This article details a build for Elder Scrolls Online, for the Sorcerer Class. Update 24, Patch 5.2.5., 2019-October-21. It is basically still relevant for Update 29, Patch 6.3.5., 2021-March-8.
Objective: Easy-to-play, Player-versus-Environment / Story Mode, Solo play. We are not trying to get the biggest numbers here, but rather be competent in story content against most world bosses and some easier solo dungeon bosses, as well as being able to handle a wide variety of situations without having to change skills.
In play, with a high enough Critical Strike percentage, what you should see is your health constantly topped up just by keeping up attacks. We slot one emergency healing skill as a backup although for the most part you shouldn't it.
In this initial article, we will discuss a "Crafter Build" -- that is a very basic setup with very little skill point use. We'll go through the basics to get you started and have a more detailed discussion later if you have more time to read.
Once you are comfortable with this build and have developed it with gear and skills, you can consider some options in our Flexible PvE Magicka Sorcerer Build that is based on this one.
Class: Sorcerer. All Attribute points into Magicka and top up your Health with Crusty Bread when facing enemies that might hit you with a powerful attack so you don't get one-shot killed. For the most part you shouldn't need to boost your health or use any healing potions or spells at all against regular mobs.
Skills: The core of this build relies on getting Critical Strikes to get continuous healing from Surge. We try to proc (trigger) it with multiple damage-over-time effects on many targets. The healing is limited to your chance of scoring a Critical Strike and is capped at once per second, but you can increase the number of opportunities per unit time when you have many effects happening.
We won't go through absolutely everything about skills -- Use your common sense to get Passive Skills and allocate Champion Points usefully.
For the basic build, the final skill loadout is:
Bar 1 - Precise Restoration Staff with Glyph of Absorb Health
Aim for the Divines trait on armor, Precise trait on weapons, and 50%+ for your Spell Critical Strike rating. If you have the skill points to spare, the Light Armor > Prodigy passive also increases your Critical Strike rating for spells.
Notes
Objective: Easy-to-play, Player-versus-Environment / Story Mode, Solo play. We are not trying to get the biggest numbers here, but rather be competent in story content against most world bosses and some easier solo dungeon bosses, as well as being able to handle a wide variety of situations without having to change skills.
In play, with a high enough Critical Strike percentage, what you should see is your health constantly topped up just by keeping up attacks. We slot one emergency healing skill as a backup although for the most part you shouldn't it.
In this initial article, we will discuss a "Crafter Build" -- that is a very basic setup with very little skill point use. We'll go through the basics to get you started and have a more detailed discussion later if you have more time to read.
Once you are comfortable with this build and have developed it with gear and skills, you can consider some options in our Flexible PvE Magicka Sorcerer Build that is based on this one.
Class: Sorcerer. All Attribute points into Magicka and top up your Health with Crusty Bread when facing enemies that might hit you with a powerful attack so you don't get one-shot killed. For the most part you shouldn't need to boost your health or use any healing potions or spells at all against regular mobs.
Skills: The core of this build relies on getting Critical Strikes to get continuous healing from Surge. We try to proc (trigger) it with multiple damage-over-time effects on many targets. The healing is limited to your chance of scoring a Critical Strike and is capped at once per second, but you can increase the number of opportunities per unit time when you have many effects happening.
We won't go through absolutely everything about skills -- Use your common sense to get Passive Skills and allocate Champion Points usefully.
For the basic build, the final skill loadout is:
Bar 1 - Precise Restoration Staff with Glyph of Absorb Health
- Sorcerer > Storm Calling > Surge > Critical Surge
- Soul Magic > Soul Trap > Soul Splitting Trap
- Restoration Staff > Steadfast Ward > Healing Ward
- Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Bound Armor > Bound Aegis
- Mages Guild > Magelight > Inner Light
- Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Summon Charged Atronach
- Sorcerer > Storm Calling > Mages' Fury > Endless Fury
- Sorcerer > Storm Calling > Lightning Splash > Lightning Flood
- Destruction Staff > Wall of Elements > Unstable Wall of Elements
- Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Bound Armor > Bound Aegis
- Mages Guild > Magelight > Inner Light
- Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Summon Charged Atronach
Rotation
- Critical Surge
- Soul Splitting Trap
- Lightning Flood
- Unstable Wall of Elements
- Low on Magicka? Heavy Attack.
- Enemies are low on Health? Endless Fury.
- Effects expired? Start them again. The Action Duration Reminder Addon is very useful for this.
- Otherwise Heavy Attack or Light Attack or Endless Fury until it is time to refresh your damage over time effects.
Aim for the Divines trait on armor, Precise trait on weapons, and 50%+ for your Spell Critical Strike rating. If you have the skill points to spare, the Light Armor > Prodigy passive also increases your Critical Strike rating for spells.
Notes
Soul Splitting Trap
Gear
Gear that improves Critical Strikes tends to be expensive for the Divines trait, so initially you might start with buying (or farming) any set, just to get the set bonus for Spell Critical.
Law of Julianos, being a Crafted Set, can be the easiest to get in Divines and is therefore a good starter as well while you assemble the other sets. It also has the interesting option of letting you do this build with five pieces of Heavy Armor if you wanted to, and in the early game that could help with survivability while you get your skills. In the late game when you have Skill Points to spare, you'd lose out on a lot of Light Armor passives, however.
Combat Physician is a fairly easy one to farm from the easy Wayrest Sewers I dungeon and trading for gear with your teammates. Do it on multiple characters when it is a Pledge. Trying to get jewelry and weapons from dungeons seems to be much harder, so buy Overland Sets for those slots. For Jewelry for Overland Sets, doing a few dolmens in the appropriate zone should get you what you need.
The shield procs on someone getting critical healing from you. So if you are only ever healing yourself, it will always be on you.
All pieces of Mad Tinkerer seem comparatively easy to get and the crowd control effect from the 5-piece bonus is a good combination attack/defense power.
As you work on your gear, use the Thief Mundus Stone to improve your Critical Strike rating. Once you feel your rating procs your Surge healing enough, you can try switching it to the Shadow for more Critical Damage. Either way, the Divines trait on all your gear will help.
Soul Splitting Trap is a very interesting area of effect damage over time. Unlike many area of effects, it is not repositioned when you cast it again before the duration expires. Instead, it is attached to the target -- which also means that unlike area of effects that are positioned, once affected the target can't simply move out of it. For these reasons we are willing to sacrifice some damage for the utility.
If you encounter widely spread groups of enemies especially if they are moving a lot, you might want to use Soul Splitting Trap several times to plant the damage over time on all of them.
Bound Aegis
For many PvE encounters, you should be able to use Endless Fury quite a bit. But if you are expecting to go against a single tough high-Health target that won't qualify for the 20% Health threshold execute of Endless Fury for a long time, you might want to swap out Endless Fury for Destruction Staff > Force Shock > Crushing Shock or Sorcerer > Dark Magic > Crystal Shard > Crystal Fragments and use that instead.If you encounter widely spread groups of enemies especially if they are moving a lot, you might want to use Soul Splitting Trap several times to plant the damage over time on all of them.
Healing Ward
In the very early game you can swap Healing Ward for whatever other healing or shielding skill you have through your Restoration Staff or other skill lines.
The trickiest part of Healing Ward is that it doesn't always shield you first, even when you are not in a group, so if you want something that always focusses on you, switch to Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Conjured Ward > Hardened Ward. This does NOT heal you, so it's much more of a pre-emptive cast.
We nevertheless prefer Healing Ward over Hardened Ward in general because there are times when you might want to help your allies -- or even have to do some healing because the team healer is down.
In the very early game you can swap Healing Ward for whatever other healing or shielding skill you have through your Restoration Staff or other skill lines.
The trickiest part of Healing Ward is that it doesn't always shield you first, even when you are not in a group, so if you want something that always focusses on you, switch to Sorcerer > Daedric Summoning > Conjured Ward > Hardened Ward. This does NOT heal you, so it's much more of a pre-emptive cast.
We nevertheless prefer Healing Ward over Hardened Ward in general because there are times when you might want to help your allies -- or even have to do some healing because the team healer is down.
Bound Aegis
Bound Aegis gives you an additional 8% Maximum Magicka, which also translates to about +8% magicka damage / magicka healing to your skills. Once you find you have more than enough Magicka to sustain what you want to do, we can replace it with something else. We'll lose that 5% but hopefully gain more net utility and damage with an additional damage over time effect.
Endless Fury Execute versus High Health TargetsGear
Gear that improves Critical Strikes tends to be expensive for the Divines trait, so initially you might start with buying (or farming) any set, just to get the set bonus for Spell Critical.
Law of Julianos, being a Crafted Set, can be the easiest to get in Divines and is therefore a good starter as well while you assemble the other sets. It also has the interesting option of letting you do this build with five pieces of Heavy Armor if you wanted to, and in the early game that could help with survivability while you get your skills. In the late game when you have Skill Points to spare, you'd lose out on a lot of Light Armor passives, however.
Combat Physician is a fairly easy one to farm from the easy Wayrest Sewers I dungeon and trading for gear with your teammates. Do it on multiple characters when it is a Pledge. Trying to get jewelry and weapons from dungeons seems to be much harder, so buy Overland Sets for those slots. For Jewelry for Overland Sets, doing a few dolmens in the appropriate zone should get you what you need.
The shield procs on someone getting critical healing from you. So if you are only ever healing yourself, it will always be on you.
All pieces of Mad Tinkerer seem comparatively easy to get and the crowd control effect from the 5-piece bonus is a good combination attack/defense power.
As you work on your gear, use the Thief Mundus Stone to improve your Critical Strike rating. Once you feel your rating procs your Surge healing enough, you can try switching it to the Shadow for more Critical Damage. Either way, the Divines trait on all your gear will help.
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