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Ordinator Tip - Crusader's Fire, a Lesson in Burning

Tags: #Tips and Tricks Exploits  #Tips and Tricks Magic  #Dragonborn1721  #Tips and Tricks Ordinator 
  • July 25, 2017

    First of all, I recommend you check out my comment in The Ordinator T&T Desk about Crusader's Fire (on the first page, sixth comment down) which has some useful information that forms the basis for this discussion. Basically what I'm doing is expanding on how Enai Siaion's mods (Ordinator, Imperious, Aurora and Apocolypse mainly) all work together to really combine fun Turn Undead effects and Crusader's Fire.

    As a quick rundown, Crusader's Fire does 10 damage over 10 seconds to any enemy afflicted with Turn Undead (30 foot radius) and also boosts all attack and critical strike damage against enemies suffering from CF by 25%. It can be boosted upto 17.25 damage over 15 seconds or 258.75 damage, and the secondary effect might get a boost to 43.125% extra damage (possibly, I'm not sure if it would get boosted) just by having Restoration Mastery and Chalice of Tears. What I'm going to be looking at in this discussion is the following.

    o - Examining how it works with Ordinator's Destruction skill

    o - How far I can boost that with Imperious - Races of Skyrim, Aurora - Standing Stones of Skyrim and Vanilla Boosts

    o - Looking at synergy, how it works with other Turn Undead effects (mostly Vanilla spells and Enchantments)

    Now for a little disclaimer. I haven't fully tested anything and it's entirely based off of Enai's word and doesn't account for earlier editions of the mod, any errors he might have made or anything like that. It's also, I don't want to say theoretical, but it is techncially based off of me reading information rather than actively testing things, simply because I'm on Xbox and, you know, can't test most things. 

    With this particular perk I'm not entirely sure whether it's fire damage or not but I'm assuming so based on the descriptive word of divine fire which to me suggests Fire Damage, and thus anything that boosts fire damage will be assumed to also boost Crusader's Fire (whether or not this is true, isn't something I can test).

     

    At any point, if you guys want to say... You know what, Deebs I don't want your math and your explanations (fair enough, I ramble too much and there's plenty of maths) then head 


    So, the first thing I'm looking at is arguably the thing I'm least sure. I'm at least 75% sure that Crusader's Fire does in fact deal Fire damage, but for all I know it could be Sun Damage, Magic Damage or just something else that I couldn't even guess. If it is boosted by Fire Spells, it's rather likely that almost all of the Fire Tree in Destruction will actually boost the spell to be kind of insane. I'll be looking at the following list of perks in this section with the assumption that they boost Crusader's Fire.

    Combustion 2/2 - 50% boost to damage (technically it's based on health but I'm assuming the full effect here).

    Scarring Burns - 25% reduction to Fire Resistance for 5 seconds (which I believe should allow the first 5 seconds to do 25% more damage).

    Conflagation - Ignites the ground beneath the target to do 8 damage for 3 seconds on contact and lasts for 30 seconds (I'm going to assume it doesn't stack, so that the fire damage doesn't light the ground on fire, and that you can only burn someone every 3 seconds but it does add 24 damage/3 seconds)

    Elemental Specialization - 15% extra damage to all spells and effects of the fire element.

    World in Flames - Conflagaration is boosted by 25% and an enemy effected by it takes 25% more damage from all fire spells.

    I will not be looking at Cataclysm and Flash Fire because, well partially because it's just hard but also because they're more random and unpredictible, but do note that they will boost your total damage by more then what I mention.

    So...man this is going to be deep. First we're going to look at Conflagation because it's the most concerning to me. Here we have to consider a few things, an enemy with Turn Undead isn't going to be taking damage from it more than once because they're going to be on the run, so we only have to take it's damage and boosts into consideration a single time (which is good). Now the first boost is simple at 15% which gives us 9.2 damage for 3 seconds (27.6). Then it gets boosted by another 25% to 11.5 for 3 seconds (34.5 damage). Finally is the 50% boost from Combustion (though really it won't always be this high) which changes it to 17.25 damage for 3 seconds (51.75 damage). Oh, and silly me because this will all happen after Crusader's Fire we also need to take into consideration that Scarring Burns will be active, meaning we need to boost it by 25% again... Yeah, so instead we're at a total, and final damage count of 66 points. 

    So, yeah, it's not massive but it is a boost, and what is cool is that just having it up and an enemy taking damage from it will trigger World in Flames meaning Crusader's Fire will do more damage. And I believe there's also the fact that Scarring Burns should activate again meaning that...fuck. Okay so technically speaking I should have to figure out that there might be a single second of Conflagation that actually does 50% more damage, and there'd be a second or two of Crusader's Fire that does 50% and then about 6 or so seconds that do 25% but I can't test it. Do note that there may be a bit of a boost from that but I can't test it so I'll assume that Scarring Burns can only be active a single time.

    Anyway, so now we have to look at Crusader's Flame being boosted up from 17.25 damage over 15 seconds and seeing what Destruction will do to it. From the top down, we have a 50% to start us off which brings it up to 25.875 for 15 seeconds. Skipping Scarring Burns temporarily (so I can do it last) is Elemental Specialization with it's 15% boost bringing us to 29.75625, then World in Flames boosting it by 25% to 37.1953125 and 5 seconds of that will finally be effected by Scarring Burns, or at least I'm only counting it now. So we get 46.50 for 5 seconds and 27.20 for 10 seconds or a total damage of.

    Crusader's Fire + All Destruction Boosts + All Destruction Boosts = 503.5 damage + 66 from Confalgation or 

    569.5 damage total.


    Right, so from here on we get to a much simpler part of the whole thing, and I can be a lot more sure about what I'm talking about. There's some stuff in the Destruction section that I'm a bit shakey on but I'm confident that I'm within a 20 point margin of error there, which isn't as bad as I was expecting. This section will look at Imperious - Races of Skyrim (or just the Breton Race) and Aurora - Standing Stones of Skyrim (Apprentice and Mage) to see the small bonuses that they give, well really it's a combination. Aurora does basically nothing without Imperious, or really just 10% boosts which aren't that interesting to be honest.

    There are two main things to look at are the Apprentice Stone and the Mage Stone boosted by Stones of Galen (a Racial bonus for Bretons that gives extra effects to all Standing Stones). The former is the slightly more effective standing stone and gives a 25% boost to spell damage, there is of course also the basic effect of the Stone, but that's aimed at regular spells. The Mage Stone will give you a 20% boost or 10% boost if you aren't running a Breton. There is a small secondary effect with the Apprentice Stone that I'm not entirely sure whether or not it will activate, but if so the stone might stop Crusader's Fire from activating if you get hit.

    46.50 for 5 seconds and 27.20 for 10 seconds (times 25%) = 58.125 for 5 seconds and 34 for 10 seconds or 630 damage.

    So it isn't a massive boost but I do think that a 60 point boost is still pretty good. The Mage Stone is slightly less effective, but is arguably more effective in general.

    46.50 for 5 seconds and 27.20 for 10 seconds (times 20%) = 55.80 for 5 seconds and 32.64 for 10 seconds or 605 damage. 

    So, there is a twenty point difference so my continuing math will be based on the Apprentice Stone but do note that there is a small difference between the two, and that if you want the other (in my opinion), better boosts that the Mage Stone gives then it's still extremely viable. I was hoping to look at Apocolypse here as well but there aren't actually any Turn Undead spells there, I guess Enai thought there were plenty of them in Vanilla Skyrim, which is pretty fair, so there's nothing really awesome that can be done through there, I mean there are some spells that reduce Fire Resistance, and we could look into them but this is supposed to be the most optimal use of Crusader's Fire without boosting it with other spells or powers (not including passives.)

    The final section of this...guide I suppose, will be looking at the various Vanilla Boosts that should effect Crusader's Fire. The boosts that I believe will effect the perk are Azhidal (25% boost to fire damage), Fortify Restoration Potion (max 75% boost to the magnitue of Restoration Spells) and Shalidor's Insights (Restoration) (50% boost to duration). 

    Azhidal Boost - 58.125 for 5 seconds and 34 for 10 seconds *25% = 72.65625 for 5 seconds and 42.5 for 10 seconds or 788 damage

    Resto Potion - 72.65625 for 5 seconds and 42.5 for 10 seconds *75% = 127.1484375 for 5 seconds and 74.375 for 10 seconds or 1379 damage

    Shalidor's Insights - 127.1484375 for 5 seconds and 74.375 for 17.5 seconds = 1937 damage

    Now we're finally starting to get there. Shalidor's Insights gives a huge buff, and when paired with a Fortify Restoration potion, well your starting to look at some really intense damage output finally. This doesn't even go into the fact that a lot of Undead are weak to fire (pretty much all of them are if you've got smart mods) and the fact that your doing this to any enemy that is effected by the effect within 30 feet. Honestly, if your going for maximum damage against undead I would still recommend going with Warrior's Fire. It's simply more effective at dealing with enemies, though you could arguably consider this to be slightly more effective because of the way it deals with Undead (Always triggering if they're effected with Turn Undead and within range). 

    Thanks for reading my second Ordinator Tip. As always, if you have any questions then drop them down in the comments, that goes for any fixes to my maths as well, I'm not stupid enough to think that I was flawless  here, nor am I smart enough to be confident that I'm flawless. The whole Scarring Burns thing has me especially confused, technically I think it's possible that it would activate once for Crusader's Fire and once for Conflagration, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, the next article is going to be shorter, and just look at how insane some of the Shrine Blessings can get with Gods and Mortals, Pilgram and Stones of Galen, which is slowly starting to become my favourite Racial Bonus ever.