Can we do this instead?

1. Assuming pure Sorc's even exist anymore with subclassing, why are we making Hardened Ward Sorc's gambling on their most important defensive tool when they need it most at low health? Without a defensive hot or purge, what are the odds that a Sorc meets 3 conditions of requiring full hp, casting a Dark Magic skill, and having that still be active by the time they need it 10s later?
2. NB's Assassination line gives Minor Savagery and 10% crit damage in 1 passive.
3. DK's Earthen Heart line gives Minor Brutality and 3 ult gen every 6s in 1 passive.
4. When we initially read the teaser, no one was complaining it would of been overpowered so why are we adding conditions to a necessary buff in the line as if it would of been? What exactly does this solve other than being unfun to engage with?
5. While Dark Magic and Daedric Summoning needed improvements, no one thought you would shift the power from a weak line to another weak line. Why can't we just improve both at the same time? Why are we knocking 1 down to prop the other up?

I appreciate the passive power of Bound Armor being hybridized and shifted into a passive which keeps the overall power budget of Sorcerer the same, while opening up opportunities for more diverse builds, in theory this was a great balancing decision...

However, shifting it from Daedric Summoning to Dark Magic is a mistake that further seperates Sorc's lines, forcing an identity crisis by either forcing all 3 lines or 1 where you avoid the idea entirely.

Surge asks the player to crit, so you need to take Dark Magic and Daedric Summoning for the Major/MInor Prophecy buffs. Hardened Ward asks the player to stack mag, so you need to take Dark Magic now, and Storm Calling so all your class skills actually provide something for being slotted.

My suggestion in this post is to fix the issue the new change caused, but in the future, I hope you find a way to give Dark Magic something more unique, then shift this same Max Magicka/Stamina power BACK to Daedric Summoning where it belongs.

Gaelethon wrote: »

Do you have the Battle Mastery champion point, which would increase application of Sundered by 60%?

This is from live. Ignore the +30% on combat metrix, I had the Magical CP on which messed with the add-on somehow, but Martial CP was removed, so +0% is in effect.

This shows Bound Armaments on live is treated as "single target dot" for status effect chance at 3% instead of 10% like Rapid Strikes... for reasons... despite scaling with single target + direct damage buffs from sets/cp.

So.. TLDR, they most likely gave the skill x5 status effect chance, going from 3% to 15%.

I don't know how I feel about this because it shouldn't be 3% to begin with, it's created a perspective for them that they've buffed it by 5x when in reality it's more like 1.5x. Take for example Force Pulse, it does 10% for each of the 3 hits, all different elements, both treated as single target + direct, the skill is strong, but it's never been considered OP to have that 10% x 3, why would BA be any different? I have no clue why Bound Armaments (and Rapid Strikes) are nerfed behind the scenes like this if they scale with Direct damage.

With regard to this developer comment: "... but we’re using this as an experiment to see if this sort of shuffling of power is seen as a good thing or not in the brave new subclassing world. Definitely give us your feedback on this."

I think shuffling power around within a class can be a good thing. If one skill line of a class is clearly overperforming compared to others, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that power moved into a weaker line. That kind of redistribution could help promote build diversity, which is a win in my book.

The Sorcerer, however, doesn't really have any skill line that's overperforming (in PvE at least). So in this case I personally think that just buffing Dark Magic, instead of shuffling power from Daedric Summoning into Dark Magic, might have been a better approach.

I would've also greatly preferred it if getting the extra Magicka or Stamina wouldn't depend on having to cast a Dark Magic ability when at full Health. In its current state, I imagine that the uptime of the buff over the course of a longer fight won't be the best. The new buff could've been added to Exploitation instead in my opinion (similar to how the Nightblade's Hemorrhage passive always gives the player 10% Critical Damage).

On a related note, now that the Assassination skill line has lost the Weapon/Spell Damage bonus from Grim Focus, maybe that power could be shuffled into another Nightblade line? The Shadow line, for example, already has a few damaging morphs and the Born From Shadow mechanic - it feels like a natural candidate for some kind of damage increasing passive. At the moment it doesn’t really see much use in subclassed DPS builds, which is a bit of a shame, but that could change if it got a decent buff.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

No extra Sundered chance yet either. So even less time to test it by the time it actually comes out.

The sunder chance is probably just behind the scenes proc coefficient for status effects. It'd be painful, but you can test for it.

I will and update here shortly, but most skills specify that they increase their chance. The only one I think they ever forgot to update the tooltip for was Volatile Familar. Maybe it's a Sorc theme at that point lol.