Trialling Stamina Sorcerer - U34: Trash (ultimate drop) - Build PvE - ESO

• Alternative mythics for Kilt
• Alternative sets for Kinras's Wrath
• Alternative sets for Riptide
• Alternative skills
• Rotation
• Trash build
• Trash rotation

I spent a fair share of time trying to figure out what I can do with the buffed crystal weapon. I ended up in the conclusion that this build is the highest I can get the stam sorc to go. Essentially we are playing the risky game of stamina management with the Perfected Coral Riptide set, and our rotation ensure Kinras's Wrath set will not be an issue to keep up. The best possible backbar weapon is Perfected Merciless Charge and this leaves us 2 item slots. For the rest, we slap a mythic (most of the time it is Harpooner's Wading Kilt, but in some fights we should look at Sea-Serpent's Coil or Mora's Whispers) and one piece of Slimecraw. 

Alternative mythics for Kilt

As said, most of the time you still want to use the Harpooner's Wading Kilt, because the critical chance and critical damage it provides is huge buff to us. It does, however, lose its stacks in some of the fights. And if losing the stacks is the case, it quickly falls out of favor. In those fights, you should use something else. 

Sea-Serpent's Coil is a cool new mythic we get. It provides the buff Kinras's Wrath provides and it also gives you the buff you usually get from your healers, but only if you are damaged. The downside is, your movement will be hindered. This means the coil will be bad if you need to move a lot, so places like Cloudrest (portals) will be a death sentence to utilising the coil. Also if you are going with the coil, do swap kinras's wrath to something else. 

Mora's Whispers is a strong contender, since it does provide a little less than half of the critical chance the kilt provides, but it cannot loose stacks. Also because this build does not utilise a monster set, it doesn't matter that Mora's Whispers is a shoulder piece.

Alternative sets for Kinras's Wrath

Sometimes it is not reasonable to assume you can do two light attacks in a 5 second period on your frontbar making kinras's wrath drop its stacks and thus become a lot worse of a set to use. (For example in Lokkestiiz hardmode, you might not have anything to light attack on the beam phase.) This means we should look for alternatives for it. 

Kinras can be substituted with Berserking Warrior. Usually kinras is higher ceiling, but Advancing Yokeda is more consistent. AY however only can be used in melee range and is a stack set just like kinras. NOTE: Berserking warrior is the name of the set, but the set pieces are named X of advancing yokeda leading to players calling Berserking Warrior as Advancing Yokeda or AY for short. 

A good alternative for kinras's wrath is Pillar of Nirn. This set is not far behind kinras DPS-wise and does have a lot easier conditions to use. It is ideal for fights where the target is relatively stationary, but where stack sets are not useful. 

Alternative sets for Riptide

Coral Riptide is a risky set to run. For it to be the best it can be means you need to stay at 33% stamina or below it for the fight, which can be difficult. As a stamina sorcerer, you do have around 36k max stamina, which means you are ideally floating around 12k or below stamina. That is more than enough stamina, since magicka dds usually have that as their max stamina! But when practising to use it in real fights, you might dip into too low of stamina. If that is the case, and a mechanic requiring a block or a dodge comes, you will die if you do not have the stamina to do the required action. So, if you do not feel good about your stamina management skills, here's some options for you to play with.

Arms of Relequen is the second best set in the single target fights, only losing to the Coral Riptide. It provides a huge single target dot, which can be kept up by light attacking, and it only drops stacks if you do not light attack in a 5 seconds window. It does not give any splash damage, which means in fights requiring some splash damage, Relequen becomes less ideal substitute. 

Whorl of the Depths is a light armor set you can frontbar, and it deals splash damage. It is also a lot easier to use than either of the bigger hitters - that is relequen and coral riptide. In the DPS department, whorl is just a 1k behind relequen, so it is still real good to use. To use it, I recommend you to body your original frontbar set (either Kinras's Wrath or Pillar of Nirn) and to wear the jewelry and two daggers of Whorl. 

Alternative skills

If you are not heading into the boss fight with 500 ultimate, it might be better for you to swap the Greater Storm Atronach on your frontbar to Flawless Dawnbreaker and the Power Overload to Greater Storm Atronach. This way you get the passive effect from the fighter's guild skill line on your frontbar, and still get to use the strongest ultimate available. 

Sometimes Carve cannot be used every time you want to making its stacks drop. This means in those fights you need to build the stacks up again and thus lowering your other casts. (Archcustodian of Hall of Fabrication comes to mind) In these fights, do substitute Carve with Hurricane, since hurricane still is a long duration skill doing similar damage to carve. 

Rotation

This build uses a dynamic rotation with a relatively static opening. You should always have both pets up before starting any fight. 

In the opening you do not light attack weave at first. To start with the opening burst, you 

1. Cast Power Overload 
2. Dump stamina by casting Crystal Weapon a couple of times to lower your stamina to around 60% or lower. 
3. Cast Bound Armaments 
4. Cast Summon Twilight Tormentor 
5. Cast Crystal Weapon 
6. Barswap and cast Barbed Trap 
7. Start weaving and weave Stampede 
8. Weave Carve 
9. Barswap and weave Crystal Weapon 
10. Weave Bound Armaments 
11. Weave Crystal Weapon 
12. Weave Daedric Prey 

From here on, you follow a couple of rules:

1. Never let carve drop its stacks! You can cast carve as soon as you need to, but do not let it drop its stacks. 
2. Crystal weapon is to be used as your every second skill. Always weave crystal weapon before weaving a skill. Always. Plan your rotation a few seconds in the future to ensure this happens! 
3. When you reach around 200 ultimates, you end your opening burst with a cast of Greater Storm Atronach (because you cannot weave the atronach around 180-185 ultimates because of the overload eating ultimate points on each light attack) 
4. After the opening, you do not cast Power Overload ever again in the fight, only atronachs! 
5. If you are using substitute ultimate skill setup, ignore the parts about power overload. 

The priority of the skills goes

1. Carve
2. Daedric Prey if your atronach is up
3. Stampede 
4. Barbed Trap 
5. 3 or 4 stacks of Bound Armaments 
6. Daedric Prey without atronach up
7. Summon Twilight Tormentor if the target is above 50%
8. Summon Volatile Familiar 

If you have substituted Carve with Hurricane, it should be placed between barbed trap and bound armaments in the priority list. Hurricane does do its biggest ticks of damage near the end of it meaning you should rather undercast it than overcast it. 

Daedric Prey boosts your pets' and atronach's damage and it has an explosion component in the end of the skill. This means you do want it up as much as you can, but also do not want to overcast it, but let it end. It is why the priority of the skill changes with the atronach: with atronach, it is important to keep a high uptime on daedric prey, because it boosts your burst window the atronach provides. 

Trash build

This time around our trash build is split into two builds. The first one is to be used when you do not have an ultimate to drop to the trash mobs, and the second is to be used with an ultimate. Ideally you'd swap from the first trash build to the second between the trash packs to get the soul buff of Sul-Xan's Torment. 

Trash rotation

Before engaging with the trash pack, you prebuff your self with 

1. Bound Armaments 
2. Channeled Acceleration 
3. Hurricane 
4. Dark Deal (buffs others in the group via the dark magic passive) 
5. Proximity Detonation 
6. Target the middle of the trash pack or the main target with Arrow Barrage 

From there on, barswap and first cast Lightning Flood followed by Deadly Cloak and then spam Whirling Blades while casting Bound Armaments every time 3 daggers are up. 

If you are using the ultimate, cast the Shooting Star after casting Unstable Wall of Elements (which replaces Arrow Barrage) to the middle of the pack or to the priority target.