Mag dps sustain and self healing?

ImmortalCX

I rolled a dark elf mag arcanist and followed alcast build. Its dual staff with julianos and mothers sorrow sets. Ive followed his mid tier build almost verbatim.

All of my Prior experience has been with my main stamblade dw/bow. Stamblade has briarheart set and some of the dw skills return health. My stamblade is very survivable and she has sustain for days.

My new arcanist runs out of gas, and doesnt have any self healing to speak of. More reliant on pots.

It makes sense because a ranged dps doesnt have to play at melee range and is in less danger, so probably doesnt need health return. Should i be looking into other sets/ enchants or is this the way its supposed to be? I either have to ha or pot. And when i take moderate damage i cant just refill it by attacking i have to move defensively.

My stamblde doesnt have any spammable that will exhaust my stam, it is usually a result of having to roll dodge or escape or vigor. My arcanist just feels fragile in comparison.

moderatelyfatman

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I rolled a dark elf mag arcanist and followed alcast build. Its dual staff with julianos and mothers sorrow sets. Ive followed his mid tier build almost verbatim.

All of my Prior experience has been with my main stamblade dw/bow. Stamblade has briarheart set and some of the dw skills return health. My stamblade is very survivable and she has sustain for days.

My new arcanist runs out of gas, and doesnt have any self healing to speak of. More reliant on pots.

It makes sense because a ranged dps doesnt have to play at melee range and is in less danger, so probably doesnt need health return. Should i be looking into other sets/ enchants or is this the way its supposed to be? I either have to ha or pot. And when i take moderate damage i cant just refill it by attacking i have to move defensively.

My stamblde doesnt have any spammable that will exhaust my stam, it is usually a result of having to roll dodge or escape or vigor. My arcanist just feels fragile in comparison.

Just slot Reaving Blows from the Blue CP tree. It will convert 7% of your damage to healing which will be very strong when you pop up your damage shield every few seconds.

Desiato

So the general understanding in the community is that Alcast doesn't really play anymore, his builds are designed by others and generally are not considered very good.

Arc is the most survivable dps class in the game.

Honestly, you shouldn't have problems sustaining any class with bi stat food/drink like Ghastly Eye Bowl or Witchmother's potent brew if you want some health too.

Hapexamendios

The arcanist has some decent heals. I use Runemend myself.

Zodiarkslayer

MagArc is very good at sustaining and damage, but the self healing and damage mitigation side is a little underwhelming.
That is the reason why I swapped out Soldier of Apocrypha and subclassed Restoring Light instead.

@ImmortalCX This patch the damage from Fatecarver has been increased and set off by simultaneously increased ressource drain. Maybe you are feeling that? And excuse my bluntness, but Julianos and Mother's Sorrow are Accessibility options. They are not recommended for Arcanists.

It is my understanding as well, that @Alcast isn't playing himself anymore. He is still a cool guy. And his websites and services are cornerstones of the community. Maybe think of the builds as entry level, that enables you to learn the game yourself?

Renato90085

give up julianos ,swap to briarheart
problem done

ImmortalCX

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

It is my understanding as well, that @Alcast isn't playing himself anymore. He is still a cool guy. And his websites and services are cornerstones of the community. Maybe think of the builds as entry level, that enables you to learn the game yourself?

This is smug and baseless.

I am asking the questions so that I can learn. 2500 hours of playtime with my stamblade leaves me knowing that this isn't a great setup.

As you confirm, arcanist is weak on self heals. If alcast build is many patches behind, I'm not surprised it doesn't work well. I mean I can clear vet content, but its not a great setup.

freespirit

Swap Julianos for Order's Wrath, 5th piece bonus increases critical healing so should pair nicely with Mother's Sorrow until you get better sets, Deadly Strike might be an option too! 🙂

freespirit

Oh I always use Bewitched Sugar Skulls when going solo in harder content too. 🙂

Dagoth_Rac

Is this for group content or solo? In a group, support classes will generally help everyone with sustain. But solo? You'll need more sustain, especially in this Update where Arcanist cost has gone way up.

Food, drink, jewelry glyphs, weapon glyphs, etc., can help sustain. Experiment with more or less of them to get sustain where you are comfortable. Experiment with Reaving Blows CP or Pale Order ring for healing.

Arcanist has high enough DPS where you can sacrifice some for sustain and healing and still hit pretty darn hard.

robpr

Since the Beam is now Direct Damage, Reaving Blows CP will patch you up from basically anything.

As for sustaining, if you copied Alcast build verbatim you might notice you use medium armor (best damage passives) but you won't get skill cost reduction for mag skills and baseline stam skills are cheaper than mag. You need sustain food (like witchmother's). If you still run out of gas, consider changing Inspired Scholarship morph to Recuperative Treatise. You will lose a bit of damage but you will restore 600 stam and mag every 5s. Add some other stamina skills so you can balance to cost out. For example, Alcast uses Runeblades with Tentacular Dread. You can ditch both for Cephaliarch Flail. Runeblades are bit expensive for what they do.

Zodiarkslayer

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I am asking the questions so that I can learn. 2500 hours of playtime with my stamblade leaves me knowing that this isn't a great setup.
...

My apologies, I wasn't aware how much time you played on another class. If you will, lets dig in a little further into Magicka Arcanist's survival and sustain.

The general problem with Arcanist in SOLO is being locked into the beam. That has several downsides. The most impactful is that you cannot cast heals, if you suddenly need them. Your movement is limited, so that standing in stupid becomes a trade off against damage. And frontbar glyphs won't fire as you cannot light attack (glyph of weakening is underrated, imo).

How one approaches this issue is up to one's own preference, but I encourage anyone who asks me to keep it simple. Boss fights are hectic enough, that I do not want to fumble around with additional complexity of proc sets, rotations or monitoring sustain and synergies, which may or may not be availlable. So as a recommendation for Arcanists in general it is never wrong to go with Deadly Strike and Order's Wrath. They supplement everything in the Arcanist's toolkit, without introducing additional bottlenecks. Using 5 Light and two Medium armour pieces is the sweet spot for me, but having a heavy chest piece is never bad. So 5-1-1 is just as fine.
If you want to use Velothi Ur, you'll have to ensure that you do not need the Ring of the Pale Order. So a powerful passive HoT is recommended. Here Evolving Runemend comes into play, because it gives you a 6s heal, that is just long enough to last the beam. The size of it is crazy as well, because it will usually ending up burst healing for 22k to 25k and then giving an 8k to 10k heal over 6s, all depending on how high your crit healing stat is (Order's Wrath!).
Against tough opponents it is totally legitimate to build your crux with ER instead of Writhing Runeblades and then beam for full damage. Or to use Pragmatic Fatecarver not for damage, but for the shield when you see big damage incoming and then block cancel it after you mitigated the damage spike.
Reconstructive Domain helps too, but you need to find a place in your rotation and on your bar first, because it isn't as important as others.

Talking about the skill bars, there should be priorities (personal assessment for SOLO environment):
1) Beam and Crux builder
2) Major Buffs and Debuffs (Sorcery, Prophecy, Resolve and Breach)
3) Heal(s)
4) Backbar Weapon ability
5) Sustain Help abilities
6) Minor Breach, DoTs, Minor Buffs, general damage abilities
You can immediately see that abilities like Abyssal Impact and Fulminating Rune are not as important as most others make them out to be. To me, using them means I loose abilities to improve survivability and sustain.
Morph choices derive from these priorities, too. Pragmatic over Exhausting Fatecarver, Recuperative Treatise over Inspired Scholarship and Evolving Runemend over Audacious Runemend are key to survival and sustain. If you can use abilities that "tick more than one box", the higher their priority becomes.

This is also where Restoring Light comes in from U46 onwards. Swapping out Soldier of Apocrypha and subclassing RL from the the Templars means I can use Channelled Focus, which gives me Major Resolve, minor mending, a heal and 240 Magicka per second. Also, Extended Ritual, if I get pressured in a tough Boss fight, allows me to be kiting and get a sizeable heal during the beam phase.
Keeping Curative Runeforms is also essential, because most passives are not tied into using its abilities. You will get increased sustain and healing, no matter what. Only Intricate Runeforms depends on slotting a CR ability, but it would only influence Pragmatic Fatecarver's damage shield. It isn't a big loss, if you don't utilize it.

All in all Magicka Arcanist has everything to survive even the toughest opponents in this game. One just has to use the right abilities.