Sorc observations on changes between Live and PTS (updated for 1.61)

Ezareth

This will be long but should be informative for those with the patience to bear with it.

I've been a Min/Maxer in every game I've played so the opportunity to do some testing on PTS where there are no embedded diminishing returns on stats and being able to spend legendary enchants and craft gear, as well as reset skills and champion points without consideration to expense was a perfect opportunity for me to find the next build that I will use.

My first approach was using the same relative build and playstyle that I use in live. I found some success against many of the players but overall I found I was less effective less survivable than I am on live. I wasn't able to effectively fighting multiple players at once and come out on top unless they were really bad players. Part of the success behind my survivability on live is having a large health pool. 3600 hitpoints ensures you don't get burst down and when I switch to my sword and board my defenses are decent against physical damage and unlike while using spell shields your armor means something, especially with a shield equipped. On live the benefits of health with it's 50% bonus (on gear and enchants) was well worth it when the alternative was a far less substantial increase to magicka since it was so easy to hit the soft cap without trying. I designed my stats to stay just under the magicka softcap and dump everything else into health. Basic min/max philosophy. Also keep in my mind that my impenetrable was eliminating the majority of crits against me on live, while on test the same gear was only reducing the bonus damage of crits against me by a relatively small number.

Another big change a sorc will find between live and PTS is you can't dodge roll nearly as much and doing so will run you out of stamina fast. This is also a key to my survivability and I found that my inability to dodge roll as much when needed was getting me killed. People always think that Bolt Escape is all you need to survive as a sorc but knowing when to dodge roll while escaping is what often separates a living sorc from a dead one. When you run out of stamina and are stunned on PTS with multiple people attacking you you will die almost instantly.

Initially with Champion points I took a spread out approach. I tried to maximize the effectiveness of my point spend by putting 5-10 points into each of the abilities that had a benefit that was useful to me so I would get the most overall benefit from my point spend. Magicka reduction, Dodge roll reduction, Elemental Damage, Magick Damage, Crit damage reduction, Crit Damage, Elemental Damage reduction, Magick damage reduction, Spell Piercing, Spell Resistance. I had the "Champion Point Sampler" and while I was getting decent benefits out of a ton of abilities, it just wasn't very impactful.

Next I got an EP friend to meet with me and we did some serious testing of the game mechanics, of champion points, of *everything*. For 3-4 hours I tested about every assumption I had of how the game worked (or used to that is) and broke out the relative math behind the mechanics. Now I'm not going to share all of my discoveries as you'll have to do testing of your own if you want to understand everything but I will share some of the major things I discovered and my observations.

The first thing to understand is that the protection offered by light armor is worthless. When people do damage to your health whether with spells or physical damage they will do full damage to you or close enough that it doesn't matter. You can max out points in damage reduction abilities, and crit damage reduction abilities, add those to your impenetrable and you're not going to make a noticeable difference.

So I switched gears and did something that I've always found to be somewhat foolish in the past. I dumped every shred of stat points, enchants and gear into Magicka at the expense of health. If our actual defenses in light armor are going to be worthless why bother trying to bolster them? Plus health was seriously nerfed with the loss of bonus stats (used to be +50%) and the removal of the magicka cap. We already have access to an ability that *can't be crit* so why waste champion points and traits on your armor making the crit damage done to you smaller? This same ability can't be affected by armor, can't have the damage done to it reduced so why not instead focus on making it as powerful as possible? I'm talking about Conjured Ward and to a lesser extent Healing Ward and Harness Magicka. The sorc's Shield-stacking Trifecta. With all 3 shields active I was able to absorb between 22-40K points of damage depending on my health and the damage type.

I tested this shield stacking out while assaulting a keep. I was able to bolt through the front door with *every* NPC focused on me, made it all the way upstairs, through the archers back down stairs on the opposite side and all the way back out the front door with relatively little risk. On live if I had tried this I would almost certainly be dead.

In combat with other players I was able to take several players beating on me without breaking through my shields or putting a serious strain on my mana. All the while by maximizing my magicka I was increasing my damage and freeing up valuable champion points for other more useful abilities like damage. I made certain to only use my stamina on break-free and used the immunity provided after instead of using unstoppable or blocking.

This brings me to my next observation. As a Sorc at least, Crit damage bonus points are far less useful than bonus damage points themselves and unlike Crit damage bonus, base damage can't be reduced by crit damage reduction abilities and traits.

The downside is that as a sorc we're faced with a painful choice for damage abilities. We can choose between a constellation that gives us bonus to our elemental damage (Fire, frost and shock) and has some great perks like 12% Spell crit and 100% crit after blocking 3 spells(decent and with timing can be lined up with a boosted crystal fragment proc) or a constellation that increases our magick damage which includes fragments, curse, and a host of other non-elemental damage. The downside is the perks in the magick damage constellation are practically worthless.

I chose to go 30 into the elemental damage to get the 12% crit perk and 15 into the magic damage ability. This coupled with my gearing choices and mundus stone allowed me to crit players with a "boosted" crystal fragment for 14K. By boosted I mean a Fragment proc that gets a native 20% damage boost, Empower from refreshing my magelight, and a Major Sorcery buff. You can get major sorcery from Entropy, Spell Power Potions, or Surge.

Using this and some other findings I found I was able to burst people down easier and with greater survivability than in live. I'm pretty happy with what I've seen so far. I've chosen to keep a few of my findings to myself but I'll share some other things I noticed with specific abilities.

• The benefit provided by Minor Breach (final light armor passive) is practically useless compared to what it used to provide in penetration.
• Entropy Spell power bonus is great, but it doesn't stack with the bonus provided by a spell power potion/Surge and the dot ticks (I'm pretty certain) use up the Empower buff provided by casting a mage ability.
• Power Surge doesn't have an increase duration on the tooltip but the ability still seems to last for 40 seconds (I couldn't use a spell power pot for 40 seconds after casting PS).
• Ultimate generation is far slower compared to live. (The nice thing about this is there is now even less of a reason to focus on crit than ever. Most people wont be using Crit surge for healing and without the bonus ult and relatively more expensive cost of adding crit in PTS, going spellpower and bonus damage is far more powerful)
• Dark Exchange - I don't like the new mobile version, the old version was much easier to break after a single tick (sometimes your stamina was at 100% and your magicka was something less and it made sense to use a tick). With magicka seeming to last much longer and stamina being more valuable I find myself using this much less...I may end up replacing it with another ability on my bar.
• Impenetrable Trait - Just to Reiterate Impenetrable even at Legendary status is no longer really useful for a shield stacker. 100 Penetration rating reduces the Crit bonus damage done to you by 1.563%. This means that if someone crits you with a 5000 damage ability where they normally would normally do 7500 damage they now do 7422 damage. The reduction is linear so the effectiveness against people stacking crit damage will never increase or be reduced, it is just a flat modifier. I'd much rather have an extra 250 magicka or so from an Infused trait on my large pieces at very least. On small pieces it may make sense to go for divines depending on the mundus you choose. Remember shields cannot be crit so impenetrable doesn't help you while your shields are up.
• Power overload - in 1.61 it is getting a 50% *base* damage increase. This is just disgusting to those of us stacking magicka/spell power. I'll post some testing numbers when I get home.
• Spell Cost Reduction Formulas (lots of maths) - Figuring out how additional cost reduction will affect you is no longer easy or clear. I've been able to create a formula that fits the model within a couple of spell points but it isn't exact like my understanding of this on live. From my testing I've determined that each spell now has a base cost that can't be reduced. This base cost is anywhere between 11-14% of the actual cost of the spell. To figure out what a spell will cost you'll need to figure this base number out. For Bolt Escape for example the base number is 411. So if you take the base cost of the spell (3351) and subtract 411 from it you get the reducible portion of the spell (2940). Multiply this by 1 - .x where X is your total spell cost reduction percentage (excluding the champion reduction which I'll get to). As a sorc wearing full light armor you'll automatically get 36% reduction to your lightning spells so 2940 * .64 = 1881.6. You then add your unreducible cost to this total (411) to get 2293. Many of these numbers I are fractions so the actual cost is 2294. Now if you have 5% reduction from champion points you'd subtract this percentage from this cost so you'd be at 2179. Champion point reduction is calculated after the base cost reduction calculations are done so it is point per point less powerful than those things. Jewelry enchant reductions are another matter altogether. I think I have to modeled out but it is so complicated I'm assuming that the true calculation is much more simple and need to test more. On live I have 3 pieces of jewelry with spell cost reduction. 2 pieces are pre-1.5 patch before VR14 enchants existed which bumped the *tooltip* from 20 to 21 spell cost reduction yet this isn't reflected in the actual reduction of spells. When these items transferred over to PTS the -20 reduction converted to -188 reduction and the -21 converted to -200 reduction yet they ALL provided -211-212 cost reduction per enchant. Basically you can't trust tool tips with any reliability any more (if you ever could). I'm starting to suspect that instead of truly converting every item to a true 1.6 item they just ran some conversion scripts with health/magicka/stat multipliers against every stat and item in the database which turned whole integers into a lot of fractional numbers. This will ensure that an already inefficient code base will run even slower as floating point calculations are expensive. Just my theory from what I've seen of the changes so far.

I'll continue adding to this thread as more information becomes available to me.

WRX

We should test some other stuff and I can share a lot of really good and surprising info I have found already.

GlassHalfFull

I found this write up insightful, it matches what I started to find, but never had time to get back to it and finish. This makes me wonder, with all these changes, how are casual players going to understand the differences? It seems to me, they will try to duplicate what they used before 1.6 and just end up gimped, frustrated, and unsub.

Ezareth

GlassHalfFull wrote: »

I found this write up insightful, it matches what I started to find, but never had time to get back to it and finish. This makes me wonder, with all these changes, how are casual players going to understand the differences? It seems to me, they will try to duplicate what they used before 1.6 and just end up gimped, frustrated, and unsub.

Casual players will do what casual players typically do: Ask for help or complain on the forums and people will eventually explain their issue. Or they'll just copy someone who has spent the time to research and craft a build that is effective. A small fraction of people will accuse those who learn and adjust their strategy accordingly of cheating.

I don't think there will be a mass exodus of players who are frustrated but I'm concerned about the lack of viability in alternative builds for the "traditional" sorc. It appears anyone who uses light armor is going to be pigeon-holed into shield-stack min/maxing.

I didn't really cover too much about resto versus destro as I don't have all the destro abilities levelled and I've just never cared much for them. The only reason I use a resto staff is for healing ward and I may end up swapping that for Destro at some point before finalizing my build.

Stilliko

Good post, Thanks!

I have come to many of the same conclusions you have. Nice to see others confirming my thoughts.

I've had to rely on keeping shields up, which seems to be working very well. Light armor, as expected, doesn't help much anymore. I moved all my attribute points (like you) into magicka, and my stamina doesn't last very long blocking or dodge rolling. I've been using a combo of hardened ward (playing with the other morph, we'll see if I end up using pets) and dampen magicka. Sometimes I use healing ward too, we'll see how crowded my bar gets. It seems to be working really well.

Entropy, in my mind, for dps sorcs is a must have. Gotta love the bit of healing, empowered buff, and sorcery buff. That's interesting you think the empowered buff is getting chewed up by the dot ticks. I ran some experiments between using power surge and entropy, and my next attack consistently did more damage with enthropy (I'm sure because of empowered). That would suggest the empowered buff was going to my next attack, not the dot ticks. I'll have to do some more experimenting and figure that out.

Thanks again for the good post!

Ezareth

Stilliko wrote: »

Good post, Thanks!

I have come to many of the same conclusions you have. Nice to see others confirming my thoughts.

I've had to rely on keeping shields up, which seems to be working very well. Light armor, as expected, doesn't help much anymore. I moved all my attribute points (like you) into magicka, and my stamina doesn't last very long blocking or dodge rolling. I've been using a combo of hardened ward (playing with the other morph, we'll see if I end up using pets) and dampen magicka. Sometimes I use healing ward too, we'll see how crowded my bar gets. It seems to be working really well.

Entropy, in my mind, for dps sorcs is a must have. Gotta love the bit of healing, empowered buff, and sorcery buff. That's interesting you think the empowered buff is getting chewed up by the dot ticks. I ran some experiments between using power surge and entropy, and my next attack consistently did more damage with enthropy (I'm sure because of empowered). That would suggest the empowered buff was going to my next attack, not the dot ticks. I'll have to do some more experimenting and figure that out.

Thanks again for the good post!

I'm not as certain of Entropy as you are. The healing isn't always useful (as you are usually at full health if you're stacking correctly) and the damage isn't anything special. It *is* mana efficient but unlike Curse it isn't as consistent as a source of damage. It also removes the ability to use a spell power pot which is essential when you're trying to burst someone down. I'm not saying it's worthless, I just don't think it is as essential as people are saying.

In my testing I was using crystal fragments but I would only want to use a Crystal fragments proc to stack with Empower. Sometimes I would cast Entropy and my fragments wasn't procced so I'd cycle my Magelight until I got a proc to test. In most of these scenarios my fragment didn't get the +40% bonus damage (Empower + Fragment Proc).

The only time I was able to get the 40% bonus every time using entropy was if I waited for the proc, then used entrop and then the fragment proc cast before the first tick. I was assuming somehow the dot was absorbing the empower (even though the dot didn't get a damage increase) but didn't test it as thoroughly as I'd like.

RinaldoGandolphi

Very interesting insight, I thought stacking health would be better, but after reading this, it makes sense to stack magicka and spell damage instead since LA pretty much sucks in damage mitigation now anyhow. I was actually going to test this out this evening, good to confirm.

Pancake-Tragedy

woodsro wrote: »

Very interesting insight, I thought stacking health would be better, but after reading this, it makes sense to stack magicka and spell damage instead since LA pretty much sucks in damage mitigation now anyhow. I was actually going to test this out this evening, good to confirm.

Oh yeah, stacking magicka is definitely the way to go now as a sorc. Huge damage shields and huge dps work very well together.

Ezareth

Added:

Dark Exchange - I don't like the new mobile version, the old version was much easier to break after a single tick (sometimes your stamina was at 100% and your magicka was something less and it made sense to use a tick). With magicka seeming to last much longer and stamina being more valuable I find myself using this much less...I may end up replacing it with another ability on my bar.

DezIsDead

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Added:

Dark Exchange - I don't like the new mobile version, the old version was much easier to break after a single tick (sometimes your stamina was at 100% and your magicka was something less and it made sense to use a tick). With magicka seeming to last much longer and stamina being more valuable I find myself using this much less...I may end up replacing it with another ability on my bar.

I am also not fond of the mobile version it's a pain for me. Before I would jut tap it to get a small boost of mana after stacking shields, now it seems you get stuck in the animation for an extra tick even if you swap weapons or try to cancel it.

Stilliko

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

The only time I was able to get the 40% bonus every time using entropy was if I waited for the proc, then used entrop and then the fragment proc cast before the first tick.

Yep, this is what I do. I wait for the crystal proc then cast entrope followed right away by crystal. I also cast enthrope right before casting curse. So like you said, maybe I just haven't given the dot tick a chance. I haven't tested it as thoroughly as I'd like either. I'll check that out in more detail when I can get in game later tonight.

If the dot tick really does eat empowered, that's pretty dumb. I would hope ZOS would change that, or it really nerfs enthrope.

That's a good point about the heals. Maybe I'm just a bit necrotic, but I like having some way to heal myself on my main bar. Never know when you will need it, *** happens. I mainly use it for 40% (I hope) damage bonus, so heals are side bonus to me.

Ezareth

Stilliko wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

The only time I was able to get the 40% bonus every time using entropy was if I waited for the proc, then used entrop and then the fragment proc cast before the first tick.

Yep, this is what I do. I wait for the crystal proc then cast entrope followed right away by crystal. I also cast enthrope right before casting curse. So like you said, maybe I just haven't given the dot tick a chance. I haven't tested it as thoroughly as I'd like either. I'll check that out in more detail when I can get in game later tonight.

If the dot tick really does eat empowered, that's pretty dumb. I would hope ZOS would change that, or it really nerfs enthrope.

That's a good point about the heals. Maybe I'm just a bit necrotic, but I like having some way to heal myself on my main bar. Never know when you will need it, *** happens. I mainly use it for 40% (I hope) damage bonus, so heals are side bonus to me.

Just to clarify. You get a 20% damage bonus from the Crystal Fragment Proc bonus. You get a 20% damage bonus from Empower upon casting a mages guild ability. You get a 20% *spellpower* bonus from Major Prophecy as well as the Empower buff, but you can source both of those elsewhere.

I find Radiant magelight to be a must have in PvP unless you never want to be able to kill a NB. The stealth protection is bonus. It also gives you a cheap way to "turn on" your empower buff whenever you want to launch a boosted crystal fragment. I use this for this purpose all the time on live right now.

Ezareth

Just saw the Power Overload Light Attack 50% buff. Holy hell anyone who isn't a DK or running defensive posture is going to get fried.

Panda244

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Just saw the Power Overload Light Attack 50% buff. Holy hell anyone who isn't a DK or running defensive posture is going to get fried.

I'm a DK... And I've run both. At the same time. It's gonna be a kind of necessity in 1.6 with the reflect nerf, keep posture up to cover the gap, and when posture drops you know you've reflected 4 projectiles so pop up reflect again. Course that only works if the projectiles are spells because SOMEONE at ZOS had the silly idea of making posture only reflect spells. Whoever that was needs a lobotomy. Anywho, thanks for the notification to stay far away from Sorcs come 1.6

Ezareth

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

Teargrants

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

Asgari

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

Pancake-Tragedy

But with the recent change overload light attacks have a GCD again.

Teargrants

Should be easy to get overload light atks over 10k dmg now.

RinaldoGandolphi

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Asgari

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

My 1.6.0 overload light attacks were hitting harder than meteor haha can't wait for it now

Ezareth

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Unfortunately Ball of Lightning never absorbs reflected projectiles. That would be so nice )=

Asgari

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Unfortunately Ball of Lightning never absorbs reflected projectiles. That would be so nice )=

With streak going through block I can't use Bol .. It's already saved me multiple times in 1.6 to give that split second to execute or heal quickly. I did however watch someone with Bol use it so many times in a row even you would have been amazed.

Teargrants

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Unfortunately Ball of Lightning never absorbs reflected projectiles. That would be so nice )=

With streak going through block I can't use Bol .. It's already saved me multiple times in 1.6 to give that split second to execute or heal quickly. I did however watch someone with Bol use it so many times in a row even you would have been amazed.

Let me know when you have my trophy ready for me.

ToRelax

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Unfortunately Ball of Lightning never absorbs reflected projectiles. That would be so nice )=

With streak going through block I can't use Bol .. It's already saved me multiple times in 1.6 to give that split second to execute or heal quickly. I did however watch someone with Bol use it so many times in a row even you would have been amazed.

I tried BoL again on PTS for several reasons.
I don't get ultimate from Streak anymore, I don't heal with Surge, I don't use Negate, so no need to CC them in it.
It was very useful when fighting NA sorcs with BoL as well as I didn't have to defend myself much therefore was ready when I saw a moment to burst them down.
With this new change I doubt I'll go back to Streak before it goes life.

RinaldoGandolphi

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

woodsro wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I might have to run Defensive posture just to melt things with wings.

Has anyone tested what happens when a DK with wings reflects a fragment which is then reflected back by defensive posture and the DK uses defensive posture?

I may have to rent a templar to spam eclipse on my targets instead.

That's what I've been doing for months, once something ping pongs 2x, it can't be reflected anymore period. The problem in 1.6 is maintaining the stam to keep defensive posture up.

In 1.6 my overload light attacks were hitting for meteor damage .. Now it's 50% boosted and can spam it like crazy in fights. Insane how much just changed for sorcs.

You have no idea how happy this makes me as power overload was my primary ulty on live with either greater atronach or negate on my heal bar.

If this works like I think it does, ball of lighting teleport, stay close to shiny balls, fire power overload, any that get reflected get absorbed by my orbs, profit

Those that can't reflect...tee hee hee here here hee!

Unfortunately Ball of Lightning never absorbs reflected projectiles. That would be so nice )=

Ahh bummer EZ! I was hoping they ninja that one in!

I tried using streak on PTS but it just don't fit my style. Its too easy to be sharded in the back and even with the damage and disorient, I find I take more damage using streak.

Have you had similar results in your tests? Do you think giving up the defense advantage of BOL for streaks improved damage and forward stun will be worth it in 1.6?

Just curious if your thoughts have changed on that any.

PS: I find BOL 360 stun at the point if origin before teleporting forward to be invaluable, it will save your life in cases where you would normally get killed.

Teargrants

Streak is great for groups fights against ppl who don't perma spam immovable, outside of that, BoL is better for casters. With the new immobable nerf I expect streak to be more abusable.

Asgari

Teargrants wrote: »

Streak is great for groups fights against ppl who don't perma spam immovable, outside of that, BoL is better for casters. With the new immobable nerf I expect streak to be more abusable.

Streak does some decent AoE dps again to those bunched up groups. Should give it a try if you can on pts with those terrible templates they have now.

Saint_JiubB14_ESO

About potions

from 1.6.1
Fixed an issue that prevented drinking a potion if you already had the same buff or effect that the potion would provide. Now, you will drink the potion and receive any benefit from it that your character doesn’t already have. Drinking a potion will also refresh the same type of buff or effect if the remaining duration is shorter than what the potion will apply.

so the whole locked out of using a spell power potion should be fixed.

Teargrants

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Streak is great for groups fights against ppl who don't perma spam immovable, outside of that, BoL is better for casters. With the new immobable nerf I expect streak to be more abusable.

Streak does some decent AoE dps again to those bunched up groups. Should give it a try if you can on pts with those terrible templates they have now.

Tried it in some 4v4s last night before the pts server wipe, streak + heavy armor was quite good. Still prefer BoL in general.

That aside, I will not be on PTS anymore. After reset, it says I only have 500 crowns, and can no longer get a guar. No guar, no Teargrants.

Maulkin

Entropy + Crystal Frag proc =

A good player will see the combo coming but lesser ones are gonna get blasted to pieces! Entropy worth a main bar spot for me (for now at least).

Oh and Jesus Christ that Power Overload in 1.6.1 XD

As a vocal "forum warrior" frequently complaining about the Sorc's lack of damage output compared to other classes, I'll now happily shut up and sit down. We've been more than compensated I think, at least in PvP.

PS: Thanks for the testing and the thread. I've been stuck testing DKs for the guild and haven't had much hands-on with the Sorc besides playing with the new toys a bit. A very informative piece as always.