Stamina Sorcs in 1.6

Snit · February 2015

Let's talk about...Stamina Sorcs in 1.6.

I've been leveling one on live, and I've tested a VR14 Template (both Imperials in 7/7 medium, DW/ 2H/ Bow). It's true that very few sorc abilities have useful stamina morphs, but you only need a few good ones to make up two skill bars

My conclusions so far regarding stamina sorcs:

- The biggest issue remains the nerf to critical surge. It heals for less than half of its output on live (with tremendous variance, depending on context). Even with medium armor's decent mitigation, the char feels squishy
- Conjured Ward is great for magicka builds, but useless for for stam builds
- Bound Armaments is nice, and it definitely helps
- Similarly, the new Lightning Form works great for this build. That was a fantastic change. The only downside is that it's difficult to time your heavy attacks when your appearance is just a big clump of zaps. You get no visual feedback from your own animations, and you don't realize how important that is until it's gone
- Resource Management is tough, as sorc passives focus on magicka. The new Dark Exchange morph helps a bit, but a channeled ability is a lot more useful after combat than during
- Damage Output seemed fine with either DW or 2H. I've not done extensive tests, here, so I don't really know how they'd measure up in trials, for example

My suggestions:

- Remove the cooldown on crit surge, or at least ensure it does not proc on DoT's (Lightning Form can actually reduce your healing now). Perhaps give the skill a cap of 4 or 6 targets, so we don't see sorcs streaking through groups of 20
- Make Capacitor (Storm Calling Passive) apply to Stamina Recovery, if Stamina > Magicka
- Make at least one pet scale with the greater of Max Stam or Max Magicka, too, to encourage build variety

This is a build in which I am interested, and I've spent time fooling around with. But I'm not an expert in it by any means -- my main is a classic pajama-clad caster sorc. I hope people whose mains are Stamina Sorcs will chime in with additional, better information.

Erock25 · February 2015

I've played a majority of my 25 days /played on live as a stamina sorc and it is really a shame what they did for sorc's stamina version of class abilities. I find the dark exchange stamina morph completely useless in all forms of gameplay. Without liberal use of bolt escape, a channel like this is useless, and with a stamina build you can not bolt escape much. Bound armaments are okay for a group pve spec and that's about it. Our third 'stamina' morph was allowing overload to scale on stamina which is ridiculous because all ultimates should scale on whatever is highest imo. We desperately need a useable stamina management tool and a stamina class dps ability. Crystal blast should be changed into a short range version of crystal frag that uses stamina and procs on stamina usage.

The main nerf to stamina sorcs is how buffs work now. These only thing a stamina sorc had going for it was stacking crit surge weapon dmg increase with other weapon dmg buffs. Now that is gone and honestly without some drastic changes, stamina sorc is obsolete.

Robbmrp · February 2015

Have you tested this build on 1.6.1? The quote below was taken from those Patch notes. I'm waiting for the NA characters to be copied again before testing it again.

"Surge: All ranks and morphs of this ability now provide healing when you land a critical strike. Also, the healing cooldown has been reduced to 0.25 seconds from 1 second."

Snit · February 2015

Robbmrp wrote: »

Have you tested this build on 1.6.1? The quote below was taken from those Patch notes. I'm waiting for the NA characters to be copied again before testing it again.

"Surge: All ranks and morphs of this ability now provide healing when you land a critical strike. Also, the healing cooldown has been reduced to 0.25 seconds from 1 second."

Yes, I have tested it in 1.6. Critical Surge remains utterly gutted. Here are the reasons:

- The cooldown may be short, but in AoE situations, your damage tics simultaneously. So, in a situation where you fight four critters, your healing is cut by 3/4 vs live
- All sorc specs leave DoT's on foes. Your healing surge may therefore be consumed by a tiny bleed or burning tic, instead of a larger strike
- Base crit rates are down

It's even worse for magicka sorcs, but they have better shields now to compensate.

Holycannoli · February 2015

The overlying problem is how beneficial magicka is. It maximizes your damage and your shields. The crit surge nerf does not matter with shields + entropy.

Focusing on stamina leaves you less than a glass cannon. You can't do the damage a magicka sorcerer can do, your class skills are all magicka-based and your shields won't cut it.

Bound armaments + thundering presence (or boundless storm in my case, I'm a bow user) is OK but I have zero survivability compared to a magicka sorcerer.

What stings for me is I enjoy my stamina sorcerer on live currently and actually rerolled from breton to imperial so I could get the health and stamina bonus. With the loss of caps - which I'm OK with by the way - and the way sorcerers work in 1.6 it's only beneficial to be an altmer now.

My current live sorcerer, who I'm happy enough with to make my main and only high level character, is built the following way:

- All attribute points in health.
- 0 points in magicka and stamina
- Destro staff for PvE and bow for PvP
- one LA set with all magicka enchants for when I use my staff
- one MA set with all stamina enchants for when I use my bow
- imperial bonuses further add to health and stamina, good for PvP
- Lethal Arrow is main PvP skill, complemented with Boundless Storm (good for mobility), Ball of Lightning, Poison Injection Venom Arrow (I respecced) and of course Critical Surge
- that bar changes according to the situation at hand. I'll add Liquid Lightning for instance if at a large siege.
- second bar is for destro staff skills. Rarely used in PvP

Is he the best character possible? No, he's not a min/max character at all. I enjoy him partly because he's different, but he can be effective too. Part of the reason he can be effective is that going full health and relying on enchants for stamina works currently, due to caps.

Honestly, I cannot think of a way to make stamina sorcerers work in 1.6 without either reinstating caps (which is bad), making shields scale off stamina if stamina is higher than magicka, or giving us a Conjured Ward morph that will scale off stamina. The name of the game in Cyrodiil in 1.6 for sorcerers is shield stacking and maximizing magicka as much as possible.

The biggest issue in my opinion is the removal of caps and what it leads to. Without caps you face max magicka and max stamina players who also have survivability you can only dream of as a stamina sorcerer. What do you do to counter it? Stack health? Your damage suffers, and health is nerfed anyway. Stack stamina? You are one-shotted and you can't rely on shields. Balance health and stamina? You are ineffective.

For me the Critical Surge nerf doesn't quite hit as hard. I don't rely on DoTs so I'm not at risk of having a crit heal wasted.

Bow daage also seems to be nerfed slightly. Not a ton but it's noticeable.

Hridh · February 2015

This is worrying. I main a stamina sorceror (it exists, as you can see in lore with some enemies in Eastmarch : Nords wielding 2handers and enhancing their damage with thunder), I hoped at least there was a stamina alternative to the pet-shield magika meta...
Yeah, sure, I will melt faces with wrecking blow, but my survivability will probably be more than a worry...

Teargrants · February 2015

Guys, 2 hand stam sorcs wreck face on PTS, especially with wrecking blow being uninterruptible. All they need is one rotation after they break your shields to kill you from full health.

Stacking Rally + Vigor offers a strong self heal now so they don't need a resto off bar.

As a magicka sorc, the only counter is to spam Encase constantly.

Hridh · February 2015

Does stamina stacking and relying on Rally to heal really equal the survability of a light armour user stacking magika, giving him one-shoting magic attacks and nuke-resistant shields? Even nerfed, CF is range.... Esp., what does a stamina sorceror bring to the table now that Surge doesn't stack with momentum ? Dark deal not really counting in pvp...

Teargrants · February 2015

Hridh wrote: »

Does stamina stacking and relying on Rally to heal really equal the survability of a light armour user stacking magika, giving him one-shoting magic attacks and nuke-resistant shields? Even nerfed, CF is range.... Esp., what does a stamina sorceror bring to the table now that Surge doesn't stack with momentum ? Dark deal not really counting in pvp...

Dark Deal is crap, don't use it. Bound Armaments is crap, don't use it.

My magicka sorc has an extremely hard time dealing with 2hand stam sorcs set up as follows:

Elude + Rally + Vigor + Defensive Posture + Hardened Ward + Ball of Light = impossible for me to burst down while they have stam

Crit Rush + Wrecking Blow + Immovable + Executioner = very high dps on my shields that is completely uninterruptible outside of Encase spamming it.

Being able to drop resto staff for 1 hand/shield off bar gives stam sorcs much more survivability now because they can turtle better. All of my sorc dmg gets reflected or absorbed, what gets through gets healed.

I'd like to test a stam build myself, but I'm stuck with trials gear until they fix the crafting bug.

Phinix1 · February 2015

Holycannoli wrote: »

The biggest issue in my opinion is the removal of caps and what it leads to. Without caps you face max magicka and max stamina players who also have survivability you can only dream of as a stamina sorcerer. What do you do to counter it? Stack health? Your damage suffers, and health is nerfed anyway. Stack stamina? You are one-shotted and you can't rely on shields. Balance health and stamina? You are ineffective.

After nearly 1-year I am left with one regrettably inescapable conclusion:

ZOS is inexperienced and not so good at class balance and build diversity.

I don't see it really improving until they let go of this stamina vs. magicka mentality and give ALL morphs meaningful magic AND stamina versions (not replace working magic morphs), and make ALL ultimates scale off whichever pool is higher, or a combination/average of the two with a multiplier if the ratio between them is less than 2:1 (same for all spells and abilities).

1.6 has greatly narrowed build diversity, virtually eliminating all hybrid viability from the game, creating a "stat gap" that sees all the min-max meta-chasers going full one or the other, which in turn reduces the TTK (time to kill) to 1-3 seconds in PVP.

At the same time, they nerfed relative health across the board, wrecked Sorcerer self-heals, and also removed some abilities that were working perfectly fine in favor of token stamina morphs which don't actually see much usefulness.

I would say this patch is a case of "if you aren't prepared to do something right, put it off to a later patch." ZOS should have stuck with getting the Justice System and LFG tool fully functional before they attempted to half-moon the CP system for console release before classes were even finished being properly redesigned.

Erock25 · February 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

Hridh wrote: »

Does stamina stacking and relying on Rally to heal really equal the survability of a light armour user stacking magika, giving him one-shoting magic attacks and nuke-resistant shields? Even nerfed, CF is range.... Esp., what does a stamina sorceror bring to the table now that Surge doesn't stack with momentum ? Dark deal not really counting in pvp...

Dark Deal is crap, don't use it. Bound Armaments is crap, don't use it.

My magicka sorc has an extremely hard time dealing with 2hand stam sorcs set up as follows:

Elude + Rally + Vigor + Defensive Posture + Hardened Ward + Ball of Light = impossible for me to burst down while they have stam

Crit Rush + Wrecking Blow + Immovable + Executioner = very high dps on my shields that is completely uninterruptible outside of Encase spamming it.

Being able to drop resto staff for 1 hand/shield off bar gives stam sorcs much more survivability now because they can turtle better. All of my sorc dmg gets reflected or absorbed, what gets through gets healed.

I'd like to test a stam build myself, but I'm stuck with trials gear until they fix the crafting bug.

Are you trying to imply that a stamina sorc has the stamina sustain to use stamina as means of DPS + Rally + Vigor + Defensive Posture + Elude + Immovable? Not gonna happen. I also think you're only looking at this from a PVP perspective.

Teargrants · February 2015

Erock25 wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Hridh wrote: »

Does stamina stacking and relying on Rally to heal really equal the survability of a light armour user stacking magika, giving him one-shoting magic attacks and nuke-resistant shields? Even nerfed, CF is range.... Esp., what does a stamina sorceror bring to the table now that Surge doesn't stack with momentum ? Dark deal not really counting in pvp...

Dark Deal is crap, don't use it. Bound Armaments is crap, don't use it.

My magicka sorc has an extremely hard time dealing with 2hand stam sorcs set up as follows:

Elude + Rally + Vigor + Defensive Posture + Hardened Ward + Ball of Light = impossible for me to burst down while they have stam

Crit Rush + Wrecking Blow + Immovable + Executioner = very high dps on my shields that is completely uninterruptible outside of Encase spamming it.

Being able to drop resto staff for 1 hand/shield off bar gives stam sorcs much more survivability now because they can turtle better. All of my sorc dmg gets reflected or absorbed, what gets through gets healed.

I'd like to test a stam build myself, but I'm stuck with trials gear until they fix the crafting bug.

Are you trying to imply that a stamina sorc has the stamina sustain to use stamina as means of DPS + Rally + Vigor + Defensive Posture + Elude + Immovable? Not gonna happen. I also think you're only looking at this from a PVP perspective.

Yes I am, because I was fighting a stam sorc that was doing exactly that for 15 min straight. You have to keep in mind, this is w/ the current max 3600 CP invested.

Unchained: Reduce the stamina cost of abilities by 80% for 8 seconds after breaking free from a stun, knockdown, fear, disorient or stagger.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO · February 2015

My stam sorc use elude + crit surge + 2h damage shields to stay alive while doing good damage with the 2h on 1.6.2 (i didn't get the super 2h damage bug).

So far the one real weakness is stamina regen but as some have noticed light and heavy attacks are MUCH stronger on the pts than they are on live which increase your stam gain and reduce stam cost.

And of course sustained dps is not worth much in pvp, and a stamina sorc has no real burst dps.