[Suggestions to ZOS] Stamina Sorc discussion.

skillastat

First of all, sorry for my english as it is my second language.

Now I'll try to give my feedback as constructive as I can, even if honestly I raged so many times. I have more than 2600hours played on my main character, my stam sorc, and probably more than half of this time was in Stamina build. (I was magicka once). This post is mainly PvP oriented.

As a Stam Sorc since 1.6 and tryed numerous times beyond that point, I keep trying to hold the 2-hander stam sorc legacy. Not because this is good, but because this is my playstyle and it's fun.

My name is Saulo, as some could recognize me in PC NA Megaserver.

I was thinking the same as you guys for a long time, and even more since the ESO Live Episode 21, with the recent talk about future changes.

I tryed a lot of different combination of gear, builds and strategy. Some were more successful than others but never I could really compete versus the best players, even if I tryed hard sometimes dueling for countless hours. I finally came to the conclusion my class dosen't give me as much options as others.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of epic fights and I sometimes was proud of my build. Sometimes I could think of beating people like Sypher, King Richard, Germantrocity or Act of Rage in 1v1 situation, but they always have the last word.

Right now I'm using Two-Hand weapon (Good Single Target) and Dual Wield (for AOE mostly, switch to Flurry in organized duels)

Why do I keep sticking on Stamina Sorc then?

• Bolt Escape The defense is good with Single Target spells absorbtion and mobility to get out of AOEs and tough situation + the little stun
• Lightning Form The mobility is good + the armor and spell resist buff and I hope they keep the 40% speed buff for the stamina morph in 1.7
• and some very limited skills that I could use only in specific situations like Defensive Rune

My favorite skill is Ball of Lightning. I think this is really why I keep trying again and again to thrive on Stamina Sorc. Even if my magicka pool is not high, or I can't cast it as often as a magicka sorc.

I looked at the many other skills the Sorcerer have and there is none that really pick up my interest:

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

If you wanted to play a stamina build you picked the wrong class, nothing helps stamina sorc builds except Dark Exchange morph and Bound Armor morph.

Dark Exchange morph
Totally not reliable, this skill is going to CC the crap out of me and I'll get hit for more DPS than it could Heal me in counterpart.

Bound Armor morph
I'm never going to use 1 skills on BOTH bars to use it, never.

---

Then what does Stam Sorc builds need ?

• Stamina based passives:
  
  Here is quick things I thought, maybe not the solution but that would be a start
  
  Class Skills -> Dark Magic -> Exploitation passive ability (Activating a Dark Magic ability grants Minor Prophecy to nearby allies, increasing Spell Critical by [X amount] for 20 seconds.)
  
  This passive should grant me Weapon Critical as well.
  
  Class Skills -> Storm Calling -> Expert Mage passive ability (Increases spell power by 2% for each Sorcerer ability slotted.)
  
  This passive should grant me Weapon Damage as well.
  
  
• Single Target melee instant cast ability:
  
  Right now I'm using Wrecking blow as my main dps ability, but it's so easy for anyone to counter it by streaking/cloaking/blocking/etc. Because of the cast time.
  
  
• Reliable self-heal
  
  Dark Exchange morph as I said above is going to CC me, this skill should be instant cast. At least for the stamina morph. Maybe this skill could be totally revamped so it would cost Stamina to heal me, so Magicka sorcs would not be tempted to use it. Anyway Magicka sorcs have healing ward. Maybe Dark Deal could give me a damage shield ? Here are quick ideas but ZOS could do a lot with this skill to help us Stamina Sorcs.
  
  
• Damage Shield
  
  Right now Hardened Ward (Daedric Shield) will scale on my max magicka, making it useless for Stamina users. This skill should scale on the biggest pool the character have. If I have more Stamina than Magicka, then the shield should scale on it.

Here are quick ideas coming from a veteran Stamina Sorc.

---

Update 1.7

As others said and I completely agree with them, Stamina Sorcs are going to have a hard time in the next major update with the upcoming changes.

If we don't have any serious re-thinking, It's going to hurt us really bad.

Bolt Espace Nerf, Nirn Nerf, Dodge Roll Nerf.

I think that there's nothing we can do against those changes, but if some of my suggestions and the ones that people will add in this discussion are taken consideration maybe Stam Sorcs can get better even with the upcoming Nerfs.

These things were everything we could rely on. I tryed to duel one of the best magicka sorc without any Nirn piece on me and I was killed in under 10secs. Add the current Spell Resist Nirn gives me and I stood much longer, even if I didn't win the fight at the end.

On the large battlefield right now I can dash forward with Crit Charge, do some quick attacks and Bolt escape 2 times, heal a little, then bolt again a 3rd time and buff up my speed with Lightning Form. Increase the cost of Bolt espace and I will never be able to get out of though situations like I did before.

Not to forget the dodge roll nerf, everything that was keeping me alive and "somewhat" competitive will be taken away from me.

---

Plz @ZOS do something, BUFF STAM SORC !

EDIT: Adding some basic informations I forgot to write the first time I did the post.

NotSo

I don't pvp very often anymore because my build sucks for pvp (but it's fun to play and is only viable in pve). I'm running a wonky build that relys on heal-on-attack effects. With stamina regen stacked high with miniscule stamina pool, and large magicka pool with no magicka regen.

Tbe reason I built myself like this is literally because, in pure stamina build, daedric mines and encase take up my entire magicka pool with one cast. Now these are what I consider to be a couple class defining spells, but I cannot find a way to make them viable with a stamina build without totally ruining my pvp game. Same applies to the entire summoning skill tree. Just completely useless.
*Stares down toggle abilities with malice*

cozmon3c_ESO

Stam sorcs were nerves at the cost of magicka sorcs, go figure. Eric Wrobel is my hero and absolutely lied 5 months ago about making stam sorc a viable option.

He needs to make a damn chart, stam spec, magicka spec and hybrid spec for each class. If one is falling behind, find a way to bring it back up, if one is wrecking everything bring it down. Tweak *** weekly and if *** is broken as hell, hot fix it. Is it really that hard, wtf. Sick of waiting half a damn year for this disappointment.

skillastat

I'm absolutely with you on that, Leper Si.

Emma_Overload

Dark Exchange is HORRIBLE and could be replaced with anything, anything at all, and it would be an improvement. I think they should exchange this useless spell for some kind of buff that helps you get stamina while you are fighting, like a Critical Surge, but for stamina.

Sarousse

We also need a direct stamina based melee attack, like all other classes got.

JDar

From the Oblivion description of sorcerers:

"Besting the most well-equipped fighters, Sorcerers rely on the spells of the mystic arts. Unique to these mages is the bodily stamina to be armed with the thickest armor."

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Sorcerer_(Oblivion)

ZoS snips all over the lore.

Edited: my bold

Cathexis

There are a lot of glaring problems with stamina sorcs.

Basically, these are the serious issues I encounter:

(1) Group Dependence -- regen, escape, purge, general survival are highly dependent on having a distraction, purge is entirely dependent on others unless you have the mana efficient morph and are willing to giveup a slot on your bar somewhere

(2) No Sustainability -- once you are out of stamina, the fight is over and you lose. With roll dodge and be nerfs, getting to safety will be even harder, and mean bailing from combat even earlier

(3) No high damage resistance -- we have no access to usable shield morphs, and we are susceptible like every class to the armor bypassing mace bug, and we are forced to use 2 hand or dual wield maces to deal damage which means block isn't an option, so we have no passive resistance beyond 3 bols (now two with nerfs) at vr 14 and roll dodge (also nerfed)

(4) Range damage is mediocre -- all range abilities available to stamina sorcs are weak at best, and are used more for debuffs than for dealing actual damage

(5) No range or melee class based stamina attack or armor piercing bonus -- we have no offensive ability that we can use to bypass a significant amount of armor or use with other weapons like sword/board to deal damage; damage in general is low, and is only effective using maces with 2h or dual wield

(6) Lightning based stamina scaling is useless - overload, and now storm armor, although scaling with stamina, are useless because they don't consider that stamina sorcs don't have resistance piercing.



I have actually come up with a build that does use both bound armor and dark exchange -- they are very useful if you play them correctly.

However, when it comes down to it Dark Exchange is group dependent and Bound Armor absorbs 2 slots, 3 if you use overload, and in pvp this is totally unacceptable.

For PvP I will be releasing a build soon if I can make a video, but I highly recommend leper si's build (see YouTube)

SturgeHammer

I love Stam Sorc, and I like my current set up pretty well. Mobility + Decent Damage is all I ask for. However, I am not a fan of wrecking blow and I hate having to use it. Slowing down for the cast time can be the difference life and death for stam sorcs. An instant cast class alternative, as Saulo mentioned, would be great. I would be fine with it dealing less damage than Wrecking Blow as long as I can keep moving.

Side note, it's pretty unfortunate that the update seven Stam Sorc nerf is just collateral damage from nerfs of two other playstyles . I hope ZOS will realize this and give us something useful to make up for it.

EDIT: Instead of just hoping ZOS will notice this thread, maybe @ZOS_RichLambert could give us some "/lurk" to let us know our concerns have been seen.

cozmon3c_ESO

im /lurking right now.

Erock25

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

ToRelax

Erock25 wrote: »

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

Better Minor Endurance as we get Major buff via potions.

Erock25

ToRelax wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

Better Minor Endurance as we get Major buff via potions.

Yeah I get what you're saying, but I can't afford endless potions and use them as an OH S@!T button so I'd personally get more benefit from having Major Endurance up even before a fight started from precasting Crit Surge. All I know is Sorc needs some form of stamina replenishment mid combat. Crit Surge also giving a stamina leech mechanic would also be an awesome change.

RinaldoGandolphi

Erock25 wrote: »

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

umm..I use Empowered Ward on my Pet build to buff my Clanffear, Twilight, and Atronach damage to stack with Deadric Prey...don't nerf my pet build lol!

I will say this though, why not make Hardened Ward/Empowered Ward scale its value off either max magic or max stamina, whichever is higher.....that way Sorcs who choose to go stamina will have a viable damage sheild to make up the difference for not being able to Bolt as much.

Erock25

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

umm..I use Empowered Ward on my Pet build to buff my Clanffear, Twilight, and Atronach damage to stack with Deadric Prey...don't nerf my pet build lol!

I will say this though, why not make Hardened Ward/Empowered Ward scale its value off either max magic or max stamina, whichever is higher.....that way Sorcs who choose to go stamina will have a viable damage sheild to make up the difference for not being able to Bolt as much.

@RinaldoGandolphi Check out my sorc suggestions topic in my sig. I address your Empowered Ward issues by adding that missing damage to Daedric Prey + turning that morph into a pet targeting control.

SturgeHammer

Erock25 wrote: »

Great post Saulo. I'm just going to throw my own personal stamina related suggestions on here.

- Empowered Ward now scales on max HP (scaling on stamina may be an option now that they are nerfing roll dodge spam)
- Crystal Blast changed to melee range / stamina scaling version of Crystal Frag with a groupwide Minor Brutality buff
- Critical Surge cost is reduced and add Major Endurance buff.

Crit Surge needs a rework. It's too similar to momentum, but costs way more. I'd like to see it become mechanically different from momentum, maybe something like:

-cost magicka to cast as it does now
- 15 second + duration
- grants bonus lightning damage to weapon attacks (all feats, light and heavy attacks)
- can be reactivated, with a Stamina Cost, on stunned targets to drop a powerful melee attack that scales off stam and weapon damage

Just throwing out ideas, but I want it to do something awesome. It really should be one of the signature abilities in a stam sorc's arsenal.

skillastat

Thanks for all the answers, let's keep that discussion going !

As for Crit Surge, I don't use it because of the magicka cost.

Right now my only viable heals are Rally and Vigor. My magicka only is used for Bolt, Lightning Form and maybe another skill I use but not from class skills most of the time.

I tried to mix Proximity Detonation with Steel Tornado, but again it's not a class skill. I'd prefer to see more than 2 skills from Sorcerer that would actually be meaningful to use.

Cathexis

I would like to see bol reflect spells, not just absorb them.

skillastat

This would not be a good alternative for the Stamina side of Sorcerer, but for the whole class.

Imagine Magicka Sorcs being able to reflect.... Without even using Sword and Board.

It would be a mess.

What we need as Stamina Sorcs is ways to differentiate us from Magicka Sorcs and still be competitive.

Cathexis

I find your it would be a mess statement highly nonspecific. If people really want bolt escape+morphs to just be a chance to escape and not spammable, they should have to think about what their doing when fighting a retreating sorc.

What good is a single high magicka teleport if you are just going to get bursted down the second you move.

I hardly think a reflecting bol is unfair. Opponents are expected to think about what they are casting and how they react to what is cast. I hardly think its unfair to have the same expectations when it comes to fighting against bol

I agree though that stamina sorcs need to be able to differentiate, but I've been fighting this fight for quite a while now and I can tell you most stamina sorcs would settle for access to the basics.

skillastat

I would like that my BE reflect the single target spells ability, but I think it would be too much for the Magicka Sorcs since they are already very good at what they do. Right now I'm thinking of a way to enhance Stamina Sorcs without giving more power to Magicka Sorcs ^_^

skillastat

/bump

Keep this discussion alive if you want to catch ZOS attention ! Do you have any new ideas ? Share them here.

cozmon3c_ESO

It's probably too late now, if Eric wasn't working on it up til now, we probably won't see any useful changes by next update.

Erock25

I just don't understand why THE GUY who seems to make the decisions around here when it comes to abilities has absolutely ZERO presence on the forums. It is true that if he was around the forums floating ideas he would get a lot of bad feedback, but it could very easily be sifted through by seeing what people agree and disagree with. The fact that improving stam morph of Dark Exchange is one of the things he mentioned in ESO LIVE scares the bejeezus out of me. That is so out of touch with what the player base actually wants to a level that he must not read a single bit of feed back. What I wouldn't give to be able to a be a fly on the wall during the internal PVP matches Wrobel mentioned they'd use for testing.

TBois

We have had at least three threads on this forum (and at least one in the general combat forum) with good discussion since they released their proposed stam sorc improvements. This was before ESO live. ESO live was a confirmation that they were either too far ahead with the morphs to change direction, or they simple don't care/listen. I hope to bring it up in guild zos meetings, but I'd say there is not much hope for stam sorcs next patch.

Edit: In the previous threads most stam sorcs were in agreement that the proposed changes weren't in a good direction and the community came up with multiple better changes to sorc.

SturgeHammer

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

It's probably too late now, if Eric wasn't working on it up til now, we probably won't see any useful changes by next update.

Hopefully Eric has a few buffs tucked away for us somewhere, he said that all the combat changes mentioned where just highlights.

Also, I have been thinking some more about how the Bolt Escape nerf will change my stam sorc play. Last night I had a situation come up where I decided to chase a magicka sorc. I know this is normally ill advised, but for context the enemy sorc was bolting away from a larger fight for survival, which in this case I like my odds if I catch them. Through a combination of Crit Rushes, streaks and Boundless Storm + bow roll speed buff I was able to keep up with the enemy through very long series of Ball of Lightings. In the end, I nearly died, the enemy after all that was still able to maintain shields and deadric curses, but eventually went down to soul assault. That left me thinking "in update 7, if an enemy sorc has to spend way more mana than this to get away, and my mana and stam consumption stays roughly the same then my odds in what is normally a poor match up get significantly better." Even though I will be impacted by the dodge roll and bolt nerfs, I believe in context to the all the changes (bolt nerf, roll nerf, rd nerf, burst damage nerf, block nerfs) it actually makes a lot of bad match ups for stam sorcs much more winnable .

Or I maybe completely off base and will hopefully come back to my senses.

ToRelax

SturgeHammer wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

It's probably too late now, if Eric wasn't working on it up til now, we probably won't see any useful changes by next update.

Hopefully Eric has a few buffs tucked away for us somewhere, he said that all the combat changes mentioned where just highlights.

Also, I have been thinking some more about how the Bolt Escape nerf will change my stam sorc play. Last night I had a situation come up where I decided to chase a magicka sorc. I know this is normally ill advised, but for context the enemy sorc was bolting away from a larger fight for survival, which in this case I like my odds if I catch them. Through a combination of Crit Rushes, streaks and Boundless Storm + bow roll speed buff I was able to keep up with the enemy through very long series of Ball of Lightings. In the end, I nearly died, the enemy after all that was still able to maintain shields and deadric curses, but eventually went down to soul assault. That left me thinking "in update 7, if an enemy sorc has to spend way more mana than this to get away, and my mana and stam consumption stays roughly the same then my odds in what is normally a poor match up get significantly better." Even though I will be impacted by the dodge roll and bolt nerfs, I believe in context to the all the changes (bolt nerf, roll nerf, rd nerf, burst damage nerf, block nerfs) it actually makes a lot of bad match ups for stam sorcs much more winnable .

Or I maybe completely off base and will hopefully come back to my senses.

If it's a bad matchup, than that's only because the magicka Sorc is simply stronger than the stamina Sorc 1v1.
You could always chase them with significantly lower cost and deal high damage on the way if they don't refresh their shields.

SturgeHammer

ToRelax wrote: »

SturgeHammer wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

It's probably too late now, if Eric wasn't working on it up til now, we probably won't see any useful changes by next update.

Hopefully Eric has a few buffs tucked away for us somewhere, he said that all the combat changes mentioned where just highlights.

Also, I have been thinking some more about how the Bolt Escape nerf will change my stam sorc play. Last night I had a situation come up where I decided to chase a magicka sorc. I know this is normally ill advised, but for context the enemy sorc was bolting away from a larger fight for survival, which in this case I like my odds if I catch them. Through a combination of Crit Rushes, streaks and Boundless Storm + bow roll speed buff I was able to keep up with the enemy through very long series of Ball of Lightings. In the end, I nearly died, the enemy after all that was still able to maintain shields and deadric curses, but eventually went down to soul assault. That left me thinking "in update 7, if an enemy sorc has to spend way more mana than this to get away, and my mana and stam consumption stays roughly the same then my odds in what is normally a poor match up get significantly better." Even though I will be impacted by the dodge roll and bolt nerfs, I believe in context to the all the changes (bolt nerf, roll nerf, rd nerf, burst damage nerf, block nerfs) it actually makes a lot of bad match ups for stam sorcs much more winnable .

Or I maybe completely off base and will hopefully come back to my senses.

If it's a bad matchup, than that's only because the magicka Sorc is simply stronger than the stamina Sorc 1v1.
You could always chase them with significantly lower cost and deal high damage on the way if they don't refresh their shields.

That is true. Guess I am trying to spot a silver lining to the update 7 stuff, but one may not exist.

Cathexis

ToRelax wrote: »

If it's a bad matchup, than that's only because the magicka Sorc is simply stronger than the stamina Sorc 1v1.
You could always chase them with significantly lower cost and deal high damage on the way if they don't refresh their shields.

My Stam sorc wrecks magicka sorcs, but hes designed to fight casters.
It is possible to build a Stam sorc that beats magicka sorcs.