Sorc 1.6.3 Preview (From Livestream)

Khivas_Carrick

I would like to think it would make sense, dare I say common sense, that a damage shield can be subjected to critical strikes, especially since they're technically just an addition to your life bar.

Asgari

Sorcs with shields will be a thing of the past. Same with sorcs in pvp. No way you can be LA without heavy shields and having them nerfed strength wise on top of them being crit able now means GG.

Snit

Here's the funny bit -- I would bet my striped senche tiger that internally, the combat team thought, "If we ensure crit surge works on shields, sorcs will be happy."

Dracane

Snit wrote: »

"If we ensure crit surge works on shields, sorcs will be happy."

Yeeeees, soo happy..........

ToRelax

Snit wrote: »

Here's the funny bit -- I would bet my striped senche tiger that internally, the combat team thought, "If we ensure crit surge works on shields, sorcs will be happy."

If they would make Crit Surge work in the first place and let us do the damage of a stamina build without going 100% on magicka...

OtarTheMad

If you can crit on shields on top of the nerf... then... I can't believe my Sorc is dead... damn. I spent so much time on it... players can tell me to change the build, go heavy and stam. build but I like magicka builds more. Been playing on my Sorc since Early Release and now it's a dead class... that really blows.Nice job ZOS.

RinaldoGandolphi

I don't know what to think, honestly. These changes make the class unplayable. You wont survive in pvp period.

These guys seem so far out of touch were not even in the same city, let alone ballpark.

jluchau

I think i will reserve judgment on any of these changes until I actually see them. We can speculate sure, but to get all upset without even seeing the hard numbers seems silly to me. What I do notice is that they do seem to be listening and do seem to be making an honest effort to make improvements and balance things. I think we sometimes forget that PTS is a testing server. It's not the live game. I've been playing sorc. class since beta and i'm not a pro player but I love my sorc. The initial changes in 1.6 were difficult and I feel like I don't know my own character anymore, but I see them working with me and i'm willing to reserve judgement till the live version hits. In the meantime i'm willing to test and give feedback, but man... so much negativity on comments that we have no hard numbers on and can't test seems premature. For instance, while i heard him say they were going to change the passive and make it increase spellpower I didn't hear him say they were taking away the reduced cost function. Now, maybe they are, maybe they are not, but we can't get angry till we know. Just my 2 cents. I'm still hopeful.

Palidon

Instead of concentrating their efforts on introducing new adventure zones to explore and fixing the many issues and bugs left unattended, ZOS has been hell bent on destroying the game with their constant changes to class abilities and many other aspects of the game. Oh well there is nothing we as players can do about it. ZOS has by their very actions decided to just ignore the many comments, complaints and suggestions posted about what they have been doing.

ToRelax

I am worried about that you may crit shields, only because that may force me to invest more into health ( a change I actually wanted).
That is, because they really didn't seem to acknowledge the low damage a Sorc will do also in PvP if they don't stack magicka like crazy.
I wanted to have more health and healing instead of damage shields (note that my healing was actually nerfed with Healing Ward as a damage shield) but get away from the instagib fest that is 1.6 PvP on pts (even without the bugs).
Damage would be fine if stamina builds wouldnt do the crazy damage they are able to. Being forced to invest into health again I just can't compete with that.
Heck, I even made a NB template stam build and it had excellent healing, too, there seems to be no downside to stamina anymore while they do more damage than magicka (both singel target and AoE).

edit: typo

Snit

ToRelax wrote: »

I am worried about that you may crit shields, only because that may force me to invest more into health

You get little out of health, though, given the low mitigation of light armor. Health is a much better investment for someone in medium or heavy.

It might work if you can commit to keeping Thundering Presence up. That provides poor synergy with your shield, but it would make investing in health more worthwhile.

Aimelin

jluchau wrote: »

I think i will reserve judgment on any of these changes until I actually see them. We can speculate sure, but to get all upset without even seeing the hard numbers seems silly to me. What I do notice is that they do seem to be listening and do seem to be making an honest effort to make improvements and balance things. I think we sometimes forget that PTS is a testing server. It's not the live game. I've been playing sorc. class since beta and i'm not a pro player but I love my sorc. The initial changes in 1.6 were difficult and I feel like I don't know my own character anymore, but I see them working with me and i'm willing to reserve judgement till the live version hits. In the meantime i'm willing to test and give feedback, but man... so much negativity on comments that we have no hard numbers on and can't test seems premature. For instance, while i heard him say they were going to change the passive and make it increase spellpower I didn't hear him say they were taking away the reduced cost function. Now, maybe they are, maybe they are not, but we can't get angry till we know. Just my 2 cents. I'm still hopeful.

no instead they are going to "buff" the useless abilities no one ever uses and "change" the passive, i'm sure they'll remove the reduced cost, else that'd be too op in the eyes of other classes ...

like i said in another thread fellas, they want us to roll DKs and spam GDB for dayz without any of us killing eachother

nerf to dmg shield, even without the dmg bug on pts some stam abilities & 2h were hitting for way more than a magicka based sorc can hit for ... and now they have a stam heal too that is waaaay too op, you can say, oh its for rank 10, yea all those AP farmers and stuff are way past rank 10, then curse is now blockable, lmao, next thing you know they'll make curse reflect with scales, so DKs can cry less about the "nerf" to scales, since they allready cried about crushing shock taking away 3 stacks of the 4, well guess what buddy, the attack does 3 types of dmg, deal with it.

But nah, i'll just continue to laugh at those silly DKs while they flap their wings even in a melee fight ....

gg

oh and i forgot about the negate nerf .. LOL what are these ppl on ?
lets make a skill that creates a zone/field/bubble that NEGATES "magic" but it'll only do it once, then the fields gonna stay there for 12 seconds looking pretty

Valnas

can you just redo the class at this point ?

ToRelax

Snit wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

I am worried about that you may crit shields, only because that may force me to invest more into health

You get little out of health, though, given the low mitigation of light armor. Health is a much better investment for someone in medium or heavy.

It might work if you can commit to keeping Thundering Presence up. That provides poor synergy with your shield, but it would make investing in health more worthwhile.

Oh, nonono, I would run heavy, already know how to handle the magicka problems.

Vis

Unless the new spell damage passive is miraculously massive, sorcs were just nerfed two more times today:

1. Higher storm costs
2. Lower shields

Crit surge is insufficient to heal with a stamina build. It already costs more than 5 times entropy and is redundant. Sorcs will have the weakest passives in game to play a stamina build and our magicka build is gimped to almost unplayable.

I would also like to remind Eric that our supposed "insta cast nuke" is actually the game's most reflected skill and often more a liability than a benefit. Also like to remind Eric, timing burst with curse/fragments is difficult because frag is a chance proc, and any player worth two cents has bock or dodge timed with the curse duration.

I am going decon all my alt v14s' gear because I refuse to be forced to play them via nerfs originating from baddies. No gear, no temptation to flip to one of them for fotm. I am going to continue killing those baddies with my sorc even if they get the devs to give me nothing more than a feather and orange juice.

Dagoth_Rac

Don't damage shields already take full damage, bypassing armor/resist/blocking? That seems like enough extra damage. Having unmitigated critical attacks on damage shields as well seems excessive.

Faulgor

The problem I have is that he first said they want to increase build diversity, but then offered nothing again for sorc healers and stamina sorcs. Sorc tanks are probably in a better spot than those, but still lacking. I don't see this problem with other classes.

Templar
- Healing is a given
- Tanking is a given, even though some think DK overshadows Templars here
- Stamina DPS Templars seem in a really good spot right now, I'm looking forward to level mine
- Magicka DPS I'd say is a bit behind stamina, as is most magicka, but still viable in most settings

Nightblade
- Got lots of buffs for Healing in 1.6, really good changes imo
- Tanking is harder, but feels unique. Could be improved a bit?
- Stamina DPS is a given
- Magicka DPS is difficult to judge atm for me, but the potential is there

Dragon Knight
- Probably the worst healers, but at least got a Major Mending buff and can support others with shields.
- Tanking is a given
- Stamina DPS was not optimal with a DK before, but it seems 1.6 has improved this substantially.
- Magicka DPS is a given

Sorcerer
- No synergy with healing whatsoever. Now probably has more spell power than any other resto staff healers, but that's not a lot to work with.
- Tanking is possible, but quite hard due to lack of self-heal.
- No synergy with stamina DPS except for Bound Armaments, not even another stamina morph
- Magicka DPS should be a given, but isn't, as we all have been talking about

So why don't you guys start from there? Why has the philosophy that has worked quite well for other classes been impossible for Sorcerers?
Why can't we have a reliable self-heal? Why can't we have an instant nuke or target DOT with a stamina morph? Why can't we have skills that help supporting our group members? Why can't we have better synergy with healing?

I generally don't like repeating myself, but I think these suggestions I made in another post would adress most of these issues

Dark Magic

Encase has been removed and replaced by a new ability, Bloodbile

Bloodbile
- Call on Peryites powers to deal X bleed, poison and disease damage over 5 seconds.
Blood Fountain
- After 5 seconds, explodes for x disease damage, damaging everything in 6 meter radius.
Blight
- This ability now scales with stamina and weapon power. Also applies Major Defile debuff to target.

Rune Prison
- Reduced cast time to 0.5 seconds.

Dark Exchange
- This ability is now a toggle (because I know you love those)
- While toggled, disables Stamina Recovery, but doubles Magicka Recovery and tripples Health Recovery.
Dark Conversion
- While toggled, disables Magicka Recovery, but doubles Stamina Recovery and tripples Health Recovery.
Dark Deal
- While toggled, disables Health Recovery, but doubles Magicka and Stamina Recovery and grants the Major Mending buff.

Daedric Mines has been removed and replaced by a new ability, Fatigue

Fatigue
- Creates a minor absorption field for 20 seconds, draining x Stamina per second from enemies inside the field and reducing their movement speed. Also applies the Major Endurance buff to the caster.
Lifeforce Trap
- Also drains x Magicka per second from enemies inside the field and applies the Major Intellect buff to the caster.
Trespasser's Bane
- Applies the Major Endurance buff to group members inside the field.

These changes give Sorcerers a short duration spamable DOT (Bloodbound) to trigger Crystal Fragments, aswell as improving this trees original purpose: Crowd control and support. Rune Prison can be used more deliberately if the situation demands it, while Fatigue is especially useful in PvP and in supporting group members. One of Dark Exchange's morphs is also designed to improve the healing role for Sorcerers. In conjunction with the Blood Magic passive (which could be reduced in magnitude), the spamability of most spells allows for a good healing method.
In essence, Dark Magic is used to annoy your enemies, as well as buffing yourself and your group members.

Storm Calling

Lightning Form
- Doubled damage.
Boundless Storm
- Removed Major Resolve and Major Armor buffs; Increase damage by 300% to base damage.

Lightning Splash
- Doubled damage.

Surge
- Removed healing effect.
- Applies the Major Brutality buff for x seconds. All weapon attacks have a 20% chance to disorient target.
Power Surge
- Also applies the Major Sorcery buff.
Critical Surge
- Critical hits disorient target.

Energized
- 5/10% chance on damaging with a Storm Calling ability to restore x Magicka.

Lightning Form is a nice buff for armor, but not much else. These changes increase its viability as a close-up DOT, even more so with its morph that forsakes the armor buff for more damage. Lightning Splash simply deserves up to twice its current damage to be an alternative to other AoEs, considering it's not a PBAoE like Impulse, Carve or Whirlwind. Surge is simply gone as a useful heal - that functionality has been moved to the Dark Magic tree. Instead, Surge improves survivability by disorienting targets, which can be easily CC broken in PvP but offers quite a bit utility in PvE.

xherics

Personally I am glad, that ZOS trying to help the community and buffing the sorcerer, but by my opinion, the planned changes are not enough - but I want to test them as well.

My pre-test opinion is this:

The mentioned passive should be at least 5% more spell damage for 1 slotted skill, but this is the minimum to have it at least a bit effective!
I can imagine 5% for first passive skill point, 10% for second skill point used there! That would be a great buff!

So, 1 skill slotted on bar = 10% more spell damage!

Lighting splash: ZOS you need to increase the damage of this skill also, and morphs as well, not only the duration. This spell hits really like a small baby and when somebody uses the Synergy it just disappears with not enough high end damage.
I think Staff Elemental ring/Impulse will be still better than this one!

One wanted fix of Crystal Fragments: It is never instant cast, even it PROCs from other skills, it has still cast time, less the full cast time, but it is still not instant! Maybe the animation change should be a fix for this, to be sure, that it is instant.


@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Exstazik

xherics wrote: »

Personally I am glad, that ZOS trying to help the community and buffing the sorcerer, but by my opinion, the planned changes are not enough - but I want to test them as well.

My pre-test opinion is this:

The mentioned passive should be at least 5% more spell damage for 1 slotted skill, but this is the minimum to have it at least a bit effective!
I can imagine 5% for first passive skill point, 10% for second skill point used there! That would be a great buff!

So, 1 skill slotted on bar = 10% more spell damage!

Lighting splash: ZOS you need to increase the damage of this skill also, and morphs as well, not only the duration. This spell hits really like a small baby and when somebody uses the Synergy it just disappears with not enough high end damage.
I think Staff Elemental ring/Impulse will be still better than this one!

One wanted fix of Crystal Fragments: It is never instant cast, even it PROCs from other skills, it has still cast time, less the full cast time, but it is still not instant! Maybe the animation change should be a fix for this, to be sure, that it is instant.


@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

You can do Instant CF,but you need prevent animations with block....
unfortunately after block you can't use anything ~1 sec.
Seems ZOS can't fix this due world CD animations

1. If you not cancel animation this CD=animation while the character up hand and cast CF
2. If you cancel animation this CD goes after block

If this can not be fix as i already wrote due World CD than "CF Proc" should do more DMG than 20% because even with "Proc" it's done less damage than "Snipe/lethal arrow" spam

sput4ueb17_ESO

For sure Sorcerer needs love from Zos at least they hear the community and trying something .Most of us will have to wait 1.63 next week to check and be productive again in our posts.
My opinion is that Sorcerer has to have differernt options for his gameplay and not just use pets .. he must have spells as a priority and pets ok maybe but not a full tree of it.
Just wait and we will see ...crossing fingers here....

kkampaseb17_ESO

If they allow procs and crits on shields I don't see a reason for the 15% nerf. It is a bit too much. Also, as a stamina sorc I really don't like the increased cost for Stormcalling abilities.

Seraphyel

I really like the change of Splash, I love that ability - but not only the duration should be increased, they should increas the damage, too. Or even the first hit morph should get a serious buff.

Right now Sorcs have too many "meh" abilities. Daedric Mines is totally a Melee skill - why is there no morph that places three mines on the target and that explode after we (=the Sorc) did some amount of damage? Or they explode when they get hit by Crystal Shards or something like that - would give us more opportunities.

ToRelax

Seraphyel wrote: »

I really like the change of Splash, I love that ability - but not only the duration should be increased, they should increas the damage, too. Or even the first hit morph should get a serious buff.

Right now Sorcs have too many "meh" abilities. Daedric Mines is totally a Melee skill - why is there no morph that places three mines on the target and that explode after we (=the Sorc) did some amount of damage? Or they explode when they get hit by Crystal Shards or something like that - would give us more opportunities.

Ehm, sorry, but those mines - we really don't need more burst damage.
We need better sustained damage without having to use pets for it.

Only thing I am not so sure about Lightning Splash is that it may not be able to compete with Impulse or Firerune (it will at least be better than the 1.62 Wall of Elements, wich really isn't that hard).
The changed passive must give a lot of spell damage to make sorcerer abilities more worthwhile to slot. Since spell damage doesn't even contribute that much to most abilities. But if it does, that change is a very good one imo.

Seraphyel

ToRelax wrote: »

Seraphyel wrote: »

I really like the change of Splash, I love that ability - but not only the duration should be increased, they should increas the damage, too. Or even the first hit morph should get a serious buff.

Right now Sorcs have too many "meh" abilities. Daedric Mines is totally a Melee skill - why is there no morph that places three mines on the target and that explode after we (=the Sorc) did some amount of damage? Or they explode when they get hit by Crystal Shards or something like that - would give us more opportunities.

Ehm, sorry, but those mines - we really don't need more burst damage.
We need better sustained damage without having to use pets for it.

Only thing I am not so sure about Lightning Splash is that it may not be able to compete with Impulse or Firerune (it will at least be better than the 1.62 Wall of Elements, wich really isn't that hard).
The changed passive must give a lot of spell damage to make sorcerer abilities more worthwhile to slot. Since spell damage doesn't even contribute that much to most abilities. But if it does, that change is a very good one imo.

You do realize that those mines give you sustained damage next to burst?

"28m range: Place three daedric mines on your target. The mines will last for 30 seconds. When you attack the target, each mine explodes after the target received XX damage. Do those mines last until the end, they will explode for 50% of their combined damage. Daedric Mines can only be cast once."

So they would give you burst AND sustained damage, cause both are going hand in hand.

I love the skill but I hate the melee range component of it.

ToRelax

Seraphyel wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Seraphyel wrote: »

I really like the change of Splash, I love that ability - but not only the duration should be increased, they should increas the damage, too. Or even the first hit morph should get a serious buff.

Right now Sorcs have too many "meh" abilities. Daedric Mines is totally a Melee skill - why is there no morph that places three mines on the target and that explode after we (=the Sorc) did some amount of damage? Or they explode when they get hit by Crystal Shards or something like that - would give us more opportunities.

Ehm, sorry, but those mines - we really don't need more burst damage.
We need better sustained damage without having to use pets for it.

Only thing I am not so sure about Lightning Splash is that it may not be able to compete with Impulse or Firerune (it will at least be better than the 1.62 Wall of Elements, wich really isn't that hard).
The changed passive must give a lot of spell damage to make sorcerer abilities more worthwhile to slot. Since spell damage doesn't even contribute that much to most abilities. But if it does, that change is a very good one imo.

You do realize that those mines give you sustained damage next to burst?

"28m range: Place three daedric mines on your target. The mines will last for 30 seconds. When you attack the target, each mine explodes after the target received XX damage. Do those mines last until the end, they will explode for 50% of their combined damage. Daedric Mines can only be cast once."

So they would give you burst AND sustained damage, cause both are going hand in hand.

I love the skill but I hate the melee range component of it.

You don't understand. We already have high burst damage, more would be OP.

Seraphyel

Than make those Mines a DoT if the "burst" is too high.

It's unpredictable burst damage and I don't really see the issue with it but I can understand that too many burst enforces the Nerf-sayers to be outspoken again.

xherics

Exstazik wrote: »

You can do Instant CF,but you need prevent animations with block....
unfortunately after block you can't use anything ~1 sec.
Seems ZOS can't fix this due world CD animations

1. If you not cancel animation this CD=animation while the character up hand and cast CF
2. If you cancel animation this CD goes after block

If this can not be fix as i already wrote due World CD than "CF Proc" should do more DMG than 20% because even with "Proc" it's done less damage than "Snipe/lethal arrow" spam

Agree, this unwanted cooldown is the problem with not instant cast.

diwie

OK ESO will become f2p to us but the fish still rots from head down. If my sorc shield last long enough I ll might have fun steaking backward more times in cyro lag hell. Others can do the work. With two pets sorcs have to concentrate to their npc role. As long there's no new contend or suitable set drop we ll can absorb not getting into trials.
Thanks for testing. I don t feel better now.

prototypefb

sorcs will have little less burst but will have enough versatility in a blattle to be effective, stop crying and wait for actual patch to kick in.
crystal shards will be as effective as they are now, even more since many ppl will choose force pulse instead of crushing shock.
all ranged interrupts will come at a cost of dps loss, therefore giving you a choice.
channel skills might thrive more than they are now, with spell weaving and crushing shock currently ther eis almost no point using most spells with cast time, that is about to change.

Kingdinguhling

Is there a transcript or a Video of the live stream preview somewhere someone can please post a link or something to either of these.


Just would provide some material to look over if someone could provide it.