@ZOS 1.6 Critical Surge alternate suggestions

NotSo · January 2015

Surge
This ability now applies the Major Brutality buff.
Power Surge: This ability now applies the Major Brutality and Major Sorcery buffs.
Critical Surge: This ability now has a one second cooldown on the heal.

One second cooldown makes this heal totally unreliable; if you have any sort of aoe damage or dot that crits, consider this heal wasted. Since there's also a blatant reason behind the nerf (super fantabulous never ending mega heals), I would like to propose some alternate/additional ways to apply Critical Surges heals.

If Critical Surge must have a one second cooldown:
1. put a minimum damage gate behind the heal proc to prioritize larger hits.
2. check damage output over that 1 second and award a heal based on that (with or without a cap on heal strength).
3. change the heal to grant any resource at a higher reward % (aiming at lowest resource pool)
4. instead of proccing for heals, proc for more damage (it is lightning after all)
5. Change the cooldown behavior to wait 0.1 seconds before applying a cooldown to the remaining 0.9 seconds to allow all simultaneous crits to proc (to be aoe/cleave friendly)
EDIT: 11. Critical Surge can look at the highest crit in that one second span.

If the one second cooldown it temporary for testing reasons (suggestions based on 1.5 Surge):
6. simply reduce the cooldown itself, previously heal procs were going off almost nonestop so even a 0.2 second delay would give it some dampening.
7. reduce the damage % checked for heal
8. only allow heal procs when below x% of max health
9. change Critical Surge to choose random attacks that will receive the bonus damage buff (hopefully higher than 20%) and have those attacks apply the heal
10. give this heal, as it is now, to Power Surge (on top of both damage buffs)

If it turns out to still be too much, change the proc to look at a different % chance instead of crit % chance (I have 56% on live wearing crafted gear, I get all the heals)

Each of these is supposed to work by itself on top of either the 1.5 or 1.6 Surge but feel free to mix and match as well as add your own.
Thoughts?
If anything needs to be explained further, just ask.

FallenProphet · January 2015

I like suggestions 1,5, and 6. As they are trying to run it now I agree the heals are going to be something you can no longer rely on to help you out. They also are bringing down crit chance from Mage light Iif I remember correctly from the patch notes so that's another hit on both damage and the heals

NotSo · January 2015

Yeah magelight gives a flat +10% crit and inner light only adds +5% max magicka (more damage, less crit)

Robbmrp · January 2015

Many of these suggestions would work better than it is now on the PTS. Hopefully they implement the change.

Digiman · January 2015

It seems the original purpose of this 1 second CD was to force the Sorcerer into using single target attacks. I really can only see melee stamina based sorcerers using this.

Eitherway it's unacceptable if this goes live. Don't want to have to wait 6 months before Lead Skill line designer decides to take another look.

angelyn · January 2015

I've posted this elsewhere but:
LIGHT ARMOUR MAGICKA SORCS HIT 3 TIMES OVER IN THIS UPDATE:

Nerfed health of all players- didn't scale health up same amount as other stats
Nerfed light armour -to provide only 25% protection that heavy can
Nerfed only remotely reliable healing for class- crit surge.

CRIT SURGE WAS THE ONLY REMOTELY RELIABLE SELF HEAL IN OUR OWN SKILL TREE(PVE)
So the main reason they nerfed Crit surge healing was due to the combination of impenetrable & AOE changes that will affect PVP? I can understand how the new AOE system means that healing off of a high crit AOE ability might make you OP.However, I wondered why all AOE healing abilities for all classes didn't have a 1 second cooldown implemented.

Even if there was no cooldown I have to choose between weapon power+healing or boost to spell power:

Stamina sorcs get healing(albiet at 1 second cooldown nerf rate)plus increased damage
Magicka sorcs get increased damage

Why should I PVE magicka sorc now have no viable self healing skills from my own class because they redesigned the AOE and impenetrable system?I'm not saying that the AOE changes or the Impenetrable changes are bad. I'm only saying that as a class, sorcerer's have no real self healing skill now because ZOS rendered our only remotely reliable heal (in PVE!) useless. In addition, they did this to stop their new system from affecting PVP negatively.

And even for stamina sorcs, a 1 second cooldown on the only remotely reliable heal from our own class tree will probably now not make it onto their bar. However, they may actually get some heals in PVP with the changes to impenetrable?

ANY OTHER RELIABLE SELF HEALS IN OUR OWN SKILL TREE?
There is hardened ward as an alternative to heal but because from now on all sorcs have to use pets, we will be picking the empowered ward morph instead so that we can have measly DPS.

Dark Exchange is another class ability that has promise for both magicka and stamina sorcs, but its rendered useless by the fact that it's a channeled ability. Make it an instant cast like @Kilandros suggested in this post:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/147868/suggestion-dark-exchange

Then all sorcs will actually have something in the SORCERER tree that can reliably heal them. That is the reason why so many sorcs are complaining. I don't care if you take away crit surge, but give me a reliable heal in my own class tree.

NotSo · January 2015

@Digiman‌
I feel the same way, but forcing any sort of playstyle doesn't exactly fit the "play as you want" sandbox player demograph

@angelyn‌
I was just thinking that I had better Surge proc heals in Cyrodiil prior to 1.6s 1 sec cooldown

gendarkb16_ESO · January 2015

Well as I posted in the other post:

gendarkb16_ESO wrote: »

Stop saying that stamina sorcs benefit from surge... the first problem with surge even in 1,5 in AvA is that if the enemy blocks your crit, you don't heal, so in pvp everyone is permablocking so crit surge in pvp never (or very rare) heals. At least in 1.5 pve critical surge is still good.

But right now in 1.6 patch and the new buff unification mechanic, surge got nerfed to oblivion for both magica and stamina sorcerers.

Why use surge now when:

Magica sorc: Entropy gives the same buff and better heals + a dot dmg
or even worse a spellpower pot with health/spellpower/extrastat pot is better than surge for more duration and you get a free slot on your bar.

Stamina sorc: Rally gives the same buff for an extra 14s (34s total) and way more heals and a reliable heal on demand.
or even worse a weaponpower pot or health/weaponpower/extrastat pot is better than surge again and you get a free slot on your bar, you can even drop rally ... so why use rally or surge when a pot does the same effect.

The only way that surge ls usefull again is with the removal of the internal cooldown and make that if a crit attack is blocked you still heal by the 65% of the damage you did.
Also you promised(in interviews and esolive)that the extra duration that power surge morph gives right now in 1,5p (around 34-40s) in 1,6 that would be the new duration of surge in the base spell. Right now the brutality buffs fron pots last longer than surge...

So my suggestions would be:

- Move the crit heal to base spell
- In AvA if your crit is blocked you get healed for the 65% dmg done, ex: 1000dmg crit , because is blocked target takes 500dmg and you heal for 325hp
- Remove (1.5) or lower the cooldown to 0.2s so the same area can't heal x6 x60
- Increase the duration of surge to 30-40s can't be that the brutality buff from a potion last longer than a buff that uses a slot in the action bar.
- Morph 1 magica: add spell power buff
- Morph 2 stamina: add minor berserker buff

Flaminir · January 2015

Another thing that's been missed by a few.... in 1.6 it seems that crit levels in general have been nerfed... sets, abilities etc.... it looks like it will be a lot harder to get the 60% (ish) crit that many have now....

So on top of the fact it may now proc on a small DoT effect only due to the cooldown...

Lower crit = fewer heals

Fewer heals + lower heals + Light armor nerf = A problem!

Nightreaver · February 2015

Digiman wrote: »

It seems the original purpose of this 1 second CD was to force the Sorcerer into using single target attacks. I really can only see melee stamina based sorcerers using this.

Eitherway it's unacceptable if this goes live. Don't want to have to wait 6 months before Lead Skill line designer decides to take another look.

If you use a Magicka build then it is nerfed even for single target attacks. Damage from Shock is split into 3 attacks that all happen concurrently. With a 1 second CD that means only one of those attacks can proc the heal essentially reducing the heal to 1/3 of what it should be.

Yusuf · February 2015

My suggestion: give the crit-heal to both morphs with no cooldown.
Reduce the percentage of the healing if you really want to nerf it. Tune it down from 65% to maybe 45%.

As it is right now Sorcerers are the only class who don't have a skill to heal yourself while dealing damage, e.g. DK's Inhale, NB's Sap Essence, Templars Biting Jabs.

Funniest thing is, sorcs were the best at simultanuous selfhealing and dps-ing (in PVE) and ZOS just comes around the corner and hurls a giant turd into our faces, taking away the last thing we excelled at..