Radiate77 wrote: »

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.

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.

The complete picture with skill lines is that they are never just Damage, Tank, or Heal, you have so many other variables.

Like Stormcalling, it was never just Damage, it was Damage and Mobility, like Ardent Flame is Damage and Healing, like Winter’s Embrace is Damage and Defense.

Clearly defined skill lines like the ones above, that have deviations, force people to make choices in regards to what they want on their build.

Exactly, so I think it is for the best for zos to start thinking this way again and bring multiple purposes to lines. Just with stormcalling as an example

• Aggressive oriented engagement burst damage. Yes hurricane is a burst dot, it is very responsive in the fact that you apply it to yourself preemptively before streaking in for burst.
• Mobility for tanking, lightning movement speed and streak
• Heals when you are aggressive with damage. Honestly I would prefer crit surge to heal less per, but be able to tick 4x more often to only reward players who are more aggressive instead of a boring guaranteed per second.

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

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.

I thought that was fine aswell, but not anymore with subclassinge because inevitably players will flock to the highest efficiency setups. Which only took a week of pts. Why choose something that is well rounded but not particularly good when you can choose a hyper specific skill line like assassination to perfectly stack crit?

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I thought that was fine aswell, but not anymore with subclassinge because inevitably players will flock to the highest efficiency setups. Which only took a week of pts. Why choose something that is well rounded but not particularly good when you can choose a hyper specific skill line like assassination to perfectly stack crit?

I think it's possible, but they've handled it so poorly so far that I'm not entirely confident they can pull it off.

Eg. Warden's Winter's Embrace has a pretty good 65/35 split. If you wanted to play a Frost mage, you will 100% want to take this skill line, but it still primarily focuses on tanking. The main reason this isn't as popular is because there just isn't enough Frost skills in other subclass lines to make a 3/3 combo that is competitive.

You could say the same about Sorc's Daedric Summoning line. Prior to actually seeing U46, many people who weren't even interested in pets for DPS suddenly started to wonder what an all in pet tamer could look like, using Daedric Prey to subclass into Grave Lord and Animal Companions for Bear, Skele Archer, and Blastbones.

Fast forward to PTS, they completely gut Daerdic Prey to only work on Daedric Pets which not only killed the potential build diversity, it basically made the entire skill line lack any niche focus along with the nerfs to Ward and Magicka scaling. Hell, even with a 2 pet sorc build, you're better off replacing Fury, Frags, and Prey with Merc Focus, Surprise Attack, and Killers Blade. Prey has become useless for its intent as well as subclassing and a pet tamer build like I mentioned is so far behind, it's just role play at that point.

So no, I don't think a skill line needs to be 100% a role, but it certainly should lean in a direction, between 80-65 vs 20-35 split. Since damage dealing is so open ended vs tanking/healing, the smaller part of those ratio's need to fill niches that require combinations with other skill lines to make them really competitive to avoid the skill lines being overpowered. Like the 2 examples above, if Daedric Prey buffed all pets, you wouldn't see every damage dealer take the line like how we see Herald, Aedric, and Assassination because they would need to lean into pets to make it shine... or frost damage..

As it stands, Daedric Summoning and Dark Magic are good at nothing, so they do nothing, they get used by no one. They can either shift some skills around to make the roles more obvious and hope that a healer taking Dark Magic for some reason engages with Crystal Frag... or they can give us a reason to select these mixed lines.

In Sorc's case, I think moving Crystal Frag and Minor Prophecy out is a no brainer. Trying to make 3 damage skill lines work will never happen, even if they aim for the niche scenario's I mentioned, there is just way too much work to do there because there is only 1 damage skill. It's not feasible. 2 lines with one being a pet dd + tanking focus and no pet dd + utility focus makes much more sense to me. Dark Magic is this odd man out.

Here is how I would restructure sorc in the eyes of subclassing. The goal would be to retain the core sorc playstyles that existed over the years.
- Pet zone control sorc
- Block sorc
- Shield sorc
- Timed burst
- Stamsorc brawler mobility
- Stamsorc Dot aggressive chase

With these in mind the subclasses should probably be structured as such:
- Deadric summoning hosts the pet sorc and block tank playstyle with a taunt in the kit
- Dark magic hosts the Shield and timed burst
- Stormcalling hosts the stamsorc kits......since its basically the only identity stamsorc ever had.

Let me know if you can think of other playstyles, but I may write up entire skill lines based on this later.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Here is how I would restructure sorc in the eyes of subclassing. The goal would be to retain the core sorc playstyles that existed over the years.
- Pet sorc
- Block sorc
- Shield sorc
- Timed burst
- Stamsorc brawler mobility
- Stamsorc Dot aggressive chase

With these in mind the subclasses should probably be structured as such:
- Deadric summoning hosts the pet sorc and block tank playstyle with a taunt in the kit
- Dark magic hosts the Shield and timed burst
- Stormcalling hosts the stamsorc kits......since its basically the only identity stamsorc ever had.

Let me know if you can think of other playstyles, but I may write up entire skill lines based on this later.

Crafter

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.

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.

The reason why top 2 damage skill lines are assassination and hetald is because the potency of the skilld and passives supporting each to do more damage. Other skill lines either have good passives but trash skills like storm calling or good skills but trash passives like ardent flame.

Not sure if youbremmember, but the reasons why sorcerer used to be top tier damagr dealer because it had disentegrate passive, 250% hurricane, unlimited heals from crit surge and overload, basically storm calling passives and skills

I miss disintegrate, please zos, it is time to bring it back.

universal_wrath wrote: »

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.

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.

The reason why top 2 damage skill lines are assassination and hetald is because the potency of the skilld and passives supporting each to do more damage. Other skill lines either have good passives but trash skills like storm calling or good skills but trash passives like ardent flame.

Not sure if youbremmember, but the reasons why sorcerer used to be top tier damagr dealer because it had disentegrate passive, 250% hurricane, unlimited heals from crit surge and overload, basically storm calling passives and skills

I miss disintegrate, please zos, it is time to bring it back.

Implosion used to be crazy, I used to run a destro AOE dot build for emp pushes back in the day. Literally have killfeeds of 30+people at a time with implosion getting half the kills.

Crit surge IMO should be balanced around crit as the limiting factor and not a cooldown. Even a 0.25s cooldown like before was better because build wise it incentivized you to go towards more crit or more ticks or both. Now it is just a bland practically guaranteed heal/sec

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I thought that was fine aswell, but not anymore with subclassinge because inevitably players will flock to the highest efficiency setups. Which only took a week of pts. Why choose something that is well rounded but not particularly good when you can choose a hyper specific skill line like assassination to perfectly stack crit?

I think it's possible, but they've handled it so poorly so far that I'm not entirely confident they can pull it off.

Eg. Warden's Winter's Embrace has a pretty good 65/35 split. If you wanted to play a Frost mage, you will 100% want to take this skill line, but it still primarily focuses on tanking. The main reason this isn't as popular is because there just isn't enough Frost skills in other subclass lines to make a 3/3 combo that is competitive.

You could say the same about Sorc's Daedric Summoning line. Prior to actually seeing U46, many people who weren't even interested in pets for DPS suddenly started to wonder what an all in pet tamer could look like, using Daedric Prey to subclass into Grave Lord and Animal Companions for Bear, Skele Archer, and Blastbones.

Fast forward to PTS, they completely gut Daerdic Prey to only work on Daedric Pets which not only killed the potential build diversity, it basically made the entire skill line lack any niche focus along with the nerfs to Ward and Magicka scaling. Hell, even with a 2 pet sorc build, you're better off replacing Fury, Frags, and Prey with Merc Focus, Surprise Attack, and Killers Blade. Prey has become useless for its intent as well as subclassing and a pet tamer build like I mentioned is so far behind, it's just role play at that point.

So no, I don't think a skill line needs to be 100% a role, but it certainly should lean in a direction, between 80-65 vs 20-35 split. Since damage dealing is so open ended vs tanking/healing, the smaller part of those ratio's need to fill niches that require combinations with other skill lines to make them really competitive to avoid the skill lines being overpowered. Like the 2 examples above, if Daedric Prey buffed all pets, you wouldn't see every damage dealer take the line like how we see Herald, Aedric, and Assassination because they would need to lean into pets to make it shine... or frost damage..

As it stands, Daedric Summoning and Dark Magic are good at nothing, so they do nothing, they get used by no one. They can either shift some skills around to make the roles more obvious and hope that a healer taking Dark Magic for some reason engages with Crystal Frag... or they can give us a reason to select these mixed lines.

In Sorc's case, I think moving Crystal Frag and Minor Prophecy out is a no brainer. Trying to make 3 damage skill lines work will never happen, even if they aim for the niche scenario's I mentioned, there is just way too much work to do there because there is only 1 damage skill. It's not feasible. 2 lines with one being a pet dd + tanking focus and no pet dd + utility focus makes much more sense to me. Dark Magic is this odd man out.

The gatekeeping of Daedric Curse was so upsetting

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Ok here are my skill lines for a subclass version of sorc. Basing off my previous post. I may put this on the original post if we want to theory work this out. For the most part this would equally balance out the skill lines to host damage, tank, and heals on their own. Allowing them to be mixed and mingled with other class skill lines without losing functionality.

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

1. 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.
   
2. Mages fury - stays the same OVERLOAD reduces cost by half
   • Endless - Becomes a simpler crystal weapon with the one hit 4s timer.
   • Wrath - increased damage and 4s timer
3. 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
4. Lightning Splash - Does this see use in PvE? Otherwise flex
   
5. 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
   • Power surge - Able to tick every 1s less healing
6. Bolt Escape - no changes OVERLOAD stuns the full length
   • Streak - stuns and does damage at final location
   • BoL - Stuns at starting location, absorbs 12 projectiles
7. Capacitor - 141 regen is fine. I think something like 200 return while sprinting would fit well with the mobility aspect.
8. Energized - 5% phys and shock is fine
9. Amplitude - 10% is fine
10. 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

1. Negate - Honestly no change
   
2. Crystal shard
   • Crystal Frags - doesn't change
   • Crystal Weapon - 0.8s cast time 7m range (crystal dizzy old stamsorc playstyle) High Damage, 33% chance on proc to have a 1.2s cast time and stun the enemy with added damage. (clear telegraph with proper reaction time)
3. Curse
   • Haunting curse - Hits twice
   • Draining curse - Returns magic while attacking enemy
4. 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
5. 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
6. Ward
   • Hardened ward - Increased tooltip and cap
   • Defensive ward - Ward's you and one group member within 7m, Heals if it persists.
7. Unholy Knowledge - Reduce the cost of all abilities by 6% increase max stats by 10%
8. Blood Magic - When you damage or heal using a dark magic skill, heal for X based on max health
9. Persistence - After blocking an attack your next ability costs 20% less
10. Exploitation - After successfully finishing a cast time, your next direct damage does 10% more damage

---

Daedric Summoning - Pets, zone of control, and tanking

1. Atro - Just make this drop and move with you with a self synergy
   
2. Familiar - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Clanfear - single click heal and headbut stun/taunts if aimed at a mob
   • Volatile - does more damage, single click low cost execute
3. Encase
   • Shattering - immobilize and self heal based on enemies hit
   • Vibrant - heal and major vitality
4. Winged Twighlight - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Matriach - single click heals
   • Tormentor - single click reverse execute damage
5. Daedric Mines - Good zone control for pet build kiting
   • Tomb - at target location
   • Refuge - surround yourself with mines
6. 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
7. Rebate - You restore resources when one of you daedric summoning skills ends
8. Power stone - Reduces the cost of ultimate abilities by 20%
9. Daedric protection - Reduces your damage taken by 5% while Deadric ability is active
10. Expert summoner - Increase your damage done for each active Pet (includes other pets like bear, netch, spirit, blastbones)

Overall I like these swaps a good bit, but mage's fury really needs a non-burst morph so the skill is usable in pve and also should have its execute threshold upped to match the 33% threshold present on all other executes. I also think energized needs to be at least doubled to be in line with the other elemental damage buff passives.

Ahh I hadnt edited this list, but I was gonna change one morph of mages fury to be like current crystal weapon. Where itd be "apply lightning to your weapon which deals damage on your next 4 light attacks, deals bonus damage on targets under 50%" Basically it is a self applied dot that can change targets quickly. Which pairs into the responsive nature of stormcalling.

My dilema is that the mag version of mages wrath being the 4s timer execute really belongs to the shieldsorc playstyle which should be in dark magic. Maybe this execute should be on rune cage or something instead. (stormcalling does already have the reverse execute amplitude technically)

I left energized low because the line already has more than enough damage output. It atleast feels on par in PvP compared to aedric, animal, and assassination which are the top 4 chosen right now.

Sorc's getting % more damage for class skills would also be wonderfully broken

madmufffin wrote: »

Sorc's getting % more damage for class skills would also be wonderfully broken

The buff was %weapon or spell damage before. Aedric spear already has one passive grant 6% weapon/spell damage and 6% resists. So something like 3% weapon damage per skill assuming 3 skills slotted at most on one bar isn't too crazy

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

Sorc's getting % more damage for class skills would also be wonderfully broken

The buff was %weapon or spell damage before. Aedric spear already has one passive grant 6% weapon/spell damage and 6% resists. So something like 3% weapon damage per skill assuming 3 skills slotted at most on one bar isn't too crazy

I want all class skills, which would be like 15% lol

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Ok here are my skill lines for a subclass version of sorc. Basing off my previous post. I may put this on the original post if we want to theory work this out. For the most part this would equally balance out the skill lines to host damage, tank, and heals on their own. Allowing them to be mixed and mingled with other class skill lines without losing functionality.

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

1. 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.
   
2. Mages fury - stays the same OVERLOAD reduces cost by half
   • Endless - Becomes a simpler crystal weapon with the one hit 4s timer.
   • Wrath - increased damage and 4s timer
3. 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
4. Lightning Splash - Does this see use in PvE? Otherwise flex
   
5. 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
   • Power surge - Able to tick every 1s less healing
6. Bolt Escape - no changes OVERLOAD stuns the full length
   • Streak - stuns and does damage at final location
   • BoL - Stuns at starting location, absorbs 12 projectiles
7. Capacitor - 141 regen is fine. I think something like 200 return while sprinting would fit well with the mobility aspect.
8. Energized - 5% phys and shock is fine
9. Amplitude - 10% is fine
10. 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

1. Negate - Honestly no change
   
2. Crystal shard
   • Crystal Frags - doesn't change
   • Crystal Weapon - 0.8s cast time 7m range (crystal dizzy old stamsorc playstyle) High Damage, 33% chance on proc to have a 1.2s cast time and stun the enemy with added damage. (clear telegraph with proper reaction time)
3. Curse
   • Haunting curse - Hits twice
   • Draining curse - Returns magic while attacking enemy
4. 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
5. 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
6. Ward
   • Hardened ward - Increased tooltip and cap
   • Defensive ward - Ward's you and one group member within 7m, Heals if it persists.
7. Unholy Knowledge - Reduce the cost of all abilities by 6% increase max stats by 10%
8. Blood Magic - When you damage or heal using a dark magic skill, heal for X based on max health
9. Persistence - After blocking an attack your next ability costs 20% less
10. Exploitation - After successfully finishing a cast time, your next direct damage does 10% more damage

---

Daedric Summoning - Pets, zone of control, and tanking

1. Atro - Just make this drop and move with you with a self synergy
   
2. Familiar - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Clanfear - single click heal and headbut stun/taunts if aimed at a mob
   • Volatile - does more damage, single click low cost execute
3. Encase
   • Shattering - immobilize and self heal based on enemies hit
   • Vibrant - heal and major vitality
4. Winged Twighlight - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Matriach - single click heals
   • Tormentor - single click reverse execute damage
5. Daedric Mines - Good zone control for pet build kiting
   • Tomb - at target location
   • Refuge - surround yourself with mines
6. 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
7. Rebate - You restore resources when one of you daedric summoning skills ends
8. Power stone - Reduces the cost of ultimate abilities by 20%
9. Daedric protection - Reduces your damage taken by 5% while Deadric ability is active
10. Expert summoner - Increase your damage done for each active Pet (includes other pets like bear, netch, spirit, blastbones)

Overall I like these swaps a good bit, but mage's fury really needs a non-burst morph so the skill is usable in pve and also should have its execute threshold upped to match the 33% threshold present on all other executes. I also think energized needs to be at least doubled to be in line with the other elemental damage buff passives.

Ahh I hadnt edited this list, but I was gonna change one morph of mages fury to be like current crystal weapon. Where itd be "apply lightning to your weapon which deals damage on your next 4 light attacks, deals bonus damage on targets under 50%" Basically it is a self applied dot that can change targets quickly. Which pairs into the responsive nature of stormcalling.

My dilema is that the mag version of mages wrath being the 4s timer execute really belongs to the shieldsorc playstyle which should be in dark magic. Maybe this execute should be on rune cage or something instead. (stormcalling does already have the reverse execute amplitude technically)

I left energized low because the line already has more than enough damage output. It atleast feels on par in PvP compared to aedric, animal, and assassination which are the top 4 chosen right now.

That would be pretty cool to add to the reverse scaling damage on the passive too. I think the damage boost is really needed for the line to be usable in pve for anything other than the reverse scaling passive and wouldn't change the overall function of the class in pvp. I don't think 5% really moves the needle in pvp but does a lot in pve.

5% is pretty big in pvp. In terms of theory craft crunching numbers 5% damage done is like slotting a basic 5 piece set like hundings. 10% is your standard proc set stat output like stuhns, clever alch for example. More niche annoying proc sets like Essence thief chasing the buff on the ground is more like a 15% bonus.

I think the phys being taken off and doing more damage vs concussed enemies would also be a good pathway to keep it balanced and make it usable too.

Problem there is that it becomes asinine to track. Sure parsing on a dummy is one thing, but otherwise timing burst or dropping ults would require addons to use that passive. IMO that just becomes poor game design.

I don't think it's quite as annoying as something like off-balanced. It also fuels the value of leaning into shock damage to increase the value of the passive similar to frost damage with Winter's on Warden.

madmufffin wrote: »

I don't think it's quite as annoying as something like off-balanced. It also fuels the value of leaning into shock damage to increase the value of the passive similar to frost damage with Winter's on Warden.

IDk offbalance and status effects are all in that realm of a hidden extra mechanic that HAS an output, but it just kinda happens instead of people paying attention to it. I would prefer to give a flat buff towards active skill's tooltips that are seen by both players vs some near invisible damage that happens randomly. In pve who cares, dps on my addon is dps. In PvP you want combat to be clear and make sense.

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

Sorc's getting % more damage for class skills would also be wonderfully broken

The buff was %weapon or spell damage before. Aedric spear already has one passive grant 6% weapon/spell damage and 6% resists. So something like 3% weapon damage per skill assuming 3 skills slotted at most on one bar isn't too crazy

Thinking back on this, it would at least make more sense to be 5% for sorc skills or even just Storm Calling skills so that slotting overload front bar would actually be valuable. As it is now no reason not to use Incap or DB there instead.

5% on storm skills is exceedingly weak, at that point 10% makes more sense. On all sorc skill lines is an interesting concept, but with subclassing we need to understand that "classes" are not a thing anymore. Scribing and class sets are the only reasons to pick one class over the other.

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

I don't think it's quite as annoying as something like off-balanced. It also fuels the value of leaning into shock damage to increase the value of the passive similar to frost damage with Winter's on Warden.

IDk offbalance and status effects are all in that realm of a hidden extra mechanic that HAS an output, but it just kinda happens instead of people paying attention to it. I would prefer to give a flat buff towards active skill's tooltips that are seen by both players vs some near invisible damage that happens randomly. In pve who cares, dps on my addon is dps. In PvP you want combat to be clear and make sense.

madmufffin wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

Sorc's getting % more damage for class skills would also be wonderfully broken

The buff was %weapon or spell damage before. Aedric spear already has one passive grant 6% weapon/spell damage and 6% resists. So something like 3% weapon damage per skill assuming 3 skills slotted at most on one bar isn't too crazy

Thinking back on this, it would at least make more sense to be 5% for sorc skills or even just Storm Calling skills so that slotting overload front bar would actually be valuable. As it is now no reason not to use Incap or DB there instead.

5% on storm skills is exceedingly weak, at that point 10% makes more sense. On all sorc skill lines is an interesting concept, but with subclassing we need to understand that "classes" are not a thing anymore. Scribing and class sets are the only reasons to pick one class over the other.

Concussion basically just requires inflicting shock damage, which is quite easy to maintain after it has been applied. As to class skills, anythign other than weapon or guild skills would be a class skill and thus get the % increase, which would be quite a lot.

That could work more I suppose if hurricane went back to being shock damage. The phys damage passive and hurricane really only became a thing due to the mag/stam split in the game where pen and nonhybridization required the split.

Otherwise any other thoughts on how I broke up the 3 sorc skill lines to try and have dmg/tank/heals.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

---

EDIT: Ok here are my skill lines for a subclass version of sorc. Basing off the thread discussion. For the most part this would equally balance out the skill lines to host damage, tank, and heals on their own. Allowing them to be mixed and mingled with other class skill lines without destroying the most common sorc playstyles over the years.

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

1. 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.
   
2. Mages fury - stays the same OVERLOAD reduces cost by half
   • Endless - Your next 4 light attacks deal x shock damage, deals bonus damage on targets under 50% hp. (basically replaces LIVE crystal weapon)
   • Wrath - increased damage and 4s timer
3. 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
4. Lightning Splash - Does this see use in PvE? Otherwise flex
   
5. 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
   • Power surge - Able to tick every 1s less healing
6. Bolt Escape - no changes OVERLOAD stuns the full length
   • Streak - stuns and does damage at final location
   • BoL - Stuns at starting location, absorbs 12 projectiles near final
7. Capacitor - 141 regen is fine. I think something like 200 return while sprinting would fit well with the mobility aspect.
8. Energized - 5% phys and shock is fine
9. Amplitude - 10% is fine
10. 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(tank/heal) and timed burst

1. Negate - Honestly no change
   
2. Crystal shard
   • Crystal Frags - doesn't change
   • Crystal Weapon - 0.8s cast time 7m range (crystal dizzy old stamsorc playstyle) High Damage, 33% chance on proc to have a 1.2s cast time and stun the enemy with added damage. (clear telegraph with proper reaction time)
3. Curse
   • Haunting curse - Hits twice
   • Draining curse - Returns magic while attacking enemy
4. 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
5. 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
6. Ward
   • Hardened ward - Increased tooltip and cap
   • Defensive ward - Ward's you and one group member within 7m, Heals if it persists.
7. Unholy Knowledge - Reduce the cost of all abilities by 6% increase max stats by 10%
8. Blood Magic - When you damage or heal using a dark magic skill, heal for X based on max health
9. Persistence - After blocking an attack your next ability costs 20% less
10. Exploitation - After successfully finishing a cast time, your next direct damage does 10% more damage

---

Daedric Summoning - Pets, zone of control, and tanking

1. Atro - Just make this drop and move with you with a self synergy
   
2. Familiar - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Clanfear - single click heal and headbut stun/taunts if aimed at a mob
   • Volatile - does more damage, single click low cost execute
3. Encase
   • Shattering - Roots enemies and buffs pets hit by 10%
   • Vibrant - heal and major vitality
4. Winged Twighlight - Double click to toggle on/off, with a cost/s
   • Matriach - single click heals
   • Tormentor - single click reverse execute damage
5. Daedric Mines - Good zone control for pet build kiting
   • Tomb - at target location
   • Refuge - surround yourself with mines
6. 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
7. Rebate - You restore resources when one of you daedric summoning skills ends
8. Power stone - Reduces the cost of ultimate abilities by 20%
9. Daedric protection - Reduces your damage taken by 5% while Deadric ability is active
10. Expert summoner - Increase your damage done for each active Pet (includes other pets like bear, netch, spirit, blastbones)

Losing Daedric Prey means that the pets tooltip probably needs to get pretty juiced damage wise to make the HA sorcs not riot.