Sorcerer Skilltrees - a re-imagining

Jar_Ek

Overview
After numerous discussions, I decided to try to re-imagining the sorcerer skills to include stamina-build friendly morphs without heavily impacting on the magicka morphs (and adding some basic improvement suggestions). I found that this was pretty much impossible – not because it cannot be done, but because it will just extend the existing arguments between stamina/hybrid/magicka proponents.

So I tried an alternative method of satisfying the criteria. The key to this is alternative passives (not morphs, but mutually exclusive options) such that we can get closer to alternative builds without destroying existing ones. Naturally as these alternative passives are mutually exclusive with the existing ones it is only possible to select the new (alternative) passive at the expense of the original passive. The simplest way to think of it is as a passive morph – in that it is different to the original and a replacement for it.

However I also found it necessary to modify some of the existing skills, just not into stamina morphs – mostly because I think they are weak or they fail to provide any diversity.

Storm Calling
By the name this looks like it should be a powerhouse of lightning based damage abilities...

Mages Fury:
Lightning based, ranged damage with execute (at < 25% health) and minor splash on execute.
Endless Morph
Current: Killing an opponent with this restores magicka
Suggestion: Each subsequent cast of this spell reduces the magicka cost of the next cast of this spell within 2 seconds by 10% - to a maximum of 50% reduction. Magicka restoration is directly proportional to spell cost reduction (so at 50% cost reduction, restoration is 50% of normal).
Reason: This would enable it to be more endless and useful for sustain, esp. in the execution phase.
Wrath Morph
Current: The target explosion (the execute element) causes additional damage to nearby enemies.
Suggestion: Increased base damage, but slightly reduced execute “bonus” damage. Overall damage in execute phase is unchanged. Wrath applies a minor breach (spell resist) debuff to all targets hit by it (including by the explosion) and activates the explosion at 35%.
Reason: This would provide a group effect and also allow the execution phase to start earlier – plus the base damage makes it useable as a filler.

Lightning Form Morphs:
Provides the maximum spell resist and armour buffs for a decent time period and creates a mobile AoE DoT centred on the caster.
Suggestion: Reduce the cost by 5% per rank in a morph (i.e. 20% at rank IV in the morph).
Reason: This makes it more affordable for stamina builds and, due to the durations, won’t have any real impact on magicka builds (as this is not a spamable skill).

Lightning Splash:
A ground AoE DoT that hits for decent damage.
Liquid Morph
Current: Increased duration
Suggestion: Keep the same duration and make the ground AoE DoT is attached to the target for the duration.
Reason: This allows one morph to keep the DoT on the target reliably without the need for a recast (note that either morph could have this treatment – this is just the one I thought would work better).

Surge:
Provides major brutality (weapon damage) buff and healing on critical (with a 0.25s)
Suggestion: Reduce the CD to 0.05s (or whatever value is required to prevent AoE simultaneous heals), and add a major (minor because it impacts on other forms of self-healing?) mending buff (increases healing output).
Reason: This offsets the randomness of the heals and provides Sorcerer healers a significant buff. However it still prevents AoE damage spam from providing huge levels of healing (i.e. you cannot get healed multiple times from one Impulse/Steel Tornado/etc). So to offset that loss (compared to 1.6), the healing output is buffed (mending).
Note that this could be (and might need to be) rebalanced by changing the level of healing return in the base skill if required [i.e. reduce the healing return by x% (30% for major, 8% for minor) of its current value] such that the mending buff does not boost self-healing too much.
Critical Morph
Current: Increases the healing return by 10% to 20% at rank IV.
Suggestion: Reduce magicka cost by 30% and whilst active it provides a major Endurance (stamina regen) buff. Healing return from critical is not increased.
Reason: This would make it a useful for stamina builds and maybe PvP magicka builds.
Power Morph
Current: Provides major sorcery (spell damage) buff
Suggestion: No longer provides a Brutality buff. Provides major sorcery buff and major (minor?) berserk buff.
Reason: This would make it a very good DPS substitute for Structured Entropy for magicka builds.
Note this does make the morph slightly worse for hybrid builds (as they lose the brutality buff).

Bolt Escape
A short range teleport. Causes a stun at the launch point.
Streak morph
Current: Stuns opponents within path.
Ball of Light morph
Current: Leaves a 4 second ball that absorbs projectiles

Overload
Ultimate that provides a 3rd cast bar, and changes light attacks into powerful single target strikes and heavy attacks into AoE attacks.
Energy
Current: Strikes replenish magicka
Power
Current: Increases range and damage of heavy attack
Suggestion: Strikes replenish stamina
Reason: The counterpoint to energy overload, rather than increasing the power of the heavy attack.

Storm Calling Passives
This is the important part! With alternative passives we can get closer to what we desire for all types of build. However the alternative passives require you to select them at the expense of the original passive (so you can’t have both Capacitor and Battle Magus for example).

Capacitor
Current: Increased magicka regeneration
Battle Magus
Suggestion: All sorcerer damage abilities (including pets) can now scale off their stated resource, or both resources combined *0.7 (1pt) or *0.8 (2pt) – whichever is higher. Wards (and non-damaging skills that scale) now scale off magicka, or both health and magicka combined at *0.7 / *0.8.
Reason: This allows stamina and hybrids to be roughly comparable in damage to pure builds, but lose their magicka regeneration bonus.

Energised
Current: Increases lightning damage.
Infusion
Suggestion: Weapons are infused with lightning / power and cause additional damage. This damage increase is calculated off the sorcerers spell power. This passive allows the disintegrate passive to trigger from weapon attacks.
Reason: This makes sorcerer weapon damage slightly higher than it would otherwise be and synergises with Disintegrate and Expert Mage. This damage increase is intended to be lower than Energised provides for Lightning skills, even at high spell power levels (Diminishing returns apply). And yes this is probably actually better for spell power (hence magicka) builds.

Disintegrate
Current: Chance to proc a high damage disintegration (scales off health I think) on low health targets from lightning attacks.
Feedback
Suggestion: This has a high chance to cause a low damage feedback attack (which scales off health) when damaged if any Lightning skills are on your bar. The chance increases with number of abilities (5 / 10% per ability). It will not proc if your shield is hit and you take no damage.
Reason: This supports melee builds and provides additional damage for such roles (magicka or stamina).

Expert Mage
Current: Increase to spell power of 2% per sorcerer skill on the bar.
Wise Mage
Suggestion: Decrease the cost of all sorcerer skills by 5/10%.
Reason: This provides a sustain option instead of a damage option – which makes magicka abilities more affordable. This is good for stamina users and good for magicka sustain builds rather than straight DPS builds.

 

Dark Magic
This covers the use of daedric power to CC, damage and recover resources.

Crystal Shards
Damaging attack with a cast time that causes a knockdown.
Suggestion: Reduce the flight time dramatically. Make the animation less obvious and easy to pick out.
Reason: This is currently too easy to dodge, reflect, block, etc.
Crystal Blast
Current: Provides an AoE version of crystal shards.
Suggestion: Reduce the cast time slightly and reduce the AoE damage (with a knock-down). Allow this to procs off criticals (15% chance) for a insta-cast, reduced cost version. This insta-cast proc has a CD of 2s, although you can always hard cast.
Reason: This brings it more into line with Fragments but supports a different type of build – however the proc chance is lower and the effect has a CD.

Encase
This is a cone shaped area effect root.
Restraining Prison
Current: Adds a snare after the base effect ends.
Suggestion: Also changes the shape/targeting to be a circular, ranged, ground targeted AoE (as per Lightning Splash) that has exactly the same effect as the base Encase effect.
Reason: This supports tanks and melee builds as it allows it to be self-targeted (esp. if zos provide a means to enable self targeting for such abilities); and provides a more flexible skill for everyone else.

Rune Prison
Current: Disorientation CC that breaks on damage.
Suggestion: Reduce the cast time by 50%.
Reason: The cast time makes this a pre-combat cast only and it has no real use in PvP. A lower cast time would help somewhat.
Runic Cage Morph
Current: This causes a stun when the effect ends.
Suggestion: This becomes a hard encasing, rather than a disorientation effect. This does not break on damage from the sorcerer or his pets (including his own aoe/splash) – it does break on others damage. The target cannot be damaged by the sorcerer whilst inside the prison. The cost of breaking free from this effect is increased by 50%. Only one can be active at one time, recasting on the same target whilst the ability is currently active cancels the existing encasement.
Reason: This provides an alternative CC mechanism, that actually keeps an opponent locked down – but it doesn’t do anything else (no damage, no stun, etc).

Dark Exchange
This is a heal that restores magicka at the cost of stamina. It also CCs the sorcerer by applying a snare and being a channel (i.e. cannot use any other skills / attacks). Blocking cancels it.
“Stamina” Morph
Current: Converts magicka into stamina / health as a channel.
Suggestion: Change the skill into a toggle. Whilst toggled on, the ability swaps magicka for stamina and health – it does not snare the sorcerer, or stop them using skills. It is automatically toggled off by a performing a weapon swap, or when the sorcerer is hit by an interrupt (or by re-pressing the toggle). Whilst the toggle is active the sorcerers normal regeneration is halted (i.e. 0 magicka, stamina and health regeneration). Whilst on the skill bar (regardless of being on or off), it provides a minor maximum health increase (8%). The exact level of conversion is reduced compared to dark exchange to be appropriately balanced – the conversation rate must be good enough to be worth slotting regardless.
Better Conversion Rate Morph
Current: This morph makes the conversation rate better.
Suggestion: Change the skill into a toggle. Whilst toggled on, the ability swaps magicka for stamina and health – it does not snare the sorcerer, or stop them using skills. It is automatically toggled off by a performing a weapon swap, or when the sorcerer is hit by an interrupt (or by re-pressing the toggle). Whilst the toggle is active the sorcerers normal regeneration is halted (i.e. 0 magicka, stamina and health regeneration). Whilst on the skill bar (regardless of being on or off), it provides a minor maximum health increase (8%). The exact level of conversion is reduced compared to dark exchange to be appropriately balanced – the conversation rate must be good enough to be worth slotting regardless.

Daedric Mines
This generates 3 daedric mines that explode on contact causing high damage and a short immobilisation. They have a 3 second activation period and are generated in a PBAoE around the caster.
Suggestion: Bosses should be affected by multiple mines, but additional mines past the first should have their damage calculated on a diminishing returns basis – such that each subsequent mine hit within a 0. 5 second timescale causes 50% less damage than the previous (so 100%, 50%, 25%, etc).
In addition the mines (when active) should immobilise (stop) charging attacks (including streak / bolt escape)and should trigger and cause damage on anyone trying to dodge roll through them (otherwise it rather defeats the point of them).
Daedric Tomb
Current: This generates 3 mines with a 0 second activation period in a straight line in front of the caster.
Suggestion: The mines are invisible to everyone except the caster.
Daedric Minefield
Current: This generates 5 mines with a 3 second activation period in a PBAoE pattern around the caster.
Suggestion: The mines are invisible to everyone except the caster.

Negate Magic:
Suggestion: Allow negate magic to negate all abilities on initial activation and then have a charge system where additional negation use up 1 charge per standard ability, 5 per boss ability, and 10 per ultimate ability. The negate field has X charges after the initial negation and hence could negate the next X regular abilities, the next X/5 boss abilities, or the next X/10 ultimates used – at which point it collapses (even if it would have had duration left). My initial suggestion would be 10 charges and/or to tweak with ultimate / boss charge destruction.

Dark Magic Passives
These alternative passives help to get closer to what we desire for all types of build. However the alternative passives require you to select them at the expense of the original passive.

Unholy Knowledge
Current: This provides a 3/6 stamina and magicka ability cost reduction.
Unholy Bargain
Suggestion: Cost of all class skills (except dark exchange) is met by stamina when magicka resource is exhausted at a 10/0 % penalty.
Reason: This means that sorcerers can use all their magicka and then switch to stamina costs for class skills – which supports both stamina and magicka builds. BUT at the expense of a 6% cost reduction across the board.

Blood Magic
Current: Provides a heal when an opponent is hit by a dark magic ability (8% of max health)
Dark Strength
Suggestion: Provides a damage shield that increases with number of opponents hit (3/6% of max health per opponent) that lasts 5s. This ability stacks with itself (i.e. spamming dark magic can create a large shield… but for a very limited time).
Reason: This provides an alternate means of defense and supports pre-casts of as Encase, Daedric Mines, etc.

Persistence
Current: Increases duration of dark magic abilities.
Affliction
Suggestion: All dark magic abilities apply a minor maim debuff to targets hit. This debuff lasts for the full duration of the ability + 5 / 10% (irrespective of break free).

Exploitation
Current: Provides a minor prophecy buff (spell critical) on activation.
Dark Blessing
Suggestion: Provides a minor savagery buff on activation.

 
Daedric Summoning
In order to offset the impact of the Daedric Summoning toggles (i.e. 2 slots on your bars) and the casts times, I suggest the following:

All summoning toggles should gain an active ability (a little like defensive posture has a passive effect from being slotted and an active). The initial activation of the ability sets the toggle on and to actively de-toggle it is a CTRL+ability (or similar dual key press). Any use of the normal activation key after the toggle has been set on, activates a secondary ability based on the nature of the skill. In addition all summons should scale off maximum magicka or stamina.

Example abilities are
Familiar:
Activation ability: Daedric explosion
Active ability: AoE explosion at familiar location. Costs magicka.
Clanfear:
Activation ability: Tail swipe.
Active ability: AoE knockdown with taunt at clanfear location (same damage as the baseline familiar’s explosion).
Unstable Familiar:
Activation ability: Unstable explosion
Active ability: Causes an greater AoE explosion + stun at familiar location.
Costs magicka.
Winged Twilight:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability: Performs a heal on caster. Costs magicka
Restoring Twilight:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability as Winged Twilight. Morph provides a magicka regeneration aura
Twilight Matriarch:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability as Winged Twilight. Morph provides a health regeneration aura

Daedric Curse:
Current: Causes a delayed AoE damage explosion.
Suggestion: This causes a minor DoT, with a significant AoE damage explosion for the same total damage as the current spell.
Daedric Prey:
Current: Increases pet damage whilst active.
Suggestion: Can also be used to identify targets to pets for the modified Empowered Ward.

Bound Armour:
Current: Provides a minor armour buff and improves maximum magicka.
Suggestion: Instead provides minor protection buff and improves maximum magicka.
Bound Aegis:
Current: Provides minor spell resistance buff (Ward).
Suggestion: Provides minor armour and spell resistance buffs.
Bound Armaments:
Current: Improves maximum stamina instead of magicka and provides additional damage on heavy attacks.
Suggestion: Also rovides minor armour buff (bear in mind the baseline change is to protection).

Conjured Ward:
Current: Wards self and pets with a shield scaled off magicka.
Empowered Ward:
Current: Warded pets do additional damage.
Suggestion: Empowered Ward can ward the sorcerer and up to 2 additional allies of the sorcerer.
If the sorcerer has pets active these are the first allies warded.
If the sorcerer has placed a daedric curse, then conjured ward will affect the two closest allies to the target of the curse (unless a pet has taken one or more of these wards). Otherwise it will be those closest to the sorcerer. Recasting empowered ward will kill all existing wards.
Wards from multiple sorcerers do not stack (so you cannot stack Empowered wards from another sorcerer with your own Conjured ward – and two sorcerers cannot ward stack the tank for twice the effect).
 
Daedric Summoning Passives
These are the alternative morphs for the daedric summoning.

Rebate:
Current: Regain magicka on the death of a pet
Suggestion: Regain magicka and health (10/20) on the death of a pet
Reason: This simply incorporates the clannfear health rebate passive into an actual passive.
Demonic Infusion:
Suggestion: The death of a pet infuses you with a surge of demonic strength.
When one of your pets dies / despawns, gain Major Berserk for 4/8s.
Reason: This provides a significant short term DPS boost on pet death.

Power Stone:
Current: Reduce cost of Ultimates
Power Siphon:
Suggestion: Pets gain you ultimate (1 per 10s / 1 per 5s) whilst they attack
Reason: This provides an means of ultimate generation using pets (roughly equivalent of catalyst)

Daedric Protection:
Current: Improved health recovery with skill slotted
Daedric Infusion:
Suggestion: Provides 1 / 2% max health per daedric summoning ability slotted
Reason: This supports tanks and life builds.

Expert Summoner:
Current: Familiar gains speed. Twilight gains damage. Atronach gains range.
Suggestion: All pets gain damage + health.
Clannfear gains armour/spell resist and charge.
Familiar gains speed and attack speed.
Twilight gains range and self-heal (i.e. it heals itself).
Atronach gains armour/spell resist and range.
Expert Conjuror:
Suggestion: Bound armour provides a minor increased healing received buff as an activation ability (similar to defensive stance) for 10s. This costs magicka (but see also unholy bargain).
Daedric Curse applies a minor defile effect to the target for 3/6s on cast.
Conjured ward duration increased 5 / 10% (so it doesn’t overpower shields any further).
Reason: This provides the non-pet builds with an alternative.

 
Overall:
The goal was to provide viable alternatives for stamina and hybrid builds and support for all roles. I hop that I have demonstrated that this is possible with some skill tweaks and the inclusion of alternative passives / passive morphs. Indeed without these passive morphs, this setup would not work for stamina / hybrids at all.

Anyway, please comment. And if anyone has the stomach, try the same for DK, NB and Temp.

Cheers

PKMN12

not going to happen.

Jar_Ek

@PKMN12 Probably true, but tbh I was fed up with the arguing in the sorcerer stamina and other threads and needed some form of release... this was it.

Glurin

Certainly better suggestions than I've heard so far from people just wanting to switch a bunch of skills to stamina morphs. Better by a wide margin.

Storm Calling

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Mages Fury:
Lightning based, ranged damage with execute (at < 25% health) and minor splash on execute.
Endless Morph
Current: Killing an opponent with this restores magicka
Suggestion: Each subsequent cast of this spell reduces the magicka cost of the next cast of this spell within 2 seconds by 10% - to a maximum of 50% reduction. Magicka restoration is directly proportional to spell cost reduction (so at 50% cost reduction, restoration is 50% of normal).
Reason: This would enable it to be more endless and useful for sustain, esp. in the execution phase.
Wrath Morph
Current: The target explosion (the execute element) causes additional damage to nearby enemies.
Suggestion: Increased base damage, but slightly reduced execute “bonus” damage. Overall damage in execute phase is unchanged. Wrath applies a minor breach (spell resist) debuff to all targets hit by it (including by the explosion) and activates the explosion at 35%.
Reason: This would provide a group effect and also allow the execution phase to start earlier – plus the base damage makes it useable as a filler.

Not bad. Fits better with the "Endless" Fury idea than just getting a little magicka back after you've made the kill and no longer need it. Applying breach with Wrath at a reduced execute damage makes the skill useful for more general damage than just something to spam in the execution phase.

Lightning Form Morphs:
Provides the maximum spell resist and armour buffs for a decent time period and creates a mobile AoE DoT centred on the caster.
Suggestion: Reduce the cost by 5% per rank in a morph (i.e. 20% at rank IV in the morph).
Reason: This makes it more affordable for stamina builds and, due to the durations, won’t have any real impact on magicka builds (as this is not a spamable skill).

Also good. The damage isn't terribly high and it's not a spamable skill, so the reduced cost shouldn't cause too much trouble. I believe it can trigger the disintegrate passive however, so that's something to keep in mind.

Lightning Splash:
A ground AoE DoT that hits for decent damage.
Liquid Morph
Current: Increased duration
Suggestion: Keep the same duration and make the ground AoE DoT is attached to the target for the duration.
Reason: This allows one morph to keep the DoT on the target reliably without the need for a recast (note that either morph could have this treatment – this is just the one I thought would work better).

Damage or area might have to be reduced to balance out the fact that it now tracks the target, but not a bad concept.

Surge:
Provides major brutality (weapon damage) buff and healing on critical (with a 0.25s)
Suggestion: Reduce the CD to 0.05s (or whatever value is required to prevent AoE simultaneous heals), and add a major (minor because it impacts on other forms of self-healing?) mending buff (increases healing output).
Reason: This offsets the randomness of the heals and provides Sorcerer healers a significant buff. However it still prevents AoE damage spam from providing huge levels of healing (i.e. you cannot get healed multiple times from one Impulse/Steel Tornado/etc). So to offset that loss (compared to 1.6), the healing output is buffed (mending).
Note that this could be (and might need to be) rebalanced by changing the level of healing return in the base skill if required [i.e. reduce the healing return by x% (30% for major, 8% for minor) of its current value] such that the mending buff does not boost self-healing too much.
Critical Morph
Current: Increases the healing return by 10% to 20% at rank IV.
Suggestion: Reduce magicka cost by 30% and whilst active it provides a major Endurance (stamina regen) buff. Healing return from critical is not increased.
Reason: This would make it a useful for stamina builds and maybe PvP magicka builds.
Power Morph
Current: Provides major sorcery (spell damage) buff
Suggestion: No longer provides a Brutality buff. Provides major sorcery buff and major (minor?) berserk buff.
Reason: This would make it a very good DPS substitute for Structured Entropy for magicka builds.
Note this does make the morph slightly worse for hybrid builds (as they lose the brutality buff).

Reliable combat healing is definitely an area that the sorcerer is lacking. This would help with that, but would also need some adjustment to make sure that sorcerer's don't just become regenerating gods as long as they have it up.

Overload
Ultimate that provides a 3rd cast bar, and changes light attacks into powerful single target strikes and heavy attacks into AoE attacks.
Energy
Current: Strikes replenish magicka
Power
Current: Increases range and damage of heavy attack
Suggestion: Strikes replenish stamina
Reason: The counterpoint to energy overload, rather than increasing the power of the heavy attack.

Yeah, I can see this. Gives stamina builds a comparable ultimate and doesn't really break anything.

Storm Calling Passives

This is the important part! With alternative passives we can get closer to what we desire for all types of build. However the alternative passives require you to select them at the expense of the original passive (so you can’t have both Capacitor and Battle Magus for example).

I very much like this idea. Obviously the other classes would need the same treatment, but this I think would solve a lot of problems and at the same time open up a whole slew of new possibilities.

Capacitor
Current: Increased magicka regeneration
Battle Magus
Suggestion: All sorcerer damage abilities (including pets) can now scale off their stated resource, or both resources combined *0.7 (1pt) or *0.8 (2pt) – whichever is higher. Wards (and non-damaging skills that scale) now scale off magicka, or both health and magicka combined at *0.7 / *0.8.
Reason: This allows stamina and hybrids to be roughly comparable in damage to pure builds, but lose their magicka regeneration bonus.

As long as the magicka cost remains the same and the passive ensures that stamina scaled versions are still weaker than magicka scaled versions (which I think you did if I'm reading it right), it could work.

Expert Mage
Current: Increase to spell power of 2% per sorcerer skill on the bar.
Wise Mage
Suggestion: Decrease the cost of all sorcerer skills by 5/10%.
Reason: This provides a sustain option instead of a damage option – which makes magicka abilities more affordable. This is good for stamina users and good for magicka sustain builds rather than straight DPS builds.

Cost reduction might be a tad much. Combined with Unholy Knowledge, you're looking at a 15% cost reduction right there with just those two passives.

Dark Magic

Crystal Shards
Damaging attack with a cast time that causes a knockdown.
Suggestion: Reduce the flight time dramatically. Make the animation less obvious and easy to pick out.
Reason: This is currently too easy to dodge, reflect, block, etc.
Crystal Blast
Current: Provides an AoE version of crystal shards.
Suggestion: Reduce the cast time slightly and reduce the AoE damage (with a knock-down). Allow this to procs off criticals (15% chance) for a insta-cast, reduced cost version. This insta-cast proc has a CD of 2s, although you can always hard cast.
Reason: This brings it more into line with Fragments but supports a different type of build – however the proc chance is lower and the effect has a CD.

You're trying to turn Blast into Fragments. Don't. The instant cast should remain fragments only. Reduced cast time is better, but not really necessary. To bring the single target damage more in line with fragments, you could just give it the same or similar chance at increased damage to the initial target. Cost should remain the same. Right now it functions as a long range shotgun blast with usability as a single target damage ability. Very handy against say, a boss with minions that keep moving around. Or a healer with several mobs around him. That's a different function than the straight up boss killer burst that is Fragments.

Encase
This is a cone shaped area effect root.
Restraining Prison
Current: Adds a snare after the base effect ends.
Suggestion: Also changes the shape/targeting to be a circular, ranged, ground targeted AoE (as per Lightning Splash) that has exactly the same effect as the base Encase effect.
Reason: This supports tanks and melee builds as it allows it to be self-targeted (esp. if zos provide a means to enable self targeting for such abilities); and provides a more flexible skill for everyone else.

Encase....needs some work. It's not a bad skill perse, but it's got some problems that need sorted out before we can really see how it functions on stamina builds of any kind.

Dark Exchange
This is a heal that restores magicka at the cost of stamina. It also CCs the sorcerer by applying a snare and being a channel (i.e. cannot use any other skills / attacks). Blocking cancels it.
“Stamina” Morph
Current: Converts magicka into stamina / health as a channel.
Suggestion: Change the skill into a toggle. Whilst toggled on, the ability swaps magicka for stamina and health – it does not snare the sorcerer, or stop them using skills. It is automatically toggled off by a performing a weapon swap, or when the sorcerer is hit by an interrupt (or by re-pressing the toggle). Whilst the toggle is active the sorcerers normal regeneration is halted (i.e. 0 magicka, stamina and health regeneration). Whilst on the skill bar (regardless of being on or off), it provides a minor maximum health increase (8%). The exact level of conversion is reduced compared to dark exchange to be appropriately balanced – the conversation rate must be good enough to be worth slotting regardless.
Better Conversion Rate Morph
Current: This morph makes the conversation rate better.
Suggestion: Change the skill into a toggle. Whilst toggled on, the ability swaps magicka for stamina and health – it does not snare the sorcerer, or stop them using skills. It is automatically toggled off by a performing a weapon swap, or when the sorcerer is hit by an interrupt (or by re-pressing the toggle). Whilst the toggle is active the sorcerers normal regeneration is halted (i.e. 0 magicka, stamina and health regeneration). Whilst on the skill bar (regardless of being on or off), it provides a minor maximum health increase (8%). The exact level of conversion is reduced compared to dark exchange to be appropriately balanced – the conversation rate must be good enough to be worth slotting regardless.

So your suggestion is to make both morphs identical?

I don't think there's really much of a problem with the basic mechanics of dark exchange right now. It's just, well, kind of the only reliable heal we've got and we have to basically stand still and channel for it to work.

Daedric Mines
This generates 3 daedric mines that explode on contact causing high damage and a short immobilisation. They have a 3 second activation period and are generated in a PBAoE around the caster.
Suggestion: Bosses should be affected by multiple mines, but additional mines past the first should have their damage calculated on a diminishing returns basis – such that each subsequent mine hit within a 0. 5 second timescale causes 50% less damage than the previous (so 100%, 50%, 25%, etc).
In addition the mines (when active) should immobilise (stop) charging attacks (including streak / bolt escape)and should trigger and cause damage on anyone trying to dodge roll through them (otherwise it rather defeats the point of them).
Daedric Tomb
Current: This generates 3 mines with a 0 second activation period in a straight line in front of the caster.
Suggestion: The mines are invisible to everyone except the caster.
Daedric Minefield
Current: This generates 5 mines with a 3 second activation period in a PBAoE pattern around the caster.
Suggestion: The mines are invisible to everyone except the caster.

You're just begging for trouble from the PvP crowd with the invisible mines thing.

Dark Magic Passives

Unholy Knowledge
Current: This provides a 3/6 stamina and magicka ability cost reduction.
Unholy Bargain
Suggestion: Cost of all class skills (except dark exchange) is met by stamina when magicka resource is exhausted at a 10/0 % penalty.
Reason: This means that sorcerers can use all their magicka and then switch to stamina costs for class skills – which supports both stamina and magicka builds. BUT at the expense of a 6% cost reduction across the board.

Penalty needs to be stronger than 10%/0%. You make a choice to go full stamina, it needs to come at a cost. Just like making the choice to go full magicka comes at the cost of essentially not being able to use weapon skills.

Exploitation
Current: Provides a minor prophecy buff (spell critical) on activation.
Dark Blessing
Suggestion: Provides a minor savagery buff on activation.

Comparable buffs that you have to choose between. A good suggestion.

Daedric Summoning

Pets should be mostly magicka based, but having them scale off of whichever stat is higher might not be a bad thing as long as they maintain their primarily support roles.

Conjured Ward:
Current: Wards self and pets with a shield scaled off magicka.
Empowered Ward:
Current: Warded pets do additional damage.
Suggestion: Empowered Ward can ward the sorcerer and up to 2 additional allies of the sorcerer.
If the sorcerer has pets active these are the first allies warded.
If the sorcerer has placed a daedric curse, then conjured ward will affect the two closest allies to the target of the curse (unless a pet has taken one or more of these wards). Otherwise it will be those closest to the sorcerer. Recasting empowered ward will kill all existing wards.
Wards from multiple sorcerers do not stack (so you cannot stack Empowered wards from another sorcerer with your own Conjured ward – and two sorcerers cannot ward stack the tank for twice the effect).

That might be a little too much. Particularly in PvP.

RavenSworn

I kinda like the suggestions to Daedric mines. Invisible mines or not, Wow had hunters who can place three different type of traps that are, you guessed it, invisible to other players except the caster.

This will add more dynamic gameplay for the sorcerer Imo. Perhaps the mines needs a reduced cooldown rather than instant cast? A 50% reduced cd would be better.

Jar_Ek

@Erock25 @byrom101b16_ESO @Varicite Thoughts?

Jar_Ek

@Glurin thanks for the comments. You're probably right wrt PvP stuff... but atm mines are basically useless in PVP because they can be seen and dodge rolled through for no damage. The ward was intended for healers... so maybe it needs to reduced effect on non pet allies.

Drago Belsazar

Your Best suggestions:

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Battle Magus
Suggestion: All sorcerer damage abilities (including pets) can now scale off their stated resource, or both resources combined *0.7 (1pt) or *0.8 (2pt) – whichever is higher. Wards (and non-damaging skills that scale) now scale off magicka, or both health and magicka combined at *0.7 / *0.8.
Reason: This allows stamina and hybrids to be roughly comparable in damage to pure builds, but lose their magicka regeneration bonus.

Very good suggestion or let life scale up life of pets.

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Expert Mage
Current: Increase to spell power of 2% per sorcerer skill on the bar.
Wise Mage
Suggestion: Decrease the cost of all sorcerer skills by 5/10%.
Reason: This provides a sustain option instead of a damage option – which makes magicka abilities more affordable. This is good for stamina users and good for magicka sustain builds rather than straight DPS builds.
Daedric Protection:
Current: Improved health recovery with skill slotted
Daedric Infusion:
Suggestion: Provides 1 / 2% max health per daedric summoning ability slotted
Reason: This supports tanks and life builds.

That would be fair enough. Daedric Summons aswell Life-Builds are pretty bad and the 2% Spell Damage per sorcerer skill on the bar is a bonus I don't understand. Think about a total Summoner, everything is scaling with Magicka, and he get Spell Damage, treaten like he is no Sorcerer. It could instead buff 2-4% of your highest ressource Magicka/Stamina/Health or lower costs like you suggested.

Your Bad suggestions:

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Blood Magic
Current: Provides a heal when an opponent is hit by a dark magic ability (8% of max health)
Dark Strength
Suggestion: Provides a damage shield that increases with number of opponents hit (3/6% of max health per opponent) that lasts 5s. This ability stacks with itself (i.e. spamming dark magic can create a large shield… but for a very limited time).
Reason: This provides an alternate means of defense and supports pre-casts of as Encase, Daedric Mines, etc.

Ward stacking is just Overpowered, there is no need to buff Ward-Users more AND Life-Sorcerers(Tanks) are just Underpowered and with this change you would nerf them.

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Conjured Ward:
Current: Wards self and pets with a shield scaled off magicka.
Empowered Ward:
Current: Warded pets do additional damage.
Suggestion: Empowered Ward can ward the sorcerer and up to 2 additional allies of the sorcerer.
If the sorcerer has pets active these are the first allies warded.
If the sorcerer has placed a daedric curse, then conjured ward will affect the two closest allies to the target of the curse (unless a pet has taken one or more of these wards). Otherwise it will be those closest to the sorcerer. Recasting empowered ward will kill all existing wards.
Wards from multiple sorcerers do not stack (so you cannot stack Empowered wards from another sorcerer with your own Conjured ward – and two sorcerers cannot ward stack the tank for twice the effect).

Who should be the idiot using Pets instead, if he can Ward allies? Would be to Overpowered. Buff crap Pets instead, they are just to bad.

Nutronic

Wards get a ton of play on PVP right now. I see sorcerers drop them on top of staircases and around corners all the time. The only problem with them is the arm and cast time. Still, if you watch lots of the amazing 1v5 or whatever sorc combo vids, you'll see them get used quite often. I will admit it's a bit gimmicky, but making them invisible as they are now would be both annoying and get a few grumbles from other players (though I don't believe it would be over powered).

Jar_Ek

@Drago Belsazar The passives are alternatives, so Blood Magic doesn't turn into Dark Strength unless you decide to do so. Also the shielding mechanic would only trigger on use of a Dark Magic ability that hits an opponent, has a short duration and a low strength and it scales off health. I would have thought that was better for life and tank chars... and probably not enough to help magicka ones much.

The ward allies concept is to provide a means to support a healer role and the shield strength would need to be lower for allies, but I think you're right... it would be op unless you had to pay for it elsewhere in some manner. Maybe if empowered ward only warded allies. Anyway it needs more thought.

@Nutronic I assume you mean mines? And tbh why do they need to glow like Xmas trees anyway, if not invisible, then at least less tricking obvious.

olsborg

Daedric Infusion:
Suggestion: Provides 1 / 2% max health per daedric summoning ability slotted
Reason: This supports tanks and life builds.

I love that tho...

Varicite

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@Erock25 @byrom101b16_ESO @Varicite Thoughts?

Tagging this to read later, have to hit work. I like the suggestions, will try to give a more thoughtful response when I get home.

Nice work, @Jar_Ek , the other thread was definitely getting too convoluted. : )

byrom101b16_ESO

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@Erock25 @byrom101b16_ESO @Varicite Thoughts?

A much more imaginative set of proposals than anything I have seen thus far, and good that you recognise that without an innovative approach, one side or the other will lose out.

Let's hope Zenimax hasn't got the blinkers on with this thread, as so far they have conspicuously failed to do so with anything suggesting anything other than stamina and heal development.

Mayrael

Nice sugestions from sorc perspective but generally it comes to buff up sorc and this is the reason that it wont ever happend. The most probable scenario is that they will change random magica skills to stamina based and thats all. No one is happy.

Jar_Ek

@Mayrael Well it's only done from a sorcerers perspective because I wouldn't feel confident enough to try to do the same for the other classes. However the main point still holds true for all classes - you can provide a greater set of good choices through adding alternative passives. The class skill change suggestions don't really do the heavy lifting, they tweak sorcerers to support more roles better and try to iron out the existing issues... but if the passives had alternatives that would probably be enough for most people. Well that and fixing surge

So if you, or anyone else, could look at and suggest alternative passives for the other classes to support currently weak roles/builds then we could see if the idea works across the board.

Cathexis

I did recently post a rebuild of the summoning tree as a stamina oriented tree..I'll repost later, but I one skill I thought would be good would be bound weapon which would be a summonable toggle that converts your swings to drain stamina and has a morph that converts your single swings into triple swings @ higher speeds.

Jar_Ek

@Cathexis I think I saw that, but I have tried, for the most part, not to fundamentally change the current skills core purpose... and the passive alternatives allow for stamina scaling and usage for pets (kindof). So although I rather like the idea of bound weapons I have not included them - and care would have to be taken to ensure they were not too close to NB siphoning skills.

Erock25

I just don't see ZOS giving multiple choices for passives any time soon. Giving Sorc one or two stamina morphs is a much better option. This type of stuff you are suggesting is good for a game way down the line, like 2 years from now. Unrealistic to ask for this now just when consoles are about to get the game for the first time.

Jar_Ek

@Erock25 Unfortunately I suspect you're right. However I seriously needed a break from all the stamina vs magicka arguments.

I guess if zos were properly lazy, they would make a world tree with Battle Magus, Unholy Bargain or something similar. This would then let them to make class skills magicka costed and then leave them as is and provide these passives for everyone.

ArRashid

As long as it promotes hybrids, I'm all for it. Your Storm Calling seems reasonable (though I'd prefer the execute working like Reverse Slash in 2h - being inversely proportional to HP, not just getting huge buff at 20% and less..), I don't really use the other two trees right now since they suck for my playstyle so I'm not qualified to judge..


I'm sick and tired to be forced to go light armor and staff to use class abilities or use mostly only weapon abilities if I want to go stamina.

Why don't all skills (that reasonably can) have a scaling with both physical and magical damage? I don't mean scaling off magicka, or scaling off stamina, or even scaling off the higher of two numbers, but scaling of BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. For example a skill having 40% magical and 60% physical component to it's damage would take 0.4x spell dmg + 0.6x weapon damage as it's modifiers.. I REALLY REALLY hope we'll get that system with Spellcrafting at least.

If I want to play dual wielding god of thunder, so be it. I don't like ruining my image with a pyro staff and lightning staff is so much worse that maybe it's really better to use dual wield anyway even if you're stacking magicka. I'm going about 70% stamina 30% magicka right now, with 5p Hunding's Rage and 4p Twilight's Embrace.. so both my spell&weapon crit and spell&weapon damage are roughly on the same values, but I do have a feeling I'd perform a slight bit better if I rather commited to stacking a single stat instead..




I just wish they would add a Rapier into the game as additional weapon - having one light blade in your right hand while having the other hand free for casting COULD provide for a fun gameplay - like having Overload active in left hand while you're still able to perform weapon skills, or cast crystal fragments with one hand only (with double cast time to offset that)... yeah, one can dream, but it'll probably never happen..

Jar_Ek

@ArRashid Well the Battle Magus passive suggested is something like your request for damage to be partially magicka and partially stamina in that it uses both to generate damage scaling. Also the unholy bargain passive suggestion would help with magicka costs for hybrid / stamina builds. So I think these suggestions might be alone the lines of what you want. Maybe take another look and focus on the alternative passives.

ArRashid

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@ArRashid Well the Battle Magus passive suggested is something like your request for damage to be partially magicka and partially stamina in that it uses both to generate damage scaling. Also the unholy bargain passive suggestion would help with magicka costs for hybrid / stamina builds. So I think these suggestions might be alone the lines of what you want. Maybe take another look and focus on the alternative passives.

well my sorc is lvl 20 and so far the only time I ran out of either resource was when I was spamming execute on bosses (as I focus on stamina and that one costs magicka), so I'm not really that concerned about costs (maybe it's just because I use sta/mag drinks instead of food which should probably boost damage a little), but about the actual viability of hybrids. Which would also mean not being forced to take light armor... but yeah that would need to overhaul whole armor system again so that they don't provide direct boosts to playstyle but rather light armor focusing on speed and dodging, heavy on being a frikkin wall and medium to be in the sweet spot in between them, not on boosting crit ratings and reducing ability costs.

Erock25

People shouldn't be allowed to comment on a classes viability before VR10 in my opinion.

Glurin

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@Glurin thanks for the comments. You're probably right wrt PvP stuff... but atm mines are basically useless in PVP because they can be seen and dodge rolled through for no damage. The ward was intended for healers... so maybe it needs to reduced effect on non pet allies.

In regards to the mines, I wasn't saying it was a bad idea to make them invisible. Just pointing out that you're probably going to find egg all over your front door one morning because the non-sorc PvPers are gonna really hate it.

Glurin

Erock25 wrote: »

I just don't see ZOS giving multiple choices for passives any time soon. Giving Sorc one or two stamina morphs is a much better option. This type of stuff you are suggesting is good for a game way down the line, like 2 years from now. Unrealistic to ask for this now just when consoles are about to get the game for the first time.

It's not just the passives that make these suggestions better for stamina builds though. Lowering the cost of the Lightning Form skills, for example, makes it more usable to stamina builds without really affecting balance too much because you can't spam that skill anyway.

Just flipping anything over to stamina is using the proverbial cannon to kill a mosquito. It causes far more problems than it solves and leaves a mess behind to boot. That's why suggestions like what is presented in the original post would work far better both in the short term and the long term.

Drago Belsazar

Alternative Passives for more specialization would be amazing but I think that won't happen for next years.

I want to remember some Forum members the Sorcerer is a SORCERER = Magicka Archetype. Just the Surge skill with increase of 20% Damage + 65% Crit Heals is good enough to build a Stamina - Build without any other Sorcerer Skill. Stamina Morphs will go to the Costs destryoing/weaken other builds and I fear they weaken everything but not the Shield-Stacking/Teleport Sorcerer. And that would be the sword in the achilles heel of those few refreshing Sorcerers not using a Teleport. That would annoy anyone on battlefield. Show now some love for those Sorcerers not using Teleport/Wards with Heavy or Medium Armor. If Stamina Sorcerers need more skills, let them scale with highest ressource(Stamina in this Case) but don't take away more versatility.
I really fear this yelling for more Stamina Morphs.

Drago Belsazar

I tested now nearly all builds for hours in PvP/PvE:

I can summarize it easy what is needed to give more balance:

1. Crystal Blast need to be Instant(Take Stun and some DMG away) for Tanks to suit for Blood-Magic(Passive 8% Life). Tanks cannot cast and Life Based Sorcerers are far to weak. A Magicka stacking Sorcerer can casts high Wards, high DPS, high Self-Heals. I don't know if a Developer ever tryed Cyrodiil. A Sorcerer Tank cannot even destroy the Ward and is eaten by a Teleport Sorcerer. Maybe that's true for every Classes Tanks. The good DDs stacking for high DPS has BOTH High DPS and High Heal. A Tank cannot kill them without luck in CC, because they lack damage against the very high Self-Heal/Wards.

2. Bound Aegis ist to weak. It could be added a Healing-Received passive to strengthen Life-based Builds.

3. Pets are far to weak. A Build without Pets doing more than doubled Damage without having Pets that ruin your Movement. For Cyrodiil PvP it's really terrible balance: Pets are more than far to weak. 1. The Winged Twilight is a One-Shot by nearly every Instant Cast/Shot Whatever of DD. The Summoner has higher Costs to recast his Summon and needs 1.3 seconds for it. That make these Summons Senseless. 2. The Controll is really poor. Maybe the Player should have the ability to choose that your Pets stay always by your side and attacks always your Target. Most times the Pets doing ***. And what I mean is not pushing Y+Click for every Target. Please automate it. 3. The DPS of the Pets is a joke.
Solutions: 1. Add 5000 HP, 20% more Damage to enemy Players etc. (The Cyrodiil Buff) to Pets. to close the Gap between PvP and PvE, because PvP needs Brain but Pets(Computer) cannot have one. 2. Let the Hitpoints of the Sorcerer scale with the Life of the Pets like Magicka scales with their Damage. 3. Raise their Damage. 4. If their is no Instant Crystal Blast for Self-Heal Possibilities to Tanks, the Clannfear need to be a Instant Cast.

4. Daedric Prey should be a DoT(6 seconds are purged in PvP and make this Cast useless, because only 1 Purge ruin the active Prey and aswell the following Prey - DMG is only made AFTER 6 seconds, but is reduced by Purge). 6 seconds to boost the low Pets damage does not worth the afford and should become a longer Duration.

5. The Heal Effect of the Twilight Matriarch is a joke.

6. The Hardened Ward is totally OP and should nerfed at Rank IV to a bonus of 25% like the Empowered Ward Rank IV grants only a bonus of 25% to the Damage of the Pets. The Wards are aswell in need of a fix. Medium Armor Sorcerers that can spam Dodging Rolls are in 1vs1 invincible because there is no Damage done to the shield, while you evade. But if you block, full Damage is done to it. The Abilities a Sorcerer offers make the choose very easy Light>Medium>Heavy. There should be a rethink to nerf the shields and include instead 50% Mitigation of Armor, Spell Resistance, Block, Evade.

7. The Cooldown of Surge Heals should be removed and the Crits of Pets should heal a Sorcerer with active Surge.

8. Bolt Escape aswell spammable Hide of Nightblades should be fixed. I just lost many friends to other games because of these annoying builds. A Bolt Escape should drop Magicka Recovery to 0 but costs need to be reduced. A Sorcerer could still teleport away, but could not annoy other players by teleporting 100 times until he killed you. That would force Sorcerers to make Heavy attacks to spam Bolt Escapes and give other players a chance.

Jar_Ek

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

I tested now nearly all builds for hours in PvP/PvE:

I can summarize it easy what is needed to give more balance:

1. Crystal Blast need to be Instant(Take Stun and some DMG away) for Tanks to suit for Blood-Magic(Passive 8% Life). Tanks cannot cast and Life Based Sorcerers are far to weak. A Magicka stacking Sorcerer can casts high Wards, high DPS, high Self-Heals. I don't know if a Developer ever tryed Cyrodiil. A Sorcerer Tank cannot even destroy the Ward and is eaten by a Teleport Sorcerer. Maybe that's true for every Classes Tanks. The good DDs stacking for high DPS has BOTH High DPS and High Heal. A Tank cannot kill them without luck in CC, because they lack damage against the very high Self-Heal/Wards.

2. Bound Aegis ist to weak. It could be added a Healing-Received passive to strengthen Life-based Builds.

3. Pets are far to weak. A Build without Pets doing more than doubled Damage without having Pets that ruin your Movement. For Cyrodiil PvP it's really terrible balance: Pets are more than far to weak. 1. The Winged Twilight is a One-Shot by nearly every Instant Cast/Shot Whatever of DD. The Summoner has higher Costs to recast his Summon and needs 1.3 seconds for it. That make these Summons Senseless. 2. The Controll is really poor. Maybe the Player should have the ability to choose that your Pets stay always by your side and attacks always your Target. Most times the Pets doing ***. And what I mean is not pushing Y+Click for every Target. Please automate it. 3. The DPS of the Pets is a joke.
Solutions: 1. Add 5000 HP, 20% more Damage to enemy Players etc. (The Cyrodiil Buff) to Pets. to close the Gap between PvP and PvE, because PvP needs Brain but Pets(Computer) cannot have one. 2. Let the Hitpoints of the Sorcerer scale with the Life of the Pets like Magicka scales with their Damage. 3. Raise their Damage. 4. If their is no Instant Crystal Blast for Self-Heal Possibilities to Tanks, the Clannfear need to be a Instant Cast.

4. Daedric Prey should be a DoT(6 seconds are purged in PvP and make this Cast useless, because only 1 Purge ruin the active Prey and aswell the following Prey - DMG is only made AFTER 6 seconds, but is reduced by Purge). 6 seconds to boost the low Pets damage does not worth the afford and should become a longer Duration.

5. The Heal Effect of the Twilight Matriarch is a joke.

6. The Hardened Ward is totally OP and should nerfed at Rank IV to a bonus of 25% like the Empowered Ward Rank IV grants only a bonus of 25% to the Damage of the Pets. The Wards are aswell in need of a fix. Medium Armor Sorcerers that can spam Dodging Rolls are in 1vs1 invincible because there is no Damage done to the shield, while you evade. But if you block, full Damage is done to it. The Abilities a Sorcerer offers make the choose very easy Light>Medium>Heavy. There should be a rethink to nerf the shields and include instead 50% Mitigation of Armor, Spell Resistance, Block, Evade.

7. The Cooldown of Surge Heals should be removed and the Crits of Pets should heal a Sorcerer with active Surge.

8. Bolt Escape aswell spammable Hide of Nightblades should be fixed. I just lost many friends to other games because of these annoying builds. A Bolt Escape should drop Magicka Recovery to 0 but costs need to be reduced. A Sorcerer could still teleport away, but could not annoy other players by teleporting 100 times until he killed you. That would force Sorcerers to make Heavy attacks to spam Bolt Escapes and give other players a chance.

1. OK. I would fine with changing crystal blast to an instant with no knockdown.
2. Suggestions for modifying both morphs of bound armour are included. But as my suggestions should be taken as a whole, the mending buff is on another skill.
3. You are almost certainly right about summons in PvP. I really don't bother with them in pvp, so don't feel confident to talk about that.
4. Agreed about having a dot element to curse and morphs, as suggested.
5. The heal is poor only because we cannot cast or control it and the Twilight dies too fast. If toggled summons had activated abilities as suggested this might solve the issue.
6. Well there is a general issue with shields, but hardened ward prob just needs some level of DR in PvP to keep it consistent with other shield stacking builds.
7. Yes, but removing the CD is unlikely to happen otherwise they wouldn't have changed it to start with.
8. Yeah I deliberately ducked that issue!

Nutronic

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

1. Crystal Blast need to be Instant(Take Stun and some DMG away) for Tanks to suit for Blood-Magic(Passive 8% Life). Tanks cannot cast and Life Based Sorcerers are far to weak. A Magicka stacking Sorcerer can casts high Wards, high DPS, high Self-Heals. I don't know if a Developer ever tryed Cyrodiil. A Sorcerer Tank cannot even destroy the Ward and is eaten by a Teleport Sorcerer. Maybe that's true for every Classes Tanks. The good DDs stacking for high DPS has BOTH High DPS and High Heal. A Tank cannot kill them without luck in CC, because they lack damage against the very high Self-Heal/Wards.

As a Tank Sorc who PVPs as such: No. This would be OP and heavily abused by non-tanks or tanky dpsers. Other tanky classes have reliable instant self heals, and ultimates with low costs and high damage mitigation. Let's start there.

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

2. Bound Aegis ist to weak. It could be added a Healing-Received passive to strengthen Life-based Builds.

let me fix that: Add healing done to Bound Aegis and Healing received to Bound Armaments. I don't see many life stacking Macika builds, and the few tanky sorcs I do see run the Armaments. This makes sense because if you want to avoid taking damage you block... not cast a weak shield. If there was a more reliable self heal, both still work, except one works a bit better in both PVP and PVE for more life heavy builds.

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

3. Pets are far to weak. A Build without Pets doing more than doubled Damage without having Pets that ruin your Movement. For Cyrodiil PvP it's really terrible balance: Pets are more than far to weak. 1. The Winged Twilight is a One-Shot by nearly every Instant Cast/Shot Whatever of DD. The Summoner has higher Costs to recast his Summon and needs 1.3 seconds for it. That make these Summons Senseless. 2. The Controll is really poor. Maybe the Player should have the ability to choose that your Pets stay always by your side and attacks always your Target. Most times the Pets doing ***. And what I mean is not pushing Y+Click for every Target. Please automate it. 3. The DPS of the Pets is a joke.
Solutions: 1. Add 5000 HP, 20% more Damage to enemy Players etc. (The Cyrodiil Buff) to Pets. to close the Gap between PvP and PvE, because PvP needs Brain but Pets(Computer) cannot have one. 2. Let the Hitpoints of the Sorcerer scale with the Life of the Pets like Magicka scales with their Damage. 3. Raise their Damage. 4. If their is no Instant Crystal Blast for Self-Heal Possibilities to Tanks, the Clannfear need to be a Instant Cast.

I agree with this. Although the instant cast with Clannfear would clearly be abused (especially with the rebate passive) as it already was. I use my pet in Cyrodiil because it creates havoc, and actually does mess with player's targeting. If pets got the same bonuses as players in Cyrodiil, there would be tones of QQ, but I guess so long as they didn't update the AI it would be easy to counter lol. Also, they need to drop the "Y+click" and just make "Y" context sensitive.

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

4. Daedric Prey should be a DoT(6 seconds are purged in PvP and make this Cast useless, because only 1 Purge ruin the active Prey and aswell the following Prey - DMG is only made AFTER 6 seconds, but is reduced by Purge). 6 seconds to boost the low Pets damage does not worth the afford and should become a longer Duration.

Good idea, if it doled out the same burst damage instead over time, it could make for a good continuous cast combo with pets.

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

5. The Heal Effect of the Twilight Matriarch is a joke.

It use to be better, I'd say it use to be so good I'd go from 30% life to 100% before they nerfed it. I personally think they did that because they wanted to prevent it from being abused and would return to it at a later time... Just a guess, but yeah it does suck now.

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

8. Bolt Escape aswell spammable Hide of Nightblades should be fixed. I just lost many friends to other games because of these annoying builds. A Bolt Escape should drop Magicka Recovery to 0 but costs need to be reduced. A Sorcerer could still teleport away, but could not annoy other players by teleporting 100 times until he killed you. That would force Sorcerers to make Heavy attacks to spam Bolt Escapes and give other players a chance.

Smart @Jar_Ek This topic is like a powder keg for ----hurt. All that needs to be said is each class has their own way of simply not dying. DK's capping damage, NB stealth, and Templar heals (granted these aren't all equally effective). I've been guilty of chasing sorcs, but when I really want to It's not impossible to catch them.

Drago Belsazar

@Nutronic I read now much of abusing. Please explain that to me.

Nutronic wrote: »

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

1. Crystal Blast need to be Instant(Take Stun and some DMG away) for Tanks to suit for Blood-Magic(Passive 8% Life). Tanks cannot cast and Life Based Sorcerers are far to weak. A Magicka stacking Sorcerer can casts high Wards, high DPS, high Self-Heals. I don't know if a Developer ever tryed Cyrodiil. A Sorcerer Tank cannot even destroy the Ward and is eaten by a Teleport Sorcerer. Maybe that's true for every Classes Tanks. The good DDs stacking for high DPS has BOTH High DPS and High Heal. A Tank cannot kill them without luck in CC, because they lack damage against the very high Self-Heal/Wards.

As a Tank Sorc who PVPs as such: No. This would be OP and heavily abused by non-tanks or tanky dpsers. Other tanky classes have reliable instant self heals, and ultimates with low costs and high damage mitigation. Let's start there.

I don't understand what can be abused here? A standard DD has 20.000K Life = 1600 Blood Magic Heal. A standard Mage DD wears Light Armor = 10% Mitigation. You shown us Wards(10.000) needs a HEAVY Nerf, if you call 1600 Instant Blood Magic Heals abusing. It would not safe a single DD. If Crystal Blasts AND the Clannfear remains with Cast time, think about everyone can kill you with only using bashes. A DK Tank for example or Templar don't show these big weaknesses. There is a Life Scaling Instant Blazing Shield or an Instant Dragon Blood. If a DD has a reduce in DPS to use this 1600 Self-Heal, I say let them do it. Only that all understand what we are talking about. 1600 HPS against 4000 HPS with Vigor for DD or aswell a spammable 10.000 4seconds Spring. What do you think will be used? A Tank with 32.000 Life would have 2560 possible HPS. A DD does more DPS, more HPS and would still do with this change. I see nothing abuse or OP here.

Nutronic wrote: »

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

2. Bound Aegis ist to weak. It could be added a Healing-Received passive to strengthen Life-based Builds.

let me fix that: Add healing done to Bound Aegis and Healing received to Bound Armaments. I don't see many life stacking Macika builds, and the few tanky sorcs I do see run the Armaments. This makes sense because if you want to avoid taking damage you block... not cast a weak shield. If there was a more reliable self heal, both still work, except one works a bit better in both PVP and PVE for more life heavy builds.

I don't have tested it, but in theory I think it is impossible to play a Stamina Sorcerer Tank successfully. But as a Sorcerer is a Magicka-Archetype I think that is not surprising.

Nutronic wrote: »

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

3. Pets are far to weak. A Build without Pets doing more than doubled Damage without having Pets that ruin your Movement. For Cyrodiil PvP it's really terrible balance: Pets are more than far to weak. 1. The Winged Twilight is a One-Shot by nearly every Instant Cast/Shot Whatever of DD. The Summoner has higher Costs to recast his Summon and needs 1.3 seconds for it. That make these Summons Senseless. 2. The Controll is really poor. Maybe the Player should have the ability to choose that your Pets stay always by your side and attacks always your Target. Most times the Pets doing ***. And what I mean is not pushing Y+Click for every Target. Please automate it. 3. The DPS of the Pets is a joke.
Solutions: 1. Add 5000 HP, 20% more Damage to enemy Players etc. (The Cyrodiil Buff) to Pets. to close the Gap between PvP and PvE, because PvP needs Brain but Pets(Computer) cannot have one. 2. Let the Hitpoints of the Sorcerer scale with the Life of the Pets like Magicka scales with their Damage. 3. Raise their Damage. 4. If their is no Instant Crystal Blast for Self-Heal Possibilities to Tanks, the Clannfear need to be a Instant Cast.

I agree with this. Although the instant cast with Clannfear would clearly be abused (especially with the rebate passive) as it already was. I use my pet in Cyrodiil because it creates havoc, and actually does mess with player's targeting. If pets got the same bonuses as players in Cyrodiil, there would be tones of QQ, but I guess so long as they didn't update the AI it would be easy to counter lol. Also, they need to drop the "Y+click" and just make "Y" context sensitive.

I agree with you that a 35% instant Self-Heal could be abused and not only used by tanks. That is another Story than 8% and thats why I said a Sorcerer needs an instant Crystal Blast instead. But one of them needs to be Instant. My Solution would be the instant Shard. As I played a summoner now long enough I can say the 1.3 seconds are okay. BUT I cannot accept the Pets has to remain as crap.
90% of Sorcerers and 99% of all succesfull sorcerers are Ward-Stacking and Teleporting. It is the only Build I have never beaten as Magicka-Sorcerer Tank, because it is impossible to me to bring the Wards down. Even a planned Burst which needs micromanagement of Daedric Prey Explosion + Magicka Detonation + Soul Assault is NOT enough to kill those guys.
If you roll a Summon Build, you and your Pets + Daedric Prey + Pet-Buffing-Ward doing about 3500 DPS. A guy using proccing instant shards + Force Shocks doing 12000 DPS. That is fair? Look at the amount of needed Slots. And if you're stacking Life instead of Magicka, your Pets don't many damage, I think it would be fair enough these Pets would increase in Life. Why DD's QQ if Matriarch is not anymore an instant Shot? Let Summoners play the game don't force them to recast every 5 seconds their matriarchs to do their 3500 DPS.
I want every good player to be fair here at this point. Who has not laughed yet seeing a player with Pets and thought this will be an easy fight? The Self-Heal is totally crap because your Matriarch is shot down instant. In a duel of good players it never comes to this heal. That's the point. 10.000 Life Matriarch, while there are Players with 20K DPS is a totally joke. Don't let them only scale with Magicka, use Life-Pool too. There is nothing OP. Much Magicka, Low Life = Good Damage, Low Life; Much Life, Low Magicka = Good Life, Low Damage; Average Magicka, Average Life = Average in Both.
This Summoner is a teethless One. I never saw a Game this Build lacks that many opportunities. A DD who has Problems with a Matriarch gaining the 5000 HP PvP-Buff is a noob.
The Pets needs in PvP at least(!) 20% more damage. 5000 HP more + at least(!) 1 Hitpoint per 5 Hitpoints of the Sorcerer. A 20.000 Life Sorcerer Matriarch would gain 10000 + 5000 + (20000/5=4000) = 19000 HP Matriarch - Still 1 Shot for some, 2 Shot for most. With these Changes the Pets would be in my opinion still bad. To make them useful much more is needed. And 1 more Point. If you decide to stick with Instant Shards + Force Shocks = 12000 DPS you have a good possible Self-Heal with Crit-Surge. But if you decide to stick with Pets + Daedric Prey + Pet-Buffing-Wards you have only 3500 DPS and no Self-Heal, because they don't count? Please Hotfix this unfair balancing issue. Just view these numbers and the gap behind and do something please. Just make it possible to run as a succesfull Summoner and not remain as a running joke, that everyone has something to laugh about.

CP5

Nutronic wrote: »

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

3. Pets are far to weak. A Build without Pets doing more than doubled Damage without having Pets that ruin your Movement. For Cyrodiil PvP it's really terrible balance: Pets are more than far to weak. 1. The Winged Twilight is a One-Shot by nearly every Instant Cast/Shot Whatever of DD. The Summoner has higher Costs to recast his Summon and needs 1.3 seconds for it. That make these Summons Senseless. 2. The Controll is really poor. Maybe the Player should have the ability to choose that your Pets stay always by your side and attacks always your Target. Most times the Pets doing ***. And what I mean is not pushing Y+Click for every Target. Please automate it. 3. The DPS of the Pets is a joke.
Solutions: 1. Add 5000 HP, 20% more Damage to enemy Players etc. (The Cyrodiil Buff) to Pets. to close the Gap between PvP and PvE, because PvP needs Brain but Pets(Computer) cannot have one. 2. Let the Hitpoints of the Sorcerer scale with the Life of the Pets like Magicka scales with their Damage. 3. Raise their Damage. 4. If their is no Instant Crystal Blast for Self-Heal Possibilities to Tanks, the Clannfear need to be a Instant Cast.

I agree with this. Although the instant cast with Clannfear would clearly be abused (especially with the rebate passive) as it already was. I use my pet in Cyrodiil because it creates havoc, and actually does mess with player's targeting. If pets got the same bonuses as players in Cyrodiil, there would be tones of QQ, but I guess so long as they didn't update the AI it would be easy to counter lol. Also, they need to drop the "Y+click" and just make "Y" context sensitive.

I would just like to add something in about pets in Cryodiil. They are whatever level the caster is, regardless of their level. This means if a level 10 drops an atronach, its a level 10 mob, fighting a hoard of v12's. It doesn't end that well, and add in the fact that pets have 0 health recovery in combat and the only advantage I see them having is the 80% resist to aoe's, which still doesn't help the fact they are so easy to kill or ignore.