Want to Play a Glass Cannon--Is That Wrong?

Ouranos · January 2015

My first couple of characters in this game were all sorcerers (beta and early release), but I really just don't enjoy the gameplay. I want to play them thematically, but they just don't feel fun. Furthermore, with all this sorcerer stuff going around, I'm afraid to make another. I want a pure "wizard robe and hat" character I can take well into endgame, possibly with a little RP, and not feel like rubbish.

After these experiences, I took a couple months' break from the game and came back to play a 2H DK with medium armor and a mix of melee and fire skills--it's been really fun so far (like, I love my characters--I made a couple to mix it up)--but it's not quite what I want to play.

This kind of stylization has been a staple for DND, fantasy, and so on for...like...ever. But I feel like that kind of experience isn't really rewarded in ESO. I'm hoping a new skill line is added to enrich casting gameplay, or several of them are severely modified to address this. My sorcerers just cast crystal blast 90% of the time.

NotSo · January 2015

I wanted to make basically the same thing but with a couple pieces of plate armor and a two handed sword. After sticking with the same sorc since launch, I can tell you that there are not very many sorc class skills that synergize with anything really. Except for the lightning skills, but I've got a really weird stamina build utilizing that tree.

Edit: the summoning skill line has an ability that grants a damage shield on top of your health that also effects your pets but that kind of "forced" synergy just turns me off, to include a bunch of useless passives if you decide against using pet summons all together.

Ouranos · January 2015

Yeah... You'd just think that sorcerers would synergize well with staffs or something, but they feel completely separate to me. My DK and Templar have melee skills that seem to mix well with their basic weapon skills, but not so with my sorcerer, which kind of saddens me.

But more generally, sorcerer skills just don't feel like magic to me. They feel like gimmicks. I had the same issue with WoW until the most recent expansion--I played mages for years but only felt recent updates made their attacks actually feel like spilling out magic.

The skills I want to use are underpowered, and the skills I need to use are like parlor tricks. And even the ones I want to use don't seem to have fun gameplay, or at least look as visually interesting as many skills in the game.

I mean--look at the cinematics. Look at the animations we see in some quest lines. Clearly, they know what magic can look like, but it's like they don't think we should be able to feel like that when we use it. I don't need to lay waste to Cyrodiil, but I sure as hell don't want to just lob purple rocks and other downplayed elements at my enemies.

Lynx7386 · January 2015

Melee is stuck with *** poor animations too, I really think zenimax needs new animators

Ouranos · January 2015

The earliest animations looked like they came out of a Sims title. I'm glad we've improved since then, but there's a long way to go. If the road goes on that long.

NotSo · January 2015

Yeah, really weird that my heavy attacks with a two-hand sword still zigzag through the air

LegacyDM · January 2015

Glass canon in pvp is lackluster in this game. Most people, run around with shields, damage mitigation spells, and 3500+ hp. If your glass cannon, your basically reduced to ganking people on horseback or a support character in a Zerg waiting for someone to lose enough HP to burst in. In my opinion, ZOS has effectively neutered glass cannon, leaving the game to become a tank vs tank defensive game. Which is why sorcerers and dual wield NB are frustrated. In mmorpgs it's extremely difficult to balance glass cannons. They are either to strong or too weak. ZOS doesn't want to deal with this problem so they just neutered them all together and forced the game to be tank vs tank . So people wouldn't complain, they gave all classes the option to be a tank with shields.