1.6.5 Sorcerer detailed balance feedback

byrom101b16_ESO

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

Bound Armor has always been terrible. It still is. Toggle and high cost.

Seriously, of we could just get the cost (surge is even expensive for mag users) and number of toggles issue under control that would go a long way.

Running surge and lightning armor (8k magicka every 15-20 seconds) requires 800-1000 magicka regen in non-light armor. Ridiculous, Anne those aren't even super skills

I run that combo in Light Armour and it is manageable, but the Thundering Presence only partially makes up for the steaming pile of shite they made out of Light Armour - it's more useful for the pbaoe tick and the fact it isn't nearly as costly as Hardened Ward in any fight which isn't over in seconds.

serenity_painted

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

Why play a Sorcerer if you don't want to use magic?

The argument is the wrong way round.

Oh and it is maths - the difference between ONE choice and TWO...

No one is arguing that some stamina abilities can't be part of the mix - but WHY does the primary magicka using thrust of the class have to suffer?

If you want to play a heavily invested stamina class, don't play a Sorcerer.

No-one would play a Dragon KNIGHT and expect wall to wall spells and no melee weapon combat...

... but then Zenimax couldn't conceptually design their way out of a hat could they...

Way to completely avoid my arguments *golfclap*
And it's funny you bring up DK's beacuse they make excellent mages. Infact, they did, and maby still do more damage as mages than sorcs do. Yet sorcs can't make excellent melee fighters.
Why would you play ESO if you want classes that are pidgeonholed?

I wanto use magic as in i wanto cast spells, that's the point, but i wanto use it while fighting in melee. In this game that means i haveto rely on stamina since ignoring health is suicide. Making acouple of morphs into stamina spells is a compromise.
This is a TES game and i wanto play a class that atleast resembles the one i made in every other TES game. A mage that fights in melee with swords while using destruction, illussion and conjuration magic. The closest i can get to that is the sorc.

I don't get your constant hyperbole, modifying 1 or two abilites won't cause an entire playstyle or the entire class to "suffer".
It's like you think sorcs should only cast spells beacuse they are sorcs and that's the way it is, and any change to that is going to somehow ruin your playstyle. It's ridiculous.

Snit

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

Why play a Sorcerer if you don't want to use magic?
No-one would play a Dragon KNIGHT and expect wall to wall spells and no melee weapon combat...

Your views are squarely at odds with the core design principle of TESO's classes. It's fine if you don't like it, but let's not take up too much space in a useful thread arguing issues they decided in pre-alpha.

Snit

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

Bound Armor has always been terrible. It still is. Toggle and high cost.

Bound Armor is more of an offensive buff now. The armor add is beside the point.

Jar_Ek

Dear @ZOS_GinaBruno,

To answer the question about stamina sorcerers, we first need to analyse the problems. As I see it the main issues are:
Cost of abilities, esp those that are most useful to a stamina build: surge/critical surge, lightning form and morphs, bolt escape and morphs, daedric mines and morphs... and now maybe clannfear for the heal.
The lack of a direct stamina scaled damage ability.
The lack of any stamina regeneration mechanisms.
The lack of an effective heal (surge CD means it is not effective, and the recast time means that the clanfear is also not effective).
From a tanking perspective any form of damage mitigation above the major armour/spell resists that all classes get.

To make stamina sorcerers better, we should consider the following:

Add a cost reduction into Bound Armour and it's morphs. This would help both magicka and stamina builds... the morphs could target different spells for better reduction.
Remove the cooldown from surge and morphs, apply a aoe cap of 3 opponents. If this is unacceptable, make the critical surge morph have no cool down and a aoe cap and leave the other morphs as is.
Add a stamina regeneration mechanism to critical surge, providing stamina on critical (as the value of the stamina return would not be linked to damage,this could have a cooldown).
Change daedric minefield into a stamina morph.
Change crystal blast into a stamina morph, but enable a 8m fragment type proc on critical hits, with a cool down of 3s.
Make dark conversation and morphs instant and adjust the values.
Provide the means to get a major damage mitigation buff, maybe through a morph of an ultimate (Negate?).

Mumnoch

ESO has pretty much spoken that they will not be buffing the Sorc. On a live stream that another poster linked he pointed out the fact the Dev's said it was a L2P issue even though it's not.

Reroll to one of the 3 other classes. Sorc's are dead unless you want to play a 2 button rotation with the other 3 being toggles and want to barely reach the lowest of DPS the other DPS'ers are putting out.

I started playing this game back in January because of all the "positive" feedback I had seen on the game changes and how it appeared the Dev's actually listened to the playerbase and worked to improve the game and gameplay. What I failed to realize is that this was in regards to the DK, Templar, and NB classes only. These guys got payed, don't expect them to fix or adjust anything for us in regards to the Sorc. They already have their hands full making sure the playerbase that plays DKs, Templars, and NBs stay happy.

Snit

Here's an oddity with Expert Mage:

- Assume you build for spell power, as opposed to max magicka, to maximize the effect of Expert Mage (and because spell power generally adds more to damage output)
- You can load either Power Surge or Structured Entropy as a source of the major sorcery buff
- Given that you are built for spell power, which of those two increases the tooltip damage of your spells more?

It's Entropy. The mage guild passives remain stronger than the sorc class passives. From a pure DPS perspective, you're better off with a mage guild spell in any given slot than you are with a sorc spell, other things being equal.

I found that surprising.

Jar_Ek

Well currently Rally is better than Critical Surge, even if you build for criticals (longer duration, non random and guaranteed healing). And, it seems, Entropy is better than Power Surge.

Makes you wonder who thought up the Surge changes...

Cuyler

Can someone confirm if basic staff Light and heavy attacks scale off of spell or weapon damage? @ZOS

Drazhar14

I didn't read through all of this, so I don't know if it has been suggested, but I just came here to say this for Surge:

1) Have it track critical damage done during the cool down period.
2) Apply the single highest value done when the cool down is up.
3) No more low heals from damage over time abilities.
4) Profit!

Feynn

Snit wrote: »

Here's an oddity with Expert Mage:

- Assume you build for spell power, as opposed to max magicka, to maximize the effect of Expert Mage (and because spell power generally adds more to damage output)
- You can load either Power Surge or Structured Entropy as a source of the major sorcery buff
- Given that you are built for spell power, which of those two increases the tooltip damage of your spells more?

It's Entropy. The mage guild passives remain stronger than the sorc class passives. From a pure DPS perspective, you're better off with a mage guild spell in any given slot than you are with a sorc spell, other things being equal.

I found that surprising.

I think that must mean that your magicka to spell power ratio is high enough to make it so that you profit more from a 2% increase in magicka than from a 2% increase in spell power. In other words, you are built for magicka more than you are built for spell power. I tried the same experiment with my usual stats, and I found that having a Mages Guild spell instead of a Sorcerer spell was better for me too. Then I removed a lot of gear in order to drastically decrease my maximum magicka, and I noticed that I was better off with a 2% increase in spell power than a 2% increase in maximum magicka (obviously).

This having been said, I wonder what kind of builds would actually have such a (relatively) low magicka as to actually benefit from Expert Mage more than they would from Magicka Controller. Oh wait! I know! Stamina Sorcerers, of course!

Seriously, Zenimax, why do you want Sorcerers to go stamina? Why all this hate for magicka-based Sorcerers? (I won't even bother saying magicka-DPS, considering that you need to go for stamina if you want to be a tank and you don't really have much to work with as a sorcerer if you want to be a healer, compared to other classes)

Snit

Feynn wrote: »

I think that must mean that your magicka to spell power ratio is high enough to make it so that you profit more from a 2% increase in magicka than from a 2% increase in spell power. In other words, you are built for magicka more than you are built for spell power.

As I said in the post, though, I am built for Spell Power

Specifically, I have four pieces of VR14 MK and three Torug's Pact. I also use two Light of Cyrodiil rings. There is one place I could swap a magicka bonus for Spell Power (I have a healer neck and gloves. I could switch to an Adroitness two-piece, but I hate putting VR 12 stuff on).

So, even when you build for spell power at the expense of magicka, the mage guild bonus adds more damage than the sorc class passive. It's just odd.


ps... stam sorcs don't build for spell power.

Erock25

Feynn wrote: »

Snit wrote: »

Here's an oddity with Expert Mage:

- Assume you build for spell power, as opposed to max magicka, to maximize the effect of Expert Mage (and because spell power generally adds more to damage output)
- You can load either Power Surge or Structured Entropy as a source of the major sorcery buff
- Given that you are built for spell power, which of those two increases the tooltip damage of your spells more?

It's Entropy. The mage guild passives remain stronger than the sorc class passives. From a pure DPS perspective, you're better off with a mage guild spell in any given slot than you are with a sorc spell, other things being equal.

I found that surprising.

I think that must mean that your magicka to spell power ratio is high enough to make it so that you profit more from a 2% increase in magicka than from a 2% increase in spell power. In other words, you are built for magicka more than you are built for spell power. I tried the same experiment with my usual stats, and I found that having a Mages Guild spell instead of a Sorcerer spell was better for me too. Then I removed a lot of gear in order to drastically decrease my maximum magicka, and I noticed that I was better off with a 2% increase in spell power than a 2% increase in maximum magicka (obviously).

This having been said, I wonder what kind of builds would actually have such a (relatively) low magicka as to actually benefit from Expert Mage more than they would from Magicka Controller. Oh wait! I know! Stamina Sorcerers, of course!

Seriously, Zenimax, why do you want Sorcerers to go stamina? Why all this hate for magicka-based Sorcerers? (I won't even bother saying magicka-DPS, considering that you need to go for stamina if you want to be a tank and you don't really have much to work with as a sorcerer if you want to be a healer, compared to other classes)

Did you just say that expert mage was a good change for stamina sorc? That is absolutely wrong. Reading these forums really shows the hurdle ZOS has to overcome with balancing because people just don't understand the game they are playing. I don't know how many people now I've read that say any help for stamina sorc is a direct nerf to magicka sorc, and that just isn't true.

Jar_Ek

Stamina sorcerers will never stack enough spell power for Expert Mage to be of any use. Hell even hybrids won't.
Also I fail to see how ensuring that sorcerers are viable in all major roles can really hurt the magicka dps role - unless ward's were suddenly scaled off stamina or health.. but I have yet to see any sorcerers suggest this. All the sorcerer suggestions I have seen try to account for multiple playstyles. The suggestions may be poor, op, or I'll thought out... or may be amazing, but none try to mess with other specs.

Feynn

I don't think help for stamina sorcerers is a direct nerf for magicka sorcerers, don't get me wrong. But it's true that if Zenimax is just focused on improving stamina sorcerers and has made no mention of having any intention of improving magicka sorcerers as well, then yes, it is a problem for magicka sorcerers indeed.

I also didn't mean to say that Expert Mage is a skill intended for stamina sorcerers. But it's true that it's comparatively preferable to Mages Guild skills the less magicka you have, which is what gave me that thought. You are right though, a stamina sorcerer would not only have less magicka, but also less spell power, so perhaps Expert Mage wouldn't even benefit them so much.

It's troubling that even taking into account the Expert Mage passive it's probably better in many situations to use Entropy instead of Power Surge, because the increase in max magicka surpasses the increase in spell power, even for a built made for spell power, like for @Snit .

While we are on the topic of Sorcerers being nerfed, I just witnessed a fight between my VR14 clannfear and a VR10 commoner I had just pickpocketed. The clannfear died twice before he was finally able to kill that one single NPC.

HiP

don't try to think too much into Expert Mage... it was not a buff at all, it was only meant as an indirect way to nerf Bolt Escape again. nothing more.

cschwingeb14_ESO

Snit wrote: »

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

Bound Armor has always been terrible. It still is. Toggle and high cost.

Bound Armor is more of an offensive buff now. The armor add is beside the point.

That's the point. Its a weak offensive (8% magicka/stam is what, 2-3% damage? 11% heavy attack damage for stam) and very weak defensive buff (less than 2% damage redux)

2 slots, or 1 slot and a very high activation cost. Compare that to inner light(toggle), or structured entropy (not a toggle but so much better)

ZOS is so worried about sorc burst that they are hamstringing all of our class buffs. Just make Curse a DoT with some boom/cc on the end (ie ticks for 1k/s damage then explodes for 3k, explosion is blockable, dot ticks are not). Sorcs burst is suddenly less, while sustained damage goes up

HiP

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

Just make Curse a DoT with some boom/cc on the end (ie ticks for 1k/s damage then explodes for 3k, explosion is blockable, dot ticks are not). Sorcs burst is suddenly less, while sustained damage goes up

that would make us more powerful in pvp actually... our burst can be blocked. your change would make part of it unblockable.
and at the end of the Curse, the dps would be the same as it is now.
unless you mean that you want more overall damage from the Curse ?

their problem is really that when we go for full burst glass cannon, it also boosts our most efficient defense.
all they have to do to fix a lot of things is scale all shields off the HP of the target, like the other classes.

Snit

HiP wrote: »

their problem is really that when we go for full burst glass cannon, it also boosts our most efficient defense

For DPS, stacking spell damage is considerably more effective than stacking magicka (for non-pet builds). Spell damage does nothing for defense.

HiP

Snit wrote: »

HiP wrote: »

their problem is really that when we go for full burst glass cannon, it also boosts our most efficient defense

For DPS, stacking spell damage is considerably more effective than stacking magicka (for non-pet builds). Spell damage does nothing for defense.

look again, Healing ward scales better off spell damage. and hardened ward still gets better with spell damage, even if less so than with max magicka.
also, even if you're going for all spell damage, you still stack magicka on armor glyphes at least.
i don't see anyone stacking spell damage and going full stamina or full health

Snit

HiP wrote: »

look again, Healing ward scales better off spell damage. and hardened ward still gets better with spell damage, even if less so than with max magicka

Healing Ward is a heal - heals scale with spell damage. Hardened Ward does not. (I just rechecked it)

HiP

Snit wrote: »

Healing Ward is a heal - heals scale with spell damage. Hardened Ward does not. (I just rechecked it)

Healing ward is a shield.
however we choose to increase our damage, spell damage or magicka pool, our defense increase too.
that's what is wrong with the sorc. maybe even in the game in general hard to fix it without breaking half of the game now.

TehMagnus

Survivability is not an issue since you're not supposed to heal yourself in trials, hence sorcs have as much resistance as any other class.

Usefullness in 1.6.3 you can only speculate and in any case to get the higher leaderboard scores you have to do Hard Mode and DPS is not the most important thing, it's surviving and using ultimates at the correct time.

There is no reason to refuse a sorc in any group since the most important thing now is to be a skilled player and survive while dealing DECENT DPS.

gurugeorgey

HiP wrote: »

Snit wrote: »

Healing Ward is a heal - heals scale with spell damage. Hardened Ward does not. (I just rechecked it)

Healing ward is a shield.
however we choose to increase our damage, spell damage or magicka pool, our defense increase too.
that's what is wrong with the sorc. maybe even in the game in general hard to fix it without breaking half of the game now.

I don't know if that's necessarily broken, it's just a different philosophy. Old school idea was interdependence of classes, so one specialized in dps, one in healing, one in mitigation, one in CC. That's all changed with the greater number of casual players - design philosophy these days is generally "any class ought to be able to output respectable dps and have decent defence while doing whatever else it is they specialize in".

That makes things much more friendly for solo play, which is what most casual players are into. But it makes it frustrating for those who liked the old school way of interdependence, ultra min-maxing and uber specialization.

It's also frustrating from the developers' point of view, I guess, because it means that ultimately everything devolves to "dps is king" - there's less room for interesting endgame gameplay with synergies and interdependences between players, because nobody is that specialized any more, everyone's a jack of all trades who can dps, more or less.

As always, something is lost, something is gained. And meanwhile, for the vast majority if players who just follow their nose through the game, the system works pretty well (in the sense that you can build as you go, as you feel it, and have something that's viable).

GilGalad

TehMagnus wrote: »

Survivability is not an issue since you're not supposed to heal yourself in trials, hence sorcs have as much resistance as any other class.

I'm tired of writing to hodor people, who don't seem to be able to think about anything else but trials situations, but I will do it one more time.
1. Sorcs don't have as much resistance as other classes. DKs and Temps have passives that give spellres. DKs can block an additional 10%, Temps 15% more melee. There are a lot of AOEs you have to block in trials, specially in hard modes.
2. Survivabilty is an issue in vet DSA where you can't always rely on your healer (e.g. Vamp stage).

TehMagnus wrote: »

Usefullness in 1.6.3 you can only speculate and in any case to get the higher leaderboard scores you have to do Hard Mode and DPS is not the most important thing, it's surviving and using ultimates at the correct time.

If the sorc had an useful ultimate this would be true, but a sorc doesn't have a nova, VOB or Magma Armor (synergy) or does offer any other group utility, but the 3% spellcrit. Negate is useless after the nerf and the Barrier is available to every class.

NBs can heal the group, while dealing dmg, have their VOB and increase the groups weapon crit.
Temps have their nova and increase the groups spelldmg by 5%.
DKs have the magma armor, increase the groups weapon dmg by 5% and can increase the groups fire dmg by 10% (engulfing flames)

TehMagnus wrote: »

There is no reason to refuse a sorc in any group since the most important thing now is to be a skilled player and survive while dealing DECENT DPS.

Skill might be more important in 1.6, but a skilled sorc will reach a limit pretty fast, while DKs and Temps have still space to improve. The often cited liquid lightning is useless in most HRC fights, specially in the hardmodes when the boss is moving all the time, so sorcs loose about 1,5k DPS there, no matter how skied they are.

I am tired of discussions with hodor people who's best scores are with everything but their sorcs. I would appreciate it when you go back, play your DK and stop all your biased posts. We are interested in an objective discussion, give me facts, that's all I'm interested in. Stop stating sorcs are fine, without any good arguments.

Sorcs might be fine in most Trial situations when it comes to pure DPS, but as you said it's not about pure DPS anymore.
Everything else needs improvement, specially the utility and the ability to play anything else but magicka DPS.

Morgha_Kul

There was a LOT to read there, so I apologize for not reading it all before posting.

My comment has to do with the Twilight Matriarch. I've never cared for the Twilight, and I rather miss some of the other summons from Morrowind. Since we're evidently not meant to summon Atronachs, why not do something similar to what happens with the scamp.

That is:

Summon Scamp
>Summon Unstable Scamp
>Summon Clannfear

Summon Winged Twilight
>Summon Restoring Twilight (which I would just rename Twilight Matriarch)
>Summon Hunger

The Hunger would be a melee/ranged creature that would transfer any damage done as health back to the caster. This mimics the heal of the original Matriarch summon, but gives us a different creature (and one without giant wings constantly preventing you interacting with things and blocking your view). Plus, I always thought the Hunger was a visually dynamic, even frightening creature. It could be AWESOME in the new game.

byrom101b16_ESO

gurugeorgey wrote: »

It's also frustrating from the developers' point of view, I guess, because it means that ultimately everything devolves to "dps is king" - there's less room for interesting endgame gameplay with synergies and interdependences between players, because nobody is that specialized any more, everyone's a jack of all trades who can dps, more or less.

The maybe they shouldn't have made their endgame content time and dps-based? lmfao!

...and it still will be, once killing all the mobs and having no deaths in a trial is on farm mode...

But that's Zenimax all over - create the problem; fix the wrong aspect of the problem; force respecs and regearing; blame the players for being upset about it...

byrom101b16_ESO

Gil.Galad wrote: »

TehMagnus wrote: »

Survivability is not an issue since you're not supposed to heal yourself in trials, hence sorcs have as much resistance as any other class.

I'm tired of writing to hodor people, who don't seem to be able to think about anything else but trials situations, but I will do it one more time.
1. Sorcs don't have as much resistance as other classes. DKs and Temps have passives that give spellres. DKs can block an additional 10%, Temps 15% more melee. There are a lot of AOEs you have to block in trials, specially in hard modes.
2. Survivabilty is an issue in vet DSA where you can't always rely on your healer (e.g. Vamp stage).

TehMagnus wrote: »

Usefullness in 1.6.3 you can only speculate and in any case to get the higher leaderboard scores you have to do Hard Mode and DPS is not the most important thing, it's surviving and using ultimates at the correct time.

If the sorc had an useful ultimate this would be true, but a sorc doesn't have a nova, VOB or Magma Armor (synergy) or does offer any other group utility, but the 3% spellcrit. Negate is useless after the nerf and the Barrier is available to every class.

NBs can heal the group, while dealing dmg, have their VOB and increase the groups weapon crit.
Temps have their nova and increase the groups spelldmg by 5%.
DKs have the magma armor, increase the groups weapon dmg by 5% and can increase the groups fire dmg by 10% (engulfing flames)

TehMagnus wrote: »

There is no reason to refuse a sorc in any group since the most important thing now is to be a skilled player and survive while dealing DECENT DPS.

Skill might be more important in 1.6, but a skilled sorc will reach a limit pretty fast, while DKs and Temps have still space to improve. The often cited liquid lightning is useless in most HRC fights, specially in the hardmodes when the boss is moving all the time, so sorcs loose about 1,5k DPS there, no matter how skied they are.

I am tired of discussions with hodor people who's best scores are with everything but their sorcs. I would appreciate it when you go back, play your DK and stop all your biased posts. We are interested in an objective discussion, give me facts, that's all I'm interested in. Stop stating sorcs are fine, without any good arguments.

Sorcs might be fine in most Trial situations when it comes to pure DPS, but as you said it's not about pure DPS anymore.
Everything else needs improvement, specially the utility and the ability to play anything else but magicka DPS.

As usual, to the point, more usefully analytical than the 'look at my parse' coterie, and actually dealing with the representative truth of the matter.

Cue another sub-90 second target dummy dps video denial!

gurugeorgey

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

gurugeorgey wrote: »

It's also frustrating from the developers' point of view, I guess, because it means that ultimately everything devolves to "dps is king" - there's less room for interesting endgame gameplay with synergies and interdependences between players, because nobody is that specialized any more, everyone's a jack of all trades who can dps, more or less.

The maybe they shouldn't have made their endgame content time and dps-based? lmfao!

...and it still will be, once killing all the mobs and having no deaths in a trial is on farm mode...

But that's Zenimax all over - create the problem; fix the wrong aspect of the problem; force respecs and regearing; blame the players for being upset about it...

It's not quite fair to say it's a Zenimax thing, it's a thing with all modern MMOs, they all have the same problem.

That's what I mean by cost/benefit. The benefit of having any class do decent dps and have decent survivability is that the game is more casual/roleplay friendly, and in view of the well-known fact that most players of MMOs are casual, that's a not inconsiderable benefit from both devs' and said players' points of view.

The cost is that you can't get such an intricate, team-based endgame - and that's also not an inconsiderable cost in terms of satisfied endgame players being good publicity for a game, and unsatisfied ones being bad publicity.

All modern MMOs are juggling with this conundrum, every single MMO forum out there you'll see complaints about the endgame devolving to a boring DPS race (well, boring for most people except min-maxers who love spending inordinate amounts of time and money on squeezing out another few percent dps ).

wolonggong_ESO

gurugeorgey wrote: »

It's not quite fair to say it's a Zenimax thing, it's a thing with all modern MMOs, they all have the same problem.

Its only a thing with PvP centered games. Those not built around PvP don't have the "balance" issues that get broken more than fixed...the reason they are broken more than fixed is that developers hear the cries of players and balance around that instead of the actual problems...so, things break because those player tears are from people getting their butts kicked and screaming for a nerf.