Magicka Sorcerer

Welcome to my Magicka Sorcerer guide! This guide will teach you to summon lightning and pets to destroy your enemies with the power of daedric magic

This guide is mostly designed for PvE group play but can work to some degree for solo play as well. (For extensive solo play, you may need to make a number of adjustments for survivability)

Sorcerer Basics

Sorcerers are experts in the dark arts, using dark magic to conjure runes, daedric creatures, and lightning. With two summonable pets able to autonomously attack enemies, sorcerers are good at putting out extra zero-effort damage just by having these pets summoned; however, they can also do strong damage without using pets. Sorcerers tend to be especially good at:

• Direct damage: Most of the sorcerer's strongest damage abilities do large bursts of instantaneous damage, rather than damage-over-time (DoT) damage
• Single-target damage: Sorcerers are capable of doing the highest single-target damage of any class, though their area (AoE / area-of-effect) capabilities are a little more wanting
• Ranged combat: Sorcerers are skilled at ranged combat, able to deal high damage while staying far away from the enemy

Gear

Basics

• We'll use mostly light armor. The Light Armor skill line provides damage stats and magicka recovery that will be very helpful to doing as much damage as possible and keeping up our resources
  • One or two medium armor pieces can be helpful as well, as the Medium Armor skill line provides critical damage, a powerful stat that light armor does not provide
• We'll use a lightning staff on our frontbar. This will allow us to maintain range while also boosting our already-high direct damage even higher via the Ancient Knowledge passive
  • If you'd like, you can also use a different weapon, such as dual wield daggers. Daggers will allow us to do a little more damage with their strong passives, but will force us to stay in melee range
• We'll use an inferno staff for our backbar. This will be one of our strongest backbar options and also allow us to maintain range
  • Two-handed greatswords and bows are also excellent alternative options

Note that despite the physical/stamina-based inclination of swords and bows, we can still use these weapons on a magicka-based build. There's no penalty or disadvantage for doing so; in fact, using swords and bows can be helpful to regulating our magicka usage, since their respective skills cost stamina and won't dip into our magicka

This guide will favor a lightning staff + inferno staff setup; however, a few different setup options will be shown for other weapons

Gear Setups

• Starting Gear
• Intermediate Gear
• Advanced Gear

Starting Gear

Try this setup until you reach CP 160 (the gear cap). These sets are all craftable! Ask for help in guild chat or Discord if you'd like someone to make them for you. The Training traits will get you a bunch of extra XP

If you have some extra skill points available to invest in the Medium Armor skill line, swapping the head and/or shoulder piece to medium armor will usually yield a little bit more damage

This setup uses Order's Wrath for huge crit buffs to do lots of extra damage, and Adept Rider for extra movement speed, perfect for new characters that tend to struggle to move quickly around the world. Night Mother's Gaze is just filler for our last two pieces, providing a little extra crit chance

Gear Slot	Type	Set	Trait	Enchant
Head Shoulders	Light	Night Mother's Gaze	Training	Max Magicka
Chest Hands Waist Legs Feet	Light	Adept Rider	Training	Max Magicka
Neck		Order's Wrath	Arcane	Magicka Recovery
Ring Ring		Order's Wrath	Arcane	Spell Damage
Front Weapon	Lightning Staff	Order's Wrath	Training	Flame
Back Weapon	Inferno Staff	Order's Wrath	Training	Weapon Damage

Alternatives

You can substitute Adept Rider with:

• Order's Wrath for extra damage
• Heartland Conqueror for a small amount of extra kill XP
• Armor of the Seducer for extra magicka sustain

Intermediate Gear

Once you hit CP 160, swap off your training gear and set up for pure damage! This gear will serve you well through the vast majority of content throughout the game

If you have some extra skill points available to invest in the Medium Armor skill line, swapping the head and/or shoulder piece to medium armor will usually yield a little bit more damage

This setup uses Order's Wrath for huge crit buffs to do lots of extra damage, and Law of Julianos for additional damage bonuses. Night Mother's Gaze is just filler for our last two pieces, providing a little extra crit chance

Gear Slot	Type	Set	Trait	Enchant
Head Shoulders	Light	Night Mother's Gaze	Divines	Max Magicka
Chest Hands Waist Legs Feet	Light	Law of Julianos	Divines	Max Magicka
Neck		Order's Wrath	Arcane	Magicka Recovery
Ring Ring		Order's Wrath	Arcane	Spell Damage
Front Weapon	Lightning Staff	Order's Wrath	Precise	Flame
Back Weapon	Inferno Staff	Order's Wrath	Infused	Weapon Damage

Alternatives

I recommend the above gear for the simplicity in acquiring it, but here are some additional options

• Mother's Sorrow: Provides a big stat boost, somewhat similarly to Order's Wrath
• Briarheart: Provides some extra healing along with extra damage
• Medusa: Provides a big stat boost as well as Minor Force, a powerful critical damage buff
• Overwhelming Surge: Provides extra magicka along with a decent damage proc

If you're ready for vet dungeons, consider swapping out your Night Mother pieces for a monster set. These basegame monster sets are some of the easiest ones to get but are still quite powerful

• Maw of the Infernal
• Stormfist

Advanced Gear

Consider this setup once you have some trials and veteran dungeons under your belt. This setup uses very optimized sets and traits but will require significant trial and dungeon farming

The gear listed in the Intermediate Gear section is entirely adequate for most content in ESO. The gear listed below will often provide noticeably more damage, but crafted gear will be plenty for anything short of seriously dedicated veteran content. If you're not interested in vet content and you're not interested in farming, you can skip this section!

• This setup uses Whorl of the Depths, which provides a big proc effect to do large amounts of extra damage. Its one drawback is that the effect stays on the ground and can't be re-procced until the effect's long timer finishes, so if the enemy moves out of the damage area, you'll lose a lot of damage
• We also have Pillar of Nirn, which will proc extra DoT damage to run almost constantly as long as we're dealing damage
• Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is an excellent mythic that gives a flat 15% damage bonus as well as the Minor Force buff for extra critical damage and a big penetration bonus to tear through enemy resistances; however it has the drawback of nearly negating the damage of our light attacks
  • Despite the damage negation, make sure to use light attacks anyway, because light attacks proc our weapon enchants and also cause us to generate ultimate
• The Crushing Wall arena weapon will cause our Unstable Wall skill to do lots of extra damage
• Finally, we'll top off our build with one piece of Slimecraw monster set, just providing a crit chance bonus

Gear Slot	Type	Set	Trait	Enchant
Head	Medium	Slimecraw	Divines	Max Magicka
Shoulders	Light	Pillar of Nirn	Divines	Max Magicka
Chest Hands Waist Legs Feet	Light	Whorl of the Depths	Divines	Max Magicka
Neck		Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet	Bloodthirsty	Spell Damage
Ring Ring		Pillar of Nirn	Bloodthirsty	Spell Damage
Front Weapon	Lightning Staff	Pillar of Nirn	Precise	Flame
Back Weapon	Inferno Staff	Crushing Wall	Infused	Weapon Damage

Advanced Medium Armor Setup

Advanced trial groups will typically use medium armor rather than light, as medium armor passives provide more useful bonuses in very organized groups. Magicka sorcerers are capable of using medium armor, but will have to change to using more stamina-based skills, and therefore stamina-based weapons to provide these skills, in order to maintain enough magicka to sustain with medium armor

• This setup uses Ansuul's Torment instead of Whorl, providing a flat 7% bonus to our damage. You can get a huge additional 7% bonus by interrupting enemies, but this is not a priority; we're wearing this set mostly for the always-on bonus
• We also swap Crushing Wall for Merciless Charge, a different arena weapon which will give us some extra damage by buffing our direct damage (i.e. instantaneous non-DoT damage)

Gear Slot	Type	Set	Trait	Enchant
Head	Light	Slimecraw	Divines	Max Magicka
Shoulders	Medium	Pillar of Nirn	Divines	Max Magicka
Chest Hands Waist Legs Feet	Medium	Ansuul's Torment	Divines	Max Magicka
Neck		Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet	Bloodthirsty	Spell Damage
Ring Ring		Pillar of Nirn	Bloodthirsty	Spell Damage
Main Hand Weapon	Dagger	Pillar of Nirn	Nirnhoned or Precise	Flame
Offhand Weapon	Dagger	Pillar of Nirn	Charged	Poison
Back Weapon	Greatsword	Merciless Charge	Infused	Weapon Damage

Alternatives

A wide variety of additional options listed here

• Five-Piece Sets
  • Arms of Relequen: High single-target damage, but low AoE and requires very good light attack weaving to use well. For most purposes, another set will be better
  • Mantle of Siroria: Provides a big stat boost. Solid damage buff, but requires standing in one place to maintain the buff. For most fights where you have to move around, this set will perform poorly
  • Kinras's Wrath: Gives us Major Berserk, a big boost to our damage. Reasonable alternative to Pillar but requires very good light attack weaving to keep up the buff; for most purposes, another set will yield more consistent results
  • Grave Inevitability: Gives us Major Force, a big boost to our damage. Similarly to Kinras, this set requires very good light attack weaving to keep up the buff; for most purposes, another set will yield more consistent results
• Monster Sets (requires rearranging your gear setup, e.g. swapping out the Velothi mythic)
  • Maw of the Infernal
  • Stormfist
  • Zaan
  • Kjalnar's Nightmare
• Arena Weapons
  • Thunderous Volley (Bow)
• Mythics
  • Harpooner's Wading Kilt: Gives us a huge stacking damage boost. This mythic can yield higher damage than Velothi, but only if we can keep up the buff stacks by not taking direct damage. Anytime we take direct damage will drop a large portion of the buff, so use this set with caution

Skills and Passives

Skills

I'm listing way more skills than will actually fit on your bars, just to emphasize how many good options there are. See Example Bar Setups below for specific examples of bar setups, but ultimately you can just pick whatever skills you like best!

Choose at least one spammable

This is the skill you'll be casting most often, while your DoTs are still running

•  Crystal Fragments: The highest-damage spammable. Can proc randomly when we cast any skill on the same bar (including Frags itself), to make our next Frags cast incredibly powerful
  • Has a slightly inconvenient cast time. If you prefer an instant-cast spammable, try Force Pulse. Even if you do this, keep Frags to cast just when it does its special proc, which is very powerful and does not have a cast time
•  Force Pulse /  Crushing Shock: Another solid spammable. Use Force Pulse to cleave to additional enemies or Crushing Shock for a ranged interrupt
•  Mages' Wrath: This is an execute spammable. After an enemy's health has dropped to 20%, you can spam this skill instead of your regular spammable for lots of extra damage both to that enemy and in an area around it. Before this 20% threshold, this skill will do mediocre damage; you should use a different spammable for the majority of the fight
•  Pulsar: AoE spammable. With a lightning staff, we'll get extra damage for every enemy nearby that we hit with this skill. Also applies Minor Mangle to debuff the enemies' health pools

Choose one or both pets (optional)

Pets are a playstyle almost unique to sorcerers! They will do lots of damage passively just by being summoned, and also have an ability you can activate by casting the skill again

Note that pets need to be slotted on both your bars, or else the pet will un-summon when you swap

•  Summon Volatile Familiar: Great passive damage while the pet is summoned. You can also cast it while the pet is out to get some nice AoE damage
•  Summon Twilight Matriarch /  Summon Twilight Tormentor: Also good passive pet damage. Matriarch gives you a big heal when you cast it while summoned, while Tormentor does slightly more damage

Choose one of these high-damage skills

These will make up a significant portion of our damage and will more or less define the rhythm of our rotation. (I recommend using just one of these; managing both is possible but rather challenging)

Use Daedric Prey if you're using both pet skills, and Haunting Curse if you're using neither or just one. Bound Armaments is a bit less beginner-friendly but otherwise another great option

•  Daedric Prey /  Haunting Curse: Does a big burst of damage after 6 seconds. Prey also increases your pets' damage, and Curse lasts 12 seconds and does two bursts
  • Prey is incredibly strong since it both deals damage and buffs your pets' damage, but it has a short timer. You'll want to cast it consistently every 6th cast for best results
  • Curse has a much longer timer and isn't as powerful, so it doesn't need to be micro-managed as much
•  Bound Armaments: Excellent damage skill, but requires good light attack weaving to use effectively
  • For optimal damage, ideally cast this every 4th skill if you're weaving well; otherwise just cast it whenever you've hit four light attacks to proc it

Choose some DoTs

Fill up the rest of your skill slots with DoTs, and optionally utility skills (see below)

•  Unstable Wall of Elements: Great AoE DoT
•  Barbed Trap: Provides Minor Force to increase your crit damage, as well as applying a DoT
•  Hurricane: Excellent AoE DoT skill. Also provides Major Resolve to protect you and Minor Expedition for a nice speed boost
•  Lightning Flood: Good AoE DoT
•  Anti-Cavalry Caltrops: Decent AoE DoT; mainly useful if you need a stamina skill for better magicka sustain

Choose some utility skills (optional)

Miscellaneous skills you can use for buffs, recovery, and extra damage

•  Bound Aegis: Passively increases our max magicka and protects us with Minor Resolve. (No need to cast this skill, we just have it for the passive buffs)
•  Inner Light: Another skill that passively increases our max magicka. Also provides Major Savagery/Prophecy to increase our weapon and spell crit stats. (No need to cast this skill, we just have it for the passive buffs)
•  Dark Conversion: Great sustain skill. Gives back a ton of magicka both immediately and over time. Also provides some healing and the Minor Berserk buff for extra damage
•  Critical Surge: Strong heal-over-time skill that heals us as long as we're doing critical damage. Also provides Major Brutality/Sorcery for some nice stat boosts

Choose ultimates

Very high damage skills you can cast when your Ultimate meter is full. Normally you'll want Atronach on the backbar, and either Dawnbreaker or Atronach again on your frontbar

•  Summon Charged Atronach: One of the highest damage ultimates in the game! Does a lot of damage, and provides a synergy for allies to get the excellent Major Berserk buff
•  Flawless Dawnbreaker: You can optionally slot this passively on your frontbar for the Slayer passive in Fighters Guild, with Atronach on your backbar. (You won't normally actually cast Dawnbreaker; it's just there for the passive stat boost)

Example Bar Setups

Pet setups are simpler to use and generally do more damage, but no-pet options can be powerful as well

Consider these setups as templates for your own setup; there's not necessarily a need to follow them exactly. Skills marked "Flex" in particular can be replaced with other skills that you prefer, or ones of the opposite stat cost if you're having sustain trouble

Quick Guide to Skill Casting

Remember, there is a one second global cooldown (GCD) for casting skills. After you cast a skill, you are unable to cast another skill for one second. Therefore it is ideal to cast skills on a consistent rhythm of one skill per second, the maximum speed allowed by the GCD. Consider using a metronome to get accustomed to this rhythm

• Naturally, casting this frequently will burn through a lot of resources, but any second where you're not casting a skill is a second wasted where you could have been doing more damage! But see Sustain Tips below if you're running out of resources
• Also remember to weave a light attack between each skill. Along with dealing extra damage, this will cause you to generate ult and also assist in applying your weapon enchantments, which are activated by light attacks and weapon skills. A successful weaver will cast one skill and one light attack in each one-second interval

Rotation

Watch your skill timers! Your main goal in your rotation is to keep your DoT timers all running as much of the time as possible. When you see a timer run out, cast that skill again

Your goals in your rotation are:

• Keep your DoT and buff timers running at all times
• Cast a useful skill on every one-second GCD

Your priorities in casting your skills are:

• If you have Crystal Fragments slotted, cast it whenever it procs. That proc does huge damage, so it's your top priority. (Don't prioritize Frags if it's not procced)
• If you're using Daedric Prey, cast that whenever its timer runs out. Prey does huge burst damage and also buffs your pets' damage if you're using any, so it's another high priority
• Whenever one of your DoT timers has run out or is about to, cast that skill again to keep it running!
• Whenever your cooldowns are all still running, hit your spammable skill ( ) for extra damage
  • Try to avoid recasting DoTs before their timers expire, unless the enemy has moved out of the skill's area. This will usually not provide much or any additional damage
  • If you're using Mages' Wrath, remember to start using that as your new spammable when the enemy is at low health (20% and below)

You should spend most of your time on your frontbar. Just go to your backbar briefly to refresh skill timers

Priority Passives

All passives are useful for something, but these are the passives that will be most relevant to combat

Daedric Summoning: Everything: Rebate, Power Stone, Daedric Protection, Expert Summoner

Dark Magic: Everything: Unholy Knowledge, Blood Magic, Persistence, Exploitation

Storm Calling: Everything: Capacitor, Energized, Amplitude, Expert Mage

Destruction Staff: Penetrating Magic, Elemental Force, Ancient Knowledge, Destruction Expert

Light Armor: Everything: Grace, Evocation, Spell Warding, Prodigy, Concentration

Medium Armor (only if wearing some medium pieces): Dexterity, Wind Walker, Agility, Athletics

Fighters Guild: Slayer, Banish the Wicked, Skilled Tracker

Undaunted: Everything: Undaunted Command, Undaunted Mettle

Assault: Continuous Attack

Racial: Everything

Alchemy (if using potions): Medicinal Use

Character

Race

Racial differences are relatively minimal, so I advise simply picking a race you like. But if you're wanting to optimize, the best options are:

• High Elf / Dark Elf (best damage)
• Khajiit (next-best damage)
• Breton (best sustain)

Attributes

All 64 points belong in Magicka. Your skills do more healing based on your Max Magicka value (or Stamina, whichever is higher), so it is ideal to build one value as high as possible

Mundus Stone

•  The Lover
  • Gives you extra penetration to shred through enemies' defenses. This is a great option for (1) when you're leveling, or (2) when you're not with a particularly organized group. When in doubt, Lover is likely the way to go
•  The Thief
  • Increases your critical chance, which is another excellent stat for maximizing damage. This is the best option when you have skill points, Champion Points, and group support invested into maxing out your penetration already

Consumables

Foods/Drinks

• Witchmother's Potent Brew (for extra sustain)
  • Max Heath/Magicka, Magicka Recovery
• Melon-Baked Parmesan Pork / Mistral Banana-Bunny Hash / Solitude Salmon-Millet Soup (if you have plenty of sustain)
  • Max Health/Magicka
  • Requires CP 150+
• Ghastly Eye Bowl (for more extra power and sustain but no health bonus)
  • Max Magicka, Magicka Recovery

Potions

• Crown Tri-Restoration Potion (free option if accumulated from daily rewards)
  • Max Health/Magicka/Stamina, Health/Magicka/Stamina Recovery
• Magicka Potion (cheaper craftable potion)
  • Max Magicka, Magicka Recovery
  • Only practical at CP 150+
• Spell Power Potion (most powerful but more expensive craftable)
  • Max Magicka, Magicka Recovery, Major Sorcery/Prophecy
  • Only practical at CP 150+

Champion Points (level 50+)

A rough progression of what CP nodes to start with once you hit level 50. You'll be able to use more and more of these nodes as you gain experience and accumulate more Champion Points. Fill each node completely before moving on to the next one

Warfare

• Start with Precision and (in the Extended Might sub-tree) Piercing
• Then add these four slottables: Fighting Finesse, Deadly Aim, Master-at-Arms, Wrathful Strikes. (Make sure you add them to your Champion Bar or they'll have no effect!)
  • For optimized group play, you can also swap out Fighting Finesse for Backstabber to get slightly more crit damage
• Next grab Eldritch Insight, and also the non-slottable CP from the Extended Might sub-tree (i.e. skip any CP with the "Add to Champion Bar to activate" note)
• Finally add the rest of the non-slottable CP throughout the Warfare tree

Fitness

• Take these three slottables: Rejuvenation, Boundless Vitality, Fortified. (Make sure you add them to your Champion Bar or they'll have no effect!)
• Grab Sprinter, Hasty (in the Wind Chaser sub-tree), and Hero's Vigor
• Take the rest of the non-slottable CP throughout the Fitness tree, including those in the three subtrees
• At some point during the above step, take one more slottable CP of your choice (Celerity (in the Wind Chaser sub-tree), Siphoning Spells, Spirit Mastery are some of the most useful ones)

Craft

• Use whatever you'd like here; these points mostly don't affect your combat skill. There are lots of options for crafting, stealth, movement speed, and more in this tree
• Some early nodes I find good for very general usage include Steed's Blessing, Breakfall, and Wanderer

Sustain Tips

Need some more magicka sustain? Magicka sorcerers very commonly struggle with keeping up their magicka, so you're not alone! Check these tips, in roughly this order:

• Have you bought all your passives? Your Light Armor and class skill lines in particular have several passives that will give you extra magicka
• Are you using mostly light armor? If not, consider doing so to get lots of extra magicka from the Evocation passive
• Do you have CP points in the Rejuvenation passive (red tree)?
• Are you using Crystal Fragments as your spammable? Frags has a unique effect that reduces the cost of your next skill cast. Consider switching to Frags if you're using a different spammable; despite the perhaps-challenging cast time, it will actually help your sustain
• Are you using several stamina-costing skills like Hurricane and Barbed Trap? The more you use stamina skills, the less you'll be using up your magicka
• Are you using food with a magicka recovery buff, like Witchmother's Potent Brew?
• Are you using a potion with a magicka recovery buff?

If you still need more magicka, try these options. These may alter your build a little bit more significantly

• Use magicka recovery glyphs on some or all of your jewelry
• Slot Dark Conversion. This skill provides a very large amount of magicka immediately, as well as extra magicka over its 20 second duration
• Use a stamina-based weapon on one or both bars. A greatsword or bow on your backbar, or dual wield daggers on your frontbar, will give you access to more strong stamina skills to slot to avoid using so much magicka

Written by @IIIlIlIIlllIIlllIIll (Updated 05/2024 - U41 / Scions of Ithelia)