What is the Subclass Balance theory?

MincMincMinc · July 18

This stems from pts discussions, but is an over-arching issue really for the whole game. Power creep and build diversity are the two main factors to be discussed.

From what I can lay out there are a few choices in game design balance here:

Anyone can subclass any line, where skill lines are changed to be like the DLC classes with raw DPS, healing, or tanking skill lines. Knowing that players will sway towards 3x dps or 3x tank or 3x healing lines.
Anyone can subclass any line, where skill lines are balanced individually to portray a theme/playstyle hosting dps, tank, and healing. This would require effort on zos's part, but allows more plug and play between any skill lines.
Skill lines are balanced in a raw dps, tank, or healing skill line, but subclassing restrictions are put in place that force you to take one dps, tank, heal line each.

U47 pts saw the proposed lightning form change to move resolve to summoning. Which aimed to balance based on (1) where stormcalling became a DPS only skill line. This was rejected by the community and was reversed back towards the direction of (2) where stormcalling may still host dmg, tank, heal.

IMO, the (2) method is the most ideal because it fulfills the play how you want slogan, while also giving many more options. Option (1) is the current live ruleset and we can already see builds fall into a single bottleneck combo of skill lines for "the most efficient" damage meta. For (2) to work though we need to translate the old class playstyles to still exist for those players. Below is an example of taking some presub sorc playstyles and trying to re-arrange skills such that those play styles will be functional again.

Stormcalling - High mobility, response ready damage, heals based on aggression

Overload - Toggle cost per sec, Adds chain lightning to light and heavy attacks bouncing up to 3L-6H targets within 5m of each other. Gives bonus effect to stormcalling skills OR Able to gen ult while toggled.
Mages fury - stays the same OVERLOAD reduces cost by half
- Endless - (replaces current crystal weapon.) Charge your weapon with lightning for the next 4 hits dealing X damage, Damage increases on enemies under 50%hp
- Wrath - Same as current Wrath but on a 4s timer.....otherwise it is useless compared to other executes
Lightning form - Major Resolve + shocktick
- Hurricane - Grants minor expedition. Phys tick per sec, if you hit an enemy, increases the damage and radius of the hurricane instead of guaranteed. OVERLOAD maxes out hurricane
- Boundless - Major Expedition OVERLOAD doubles the duration
Lightning Splash - Does this see use in PvE? Otherwise flex
Surge - major brutality and heals per sec (the shorter ticks Reward building differently into crit/ticks/aoe) OVERLOAD allows ticks to happen 2x as fast.
- Critical surge - Able to tick every 0.25s upon dealing a critical (tooltip is reduced accordingly)
- Power surge - Able to tick every 1s less healing
Bolt Escape - no changes to default OVERLOAD stuns the full length
- Streak - stuns and does damage only at final location
- BoL - Stuns at starting location, absorbs 12 projectiles
Capacitor - 141 regen is fine. I think something like 200 return while sprinting would fit well with the mobility aspect better.
Energized - 5% phys and shock is fine
Amplitude - 5% mit at full hp and 0% at 0hp, 5% damage done against 100% hp enemies and 0% at 0hp
Expert mage - this should give a 3% bonus for each sorc skill slotted.....the % bonus incentivizes players to build into WD instead of just the more efficient Crit or pen.

Dark Magic - Shield and timed burst

Negate - Honestly no change
Crystal shard
- Crystal Frags - doesn't change
- Crystal Weapon - 0.8s cast time 7m range (old dizzy copy for old stamsorc playstyle) High Damage, 33% chance on proc to have a 1.2s cast time and knockup the enemy with added damage. (clear telegraph with proper reaction time......make the animation blue for normal hit and purple for the stun hit)
Curse
- Haunting curse - Hits twice
- Draining curse - Returns magic while attacking the enemy, hits once after 8s
Rune Prison
- Cage - Stuns an enemy, stuns and deals damage if the enemy was blocking.
- Defensive - Stuns the next enemy that attacks you and grants a shield based on hp if hit
Dark Exchange - These should just be flat resource return with no over time aspect to play into the max stat pool deficit playstyle
- Dark Deal - Returns stam, heal scales with max stat
- Dark Conversion - Returns mag, heal scales with max stat
Ward
- Hardened ward - Increased tooltip and cap
- Defensive ward - Ward's you and one group member within 7m, Heals if it persists.
Unholy Knowledge - increase max stats by 10% While a shield is applied reduce the cost of all abilities by 10%
Blood Magic - When you damage or heal using a dark magic skill, heal for X based on max health
Persistence - After blocking an attack your next ability costs 20% less
Exploitation - After successfully finishing a cast time, your next direct damage does 10% more damage

Daedric Summoning - Pets, zone of control, and tanking

Atro - Just make this drop and move with you with a self synergy
Familiar -
- Clanfear - heal and headbut stun/taunts if aimed at a mob
- Volatile - does more damage overall, active execute projectile
Encase
- Shattering - immobilize and self heal based on enemies hit
- Vibrant - heal and major vitality
Winged Twighlight -
- Matriach - Heals up to 4 allies around matriach
- Tormentor - Reverse execute damage
Daedric Mines - Good zone control for pet build kiting
- Tomb - at target location
- Refuge - surround yourself with mines
Bound armor
- Bound Aegis - 40% block mit 6s and grants you and 3 group members within 8m major protection
- Bound Calling - 40% block mit 6s and AoE taunt
Rebate - You restore resources when one of you daedric summoning skills ends
Power stone - Reduces the cost of ultimate abilities by 20%
Daedric protection - Reduces your damage taken by 5% while a daedric ability is active
Expert summoner - Increase your damage done with pets for each active Pet (includes other pets like bear, netch, spirit, blastbones)

tsaescishoeshiner · July 18

The fourth option is where skill lines offer a greater variety. For example, we have role-specific skill lines like the DLC classes, but some of the base class skill lines have a more unique offering that might work with someone's build.

For example, if they need a new DPS line but they want to be tankier while having an execute, they can add Storm Calling, which combines these two.

If they want a healing skill line while also adding some recovery, there's siphoning.

I find some of the base game classes harder to add to a subclassed build (like Dragonknight) because of the weird combination of role-based skills, but it offers more variety of options. This is particularly true in PvP, where builds can differ greatly and find different ways to get the same buffs and skill stypes, but for an optimized DPS, there will probably be more streamlining.

For a casual build, they can already add role-specific skills from just about any class.

BasP · July 18

I definitely agree that the second option is the most appealing, for the reasons you've already outlined. If every skill line offered something for all three (or at least two) roles, it would help mitigate power creep - since stacking three pure DPS lines wouldn’t be the possible - and I reckon it would result in more build diversity overall as well.

I like your ideas for the Sorcerer by the way!

Vaqual · July 18

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] Lightning form - Major Resolve + shocktick
Hurricane - Grants minor expedition. Phys tick per sec, if you hit an enemy, increases the damage and radius of the hurricane instead of guaranteed. OVERLOAD maxes out hurricane

Boundless - Major Expedition and 6s of snare/immobilize immunity OVERLOAD doubles the duration

Weren't you super against snare removal and Major Expedition on the same ability in your big movement speed thread?

MincMincMinc · July 18

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I find some of the base game classes harder to add to a subclassed build (like Dragonknight) because of the weird combination of role-based skills

This is covered by option 2 where dk is much like sorc in the fact that its skill lines are fairly spread out.

Vaqual wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] Lightning form - Major Resolve + shocktick
Hurricane - Grants minor expedition. Phys tick per sec, if you hit an enemy, increases the damage and radius of the hurricane instead of guaranteed. OVERLOAD maxes out hurricane

Boundless - Major Expedition and 6s of snare/immobilize immunity OVERLOAD doubles the duration

Weren't you super against snare removal and Major Expedition on the same ability in your big movement speed thread?

Not completely, the problem I was talking about there was that with how easy it is to have movement speed, combat can turn into a Redlight - Greenlight feeling. People go from stationary to out of melee range in a gcd. That thread had two main points of most snare/root animations lacked animations while counterplay options at the time were limited. At the same time player movement speed in combat had doubled with power creep. Unlike a raid boss's healthbar, the map of tamriel isnt getting larger and skill ranges aren't getting larger to compensate. Anyways for this example its based on the current game state if you have comments towards which design path you think is better.

Vaqual · July 19

Sure, I am entirely in favour of what you call method (2). But I would be cautious throwing around buffs, when they haven't even figured out which passives should or shouldn't stack between skill lines.
Some of your suggestions, like adding snare removal or quadrupling the maximum proc rate of Surge, are things that I wouldn't give out in a bundle just to make a skill lines (Storm Calling in this case) more attractive in comparison to a clearly misaligned skill line like Assassination.
Sorc has a some very situational abilities and those are unattractive to many players. I'd be ok with giving those a bit more universal appeal. The mainstays should not be the first ones to receive love, even if there is an unbalance between some of the morphs, because honestly, some of it is really only an issue when looking at it from a narrow angle.

For example, I get that many people think that boundless is trash, because it doesn't scale up like Hurricane and the overall ground coverage from the movement speed buff is not even half. Realistically the damage per cast is decent and Major Expedition on demand is just a different thing than Minor Expedition. Sure, for someone who runs RAT, this is close to a waste of a slot. Getting that extra bar slot from merging the main benefits sounds fun. Warden gets it too, right? But what comes after that? Are you telling the players who run Shadow that Twisting Path can't have the same? The ability that already needs an entire passive ability to roughly break even with Boundless per cast? Because they are supposed to slot Phantasmal to make up for it? What is a convencience to one player, becomes unfair for another.

I get that it would feel nice to have Cwep heal twice from Blood Magic. And you put Curse into Dark Magic there for another two ticks. It looks pretty much like you moved all the goodies into 2 lines to say the pet players can have Summoning and you'll be fine with never touching it again. This looks a lot like these thread from "Sorc players" (those players know who they are) about changes that would be good for "Sorc players" (you get what I mean, subclassing aside). But everyone else also has to play the game. And while these are just suggestions, it is too much. It is alienating really. It invokes the worst images from the most horrbile purely Sorc dominated patches.

So this is why I'd say it would be best to buff situational abilities like Rune and Fury, maybe even with a new function that is not necessarily related to it's main concept. Because they are not horrible at what they do per se (not talking about the 2s grace on fury, that was just bad), but they also do nothing for a big portion of a fight.

In conclusion: Conceptually I am with you. But presenting the topic buff-heavy like this is not my cup of tea. The moment when heals from blood magic + surge are outpacing a jabbing templar in his house is when stuff stops making sense to me. I wish I could be more positive and I am probably going a bit overboard with the criticism, granted you aren't denying the possiblity of buffing other skill lines in the same manner, but I have seen a lot of "ideas" in this vein lately and I just want to be clear about my opinion on those. The balancing issues from subclassing shouldn't be used to justify further power creep and I am rather expecting ZOS to dismantle the stacking and scaling redundancies between lines that contribute the most to it.

Turtle_Bot · July 19

Vaqual wrote: »

For example, I get that many people think that boundless is trash, because it doesn't scale up like Hurricane and the overall ground coverage from the movement speed buff is not even half. Realistically the damage per cast is decent and Major Expedition on demand is just a different thing than Minor Expedition. Sure, for someone who runs RAT, this is close to a waste of a slot. Getting that extra bar slot from merging the main benefits sounds fun. Warden gets it too, right? But what comes after that? Are you telling the players who run Shadow that Twisting Path can't have the same? The ability that already needs an entire passive ability to roughly break even with Boundless per cast? Because they are supposed to slot Phantasmal to make up for it? What is a convencience to one player, becomes unfair for another.

I just want to clear up a few misconceptions here.

Boundless is not "trash" because it doesn't scale up like hurricane, infact, that's one of the things that helps set it apart from hurricane (consistent damage for longer, over the shorter but burstier damage of hurricane). What makes Boundless "trash" is the following:
- It's radius is still smaller than the updated melee attack range, so melee enemies can hit you without taking a single tick of damage from boundless (at least hurricane increases its radius to match/outrange melee attacks after a few seconds). This issue is further exacerbated by the 2 second tick frequency of the ability (given to it in U35 as part of the standardization of DoTs) giving even slow melee builds ample time to move in and out of it's radius in-between the damage ticks.
- Major Expedition is a significantly more accessible buff than Minor Expedition is, especially since Summerset where RaT was introduced and provides Major Expedition + Minor Force + snare removal/immunity all in 1 cast.

While most of the issues with the boundless morph do stem from the first point, the fact that a build can get everything and more from RaT and easily slot a different source of Major resolve (provided for the group by frost cloak in PvE and other lines/hurricane/chudan do it better in PvP) is what makes the Boundless morph not worth running outside of fun/theme builds.

MincMincMinc · July 19

Vaqual wrote: »

Sure, I am entirely in favour of what you call method (2). But I would be cautious throwing around buffs, when they haven't even figured out which passives should or shouldn't stack between skill lines.
Some of your suggestions, like adding snare removal or quadrupling the maximum proc rate of Surge, are things that I wouldn't give out in a bundle just to make a skill lines (Storm Calling in this case) more attractive in comparison to a clearly misaligned skill line like Assassination.

Numbers wise that surge change would be a net loss in most scenarios, if it were the same value/4 youd have to hit the tickrate 4x instead of once. Numerically this is just an example that is up for change obviously.

Wait are you saying assassination is bad or good? Right now its on basically half the pvp builds solely for bow proc. (IMO I would rather the bow proc and incap be swapped damage wise.)

Vaqual wrote: »

I get that it would feel nice to have Cwep heal twice from Blood Magic. And you put Curse into Dark Magic there for another two ticks. It looks pretty much like you moved all the goodies into 2 lines to say the pet players can have Summoning and you'll be fine with never touching it again. This looks a lot like these thread from "Sorc players" (those players know who they are) about changes that would be good for "Sorc players" (you get what I mean, subclassing aside). But everyone else also has to play the game. And while these are just suggestions, it is too much. It is alienating really. It invokes the worst images from the most horrbile purely Sorc dominated patches.

I think I said to return Cwep to a single hit. Yes I moved curse and ward to dark magic to consolidate the core magsorc playstyle of shielding and timing combos with curse and frags. Which has been a playstyle since the dawn of time. can't say I have seen a viable magsorc in any bg match since subclassing. Honestly don't think I have seen a curse or frags used once.

As far as Pet sorc goes it is more about zone of control where you would focus more on holding your ground and controlling pets vs just a magsorc with two extra dots following around. I was unsure about the pet damage bonus since numerically this could go crazy depending on subclass interactions with blastbones, netch, spirit, etc. I do think a pet sorc should get the main bulk of their output from using their pets properly though instead of neglecting them. Also, I figure mines is better used on the petsorc so you can peel for yourself. With the available tanking and heals I put in summoning, ward could be shifted to dark.

Vaqual wrote: »

So this is why I'd say it would be best to buff situational abilities like Rune and Fury, maybe even with a new function that is not necessarily related to it's main concept. Because they are not horrible at what they do per se (not talking about the 2s grace on fury, that was just bad), but they also do nothing for a big portion of a fight.

Yeah rune is close to javelin, but at the same time javelin is useful just to slot for the passives, where right now LIVE dark magic is lackluster.

Vaqual wrote: »

In conclusion: Conceptually I am with you. But presenting the topic buff-heavy like this is not my cup of tea. The moment when heals from blood magic + surge are outpacing a jabbing templar in his house is when stuff stops making sense to me. I wish I could be more positive and I am probably going a bit overboard with the criticism, granted you aren't denying the possiblity of buffing other skill lines in the same manner, but I have seen a lot of "ideas" in this vein lately and I just want to be clear about my opinion on those. The balancing issues from subclassing shouldn't be used to justify further power creep and I am rather expecting ZOS to dismantle the stacking and scaling redundancies between lines that contribute the most to it.

Like I said before take this as more of an example for how I would suggest reorganizing a class such that we dont fall into Storm = damage, dark magic = heal, daedric = tank. Numbers or buffs are completely fair game for changing, whats important is reorganizing to keep long standing playstyles possible with subclassing.

Vaqual · July 19

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I just want to clear up a few misconceptions here.

Boundless is not "trash" because it doesn't scale up like hurricane, infact, that's one of the things that helps set it apart from hurricane (consistent damage for longer, over the shorter but burstier damage of hurricane). What makes Boundless "trash" is the following:
- It's radius is still smaller than the updated melee attack range, so melee enemies can hit you without taking a single tick of damage from boundless (at least hurricane increases its radius to match/outrange melee attacks after a few seconds). This issue is further exacerbated by the 2 second tick frequency of the ability (given to it in U35 as part of the standardization of DoTs) giving even slow melee builds ample time to move in and out of it's radius in-between the damage ticks.
- Major Expedition is a significantly more accessible buff than Minor Expedition is, especially since Summerset where RaT was introduced and provides Major Expedition + Minor Force + snare removal/immunity all in 1 cast.

While most of the issues with the boundless morph do stem from the first point, the fact that a build can get everything and more from RaT and easily slot a different source of Major resolve (provided for the group by frost cloak in PvE and other lines/hurricane/chudan do it better in PvP) is what makes the Boundless morph not worth running outside of fun/theme builds.

I think both of these reasons are still reflected very clearly in my wording. I don't feel like there was a misconception.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Numbers wise that surge change would be a net loss in most scenarios, if it were the same value/4 youd have to hit the tickrate 4x instead of once. Numerically this is just an example that is up for change obviously.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I think I said to return Cwep to a single hit. Yes I moved curse and ward to dark magic to consolidate the core magsorc playstyle of shielding and timing combos with curse and frags. Which has been a playstyle since the dawn of time. can't say I have seen a viable magsorc in any bg match since subclassing. Honestly don't think I have seen a curse or frags used once.

Ok that implied change to Cwep ticks wasn't clear to me from the writeup. Neither was that you intended a healing reduction together with the hit rate increase on Surge. These are big points and can easily make substantial differences. In my ideal world changes that are being made should be tuned well enough to stay for a long time, for players to get adjusted and build around them without swapping gear every quarter. For the entirety of 2024 Sorc was clearly overbuffed and just because subclassing created new issues it doesn't mean that this playstyle needs to be elevated to the top again. The dust needs to settle and both ZOS and the players must come to terms with the new intended power cap that builds should operate on. Another aspect of it is of course that many players got spoiled and now act like going from hardened to regenerative is the end of the world, when in a majority of cases their shields didn't even get depleted on cast. It is of course more complex than just that, but they have to take one step after the other. I'd certainly like it if they could do things faster, but how likely is that.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Wait are you saying assassination is bad or good? Right now its on basically half the pvp builds solely for bow proc. (IMO I would rather the bow proc and incap be swapped damage wise.)

I am saying that assassination does too much right now and it should not be used as a reference for skill line power budgets until it is properly adjusted. The change to Grim Focus WD/SD is quite big and it will have a tangible impact in PvE, but of course they had to make everything complicated by messing with the stacks...

MincMincMinc wrote: »

As far as Pet sorc goes it is more about zone of control where you would focus more on holding your ground and controlling pets vs just a magsorc with two extra dots following around. I was unsure about the pet damage bonus since numerically this could go crazy depending on subclass interactions with blastbones, netch, spirit, etc. I do think a pet sorc should get the main bulk of their output from using their pets properly though instead of neglecting them. Also, I figure mines is better used on the petsorc so you can peel for yourself. With the available tanking and heals I put in summoning, ward could be shifted to dark.

I get the intention and it is justifiable that way. But the consequence is that the full extent of Sorc burst combos becomes available on two lines, potentially boosted by a non-Sorc offensive line — and that's already a big deal. Adding all of the smaller buffs that you have sprinkled in on top of that (like adding the even higher resource buff to Dark Magic as compared to PTS, drastically higher than live), it gets to the point where it becomes too much, even if I agree design wise. I would like for Curse to be in Dark Magic, I really think that would be nice from a gameplay perspective and for diversifying the theme (too much crystaly stuff in that line). But this shouldn't come at the cost of the line becoming too strong. I think focusing on the pets and control with Summoning is nice. It just reads a bit like a fake concession or a bargaining chip to achieve the more drastic buff to Dark Magic. Does it make sense the way I write it? It would just be disproportional, as long as other lines still have "adds 2 seconds to the duration, except..."-type passives.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Like I said before take this as more of an example for how I would suggest reorganizing a class such that we dont fall into Storm = damage, dark magic = heal, daedric = tank. Numbers or buffs are completely fair game for changing, whats important is reorganizing to keep long standing playstyles possible with subclassing.

I certainly don't want to discourage this discussion and I want the same thing for the game. Consolidating playstyles on fewer skill lines than before is however a net buff, because it frees up massive potential. That must be considered, especially when further buffs are suggested.

MincMincMinc · July 19

Oh 100% agree on assassination. I can clarify some of the writeup then. For the 2024 sorc balance, zos should have known from the summerset shield changes to healing ward that having a strong shield and a strong heal were a bad idea.

For the Max stats on dark magic it is to pair into wards and the deficit sustain model.

I don't necessarily think consolidating Curse and ward to dark magic makes it suddenly crazy. If anything it would be a mirror to animal except with less buffs/debuffs and currently worse passives in exchange for frags.

Turtle_Bot · July 20

Vaqual wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I just want to clear up a few misconceptions here.

Boundless is not "trash" because it doesn't scale up like hurricane, infact, that's one of the things that helps set it apart from hurricane (consistent damage for longer, over the shorter but burstier damage of hurricane). What makes Boundless "trash" is the following:
- It's radius is still smaller than the updated melee attack range, so melee enemies can hit you without taking a single tick of damage from boundless (at least hurricane increases its radius to match/outrange melee attacks after a few seconds). This issue is further exacerbated by the 2 second tick frequency of the ability (given to it in U35 as part of the standardization of DoTs) giving even slow melee builds ample time to move in and out of it's radius in-between the damage ticks.
- Major Expedition is a significantly more accessible buff than Minor Expedition is, especially since Summerset where RaT was introduced and provides Major Expedition + Minor Force + snare removal/immunity all in 1 cast.

While most of the issues with the boundless morph do stem from the first point, the fact that a build can get everything and more from RaT and easily slot a different source of Major resolve (provided for the group by frost cloak in PvE and other lines/hurricane/chudan do it better in PvP) is what makes the Boundless morph not worth running outside of fun/theme builds.

I think both of these reasons are still reflected very clearly in my wording. I don't feel like there was a misconception.

My first point about the scaling could have been how I read your post. To me it seemed like the mentioned scaling of hurricane was referring to the damage scaling, not the radius scaling.

I still think the issue surrounding accessibility of Major vs Minor Expedition buff wasn't as clear from your wording though. Yes, the minor buff lasts much longer than the major version, which allows better long term mobility, but that wasn't the issue with Major v Minor expedition buffs I was referring to. The issue is the fact that major expedition is so easy to obtain compared to minor expedition (outside of contingency/concealed) which is a big factor in itself, that (from what I read) wasn't mentioned.
Basically Boundless feels like it's just an AoE DoT (that can't even hit melee attackers) and nothing else if the build already has access to Major resolve and RaT/warden wings, while hurricane at least feels like it still offers minor expedition for even more speed as well as the AoE DoT (that scales its radius) to also work alongside RaT/wings and other sources of Resolve, leaving it slightly more useful as an option on builds that may already have Resolve and Expedition.

Vaqual · July 20

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I just want to clear up a few misconceptions here.

Boundless is not "trash" because it doesn't scale up like hurricane, infact, that's one of the things that helps set it apart from hurricane (consistent damage for longer, over the shorter but burstier damage of hurricane). What makes Boundless "trash" is the following:
- It's radius is still smaller than the updated melee attack range, so melee enemies can hit you without taking a single tick of damage from boundless (at least hurricane increases its radius to match/outrange melee attacks after a few seconds). This issue is further exacerbated by the 2 second tick frequency of the ability (given to it in U35 as part of the standardization of DoTs) giving even slow melee builds ample time to move in and out of it's radius in-between the damage ticks.
- Major Expedition is a significantly more accessible buff than Minor Expedition is, especially since Summerset where RaT was introduced and provides Major Expedition + Minor Force + snare removal/immunity all in 1 cast.

While most of the issues with the boundless morph do stem from the first point, the fact that a build can get everything and more from RaT and easily slot a different source of Major resolve (provided for the group by frost cloak in PvE and other lines/hurricane/chudan do it better in PvP) is what makes the Boundless morph not worth running outside of fun/theme builds.

I think both of these reasons are still reflected very clearly in my wording. I don't feel like there was a misconception.

My first point about the scaling could have been how I read your post. To me it seemed like the mentioned scaling of hurricane was referring to the damage scaling, not the radius scaling.

I still think the issue surrounding accessibility of Major vs Minor Expedition buff wasn't as clear from your wording though. Yes, the minor buff lasts much longer than the major version, which allows better long term mobility, but that wasn't the issue with Major v Minor expedition buffs I was referring to. The issue is the fact that major expedition is so easy to obtain compared to minor expedition (outside of contingency/concealed) which is a big factor in itself, that (from what I read) wasn't mentioned.
Basically Boundless feels like it's just an AoE DoT (that can't even hit melee attackers) and nothing else if the build already has access to Major resolve and RaT/warden wings, while hurricane at least feels like it still offers minor expedition for even more speed as well as the AoE DoT (that scales its radius) to also work alongside RaT/wings and other sources of Resolve, leaving it slightly more useful as an option on builds that may already have Resolve and Expedition.

Yes, but ultimately prioritizing RaT and Wings is a conscious decision based the fact that those abilities are extremely strong, and less so because Boundless weak. There are in fact not terribly many sources for Major Expedition and I'd consider Boundless quite high up in that list, compared to some of the others.
Boosting Boundless to S+ tier with a snare removal because it situationally falls behind another combo within the extended Sorc kit would just be a slap in the face for the already inferior Major Expedition abilities - and worse: a slap in the face for other snare removal abilities.
The mindset can't be "my abilities have to check all boxes". I know this wasn't your suggestion, but still the basis of my original argument. Some gaps are part of the design and balancing.

Buffing the contact radius to the new melee standard can certainly be considered, but outside of pure zerg mayhem it is already extremely unlikely to find a scenario where Boundless would consistently perform worse than ground targeted abilities in terms of effective ticks per cast.

Vaqual · July 20

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I don't necessarily think consolidating Curse and ward to dark magic makes it suddenly crazy. If anything it would be a mirror to animal except with less buffs/debuffs and currently worse passives in exchange for frags.

While I thought that was clear enough from the way I wrote it, I'll spell out the thought:
One consequence would be that you could bring a line like Aedric Spear, Animal companions, Grave Lord or Assassination without compromising your setup, all of which can drastically enhance a burst combo. If you want to use Curse currently with one of those on live you'd either get locked out of Storm Callings offensive passives and the unavoidable Streak Stun or you would lose access to Cwep and the passive interactions from your hypothetical scenario (with Curse being in Dark Magic). Most trades would give you either 1 more delayed burst skill or 1 unavoidable CC at the cost of one of those two.
I would say circumventing that would be quite the significant consequence, hence my caution with adding too many buffs to such a shift. And those are only some examples.

MincMincMinc · July 21

Vaqual wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I don't necessarily think consolidating Curse and ward to dark magic makes it suddenly crazy. If anything it would be a mirror to animal except with less buffs/debuffs and currently worse passives in exchange for frags.

While I thought that was clear enough from the way I wrote it, I'll spell out the thought:
One consequence would be that you could bring a line like Aedric Spear, Animal companions, Grave Lord or Assassination without compromising your setup, all of which can drastically enhance a burst combo. If you want to use Curse currently with one of those on live you'd either get locked out of Storm Callings offensive passives and the unavoidable Streak Stun or you would lose access to Cwep and the passive interactions from your hypothetical scenario (with Curse being in Dark Magic). Most trades would give you either 1 more delayed burst skill or 1 unavoidable CC at the cost of one of those two.
I would say circumventing that would be quite the significant consequence, hence my caution with adding too many buffs to such a shift. And those are only some examples.

Right, see the issue is that what you are worrying about already exists for those lines you just listed. I can already pair up those skill lines to drastically enhance a burst combo. You can pair up Shalks+BB+Merci for a 30k+combo. All existing on pure damage lines.

I do see your point about keeping skill lines limited to 1 delayed burst or 1 unavoidable CC. In my current concept I moved current live Cweapon to stormcalling which would pair with streak which may be too much maybe this would be a reason to keep cweapon spread out over multiple gcds, maybe play into the execute concept. (I hate live cweap, it was a sorry excuse for a stamsorc "spammable" and made no sense for being the other morph of frags). Curse and rune cage being on dark magic would also be an issue being on the same skill line, but could be addressed timing wise.

Vaqual · July 21

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right, see the issue is that what you are worrying about already exists for those lines you just listed. I can already pair up those skill lines to drastically enhance a burst combo. You can pair up Shalks+BB+Merci for a 30k+combo. All existing on pure damage lines.

Yes I am aware of that, but at least you have to fully lock in on DPS lines and relinquish a large portion of defensive utility with that pick. Compared to your concept it has very limited passive heals (compared to Surge + Bloodmagic), no guaranteed CC, no Dark Deal (which is in a category for itself together with Leechies), etc. I am sure you know what the differences are and where the strengths of the innate Sorc Burst combo the core playstyles lie. The point being that eliminating the need for Summoning offers great flexibility and potential in any direction.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

In my current concept I moved current live Cweapon to stormcalling which would pair with streak which may be too much maybe this would be a reason to keep cweapon spread out over multiple gcds, maybe play into the execute concept. (I hate live cweap, it was a sorry excuse for a stamsorc "spammable" and made no sense for being the other morph of frags).

I know that Cwep isn't so great on live, but it is still just half a step away from being an absoltue menace, as it was just before U35. The timer is still long enough to put it in front of a contigency ult dump. It won't line up with a BB without skipping another LA, but with the second tick from Shalks or Curse it can still be done. Spreading out the damage could be interesting, if the total number of ticks doesn't become crazy, as long as it has its single target direct damage status. But opening up abilities to redesign like this is likely an open-ended discussion.

MincMincMinc · July 21

Vaqual wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right, see the issue is that what you are worrying about already exists for those lines you just listed. I can already pair up those skill lines to drastically enhance a burst combo. You can pair up Shalks+BB+Merci for a 30k+combo. All existing on pure damage lines.

Yes I am aware of that, but at least you have to fully lock in on DPS lines and relinquish a large portion of defensive utility with that pick. Compared to your concept it has very limited passive heals (compared to Surge + Bloodmagic), no guaranteed CC, no Dark Deal (which is in a category for itself together with Leechies), etc. I am sure you know what the differences are and where the strengths of the innate Sorc Burst combo the core playstyles lie. The point being that eliminating the need for Summoning offers great flexibility and potential in any direction.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

In my current concept I moved current live Cweapon to stormcalling which would pair with streak which may be too much maybe this would be a reason to keep cweapon spread out over multiple gcds, maybe play into the execute concept. (I hate live cweap, it was a sorry excuse for a stamsorc "spammable" and made no sense for being the other morph of frags).

I know that Cwep isn't so great on live, but it is still just half a step away from being an absoltue menace, as it was just before U35. The timer is still long enough to put it in front of a contigency ult dump. It won't line up with a BB without skipping another LA, but with the second tick from Shalks or Curse it can still be done. Spreading out the damage could be interesting, if the total number of ticks doesn't become crazy, as long as it has its single target direct damage status. But opening up abilities to redesign like this is likely an open-ended discussion.

IDK everyone I know in bgs and 1vX pvp is purely running only damage without a second thought, maybe restoring light. Sustain is everywhere now, which was the major trade off back in the day to prevent players from going crazy. All your heals come from Vigor and Healing soul. Sets are all damage. Its hard to put a number on crystal frags when it comes to how much damage it offers the line. It basically tooltips the same as the 2nd hit of shalks without the debuffs. Curse is about 2/3 that. So the actual tooltip outputs are probably about even in the lines................... Its probably pointless to try and think through numerics though and instead focus on making sure the playstyles can actually continue to exist.

For Cwep maybe moving to stormcalling fury as a morph perhaps "your next 4 light/heavy attacks deal X shock damage. Doubles/scales on enemies under 50%hp". Keeping an execute on stormcalling makes the most sense as a counter to losing amplitude on lower health enemies.

Vaqual · July 21

MincMincMinc wrote: »

For Cwep maybe moving to stormcalling fury as a morph perhaps "your next 4 light/heavy attacks deal X shock damage. Doubles/scales on enemies under 50%hp". Keeping an execute on stormcalling makes the most sense as a counter to losing amplitude on lower health enemies.

That would in fact be something that I would find quite cool.

MincMincMinc · July 22

Vaqual wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

For Cwep maybe moving to stormcalling fury as a morph perhaps "your next 4 light/heavy attacks deal X shock damage. Doubles/scales on enemies under 50%hp". Keeping an execute on stormcalling makes the most sense as a counter to losing amplitude on lower health enemies.

That would in fact be something that I would find quite cool.

Yeah kind of like a boosted dot, that requires you to hit light attacks to be effective. Actually that plays into the stormcalling hurricane self applied dot playstyle well. It basically lets you have good response time on your build being able to have pressure that lets you swap targets quickly.