[SUGGESTION] QoL improvements for Sorcerer that are simple and effective.

Turtle_Bot · January 30

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Wrobel

I know you guys will be busy with feedback for the new patch, but I want to put forward some small changes that could be very easily implemented for the Sorcerer class that would not break balance, but help the class solve some of its most pressing issues, being bar space, lack of inherent crit chance to synergize its kit and lack of utility due to the bar space issues.

I want to note that your idea for Conjured Ward & morphs does come close to what I was going to suggest for that ability and I like the bonus for not running the pets, that is definitely something cool to see, so I will start off with that one.
Daedric Summoning:

Conjured Ward:
- Increase the size of the shield by 10% while you have no permanent pets active.
- Hardened Ward:
  - Increase the size of the shield by 10% while you have no permanent pets active. Grants interrupt immunity while the shield is active, also if you don't have a permanent pet active, reduces the damage the Wards take by an additional 10%.
- Regenerative Ward:
  - Increases the size of the shield by 10% while you have no permanent pets active. Heals over time for X amount and grants minor endurance and minor intellect for 10 seconds. The heal over time is increased by 25% if you have no permanent pets active.
  This allows sorcerers a choice to run with pets, but have smaller wards, or run without pets to have bigger wards and gain more from those wards bonus effects. This also reinforces the Hardened versus Regenerative aspects of the wards and deciding between the 2 to suit your playstyle.
Daedric Curse:
- Haunting Curse:
  - This morph now also inflicts Major Breach. The damage now triggers at 3/10 seconds down from 3.5/12 seconds.
- Daedric Prey:
  - This morph now also grants Empower in addition to x% pet damage done. Curse still lasts 6s, but damage now triggers at 3s instead.
  This allows sorcerers curses to feel impactful over the entire course of a fight, while reinforcing the different aspects where 1 morph works with the pets and the other is for those lone wolf sorcerers. We have also adjusted the trigger delay of the damage portion of this ability to allow for a more forgiving rotation.
Bound Armor:

This ability now grants Major Prophecy/Savagery while on either bar instead of 8% max magicka and minor protection. Bonus block mitigation reduced to 18%, but the duration increased to 8 seconds.
- Bound Aegis:
  - Also grants Minor Resolve while slotted on either bar. When Activated grants Minor Protection and +20% block mitigation for 10 seconds.
- Bound Armaments:
  - This abilities cost now scales to your highest resource. Daggers now last until they are used. Increases your weapon and spell critical rating by X for each active dagger (X is whatever the number is that equals 1% rating).
  We have updated and hybridized this skill and its morphs. Aegis for defense and tanking, armaments for damage dealers. By scaling this skill with the highest resource and the bonus now being critical strike chance instead of max stamina, this opens up the skill to magicka sorcerers to use as well as keeping it as a strong option for stamina sorcerers. We have also updated bound armaments to give it the same quality of life treatment that we gave to merciless resolve.

Storm Calling:

Lightning Form:
- Reverted the Tick rate back to 1 second and increased the base radius from 5m to 7m of this ability and morphs.
By reverting the tick rate and increasing the base radius of this ability and its morphs, this reverts the unintentional/overlooked nerfs that the adjustments to the base melee attack range and the changes to damage over time tick rates did to sorcerer and its ability to heal from dealing damage, in particular from its class heal over time, Critical Surge. We will be keeping an eye on these changes and if necessary make adjustments to the amount of healing that critical surge provides to ensure it stays in line with other healing over time effects.

By making these changes, it achieves the following:
- Gives sorcerer a more reliable way to proc crit surge (the class's only "heal over time").
- It frees up some of sorcerers bar space pains to potentially try other options/utility, now it only has to try and fit 12 abilities into its 12 bar slots instead of 14+ so can try out different options.

Wishlist for once the main issues of bar space, crit chance and utility outlined above are solved.

Rune Prison:
- This ability and the Rune Cage morph are reworked to be a DoT ability. Make it deal its damage over a 15/20 second duration with a single attempt to stun after 2 seconds (with the same current giant crystal visual that indicates the stun is about to happen), this makes it useful even in PvE while being a better way to proc dark magic passives that are really struggling currently.
- Defensive Rune morph grants either mitigation or a small heal over time, or make it an AoE stun if it procs. Duration reduced to suit.

Now, to give preliminary feedback on the proposed changes to Sorcerer:
Conjured Ward:
- As noted, the Conjured Ward changes are definitely a step in the right direction. Adding utility makes it worth slotting them, more than just increasing their size (outside of imbalanced levels) ever could.
Expert Summoner:
- This change misses the mark.

Sorcerer in PvE is forced to run atro on the back bar because the only thing it brings to a group is the atro synergy for major berserk, when the sorc casts atro and switches to the front bar, it loses the bonus to max mag/stam which results in a DPS loss.
Meanwhile to make the most use out of Hardened ward and its new found healing (mostly from tanks and in PvP), a sorcerer wants to stack as much health as it can (to still be able to add damage to deal damage) and by not having a pet active, this makes that even harder to achieve on a class that already has no bar space for more important utility effects, let alone the space to slot a pet that takes up 2 slots.

Encase:
- I still need to test this out, but it looks promising on paper (the heal morph in particular). It could likely require a slight buff, but as I said, I still need to test it.
Daedric Mines:
- This is an interesting change, Not sure how it will play out, needs testing, but could be a potentially very strong defensive tool in the right scenario
Lightning Splash:
- This ability needs the synergy removed, damage over time increased and given a different effect. The synergy is taking up far too much of this abilities damage that it just isn't worth slotting at all until that is fixed.

EDIT: Reworded Daedric Prey changes to provide better clarity regarding the intention of the changes, thanks @MashmalloMan for pointing this out.

MashmalloMan · January 30

Ehhh nice to see some of our idea's combined. Saved me the time it would take to write this up.

Major Breach on Haunting Curse and Major Prophecy/Savagery on BA feels like a no brainer.

Whats funny is when were talking about this, you advocated for max resources being important, but now we get 10% more mag/stam in place of hp as a passive. It feels like all the more reason that Bound Armor morphs should not include this, why is Sorc double dipping and forcing both of these morph choices to not be hybridized?

Totally agree with pretty much everything you said.

I'd add:

With the status effect change, being elementally focused is more important than ever. Since Sorc is suppose to have an affinity for Physical/Shock damage, why are random skills in our toolkit Magicka based? It feels thematically limiting and out of place.
Convert all "Crystal" damage sources to Physical.
Convert all "Purple Glowy Magic" damage sources to Shock.
Add a small, but unique bonus to the passive for Sundered/Concussed because the 5% is underwhelming.. like:
- + x% status effect chance for Sundered/Concussed.
- or.. + x% movement speed for 4s when proccing Sundered/Concussed.
- or.. + x% crit chance for 4s when proccing Sundered/Concussed.
- or.. Sundered/Concussed deal their damage to nearby enemies in a 4m radius. This has a 4s CD.

ZhuJiuyin · January 30

I guess this wouldn't work, it would completely remove sorc's style as a black magician. My suggestion is to modify the passive ability (such as Amplitude) and add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct magic damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning attack.
Triggering surge through multiple damage, multi-stage strikes are also more in line with sorc (such as Bound Armaments)

Turtle_Bot · January 30

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I guess this wouldn't work, it would completely remove sorc's style as a black magician. My suggestion is to modify the passive ability (such as Amplitude) and add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct magic damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning attack.
Triggering surge through multiple damage, multi-stage strikes are also more in line with sorc (such as Bound Armaments)

Something like this would be cool to replace the capacitor passive (with the mag recovery moved to the daedric protection passive).

Fits with the name too since capacitors store then discharge electricity into circuits.

MashmalloMan · January 30

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I guess this wouldn't work, it would completely remove sorc's style as a black magician. My suggestion is to modify the passive ability (such as Amplitude) and add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct magic damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning attack.
Triggering surge through multiple damage, multi-stage strikes are also more in line with sorc (such as Bound Armaments)

If for whatever reason they couldn't change the magic damage skills, sure I'd take that, sounds cool. But they definitely can, because we saw them do it for DK a year or 2 ago where they were in the same boat with random skills dealing Magic Damage, despite the clear affinity in the class being Poison/Fire.

Very positive change that just makes sense.

Turtle_Bot · January 30

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now, to give preliminary feedback on the proposed changes to Sorcerer:
Conjured Ward:
- As noted, the Conjured Ward changes are definitely a step in the right direction. Adding utility makes it worth slotting them, more than just increasing their size (outside of imbalanced levels) ever could.
Expert Summoner:
- This change misses the mark.
Sorcerer in PvE is forced to run atro on the back bar because the only thing it brings to a group is the atro synergy for major berserk, when the sorc casts atro and switches to the front bar, it loses the bonus to max mag/stam which results in a DPS loss.
Meanwhile to make the most use out of Hardened ward and its new found healing (mostly from tanks and in PvP), a sorcerer wants to stack as much health as it can (to still be able to add damage to deal damage) and by not having a pet active, this makes that even harder to achieve on a class that already has no bar space for more important utility effects, let alone the space to slot a pet that takes up 2 slots.
Encase:
- I still need to test this out, but it looks promising on paper (the heal morph in particular). It could likely require a slight buff, but as I said, I still need to test it.
Daedric Mines:
- This is an interesting change, Not sure how it will play out, needs testing, but could be a potentially very strong defensive tool in the right scenario
Lightning Splash:
- This ability needs the synergy removed, damage over time increased and given a different effect. The synergy is taking up far too much of this abilities damage that it just isn't worth slotting at all until that is fixed.

Ok, a bit of an update now that I've had a chance to test things out on the PTS for a bit.

Conjured Ward:
- This was definitely a step in the right direction, the heal is just enough to help pull sorcerer out of execute range while the ward provides the buffer required to absorb the initial execute hit, especially for the Hardened Ward morph.

Encase:
- Playing around with the heal morph of this skill, my concerns have been alleviated. It feels about the same as blessings of protection as a heal, but the secondary effects, combined with the changes to the mending buff help it to be it's own unique heal for no pet sorcerer.

Daedric Mines:
- Not a bad change for this skill. It's going to have some nice group utility or give a sorc the potential to maybe refresh a shield once or twice in the heat of battle. The fact that it has the cooldown of 2 seconds per target and that the shields cannot be stacked keeps this balanced. Nice group utility, good for what it does. Not something that would fit my playstyle, but it is nice to see it there as an option for sorcerers to support their groups (or give sorcerer tanks a new unique tool to utilize).

Lightning Splash:
- Still an extremely underwhelming skill. As I stated before, so much of this abilities damage is locked behind the synergy that the damage over time component just cannot keep up with the globally available DoT abilities, especially without any secondary effects/debuffs. This will need more than just a radius increase to make it worth slotting on sorcs already tight bar space.

Lastly, Expert Summoner:
- The max stats is nice, but the missing health definitely hurts, especially for PvP where not having pets is very common and having higher minimum health (around 30k+) is a requirement to not just instantly die to a random gank or siege. This passive should ideally give max health while a daedric summoning ability is slotted, then also give the max mag/stam while no pets are active. That way there's some consistency at the base line for this passive, but there's still a bonus for not running the pets. To counter this new power of buffing all 3 attributes at the same time while no pets are active, the percent bonus increase can easily be reduced from the proposed +10% down to +7% or +8%.

Overall:
Overall these changes are good. The ideas behind the changes for the most part either work well or only require small tweaks to get into that sweet spot.
The changes to ward and encase definitely fix one of sorcs biggest issues, that being a way to recover from being dropped into the execute threshold.
Mines also allows sorcerers to fill some additional utility/support roles without relying entirely on atro and for sorcerer tanks to carve their own niche in the tanking role.

Missed opportunities/additional changes:
As outlined, the majority of the changes proposed are steps in the right direction. There's only really 1 thing I would like to see added.

With the max stats now on the Expert Summoner passive, replacing the bonus stats on bound armor + morphs with Major prophecy/savagery while slotted on either bar, and have the daggers on bound armaments give a small (+1% or +1.5%) bonus to critical strike chance for each active dagger.
Also rework the cost of the active component to be based off of which ever max resource is higher to fully hybridize this ability and morphs.
This way it separates the morphs into tank/healer or dps roles, and allows either morph to be used by any sorc and all sorcs would benefit equally from slotting whichever morph would best suit their role.
This also allows bound armaments to have it's own identity compared to the currently objectively stronger Merciless Resolve skill in the NB kit. MR would be all about the 1 big hit that 100 to zero's the target by stacking raw damage and forcing the crit with invis, while BA would be all about the "death by a thousand cuts" by stacking critical strike chance and having more opportunities to potentially crit due to the multiple projectiles.

ZhuJiuyin · January 30

Restraining Prison is not bad, allowing Sorc to get stable healing.
But Shattering Prison is still not good enough, as a damage skill, still doesn't do enough damage.
According to usep's information: Shattering Prison (Old) deal [4765 / 4816 / 4869 / 4920] Magic Damage, and according to U41's instructions, it will increase the damage of Shattering Spines by 10%, which is 4920*1.1=5412.
But in comparison, Wardens' Scorch can cause [6641 / 6714 / 6787 / 6860] AOE magic damage (3 seconds delay) + [9223 / 9324 / 9426 / 9527] magic damage (6 seconds delay). Morphs even grant Major and Minor Breach.
Blighted Blastbones(old) (2.5 seconds delay) can cause [9529 / 9633 / 9737 / 9842] Disease Damage and give Major Defile.
Shattering Prison does even less damage than most spamablecs, such as Force Pulse(1905*3=5715 > 5412)

To make Shattering Prison worth using in PVE without making it too powerful in PVP, I recommend:
1. Let Shattering Prison always give Overcharged when it hits, and give the target another Overcharged when it causes damage.
OR
2. Let Shattering Prison give the target an additional 10 seconds of magic damage after causing damage, making Shattering Prison worthy of being used in PVE.

Elyu · January 30

Very much agree with OP + @MashmalloMan

Regarding the point made by @ZhuJiuyin one potential solution would be my suggestion from "Class Identity" thread of introducing more damage types into the game.

Thus sorc would have access to three damage types, each with an associated status effect:

Physical (sundered)
Shock (concussed)
NEW: Shadow (darkened?)

Syldran · January 30

I suggest that one of the Mages' Fury morphs be turned from an execute to a spamable that has a high chance of triggering concussion.

katorga · January 30

Bound Armaments daggers need to stay active until used, just like Grim Focus. This bugs the heck out of me. I can lead off with Merciless on my NB.

Bound armaments needs to change from 8% stamina to 8% mag/stam or 8% wep/spell dmg on the base skill, aligns with hybridization.

Dark Conversion and Crit Surge need to be merged into a single skill, major brutality/sorcery and heal on crit passively applied while slotted on either bar.

Dark conversion needs to provide the minor buffs for 20s.

The other changes are OK. Shields needed big update to remain competitive with Arcanist shields. Arcanist shields are bigger, cheaper, and have a larger burst heal capability.

Being able to at least attempt to heal without a pet is great, but the PTS heals don't compete with other classes' current healing ability.

The sorc changes are OK. The NB changes are amazing. So Sorc will remain C tier and the bar to reach S tier just got higher.

Jierdanit · January 30

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now, to give preliminary feedback on the proposed changes to Sorcerer:
Conjured Ward:
- As noted, the Conjured Ward changes are definitely a step in the right direction. Adding utility makes it worth slotting them, more than just increasing their size (outside of imbalanced levels) ever could.
Expert Summoner:
- This change misses the mark.
Sorcerer in PvE is forced to run atro on the back bar because the only thing it brings to a group is the atro synergy for major berserk, when the sorc casts atro and switches to the front bar, it loses the bonus to max mag/stam which results in a DPS loss.
Meanwhile to make the most use out of Hardened ward and its new found healing (mostly from tanks and in PvP), a sorcerer wants to stack as much health as it can (to still be able to add damage to deal damage) and by not having a pet active, this makes that even harder to achieve on a class that already has no bar space for more important utility effects, let alone the space to slot a pet that takes up 2 slots.
Encase:
- I still need to test this out, but it looks promising on paper (the heal morph in particular). It could likely require a slight buff, but as I said, I still need to test it.
Daedric Mines:
- This is an interesting change, Not sure how it will play out, needs testing, but could be a potentially very strong defensive tool in the right scenario
Lightning Splash:
- This ability needs the synergy removed, damage over time increased and given a different effect. The synergy is taking up far too much of this abilities damage that it just isn't worth slotting at all until that is fixed.

Ok, a bit of an update now that I've had a chance to test things out on the PTS for a bit.

Conjured Ward:
- This was definitely a step in the right direction, the heal is just enough to help pull sorcerer out of execute range while the ward provides the buffer required to absorb the initial execute hit, especially for the Hardened Ward morph.

Encase:
- Playing around with the heal morph of this skill, my concerns have been alleviated. It feels about the same as blessings of protection as a heal, but the secondary effects, combined with the changes to the mending buff help it to be it's own unique heal for no pet sorcerer.

Daedric Mines:
- Not a bad change for this skill. It's going to have some nice group utility or give a sorc the potential to maybe refresh a shield once or twice in the heat of battle. The fact that it has the cooldown of 2 seconds per target and that the shields cannot be stacked keeps this balanced. Nice group utility, good for what it does. Not something that would fit my playstyle, but it is nice to see it there as an option for sorcerers to support their groups (or give sorcerer tanks a new unique tool to utilize).

Lightning Splash:
- Still an extremely underwhelming skill. As I stated before, so much of this abilities damage is locked behind the synergy that the damage over time component just cannot keep up with the globally available DoT abilities, especially without any secondary effects/debuffs. This will need more than just a radius increase to make it worth slotting on sorcs already tight bar space.

Lastly, Expert Summoner:
- The max stats is nice, but the missing health definitely hurts, especially for PvP where not having pets is very common and having higher minimum health (around 30k+) is a requirement to not just instantly die to a random gank or siege. This passive should ideally give max health while a daedric summoning ability is slotted, then also give the max mag/stam while no pets are active. That way there's some consistency at the base line for this passive, but there's still a bonus for not running the pets. To counter this new power of buffing all 3 attributes at the same time while no pets are active, the percent bonus increase can easily be reduced from the proposed +10% down to +7% or +8%.

Overall:
Overall these changes are good. The ideas behind the changes for the most part either work well or only require small tweaks to get into that sweet spot.
The changes to ward and encase definitely fix one of sorcs biggest issues, that being a way to recover from being dropped into the execute threshold.
Mines also allows sorcerers to fill some additional utility/support roles without relying entirely on atro and for sorcerer tanks to carve their own niche in the tanking role.

Missed opportunities/additional changes:
As outlined, the majority of the changes proposed are steps in the right direction. There's only really 1 thing I would like to see added.
With the max stats now on the Expert Summoner passive, replacing the bonus stats on bound armor + morphs with Major prophecy/savagery while slotted on either bar, and have the daggers on bound armaments give a small (+1% or +1.5%) bonus to critical strike chance for each active dagger.
Also rework the cost of the active component to be based off of which ever max resource is higher to fully hybridize this ability and morphs.
This way it separates the morphs into tank/healer or dps roles, and allows either morph to be used by any sorc and all sorcs would benefit equally from slotting whichever morph would best suit their role.
This also allows bound armaments to have it's own identity compared to the currently objectively stronger Merciless Resolve skill in the NB kit. MR would be all about the 1 big hit that 100 to zero's the target by stacking raw damage and forcing the crit with invis, while BA would be all about the "death by a thousand cuts" by stacking critical strike chance and having more opportunities to potentially crit due to the multiple projectiles.

I think Hardened Ward should get a full heal instead of just that small burst, that is really not enough.

Also max Health in addition to Stam and Mag is definitely needed, 30k HP with 55k Mag is just still really super bad stats.

MagSorc is really going to be super weak if these changes go live, totally need to change that ZOS.

Enverrr · January 30

@Turtle_Bot The delay for the detonation of the haunting curse, which is a delayed burst ability, should remain the same (3.5 seconds), as it is impossible to achieve 100% rotation speed due to ping. At best, the rotation speed will be 95% percent. It is also worth considering the flight time of projectiles, since Magsorc is primarily a long-range class. This means that the 3rd ability released for a burst with haunting curse will reach the enemy in approximately 3.5 seconds. You can also test this on a dummy

MashmalloMan · January 30

Jierdanit wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now, to give preliminary feedback on the proposed changes to Sorcerer:
Conjured Ward:
- As noted, the Conjured Ward changes are definitely a step in the right direction. Adding utility makes it worth slotting them, more than just increasing their size (outside of imbalanced levels) ever could.
Expert Summoner:
- This change misses the mark.
Sorcerer in PvE is forced to run atro on the back bar because the only thing it brings to a group is the atro synergy for major berserk, when the sorc casts atro and switches to the front bar, it loses the bonus to max mag/stam which results in a DPS loss.
Meanwhile to make the most use out of Hardened ward and its new found healing (mostly from tanks and in PvP), a sorcerer wants to stack as much health as it can (to still be able to add damage to deal damage) and by not having a pet active, this makes that even harder to achieve on a class that already has no bar space for more important utility effects, let alone the space to slot a pet that takes up 2 slots.
Encase:
- I still need to test this out, but it looks promising on paper (the heal morph in particular). It could likely require a slight buff, but as I said, I still need to test it.
Daedric Mines:
- This is an interesting change, Not sure how it will play out, needs testing, but could be a potentially very strong defensive tool in the right scenario
Lightning Splash:
- This ability needs the synergy removed, damage over time increased and given a different effect. The synergy is taking up far too much of this abilities damage that it just isn't worth slotting at all until that is fixed.

Ok, a bit of an update now that I've had a chance to test things out on the PTS for a bit.

Conjured Ward:
- This was definitely a step in the right direction, the heal is just enough to help pull sorcerer out of execute range while the ward provides the buffer required to absorb the initial execute hit, especially for the Hardened Ward morph.

Encase:
- Playing around with the heal morph of this skill, my concerns have been alleviated. It feels about the same as blessings of protection as a heal, but the secondary effects, combined with the changes to the mending buff help it to be it's own unique heal for no pet sorcerer.

Daedric Mines:
- Not a bad change for this skill. It's going to have some nice group utility or give a sorc the potential to maybe refresh a shield once or twice in the heat of battle. The fact that it has the cooldown of 2 seconds per target and that the shields cannot be stacked keeps this balanced. Nice group utility, good for what it does. Not something that would fit my playstyle, but it is nice to see it there as an option for sorcerers to support their groups (or give sorcerer tanks a new unique tool to utilize).

Lightning Splash:
- Still an extremely underwhelming skill. As I stated before, so much of this abilities damage is locked behind the synergy that the damage over time component just cannot keep up with the globally available DoT abilities, especially without any secondary effects/debuffs. This will need more than just a radius increase to make it worth slotting on sorcs already tight bar space.

Lastly, Expert Summoner:
- The max stats is nice, but the missing health definitely hurts, especially for PvP where not having pets is very common and having higher minimum health (around 30k+) is a requirement to not just instantly die to a random gank or siege. This passive should ideally give max health while a daedric summoning ability is slotted, then also give the max mag/stam while no pets are active. That way there's some consistency at the base line for this passive, but there's still a bonus for not running the pets. To counter this new power of buffing all 3 attributes at the same time while no pets are active, the percent bonus increase can easily be reduced from the proposed +10% down to +7% or +8%.

Overall:
Overall these changes are good. The ideas behind the changes for the most part either work well or only require small tweaks to get into that sweet spot.
The changes to ward and encase definitely fix one of sorcs biggest issues, that being a way to recover from being dropped into the execute threshold.
Mines also allows sorcerers to fill some additional utility/support roles without relying entirely on atro and for sorcerer tanks to carve their own niche in the tanking role.

Missed opportunities/additional changes:
As outlined, the majority of the changes proposed are steps in the right direction. There's only really 1 thing I would like to see added.
With the max stats now on the Expert Summoner passive, replacing the bonus stats on bound armor + morphs with Major prophecy/savagery while slotted on either bar, and have the daggers on bound armaments give a small (+1% or +1.5%) bonus to critical strike chance for each active dagger.
Also rework the cost of the active component to be based off of which ever max resource is higher to fully hybridize this ability and morphs.
This way it separates the morphs into tank/healer or dps roles, and allows either morph to be used by any sorc and all sorcs would benefit equally from slotting whichever morph would best suit their role.
This also allows bound armaments to have it's own identity compared to the currently objectively stronger Merciless Resolve skill in the NB kit. MR would be all about the 1 big hit that 100 to zero's the target by stacking raw damage and forcing the crit with invis, while BA would be all about the "death by a thousand cuts" by stacking critical strike chance and having more opportunities to potentially crit due to the multiple projectiles.

I think Hardened Ward should get a full heal instead of just that small burst, that is really not enough.

Also max Health in addition to Stam and Mag is definitely needed, 30k HP with 55k Mag is just still really super bad stats.

MagSorc is really going to be super weak if these changes go live, totally need to change that ZOS.

The small heal is plenty, lets not overload the skill and get it nerfed. Sorc has been begging for heals without pets for a very, very long time and while something has to be done about Crit Surge and the power it's lost due to power creep over the past 7-8 years, shield morphs are a big step in the right direction. That heal while small, is on the same GCD as the shield itself and underneath it, allowing Sorcs an opportunity to get out of execute range. I would suggest Sorcs test it on live before we ask for more at this point. Be realistic. They're the best shields in the game.

Max health, stam, and mag is not "needed". The pts 10% stam/mag is much better than the original 8% hp because at its core, it's more versatile and flexible. If you need more health, it's much easier to give up stam or mag to do so, vs the opposite, a pve player has a bare minimum requirement of health, so there is no hp to transfer over. That said, I think it would be beneficial to adjust the passive in some form so that non pet sorcs aren't punished for using Storm Atro, since it takes away our stam/mag bonus upon bar swapping.

Why would we be any weaker than before?

For pvp. These are all beneficial no matter how you swing it. The only sub class missing out here is stam sorc to which I main, and even I don't care. My 33k hp will probably drop to 30k, my 24k stam will bump up to 26k, so all I have to do is lower my stam to 24k and increase my health to 32k and I'm essentially back to square one. After all is said and done, I'm going to lose like 200-300 hp with the same stamina, while also getting 10% more mag.. although I don't super care about that part because my 15k is enough, it's something.

For pve. At the current moment I can't not run a pet in groups because it equates to too much, but outside groups like arena's, overworld, even 4 man dungeons, I don't run pets because they die too easily or dumb as rocks. So I'm going to get a 10% stam/mag buff where I didn't have it before. That's a win no matter how you slice it.

MashmalloMan · January 30

Enverrr wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot The delay for the detonation of the haunting curse, which is a delayed burst ability, should remain the same (3.5 seconds), as it is impossible to achieve 100% rotation speed due to ping. At best, the rotation speed will be 95% percent. It is also worth considering the flight time of projectiles, since Magsorc is primarily a long-range class. This means that the 3rd ability released for a burst with haunting curse will reach the enemy in approximately 3.5 seconds. You can also test this on a dummy

Those are valid points, but all in all, 0.5s isn't a big deal to begin with. I'm willing to bet most combo's result in you being closer to the 3.2s-3.3s range than you are to the 3.5-3.7s range.

The point was to reduce the total 12s window down to 10s which fits better within current standards for skill durations and rotations. It's a small change, but would help non pet Sorc better compete in pve and you would actually have a chance to capitalize on that second tick in pvp quicker. By keeping the window between the 1st and 2nd tick at 7s, you should still be able to time 2 combo's within the 7s stun immunity window.

It would be a decent quality of life change that doesn't increase the damage, but does increase the dps which non pet sorc struggles with. Is it super necessary? No, but it would help. The main thing I want is Major Breach and it makes perfect sense for this skill.

MashmalloMan · January 30

Elyu wrote: »

Very much agree with OP + @MashmalloMan

Regarding the point made by @ZhuJiuyin one potential solution would be my suggestion from "Class Identity" thread of introducing more damage types into the game.

Thus sorc would have access to three damage types, each with an associated status effect:

Physical (sundered)
Shock (concussed)
NEW: Shadow (darkened?)

Yeah thats my main point. Magic damage does nothing for Sorc, no passive either in the past or present reinforces the idea that Sorc is a "Magic Damage" class. It's always been shock(lightning)/physical(wind/air) from the inception of Hurricane vs Boundless Storm as class identifiers, to the original Implosion passive that gave us execute damage procs with % chance to low health enemies replaced by boring Amplitude. We are the Storm class of the game you can find in other RPGs, even our Daedric Summoning pets deal physical/shock, so it's not like it's only from the Storm Calling skill line. It should be in all of them imo.

If they made our Magic damage interesting, added a unique passive, sure, that would be cool, but what is more likely to happen?

The DK treatment of converting all Magic damage to Fire/Poison because the class clearly had an affinity for those damage types and not Magic damage, which is the same situation Sorc is in.
Creating a brand new element or passive after 10+ years of never showing a single hint that it's a part of Sorc's identity?

Yeah, my money is on option 1. It's a lot simpler for them to achieve too.

Lastly, separating a classes damage type into 2 elements is bad enough, but at least interesting for build purposes, when you separate it 3 or more times, it gets very difficult to use any set, passive or future potential combo/mythic that requires you to focus on a single element.

For example, the Storm Cursed Revenge set which was DEAD on arrival.. (5 items) When you deal Shock Damage, you have a 15% chance to deal 433 Shock Damage to the enemy and up to two other enemies within 5 meters. This effect scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

This would actually be a decent set if Sorc could get Shock damage from more abilities in their kit, but unfortunately, it's just not reliable. If Sorc had a shock spammable, if Curse was shock, if Mages Fury and Lightning Flood were worth slotting..

Even now, Concussed increases in damage the more you proc it back to back. If Sorc was really good at proccing this, it would be a really decent damage bonus. The new idea behind the passive really supports that we should be shock/physical.

ZhuJiuyin · January 31

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Yeah thats my main point. Magic damage does nothing for Sorc, no passive either in the past or present reinforces the idea that Sorc is a "Magic Damage" class. It's always been shock(lightning)/physical(wind/air) from the inception of Hurricane vs Boundless Storm as class identifiers, to the original Implosion passive that gave us execute damage procs with % chance to low health enemies replaced by boring Amplitude. We are the Storm class of the game you can find in other RPGs, even our Daedric Summoning pets deal physical/shock, so it's not like it's only from the Storm Calling skill line. It should be in all of them imo.

If they made our Magic damage interesting, added a unique passive, sure, that would be cool, but what is more likely to happen?
The DK treatment of converting all Magic damage to Fire/Poison because the class clearly had an affinity for those damage types and not Magic damage, which is the same situation Sorc is in.

Creating a brand new element or passive after 10+ years of never showing a single hint that it's a part of Sorc's identity?

Yeah, my money is on option 1. It's a lot simpler for them to achieve too.

Lastly, separating a classes damage type into 2 elements is bad enough, but at least interesting for build purposes, when you separate it 3 or more times, it gets very difficult to use any set, passive or future potential combo/mythic that requires you to focus on a single element.

For example, the Storm Cursed Revenge set which was DEAD on arrival.. (5 items) When you deal Shock Damage, you have a 15% chance to deal 433 Shock Damage to the enemy and up to two other enemies within 5 meters. This effect scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

This would actually be a decent set if Sorc could get Shock damage from more abilities in their kit, but unfortunately, it's just not reliable. If Sorc had a shock spammable, if Curse was shock, if Mages Fury and Lightning Flood were worth slotting..

Even now, Concussed increases in damage the more you proc it back to back. If Sorc was really good at proccing this, it would be a really decent damage bonus. The new idea behind the passive really supports that we should be shock/physical.

Yes, "most" of DK's skills are fire or poison, but DK's Stone Giant is still Physical Damage.
As I mentioned in another thread, each class basically has 3 different attributes, and most of them work well and have good data on eso logs. (Classes such as Arcanist, Templar, Necro, and DK often appear in the top 100)

DK-poison, fire, physics
NB-magic, disease, poison
Warden-ice, bleeding, disease
Templar-magic, physics, fire
Necro-ice, fire, disease, shock
Arcanist-ice, physics, magic
Sorc-impact, physics, magic

The real problem with Sorc is not whether the element attributes are unified, but that its active/passive capabilities are seriously low, outdated, and useless. All active/passive abilities cause insufficient damage and provide insufficient effects.
Let’s take Encase as an example (it has been mentioned elsewhere, please forgive me for copying and pasting it directly),

"This buff to Encase looks good on paper, but in reality Shattering Spines, as a damage skill, still doesn't do enough damage.
According to usep's information: Shattering Prison (Old) deal [4765 / 4816 / 4869 / 4920] Magic Damage, and according to U41's instructions, it will increase the damage of Shattering Spines by 10%, which is 4920*1.1=5412.
But in comparison, Wardens' Scorch can cause [6641 / 6714 / 6787 / 6860] AOE magic damage (3 seconds delay) + [9223 / 9324 / 9426 / 9527] magic damage (6 seconds delay). Morphs even grant Major and Minor Breach.
Blighted Blastbones(old) (2.5 seconds delay) can cause [9529 / 9633 / 9737 / 9842] Disease Damage and give Major Defile.

Even compared with Cephaliarch's Flail, Cephaliarch's Flail is delayed by 0.3 seconds, causing
1.5303 damage (AOE)
2.healing
3.generating Crux
4.immobilized for 3 seconds
5. 5% increased damage
6. Execution (morph) or more damage (morph)
A total of 6 different effects are given. In contrast, Shattering Spines only has
1.Cause about 5412 AOE damage (delay)
2.immobilized for 4 seconds
3.Major Maim
Shattering Spines only has 3 effects, which is obviously completely lost to Scorch, Blighted Blastbones (in terms of damage), and Cephaliarch's Flail (in terms of number of effects)"

Therefore, changing the elemental attributes of skills cannot really solve the problem of Sorc. The real solution is to buff active abilities, increase damage by 10~40%, provide more named buffs, etc., and redesign passive abilities, such as I mentioned before Yes, modify the passive ability (such as Amplitude or capacitor ) and add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning or magic attack.(*Minor modification)
Triggering surge through multiple damage, multi-stage strikes are also more in line with sorc (such as Bound Armaments).

Turtle_Bot · January 31

MashmalloMan wrote: »

For example, the Storm Cursed Revenge set which was DEAD on arrival.. (5 items) When you deal Shock Damage, you have a 15% chance to deal 433 Shock Damage to the enemy and up to two other enemies within 5 meters. This effect scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

This would actually be a decent set if Sorc could get Shock damage from more abilities in their kit, but unfortunately, it's just not reliable. If Sorc had a shock spammable, if Curse was shock, if Mages Fury and Lightning Flood were worth slotting..

Even now, Concussed increases in damage the more you proc it back to back. If Sorc was really good at proccing this, it would be a really decent damage bonus. The new idea behind the passive really supports that we should be shock/physical.

You have no idea how many times I have looked at that set and tried my best to make a build that will make it work. The set itself is in a good spot, but the fact that far too many of the shock damage active abilities are pure garbage compared to everything else, keeps this set completely dead...

MashmalloMan · January 31

@ZhuJiuyin

To the point about ESO logs, I'm not sure why that matters? I'm coming from a purely class identity and build theory crafting point of view. A base skills power will decide whether or not it gets used, not what element it is. A 5% boost to damage is peanuts, but getting to use more unique skill combo's and sets would make each class stand out more.

Name 1 DK that actually likes Stone Fist and doesn't want a Stam Poison Whip? The only other skill that comes to mind is 1 morph of Leap, mostly used for burst/cc/gap closer in pvp and the reason it's "fine" is because the morph effect specifically gives it increased damage and a lower ult cost. Both of those skills are by no means interesting to the classes design and are bad examples to use. Why would we focus on 2 out of 36 skills being physical, instead of the remaining that are fire/poison? DK has some of the best class identity in the game and it's evident why.

You've mentioned all 7 classes, but only Sorc, DK, Warden, and Necromancer have clear influences towards elements built within their passives which is my entire premise. You included the off type damage sources that I would argue should be converted in those classes as well, I'm not just talking about Sorc. In the context of today with hybridization and peoples complaints about classes feeling all too similar, how exactly is it a bad thing to reinforce the idea that some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin? Isn't that what classes should be about or else you run into a situation where every single player slots the same skills creating boring metas like.. Rending Slashes, Ele Sus, Resolving Vigor.

For Warden, their mismatched bag of elements is widely known issue among Warden mains. For the longest time, there was a clear direction you could see for the class where stamina Warden should have been focused on Bleed (Eg. Animal Fantasy) while magicka Warden should have been focused on Frost (Ice Mage Fantasy). To reference their kit as perfect the way it is, is misleading as they're not happy with the state it's in and Stam Warden has been completely shunned over the past 1-2 years in ZOS efforts to make Ice Warden more interesting.

So to summarize as what I believe the classes imply, but do so in a poor way:

Sorc = Aeromancer = Physical/Lightning
DK = Pyromancer = Fire/Poison
Warden = Cyromancer + Beast Tamer = Frost/Bleed
Necromancer = Elementalist = They have access to a bit of all 8 elements, not just 3, this is clearly deliberate seeing as ZOS wants them to be the "DOT" class, so a bonus to everything while having access to everything is pretty cool.

For Arcanist, NB, and Templar.. missed opportunities, they don't have clear elemental affinities, but maybe that's fine that some do and some don't.

NB I'd argue should focus on Poison/Disease as an assassination type of class.

Templar I'd argue should focus on Physical/Magic damage as they're the holy mage type of class. Those 2 elements are largely generic enough that you can pretend they're any type of magic which is why they're used so frequently in their kit for "holy" spells. They have 2 out of 36 skills that deals fire damage, so again, don't see why this would be a part of your 3 element argument, it's another example of poorly designed class fantasy. It's also another skill most Templars don't like ironically enough.

ZhuJiuyin · January 31

MashmalloMan wrote: »

@ZhuJiuyin

To the point about ESO logs, I'm not sure why that matters? I'm coming from a purely class identity and build theory crafting point of view. A base skills power will decide whether or not it gets used, not what element it is. A 5% boost to damage is peanuts, but getting to use more unique skill combo's and sets would make each class stand out more.

Name 1 DK that actually likes Stone Fist and doesn't want a Stam Poison Whip? The only other skill that comes to mind is 1 morph of Leap, mostly used for burst/cc/gap closer in pvp and the reason it's "fine" is because the morph effect specifically gives it increased damage and a lower ult cost. Both of those skills are by no means interesting to the classes design and are bad examples to use. Why would we focus on 2 out of 36 skills being physical, instead of the remaining that are fire/poison? DK has some of the best class identity in the game and it's evident why.

You've mentioned all 7 classes, but only Sorc, DK, Warden, and Necromancer have clear influences towards elements built within their passives which is my entire premise. You included the off type damage sources that I would argue should be converted in those classes as well, I'm not just talking about Sorc. In the context of today with hybridization and peoples complaints about classes feeling all too similar, how exactly is it a bad thing to reinforce the idea that some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin? Isn't that what classes should be about or else you run into a situation where every single player slots the same skills creating boring metas like.. Rending Slashes, Ele Sus, Resolving Vigor.

For Warden, their mismatched bag of elements is widely known issue among Warden mains. For the longest time, there was a clear direction you could see for the class where stamina Warden should have been focused on Bleed (Eg. Animal Fantasy) while magicka Warden should have been focused on Frost (Ice Mage Fantasy). To reference their kit as perfect the way it is, is misleading as they're not happy with the state it's in and Stam Warden has been completely shunned over the past 1-2 years in ZOS efforts to make Ice Warden more interesting.

So to summarize as what I believe the classes imply, but do so in a poor way:
Sorc = Aeromancer = Physical/Lightning

DK = Pyromancer = Fire/Poison

Warden = Cyromancer + Beast Tamer = Frost/Bleed

Necromancer = Elementalist = They have access to a bit of all 8 elements, not just 3, this is clearly deliberate seeing as ZOS wants them to be the "DOT" class, so a bonus to everything while having access to everything is pretty cool.

For Arcanist, NB, and Templar.. missed opportunities, they don't have clear elemental affinities, but maybe that's fine that some do and some don't.

NB I'd argue should focus on Poison/Disease as an assassination type of class.

Templar I'd argue should focus on Physical/Magic damage as they're the holy mage type of class. Those 2 elements are largely generic enough that you can pretend they're any type of magic which is why they're used so frequently in their kit for "holy" spells. They have 2 out of 36 skills that deals fire damage, so again, don't see why this would be a part of your 3 element argument, it's another example of poorly designed class fantasy. It's also another skill most Templars don't like ironically enough.

I'm not against "some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin"
But as you said, Templar's "holy" spells should be magic damage, so Sorc's entire skill line is named "Dark Magic", as the opposite of "holy", shouldn't it also be magic damage?
Let’s take a brief look at the damage types of the current version of Sorc:
Shock Damage: Shock Damage (contains 2 morphs), Summon Volatile Familiar, Summon Winged Twilight (contains 2 morphs), Overload (contains 2 morphs), Mages' Fury (contains 2 morphs), Boundless Storm, Lightning Splash ( Contains 2 types of morph) and Streak, a total of 8 types

Magic Damage: Suppression Field, Crystal Fragments, Shattering Prison, Rune Cage, Daedric Mines (contains 2 morphs), Daedric Curse (contains 2 morphs), a total of 6 types

Physical Damage: Crystal Weapon, Unstable Clannfear, Bound Armaments, Hurricane, 4 types in total

If it goes by the concept of "some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin", then shouldn't Sorc emphasize Magic and Shock damage? After all, these are the two elements that are statistically the most numerous.

Besides, is it a bad thing to have affinities to three elements (magic, impact, and physics)? Just modify the passive slightly, for example:
Energized: Increases your Physical and Shock Damage by 5%.
Blood Magic: Increase magic damage by 5% (or increase magic damage by 10% critical ). And when you deal damage with a direct damage magic type, restore X life.

In this way, whether you want to become a lightning mage or a dark mage, everyone will be happy.

Elyu · January 31

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Elyu wrote: »

Very much agree with OP + @MashmalloMan

Regarding the point made by @ZhuJiuyin one potential solution would be my suggestion from "Class Identity" thread of introducing more damage types into the game.

Thus sorc would have access to three damage types, each with an associated status effect:

Physical (sundered)
Shock (concussed)
NEW: Shadow (darkened?)

Yeah thats my main point. Magic damage does nothing for Sorc, no passive either in the past or present reinforces the idea that Sorc is a "Magic Damage" class. It's always been shock(lightning)/physical(wind/air) from the inception of Hurricane vs Boundless Storm as class identifiers, to the original Implosion passive that gave us execute damage procs with % chance to low health enemies replaced by boring Amplitude. We are the Storm class of the game you can find in other RPGs, even our Daedric Summoning pets deal physical/shock, so it's not like it's only from the Storm Calling skill line. It should be in all of them imo.

If they made our Magic damage interesting, added a unique passive, sure, that would be cool, but what is more likely to happen?
The DK treatment of converting all Magic damage to Fire/Poison because the class clearly had an affinity for those damage types and not Magic damage, which is the same situation Sorc is in.

Creating a brand new element or passive after 10+ years of never showing a single hint that it's a part of Sorc's identity?

Yeah, my money is on option 1. It's a lot simpler for them to achieve too.

Lastly, separating a classes damage type into 2 elements is bad enough, but at least interesting for build purposes, when you separate it 3 or more times, it gets very difficult to use any set, passive or future potential combo/mythic that requires you to focus on a single element.

For example, the Storm Cursed Revenge set which was DEAD on arrival.. (5 items) When you deal Shock Damage, you have a 15% chance to deal 433 Shock Damage to the enemy and up to two other enemies within 5 meters. This effect scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

This would actually be a decent set if Sorc could get Shock damage from more abilities in their kit, but unfortunately, it's just not reliable. If Sorc had a shock spammable, if Curse was shock, if Mages Fury and Lightning Flood were worth slotting..

Even now, Concussed increases in damage the more you proc it back to back. If Sorc was really good at proccing this, it would be a really decent damage bonus. The new idea behind the passive really supports that we should be shock/physical.

@MashmalloMan
Good point.
In fact I'd already made this point myself in an earlier thread just didn't remain true to my own suggestion:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/642544/class-identity

In that discussion I lay out what you suggest here:

MashmalloMan wrote: »

@ZhuJiuyin

So to summarize as what I believe the classes imply, but do so in a poor way:
Sorc = Aeromancer = Physical/Lightning

DK = Pyromancer = Fire/Poison

Warden = Cyromancer + Beast Tamer = Frost/Bleed

Necromancer = Elementalist = They have access to a bit of all 8 elements, not just 3, this is clearly deliberate seeing as ZOS wants them to be the "DOT" class, so a bonus to everything while having access to everything is pretty cool.

For Arcanist, NB, and Templar.. missed opportunities, they don't have clear elemental affinities, but maybe that's fine that some do and some don't.

NB I'd argue should focus on Poison/Disease as an assassination type of class.

Templar I'd argue should focus on Physical/Magic damage as they're the holy mage type of class. Those 2 elements are largely generic enough that you can pretend they're any type of magic which is why they're used so frequently in their kit for "holy" spells. They have 2 out of 36 skills that deals fire damage, so again, don't see why this would be a part of your 3 element argument, it's another example of poorly designed class fantasy. It's also another skill most Templars don't like ironically enough.

In slightly more detail, but the gist of it is: tie "class theme/identity" to something more concrete than the description on ESO.com.

Glantir · January 31

I would appreciate if we could get access to Major Prophecy/Savagery, maybe on the Twilight. Or at least let Inner Light and Expert Hunter work from Backbar.

Pelanora · February 1

Never anything on the pets. Please. Sorcs need to be switzerland on needing pets.

SIow · February 1

Curse having breach would be huge, it would free up an extra slot for another skill and would allow for a much wider range of gameplay.

MashmalloMan · February 1

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I'm not against "some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin"
But as you said, Templar's "holy" spells should be magic damage, so Sorc's entire skill line is named "Dark Magic", as the opposite of "holy", shouldn't it also be magic damage?

I was just disputing the idea you put forth that Templar should be fire/physical/magic when there is only 1 fire skill no one likes. They don't really have an element bonus to begin with and I'm not sure they need 1, but it could be interesting. My main point was the 4 classes I specified which do have element affinities, not the ones that don't.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

If it goes by the concept of "some classes are better with certain types of skills by a small margin", then shouldn't Sorc emphasize Magic and Shock damage? After all, these are the two elements that are statistically the most numerous.

No.

Physical is Martial damage, it's meant for Stam Sorcs, taking that away is taking a piece of their identity to make the entire class Magical for no reason, as if Stam Sorcs don't have a place in the game.
Concussed and Sundered are both useful status effects for any build type, while Overcharged gives Mag return on proc and Minor Magicka Steal, Stam Sorc's don't need this in most content.
Most class skill damage types are centered around Magical instead of Martial because originally, Stam builds were suppose to rely on weapons, Mag relied more on class skills. This has changed over time with things like Hybridization, but it is not perfect by any means and left unfinished. If anything you're highlighting why I think more of the Sorc kit should transfer to Physical/Shock because it's more inclusive, Magic damage is not.
Sorc has always had a bonus towards physical and shock damage, we used to have 2 passives, but now it's only 1 because they reworked Implosion into Amplitude. While a decent passive, it's fairly boring and took away a lot of the flavour Sorc's previously had in stacking as much physical or shock damage ticks as possible to proc Implosion. I wish that idea came back in another form, Sundered/Concussed bonus would achieve that.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Besides, is it a bad thing to have affinities to three elements (magic, impact, and physics)?

Yes, 100% yes. As I highlighted, sets like Storm Cursed Revenge are not viable in any form on the current build of the game, but that is 1 example. This can be extended to almost any elemental damage set, they are almost always dead on arrival.

Not sure why it's so complex to ask ZOS to streamline some of the classes so we could begin to see more unique build theory crafting in an age of the game where everyone complains that hybridization has made every build the same. By seperating a classes damage types into 3 categories you make it infinitely harder to use sets like Strength of the Automaton which only gives a bonus to physical/bleed skills. There is also only 2 sides of the coin, Martial/Magic or Stam/Mag. This idea is reinforced with 2 elements, but gets muddy with 3.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Blood Magic: Increase magic damage by 5% (or increase magic damage by 10% critical ). And when you deal damage with a direct damage magic type, restore X life.

I go back to my final point, what is more likely based on evidence we've seen with ZOS?

Introduce a brand new passive, that probably won't come in the form you request, missing the mark completely, for a skill line which is mostly based on utility/cc where as Storm Calling is meant as our damage skill line?
Convert x damage type to y which we've not only seen them do for Dragonknight, but also in this patch. "Inner Fire - Damage type adjusted from Magic to Flame damage.

My money is on option 2. Option 1 is overly complicated and doesn't serve Mag/Stam Sorc build diversity, it complicates it. Would it be cool? Sure. Will it happen? No chance from what I've seen. ZOS likes to support what is already there, they don't usually introduce new ideas. Look no further than the 10% mag/stam passive we got for no pet Sorc, despite requesting other bonuses for the longest time. It's definitely useful and I'm happy it's there, but it's playing off of what they think Sorc should be good at which evidently stacking resources for better shields and sustain. It's also the flip side of the current HP% passive so it made sense for them to give stam/mag instead despite being some of the weakest offensive stats to focus on.

It would be a win in my book if the damage type was converted to physical/shock, but it would be an added bonus if they reintroduced some status effect play for Sundered/Concussed to make it more fun to build around like how DK/Warden feel for build diversity regarding their elements.

ZhuJiuyin · February 1

MashmalloMan wrote: »

The quote is too long so delete it.

I still want to emphasize that changing Sorc's skill attribute to shock/physical will remove the identity of dark magic. Especially when Sorc has an entire skill line named "Dark Magic", so this obviously cannot turn all crystal and shard type skills into physical attributes as you said.

I can understand that you want to emphasize Sorc's oscillation affinity and increase the recognition of classes. But don't overlook those who wish to play as a black magician. Additionally, since Storm Calling is known to be a skill line that lacks damage and especially lacks enough magic damage (at least in PVE). Therefore, unless they are significantly enhanced or modified, many skills in Storm Calling will still be unavailable in PVE.
(The following is the Sorc skill data of VKA HM)

Not to mention that in the HM level trial, magicaSorc is already extremely weak. If you follow your original proposal and turn the crystal into physical damage, it will only make magicaSorc's position worse, because according to the setting, martial arts type damage consumes stamina. .

I still think a compromise would be to modify the passive so that Shock and Dark Magic's identity coexist.
For example, as suggested before:
1.Capacitor add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct magic damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning attack.
2.Blood Magic add a new effect to the original effect: Increase magic damage by 5% (or increase magic damage by 10% critical).
3. Persistence should be reworked and renamed. For example:
"Vicious: When Sorc uses skills that debuff the target, increase X% crit for Y seconds."

Therefore, unless ZOS renames the Dark Magic skill line and completely revamps Sorc's 3 skill lines, I still insist that the identity of Dark Magic should not be cancelled.
But if ZOS really completely revise Sorc's three skill lines, I'm worried that the situation of Warden will be repeated, causing Sorc to be limited to Lightning Staff.

MashmalloMan · February 1

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I still want to emphasize that changing Sorc's skill attribute to shock/physical will remove the identity of dark magic. Especially when Sorc has an entire skill line named "Dark Magic", so this obviously cannot turn all crystal and shard type skills into physical attributes as you said.

What identity? There is none, there never has been any, it's always been shock/physical for the class. Nothing would change about the visuals of the class, you're still using "Dark Magic" the same way Daedric Summoning skills are still Summoning skills despite using Shock for the majority of them. I'm not understanding the connection you're making between Magic damage being exclusive to "Dark Magic" and how Physical or Shock damage can't also be considered Dark Magic?

Magical damage = Magic, Frost, Fire, Shock.
Martial damage = Physical, Poison, Disease, Bleed.

Thats how ESO operates, changing the numbers from Magic to Shock or Physical would not take anything away from a Dark Magician because the skills remain the same. It just plays better off our passives and opens the door for more set opportunities. Keeping everything the status quo as I previously stated just means everyone will continue to build exactly the same way they always have, the same as each other. You can't separate class elements into 3 places, it just doesn't work in this game with only 2 morphs.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Not to mention that in the HM level trial, magicaSorc is already extremely weak. If you follow your original proposal and turn the crystal into physical damage, it will only make magicaSorc's position worse, because according to the setting, martial arts type damage consumes stamina..

Nothing I proposed would effect Sorcs damage output at all, if anything it would just make it better. I don't think you quite understand how the status effects and damage types work in this game. The only actual thing that separates Magical/Martial damage is role playing and the passives from CP you can get hours into being CP 160+.

Example just added this patch: Inner Beast - Costs 2700 stamina, deals Fire damage. Martial =/= Stamina Cost, it does sometimes influence it, but that is never what my suggestion was asking for. Crystal Frags would still be Magicka cost.

Turning the Crystal spells into Physical is purely to match what they've already done with Crystal Weapon and many Crystal based sets we're seeing this patch or in the past. It also makes sense as it's a sharp, physical object conjured into the world. Why would it deal Magic damage anyway if you're trying to impose real world logic on a fantasy RPG?

In terms of benefits, it also gives Mag Sorcs a way to proc Sundered via their spammable, seeing as they have other ways to proc Concussed to a higher degree from skills like Ele Sus, Charged Atro, and Volatile Familiar. I never once said that the skills changing to Physical damage should also cost stamina. Physical damage is a Martial damage type, but you can still spend Magicka to get it or find it on Magicka based sets. They are not locked to one another.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

1.Capacitor add a new effect to the original effect: every time sorc causes direct magic damage, it will add an additional low-damage lightning attack.
2.Blood Magic add a new effect to the original effect: Increase magic damage by 5% (or increase magic damage by 10% critical).
3. Persistence should be reworked and renamed. For example:
"Vicious: When Sorc uses skills that debuff the target, increase X% crit for Y seconds."

1. Sounds cool, but it's just never going to happen. Refer to my original comment where I stated I'm being realistic with my expectations of what ZOS is capable of and why a simple switch of damage types would change nothing negatively, while being easy to accomplish and open up build diversity... Furthermore, Sorc really doesn't need more damage via passives, we have some of the best passives in the game on that front. The main problem for our dps is it's attached to pets. The non pet skills behind Mages Fury, Boundless Storm, Lightning Flood, and Haunting Curse are all undervalued in comparison to Daedric Prey + 2 pets.

2. I mentioned this in my previous comment, Dark Magic does not need more damage implemented into it. The skill line is not meant for damage dealing, Storm Calling is, the passives in this skill line and most of the skills it represents are CC/Utility/Support/Tank based. Yeah, it has a spammable and Minor Prophecy, but it's a relic of an old age of their class design before they clearly separated the trees for DD/Healer/Tank. Point is, we just don't really need additional passive damage, especially for a skill line with only 1 real damage dealer tool. The skill line provides a decent heal for tanks and damage dealers, and that's fantastic the way it is.

3. Persistence kinda sucks, it's boring and I hope it gets reworked, but again, wrong skill line. This is meant for Tank/Utility. I don't tank, but I also don't want to take away from 1 of their only passives.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Therefore, unless ZOS renames the Dark Magic skill line and completely revamps Sorc's 3 skill lines, I still insist that the identity of Dark Magic should not be cancelled.

I covered this at the top, but yeah, nothing I suggested about changing elements effects your idea of a Dark Mage because Magic Damage does not equal Dark Magic exclusively in this game. It could be Shock, it could be Physical, the point of Dark Magic is where you get the magic from the same way you Summon Daedra.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

But if ZOS really completely revise Sorc's three skill lines, I'm worried that the situation of Warden will be repeated, causing Sorc to be limited to Lightning Staff.

Thats a valid concern, but the reason that happened was because people exclusively cried to be better Frost mages since Frost Staves were reserved as tanking/support skills and did vastly worse than every other weapon available. All of the adjustments they made to Warden was in an effort to make a support staff viable for DPS because they refused to remove it as a support tool. They had to go extreme with it.

Shock staves are already weapons. No one is asking to break the wheel, I just want better class design and the current version isn't cutting it. DK is miles ahead of most of the classes in terms of ways to build a DK, synergies between the skills and sets like Elf Bane, Ult Gen, etc. They should be the standard for ZOS.

ZhuJiuyin · February 1

MashmalloMan wrote: »

What identity? There is none, there never has been any, it's always been shock/physical for the class. Nothing would change about the visuals of the class, you're still using "Dark Magic" the same way Daedric Summoning skills are still Summoning skills despite using Shock for the majority of them. I'm not understanding the connection you're making between Magic damage being exclusive to "Dark Magic" and how Physical or Shock damage can't also be considered Dark Magic?

Just as Templar's holy magic is Magic Damage, shouldn't the corresponding dark magic also be Magic Damage? Becoming Shock Damage doesn't exactly qualify as "dark".

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Example just added this patch: Inner Beast - Costs 2700 stamina, deals Fire damage. Martial =/= Stamina Cost, it does sometimes influence it, but that is never what my suggestion was asking for. Crystal Frags would still be Magicka cost.

In the new Inner Fire, isn't it true that only Inner Fire & Inner Rage become fire damage? I'm not sure, maybe it's a matter of interpretation?
"Reduced the damage of this ability and the Inner Rage morph by 10%, and adjusted their damage type to Flame Damage rather than Magic Damage."
Even including Inner Beast, most of the current skills still follow the rules of magic skills consuming magic power and martial arts skills consuming stamina. It's hard to tell whether ZOS would break such a rule.

Also, since our alchemy system hasn't been updated yet, magicaSorc may be stuck on which potion to use if crystals become physical.Especially when Sorc still cannot obtain common BUFFs

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Sorc really doesn't need more damage via passives, we have some of the best passives in the game on that front. The main problem for our dps is it's attached to pets. The non pet skills behind Mages Fury, Boundless Storm, Lightning Flood, and Haunting Curse are all undervalued in comparison to Daedric Prey + 2 pets.

I think most of SORC's current initiative and passive ability lags behind other Classes and urgently need to be adjusted. For example, Persistence
But yes, Sorc's active ability problem is more serious than his passive ability. I've mentioned this before. The most fundamental solution is to redesign most active skills. The reason I would suggest tweaking passive abilities is because it's a more convenient Band-Aid.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

DK is miles ahead of most of the classes in terms of ways to build a DK, synergies between the skills and sets like Elf Bane, Ult Gen, etc. They should be the standard for ZOS.

I'm not sure if the DK form should become the standard, which would prevent many classes that don't have obvious elemental affinities from following such a standard. And it may also lose the original intention of "playing your role freely".

MashmalloMan · February 1

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Just as Templar's holy magic is Magic Damage, shouldn't the corresponding dark magic also be Magic Damage? Becoming Shock Damage doesn't exactly qualify as "dark".

Magic damage is just a generic name for something they can slap on any type of fantasy magic they want, but really, they do it all the time. There is sets that are water based, that deal frost damage. Countless other examples I won't waste time covering. It's the same reason the same holy skills you're referring to on Templar appear as Physical damage despite being nearly identical in function and visuals, yet costing a green bar instead of a blue bar.

In a perfect world, there is a unique damage type for holy magic, dark magic, necrotic magic, etc, but this is ESO. Anything can be any type of damage. Eg. Why is Inner Beast Physical Damage, it's identical to Inner Rage which deals Fire. There is no reason, it's game logic. Sometimes you take creative liberties to make something more enjoyable to play with despite not making a whole lot of sense.

There is no logic to this, it's purely based on the fact that this is a video game and they didn't make 15 elements to cover every type of magic they seek to create because it would be a nightmare to balance.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

In the new Inner Fire, isn't it true that only Inner Fire & Inner Rage become fire damage? I'm not sure, maybe it's a matter of interpretation?
..
Also, since our alchemy system hasn't been updated yet, magicaSorc may be stuck on which potion to use if crystals become physical.Especially when Sorc still cannot obtain common BUFFs

You're right, I misread that. Inner Beast still deals Physical Damage.

Regardless, that was never my original point and I'm willing to concede it if it was really a problem. You're focusing way too much on the resource cost which I never once mentioned should change. My intention is not to change the cost of any skills, it just made sense to me that the Crystals could deal Physical and the Purple Glow could deal Shock from a purely RP perspective of the skill fantasies they entail and the class it's on.

Although you will find examples of skills in the game that deal Martial damage, but cost Magicka and vise versa like Clanfear, or some of the Arcanist skills which have their cost scale dynamically. There is no rule that says it has to be 1 way or the other, it's a matter of class design and what works well. I'm willing to bet, you're gonna see a whole lot more of this in the future with Scribing in a few months.

If it's a problem, make the Magicka cost skills with Magic Damage converted to Shock for all I care. That is much more interesting to me than a damage type we have no use from and can't build sets or skills around.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I think most of SORC's current initiative and passive ability lags behind other Classes and urgently need to be adjusted. For example, Persistence

But yes, Sorc's active ability problem is more serious than his passive ability. I've mentioned this before. The most fundamental solution is to redesign most active skills. The reason I would suggest tweaking passive abilities is because it's a more convenient Band-Aid.

It's 100% the active skills as the problem, we have some of the best, most diverse passives in the game for damage dealing. In fact, we vastly lack in the Utility/Defence/Support passive department in comparison to other classes. Any suggestion to the passives should take that into account.

My suggestion in attachment to the element change for Physical/Shock is to add a small status effect chance increase for Sundered/Concussed. Would make the passive, class, and theory crafting more fun to showcase that we're the best at those elements like how DK is the best with Poisoned/Burning. Where they get more damage and sustain, we get more chances to proc them which plays into your idea (mine as well) of Sorc being great at dealing many instances of low damage. "Death by a thousand cuts".

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I'm not sure if the DK form should become the standard, which would prevent many classes that don't have obvious elemental affinities from following such a standard. And it may also lose the original intention of "playing your role freely".

If you ask most players that have tried all the classes, DK is by far one the best designed, well rounded, fun classes to build for. Almost all their passives and skills are impactful or just make sense. They have a great and clear definition of what the class is good at and what you should build for. Burning, Poison, Ult Gen, Tankiness, they stand their ground, turn and burn. It's not limiting at all, it's what makes the classes feel unique from one another. They have to excel at something.

I don't see how introducing a more clear definition of a classes defining elements would reduce build diversity, I explained how it would improve it and how 3, 4, or even more elements in a class kit actually hurts it. There is evidence to support this in game based on the fact that countless element based sets never get used because more classes can't justify enough skills to make them work.

If a Warden can't use Frostbite effectively, who can?

If a Sorc can't use Storm Cursed Revenge, who can?

That's a clear problem with class identity and hybridization in my opinion that they can easily resolve.

Elyu · February 3

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Thats a valid concern, but the reason that happened was because people exclusively cried to be better Frost mages since Frost Staves were reserved as tanking/support skills and did vastly worse than every other weapon available. All of the adjustments they made to Warden was in an effort to make a support staff viable for DPS because they refused to remove it as a support tool. They had to go extreme with it.

Shock staves are already weapons. No one is asking to break the wheel, I just want better class design and the current version isn't cutting it. DK is miles ahead of most of the classes in terms of ways to build a DK, synergies between the skills and sets like Elf Bane, Ult Gen, etc. They should be the standard for ZOS.

Could be solved if they introduced a new dedicated magicka based tanking weapon skill line and split the 3 destro staves into separate skill lines (thereby allowing ice staves to be dedicated to dps and not the weird support/DPS hybrid it is at the moment).