Update 6 - the last nail in the coffin for sorcerer DPS/Healer in PVE

Gyudan

With update 6, destro staff and resto staff abilities will scale based on spell damage instead of weapon damage. While this change makes sense, it will heavily impact the way sorcerer dps and healers work.

Right now, most sorcerers rely on critical surge to increase their weapon damage and the effectiveness of their destro/resto staff abilities. I've been waiting for a buff on sorcerers for a while now and this switch to spell damage is yet another nerf. Yay! Thanks ZoS!

Critical Surge
This is the one advantage that sorcerers currently have: their staff abilities can be easily boosted by overcharging weapon damage.


Apart from staff skills, the only 2 class abilities that would benefit from investing in spell damage are:
- Crystal Fragments: only useful to cast when the 35% procs. Stun is now useless for most of the PVE content.
- Endless Fury/Mage's Wrath: an execute move, only useful on targets under 20% health.



All other abilities are quite useless. Mines have been nerfed, velocious curse is too slow, all cc abilities are useless on most of the PVE content (list of immune monsters increased with update 5). Who even uses pets in advanced PVE content?

A few facts
- Sorcerers are currently less effective than other classes at dealing damage (bested by DK/NB) and healing (bested by Templar/DK). Of course good sorcerers can beat an average DK, but the best DKs pull way more dps than the best sorcs and the same goes for average ones.
- Sorcerers have no direct damage abilities and no damage over time (DoT) abilities.
- Sorcerers have no abilities that can heal other players.

DPS discussion here

For a good example of how sorcerers work, watch the "Let's play" segment of ESO Live#5, the camera is filming a VR14 sorcerer inside Blackheart Haven.

DKs right now:


Sorcerers right now:

---

DKs after update 6:


Sorcerers after update 6:



Source: admin post

ZOS_JoeBlackburn wrote: »

Hey Guys,

Qhival's post is super informative, and hopefully we can help clear up a little more of the critical strike info for you. Currently critical strikes are based on the defense that an ability checks when it goes off.

So when you use an ability like Uppercut, it checks against the target's Armor when it does damage. This means it has a Critical Strike chance based off of your Weapon Critical stat.

If you are using an ability like Crystal Shards that checks against the target's Spell Resistance when it does damage, it will base its Critical Strike chance off of your Spell Critical stat.

For Update 6 we are making a huge effort to make sure that everything that costs Magicka scales in damage based off your Max Magicka and Spell Damage, and uses Spell Critical as its Critical Strike Chance. Similarly, all abilities that cost Stamina will scale in damage based off your Max Stamina and Weapon Damage, and use Weapon Critical as their Critical Strike Chance.

We know that currently it’s a little confusing to determine what stats modify your abilities when you put them on your bar, and we are working to make sure it will be very obvious in the future.

Questions for ZoS:
- What will you change for sorcerers to balance the switch to spell damage for staff scaling in update 6?
- Should I just grab two daggers or a 2-handed sword and switch to a weapon I never wanted my sorcerer to use? Is this the only way I can deal damage similar to the other classes?
- Will sorcerers ever get a skill healing party members?
- What is the point of getting a staff to legendary quality if weapon damage doesn't matter? Just the trait increase?

I love the game but this imbalance keeps getting worse.

ers101284b14_ESO

They released info on update 6?

Edit: I'm totally stealing those pictures to use at a later date.

Gyudan

@ers101284b14_ESO : I included the source

ZOS_JoeBlackburn wrote: »

For Update 6 we are making a huge effort to make sure that everything that costs Magicka scales in damage based off your Max Magicka and Spell Damage, and uses Spell Critical as its Critical Strike Chance. Similarly, all abilities that cost Stamina will scale in damage based off your Max Stamina and Weapon Damage, and use Weapon Critical as their Critical Strike Chance.

ers101284b14_ESO

Eh that could be subject to change. A Dev doing a one off post on another post without it being official. Oh well lets see how this one goes after they fix it.

Lunerdog

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Eh that could be subject to change. A Dev doing a one off post on another post without it being official. Oh well lets see how this one goes after they *** it.

Fixed

dzugarueb17_ESO

this change makes sense

never knew it was so unlogical, oh well, I was a bad healer, sorry.

ers101284b14_ESO

Lunerdog wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Eh that could be subject to change. A Dev doing a one off post on another post without it being official. Oh well lets see how this one goes after they *** it.

Fixed

Don't fix my stuff. I said what I said. Just gotta wait until 1.6.7 when they fix the fix that fixes the fix.

TheBull

ZOS wrote:

For Update 6 we are making a huge effort to make sure that everything that costs Magicka scales in damage based off your Max Magicka and Spell Damage, and uses Spell Critical as its Critical Strike Chance. Similarly, all abilities that cost Stamina will scale in damage based off your Max Stamina and Weapon Damage, and use Weapon Critical as their Critical Strike Chance.

That's not just sorcerers OP. This completely screws Magicka NBs. Where as now ambush, and surprise attack use weapon crit which is buffed by medium armor, come 1.6 they will need to ditch the medium armor grab a dress, and maybe even inner light

Erlex

That change needs to happen, and I dont think you can reasonably complain like you are with 1 month + till the patch even remotely has a chance to happen, and without full notes.

Yes that hurts crushing shock spam, so they need to update something else. That should be the point of this thread, not a rant on how useless you will be after 1 change out of 100 unknown.

Loneshard

Gyudan wrote: »

DKs right now:


Sorcerers right now:

---

DKs after update 6:


Sorcerers after update 6:



I love the game but this imbalance keeps getting worse.

HAHA nice one m8

astro74

Sir, i tried to verbally express the facto that sorc is underperforming but im starting to doubt that they can read.. How you illustrated with pictures is pure brilliant. Only thing is instead of typning sorcerer or dk under the pictures i would suggest taking an ingame screenshot of a sorcerer and a dk and use arrows to connect them with Your pics... Always try to make a post so easy to understand that even a dev can read it.

yodased

Ok guys this is putting the horse 40 feet in front of the cart and getting upset it isn't moving.

As it currently is, yes if they keep critical surge with weapon damage then you will not be able to get the same DPS you can get now, but that isn't to say that critical surge doesn't get changed to reflect the new systems.

They aren't THAT incompetent

MrGhosty

So just to be perfectly clear, you're using the post about how damage will scaled based on what attribute is used?

If I understand you correctly, you're looking at that statement and think they'll only adjust how the damage of the staff will change, but not update or tweak how critical surge will work?

If that's the case, then shame on them.

How I personally read it is that they're trying to demystify the systems the game uses to determine overall usage so that we as players don't require a million different add ons and hours of testing time just to get a vague idea of how things work. I can't imagine they wouldn't make sure things unify across all classes, this change could well mean a lot of changes in many builds out there but I wouldn't declare the sky is falling just yet.

MissBizz

They are making crit and damage make sense. It needed to happen and I am sure we will adjust, as well they will adjust abilities to help deal with this. It will come in time.

Aeratus

lol magicka is so old fashioned. just switch to stamina

rynth

isn't a little early to be getting all upset with an update when they haven't even really officially posted anything? I mean can you hold off getting out your doom/gloom signs and pitch forks? lol

Robocles

I'm more concerned about Update 6 being a nail... in my head.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

It wouldn't just screw sorcs. Right now, for example, a stamina player with good weapon damage can flick to a resto and get decent (not amazing but decent) heals from it. So a stamina NB can use healing ward pretty well for example. If it will scale off of spell damage that will nerf many NB stamina/hybrid builds into the ground.

Also... what would be the point of the weapon damage stat of staffs? There would be little point having anything above a level 1 staff if weapon damage played no part at all (set bonuses aside).

Qhival

Yes a dev did make that post on a thread that I posted some useful information in about weapon / spell crits

The only thing you can assume from that post is that anything that uses stamina will use weapon crit, and anything that uses magicka will use spell crit. You don't know what else they will be changing to support this massive change. If I had to guess, they will be changing the pool in which many moves use. You guys are whining without all the facts.

Loneshard

Qhival wrote: »

Yes a dev did make that post on a thread that I posted some useful information in about weapon / spell crits

The only thing you can assume from that post is that anything that uses stamina will use weapon crit, and anything that uses magicka will use spell crit. You don't know what else they will be changing to support this massive change. If I had to guess, they will be changing the pool in which many moves use. You guys are whining without all the facts.

That makes sense

Faulgor

We know a ton of abilities will change with update 6. Pesonally I hope Surge will also buff spell damage along weapon damage, but we'll have to wait and see for now.

Hypertionb14_ESO

yodased wrote: »

Ok guys this is putting the horse 40 feet in front of the cart and getting upset it isn't moving.

As it currently is, yes if they keep critical surge with weapon damage then you will not be able to get the same DPS you can get now, but that isn't to say that critical surge doesn't get changed to reflect the new systems.

They aren't THAT incompetent

*looks at current patch notes and failures*

yes they are...

Gyudan

Faulgor wrote: »

We know a ton of abilities will change with update 6. Pesonally I hope Surge will also buff spell damage along weapon damage, but we'll have to wait and see for now.

I hope so too but well ... I'd like to hear good news from time to time as well.

babylon

Faulgor wrote: »

We know a ton of abilities will change with update 6. Pesonally I hope Surge will also buff spell damage along weapon damage, but we'll have to wait and see for now.

It wouldn't make any sense if they didn't change it to buff spell damage.

spryler

So Molten Whip will work off of spell crit and spell damage now? My DK destro staff fire mage will be ecstatic!!

reften

A MMO is complete when everyone is complaining equally. We're getting there!

s7732425ub17_ESO

For a good example of how sorcerers work, watch the "Let's play" segment of ESO Live#5, the camera is filming a VR14 sorcerer inside Blackheart Haven.

You CANNOT use this as an argument. I watched the "Let's Play." I have to be quite honest- the employee who played the Sorcerer was absolutely terrible. Just looking at his skill bars, what abilities he used, and how he played it was quite apparent that he was, quite frankly, a "noob" sorcerer. This is not an overstatement, he was a very, very bad representation of what a sorcerer can do. After watching this, I realized that one of the person's responsible for making changes to the game I play is a very, very bad player. This scares the crap out of me, and it should you too.

Hoodster92_ESO

Expect what they say, and certain class abilities to completely change up before they release 1.6.

There are many things that would need to change to properly do what they want to do correctly, best thing people can do is get into the PTS and test things before they release anything.

khele23eb17_ESO

yodased wrote: »

Ok guys this is putting the horse 40 feet in front of the cart and getting upset it isn't moving.

As it currently is, yes if they keep critical surge with weapon damage then you will not be able to get the same DPS you can get now, but that isn't to say that critical surge doesn't get changed to reflect the new systems.

They aren't THAT incompetent

Youre entitled to an opinion of course but... thats not something Id bet any amount of money on.

The_Sadist

It might have already been said but...

How about changing surge + morphs from weapon damage to spell damage? I feel it might be borderline overpowered though given how useful it will become.

Robocles

Surge applied to weaps intentionally, would be my guess. But, hey, they are reinventing most of the game, anyway... 6 months in... that's refreshing, right?