Lightning Form morph swap

Vogtard · January 23

Something that's been on my mind forever but became even more reasonable after the hybridization, are the Lightning Form morph effects.

Currently, Hurricane is the better option giving a better buff and better damage all-round.
Boundless Storm is mostly, yet rarely, used for the longer duration, but the short Major Expedition feels like a waste because the Major Resolve buff is mostly reapplied when it runs out, and not when needed.
Magsorcs streak to move around anyway so a short Major Expedition is useless. Stamsorcs need both speed and damage.

It would make a lot more sense that the two morphs were partially swapped to balance and strengthen their corresponding roles, and make both equally attractive.

- Hurricane as a DOT + utility.
Major Expedition for the first X seconds as a nimble gust of wind, but then shifts the speed bonus to damage bonus as the heavy hurricane grows.
Rationale: Want superspeed on demand - spam. Want more damage - wait. Both are good, active at all times, nothing is wasted. Dynamic speed+melee vibes.
Increase 4 sec to 6/8 sec or increase damage so it's not a stamsorc nerf.

- Boundless Storm as a buff.
Minor Expedition for the whole duration due to the lightning infusion.
Rationale: Worse but consistent, longer buff.
Good for both stam and mag.

Artim_X · January 23

This seems to be more of a preference issue.

I use boundless in PvE along with streak. Boundless feels like a must to keep up with the speedy stamina bois without killing my own stamina or deleting my magicka with unnecessary streak spam.

I use hurricane in PvP along with race against time to get both major and minor expedition, while having a damage over time that is more useful in that environment.

Overall, I disagree with the idea of swapping the morphs.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 23

Vogtard wrote: »

Something that's been on my mind forever but became even more reasonable after the hybridization, are the Lightning Form morph effects.

Currently, Hurricane is the better option giving a better buff and better damage all-round.
Boundless Storm is mostly, yet rarely, used for the longer duration, but the short Major Expedition feels like a waste because the Major Resolve buff is mostly reapplied when it runs out, and not when needed.
Magsorcs streak to move around anyway so a short Major Expedition is useless. Stamsorcs need both speed and damage.

It would make a lot more sense that the two morphs were partially swapped to balance and strengthen their corresponding roles, and make both equally attractive.

- Hurricane as a DOT + utility.
Major Expedition for the first X seconds as a nimble gust of wind, but then shifts the speed bonus to damage bonus as the heavy hurricane grows.
Rationale: Want superspeed on demand - spam. Want more damage - wait. Both are good, active at all times, nothing is wasted. Dynamic speed+melee vibes.
Increase 4 sec to 6/8 sec or increase damage so it's not a stamsorc nerf.

- Boundless Storm as a buff.
Minor Expedition for the whole duration due to the lightning infusion.
Rationale: Worse but consistent, longer buff.
Good for both stam and mag.

You're incorrect in the assumption that Minor Expedition is the lesser buff.

Minor Expedition is much more valuable than Major Expedition, and it's the sole reason so many sorcs swapped to Hurricane post-hybridization.

Minor Expedition is a much harder buff to acquire. Major Expedition can be obtained in a number of ways. If you swapped Minor Expedition to Boundless Storm, all the Stam Sorcs (most sorcs really) would just swap to that morph to keep the Minor Expedition because you'd be able to get Major from things like bow passives, quick cloak, Elude, or even gear sets.

Vogtard · January 23

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

You're incorrect in the assumption that Minor Expedition is the lesser buff.

You're right, I phrased that wrongly. I meant worse in terms of magnitude, but I agree that Minor Expedition is generally stronger.
But the logic remains - Boundless Storm would be more useful overall but Hurricane would have better damage. A choice.

Artim_X wrote: »

I use boundless in PvE along with streak. Boundless feels like a must to keep up with the speedy stamina bois without killing my own stamina or deleting my magicka with unnecessary streak spam.

Good point but Boundless also burns magicka when used like that. Furthermore, like you said, RAT does the same thing.
A swap would offer an alternative to managing the off-stat.
Magicka Minor Exp skill + stamina sprint, or stamina Major Exp skill, or go full Flash with stacking magicka Major&Minor Exp (Boundless+RAT) + stamina sprint.

There's of course a certain level of equivalence here, but I think my suggestion would make the selection more interesting and balanced.

Turtle_Bot · January 23

A few things need to be fixed with BOTH morphs first, before any changes can be made.

1. Increase the base radius of both morphs to 7m from their current 5m to match the new melee attack range.
2. Revert the tick rate back to the old 1 second from the current 2 seconds that ZOS nerfed it to.

It's crazy that this skills radius was left unchanged when all melee attacks had their range increased, even more so when combined with the issue this skill has with the tick rate ever since ZOS destroyed that aspect of it in U
36.
The skill is an AoE DoT, it should be ticking every 1 second, not every 2 seconds like a targeted sticky DoT.

Not only that, but the class's HoT requires dealing critical damage and both morphs used to be the best way to somewhat reliably proc that heal frequently enough to make it decent due to dealing damage once per second and in an AoE that matches the melee range giving sorcerers something to proc crit surge when the sorc is being attacked.
With the changes to melee range and tick rate, melee enemies simply outrange the base radius of hurricane (or boundless storms radius entirely), it also ticks once every 2 seconds so enemies in its range have more than enough time to avoid the ticks and prevent the sorc from getting any healing from its class HoT.

Hurricane is the better morph, but it's not just because of minor expedition being rarer than major, because it's the increase to its radius over time that allows it to still hit melee enemies and proc crit surge that makes it significantly better than boundless storm. Switching the expedition buffs around won't fix the issues with either ability and would only end up making both morphs worse and force even more sorcs into using the chudan monster set or oakensoul mythic to get major resolve and slotting another ability instead.

This is because:

- Boundless storm would now be required to be able to have access to both expedition buffs, but since its radius doesn't increase over time, its ONLY going to be resolve + expedition as the damage will never hit any thing (even melee enemies) and as such will never proc the class HoT crit surge, effectively leaving the class without a class HoT when being attacked.
- Hurricane would still be the better morph for hitting enemies to proc crit surge, but now it has the far too common major expedition so the class no longer has access to both expedition buffs if it wants to still be able to proc crit surge healing which leaves the class that is dependent on mobility for its survival without enough mobility to actually get away from attackers because it cannot stack up both expedition buffs.

Thematically speaking, the current effects better suit the abilities as well. Hurricane winds typically move slower, but last longer than lightning, while lightning is extremely fast, but has a very short duration compared to hurricane winds.

MashmalloMan · January 24

No. Do not touch a skill that has been largely thematically the same for close to 10 years. Hurricane is perfectly fine.

Boundless Storm has always been problematic for a number of reasons.

The aoe range and damage is small, both of which Hurricane does better. So the main focus of using this skill is the increased duration and Major Expedition. Don't try making it a better damage skill, that is what Hurricane is for.
The major expedition on the skill is terribly inefficient and unintuitive. Why would 4s of major expedition on a skill morph which has a focus on increased duration, make any sense? The duration of 30s is almost never met because of recasting it for major expedition. It's a terrible implementation and I hope to see it go on Quick Cloak as well. Basically does the exact same thing for a skill that gets increased duration vs its damage counterpart, Deadly Cloak (Hurricane).

So easy solution is to copy Medium Armor's Elude change they made a few years ago. Instead of providing 4s major expedition on cast, it should be applied any time you take a specific type of damage, passively for the full 30s duration.

Could mix it up from Elude, instead of getting major expedition from direct aoe damage taken for 5-7s depending on how many Medium worn, make it a flat 2-3s any time you take direct single target damage.

From a skill balance perspective between the 2:

Elude has a 36-40s duration, Boundless has only 30s. +1
Elude has Major Evasion, much rarer than Major Resolve. +1
Elude doesn't deal damage, Boundless does. -1
Elude has longer major exp at 5-7s, but the damage type is less common. Single target direct damage is woven into everything every player does, so 2-3s for Boundless could get pretty common when taking damage, giving Boundless a lead here. -1

Using my arbitrary point system, they're about equal with Elude providing about the same utility for a longer duration, but Boundless providing passive damage and potentially better expedition uptime. Boundless probably squeeks ahead with it being a magicka cost skill with damage, but class skills should be slightly more powerful than universal 1s to begin with.

Either way, making a simple change like that would go a long way in making the morph more enticing while reinforcing the idea they want for the morph that is already there, just implemented poorly.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Increase the base radius of both morphs to 7m from their current 5m to match the new melee attack range.
2. Revert the tick rate back to the old 1 second from the current 2 seconds that ZOS nerfed it to.

Yes this as well. 5m is just terrible for any aoe, especially 1 that is centered on the caster and hits only once every 2s, they destroyed Sorcs playstyle by making Critical Surge even harder to proc after years of reducing tick frequency on all skills. The fact that they went for our bread and butter too is a knee to the groin.

Vogtard · January 24

Thanks guys for the interesting inputs! Although I still think that such a swap would offer an interesting choice: AOE size + damage (+Surge synergy) vs. Minor Exp + duration, I do understand your arguments. And obviously, I completely agree with the tick frequency - that was a disgusting change.

Interestingly, the arguments presented don't indicate an obvious winner after the swap, and I think that such controversy is fantastic in creating builds. On the other hand, sorcs surely don't need a nerf of their signature skill.

All things considered in this topic, I believe there's a common agreement here that the currently underused Boundless Storm needs a buff. Perhaps simply adding the Minor Expedition (so moving it to the base skill) would be an suitable compromise?

Turtle_Bot · January 25

Honestly, the best things they can do for both morphs would be as follows:

1. Revert the tick rate back to 1 second (it's an AoE DoT, not a targeted sticky DoT).
2. Increase the base radius to 7m to match the new melee attack range or 8m if they are feeling generous.
3. (This is the new effect/buff to both morphs), Give the base skill major prophecy/savagery on cast for the duration.

This does a few things:
1. It fixes the issues with the skill that were caused by the overall combat changes ZOS made.
2. Major prophecy/savagery are basic buffs that all classes should have as standard, but especially sorcerer as sorcerers HoT depends on having high crit chance.
3. It frees up 1 bar slot to not be forced to find room for camo hunter or inner light, meaning sorc still doesn't really have a flex spot, but the class would no longer be trying to fit 13-14 abilities into their 12 skill slots.
4. It gives sorcerer a partially more reliable HoT from crit surge that has also been suffering from unreliability ever since the changes to tick rate and base melee range.
5. Being a basic buff and not something that is supposed to be rare, it makes this change a QoL thing for sorcerers, which means ZOS should be ok with implementing it.
6. It doesn't affect oakensorc since that build already has that buff from the oakensoul ring so that build won't become crazy strong with this change.

MashmalloMan · January 26

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Revert the tick rate back to 1 second (it's an AoE DoT, not a targeted sticky DoT).
2. Increase the base radius to 7m to match the new melee attack range or 8m if they are feeling generous.
3. (This is the new effect/buff to both morphs), Give the base skill major prophecy/savagery on cast for the duration.

1 and 2 sure, those are basic requirements that just bring the abilities back to the status quo they had for years, but adding prophecy/savagery overloads the skills and does nothing specifically for Boundless Storm. The biggest fault is the Major Expedition being unintuitive for a morph that is meant to last longer. If you actually want the Expedition you end up casting it much more frequently than Hurricane defeating the entire purpose of the skill effect duration. It makes no sense.

We've spoken about it ad nauseam at this point, but I feel it helps to have everyone on the same page if anything will actually be done about it. Especially being realistic about it, do we expect our Armor buff which deals decent damage and gives Expedition to also give Savagery? That's 3 named buffs + damage, if it was a scribed skill it would have 4 scripts.

Major Savagery/Prophecy and/or Major Breach should be given to lesser budgeted skills that only deal damage and have no utility to which Sorc has in spades. My vote has always been Haunting Curse (Major Breach), Daedric Prey (Empower), Bound Armaments (Major Savagery/Prophecy)... but they could look at Mages Wrath/Endless Fury, Frag/Crystal Weapon, Rune Cage/Defensive Rune.. list goes on and on.

I think Hurricane is perfectly designed the way it is, so if Minor Expedition was given to the base skill and Major Expedition was removed entirely from Boundless Storm, that would definitely fix the issue.. but I still believe in keeping with the original intent of the skill would be to convert the Major Expedition to an Elude mechanic of taking damage to proc.

Turtle_Bot · January 26

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

1. Revert the tick rate back to 1 second (it's an AoE DoT, not a targeted sticky DoT).
2. Increase the base radius to 7m to match the new melee attack range or 8m if they are feeling generous.
3. (This is the new effect/buff to both morphs), Give the base skill major prophecy/savagery on cast for the duration.

1 and 2 sure, those are basic requirements that just bring the abilities back to the status quo they had for years, but adding prophecy/savagery overloads the skills and does nothing specifically for Boundless Storm. The biggest fault is the Major Expedition being unintuitive for a morph that is meant to last longer. If you actually want the Expedition you end up casting it much more frequently than Hurricane defeating the entire purpose of the skill effect duration. It makes no sense.

We've spoken about it ad nauseam at this point, but I feel it helps to have everyone on the same page if anything will actually be done about it. Especially being realistic about it, do we expect our Armor buff which deals decent damage and gives Expedition to also give Savagery? That's 3 named buffs + damage, if it was a scribed skill it would have 4 scripts.

Major Savagery/Prophecy and/or Major Breach should be given to lesser budgeted skills that only deal damage and have no utility to which Sorc has in spades. My vote has always been Haunting Curse (Major Breach), Daedric Prey (Empower), Bound Armaments (Major Savagery/Prophecy)... but they could look at Mages Wrath/Endless Fury, Frag/Crystal Weapon, Rune Cage/Defensive Rune.. list goes on and on.

I think Hurricane is perfectly designed the way it is, so if Minor Expedition was given to the base skill and Major Expedition was removed entirely from Boundless Storm, that would definitely fix the issue.. but I still believe in keeping with the original intent of the skill would be to convert the Major Expedition to an Elude mechanic of taking damage to proc.

It's more about adding prophecy/savagery to a skill that is commonly slotted by all sorcs.

The main reason I don't add it to bound armaments is because the current iteration is stamina only and as such, it would disproportionally benefit stamina and hybrid sorcs more than it would benefit magsorc.

If they changed bound armaments and bound aegis to give +5% to both mag and stam instead of +8% to stam or mag only, then adding major prophecy/savagery to bound armaments would be a good alternative. I'm just worried then that tanks miss out on that buff because they slot bound aegis, which already has minor protection and minor resolve as passive buffs with the 40% block mitigation on activation and if prophecy/savagery is added, it would overload that skill. But I suppose, since they are tanks they will be more likely to have multiple enemies within the radius of lightning form and have something like caltrops slotted which with the reverted tick rate and increased radius would help with keeping crit surge up more often.

The issue with adding it to fury/rune prison is that those skills need a complete rework (as well as encase) before they would be worth slotting. Frags/weapon have their own issues that need addressing too, that adding that buff to those skills won't help with.

Major breach on curse is something I can get behind. It gives an alternative to ele sus for breach and buffs no pet sorc, allowing some flexibility of weapon choice. Daedric prey already has the +45% damage taken from pets debuff so it doesn't need breach. Empower would be interesting on prey, but HA builds already use oakensoul that has it already so it wouldn't really do anything. Prey also doesn't really need a buff (maybe a QoL change where it deals half its damage over 2 instances throughout the duration to make it slightly easier to use, but it doesn't need any actual increase to its power).

MashmalloMan · January 26

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

It's more about adding prophecy/savagery to a skill that is commonly slotted by all sorcs.

The main reason I don't add it to bound armaments is because the current iteration is stamina only and as such, it would disproportionally benefit stamina and hybrid sorcs more than it would benefit magsorc.

Well I didn't get into it fully, my bad, I thought you may have remembered my old thread. My full suggestion is to remove the 8% resources for Major Savagery/Prophecy... but also, since they unnecessarily nerfed the base damage and removed the 11% light attack passive, they should throw the skill a bone and include % crit chance per dagger earned. Aka something like 4-6% at 4 daggers. Both these buffs would be more thematically in line with what a Sorc should be good at.

Not asking for Bound Armaments to hit as hard as Grim Focus, but as it stands, it's currently much weaker in terms of damage AND passive benefits, all the while pushing away Mag Sorcs from using it. So since it can't deal high damage with the fact that Sorc has multiple damage skills, focusing on the passive side of it is the best case scenario.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

If they changed bound armaments and bound aegis to give +5% to both mag and stam instead of +8% to stam or mag only, then adding major prophecy/savagery to bound armaments would be a good alternative. I'm just worried then that tanks miss out on that buff because they slot bound aegis, which already has minor protection and minor resolve as passive buffs with the 40% block mitigation on activation and if prophecy/savagery is added, it would overload that skill. But I suppose, since they are tanks they will be more likely to have multiple enemies within the radius of lightning form and have something like caltrops slotted which with the reverted tick rate and increased radius would help with keeping crit surge up more often.

On the Bound Aegis side, for a Mag Sorc the 8% mag is useful, but so is Savagery/Prophecy so it's a pretty even trade. The skill actively goes against their typical playstyle given the fact that block mitigation does nothing for shields so I think it's clearly designed to be a Tank skill anyway.

As a tank skill the 8% mag is borderline useless. It helps a bit with getting more stamina because you don't need to put as much magicka, but it's so marginal given the fact that their pools are usually spread out thin between HP/Stam/Mag so they get very little from the multiplier. It also doesn't improve their damage whatsoever since you always want more Stamina than Magicka, not that it's all that important for a tank anyway.

Major Savagery/Prophecy doesn't sound exceptional for a tank at first glance, but imo sounds way more useful within this class with how Crit Surge and Minor Prophecy work, it makes perfect sense to give them Major Savagery/Prophecy on their best tank skill. As 1 of the worst tanks in the game, I feel like that would at least help carve them out a better identity.

All that said, main focus is BA, if ZOS thought Bound Aegis was fine as is, then keep the 8% mag for all I care. BA still deserves to lose the 8% stam to make it more hybrid friendly and I personally see 5% mag/stam as pretty underwhelming in comparison to crit and doesn't really fit the class. Although, I guess it's as close to the live version of the skill as you can get.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The issue with adding it to fury/rune prison is that those skills need a complete rework (as well as encase) before they would be worth slotting. Frags/weapon have their own issues that need addressing too, that adding that buff to those skills won't help with.

I agree, I'm just saying there is an obvious laundry list of undervalued skills that are higher up on the list for an opportunity like this, rather than Hurricane/Boundless Storm which are already hitting the ceiling of their skill value, but fairly balanced the way they are.

Those 2 simple fixes for ticks/aoe and adjusting the ease of access to Expedition would fix Boundless Storm completely imo.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Major breach on curse is something I can get behind. It gives an alternative to ele sus for breach and buffs no pet sorc, allowing some flexibility of weapon choice. Daedric prey already has the +45% damage taken from pets debuff so it doesn't need breach. Empower would be interesting on prey, but HA builds already use oakensoul that has it already so it wouldn't really do anything. Prey also doesn't really need a buff (maybe a QoL change where it deals half its damage over 2 instances throughout the duration to make it slightly easier to use, but it doesn't need any actual increase to its power).

Again sorry, didn't get into it here, but my full suggestions to Sorc skills for Curse morphs are as follows:

Curse - Duration changed from 6s to 5s, explosion at 3s instead of 6s. Add Empower for 5s duration.
Daedric Prey - Adds % damage done with pets to cursed enemy for 5s (nerfed to 20% from 45%).
Haunting Curse - Convert Empower to Breach. Explosion at 3s and 7s later instead of 3.5s and 8.5s later. (Full rotation is 10s instead of 12s)

Daedric Prey inevitably needs to be nerfed to its original value for anything else to be viable for Sorcs. It was a bandaid fix no one wanted. Changing the duration from 6s/12s to 5s/10s helps better fit within ESO's standards for rotations right now where they were previously designed around 6/8s rotations. By making the first explosion always happen at 3s, pet Sorcs can better manage the explosion and pet damage buffs separately instead of losing out on 1 or the other. As it stands, your target usually dies before the 6s completes, you cast it too early and lose the explosion completely, or you wait for the explosion to complete and you lose your pet damage buff. Everything about Daedric Prey sucks to use so the 3s explode, 5s duration makes it much more flexible.

I disagree about not adding Empower just because of Oakensoul. Skills should never be designed just because of sets. Plus, Oakensoul gives a lot of named buffs, but you give up a skill bar and there are more competitive mythics, even for 1 bar builds if you can manage the buffs you want yourself. If you added Empower to Daedric Prey, then players could choose whether or not they want to be an easy low skill ceiling 1 bar 2 pet Sorc or a 2 bar 2 pet sorc with a better mythic. Ultimately, it just comes down to throwing the skill a bone since the % damage is nerfed with the duration. Although my duration suggestions are ultimately for the better.

Turtle_Bot · January 27

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

It's more about adding prophecy/savagery to a skill that is commonly slotted by all sorcs.

The main reason I don't add it to bound armaments is because the current iteration is stamina only and as such, it would disproportionally benefit stamina and hybrid sorcs more than it would benefit magsorc.

Well I didn't get into it fully, my bad, I thought you may have remembered my old thread. My full suggestion is to remove the 8% resources for Major Savagery/Prophecy... but also, since they unnecessarily nerfed the base damage and removed the 11% light attack passive, they should throw the skill a bone and include % crit chance per dagger earned. Aka something like 4-6% at 4 daggers. Both these buffs would be more thematically in line with what a Sorc should be good at.

Not asking for Bound Armaments to hit as hard as Grim Focus, but as it stands, it's currently much weaker in terms of damage AND passive benefits, all the while pushing away Mag Sorcs from using it. So since it can't deal high damage with the fact that Sorc has multiple damage skills, focusing on the passive side of it is the best case scenario.

Ahh, ok, I see where you're coming from now. Yeah if it was major prophecy/savagery while slotted and bonus crit chance per active dagger instead of max stats, that would be a really cool change for armaments and work well for hybridizing the skill. I still think some max stats somewhere in the sorc kit would be good as sorc tends to be more dependent on having slightly bigger pools of both resources than other classes, especially with that conversion aspect of dark exchange gets really punishing when trying to fit vigor onto a magsorc, and especially with streaks ramping cost too for both sorcs. Maybe in a rework of the passives ZOS could give sorc a 3/7% increase to the classes resource pools to replace the lost stats from this change to armaments?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

If they changed bound armaments and bound aegis to give +5% to both mag and stam instead of +8% to stam or mag only, then adding major prophecy/savagery to bound armaments would be a good alternative. I'm just worried then that tanks miss out on that buff because they slot bound aegis, which already has minor protection and minor resolve as passive buffs with the 40% block mitigation on activation and if prophecy/savagery is added, it would overload that skill. But I suppose, since they are tanks they will be more likely to have multiple enemies within the radius of lightning form and have something like caltrops slotted which with the reverted tick rate and increased radius would help with keeping crit surge up more often.

On the Bound Aegis side, for a Mag Sorc the 8% mag is useful, but so is Savagery/Prophecy so it's a pretty even trade. The skill actively goes against their typical playstyle given the fact that block mitigation does nothing for shields so I think it's clearly designed to be a Tank skill anyway.

As a tank skill the 8% mag is borderline useless. It helps a bit with getting more stamina because you don't need to put as much magicka, but it's so marginal given the fact that their pools are usually spread out thin between HP/Stam/Mag so they get very little from the multiplier. It also doesn't improve their damage whatsoever since you always want more Stamina than Magicka, not that it's all that important for a tank anyway.

Major Savagery/Prophecy doesn't sound exceptional for a tank at first glance, but imo sounds way more useful within this class with how Crit Surge and Minor Prophecy work, it makes perfect sense to give them Major Savagery/Prophecy on their best tank skill. As 1 of the worst tanks in the game, I feel like that would at least help carve them out a better identity.

All that said, main focus is BA, if ZOS thought Bound Aegis was fine as is, then keep the 8% mag for all I care. BA still deserves to lose the 8% stam to make it more hybrid friendly and I personally see 5% mag/stam as pretty underwhelming in comparison to crit and doesn't really fit the class. Although, I guess it's as close to the live version of the skill as you can get.

Max mag is fairly useful on tanks, especially for the sword and board front, frost staff back builds that use both resources.

The reduced but now both max stats was to partially keep the identity of the skill being the only remaining percent increase to mag/stam. I honestly think both morphs could still keep that slightly smaller percent increase, given how little max stats contributes to damage and healing compared to raw weapon/spell damage. The smaller percent increase would allow for prophecy/savagery to fit on both morphs as part of the base.

The main reason I thought aegis might be too strong with major prophecy/savagery was based off your argument for lightning form/morphs being too strong with it. Those skills would have 3 buffs + damage and aegis would have 4 buffs, 3 of which would be permanent for slotting it. Maybe include the protection buff when activating the skill instead of permanently, then increase the duration, but reduce the block mitigation.
E.G.
Bound Aegis:
While slotted on either bar, grants Major Prophecy, Major Savagery and Minor Resolve. You can activate this skill to gain minor protection, reducing damage taken by 5% and increase block mitigation by 20% for 10 seconds.

Protection is now part of the active, bonus block mitigation has been halved, but the duration increased from 4 seconds to 10 seconds.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The issue with adding it to fury/rune prison is that those skills need a complete rework (as well as encase) before they would be worth slotting. Frags/weapon have their own issues that need addressing too, that adding that buff to those skills won't help with.

I agree, I'm just saying there is an obvious laundry list of undervalued skills that are higher up on the list for an opportunity like this, rather than Hurricane/Boundless Storm which are already hitting the ceiling of their skill value, but fairly balanced the way they are.

Those 2 simple fixes for ticks/aoe and adjusting the ease of access to Expedition would fix Boundless Storm completely imo.

Yeah, there's a far too long laundry list of sorc skills (and passives) that need updating.

As I said though, with sorcs well known and documented bar space issues, adding buffs the class should already have (prophecy/savagery/breach) to those skills and calling it a day there (something I can unfortunately see ZOS doing to the class...) won't change anything with the class at all as the class still won't be able to find room to slot those skills for access to those buffs. (This is more directed at ZOS, not you, because they really need to understand how massive this issue of lack of bar space is for sorcerers and why the class has been struggling so much, ever since they removed overloads 3rd bar).

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Major breach on curse is something I can get behind. It gives an alternative to ele sus for breach and buffs no pet sorc, allowing some flexibility of weapon choice. Daedric prey already has the +45% damage taken from pets debuff so it doesn't need breach. Empower would be interesting on prey, but HA builds already use oakensoul that has it already so it wouldn't really do anything. Prey also doesn't really need a buff (maybe a QoL change where it deals half its damage over 2 instances throughout the duration to make it slightly easier to use, but it doesn't need any actual increase to its power).

Again sorry, didn't get into it here, but my full suggestions to Sorc skills for Curse morphs are as follows:
Curse - Duration changed from 6s to 5s, explosion at 3s instead of 6s. Add Empower for 5s duration.

Daedric Prey - Adds % damage done with pets to cursed enemy for 5s (nerfed to 20% from 45%).

Haunting Curse - Convert Empower to Breach. Explosion at 3s and 7s later instead of 3.5s and 8.5s later. (Full rotation is 10s instead of 12s)

Daedric Prey inevitably needs to be nerfed to its original value for anything else to be viable for Sorcs. It was a bandaid fix no one wanted. Changing the duration from 6s/12s to 5s/10s helps better fit within ESO's standards for rotations right now where they were previously designed around 6/8s rotations. By making the first explosion always happen at 3s, pet Sorcs can better manage the explosion and pet damage buffs separately instead of losing out on 1 or the other. As it stands, your target usually dies before the 6s completes, you cast it too early and lose the explosion completely, or you wait for the explosion to complete and you lose your pet damage buff. Everything about Daedric Prey sucks to use so the 3s explode, 5s duration makes it much more flexible.

I disagree about not adding Empower just because of Oakensoul. Skills should never be designed just because of sets. Plus, Oakensoul gives a lot of named buffs, but you give up a skill bar and there are more competitive mythics, even for 1 bar builds if you can manage the buffs you want yourself. If you added Empower to Daedric Prey, then players could choose whether or not they want to be an easy low skill ceiling 1 bar 2 pet Sorc or a 2 bar 2 pet sorc with a better mythic. Ultimately, it just comes down to throwing the skill a bone since the % damage is nerfed with the duration. Although my duration suggestions are ultimately for the better.

Ahh, ok. I understand more now for this. Yeah that stupid buff to prey from its 20% to the current 45% was such an absurd and panicked over correction to the insane over-nerfing ZOS did of sorcerer back in U35...
With the change to pet bonus damage, I can get behind empower on prey. Maybe have breach on the base morph since prey is the odd morph out relating to the pets while curse is more of a precursor to haunting curse? The shorter duration on haunting will be really good QoL too. 12 seconds is such a long duration for a skill that only deals 2 instances of damage, majority of that damage only being single target too...