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There has been a lot of heated debate on the topic of sorcerers recently on the main ESO forums. I’ve been wanting to release a guide with my build setup for a while now, but like everyone else have been busy with testing out different skills and combinations to figure out a good setup that works. I also wanted to wait and see if anything crucial would be changed with 2.0.1 before releasing this guide. For this build I’ve mixed ideas of several other sorcerer builds I’ve heard about in-game and mixed them together into a build with which I currently have a lot of success, and more importantly, one I also very much enjoy.
I figured I’d throw the sorcerers out there who are having a hard time with their class a bone and hope this might help them to enjoy their class once again.
This guide is oriented towards an endgame PVE DPS role as a sorcerer. First I’ll talk about things such as the ideal race (debatable, but nonetheless), mundus stone, gear setup, skillbar setups, etc. After this I’ll give a more in-depth explanation of how you should ideally be playing with this specific setup.
My character sheet with all buffs up (food, spell power, pvp buffs) and the different skillbars:
Stats with bar 1:
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/2m4dgrl.png[/IMG]
Stats with bar 2:
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/2z6yy51.png[/IMG]
Race
Altmer. The 10% magicka bonus is too good to pass up as a magicka based sorcerer. Since we’re using force pulse as our main damage filler ability, altmer is also nice because of the 4% frost, fire and shock damage.
Attributes
I have 15 points in health and 47 in magicka. As I get more CP I’ll gain more hp and will take more points out of health and put them into magicka. I currently have so much in health because I got tired of having and then losing emperor buff every time. This just aims for 18k hp without emperor buff.
Mundus stone
Use the apprentice stone, it gives the biggest increase in raw damage. Another viable choice if you’re using overload a lot (and what I’m testing currently) is running the shadow stone. Shadow stone also gives more in pledges and such, because the mobs don’t really have high resistances there.
Gear
I’ve changed my gear setup, but my old setups are still viable, therefore I’ll present them all:
Setup 1 (current AOE setup)
Armor
– Head: Vr14 Valkyn skoria’s head (either heavy or medium)
– Shoulders: Vr14 Valkyn skoria’s shoulders (either heavy or medium – whichever the head isn’t)
– Chest: Vr14 Shirt of martial knowledge
– Hand: Vr14 Gloves of martial knowledge
– Waist: Vr14 Sash of martial knowledge
– Legs: Vr14 Breeches of martial knowledge
– Feet: Vr12 Shoes of adroitness
Every piece of armor should be enchanted with a magicka enchant.
Jewelry
– Necklace: Vr12 Necklace of adroitness
– Rings: 2x VR14 Band of cyrodiil’s light
Every piece of jewelry should be enchanted with a spell cost reduction enchant.
Weapons
– Bar 1: Vr14 Master’s Inferno staff in Sharpened (don’t use unless you have precise/sharpened trait)
– Bar 2: 2x Vr14 Torug’s pact swords in Nirnhoned
Setup 2 (current single target setup)
Armor
– Head: Vr14 Helm of torug’s pact (heavy)
– Shoulders: Vr14 Shoulders of martial knowledge
– Chest: Vr14 Jack of torug’s pact (medium)
– Hand: Vr14 Gloves of martial knowledge
– Waist: Vr14 Sash of martial knowledge
– Legs: Vr14 Breeches of martial knowledge
– Feet: Vr12 Shoes of adroitness
(side note, it would be ‘stat wise’ better to make the chest heavy and the helm medium, but I’ve gone with a medium chest and a heavy head just for style since it doesn’t make such a big difference anyways, just a few points in armor/spell resistance)
Every piece of armor should be enchanted with a magicka enchant.
Jewelry
– Necklace: Vr12 Necklace of adroitness
– Rings: 2x VR14 Band of cyrodiil’s light
Every piece of jewelry should be enchanted with a spell cost reduction enchant.
Weapons
– Bar 1: Vr14 Master’s Inferno staff in Sharpened (don’t use unless you have precise/sharpened trait)
– Bar 2: Vr14 Master’s Greatsword in Sharpened (same as above)
Setup 3 (other viable AOE setup)
Armor
– Head: Vr14 Valkyn skoria’s head (either heavy or medium)
– Shoulders: Vr14 Valkyn skoria’s shoulders (either heavy or medium – whichever the head isn’t)
– Chest: Vr14 Shirt of martial knowledge
– Hand: Vr14 Gloves of the healer
– Waist: Vr14 Sash of martial knowledge
– Legs: Vr14 Breeches of martial knowledge
– Feet: Vr14 Shoes of martial knowledge
Every piece of armor should be enchanted with a magicka enchant.
Jewelry
– Necklace: Vr14 Necklace of the healer
– Rings: 2x VR14 Ring of the healer
Put a spell damage enchant on the necklace, and cost reduction on both rings.
Weapons
– Bar 1: Vr14 Master’s Inferno staff in Sharpened (don’t use unless you have precise/sharpened trait)
– Bar 2: 2x Vr14 Torug’s pact swords in Nirnhoned
Setup 4 (other viable single target setup)
Armor
– Head: Vr14 Helm of torug’s pact (heavy)
– Shoulders: Vr14 Shoulders of martial knowledge
– Chest: Vr14 Jack of torug’s pact (medium)
– Hand: Vr14 Gloves of the healer
– Waist: Vr14 Sash of martial knowledge
– Legs: Vr14 Breeches of martial knowledge
– Feet: Vr14 Shoes of martial knowledge
Every piece of armor should be enchanted with a magicka enchant.
Jewelry
– Necklace: Vr14 Necklace of the healer
– Rings: 2x VR14 Ring of the healer
Put a spell damage enchant on the necklace, and cost reduction on both rings.
Weapons
– Bar 1: Vr14 Master’s Inferno staff in Sharpened (don’t use unless you have precise/sharpened trait)
– Bar 2: Vr14 Master’s Greatsword in Sharpened (same as above)
Skillbar setups
Standard build
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/35mi2xj.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/2epjy1s.png[/IMG]
3rd skillbar with overload enabled:
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/e6worq.png[/IMG]
Potion build (my current build)
[IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/fdvhtw.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/2epjy1s.png[/IMG]
3rd skillbar with overload enabled:
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/e6worq.png[/IMG]
Champion points
Here’s how I’ve done my champion point distribution up until now (241 points):
The Apprentice 60 points
– Elfborn 1
– Elemental expert 58
– Spell erosion 1
The Atronarch 10 points
– Staff expert 10
The Ritual 10 points
– Thaumaturge 10
The Steed 30 points
– Block expertise 20
– Spell shield 10
The Lady 40 points
– Hardy 20
– Elemental defender 10
– Thick skinned 10
The Lord 1 points
- Quick recovery 10
– Bastion 1
The Tower 50 points
– Magician 50
The Lover 30 points
– Arcanist 30
The Shadow 0 points
Build explanation
Let’s start with my gear setup. I use these specific sets to get the highest amount of spell damage (pretty much like every other magicka build right now) and the cost reduction on my jewelry is for pure sustain. If you want to use an undaunted set, Valkyn Skoria is simply the best undaunted set to use with this setup, since this build uses a lot of dots in the rotation and the meteor procs a lot.
Then to the next point: Why a medium armor and heavy armor piece?
I use a medium and heavy armor piece combined with 5 light pieces to get the maximum out of the undaunted passives. This gives me 6% extra magicka, stamina and health. First I thought this might give me serious sustain issues, but the way cost reduction works has been changed so that the light armor cost reduction passive doesn’t matter that much anymore as it did before.
I use the master’s greatsword on my secondary bar for the execute phase. First of all, greatswords give the biggest increase in spell damage out of all weapon types. Second of all, the enchant on the master’s greatsword which supposedly increases weapon damage, also increases spell damage. This gives an insane spell damage boost and it boosts your execute and your power overload really nicely. The sharpened trait is ideal in this case since master weapons don’t drop in nirnhoned. If you don’t have a master weapon, you can substitute with a random nirnhoned staff since nirnhoned gives more damage than sharpened.
Onto the skill rotation. Let’s start with a single target boss rotation. You generally want to be in melee range of bosses if at all possible, because of our thundering presence. If at all possible you want to not use any ultimate during trash pulls. This is so that you can have the maximum amount of ultimate and just use your overload for the entire boss fight. All you need to do then is keep your DoT rotation going and light attacking with overload.
If it’s not possible, then you’ll generally be using shooting star instead. This goes for really long fights such as the mantikora fight or the serpent fight aswell. You can open up with overload, but once you run out you’ll want to use your next ultimate on shooting star from there on.
Normal fight rotation is as following: Entropy -> thundering presence (if able to be in melee range) -> liquid lightning -> force pulse -> crystal fragments proc (repeat)
Rotation with using the potion build is largely the same, but since velocious curse comes into play it requires more casting: Spell power potion -> thundering presence (if able to be in melee range) -> liquid lightning -> force pulse -> velocious curse -> crystal fragments proc (repeat)
An important thing is that you should try to weave a medium attack between each spell cast as long as you are on your main bar. Don’t bother weaving when you’re casting on your 2nd bar (greatsword bar). With using the potion build you’ll also want to recast velocious curse every time it blows up (every 3.5 seconds).
Once the execute phase of the boss commences, you switch to your second bar and spam your mages’ wrath. Keep your DoT rotation up (liquid lightning, entropy, thundering presence if you’re in melee range) and continue to spam mages’ wrath.
Now that that’s covered, you might be thinking: “Why don’t you have elemental ring on any of your bars?” The answer to that is quite simple. There just isn’t any room for it. I’ve actually noticed that in trash pulls you can make due with just using liquid lightning, thundering presence and force pulse. The reason that you can make due with this, is that liquid lightning seems to proc the aoe of force pulse. This means that as long as mobs are standing inside your liquid lightning, your force pulse will aoe up to 2 extra mobs standing inside of it. This is however not the optimal way of doing it. For things such as veteran DSA and trials where you need to clear a lot of trash, you will want to kick something out for elemental ring. In the standard build you can swap crystal fragments out, but in the potion build you can swap velocious curse out for it. This is also a reason why I prefer the potion build, because it gives you more freedom in putting skills on your bar as you don’t need structured entropy.
We do have a little bit of a sustain problem however. If you’re doing raids, ideally you want to have someone in your raid group who uses elemental drain. This build doesn’t have room for it. If it happens that there is REALLY no one who can use it, and the boss won’t die before your mana runs out, you will want to have a second inferno staff so that you can slot it if you must. The potion build, as stated before gives a lot more freedom, so you can swap velocious curse out for elemental drain to have it on your main bar if you must. For trash pulls, the healer should ideally be using the magicka orb from the undaunted skill line. This keeps your mana up to a pretty decent degree.
The screenshots displaying DPS are at this point quite outdated. Numbers have changed around quite a bit with various changes and fixes (nirnhoned bug, sharpened bug, spell erosion bug, etc etc) so these aren’t that accurate anymore right now. They’re also mostly with using my old build. I’ll leave them up since they still give a pretty good general impression, and numbers didn’t change that much. They’re only supposed to be a guideline anyways.
So when using this build, you can expect your DPS to be something like this:
Aetherian Archive
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/23mrk1e.png[/IMG]
Aetherian Archive
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/25g9rfp.png[/IMG]
Aetherian Archive Hard mode
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/c3l3q.png[/IMG]
Sanctum Ophidia
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/wl8ytv.png[/IMG]
Sanctum Ophidia
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/15ck58g.png[/IMG]
Sanctum Ophidia Hard mode
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/287zqma.png[/IMG]
Veteran Spindeclutch
[IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/eu128j.png[/IMG]
Veteran City of Ash
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/i2r2tl.png[/IMG]
The results you get may of course vary depending on your medium attack weaving, proper execution of the rotation, crits, frag procs, etc etc. This is just a general guideline of numbers that I’ve been able to achieve with this build.
Feel free to discuss the build, ask questions and of course give feedback. I’d like to know what you guys think about the build and if you maybe have any suggestions about improving it. Also let me know if I forgot anything really important and I’ll try to update it as soon as possible.
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This topic was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by
Dymence.
