The Ruffian

Armor Types

Gear and Item Set Info

ARMOR

2 Sellistrix (monster set - medium head and medium shoulder)

5 Night Mother's Gaze (heavy chest, medium legs, medium feet, medium hands, light waist)

All Divines. All Max Stamina Enchants 

JEWELRY

3 Agility all Robust all Weapon Damage Enchants

WEAPONS

Dual Wield: 2 Hunding's Rage Sharpened Daggers 

main hand - with Weapon Damage Enchant

off hand - with Poison Enchant

Bow: (any random drop piece or crafted)

Sharpened with Crusher Enchant

CONSUMABLES

Provisioning: Orzorga's Tripe Trifle Pocket recipe (Increases Max Health and Stamina Recovery)

Potion: Essence of Weapon Crit - Dragonthorn, Mountain Flower, and Water Hyacinth (increases weapon crit, restores health and stamina)

MUNDUS

The Thief

ATTRIBUTE

9 into Health

55 into Stamina

*Werewolf/Vampire is totally up to you!*

General Info

*UPDATED as of 08 MAR 2017*

Designed for Solo PvE/VMA to those who don't have maelstrom weapons or trial gear. Fully selfbuffed, this build has 1800 stamina recovery and just under 4k weapon damage. 

Skills

Skill morphs for maximum damage: Rapid Strikes, Rending Slashes, Suppression Field. For more survivability, go with the other morphs. Rapid Strikes equals to 15% more damage than Bloodthirst. Rending Slashes has a stronger initial damage over Blood Craze, and Blood Craze's healing is too small to notice. With the appropriate passives invested, we heal for 8% of our Max Health when we activate Suppression Field, so going with Absorption Field is rather redundant. Let the enemy sit it the field and take a little extra damage instead. The sooner things die, the easier your life will be.

Arrow Barrage/Endless Hail both are good. Arrow Barrage hits more targets which means more dps. It will almost always out dps Endless Hail in most PvE content since very few bosses don't have adds. Endless Hail is harder to aim with, but it is the stronger morph for single targets. Plus, it is better on sustain since it costs less and lasts longer.

Bound Armaments needs to be on both bars since it is a toggle. Activate it on one bar, swap and if you don't have the skill double barred then you will lose the buff. While active, heavy attacks will do 11% more damage and Max Stamina is increased by 8%. No other class has this! Although the skill has a cost, it only needs to be activated once. It will stay activated until you wayshrine to another zone or enter/leave a dungeon. 

Critical Surge is your main heal (and Major Brutality buff) and must be up at all times. Hands glow electric blue while active. Critical Surge is super powerful, and it is the main reason why Stam Sorcs are so strong. Keep in mind, you need to crit on a target to get heals. Rend is a huge heal and so is Absorption Field; however, these skills also require a target. Same with Blood Craze and Bloodthirst. Stay on the offensive with this build. Turtle up and you will die. Your defensive actions are blocking heavy attacks and dodge rolling only when absolutely necessary. Go back on the offensive. Dealing damage is how you stay alive. It really is your best defense. It is also worth noting that the heals you get from Critical Surge can also crit. You're not just getting 3k heals per crit ;). This build is always ticking DoT damage; allowing more chances to crit. Hurricane is doing damage every second for 15 seconds. Rapid Strikes, 5 attacks in less than a second. Poison Injection, every second for 10 seconds. Endless Hail, every second for 10 seconds. Rend, every second for 16 seconds. So on and so on. All those damage ticks have a 75% chance to crit on this build. Critical Surge is so broken OP that you don't need redundant heals. You don't even need Vigor!

Your Dual Wield skills and Ultimates are interchangeable. Quick Cloak/Deadly Cloak has its uses in some instances. Rend/Dawnbreaker I swap often. Suppression/Ballista I swap often.

If you want to run Dark Deal for your sustain, switch to a Tri food. With 36k stamina (without bound armament buff), your skills and heals will hit harder. Having 4k extra magicka definitely helps in this case. Health will dip down to 17.5k, but with Crit Surge everything gonna be alright. It's an easy swap without having to make changes to gear. Just remember that Dark Deal has a 1 second cast time. There is a right time and a wrong time to use this skill in mid combat.

Important tooltips/passives:

Sellistrix - When you deal damage, you have a 10% chance to create an earthquake under the enemy that errupts after 2 seconds, dealing X physical damage to all enemies within 4 meters and stunning them for 3 seconds. This effect can occur once every 5 seconds.

Farming Velidreth can be a struggle. Try this instead. For VMA, this set is huge. Due to the way mobs clump together, an AoE stun means you're not taking damage. All you have to do is move to range damage dealers so the melee damage dealers have to follow you. With all the DoTs we are running, we are constantly doing damage and proc'ing Sellistrix literally every 5 seconds. This set is so much fun to use and is the key to this build for unlocking extra damage. 

Ruffian (Dual Wield Passive) - Gives you a 15% damage bonus when attacking stunned, immobilized, disoriented or silenced enemies.

In group play, dual wielders rely on their group members for stuns and such. However, this is a solo build, and that's what Sellistrix is for ;)

Implosion (Storm Calling Passive) - 6% chance when dealing shock/physical damage to pulverize your enemy under 15% health, dealing X damage.

We get a lot of implosions with this build due to all the DoTs we're running.

Suppression Field/Absorbtion Field (Morph of Negate Magic - Dark Magic Ultimate) - Important to note that these morphs both stuns enemies within, thus proc'ing Ruffian. The affliction of silence also applies on bosses even if they can still cast spells. This is how we get Ruffian to proc even on bosses. Since disorients and silence can be afflicted on bosses, if in a group and a healer is using luminous shards you can swap out this ultimate. The way to use your ultimates is to drop Field first at the beginning of fights and then stick with Rend.

Exploiter is a passive in the Ritual blue tree of the champion point system. This increases your damage against off-balanced enemies by 10%. Guess what? Stuns equals off-balance. Together with Ruffian, you're getting an extra free 25% more damage. Keep in mind that while Exploiter applies to all your damage, Ruffian only applies to dual wielding.

Undaunted Mettle Don't forget to invest skill points into this passive. 

I hope I covered everything. Any questions or criticism, please feel free to comment below. Enjoy the build!

Champion Point Tips

The Lord: 1 Expert Defender, 10 Quick Recovery

The Lady: 11 Thick Skinned, 89 Hardy, 89 Elemental Defender

The Ritual: 100 Mighty, 35 Precise strikes, 65 Thaumaturge

*Precise Strikes is kinda RNGish that only proc's when you crit. Thaumaturge is absolute damage we get all the time.*

The Shadow: 24 Tumbling

The Lover: 75 Mooncalf, 1 Tenacity

*Anymore into Mooncalf is seriously not worth it. 100 Mooncalf is only around 40-50ish more recovery*

The Tower: 100 Warlord

Build Rating