Power Surge vs Structured Entropy 1.6.3 - detailed comparison for magicka users

Gyudan

Power Surge

• Grants Major Brutality (+20% weapon damage) and Major Sorcery buff (+20% spell damage) for 23 seconds.
• Critical Strikes heal for 40% of the damage done.
• Increases spell damage by 2% while slotted (expert mage).
• Hidden cooldown of 0.25 seconds between each heal.

Advantages:
- longer duration (60% longer)
- large amount of healing done
- doesn't require a target


Structured Entropy

• Grants Major Sorcery buff (+20% spell damage) for 14.4 seconds. That buff affects your character and is not linked to the enemy you targeted. If the target dies, both buffs remain active.
• Adds a damage over time effect for the duration, also restoring a small amount of health both instantly and after 6 seconds.
• Increases max health by 8% while slotted.
• Increases max magicka and magicka recovery by 2% while slotted (magicka controller).
• 100% chance on cast to grant Empower, increasing the damage of the next attack by 20% (might of the guild).

Advantages:
- DoT effect that can proc specific sets like Valkyn Skoria, in addition to doing some damage
- better passive, 2% max magicka and magicka recovery will beat 2% spell damage every time
- 20% increased damage to the next attack is a huge advantage in any rotation
- 8% max health makes min/maxing stats much easier, allowing a larger magicka vs smaller base health pool for more damage
- available to all classes
- extremely cheap

Cost comparison of both abilities
- Base cost: Entropy is 3.33 times cheaper
- With only class/guild passives and any type of armor, Entropy is 3.86 times cheaper.
- With additional light armor passives (7 pieces) and 20 CPs in Magician (6% cost reduction), Entropy is 4.01 times cheaper.
- With 3 additional cost reduction rings, Entropy is 6.33 times cheaper.
- With the Worm Cult set (10% cost reduction when solo), Entropy is 6.51 times cheaper.



CONCLUSION
- Entropy is definitely the top choice for endgame PVE. The reduced cost along with a DoT make it much more valuable than Surge.
- Power Surge is a class-specific ability. It makes no sense that sorcerers have to pick an ability from a guild tree instead of one their own because of a power gap.
- The only use left for Power Surge is AOE fights in solo PVE or PVP, where players can't rely on an effective healer.
- According to the tests below, Entropy is stronger than Surge for AOE fights as well. The .25 seconds hidden cooldown reduces heals by a large amount when using DoT abilities.
- Entropy is stronger in PVP duels with the 20% extra damage on next attack and the reduced cost.

Suggestions
- Increase the cost of Entropy to be equivalent to Surge and/or reduce the duration.
- For Surge, having both spell and weapon damage increase is useless for casters, please get rid of the latter. Stamina users already have the other morph.
- Give Surge an additional effect, maybe something similar to "Empower" or additional lightning damage on light/heavy attacks or increased damage to sorcerer lightning attacks while active.
- Don't let this go live.

kewl

Thank you and well done! Hypothesis with supporting evidence. You deserve +5 bacon.

Flaminir

An extremely well laid out & worded post @Gyudan I still remember when ZoS turned around & said they wanted Surge to remain the corner stone of our builds <sigh> Now its pretty much just another dead skill..... niche at best.

Saint_JiubB14_ESO

Gyudan wrote: »

Power Surge

- The only use left for Power Surge is AOE fights in solo PVE or PVP, where players can't rely on an effective healer.

Unless there was an undocumented change Surge had no real advantage in AoE fights because it has a .25 sec cooldown on the heal (never been in the tooltip). So it will never trigger a heal for more than 1 hit enemy. You will get some healing, but with the extremely low cost and the fact Entropy gives additional utility, you would still be likely better off using Entropy(but maybe the Degeneration morph for the HoT and Weapon heal). If the cooldown were removed, then Surge would be great in AoE fights, even with the higher cost.

Frcyr

Surge doesn't help in AoE fight with all these changes. You will get close to no healing, because of the cooldown.

Gyudan

Saint_JiubB14_ESO wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

Power Surge

- The only use left for Power Surge is AOE fights in solo PVE or PVP, where players can't rely on an effective healer.

Unless there was an undocumented change Surge had no real advantage in AoE fights because it has a .25 sec cooldown on the heal (never been in the tooltip). So it will never trigger a heal for more than 1 hit enemy. You will get some healing, but with the extremely low cost and the fact Entropy gives additional utility, you would still be likely better off using Entropy(but maybe the Degeneration morph for the HoT and Weapon heal). If the cooldown were removed, then Surge would be great in AoE fights, even with the higher cost.

I forgot about the hidden cooldown and will add info about it in the OP.

In order to figure it out more clearly, I'm doing some testing on AOE fights with surge in Spellscar.

For this first test I used only Lightning AOE (Pulsar) that doesn't trigger DoTs. I'll be doing more tests with fire AOE and lightning splash to add DoTs.

With my sorcerer, 34% crit (with inner light), 2K spell damage (unbuffed), 26.5K magicka (missing a few passives, 0 champion points, etc.)

Here are the FTC reports:

The effective critical chance is consistantly lower than the 34% displayed in character page.
I tested about 20 groups and never reached higher than 32%, with an average crit chance of 20%. Either something is wrong with FTC or crits are not working properly.

Based on the reports above I checked the amount of healing done vs expected healing based on the crit from the FTC report and the values are consistent with the tooltip so far.
(expected healing = damage done from pulsar * crit chance * 40%)

Merlin13KAGL

You've put much love into this.

The short(er) version right now is that Power Surge is imbalanced:

• One morph should provide Spell Damage
• One morph should provide Weapon Damage
• Choose your morph, choose your increase.

In the present setup, there is no reason to use Crit Surge at all vs Power Surge (if you're going to use surge, that is)

There is almost no reason to morph. (Base skill still gives 40% crit damage healing.)

Any of the forms have the overall effect of lessening the benefit of DoT's.

They may hit a bit harder, but the lesser heals of a Crit Dot vs a Single larger damage effect (whether single target or AoE ~ think multiple-single-target) makes DoT's less favored if you're expecting to get heals.

Favor Dot's less, residual damage goes down.

They either need to find a reasonable medium for Surge or they need to replace it with a proper class heal.

Unless they are very creative ("Recharge"), such a heal will likewise not really fit in any of the three class lines.

Gyudan

2nd test: Fire Staff using only Pulsar
The crit chance is 7% higher since I only had a precise staff available. Sorry for that. 41% crit chance according to the character page.

FTC reports:

The effective and expected healing are very close.
Crit chance is still bugged. 41% on character page and it's much lower in the reports.

3rd test: Fire Pulsar + Liquid Lightning

FTC reports:

Total damage = Pulsar + Liquid Lightning
Average crit = (Pulsar dmg * Pulsar crit + LL dmg * LL crit) / (Pulsar dmg + LL dmg)

BOOM. Healing received is much lower than expected. The effect of the 0.25s starts to be visible with only one DoT.
The effective healing averages 67% of the expected amount. I'm afraid to check further and see how bad it becomes ...
Crit chance is still bugged. You can notice the difference between Pulsar and Liquid Lightning on the reports.

DeLindsay

Gyudan wrote: »

Suggestions
- Increase the cost of Entropy to be equivalent to Surge and/or reduce the duration.

You had me until that comment. ZoS needs to STOP nerfing crap and instead balance them. The only logical solution to that endeavor is to reduce the cost of Surge to be equal with Entropy instead of making Entropy cost more. Or even reduce the cost of Surge to be ~1.3x that of Entropy since it has a much longer duration, therefore still making it equal. I understand that Sorcs are furious with much of the changes in 1.6+ but that doesn't mean you should take it out on the other 3 Classes (and other Sorcs using Entropy instead of Surge) by getting ZoS to dramatically increase Entropy's cost. That's like saying "well if I can't have it neither can you".

That said, if Entropy is the clear winner against Surge for Magicka Sorcs then why wouldn't you just use Entropy?

Gyudan

DeLindsay wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

Suggestions
- Increase the cost of Entropy to be equivalent to Surge and/or reduce the duration.

You had me until that comment. ZoS needs to STOP nerfing crap and instead balance them. The only logical solution to that endeavor is to reduce the cost of Surge to be equal with Entropy instead of making Entropy cost more. Or even reduce the cost of Surge to be ~1.3x that of Entropy since it has a much longer duration, therefore still making it equal. I understand that Sorcs are furious with much of the changes in 1.6+ but that doesn't mean you should take it out on the other 3 Classes (and other Sorcs using Entropy instead of Surge) by getting ZoS to dramatically increase Entropy's cost. That's like saying "well if I can't have it neither can you".

That said, if Entropy is the clear winner against Surge for Magicka Sorcs then why wouldn't you just use Entropy?

1.5

1.6


It's fairly obvious that Entropy got a huge buff in update 6, while Surge was nerfed.
Would you be happier if Entropy lost the Major Sorcery buff altogether and came back to its 1.5 utility @DeLindsay ?

If Entropy is meant to become the only skill to buff spell damage for all classes, then Surge should be removed from the Sorcerer's skills and replaced with another ability.


Since I can't send feedback on the PTS (bugged atm), I'm just going to assume that Staves now use Weapon Critical to determine crit chance, while class magicka abilities still use spell critical.

@ZOS_GinaBruno: please forward these results along with my disappointment to Eric Wrobel and the combat team.

DeLindsay

Gyudan wrote: »

It's fairly obvious that Entropy got a huge buff in update 6, while Surge was nerfed.
Would you be happier if Entropy lost the Major Sorcery buff altogether and came back to its 1.5 utility @DeLindsay ?

If Entropy is meant to become the only skill to buff spell damage for all classes, then Surge should be removed from the Sorcerer's skills and replaced with another ability.

No I'd be happy if ZoS stopped nerfing things. If ZoS ends up changing Surge to something else so be it, but that doesn't in any way mean they should nerf Entropy just to satisfy those who are unhappy with the Surge changes. As I said, Entropy effects all 4 Classes but Surge only effects Sorcs, therefore ZoS should balance Surge around Entropy (if it's even their master plan for the 2 abilities to be similar in scope) not the other way around.

Also, where is the "huge buff" you speak of for Entropy, even in the 2 pics you list Entropy only received the SD Buff, that's it. You do understand that not all abilities in the game went up by a factor of 10 in cost and damage right? Maybe the entire point of Entropy having a low cost is for it to be the main resource for gaining the SD buff.

Gyudan

DeLindsay wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

It's fairly obvious that Entropy got a huge buff in update 6, while Surge was nerfed.
Would you be happier if Entropy lost the Major Sorcery buff altogether and came back to its 1.5 utility @DeLindsay ?

If Entropy is meant to become the only skill to buff spell damage for all classes, then Surge should be removed from the Sorcerer's skills and replaced with another ability.

No I'd be happy if ZoS stopped nerfing things. If ZoS ends up changing Surge to something else so be it, but that doesn't in any way mean they should nerf Entropy just to satisfy those who are unhappy with the Surge changes. As I said, Entropy effects all 4 Classes but Surge only effects Sorcs, therefore ZoS should balance Surge around Entropy (if it's even their master plan for the 2 abilities to be similar in scope) not the other way around.

Also, where is the "huge buff" you speak of for Entropy, even in the 2 pics you list Entropy only received the SD Buff, that's it. You do understand that not all abilities in the game went up by a factor of 10 in cost and damage right? Maybe the entire point of Entropy having a low cost is for it to be the main resource for gaining the SD buff.

Removing the Major Sorcery buff wouldn't be a nerf compared to the update 5 version. It would be keeping Entropy in the exact same situation as it was prior to update 6. Before that change, I don't remember anyone asking for Entropy to increase spell damage or anyone complaining about the skill at all. It just got a huge buff and all non-sorcerers now feel entitled to that 20% increase for some reason.
ESO has been online for 10 months and Entropy never gave any amount of spell damage on Live.

DeLindsay

Gyudan wrote: »

Removing the Major Sorcery buff wouldn't be a nerf compared to the update 5 version. It would be keeping Entropy in the exact same situation as it was prior to update 6. Before that change, I don't remember anyone asking for Entropy to increase spell damage or anyone complaining about the skill at all. It just got a huge buff and all non-sorcerers now feel entitled to that 20% increase for some reason.
ESO has been online for 10 months and Entropy never gave any amount of spell damage on Live.

And? It's part of 1.6's changed mechanics to Major and Minor buffs. All kinds of abilities and Passives got changed in 1.6 to add Major and Minor buffs of this or that effect. ZoS had to put it somewhere and they happened to choose Entropy. Once again, you have no valid argument as to why ZoS should nerf Entroy (by vastly increasing it's cost, reducing it's duration, and/or removing Major Sorcery from it altogether). The only validity this post brings is that ZoS should still look at Surge either by further tweaking how it works or changing it entirely. You did a great write up but the whole thing just reeks of "I'm unhappy so everyone else should be unhappy too".

Dimillian

The only thing ZOS need to do is remove the cooldown on surge. Then everyone will be a happy panda again.

Gyudan

DeLindsay wrote: »

All kinds of abilities and Passives got changed in 1.6 to add Major and Minor buffs of this or that effect. ZoS had to put it somewhere and they happened to choose Entropy.

My point is ZoS didn't have have to put it at all.
Prior to update 6, only sorcerers had an ability to buff their damage output on staves and even then, they were still falling behind in DPS compared to other classes.
In update 6 everyone gets the ability to buff that damage output with Entropy, meaning sorcerers lost their one advantage while not getting a significant buff to their own class abilities.

DeLindsay

Gyudan wrote: »

DeLindsay wrote: »

All kinds of abilities and Passives got changed in 1.6 to add Major and Minor buffs of this or that effect. ZoS had to put it somewhere and they happened to choose Entropy.

My point is ZoS didn't have have to put it at all.
Prior to update 6, only sorcerers had an ability to buff their damage output on staves and even then, they were still falling behind in DPS compared to other classes.
In update 6 everyone gets the ability to buff that damage output with Entropy, meaning sorcerers lost their one advantage while not getting a significant buff to their own class abilities.

Ok so now we get to the meat and potatoes of it. You ARE saying that you're unhappy that the 3 non-Sorc Classes get a Spell Damage buff that you think should be exclusive to Sorcs and that's why you want Entropy to be nerfed, got it. I'm sorry to tell you this but ZoS's new direction in 1.6 is that ALL Classes have access to just about ALL effects, one way or another. I may not be a fan of this as it's one step closer to homogenization of the Classes but I also don't think there should've ever been locked Classes to begin with. So now that you have shown your true intentions how about we look at ways for ZoS to further tweak/change Surge to make Sorcs happy with it versus calling for unwarranted nerfs?

Dimillian wrote: »

The only thing ZOS need to do is remove the cooldown on surge. Then everyone will be a happy panda again.

^ Is certainly one valid idea. The concept that Surge only works on ONE target in AOE due to the ICD is just stupid and needs to be reverted back to it's original design. Also, maybe ZoS could toss Minor Sorcery onto Surge which would then give Sorcs a distinct advantage over the other 3 Classes if they chose to use Surge over Entropy. BTW, ~3100 Magicka over 23 seconds is literally nothing. Your Magicka regen alone will return that cost in ~10 seconds.

Erlex

I believe that significantly increasing the duration of surge may do well to increase its viability. With the new buff system you can't make its effect better, but you could make it last longer. Buffing the healing from critical surge would also just make it unbalanced again.

Gyudan

DeLindsay wrote: »

I'm sorry to tell you this but ZoS's new direction in 1.6 is that ALL Classes have access to just about ALL effects

ALL effects including Major Mending (DK only) and Major Berserk (NB only) ?

PS: Major Berserk is also available to players who activate Sorcerer's Storm Atronach's synergy. Of course that synergy is not available to the sorcerer himself, which is a tiny bit ironic.

Dracane

Gyudan wrote: »

- Give Surge an additional effect, maybe something similar to "Empower" or additional lightning damage on light/heavy attacks or increased damage to sorcerer lightning attacks while active.

This, just this. I have suggested this so many times.
Simply give it a buff, that deals additional lightning damage to each attack, so that it is equal with the DoT and damage output of Entropy.

You use Surge and Entropy, because you're looking for damage and Entropy does far more damage. It can increase your DPS by over 1000 if it crits, this is insane. The cost gap between entropy and surge is huge. But the damage, this is the main problem, cost is a minor problem in my opinion Surge is in the stormcalling tree. It makes sense, to let it do shock damage. This is the best suggestion to surge ever

CP5

Dracane wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

- Give Surge an additional effect, maybe something similar to "Empower" or additional lightning damage on light/heavy attacks or increased damage to sorcerer lightning attacks while active.

This, just this. I have suggested this so many times.
Simply give it a buff, that deals additional lightning damage to each attack, so that it is equal with the DoT and damage output of Entropy.

You use Surge and Entropy, because you're looking for damage and Entropy does far more damage. It can increase your DPS by over 1000 if it crits, this is insane. The cost gap between entropy and surge is huge. But the damage, this is the main problem, cost is a minor problem in my opinion Surge is in the stormcalling tree. It makes sense, to let it do shock damage. This is the best suggestion to surge ever

So long as the added damage doesn't eat up all of surges heals this has been my favorite suggestion for surge).

Dracane

CP5 wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

- Give Surge an additional effect, maybe something similar to "Empower" or additional lightning damage on light/heavy attacks or increased damage to sorcerer lightning attacks while active.

This, just this. I have suggested this so many times.
Simply give it a buff, that deals additional lightning damage to each attack, so that it is equal with the DoT and damage output of Entropy.

You use Surge and Entropy, because you're looking for damage and Entropy does far more damage. It can increase your DPS by over 1000 if it crits, this is insane. The cost gap between entropy and surge is huge. But the damage, this is the main problem, cost is a minor problem in my opinion Surge is in the stormcalling tree. It makes sense, to let it do shock damage. This is the best suggestion to surge ever

So long as the added damage doesn't eat up all of surges heals this has been my favorite suggestion for surge).

Hopefully not. To be honest, I am not interested in the Surge heal. I was always using Power Surge in 1.5, because I prefer longer duration. The heal never seemed very usefull to me (but that's only my opinion, I never needed the heal, I prefer direct heals)

I really really wish, they consider this idea. It makes sense and would make Surge more meaningful. But I fear, they would lower the cost of Surge and think it's fine. 1.6.4 is the last hope my friends. (love love love, kisses kisses kisses to you)

Folkb

I can pull three spawns of mobs in spellscar with surge up and end with full HP. I can't say the same with entropy.

Dimillian

Folkd wrote: »

I can pull three spawns of mobs in spellscar with surge up and end with full HP. I can't say the same with entropy.

You can still do that in 1.6 ? Because as per my test you can only get 1 heal every 0.25sec only 1 mob, so totally useless in 1.6

Gyudan

Dimillian wrote: »

Folkd wrote: »

I can pull three spawns of mobs in spellscar with surge up and end with full HP. I can't say the same with entropy.

You can still do that in 1.6 ? Because as per my test you can only get 1 heal every 0.25sec only 1 mob, so totally useless in 1.6

Heals seem to work when doing damage on more than one target at the same time, otherwise there would be a much larger difference between healing expected and actually done on the graphs above.
The issue with the 0.25 cooldown cooldown is when you have more than 1 ability going on at the same time. For example when your liquid lightning ticks every 0.5 seconds and you're also spamming pulsar, half your pulsars will be under 0.25 seconds after a tick, granting no healing. The other half will be cast between 0.25 and 0.50 seconds but will prevent the next tick of liquid lightning from granting heals.

Vahrokh

Dracane wrote: »

I really really wish, they consider this idea. It makes sense and would make Surge more meaningful. But I fear, they would lower the cost of Surge and think it's fine. 1.6.4 is the last hope my friends. (love love love, kisses kisses kisses to you)

ZoS has an irrational and extremely headstrong hate for sorcs. They took away what they could, made non sorcs better than sorcs at their own job.

You have a last hope... I would not be surprised if they changed Entropy to be available only to non sorc classes instead.

Joy_Division

Folkd wrote: »

I can pull three spawns of mobs in spellscar with surge up and end with full HP. I can't say the same with entropy.

OK, we really need to stop looking at the sorcerer from corner-cases. That is why the class sucks right now.

We sorcerers who are complaining KNOW:

• in a 1.6 PvP duel situation, sorcerers are strong because of burst damage and good shields.
• in 1.5 PvP in general, sorcerers are highly valued because of their negate skill
• in 1.6 PvE a pet build does seem like it can pull DPS
• in 1.6 solo PvE, surge is going to trump entropy because it can be cast before the fight and will proc its heal more often.

We are complaining because:

• Most of us do not duel
• It is not 1.5 anymore
• We don't want to be reliant on pets
• We want to be invited to SO raids, not just complete overland PvE content

When fighting the Mantikora in Sanctum, Entropy is going to be the clear choice for the reasons the OP and others have already laid out. A class skill dedicated to a function should *never* be inferior to a generic skill available to everyone because then it is literally wasting one of the only 15 options we have to make our class favorable, fun, flexible, and formidable. The sorcerer has 2 losers alone competing against the Mage's Guild (Spell Symmetry trumps Dark Exchange 90% of the time) which really hurts the class because now DKs, Templars, and NBs can also access what were ostensibly sorcerer only options.

DeLindsay

Joy_Division wrote: »

A class skill dedicated to a function should *never* be inferior to a generic skill available to everyone because then it is literally wasting one of the only 15 options we have to make our class favorable, fun, flexible, and formidable.

Crushing Shock is superior to all Class ST damage abilities for Magicka based DPS. Nb's Funnel Health can come close but CS still beats it by a little and due to CS's 3x hit per cast it's more Magicka efficient than Funnel Health when using Elemental Drain.

There are many abilities that all Classes have available to them that are superior to their own Class ability, at least in some way. Trying to make the argument that it should be Class > all else is silly. Also I gotta disagree on the SS comparison. As a NB I'd kill to have Dark Exchange instead of having to use SS.

Joy_Division

DeLindsay wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

A class skill dedicated to a function should *never* be inferior to a generic skill available to everyone because then it is literally wasting one of the only 15 options we have to make our class favorable, fun, flexible, and formidable.

Crushing Shock is superior to all Class ST damage abilities for Magicka based DPS. Nb's Funnel Health can come close but CS still beats it by a little and due to CS's 3x hit per cast it's more Magicka efficient than Funnel Health when using Elemental Drain.

There are many abilities that all Classes have available to them that are superior to their own Class ability, at least in some way. Trying to make the argument that it should be Class > all else is silly. Also I gotta disagree on the SS comparison. As a NB I'd kill to have Dark Exchange instead of having to use SS.

I wouldn't say a weapon skill is generic since when a person chooses a weapon they are in essence defining their character. Weapon skills must be competitive with class skills otherwise said weapon is pointless.

And it's not silly. Dark Exchange was originally designed to give the sorcerer magicka back at the press of a button at any time (providing she had stamina of course). *None* of the other classes had an ability like that. Templars originally got a small amount through a passive (since gone and not replaced). DKs got theirs back but was dependent on dropping ultimates. NBs could slot a passive on and get predictable (albeit small) stream back. In one of those preview videos, the developers specifically cited dark exchange as potentially decisive when bringing down a dolmen.

But with spell symmetry, now *all* classes have the capability of getting their magicka back at the press of a button at any time (provided they have health of course). What was once the exclusive ability of sorcerers is now available to everyone ... which makes the Dark Exchange ability redundant.

What is worse, Dark Exchange was (and is) an inferior option in most cases for mana-using sorcs. It doesn't matter why you think your NB would like to have Dark Exchange because that inefficient DPS losing skill is taking up valuable space in the sorcerer line. Using Dark Exchange means you are doing nothing for 4 seconds or so and in the process consume a resource that is difficult to get back. That's 4 seconds of zero DPS. Using Spell Symmetry, I can cancel the animation, even weave in an light attack, and my group healer can easily circumvent the alleged cost for using the skill - all of this makes Spell Symmetry a more flexible and superior option that Dark Exchange in group content and certainly from a DPS perspective. Ironically, the only times I have found Dark Exchange preferable was in a *Healing* situation where a steady stream of damage was incoming; 3 fights: Last boss on normal DSA during the fire phase, Last boss in fungal Grotto during her purple beam phase, Lich boss in Wayrest Sewers during its draining beam phases.

When you watch those videos uploaded in Autumn, when people were just beginning to recognize the Sorcerer was a relatively poor performer, against the game's most difficult content, you see most Sorcerers using Spell Symmetry and not their own class skill. How is this *not* a problem? It means that sorcerers have 14 class skills to choose from instead of 15. It means a built in game mechanic designed to benefit the sorcerer now benefits everyone.

Edit: someone is bound to point out that precisely because Dark Exchange heals, that is it's advantage over Spell Symmetry. To that I would argue that simply makes Dark Exchange a niche performer (like the sorcerer itself). In the fantasy world where a sorcerer is asked to DPS in a Sanctum Raid, their job is to DPS - not heal themselves. A whole raid is more than the sum of its parts. Since healers can quickly and easily get a Spell Symmetry user back to DPSing, a competitive raid leader will want a sorcerer using Spell Symmetry. So a sorc that slots Dark Exchange instead of Spell Symmetry is hurting the group. The same logic extends to 4 person raids. The people who are complaining about sustained sorcerer DPS are referring to end-game raid content. It does not help when their own class skill devoted to resource recovery is actually counter-productive.

DeLindsay

Hasn't SS been there since day 1? I know for a fact it's been there for a long, long time but I can't recall if it was there at launch. If it was there then your entire line that Dark Exchange was unique to Sorc only and no other Class had anything like it is off-topic. Also, in 1.6.3 Dark Exchange can be toggled off so you're not stuck for 4 seconds doing nothing (a valid point to bring up).

And I rarely use SS as a NB Healer, but I was just making the point that on my Sorc I love it compared to SS, and I'd love to have it on my NB to use instead of SS.

Dyride

No need to buff healing, all it needs is a cost reduction to put it relative to Entropy (2x Entropy cost) plus cap the total number of procs to three per second (3/sec).

As @Gyudan has demonstrated using hard data, effectiveness drastically reduces with DoTs rolling. (Thanks so much for bringing the numbers to this arguement.)

That is just a rough suggestion that would allow you to heal from 1 main damage skill plus 2 DoTs or 3 hits from a AOE attack.

Using this mechanic wouldn't put Sorcs back to thrashing multiple Craglorn packs because your heals would max at 3x(0.4x(1.5xDMG)) per second for power surge and (3x(0.6x(1.5xDMG))) per sec for Critical Surge.


@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno please pass this on to the Combat team.

Gyudan

4th test: Fire Ring + Fire Clench + Liquid Lightning

FTC reports:

I switched to Destructive Ring and added Destructive Clench to the mix, hoping to get crits from the DoT effects, but apparently neither of those DoTs can do critical damage, or at least they don't count towards Power Surge. I don't know if that was already the case in update 5.
The results are very similar to the previous test, with 32% of the healing lost due to the 0.25 seconds cooldown.

5th test: Fire Ring + Liquid Lightning with higher crit

FTC reports:

I switched to gear more oriented towards spell critical (close to 1.5 stuff), reaching 51.2% instead of 41%.
The results show a healing loss of 50% because of the 0.25 seconds cooldown.

@DeLindsay @Joy_Division: please stay on topic, which is Surge vs Entropy and not the entire list of issues with the Sorcerer class.