Love the changes to Bound Armaments & Grim Focus. Please do pets next!

Hugie · September 2023

Hi there!

First off, I want to say 'thank you' to the combat team for the changes you made to Bound Armaments and Grim Focus. Being able to build stacks on both bars & no longer needing to babysit their durations was a really nice change for sorcs and nightblades.

In the same spirit as what drove these changes, I think there are a couple more adjustments to skill/bar functionality that would be immensely popular*:

1. Freeing sorcs up to 1-bar their summoned pets.
Anyone who has played sorc, particularly in endgame PVE content, knows how cramped bars get running scamp + twilight on both bars. Granted, summoning daedra is a major part of a sorc's identity, so I can appreciate the argument that they "should" take up multiple slots -- but, if you compare the situation to cros animating undead arcanist/archers, it seems unfair for one class to sacrifice more skill slots for comparable behavior. Is there any possibility that sorc pets could be revisited to be either 1-barrable and persistent (ideal), or at least 1-barrable and changed to duration-based, to match necro/nightblade equivalents (skeletal arcanist/archer, shade)? More skill slots to work with would make sorc feel a lot more versatile, in my opinion. The only downside I can think of pertains to balance (especially in PVP), but that seems like something that can be addressed with, well, balance.

2. Freeing wardens up to 1-bar bear ultimate.
Same deal here. In endgame PVE, wardens aren't *bad*, but they're certainly not popular choices for DPS on coordinated rosters outside of brittle jail (and even that has been eclipsed by Rune of Colorless Pool from arc supports). While their ult certainly isn't the whole "problem" here, it's definitely part of it: needing to double-bar bear as a major source of damage/execute is a pretty big handicap for boss fights requiring heavy cleave. It would be really nice if wardens could frontbar bear ult and backbar a destro/meteor/etc. and modify the ult's behavior such that the bear sticks around summoned w/o being on both bars, just like above re: sorc pets.

Again, I realize that it's much easier to make suggestions like these than it is to wrangle the balance/coding fallout required, but I figured it doesn't hurt to speak up with suggestions that I think would be very popular, at least from the relative minority of endgame PVE'ers. Thanks for reading & looking forward to U40!

-Huggy

* At least to the types of players I hang out with, YMMV and I acknowledge PVP is a completely different can of worms when it comes to balancing things like this!

Tyrant_Tim · September 2023

Agree with Sorcs, disagree with Warden bear.

Sorc pets are activated abilities, while the bear is a whole ultimate. If the bear was nerfed into an active abilities’ base attack and defense values, with a damage spike only for it’s ultimate, I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but currently, the bear hits too hard by itself for it to be a free ability that every Warden in the game would begin using.

Zodiarkslayer · September 2023

I think one bar sorc pets are coming. But surely with some balance changes.

Eternal Guardian should be doing Frost Damage. That is the only thing that needs changing. Otherwise the bear Ultimate is fine. Wild Guardian has a lot of power and the higher chance for applying the Hemorrhaging status effect. It can be killed, though. That is a good balance. I wouldn't want to change that.

Skullstachio · September 2023

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Agree with Sorcs, disagree with Warden bear.

Sorc pets are activated abilities, while the bear is a whole ultimate. If the bear was nerfed into an active abilities’ base attack and defense values, with a damage spike only for it’s ultimate, I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but currently, the bear hits too hard by itself for it to be a free ability that every Warden in the game would begin using.

If I may: I would agree with the wardens feral guardian, namely because if the mighty grizzly hits too hard (just its standard attacks or the guardians wrath/savagery ultimate) as you would claim, then increasing its ultimate cost from 75 to between 100-125 ultimate would be a good enough compensation to have the wardens fuzzy friend as a one bar ability, the only caveat is using the ultimate on the respective bar from which it may be slotted, because if an ultimate were to be used on a seperate bar and enough ultimate were to be accumulated to use guardians wrath/savagery while the previous ultimates effects are still active, (e.g. flawless dawnbreaker.) it would definitely have some interesting applications, particularly moreso in group compositions. Be it 4-player group dungeons, 12-player trials, who knows.

AcadianPaladin · September 2023

The problem with sorc pets is even bigger than double barring. Even if they were one barred, I'd still run a petless magsorc. That is, the pets are not worth slotting even on one bar and need some improvement. Flappy has to be really good to justifiy the obtrusive annoyance of blocking view and being in the way (or dropped down to nixad size). She hasn't been worth slotting in my opinion since matriarch's damage was nerfed, forcing a choice between healing or damage. Without plenty of both, she's not worth it. Clannfear is simply not an effective pet for a magsorc in my opinion. Purple monkey is simply way too ugly for me to even to consider slotting - so massive cosmetic rework is required there.

the1andonlyskwex · September 2023

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

The problem with sorc pets is even bigger than double barring. Even if they were one barred, I'd still run a petless magsorc. That is, the pets are not worth slotting even on one bar and need some improvement. Flappy has to be really good to justifiy the obtrusive annoyance of blocking view and being in the way (or dropped down to nixad size). She hasn't been worth slotting in my opinion since matriarch's damage was nerfed, forcing a choice between healing or damage. Without plenty of both, she's not worth it. Clannfear is simply not an effective pet for a magsorc in my opinion. Purple monkey is simply way too ugly for me to even to consider slotting - so massive cosmetic rework is required there.

My list of problems is different, but I largely agree. Double barring is less of a problem than the fact that the matriarch can wind up dead when you desperately need its heal, and the scamp has to run up to your enemies before it starts dealing most of its damage (and sometimes it runs to a spot that badly misuses its AoE).

merpins · September 2023

The bear doesn't really need to be a one-bar ability. As an ult, it does fantastic damage, so much so that there are basically 0 warden builds go without it. Even if you could one-bar it, the only difference I'd see is Warden's front-barring the Fighter's Guild ult for some extra damage. I'd like to see Bird of Prey be a one-bar ability, and I'd like to see some other specific warden buffs like adding more bleed damage abilities to the tool kit, and some extra damage to stam to make it more competitive to mag, and just buffing the class in general for PVE since it's pretty much bottom of the barrel and has been for over a year.

Zodiarkslayer · September 2023

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

The problem with sorc pets is even bigger than double barring. Even if they were one barred, I'd still run a petless magsorc. That is, the pets are not worth slotting even on one bar and need some improvement. Flappy has to be really good to justifiy the obtrusive annoyance of blocking view and being in the way (or dropped down to nixad size). She hasn't been worth slotting in my opinion since matriarch's damage was nerfed, forcing a choice between healing or damage. Without plenty of both, she's not worth it. Clannfear is simply not an effective pet for a magsorc in my opinion. Purple monkey is simply way too ugly for me to even to consider slotting - so massive cosmetic rework is required there.

Not even speaking of the fact that they cannot proc crit surge.
That is very bad in-class synergy.

Turtle_Bot · September 2023

sorc pets (well almost the entire class kit if we're honest) need a complete rework from the ground up.

The best thing to do imo is to remove the pets from sorc entirely and focus sorc back into being a mage like it was originally designed to be and create a new class based around summons and pets, that way it makes it far easier to balance both classes since they won't be trying to force 1 class to be multiple things at once (they can have the reworked pet abilities keep illusory visuals on them so the pets will still be there thematically, but would be much closer to their original design of secondary options for the class instead of this forced mash up that has only served to create headaches with balancing).

If ZOS doesn't make this split for the class, no matter what they do to make either build (pet or no pet) strong enough to compete with other classes where its lagging behind, it will end up being far too strong somewhere else within the game.

FYI:
The daedric summoning line used to focus on providing buffs for the sorc and debuffs on the target via daedric magic (curse, bound aegis/armaments, wards and the passives) and the pets used to be a secondary focus that you could summon if you chose to, but you were not forced to use them. It was much easier to balance the class this way since you weren't trying to balance what is essentially 2 different classes mashed into 1 while not being great at either unless its forced via a buff which then makes it too strong since its effectively 1.5 classes instead of only being 1 class.

Pelanora · September 2023

Yea @Turtle_Bot i agree but isn't that summons class the wardens?

They should make sorcs summon small dark transparent or small light transparent etheral things, like they are good at making pets and weapons... to match dark and lightning magic... but i dunno what for. AoE damage maybe. Or instant heal.

Turtle_Bot · September 2023

Pelanora wrote: »

Yea @Turtle_Bot i agree but isn't that summons class the wardens?

They should make sorcs summon small dark transparent or small light transparent etheral things, like they are good at making pets and weapons... to match dark and lightning magic... but i dunno what for. AoE damage maybe. Or instant heal.

technically wardens, sorcs and cros all have summons, tbh I'm surprised they didn't make necro the summon class when they made it originally, it would have fit much better than trying to force sorc like they have.

they could definitely make the animations for the abilities reflect summoning something, similar to bound armaments or the wards, but the mechanics of the abilities would need to be completely reworked away from long cast/summon times, they just make the class very clunky and punishing to run or do anything that the other classes can do much more freely and easier with much less punishment for trying to do so.

As for what to "summon" with the animations for those abilities, they can still be daedra themed. For example:
- casting the heal creates a visual of the matriarch gently wrapping her wings around the caster to heal them
- the scamp is like an AoE visual of the scamp for an AoE or something
- the clanfear appears and swipes its tail at the enemy for a knock down effect

These are just random ideas, but something along these lines would keep the daedra theme of the abilities and skill line while bringing the class back to being closer to its original idea of a sorcerer that can use daedric magic instead of this summoner that happens to occasionally use crystals or lightning that it has been turned into.

Quethrosar · September 2023

just make it so sorc can either have pets or not have pets and do the same damage with both play styles. i will choose the no pet route. i hate the pets. it is already hard enough with stacking of people in a trial and trying to see if you are hitting a target or not. adding pets makes it even worse. i wish the game didn't allow stacking, its sooo stupid to have 10 people all occupying the same spot as 1 big blob of people.

CameraBeardThePirate · September 2023

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

The problem with sorc pets is even bigger than double barring. Even if they were one barred, I'd still run a petless magsorc. That is, the pets are not worth slotting even on one bar and need some improvement. Flappy has to be really good to justifiy the obtrusive annoyance of blocking view and being in the way (or dropped down to nixad size). She hasn't been worth slotting in my opinion since matriarch's damage was nerfed, forcing a choice between healing or damage. Without plenty of both, she's not worth it. Clannfear is simply not an effective pet for a magsorc in my opinion. Purple monkey is simply way too ugly for me to even to consider slotting - so massive cosmetic rework is required there.

Not even speaking of the fact that they cannot proc crit surge.
That is very bad in-class synergy.

This is an issue with all pets. It's ridiculous that pets can't proc stuff in today's meta. It made sense in the days of Viper/Tremor one-punch builds but nowadays it's just dumb.

Necro's bread and butter burst ability can't proc stuff. That's silly.

KaironBlackbard · September 2023

merpins wrote: »

The bear doesn't really need to be a one-bar ability. As an ult, it does fantastic damage, so much so that there are basically 0 warden builds go without it. Even if you could one-bar it, the only difference I'd see is Warden's front-barring the Fighter's Guild ult for some extra damage. I'd like to see Bird of Prey be a one-bar ability, and I'd like to see some other specific warden buffs like adding more bleed damage abilities to the tool kit, and some extra damage to stam to make it more competitive to mag, and just buffing the class in general for PVE since it's pretty much bottom of the barrel and has been for over a year.

Error: My Bear does about 5k damage with it's ult. That's less than most active abilities.
My Frost Storm however deals 25k when I proc the right buffs and can hold them within the radius for the duration.
Thus, I never use the bear, and always use everything else, primarily the storm ult.

I hate the nerf to the ice shields though, Used to use it to survive ambushes and now it's no longer powerful enough to be worth it.
Each slab used to be 45k per shield, one shot per shield. Now it's 5k-10k and people tend to do 25k per shot. Don't ask me how, I don't know. That's just what hits me every time I'm in Cyrodiil. Thus I've pretty much abandoned Cyrodiil altogether.

And Sorcs, I would love the one bar to have the minions. 100 damage per 3 seconds is pathetic, but it can annoy others enough to get off me for a moment. But, since they're useless I've pretty much gone Stam-sorc instead. Crystal Weapon is powerful. At least for me.

KaironBlackbard · September 2023

Quethrosar wrote: »

just make it so sorc can either have pets or not have pets and do the same damage with both play styles. i will choose the no pet route. i hate the pets. it is already hard enough with stacking of people in a trial and trying to see if you are hitting a target or not. adding pets makes it even worse. i wish the game didn't allow stacking, its sooo stupid to have 10 people all occupying the same spot as 1 big blob of people.

Indeed. Need collisions. But then again, some people in games like that sabotage their allies with their collisions and do things like shoving them off cliffs or into lava or off ledges or into the void.
Collisions = chaos, but so does cramming.

Destai · September 2023

I was surprised more skills weren't impacted, namely Inner Light and Expert Hunter.

Pelanora · September 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

Yea @Turtle_Bot i agree but isn't that summons class the wardens?

They should make sorcs summon small dark transparent or small light transparent etheral things, like they are good at making pets and weapons... to match dark and lightning magic... but i dunno what for. AoE damage maybe. Or instant heal.

technically wardens, sorcs and cros all have summons, tbh I'm surprised they didn't make necro the summon class when they made it originally, it would have fit much better than trying to force sorc like they have.

they could definitely make the animations for the abilities reflect summoning something, similar to bound armaments or the wards, but the mechanics of the abilities would need to be completely reworked away from long cast/summon times, they just make the class very clunky and punishing to run or do anything that the other classes can do much more freely and easier with much less punishment for trying to do so.

As for what to "summon" with the animations for those abilities, they can still be daedra themed. For example:
- casting the heal creates a visual of the matriarch gently wrapping her wings around the caster to heal them
- the scamp is like an AoE visual of the scamp for an AoE or something
- the clanfear appears and swipes its tail at the enemy for a knock down effect

These are just random ideas, but something along these lines would keep the daedra theme of the abilities and skill line while bringing the class back to being closer to its original idea of a sorcerer that can use daedric magic instead of this summoner that happens to occasionally use crystals or lightning that it has been turned into.

Im sure you're right that was the original idea in eso for sorcs but it is a very strange view of sorcerers. I can't think of any important sorcerers in literature that rely on summoning. They usually channel powers not creatures.

T h White's Merlyn had a magic mustard pot. But even he turned into things rather than summoning things. Gandalf channels light.

boi_anachronism_ · September 2023

Erm no. Opening up those two slots would make the sorc beyond insane over powered and unbalanced. Stamsorc (which is a pet build) is already breaking 140k and the highest parsing class in game. Make the other skills more appealing. Gimme a viable sorc build without the damned pets!!

Jazraena · September 2023

I'd thank them for the change if it didn't come with disastrous visual consequences.

Careful what you ask for.

Ren_TheRedFox · September 2023

The thing is, if they make pets a one-bar thing, they really need to nerf the healing output from it... matriarch healing is the strongest burst healing in the game compared to other classes if you have max magicka. To prevent OP healing, you would have to change it to something like breath of life, healthy offering or even blood sacrifice (even if that is corpse based and therefore a bit difficult to use) so that you have a burst healing effect on one target, but also a small healing on another target. Only then would it make sense to make it a one bar skill instead of a two bar skill.

boi_anachronism_ · September 2023

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

The thing is, if they make pets a one-bar thing, they really need to nerf the healing output from it... matriarch healing is the strongest burst healing in the game compared to other classes if you have max magicka. To prevent OP healing, you would have to change it to something like breath of life, healthy offering or even blood sacrifice (even if that is corpse based and therefore a bit difficult to use) so that you have a burst healing effect on one target, but also a small healing on another target. Only then would it make sense to make it a one bar skill instead of a two bar skill.

Interesting point. Its a change i feel like a lot of players would be opposed to honestly but your definitely not wrong. You wouldn't want to nerf sorc healing anyway Matriarch is its only burst heal to begin with so i doubt people would want this outcome.

Ren_TheRedFox · September 2023

@boi_anachronism_ unfortunately yes ...
People tend to hide behind OP skills and don't want them nerfed. The matriarch is not the only burst heal that needs to be reworked, there are others like polar wind.
However, the biggest problem with the matriarch in my opinion is the fact that you don't have it available 100% of the time like all other burst heals. In PvP especially most of the sorcs don't want to use it because it can be killed, takes up too much bar space and you can be interrupted while recasting it which makes you extremely vulnerable and an easy target ..... Just like some other players I wrote a post about the matriarch a few months ago but nothing has changed probably it was just ignored. I'm pretty sure the developers know about our problem with the matriarch, but it seems like they try not to change anything about it and instead improve other sorcerer skills to cover this problem, even though it's one of the main problems of the sorcerer class.
I really hope they will change it one day, but when?

Pelanora · September 2023

"I really hope they will change it one day, but when?"

Me too.... me too.

boi_anachronism_ · September 2023

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@boi_anachronism_ unfortunately yes ...
People tend to hide behind OP skills and don't want them nerfed. The matriarch is not the only burst heal that needs to be reworked, there are others like polar wind.
However, the biggest problem with the matriarch in my opinion is the fact that you don't have it available 100% of the time like all other burst heals. In PvP especially most of the sorcs don't want to use it because it can be killed, takes up too much bar space and you can be interrupted while recasting it which makes you extremely vulnerable and an easy target ..... Just like some other players I wrote a post about the matriarch a few months ago but nothing has changed probably it was just ignored. I'm pretty sure the developers know about our problem with the matriarch, but it seems like they try not to change anything about it and instead improve other sorcerer skills to cover this problem, even though it's one of the main problems of the sorcerer class.
I really hope they will change it one day, but when?

I believe i said exactly this. Maybe on another thread. I never run Matriarch in pvp. Its just too unreliable because becomes an easy target. Additionally it lets other players track you very easily. Outstanding for pve. Pretty terrible for pvp.