elemental Expert, 9 in Thaumaturge, 1 in Staff Expert, 22 in Elfborn and 35 in Spell Erosion.
Scathing(Not Precise): 100 in Elemental Expert, 8 in Thaumaturge, 1 in Staff expert, 26 in Elfborn and 32 in Spell Erosion.
Scathing (Precise): 100 in Elemental Expert, 8 in Thaumaturge, 1 in Staff expert, 29 in Elfborn and 29 in Spell Erosion.
Red tree:
Points evenly across Hardy, Thick Skinned and Elemental Defender
Green tree:
100 into reduced cost, the rest into regen.
Gear Choice 1:
5 Light/1 Medium/1 Heavy
5 Piece Scathing Mage Armor full divines with Magicka enchants
3 Piece Moondancer Jewelry Arcane with full Spell Damage enchants
2 Piece Nerieneth Armor Divines with Magicka enchants
1 Sharpened Maelstrom Inferno Staff
2 Sharpened Moondancer Swords
As @Mashinate pointed out Scathing Mage procs on Twisting Path, which allows it’s uptime to be absolutely amazing, but yet still worse than TBS.
To put it in mathematical terms:
With Scathing as your armor, 1 assassination ability on your bar, precise weapon minor crit buff and the thief mundus you are going to be sitting at 77% crit. With a 20% on attack chance to proc scathing that means that each attack has a 15.4% chance to proc it. Since you should be medium weaving every skill, your attack+medium weave should take up no more than 1.2 seconds, possibly 1.1 seconds. With Twisting Path ticks once per second, we can safely assume that you will have 3 attacks every 1.1-1.2 seconds capable of proccing Scathing mage. 3 attacks every 1.1 with each attack having a 15.4% chance to proc it gives us a total of 42% chance to proc scathing per second. What this means is that it should take an estimated 2.38 seconds on average to get a scathing proc.
Now each proc cannot be re initiated during its duration, meaning you will have to wait an average of 2.38 seconds after the buff runs out to get it back up. again. Each scathing proc lasts 6 seconds, thus it will take an average of 6+2.38 = 8.38 seconds to get the second proc. Thus if we do (6 x 516)/ (8.38) = 369.45 average spell damage.
If we run the same calculation with a sharpened weapon (since the maelstrom staff only comes in sharpened not nirnhoned), we get the average Scathing spell damage to equal 359 average spell damage.
With the precise setup above you should have around 8180 Ability Power on your staff bar and 9031 Ability Power.
Ability Power = (Moondancer+ Dual wield [if applicable]) x (Max Magicka/10.46 + Buffed Spell damage)
As suggested by @liv3mind, by substituting Force Pulse for Swallow Soul/Funnel Health we are not only increasing the scathing uptime by adding 2 additional attacks that have a chance to proc it, we are ALSO adding an increased chance for Nerieneth to proc AND Force Pulse enjoys an additional 10% penetration from the destro staff line, AND triples the chance of siphoning attacks to proc. The 57 buff to average spell damage from Scathing, the Increased Nerieneth Procs as well as increased penetration are a hefty gain for the loss which is the Funnel Health heal, but it all depends on whether your group synergy permits this sacrifice. The average spell damage with force pulse weave becomes 408.9 spell damage (With a sharpened staff) and 416.7 (with a precise staff). With this we would be at 8530 on the staff bar and 9397 on the Dual Wield Bar (Sharpened weapons).
Plugging in the formula’s for average damage provided by @Asayre‘s page Sorcerer Arithmagic, we get the total power for this build to equal to 13109 and 14441 unbuffed (by CP and a particular ability coefficient) and unresisted (penetration is not applied) Ability power. By factoring in the penetration (without the Alkosh Buff we get 12200 and 13440 respectively. With the Alkosh buff, these values become 13000 and 14321.
Gear choice 2:
5 Light/1 Medium/1 Heavy
5 piece Twice Born Star set full divines with Magicka enchants
3 Piece Moondancer Jewelry Arcane with full Spell Damage enchants
2 Piece Moondancer sharpened swords (no enchants)
1 Sharpened Maelstrom Inferno Staff
2 piece Nerieneth armor divines with Magicka enchants.
Lets compare how Average Scathing damage measures up versus TBS. We will assume a precise trait on the weapons for consistency.
TBS Ability Power – 7993 with staff and 8838 with Dual Wield.
Plugging in the formula’s for average damage provided by @Asayre‘s page Sorcerer Arithmagic, we get the total power for this build to equal to 13400 and 14815 unbuffed (by CP and a particular ability coefficient) and unresisted (penetration is not applied) Ability power. By factoring in the penetration (without the Alkosh Buff we get 12062 and 13336 respectively. With the Alkosh buff, these values become 12879 and 14240.
Now Let’s look at TBS with sharpened weapons.
Plugging in the formula’s for average damage provided by @Asayre‘s page Sorcerer Arithmagic, we get the total power for this build to equal to 12812 and 14163 unbuffed (by CP and a particular ability coefficient) and unresisted (penetration is not applied) Ability power. By factoring in the penetration (without the Alkosh Buff we get 12018 and 13286 respectively. With the Alkosh buff, these values become 12799 and 14163.
These numbers show that the Force Pulse scathing setup, is higher than TBS by less than 1.1-1.6%. When Twisting Path is fixed, the damage difference between the two will drop to only 1% in single Target fights. In AoE fights Scathing mage will have almost no downtime, and will outdps TBS by around 2-3% with or without Alkosh. Thus in a raid setup TBS is worse than scathing mage, but only by around 1-3%.
Bar setup
Main bar (Staff): Inner Light, Cripple, Merciless Resolve, Force Pulse, Elemental Blockade. Ultimate – Shooting Star.
Execute bar/AoE (Dual Wield): Inner Light, Twisting Path, Proximity Detonation, Sap Essence, Impale. Ultimate – Sout Harvest.
Rotation:
Abbreviations:
EB – Elemental Blockade
TP – Twisting Path
FP – Force Pulse
MW – Medium Weave
CP – Cripple
MR – Merciless Resolve
AW – Assasin’s will
SS – Shooting Star
HA – Charged up heavy attack released upon meteor impact.
PD – Proximity detonation
BS – Bar Swap
Step 1: PD>BS>MR>SS>potion>HA
Step 2: EB>MW>CP>MW>BS>TP>BS>FP>MW>AW>MW>MR>MW
Step 3: By this point your Cripple should be at less than 1 second so you can start the rotation from Step 2. If you still have more time on Cripple, thenot do another FP>MW and then start from Step 2.
This is quite different from my previous rotation, but mathematically this offers the greatest dps output possible. Also the fact that every 11 seconds your rotation starts over allows for greater maneuverability and thus greater DPS. Shooting Star should be procced on cooldown or held until heavy add phases if those exist. I do not use Soul Harvest because the way the rotation is executed it interrupts the flow ofrom the rotation, losing you several DoT ticks and medium weaves. Also meteor hits very hard and in those heavy add phases in the new trial it helps a lot.
When the target reaches 25% the rotation changes.
Step 1: Ensure that MR is up. If AW is up start off with AW>MW.
Step 2: EB>MW>CP>MW>BS>TP>Impale x 6
If the fight is short use Soul Harvest on proc, if the fight is long wait for Shooting Star. When wiating for shooting star make sure that it is the last skill to be cast so that it hits the target when you have swapped to your dual wield bar for extra damage. Restart from Step 1.
This rotation will allow all of your DoT’s to fullyou proc on the target, and will give you a constant unchanging sequence to maximize your DPS. For prolonged fights take off Proximity Detonation and put on Siphoning Attacks.
For those that doubt that keeping up DoT’s is vital during the execute phase, take a look at your damage meter after a fight and add up the average damage of each dot over the course of its duration, then compare that damage with the average damage of your impales. You will arrive at the same conclusion as I did.
DPS parses:
As an example of this build’s ability here is a single Bloodspawn parse. The only 3 buffs that were used were – Puncture, Burning Breath and a spell pot. The gear was Precise vMA staff, 5 TBS 2 Nerieneth, 3 willpower.
First boss of vMoL: (Cursed 6 times)
Rakhhat (1st ever time attempting boss):
Force Pulse VS Swallow Soul Comparison provided by @rokrdt05
Swallow Soul Spam
Force Pulse Spam
As you can clearly see Force Pulse is quite superior in terms of synergizing with Nerieneth than Swallow is.
Acknowledgements:
I wanted to thank @rokrdt05 for teaching me the pointers and helping learn how to nightblade. I wanted to thank @Asayre for all of his hard work and write ups that I relied on extensively when theorizing this setup. Finally I wanted to thank @Mashinate for providing a very effective blueprint from which to build something slightly different.
Please let me know if there are any inconsistencies, mistakes or misjudgments on my part. Thank you all.
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Nosferatuzod.
