Nice. You touch on various issues with the Sorcerer class, most importantly the lack of good damage potential. We have been told that there are changes to Sorcerers coming up though, so it will be interesting to see if it is worth the wait.
byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »
However, despite just under 30K magicaka, over 980 regeneration, Breton spell cost reduction, over 6% magicka cost reduction from Champion points and all vet 14 gear with Magicka on everything, not to mention 32 points in Magicka... I spent at least half of my fights with less than 20% magicka, and heard that damn clicky-noise telling me I was out of juice almost constantly.
I was using Vet 5 pots, Vet 5 food, and Mage Guild magicka regen. This is the first time this problem has raised it's ugly head since this game came out for me, so let's not have any ill-advised counter-arguments assuming that I don't know how to resource-manage in fights...
The root cause of the problem is this... with mobs and bosses having such large health pools, Sorcerers having inexplicably high magicka costs for their abilities (far higher than any other class for no reason anyone has ever bothered to explain to us), and the only fast magicaka-regen ability slaughtering our health pool, it seemed a choice all too often between spamming heavy staff attacks whilst out of magicka or having a trickle of magicka back and a greatkly increased chance of a quick death to some mob, boss or other due to self-harming. The last boss in Darkshade by way of illustration, hit me for a fast ranged attack for 23K in normal mode. No discernable animation, no red patch on the ground - just dead for having hit the regen key at the same instant it turned and fragged me.
Arbitrary to say the least...
Which reminds me - refashioning Light Armour out of tissue paper was a move designed to do what positive thing to the game precisely?... I'm so glad I spent Champion points to boost that up to no discernible effect whatsoever.
Then of course there's the loot. You have utterly thrown away any sensible progression curve with the drops.
Vet 12 non-set blues from bosses that Vet 14 legendary equipped characters had to work at to kill is just inexplicable. Well, maybe it is explicable, but I am yet to hear the logic behind it.
Perhaps you can enlighten me?
Why run the dungeons at all? We might as well solo Craglorn for chests if I want blue crafting upgrades. Then at least the monetary reward and repair bills might make financial sense.
Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!
You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!
I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.
It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!
Anyway - allow me to sum up.
1. Sorcerers abilities are unreasonably, uniquely and unworkably expensive and consequently magicka build sustain is a very serious problem indeed outside of 'free-dps' pets builds. These abilities need seriously reducing in cost and balancing with other class ability costs which are almost universally cheaper.
2. The balance between the significantly increased difficulty and reward in group dungeons and veteran dungeons especially is practically non-existent. There is simply no reason to do them as they stand currently, and they need a root-and-branch overhaul before 1.6 goes live.
3. Veteran dungeon difficulty has been raised too high. Attainable health and stamina or magicka resource scores do not adequately prepare characters for the damage they will take. At the end of the day you have a game full of people who will be put off by having their characters made significantly weaker post-patch and old challenges placed beyond their reach. If you think people really want to grind their way through the same dungeons that they used to run competently to the extent you seem to want to force them with 1.6, you have another thing coming. This is made even more likely due to the underpowered trash loot issue.
4. Gear falls apart in combat by design. You seriously need to consider reversing this cheap and cynical move if you wish to keep players good will.
I've heard it said that a lot of these changes are due to an overly PvP-centric point of view on behalf of the developers. I've watched interviews that clearly show this conceptual bias. Your words people... not mine... You have also made it clear you've talked to 'guilds', and by this I take it you mean top PvP and Trial guilds. That is to say - a small, small percentage of your players base.
They might be happy playing for significant hours per day, cookie-cutting their way to success with 'only this build allowed for class x' and 'install macros or don't bother to sign up' approaches to the top end challenges of the game. That's their thing (used to be mine, and still is to a point), and they engineer their approach to maximise their effectiveness.
This does not however mean you should take their perspective as the only valid one to cater to. One only needs to look at the climb-down on animation cancelling to see that at the moment, it seems you are shifting the goalposts in game difficulty to suit top end players and not the majority of your player base, many of whom signed up with the promise of 'play the way you want to lay' ringing in their TESO-tuned ears.
I've already had a number of friends leave the game because they aren't as semi-hardcore as I am. They didn't feel the game catered for them.
They have recently been back on our guild Facebook page looking to come back. They aren't encouraged by any of the game forums, the interviews or my feedback thus-far on this game changing patch.
Personally I'd like to see them back.
Throw me a bone here would you?
Artemiisia wrote: »u guys might as well give up on getting more boost to sorcs, with the saturday small patch to PTS, its bound to be released on live this upcoming week. They aint planning anymore skill changes and boosts/nerfs. Only small tweaks and fixes.
Sorcs are dead
byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »
However, despite just under 30K magicaka, over 980 regeneration, Breton spell cost reduction, over 6% magicka cost reduction from Champion points and all vet 14 gear with Magicka on everything, not to mention 32 points in Magicka... I spent at least half of my fights with less than 20% magicka, and heard that damn clicky-noise telling me I was out of juice almost constantly.
I was using Vet 5 pots, Vet 5 food, and Mage Guild magicka regen. This is the first time this problem has raised it's ugly head since this game came out for me, so let's not have any ill-advised counter-arguments assuming that I don't know how to resource-manage in fights...
The root cause of the problem is this... with mobs and bosses having such large health pools, Sorcerers having inexplicably high magicka costs for their abilities (far higher than any other class for no reason anyone has ever bothered to explain to us), and the only fast magicaka-regen ability slaughtering our health pool, it seemed a choice all too often between spamming heavy staff attacks whilst out of magicka or having a trickle of magicka back and a greatkly increased chance of a quick death to some mob, boss or other due to self-harming. The last boss in Darkshade by way of illustration, hit me for a fast ranged attack for 23K in normal mode. No discernable animation, no red patch on the ground - just dead for having hit the regen key at the same instant it turned and fragged me.
Arbitrary to say the least...
Which reminds me - refashioning Light Armour out of tissue paper was a move designed to do what positive thing to the game precisely?... I'm so glad I spent Champion points to boost that up to no discernible effect whatsoever.
Then of course there's the loot. You have utterly thrown away any sensible progression curve with the drops.
Vet 12 non-set blues from bosses that Vet 14 legendary equipped characters had to work at to kill is just inexplicable. Well, maybe it is explicable, but I am yet to hear the logic behind it.
Perhaps you can enlighten me?
Why run the dungeons at all? We might as well solo Craglorn for chests if I want blue crafting upgrades. Then at least the monetary reward and repair bills might make financial sense.
Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!
You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!
I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.
It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!
Anyway - allow me to sum up.
1. Sorcerers abilities are unreasonably, uniquely and unworkably expensive and consequently magicka build sustain is a very serious problem indeed outside of 'free-dps' pets builds. These abilities need seriously reducing in cost and balancing with other class ability costs which are almost universally cheaper.
2. The balance between the significantly increased difficulty and reward in group dungeons and veteran dungeons especially is practically non-existent. There is simply no reason to do them as they stand currently, and they need a root-and-branch overhaul before 1.6 goes live.
3. Veteran dungeon difficulty has been raised too high. Attainable health and stamina or magicka resource scores do not adequately prepare characters for the damage they will take. At the end of the day you have a game full of people who will be put off by having their characters made significantly weaker post-patch and old challenges placed beyond their reach. If you think people really want to grind their way through the same dungeons that they used to run competently to the extent you seem to want to force them with 1.6, you have another thing coming. This is made even more likely due to the underpowered trash loot issue.
4. Gear falls apart in combat by design. You seriously need to consider reversing this cheap and cynical move if you wish to keep players good will.
I've heard it said that a lot of these changes are due to an overly PvP-centric point of view on behalf of the developers. I've watched interviews that clearly show this conceptual bias. Your words people... not mine... You have also made it clear you've talked to 'guilds', and by this I take it you mean top PvP and Trial guilds. That is to say - a small, small percentage of your players base.
They might be happy playing for significant hours per day, cookie-cutting their way to success with 'only this build allowed for class x' and 'install macros or don't bother to sign up' approaches to the top end challenges of the game. That's their thing (used to be mine, and still is to a point), and they engineer their approach to maximise their effectiveness.
This does not however mean you should take their perspective as the only valid one to cater to. One only needs to look at the climb-down on animation cancelling to see that at the moment, it seems you are shifting the goalposts in game difficulty to suit top end players and not the majority of your player base, many of whom signed up with the promise of 'play the way you want to lay' ringing in their TESO-tuned ears.
I've already had a number of friends leave the game because they aren't as semi-hardcore as I am. They didn't feel the game catered for them.
They have recently been back on our guild Facebook page looking to come back. They aren't encouraged by any of the game forums, the interviews or my feedback thus-far on this game changing patch.
Personally I'd like to see them back.
Throw me a bone here would you?
980 magicka regen is very low for a full magicka sorc build. I'm around 1350-1450 magicka regen with Warlock and Seducer no jewelry glyphs or cp into magicka regen. I'm full magicka and this works fine for me and I'm in PvP 99% of the time which dare I say tests your resources much more than PvE.
Sallington wrote: »Anything useful that players are wanting added into the game all fall under the category of "Yer ruinin my 'mersion!"
Interesting post @byrom101b16_ESO, I agree with most of the points you made.
I have to disagree on what you said about Zenimax consulting Guilds though and yes, I disagree because I am in one of the guilds they consulted with. Large guilds represent a considerable portion of the player base, the Dominion Guard alone has over 600 active members interested both in PvP and PvE, our imput is valuable and filtered from complains, suggestions and concerns of all our guildies.
Because we filter those concerns and organize them into documents, it makes a lot easier to get our point across to Zenimax and a lot easier for them to gather important data. Easier at least than combing through thousands of Forum posts every day. That said, I understand how you may feel excluded or unable to voice your opinions because you are not in one of the guilds they chose to speak to. All I can say to that is, ask your guild masters to try reaching out for that contact, ZoS is looking for input (how much of that input reverts into changes to the game, none of us really know).
@byrom101b16_ESO that's a joke right? Repair costs being that expensive? Is this just happening with Light armor or are other people in different types feeling the pinch?
Also very post, I think you hit the nail on the head quite well. The design team has not only dropped the ball on Sorcerers but kicked it into their faces. They really need to get their act together before they release this patch because Liquid Lighting is a complete and utter insult.
They're probably hoping higher repair bills encourage buying crown repair kits or subs.
OneEyedKing wrote: »Maybe enlightened XP is incorrectly damaging armor at a higher rate.
byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!
You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!
I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.
It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!
madangrypally wrote: »byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!
You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!
I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.
It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!
A few things that is likely happening.
1: ZoS increased normal degradation by 5-10% because they added Champion Passive Merchant Favor. Its possible that this change is bugged and causing much higher increased degradation then intended. We all know how fallible ZoS is.
2: Enlightenment may be causing gear to degrade 4 times faster then intended. This would be considered a bug IMO and the mechanic behind the degradation in general.
I do not think ZoS will intentionally increase degradation by 400%. ZoS is known for buggy updates and a buggy game in general. This is likely one to add to the long list of poor design.
Sallington wrote: »Anything useful that players are wanting added into the game all fall under the category of "Yer ruinin my 'mersion!"
if you are running a build with literally no regen and reduction, why are you surprised your out of resources ? rock that ele drain + mix in shock heavies if you want to regen and run no regen.
OneEyedKing wrote: »Maybe enlightened XP is incorrectly damaging armor at a higher rate.
That makes a lot of sense.