[Sorcerer] Summons: Are they too weak?(Especially in PvP)

Drago Belsazar

There are many Players complain about a not balanced Sorcerer-Class. There are some powerful skills, only a few(if not to say only 1-2) builds and many poor skills. These poor skills have a big impact on how good you can perform.
The biggest Weakness I have detectet is the Sorcerer Summoner and I know he was buffed in 1.6 but I still think this option is very bad balanced.
In my Opinion we have to look about 2 aspects of Summons:
1.) The passive Bonusses:
- Unstable Familar Morphs: AoE-Damage, Selfheal
- Winged Twilight Morphs: Magicka-Regeneration, Selfheal

The Passive Bonusses are not that bad, exception: The Selfheal of the Twilight Matriarch

2.) The Summons itself:
- DPS: If you only spam Crushing Shock + Crystal Fragments you perform about 4 times better than using Unstable Clannfear + Restoring Twilight + Daedric Prey + Empowered Ward. AND while you are perform much less DPS, the Damage is treaten like it is not yours, because there are no Selfheals done by your Summons with Surge. With this build you have a) minor Damage AND b) minor Self-Heal.
- Health: The Main Problem. The Twilight Summon is a One-Shot, the Twilight Matriarch will never use the Selfheal. Think about you were Emperor, you could a) using Crushing Shock + Crystal Fragments OR b) using a Winged Twilight with only 10.000 Hitpoints, yes - still a Oneshot. There is no Life/Armor Scaling. And I ask Myself why there is only a Link between Magicka. Summons should feel like they are a part of you, but they do not.

In my Opinion the Summons need more than only a Magicka-Link and sharing Crit-Rates. A Sorcerer who decides to have much Life, should have Pets with more Life. A Sorcerer who decides to have Heavy Armor should have Pets with Heavy Armor.

Please make the Summons a part of the Sorcerer and add:
- a Health-Link
- a Armor-Link
- Crit-Surge Heals
- a Stamina-Link (DPS could scale with both Magicka AND Stamina - that would led to that Stamina-Sorcerers could use useful Pets, that would led to that Hybrid Sorcerers could use useful Pets)
And maybe add:
- a Regeneration-Link(Health, Magicka, Stamina - Regeneration) Maybe add, that they can go aswell out of Magicka etc. or if the Sorcerer has much Regeneration the Summons could become a higher Attack-Rate.

There is much more that could be done to feel the Pets are useful and a part of the Sorcerer, at the moment they feel only useful at sacrificing them. And this is really odd.

To all other Classes: Think about you can have Summons aswell one day with Spellcrafting and be fair.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

I can see your dislike of pets but, you guys have 15k+ Shields the only spamable Ult with a three bars Sorcs need no new buffs.

I'm sorry but the fact that only one class can have pets is dumb in all the other Elder Scroll games that you could summon a daedric Atronach to fight with you I was the Archer with the Atronach it's use to be a basic part of my play style locking pets to one class when it was a general TES thing to have them even for non-mages.

Summons have never been able to kill mods solo but they do something pets that drop play level damage would be far to unbalance

olsborg

Yes - Summons are to weak but I don't think they need more scaling than with Magicka!

Offencively, the clannfear or the twilight isnt bad (never tried the explofamiliar) but they have many other issues.

• Defencively they suck, specially the twilight, its a oneshotkill and you cant heal any of them other then with hard-ward
• They dont have the best control, they run off too easily and you spend alot of time to make them attack the correct target.
• They all have cast time, wich works very bad with the first point, they die alot, cast time in pvp is murder vs good players.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

I can see your dislike of pets but, you guys have 15k+ Shields the only spamable Ult with a three bars Sorcs need no new buffs.

I'm sorry but the fact that only one class can have pets is dumb in all the other Elder Scroll games that you could summon a daedric Atronach to fight with you I was the Archer with the Atronach it's use to be a basic part of my play style locking pets to one class when it was a general TES thing to have them even for non-mages.

Summons have never been able to kill mods solo but they do something pets that drop play level damage would be far to unbalance

Well, that has nothing to do with Teleport+Ward-Stacking. But if there is only this build working and nothing got changed you can face soon one more of these Sorcerers. Maybe it is the lack of other working builds, why all roll the same.

Don't buff poor skills, because one class has strong skills make no sense to me. Sorry, but I can see only madness with Ward-Stackers and thats why you want to keep Summoners bad? I am one of these Sorcerers agreeing Wards are too strong.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

olsborg wrote: »

Defencively they suck, specially the twilight, its a oneshotkill and you cant heal any of them other then with hard-ward

And why you voted against Scaling with Life/Armor? It's just a tradeoff. If I have more Life, I can't have much Magicka. In this Case the Summons doing really low damage and the Wards are weaker, why they cannot have more Life instead? But in every Case the Twilight should not be a Oneshot.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

All four classes have super weak powers that no one uses and all class have does three builds that everyone uses

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

I can see your dislike of pets but, you guys have 15k+ Shields the only spamable Ult with a three bars Sorcs need no new buffs.

I'm sorry but the fact that only one class can have pets is dumb in all the other Elder Scroll games that you could summon a daedric Atronach to fight with you I was the Archer with the Atronach it's use to be a basic part of my play style locking pets to one class when it was a general TES thing to have them even for non-mages.

Summons have never been able to kill mods solo but they do something pets that drop play level damage would be far to unbalance

Well, that has nothing to do with Teleport+Ward-Stacking. But if there is only this build working and nothing got changed you can face soon one more of these Sorcerers. Maybe it is the lack of other working builds, why all roll the same.

Don't buff poor skills, because one class has strong skills make no sense to me. Sorry, but I can see only madness with Ward-Stackers and thats why you want to keep Summoners bad? I am one of these Sorcerers agreeing Wards are too strong.

I was only pointing out the only sorc fight I had when they use a pet and the pet was doing it's job not high damage but CCing me making me have to deal with it and melee the caster with shield bashes so he couldn't recast him

Pets work you have to make them work play style Armor, goals and powers are all a big part of making it all work

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

I was only pointing out the only sorc fight I had when they use a pet and the pet was doing it's job not high damage but CCing me making me have to deal with it and melee the caster with shield bashes so he couldn't recast him

Pets work you have to make them work play style Armor, goals and powers are all a big part of making it all work

Sounds like it was a really hard fight. -.-
Really, a good Sorcerer casts CC's himself and not by the Summon, what is left? I feel like this is a joke...

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

well my Nightblade was nuking him with his own Overload and Frag with the One-hand and Shield reflect their are only a few good sorcs that, that tactic never works on

exiledtyrant

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

I can get behind summons being more representative of the sorcerer who wields them. It makes sense and doesn't leave anyone excluded. I would have personally liked temporary summons that didn't take up two slots but that's a whole other matter. I would also like to reserve judgement on summons being overall weak as when built for they do stack up with other competitive magicka build damage wise.

Samuel_Bantien

No - Summons are great and they own all!

Twilight's OP, get rid of the Clannfear ~ Too many toggles, togglemancers don't work in PvP.
My Twilight's zap can critical up to 7k, not only can zap hit that high, it also goes through Ball of Lightning, Reflect, and Shadow Cloak. OP. As far as Clannfear goes, they aren't as mobile and take a long time to do their tail swing (which does the most damage but the animation takes too long to wind up), just get rid of the Clannfear. Command Pet OP.

Cathexis

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

How about yes and whole tree needs to be overhauled.

Mumnoch

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Didn't you get the memo?


Sorcerer's suck in PVE compared to the other classes and this is exactly how Zenimax wants it.

There's a reason the multitude of post's concerning Sorc's has dwindled down....it's call attrition. Zenimax ignored us long enough to cause most of us to say *** it and go somewhere else.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

Twilight's OP, get rid of the Clannfear ~ Too many toggles, togglemancers don't work in PvP.
My Twilight's zap can critical up to 7k, not only can zap hit that high, it also goes through Ball of Lightning, Reflect, and Shadow Cloak. OP. As far as Clannfear goes, they aren't as mobile and take a long time to do their tail swing (which does the most damage but the animation takes too long to wind up), just get rid of the Clannfear. Command Pet OP.

I never saw such a high damage, I think you have maximum Magicka and it would be fair that those Twilights that hit for half or lesser should have more Hitpoints. But you say yourself they are not working in PvP - Why don't change this? They are a Onehit, there is nothing OP.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Mumnoch wrote: »

There's a reason the multitude of post's concerning Sorc's has dwindled down....it's call attrition. Zenimax ignored us long enough to cause most of us to say *** it and go somewhere else.

This lasted now long enough. Fix the Sorcerer that he can play more than just with Wards and Teleport, and we will show them now mechanic by mechanic what we want with a poll. There is nothing they can't understand, if they keep ignoring us, we see game is not for us.

LameoveR

Yes - Summons are to weak but I don't think they need more scaling than with Magicka!

Pets in pvp.. Hunter in WoW, hm?

exiledtyrant

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

I used pets for a time in pvp. They take up to many slots however and if you want their main scaling stat to be high you also need magelight and bound aegis. This take away far to many slots. So you either under scale them or you lose out on having both their abilities. I find they work best together. They are also a nightmare in large battle because you have to command them to much to be useful. It was fun sending in my volatile familiar to bomb big groups for 6k over and over + stun though. He's like a mini atronach in that way.

Cathexis

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

This was the post I made about the potential for summons to be a stamina tree:;

Just throwing around more suggestions, why not just make the summoning tree stamina based? It needs to be overhauled anyway. Obv I don't decide what it would look like but just throwing examples out there:

Ultimate > Summon Attronach (Random Element) -- Permanent pet until slain
Morph 1 > Stam/Magicka Regen Aura
Morph 2 > AoE Spell

Skill 1 > Enslave Daedra -- Allows player to enslave any daedra type monster if targetted, if not targetting summons/unsummons, costs 5% max magicka and x stamina
Morph 1 > Daedric Protection -- Allows 2 Daedra at once
Morph 2 > Charging Daedra -- Gives charge ability to summoned daedra

Skill 2 > Summon Portal -- Allows player to summon an exit portal on first press, and then recalls the player to that portal on second press, costs 5% max magicka and x stamina, 3 second cast to recall
Morph 1 > Bidirectional Portal -- Second press summons an exit portal which can be used bi-directionally by all players
Morph 2 > Fast Recall -- Recall time is 1 second

Skill 3 > Summoned Weapon -- Toggle ability, enhances players regular weapon attacks with stamina drain, costs 5% max magicka and x stamina
Morph 1 > Rapid Enhancement -- Regular attacks now fire as 3 rapid attacks doing 66% of regular damage
Morph 2 > Magical Rush -- Spell becomes a casted AoE that enhances all players in 7 meters with stamina draining weapons

Skill 4 > Ward (Base Remains the Same)
Morph 1 > Hardened Ward (Remains the same)
Morph 2 > Channelled Ward -- Ward becomes a channelled ability that regenerates stamina at an increased rate but drains 3% mana every time the player is hit. Ward absorbs all incoming damage.



Obv doesnt have to be this, but summoning really needs an overhaul, it might be a good opportunity to build up a stamina builds for sorcs

Thelon

No - Summons are great and they own all!

While I agree that pet builds are lackluster in PvP, they can be very effective in PvE, especially for soloing content designed for groups. You can check the Build's link in my signature for more info.

cozmon3c_ESO

just scrap summons and give us some good abilities like a heal and a direct damage spell that is actually good. you cant fix pets because AI is always going to be crap no matter what they do to them.

Thelon

No - Summons are great and they own all!

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

just scrap summons and give us some good abilities like a heal and a direct damage spell that is actually good. you cant fix pets because AI is always going to be crap no matter what they do to them.

You're right. I'm sure there's no good pet builds out there.

Cathexis

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Thelon wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

just scrap summons and give us some good abilities like a heal and a direct damage spell that is actually good. you cant fix pets because AI is always going to be crap no matter what they do to them.

You're right. I'm sure there's no good pet builds out there.

I'm definately pro-pet tree, but that tree actually has to be effective in pvp and pve.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Thelon wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

just scrap summons and give us some good abilities like a heal and a direct damage spell that is actually good. you cant fix pets because AI is always going to be crap no matter what they do to them.

You're right. I'm sure there's no good pet builds out there.

Please don't vote with "No - Summons are great and they own all!" only because you dislike them. You said yourself they are scrap. You distort the vote and the question was, if they are good or just bad. If you dislike Summons, better abstain from voting and only write it down. Thanks.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Cathexis wrote: »

Thelon wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

just scrap summons and give us some good abilities like a heal and a direct damage spell that is actually good. you cant fix pets because AI is always going to be crap no matter what they do to them.

You're right. I'm sure there's no good pet builds out there.

I'm definately pro-pet tree, but that tree actually has to be effective in pvp and pve.

ZOS could increase their running speed and range, that would affect PvP but not that much PvE. But this would only be a beginning.

Thelon wrote: »

While I agree that pet builds are lackluster in PvP, they can be very effective in PvE, especially for soloing content designed for groups. You can check the Build's link in my signature for more info.

In another Thread I posted my idea of a PvP-Buff working aswell for Pets. That would not affect PvE. But if more scaling is implemented, it would not affect PvE that much, because Magicka is actually the only scaling stat, Stamina could do the same, Life/Armor would only affect their Survivability and not their damage. And a Sorcerer with high Life and Armor has not that much damage and low Magicka and so is the damage low of his Summons. If ZOS would push the damage and add more scaling, they would be hardier to kill in this case but doing still bad damage.

And serious now. Summons doing Single-Target damage. I run through Group-Delves Solo just without Summons, if I would take Summons i would need 100% more time. Whatever you saw, that was nothing special. Picking Summons means drop in damage and Survivability. The only gain in Survivability is sacrificing your Tank-Summon, so there is no more Taunt and you need more Life, another drop in damage. I see no Problem to buff Summons. In my opinion they are bad in PvE aswell. And all good players think the same and will rethink to pick a Sorcerer with or without Summons.

Cathexis wrote: »

Obv doesnt have to be this, but summoning really needs an overhaul, it might be a good opportunity to build up a stamina builds for sorcs

I think too they need an overhaul. But because they implemented effects on sacrificing it's impossible to let them cost stamina. That would ruin every Survivability-Build using Stamina to Block/Evade and summon your Summons. The Sorcerer has not enough Stamina-Regen for this way. And believe me, that would be a high nerf for Stamina-Sorcerers too. I think it would be better to add Stamina-Scaling in this case, that they remain cost in Magicka, but if you have high Stamina, your Summons do aswell more damage like if you have high Magicka. Think about it, the Clannfear is even doing Physical damage, their would be no logical error to add Stamina-Scaling.

Drago Belsazar

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

*Bump*

byrom101b16_ESO

Yes - Summons are to weak but I don't think they need more scaling than with Magicka!

I think stamina dps is already too high compared to magicka - being on average around 20-30% ahead generally and further strengthened against the disadvantages of the necessity to get close (except with bows ofc) by being supported by armours that are significantly imbalanced with Light right now.

To make Stamina scaled dps on Pets would make it the pure-ownage stamina dps class and build, even with the crappy controls on the pets as now.

If they fixed that as well, the pet running, heavy & medium armoured, high armour, high spell resistance, sacrifice healing, wrecking blow spamming Sorcerer would be a demigod of unrivalled power in the game...

... and the last thing we need is a class more powerful in multiple roles than the DK...

However,

Pet dps and survivability should be linked to all dps-relevant stats, so no build is disadvantaged over another just for running pets. So everything that adds to dps and survivability should transfer in a balanced way to pets.

It's the only way they will be truly useful or desirable... (alongside pet control improvements).

Resipsa131

No - Summons are great and they own all!

Pets are stupidly good in PvE, as many have stated.

byrom101b16_ESO

Yes - Summons are to weak but I don't think they need more scaling than with Magicka!

Resipsa131 wrote: »

Pets are stupidly good in PvE, as many have stated.

Not in groups on bosses - they are uncontrollable aggro monkeys that die too much.

So I'm not sure what you are talking about... solo play perhaps?

Snit

Drago Belsazar wrote: »

- DPS: If you only spam Crushing Shock + Crystal Fragments you perform about 4 times better than using Unstable Clannfear + Restoring Twilight + Daedric Prey + Empowered Wardeful

Pet players should also be spamming Force Shock. Do you expect to cast your pets and have them do all the damage?

Ezykil

ive always hated using pets, and i pull more dps than pet builds (single target-wise and aoe) usually. look at this dps in the top left corner here http://imgur.com/oApb6jU

Vraneon

Yes - Summons are to weak and they should scale with more than only with Magicka!

Yes, pets are way too weak. They are okay for casual pve players, but for endgame pve and pvp pretty useless and not liked by your own group.

For pve:

-) They obscure the view of your teamplayers and people in raids don't like that. Cuz they look exactly like the enemies, because the indications for friendly creatures is not very noticeable in the heat of the battle.

-) They die too fast in almost any more challenging dungeon, because of the loads and loads of aoes. Hell in a normal veteran 12 dungeon I have to recast my twilight, because a meele add kills it. I mean whats the point of summoning a familiar that needs babysitting? Am I supposed to taunt the adds as a dps? Or should I tell the tank: Hey, take care so my poor familiars don't take too much dmg?

-) People in groups and raids don't like them cuz there were bugs where they would consume healing instead of your other group members and ofc a pet is not more important than a player, mainly because you can just resummons it.

-) The atronach ulti doesn't taunt anymore, if you want to solo something and you cant even hit it on the boss of a group, because then there will be targeting issues often, so you will lose out some damage.

-) They deal barely any aoe dmg. Slotting just any other aoe spell and casting it once does more dmg in a group than a familiar.

-) They cover two slots,


Similar issues for pvp:

-) They die way too fast to be usefull. If I see a familiar anywhere on the battlefield I just kill it, its always (!) one or two shots with almost any skill. Even two heavy attacks do the job and you don't even need to fully charge them.

-) This leads to another problem. Even if they would be somehow atleast average damage, you become so horribly predictable, with 3 toggles that you can get countered very easily.

-) There are still bugs where your pets wont get invisible when you sneak.

-) A sorcerer isn't op at all. Most of those so called good pvp sorcerers are kind of trolling or baiting people into following them and then finishing enemies off when they spend all resources chasing them or baiting the enemy into a bad situation, like near some enemy resource. The shield stacking isn't op at all. First of all other classes have shields too. The sorcerer has just ONE additional shield. This so called shield stacking as everyone refers to is a joke. Everyone can shield stack. Barrier, dampen magicka, sun shield, igneous shield, hardened ward etc. Well why do you shield stack as a sorc? Hmmm, because you cant do anything else to your health. You have to stack 3 shields or recast non stop one, because otherwise you would die as a sorc. Its the same as if someone would complain about people blocking too much or dks using dragon blood too much. And I don't see why bolt escape should be op at all. Going invisible all the time or roll dodging indefinitely must be op too then I guess? Or super strong group heals? The shield and the teleport don't even let you avoid any meele attacks or snipes.

People who say pets are strong, balanced or overpowered are either new players, only play solo pve content or just don't play the class and don't care. I don't think its bad or not good to state your opinion, when people play only solo content or do things relaxed style, but already watching the votes and talking to friends and seeing the amount of classes preferably played in difficult content, shows how the sorcerer class has gotten even weaker with the new 1.6 patch. And that not because it got really debuffed. Just the other classes got buffed and fixed better than the sorcerers. Nowdays a lot of player have more chars on veteran level anyway. Cant remember anyone saying: Oh, wait let me relog to my sorc for more dps.

-) Sorcerer remain the lowest dps class in pve (doesn't mean there are no good sorcerer, but if the same player would play another class he would do more damage...)

-) Its the class with the least amount of choices regarding other roles (as a tank you do simply a lot better with other classes, dks are obviously designed for tanking just for their instant percentage based self heal and block passive for example and Templars are still the number one healers, because of their abilities and passives and other classes succeed in other roles even better than a sorcerer)


Because of all the reasons stated above, Yes I think those currently barely useful familiars need to be changed into something useful.

Lava_Croft

I fully support this thread requesting a buff to Sorcerer skills.