Sorcerer Surge discussion - all welcome

Jar_Ek · March 2015

Sorcerer’s Surge

I am looking to try to get a consensus around what a suitable change (set of changes) to Surge, Critical Surge and Power Surge might be. Thus I am looking for ideas as to how the skill could / should be changed in order to be useful.

To ensure that we all start on the same page, the issues with Surge (as I see it) are:

Surge
• The cool down of 0.25s makes the healing component of the ability random due to the heals being triggered by DoT criticals or low damage attack criticals
(i.e. light attack weaving).
• The buff component of the baseline ability is only useful for stamina weapon builds.
• The same buff is provided by the 2H skill Rally which also provides a HoT and a heal on completion (including if recast). The heal from Rally is not
random.
• The cost of the ability is high, especially when compared to Entropy and Rally.

Power Surge
• Due to the changes to 1.6.5 attributes, hybrids builds are currently less effective (they do less damage due to lower pools) and hence the dual buff
(Weapon and Spell Power) is of limited usefulness as the current meta pushes towards pure builds.
• The spell power buff component of the Power Surge morph is replicated by the mage guild Entropy ability – which also has a lower magicka cost and
additional capabilities (including healing) at least partially from the Mages Guild passives.

Critical Surge
• The Critical Surge morph only changes the healing percentage of the critical to 60% from 40%.

In addition we should consider why the cool down was introduced, such that we do not make requests that are “unreasonable”. The cool down was presumably introduced because sorcerers could solo large packs of mobs without fear of dying due to the number of simultaneous heals that could be generated by the ability (and hence very high HPS). If there were other reasons that you see, please let me know.

Potential Solutions that I am aware of include:
• Remove the cool down from the healing component of the ability and cap the number of heals that can be generated by an AoE ability. A maximum of 6
has been suggested.
This removes the randomness of the healing.

• Remove the cool down from the healing component of the ability and cap the number of simultaneous heals that can be generated.
This reduces the randomness of the healing.

• Remove the cool down from the healing component of the ability for abilities used in melee. This removes the randomness of the healing for melee
combats – where the sorcerer is at least in danger (esp. in light armour).

• Reduce the cool down to 0.05s, to remove simultaneous heals (i.e. AoE).
This reduces the randomness of the healing.

• Remove the cool down from the healing component of the ability, but cap the maximum healing attainable within a fixed timespan (e.g. 0.25s) based on a
second attribute (e.g. health).
This removes the randomness of the healing.

• Keep the cool down, but provide the heal for the 0.25s CD period based on the highest critical damage caused within that period.
This removes the randomness of the healing.

• Keep the cool down, but provide a fixed healing value per critical hit (e.g. %health).
This removes the randomness of the healing.

• Remove the healing component and provide additional buffs instead (e.g. critical buffs).
This bypasses the healing issue and makes the ability different to similar generally available skills, but leaves sorcerers without a good class heal.

• Make the Critical Surge morph a stamina morph
This could help to deal with the ability cost as a stamina sorcerer (but removes a magicka dump from them)

• Remove the cool down from the Critical Surge morph only, and apply one of the above suggestions to cap the maximum healing capability.
This differentiates between Power and Critical Surge, forcing hard decisions to be made for a more reliable heal.

• Reduce the ability cost by X%
This makes the ability more affordable for stamina sorcerers

• Add a secondary minor buff on critical hit that lasts for a limited time (e.g. damage mitigation or critical chance or critical damage for 1s). This secondary
buff could be different for Critical Surge and Power Surge.
This makes the ability different to the general abilities and improves it such that it is worth considering over those abilities.

• Provide a different buff
This means there is no conflict between this skill and similar generally available skills.

• Add an additional buff to both morphs - make the buffs different
This means there is less conflict between the skill and the general ones. One suggestion is minor healing buff on Power Surge.

The above list is not mutually exclusive (i.e. it could be mix and match) and is really a starter for 10.

Snit · March 2015

The two sorc variants most in need of buffs are 1) Stamina Sorcs and 2) Healer sorcs. Stamina sorcs were hurt by the new Expert Mage, and Healer sorcs literally have no healing or group mitigation actives. Both of these can be addressed with two changes to Surge:

- Critical Surge Morph: Cost reduced
- Power Surge Morph: Healing you initiate increased by 8% (in addition to the curent effects)

Add one or two more skill morphs (for any sorc skill) useful to stamina/ tank sorcs, and call it a day. Sorcs would be fine.

Khivas_Carrick · March 2015

This is just a rough guess of what could be done, but I could see Surge becoming an active ability that has to be maintained (I'm doing this because I doubt you want more toggles) but it would function similar to how Evil Hunter does now, only that instead of a random chance at doing extra damage, we get something that looks more like this:

Surge -
Invoke Meridia's name to get a rush of power, allowing all of your weapon attacks to deal X Magic Damage for 20 seconds. While active, all critical strikes heal you for 50% of the damage done up to 6 Critical Strikes at once with a .5 second cooldown.

Critical Surge - The Magicka Morph
Invoke Meridia's name to get a rush of power, allowing all of your spell attacks to deal X Magic Damage for 20 Seconds. While active, all critical strikes heal you for 70% of the damage done up to 6 Critical Strikes at once with a .5 second cooldown, and will cause Minor Breach to an enemy for 6 seconds.

Power Surge - The Stamina Morph
Invoke Meridia's name to get a rush of power, allowing all of your weapon attacks to deal X Magic Damage for 20 Seconds. While active, all Critical Strikes heal you for 50% of the damage done for up to 6 Critical Strikes at once with a .5 second cooldown, and will cause an additional X Magic Damage over 6 seconds to the enemy. Spell now scales with Weapon Power, Weapon Critical, and Stamina.

Bad suggestion is bad, I know, but it's a possible start.

Flaminir · March 2015

For me there are all kinds of useful & interesting suggestions to do with surge... I like the idea of Snit above that any changes could be made to help address the stamina / healer conundrum...

But the one and only 'MUST HAVE' in any changes is that the healing cooldown has to go....

We finally have access to a few dots now, the healing is useless so a wasted ability, on top of the other wasted ability in the fact that it buffs both spell & weapon power.

Base spell
20 seconds - provides major brutality & major sorcery

Power surge (Stamina cost morph)

For 20 seconds provides major brutality & heals 40% of all critical hits on first 6 targets, also provides minor intellect (Small boost to magicka regen to make up for loss of storm call cost reduction passive).

Critical Surge (Magicka cost morph)

For 20 seconds provides Major Sorcery & Major mending. Heals for 25% of damage done on crit to 1st 6 targets at a time.
Reduced self healing as major mending will allow the caster to have stronger heals from the resto line

serenity_painted · March 2015

Well first of all the skill is far too expensive for the effect provided. I like that common pool skills are on par with class skills now for the most part, but in Surges case it's just plain inferior compared to Rally and Entropy.
Sure, you can use it too boost DW and Bow but they don't have much magicka to throw around.

Secondly, i stam Sorcs suffer from stam problems and Dark Deal isn't something you can just pop during a fight without a big dps loss. Critical Surge already is completely uninteresting to a Magicka Sorc so why not allow it to restore stamina on Crit on top of the heal?

tinythinker · March 2015

I am still doing OK with Crit Surge in solo Alliance questing in veteran zones as a magicka Sorcerer, but I am not sure why they left its buff as a weapon damage increase. I am sure Stamina Sorcs can use it as a magicka dump but it would be pretty costly for a stamina build, wouldn't it? I can't say what the best option is, and I am not too picky as long as any new change doesn't make it work any less effectively than it does now with my spell critical focused/magicka approach.

Off of the top of my head, I might make it look like this with the current (1.6.5-1.6.6) cost and cooldown:

Invoke Meridia's name to get a rush of power, granting you Minor Prophecy for an additional 3% Spell Critical chance and inflicting Minor Breach on affected targets, reducing their Spell Resistance by 8%.

While active, critical strikes heal for you 60% of the damage done.

That would be amazing.

Glantir · March 2015

Power Surge
grants major Sorcery buff, while active, critical strikes heal for you 5% your max life and restore magicka 5% of the damage. cost magicka

Critical Surge
grants major brutality buff, while active, critical strikes heal for you 5% your max life and restore Stamina 5% of the damage. cost stamina

Give both a little cooldown, otherwise it is a bit to strong and reduce the cost 3k+ is to much even if this skill restore magicka/stamina