Mtg Black Aoe Dmg

UPDATED FOR UPDATE 13: HOMESTEAD
Greetings! I wanted to share my build that I've been using since One Tamriel. Perhaps others would like to give it a try as well. This is an AOE/DOT build utilizing the Necropotence set as it's centerpiece.
PROS: Simple rotation, Massive AOE dps, High magicka sustain, Huge shields, Playable in ALL content, Does not require Trials gear, High survivability, Very few traditional sorc counters work against it.
CONS: Pet required (if that bothers you), No upfront burst, Less single target damage than some other builds, Lack of available skill bar space for some common sorc abilities.
Before I share my build, let me just give a shout out to Nos's No Spamable Build and Thelon's Pet Sorc Build, both of which I've learned a lot from. If you are doing trials as part of a high level guild or solo vet dungeons, their builds may do better for you than this. I don't get a chance to run trials much and don't have any of the trials sets. I also really hate running out of magicka, and since most of the time I can't rely on healers to support me (PUGing and such), this build keeps that from ever happening. I do trials and solo vet dungeons occasionally on this build and it works well for me even if it may not be pulling the absolute highest dps possible.
Why Necropotence?
Arguably, Infallible Aether is a better PvE set in terms of raw set bonuses (almost 18% improvement, assuming no one else is applying Minor Vulnerability), but in my calculations Necropotence outshines most other sets because of its huge magicka pool bonus. Like 11% improvement over 6-8% improvement from most other good sets. A big magicka pool also improves shield size and pet strength, as well as simply giving you more casts before running out (which means regen is less important when combined with heavy attacking frequently). It also does the same thing that Spell Damage does, just at the rate of 10.5 : 1. That means that the cumulative power of a 40k magicka, 3k spell damage build would be about 6910. So a build with 50k magicka would only need 2148 spell damage to be equally as powerful. This build sits at about 52-53k magicka and 2615 spell damage with blue food and power surge up. All of these reasons made me want to invest in making what had simply been a theory crafted build a reality.
But you need a pet!
This is one reason why people will satisfy themselves with a different set over Necropotence. Lots of people don't like running pets for various reasons, so if you're one of those people this build will immediately turn you off. For me, on PC, I feel like I'm able to control my pet easily and keep it alive almost all of the time, and you'll see it actually ends up being very powerful.
But..so many toggles!
This is the other, and more serious, drawback to the build. Because you really need Inner Light and Bound Aegis to get the full benefit of the % increases to Necropotence's magicka pool buffs, it leaves you with precious little space for much else. You can't effectively run the standard C-Frag, Force Pulse rotation you'd do on most builds, so that's where the use of Heavy Lightning Attacks comes in. The skill choices I made were largely to compensate for this problem, but in the end they all synergize well.
Alright windbag, get on with it!
Ok, ok! The build has a few minor alterations between PvE and PvP. The PvE version can be run for all PvE content including dungeons, trials, and vMA. The PvP build can be used for dueling, IC crawling, and overland Cyrodiil either solo or in a group.
First up, PvE with Ilambris (self-buffed with Blue Food and Power Surge)
Next, PvP with Infernal Guardian (self-buffed with Blue Food and Power Surge)
Explanation of Gear:
- Divines is the best trait choice for this build in either PvE or PvP. We will be stacking two shields worth about 25k in PvP, so we can keep our rotation up and refresh shields on the fly. If you do take some heat with shields down, Power Surge will get you back up in a few seconds. Impenetrable is a wasted trait here. Divines is also better than Infused because we want higher crit chance from the Thief mundus stone for more heals from Power Surge.
- Obviously, Necropotence is used for the reasons listed above.
- Ilambris is the best PvE monster set for magicka sorcs. It procs a ton off of heavy attacks, liquid lightning and blockade of fire. Even without crits, it still performs well.
- Infernal Guardian is the best PvP monster set for magicka sorcs. It's free pressure on your opponent for using shields you'd use anyway. Even if it doesn't hit them it makes them focus on getting out of the red instead of just being free to wail on you. And when it does connect it hits hard.
- You can choose to run Infernal Guardian in vMA instead of Ilambris. The choice is yours.
- I ended up getting an Infused Heavy Infernal Guardian helm (I've got a Light Divines too) and decided to keep it as is for the extra 1.1k health enchant. You could go Divines if you prefer with a magicka enchant, trading some survivability for a little more dps. The extra 1k health has saved me a number of times, gIving me that extra second to stack shields and make a comeback.
- Willpower is more powerful on its own than any 4 piece except for Infallible or Moondancer, and stronger than those in PvP. So the front bar staff does not need to be part of any set. You can craft it or get one from some other set. Just make sure it's Sharpened, obviously. No need for vMA staff on the front, the weapon damage enchant is better for the front bar.
- Back bar vMA Inferno Staff is important. You can get by with a non-set staff, but you'll want to try to farm it along with the monster sets. Since we're using Lightning Heavy attacks it will provide a pretty significant boost to each tick's damage. Sharpened would be best. I just have Precise, which is still good and not a huge deal since we dont stay on the back bar for long anyway.
Explanation of Champion Points:
Blue Tree:
- Since we're using practically 100% dot damage, we split points equally between Elemental Expert and Thaumaturge, with 44 in Spell Erosion and 9 in Elfborn. You can play with the numbers a little, but the difference will be very slight. I have tested these numbers down to the difference between 1 point, and this is the most optimal for this build.
Green Tree:
- Because we don't have much base regen to begin with anyway, I put some points into Tenacity to boost heavy attack resource regen. I like this balance. It allows you a little more direct control of when you get more resources or when it's not as important. Like, if you're in a long duel and have been taking a lot of pressure, just stop using the ground dots and focus on heavy attacks and Familiar pulses and that will usually be enough to get back up to a good resource level again in short order.
Red Tree:
- 100 points into Bastion. The rest go into resistances. Do what you want here.
Explanation of Skills:
Front Bar:
Power Surge - We're using this for both Major Sorcery and the heals on crit. With crit chance around 57% and many ticks from all the dots, this skill will heal you back to full quickly as long as you keep shields up, especially if enemies try to fight you with melee in the middle of all your dots.
Inner Light - Passive bonuses are necessary for maximizing dps. Stealth detection is nice to have too. The empower buff won't usefully effect any of our normal rotation. You could empower a fire heavy attack from the back bar to open, but it only applies to the last tick of the lightning heavy attack, which isn't worth the magicka cost.
Volitile Familiar - We'll talk about him on the back bar.
Bound Aegis - Passive bonuses are necessary for maximizing dps. Extra resistances are nice should your shields go down for a second.
Empowered Ward - Some will prefer Hardened Ward because of its increased size. I prefer this because it costs less, increases magicka recovery, and lasts 10 seconds. It ensures that you can have both shields up together for the full 6 second duration of the 2nd shield in PvP and gives us a little buffer on either side of the 2nd shield falling off. And since our magicka is so high, the shield is already as big or bigger than Hardened Ward on other lower magicka sorc builds.
PvE Ulti: Thunderous Rage - This is a must-have skill on the front bar, as it's the only skill from the destro line we can put up there, which means our front bar benefits from the Ancient Knowledge 8% AOE damage increase. The ulti should be up about once every minute (6 rotations). And yes, the lightning version is actually stronger than the fire version due to lightning and aoe passives.
PvP Ulti: Soul Assault - This ulti is a beast and the only real surprise burst this build possesses. The tooltip is about 85k damage. It will kill basically anyone who doesn't shield/heal through it, even from full health. I'll talk more about its synergy with Volatile Familiar in the PvP Rotation section.
Back Bar:
Liquid Lightning / Elemental Drain - Liquid Lightning is a very powerful, cheap, and long lasting aoe dot. It will be less effective in PvP fights against ranged opponents, so in those situations you can switch it for Elemental Drain. You ideally want the Major Breach debuff on any serious target you ever fight. If you can get a healer to run it, that would be best. I tested switching out other skills for this on the target skeletons, but applying it to all targets slows the rotation down somewhat, and it ended up being a dps loss over what I've chosen.
Blockade of Fire - Another great aoe dot, boosting staff attack damage via the vMA staff. The buff can be applied by casting Blockade on the back bar and then reaping the benefits on the front bar. Although the lightning version does more damage due to passives, this is our only source of fire damage to get the fire attack from Ilambris to proc. For this reason, there's just no getting around needing the sharpened vMA fire staff.
Volitile Familiar - He's squishier than the Clannfear, but regular shielding makes that a non-issue. You don't usually need the Clannfear heal or the Twilight heal, so you're better off with the extra dps from the Familiar. It's a lot of dps too. The Familiar regularly crits for 10k damage. That's potentially 30k damage over 8 seconds with an aoe stun at the end. The stun is also very important to synergize in PvP with Soul Assault, which I'll explain in more detail in a minute.
Bound Aegis - as above
Daedric Prey / Dampen Magic/ Elemental Drain - In PvE, Daedric Prey works well to amplify the Familiar pulse and has a nice burst at the end as well. You could slip Elemental Drain here if ou prefer, especially if you are running group content and no one else is applying it to the boss. Just ask the healer before you start. Inner Light is a fine choice if you don't have something else you want. Dampen Magic is for PvP and is essential. You will die a lot faster and more often with only one shield. Harness Magicka is an alternative, but I prefer the increased shield size and don't really need the regen from the potential incoming magic damage. Also, I think it's important to have a shield on each bar so you can just insert a shield cast into what you're doing without needing to swap bars.
Ulti: Energy Overload - In PvE this is to provide an ulti point dump after fighting trash for a while. You use this after dropping dots instead of heavy attacking until your ulti points get to 213, at which point you switch to using the destro ulti when it's up. In PvP this can be another surprise burst option, though it has some easy counters. It's also useful for some utility skills on the 3rd bar. In any case, the 3rd bar needs Volitile Familiar and Bound Aegis on it. You can have Inner Light on to boost damage of light attacks or drop it for a utility skill. You'll also want Empowered Ward on there for some protection. In PvE, I usually put Mage's Wrath on for boss execute phases. In Cyrodiil, I slot Defensive Rune, which I put on whenever I'm out of combat, and Charging Maneuvers for faster mount speed. For duels, you could put Mage's Wrath and Crystal Frags on to maybe get a Mages Wrath, C-Frag, Overload combo in if your normal rotation isn't cutting it. Or you could put Daedric Minefield on there. Lots of options to choose from.
Alternately, in PvP, you could put Eye of the Storm here.
For vMA, I take off Thunderous Rage for double barring Energy Overload, just so I don't accidentally blow my ulti before the boss round. I also put Liquid Lightning on my Overload Bar in vMA instead of Mage's Wrath, so I can keep my Lightning and Familiar dots up on the boss without dropping out of Overload.
Explanation of Rotation:
PvE
Power Surge (33 seconds) > Empowered Ward (10 seconds) > Thunderous Rage > Liquid Lightning (10 seconds) > Blockade of Fire (8 seconds) > Volatile Familiar (8 seconds) > Daedric Prey > 2 Lighting Heavy Attacks
If you're responsible for casting Elemental Drain, get that in near the beginning and keep it up. Keep repeating the above rotation as stuff falls off. You can hold off on continually recasting Empowered Ward if you're taking low or no damage.
The fall off times of the dots line up perfectly, so you can always just go 1, 2. 3 on your back bar every 10 seconds and keep everything up almost 100%.
PvP
Power Surge (33 seconds) > Empowered Ward (10 seconds) > Dampen Magic (6 seconds) > Liquid Lightning (10 seconds) > Blockade of Fire (8 seconds) > Volatile Familiar (8 seconds) > Lighting Heavy Attacks
If you've slotted Elemental Drain instead of Liquid Lightning, fit that in near the beginning and keep it up. For duels, you can drop dots before shields during the count down at the start of the fight.
Volitile Familiar + Soul Assault synergy:
The 5th pulse of the Familiar attack is a stun. If you watch the Familiar pulses and start Soul Assault just after the 4th pulse, the target will be hit with a stun in the middle of the ulti and will take massive damage even if they attempt to break free. Usually they haven't reacted fast enough to put on a shield or heal yet, so they are completely vulnerable. I have won MANY duels against every class type using this technique. Sparring for a long time with players, they will begin to develop counter strategies, but almost everyone is taken by surprise initially, which is really what counts in Cryodiil.
The Sorc House:
Aside from the above synergy, dropping Liquid Lightning, Blockade of Fire, Volatile Familiar Pulse, Infernal Guardian mortars, and Lightning Heavy Attacking while stacking 25k shields will spell immediate death for anyone foolish enough to melee attack you without serious PvP skills. You only have to resort to Soul Assault if your opponent proves to be a non-potato. The whole build is outside of the norm of what other players expect a sorc to do, and that works to your advantage.
PvP Counters:
Standard sorc counters don't really work against this build. Our attacks are not dodgable or reflectable. However, because the Familiar is integral to the surprise burst of Soul Assault, if the target is running Immovable pots, disables the Familiar via cc, or constantly kills it while aoeing you both, you'll find the fight more difficult. This is one reason why we run Overload on the back bar. If you are consistently thwarted, you can switch it up and try to get an Overload combo in. Even on players who use these techniques, you can sustain the fight using the normal rotation for a really long time without resource issues and look to exploit a mistake.
DPS Parse
Here is a DPS Parse against 3 Target Skeletons standing close together. Essentially, the best-case scenario for your general AOE fight. You can see that the single target DPS against each skeleton is about 24-26k. This will simply be multiplied by however many enemies you have within your Liquid Lightning circle. Also note that the Mag Regen is higher than the Mag Drain. This rotation is infinitely sustainable and was used without interruption until all 3 skeletons were dead. It took 2 minutes to kill all three skeletons.
..Ok. That's it. Thanks for reading!