AlterBlika wrote: »

Since subclassing is a thing now, lightning form deserved a rework because it's just too loaded.
Nowadays they don't want you to have both damage and major resolve at the same time, and that's a good thing.

yeah so instead of being overloaded with damage and resolve, its now damage......and more damage on an already high damage skill line

AlterBlika wrote: »

Since subclassing is a thing now, lightning form deserved a rework because it's just too loaded.
Nowadays they don't want you to have both damage and major resolve at the same time, and that's a good thing.

I don't mind if they remove Resolve from Hurricane, but it has to be reasonable. As a stamsorc main who still enjoys pure stamsorc, I am now forced to choose between having a built-in Major Prophecy (which us sorc mains have been begging for over the past few years), or Major Resolve which was already on a good skill in the first place. It just looks like a pointless change and further forces people to use subclass because now you're basically stuck to using Chudan if you want Major Resolve on a pure sorc lol.

At this point I'm convinced that whoever is responsible for combat balance actually just hates sorcs.

That's all I've got. Sorc skills are objectively worse than literally everything available on other classes.

Mages Wrath is such a joke of an execute that if you slot it on an arcanist, when the target reaches < 20% health you still do more damage with the beam. It's literally a dps loss to start casting mages wrath during execute.

We've all seen the comparison of bound armaments to relentless focus.

Crystal frags has essentially been removed from the game if anyone is using sub classing at all. Dark magic is utter garbage, no matter what role you are playing.

In U46 they acknowledged that they had INTENTIONALLY not adjusted crystal frags to proc on either bar because of PvP.
In week 1 of U46 they had a 10% nerf to bound armaments because it could somehow work with crystal weapon and be strong? What? In what universe?

Whoever is making these changes has it in their head that sorc is the best class in the game and they need to be super careful not to buff it, and if anything if should be nerfed whenever possible.

If nothing else this completely disproves their "balance by spreadsheet" or "skill power balance" formulae rubbish that they spout.
They clearly just balance by vibes.

Malyore wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Malyore wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

AlterBlika wrote: »

Since subclassing is a thing now, lightning form deserved a rework because it's just too loaded.
Nowadays they don't want you to have both damage and major resolve at the same time, and that's a good thing.

yeah so instead of being overloaded with damage and resolve, its now damage......and more damage on an already high damage skill line

Perhaps then a better option is for hurricane to have the pts format, and lightning form grants resolve but deals no damage then.

Form already got nerfed to deal less damage and hit every two seconds awhile back, with already low range. But I'd be willing to give up the damage if it means I get to keep Major Resolve on... my character.

Well riddle me this batman, is resolve the reason stormcalling is strong? Or could it be just chosen because it is a good burst skill line for pvp. Critsurge solely carried stamsorc for a decade. Streak needs no explanation. The passives net you 15-10% damage on your burst weave. Its just sad that an all around good skill line for years and years is being torn apart now that we finally get to pair it with others. I mean other than overload almost never properly functioning, lightning splash is the only useless skill.

Throwing a major buff on daedric summoning in place of unique % modifiers is not going to save that skill line.

• Pets are niche for damage and still take up bar space with little gain.
• Pets for healing are iffy if they are up or not.
• Atro can be walked away from and hits like a noodle.
• Aegis doesnt give CC immunity so it is just a worse immovable.
• Ward was instantly not viable without the heal(shield needs to be compensated).
• BA for damage is worth half of what merciless provides on a skill line with no damage passives.
• Rebate is a joke of sustain, essentially just conditional 120 post buff recovery
• Powerstone is basically minor heroism dare I speak too loudly, the only use case would be for vampire ult builds which is a whole separate list of bad design choices.
• Daedric protection is too low for the condition considering necro skills have these for slotting,
• Expert summoner is basically irrelevant now adays since max stats are not needed for any build......same reason shield builds only functioned because of the heal.

I don't know what you're asking me or telling me directly.

I just know I liked storm calling for my solo PvE sorc. And I'd like to keep Major Resolve on the character. So having one morph of lightning form still grant resolve I think is a decent compromise. Players can choose whether they want it to be more damage focused or more defense focused.

Fixes nothing because that is the exact same situation we're in right now. Pick Bound Aegis for defense or Bound Armaments for offense which effectively kills Bound Armaments because you need Major Resolve or you're forced to use Chudan. That's assuming you'd even take the line to begin with, the skill line used to be good for Ward and Mag Stacking, but that's gone from 18% to 5% without a burst heal.

Somehow Arcanist has 10% stronger and cheaper shields with an in class Hardened Ward that still heals and NB offers better Magicka scaling via Siphoning despite never needing or identifying with it in the first place. Whats left? Pets? Curse?.. oh the ability everyone can purge now with Betty or Ritual? The only people who will be using Daedric Summoning are the ones who don't want to subclass.

This was a terrible decision and should not be replicated, no other class has to pick between morphs on Major Resolve. None. 0. Not a single class. Even if I were to extend this situation to the other 2 popular buffs in Major Prophecy/Savagery or Major Brutality/Sorcery, it happens on 1 skill and no one ever liked it to begin with; Templar's Biting Jabs vs Puncturing Sweep. Those big 3 should always be on the base skill and all morphs.

My problem at this point is well beyond the idea of losing something cool we've had for 11 years or that it's moved to our pseudo "tanking" line, I could understand that, but they went about it terribly. Major Prophecy/Savagery is something we've wanted since the classes inception because Surge begs the class to crit and MInor Prophecy reinforced that, except just like in a monkey's paw situation they finally give it to us on a dead skill and grant us Minor Force as if we didn't get it already from Dark Deal, Trap, Contingency, or Velothi. In almost all content outside a ranged mag sorc in pvp, you already had Minor Force and they don't even use Lightning Form to begin with.

It's infuriating that they're focussing on nerfing things that weren't a problem instead of improving dead lines like Dark Magic, Daedric Summoning, Earthen Heart, Dawn's Wrath, etc, etc. Why is beam exactly the same as before with a minor tweak to banner? It's so nonsensical.

Man this skill line is going to die, and will end up sitting in the dumpster with Dark Magic and Shadow

Been playing with my UESP "stamsorc" BG setups and in general here is the Live vs PTS Effective output.
Running Storm+Animal swapping from assassin/aedric to restoring for rune.

U46 Live

• 7957 to 16858 effective Aedric+ Acuity
• 9868 to 10603 (125ult) to 12931 (500ult) effective Assassin+ Balorgh/trickery (current gear for 33% more average heals than acuity setup, with the ability to go higher damage if absolutely needed.
• 10340 effective Assasin+ Stuhns/bloodspawn

U47 PTS

• 7168 to 15043 effective Aedric+ Acuity
• 9084 to 9766 (125ult) to 11933 (500ult) effective Assassin+ Balorgh/trickery
• 9521 effective Assasin+ Stuhns/bloodspawn

So in general a 8-12% loss. It may be more popular to drop the bloodspawn ult gen entirely for chudan. It is easier to wait for ult and run around for an extra 20s than lower your potential. Or just group with a winter's player. The acuity build can compensate now that you have restoring tankiness and just go more medium

universal_wrath wrote: »

The change is totaly fine if you are not into subclassing and PvP. I personaly like the new lightning form and I hope zos move into this direction for other skills lines. Storm calling is the focused damage and a bit of utility, Dark magic of Tank and a bit of healing, and Deadric summoning with pets, healing and utility.

Storm calling is near perfect damage oriented skill line, now the other sorc skill lines (deadric summoning and dark magic) need a rework and have some of their skills swapped.

Currently change to lightning form does not work out regardless of being good or bad by itself. As things stand storm calling is only ever used as a secondary damage line because it has decent passives, a decent dot (hurricane) and some utility (surge and bolt escape) but no actually good damage skills that would make the tree desirable. There is no spammable at all, no burst skills because fragments and curse are in other sorc line (also pointing out that they are still far inferior to similar skills of other classes). Lightning splash is ok with self synergy, overload can be situationally good, mages’ fury is one of the worst skills in the game that being an execute with the lowest threshold is literally never worth casting even under said threshold, without exaggeration.

If skill lines were to be remade to fit distinct roles then it would have to be done as a number of simultaneous changes to avoid creating chaos and causing lines to float in-between, not fitting any needs.

hoangdz wrote: »

I’m willing to support the change going through IF AND ONLY IF they completely rework Bound Aegis. In PvP, that skill is literally there just for the passive, nothing more. In PvE, what tank is going to spend 4k mag for 6s of increased block mitigation?

At the very least, rework Bound Aegis’s active to be more appealing. Instead of 6s of 40% block mitigation, turn it into an un-named general mitigation. Something like 15s of 10% mitigation would definitely be appealing enough for both PvP and PvE.

It would look like this:

Bound Aegis:

When activated, increase your mitigation by 10% for 15s. Also gives Major Resolve and 8% max mag while slotted on either bars.

The Minor Resolve can go, idc lol

Bound Aegis goes hard for Sorc Tanks in PvE. Not trying to see the Block Mitigation go anywhere.

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

universal_wrath wrote: »

The change is totaly fine if you are not into subclassing and PvP. I personaly like the new lightning form and I hope zos move into this direction for other skills lines. Storm calling is the focused damage and a bit of utility, Dark magic of Tank and a bit of healing, and Deadric summoning with pets, healing and utility.

Storm calling is near perfect damage oriented skill line, now the other sorc skill lines (deadric summoning and dark magic) need a rework and have some of their skills swapped.

Currently change to lightning form does not work out regardless of being good or bad by itself. As things stand storm calling is only ever used as a secondary damage line because it has decent passives, a decent dot (hurricane) and some utility (surge and bolt escape) but no actually good damage skills that would make the tree desirable. There is no spammable at all, no burst skills because fragments and curse are in other sorc line (also pointing out that they are still far inferior to similar skills of other classes). Lightning splash is ok with self synergy, overload can be situationally good, mages’ fury is one of the worst skills in the game that being an execute with the lowest threshold is literally never worth casting even under said threshold, without exaggeration.

If skill lines were to be remade to fit distinct roles then it would have to be done as a number of simultaneous changes to avoid creating chaos and causing lines to float in-between, not fitting any needs.

My main point is that the change to lighting form is a step in the right direction and now storm calling line heabily focused on damage regardless of the dmg is good or bad. It is now easier to know how to buff the the storm calling skills and make them do more damage instead of having random effects not sure if skills like lightning form should do damage, tanking or utility.

I Probably would swap surge with crystal shard as crystal weapon is already doing physical and crystal frag might need damage type change. This way we have a dedicate line almost exclusively damage oriented that has spammable, finisher, AOE damage and damage ulti that is Similar to assassination, ardent flame, grave lord, and animal companion skill lines.

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Minor force is the worst buff, so many sources now for it...

Major crit chance would fit so much better considering crit surge needs you to have crit to work. It makes no sense to give stormcalling two skills that require you to get crit chance, when it has no way of getting critchance. Atleast without running assassination, except you likely cant since you now need major resolve.

We did it boys! ......but now there are more questions.

1. Are skill lines going to be balanced on their own now such that lines are a mix of damage, tank, heals? A true "play how you want" concept.
2. Reversing hurricane resolve tells us that zos doesnt want a system where we only have dedicated damage, tank, or heal lines. So now what will happen with warden for example? Where green balance is clearly the heal line, winter is clearly the tank line, and animal is clearly a damage line. What about templar? Or necro

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

We did it boys! ......but now there are more questions.

1. Are skill lines going to be balanced on their own now such that lines are a mix of damage, tank, heals? A true "play how you want" concept.
2. Reversing hurricane resolve tells us that zos doesnt want a system where we only have dedicated damage, tank, or heal lines. So now what will happen with warden for example? Where green balance is clearly the heal line, winter is clearly the tank line, and animal is clearly a damage line. What about templar? Or necro

Doesn't necessarily mean 2. It is possible (even likely imo) they might revisit the idea when they come up with more fleshed out solutions.

Id hope their solution doesnt involve just throwing more major/minor buffs on every morph. Youd think the vengeance bloat reduction would make them hold off on adding more bloat.

A better starting point would be adjusting passives to balance out the 21 skill lines. Why should storm, aedric, and assassin host the best possible damage passives, while daedric summoning or dark magic are literal jokes.

Yeah we still effectively lose the benefit of the skills because no one is picking Dark Magic Why not put it in the damage skill line?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

We did it boys! ......but now there are more questions.

1. Are skill lines going to be balanced on their own now such that lines are a mix of damage, tank, heals? A true "play how you want" concept.
2. Reversing hurricane resolve tells us that zos doesnt want a system where we only have dedicated damage, tank, or heal lines. So now what will happen with warden for example? Where green balance is clearly the heal line, winter is clearly the tank line, and animal is clearly a damage line. What about templar? Or necro

Doesn't necessarily mean 2. It is possible (even likely imo) they might revisit the idea when they come up with more fleshed out solutions.

Id hope their solution doesnt involve just throwing more major/minor buffs on every morph. Youd think the vengeance bloat reduction would make them hold off on adding more bloat.

A better starting point would be adjusting passives to balance out the 21 skill lines. Why should storm, aedric, and assassin host the best possible damage passives, while daedric summoning or dark magic are literal jokes.

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded the original proposed changes and may have even been excited about them if ZOS had done a lot more to flesh Sorc out properly, instead of those random changes that didn't really achieve anything outside of preventing Sorcerer from effectively interacting with sub-classing. If changes were made, such as:
- moving frags + curse active skills and the exploiter passive into the storm calling line as those are key sorc DPS abilities (bonus points from me if they also became actual lightning abilities)
- adding the major prophecy buff into a storm calling skill instead of tacking it on armaments (which also removed resolve from that morph)
- additional reworks to dark magic and daedric summoning to make them more appealing in their own right as tank/support and pet lines respectively
- addressed long standing issues with storm calling active skills (fixed overload bugs, buffed/reworked fury, removed the unlisted cast delay on lightning splash, increased lightning form radius to 8m, etc.)

But none of these things were done week 1 and this was the crux of the issue. The changes (thankfully soon to be mostly reversed/reworked) were just a bunch of unnecessary nerfs and changes that just made all 3 of sorcs lines next to impossible to sub-class effectively without feeling like a direct nerf compared to the other skill lines, that also brought nothing to compensate or get excited about.
At least if the above additional changes had been done alongside the original proposed changes of 11.1.0, there would have been things to get excited about and try out for Sorcerer, since at the minimum the lines would be better split to facilitate sub-classed builds, but could have also been potential starting points on their own for new viable builds.

I just see making "damage" or "tank" or "heal" skill lines a thing as a terrible choice. Sure it was fine before so people learning the game had a clear direction to slot skill points. Now though it will just allow end game players to run 3x damage lines, which we already saw happen.

In a perfect world scenario if they worked hard to go this route, every skill line would have its own form or tank, heal, damage such that we have 21 unique playstyle options to mix without suddenly power creeping the game by 3x and every meta boiling down to the 3 most efficient damage lines.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

We did it boys! ......but now there are more questions.

1. Are skill lines going to be balanced on their own now such that lines are a mix of damage, tank, heals? A true "play how you want" concept.
2. Reversing hurricane resolve tells us that zos doesnt want a system where we only have dedicated damage, tank, or heal lines. So now what will happen with warden for example? Where green balance is clearly the heal line, winter is clearly the tank line, and animal is clearly a damage line. What about templar? Or necro

Doesn't necessarily mean 2. It is possible (even likely imo) they might revisit the idea when they come up with more fleshed out solutions.

Id hope their solution doesnt involve just throwing more major/minor buffs on every morph. Youd think the vengeance bloat reduction would make them hold off on adding more bloat.

A better starting point would be adjusting passives to balance out the 21 skill lines. Why should storm, aedric, and assassin host the best possible damage passives, while daedric summoning or dark magic are literal jokes.

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded the original proposed changes and may have even been excited about them if ZOS had done a lot more to flesh Sorc out properly, instead of those random changes that didn't really achieve anything outside of preventing Sorcerer from effectively interacting with sub-classing. If changes were made, such as:
- moving frags + curse active skills and the exploiter passive into the storm calling line as those are key sorc DPS abilities (bonus points from me if they also became actual lightning abilities)
- adding the major prophecy buff into a storm calling skill instead of tacking it on armaments (which also removed resolve from that morph)
- additional reworks to dark magic and daedric summoning to make them more appealing in their own right as tank/support and pet lines respectively
- addressed long standing issues with storm calling active skills (fixed overload bugs, buffed/reworked fury, removed the unlisted cast delay on lightning splash, increased lightning form radius to 8m, etc.)

But none of these things were done week 1 and this was the crux of the issue. The changes (thankfully soon to be mostly reversed/reworked) were just a bunch of unnecessary nerfs and changes that just made all 3 of sorcs lines next to impossible to sub-class effectively without feeling like a direct nerf compared to the other skill lines, that also brought nothing to compensate or get excited about.
At least if the above additional changes had been done alongside the original proposed changes of 11.1.0, there would have been things to get excited about and try out for Sorcerer, since at the minimum the lines would be better split to facilitate sub-classed builds, but could have also been potential starting points on their own for new viable builds.

In a perfect world scenario if they worked hard to go this route, every skill line would have its own form or tank, heal, damage such that we have 21 unique playstyle options to mix without suddenly power creeping the game by 3x and every meta boiling down to the 3 most efficient damage lines.

I can see this. But also, honestly I like the concept of the tank/heal/dd line distinctions more blurred for some classes than others; like, necromancer skill lines being more clearly split between the three than, for example, nightblade who has somewhat of a dd element (magicka nightblade siphoning) in a line that's mostly heal-oriented.

I think sorcerer fits the blurred skill line roles. IMO, for example, it should be okay that Daedric Summoning is may be the most tank-oriented of their lines, while also providing dd elements (pet dd).

In terms of balance, considering subclassing, that's another thing; but, I think it's cool if some classes are 80-100% role-split in their skill lines and some classes are more 40-80% role-split.