[Sorc] Fresh cr40 Guidelines and Orientations

[AsthonC]

Hello all, I just dinged my first cr40 (rr51) character and I'd like help from my fellow veterans to step up my game. I play mainly open RvR.

1 - Gearing advices:
This is my armory:
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 893/armory

I don't have much time to play and I often play on NA time destruction side, so for gearing advices I'd like to prioritize PvP gear even if it means a longer grind.

2 - Build:
My ST build (it's my preferred build):
RoR.builders - Sorcerer
My AOE build (keep and fort):
RoR.builders - Sorcerer
Renown:
https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/r ... ;2;3;0;0;0

3 - Rotation:
I have no idea what the standard rotation should be, I just build Dark Magic to 100 while trying to align Impending Doom with the Word of Pain tick. So I have a lot of questions regarding this:
3.1 What's my rotation ST and AOE-wise?
3.2 Do I ever use Doombolt?
3.3 Do I ever use Dhar Winds?
3.4 Do I ever use Shattered Shadows?
3.5 Do I ever use Obsessive Focus?
3.6 How freely am I to use my immunity giving skills? I don't know how good they are comparing to other classes so I refrain to using them, in what situations should I use our root, silence and disarm

4 - Gameplay:
During open RVR I use ST build and usually try to focus unguarded MDPS and RDPS, healers disrupt too much and tanks absorb too much, is there anything else I should be aware of?

During keep/fort, both defending and attacking, I use AOE build but I am a little bit lost, what is the main thing I should be doing?


Thanks in advance for everyone willing to share their knowledge of the game!

[reyaloran]

For gearing, sorc is one of the most reliant on pve gear classes. Unfortunately nothing is better then the blood lord staff and the sentinel jewelry is needed until you can pay the 10k crests for a triumph ring. That said, dungeons do still happen in NA as we regularly run them in Agony and I think a few other guilds run them as well.

For the rotation side of things for ST sorc your goal is to timestamp people with chill wind -> word of pain/vision of domination -> doom bolt/artic blast -> gloom burst -> impending doom -> hand of ruin. If you do all of that in that order everything will hit within 2 seconds of each other which is how you kill a healer or ranged dps. You never let dhar wind drop off since its ~60% of your classes damage so you need to either find a healing friend or develop a potion addiction. Aoe sorc is more of a melee dps then a ranged dps. Find a tank and a healer then spec for disastrous cascade, never ending agony, piercing shadows, shadow knives, and impending doom. Your goal at that point is to cast DC on cool down and fill with any instant aoe you can (infernal wave, shadow knives, pit of shades). If you need to get ap then do reckless gathering into a impending doom cast to rebuild your ap and keep your dark magic high.

[gersy]

Gear:

If you cannot do pve you're gonna have a rough time with gearing. Pve sets/accessories on sorc are VERY strong (sent, bloodlord, onslaught mainly - the other pve sets are not very good). You really should try to do at least 2-4 BS runs for the staff and bloodlord set since the staff is very powerful/ BiS for sorc and the set will save you ~4000 war crests vs buying full invader or full triumphant which are potential crest waste. Also need to do 4 BB runs for the sentinel ring so you can use sentinel talismans especially considering how weak your jewelry is currently.

4 BB and 4 BS runs is on average 8-12 hours of pve vs 100-150+ hours of crest grinding depending on efficiency, so skipping the vanquisher and invader ward is extremely valuable. You're saving ~5000 crests if you skip both.

You can go with Vanq after where you're at now if you don't want to do BB. Vanq is a good set too. If you can manage to do LotD the cape/jewel combo is also very powerful for sorc. After sent/vanq ward is done buy triumphant belt/boots and finish the invader ward with bloodlord or try to get it out of fortress bags I guess but that seems unreliable. Buy it only as a last resort.

After that I recommend buying main sov helm, shoulders, chest, gloves and jewel. You then mix those 5 pieces with your 2 pieces of triumphant that you purchased earlier and with LotD cape/jewel for 5/2/2 mix which will serve as your endgame pre-bis before triumphant ring where you would buy sov cloak and triumphant gloves and go 5sov/4tri.

If you cannot manage LotD, I suggest you can go with sov helm, shoulders, cloak, chest, jewel and triumphant gloves, belt, boots while holding on to the sentinel ring until triumphant ring. This 5/3 will be a lot weaker than 5/2/2 however.

Builds:

ST build gloomburst - for Scenarios and Kite/Roaming Parties. Gloomburst variant is more greedy and increases your own burst and damage dealt.

ST build proc - for Scenarios and Kite/Roaming Parties. Proc version is less greedy and increases your party members damage. Can be better damage than gloomburst build if you have active tanks and a good dps partner who are maintaining high uptime on target and activating their procs more.

Melee bomber build - Melee range wb aoe build. Can swap piercing shadows to neverending agony to make it more of a distance based build if you cannot get a guard or are in a pug warband where melee build is harder to play (usually know as Wave or Mid-range build)

ST/Aoe Hybrid - for Kite/Roaming Parties where you want to surf on warbands and need aoe pressure to secure more kill credit while still having the ability to deal high priority ST damage. Usually would only use this one during primetime when it's blobby.

Pve build - Looks funny because it kind of is. All you do is stand in melee range and spam Doombolt for bosses. That's the most optimal pve rotation. Disastrous Cascade/Shattered Shadows when aoe is required (but don't do it if your tank is skipping mobs, you'll just get aggro).

There's some other build variants like tap bomber but maybe too niche to explain for these purposes. These 4 should suit you fine for 99% of gameplay.

Rotation:

Rotations in pvp are almost always going to be situationally dependent but I can give some brief outlines. ST Sorc is all about "timestamping". This is a term used to describe when you are applying multiple damage instances within a 1-2 gcd time frame, thus stacking them for massive amounts of burst damage. Sorc is especially good at this and getting these combos down is crucial to proper gameplay. Keep in mind these are just guidelines (especially on aoe builds) and perfect rotation is not always possible and rotations change based on circumstance.

ST builds:
(Build to 80-100 Resource by spamming Ice Spikes/Infernal Wave out of combat before a fight)
Chillwind -> Vision of Torment -> Word of Pain -> Arctic Blast -> Gloomburst -> Impending Doom -> Hand of Ruin -> Infernal Wave
By doing this, you are ensuring that your Vision + Arctic Blast hit at the same time as well as your Word of Pain and Gloomburst shortly after then following with high damage instant casts to secure kills. You can also do baby rotation if the target doesn't die and you want to keep pressuring them or doing a "fake rotation" by doing the same thing but taking out Word of Pain (and optionally changing out Arctic Blast for Doombolt to make the timestamp a bit neater/harder hitting). Many players only track and look for Word of Pain, so doing a baby rotation with just Vision can catch them off guard and grant you extra pressure.

Melee bomber:
(Build to 100 Resource by spamming Ice Spikes/Infernal Wave out of combat before a fight or Impending Doom at range)
Ice Spikes -> Disastrous Cascade -> Surging Pain x2 -> Ice Spikes -> Impending Doom low hp target -> Infernal Wave -> Disastrous Cascade if still in melee, otherwise Shadow Knives -> Repeat


3.2 - Doombolt sometimes, mostly in pve or for ST rotation in place of Arctic Blast if you can reliably stand still for 3 seconds.
3.3 - Not really, unless you need to dump your career resource for some reason (which you should never do).
3.4 - Only in pve with close quarters tactic
3.5 - If you only have 1 target and can guarantee you will only have 1 target, sure. Otherwise you lose damage after that 1 target is gone.
3.6 - Refrain from using them unless absolutely needed. Handing out immunities is typically very bad. Never use aoe root randomly while in warband vs warband combat. Rooting will make your tanks unable to punt/aoe root and typically they want to do it not a sorc. In coordinated environments, aoe silence on the enemy healer line or a single enemy healer in an SC is potentially extremely powerful. Rooting/disarming/silencing in a 1v1 is fine at your own discretion.

Gameplay:

What you say is fine yes, focus unguarded always if possible. Never hit tanks in orvr, SnB tanks will block/disrupt everything. 2h tanks in SCs can be a target sometimes. Healers are iffy, with avoidance change they all have a lot more disrupt than before since they cannot be reduced below 50% by your reduced chance to be disrupted stat. In keep/fort you kind of just spam the choke with pit/wave/spikes etc while trying not to die, in pug situations aoe sorc is not fantastic for defending or attacking outside of walking in under tank m4 and doing aoe as normal.

Hope it helps.

[Zxul]

About the rotation, if there is a chance of cleanse, putting Vision of Torment before the Chillwind might be a good idea, so Vision of Torment will be cleansed instead of resist debuff.

[reyaloran]

About the rotation, if there is a chance of cleanse, putting Vision of Torment before the Chillwind might be a good idea, so Vision of Torment will be cleansed instead of resist debuff.

Torment hits for a decent amount (~65% of word of pain) so having that hit is better then having the spirit debuff in place. If you try to use it to protect the chillwind on the word of pain rotation then there is a high chance the target will run before you can get the rest of your rotation out killing your timestamp.

[AsthonC]

Wow! So much valuable information, can't thank you guys enough!

[Vandamonia]

What should we spend our renown on as a sorc, good builds