Change Sorcerer's Storm Calling passives

Operativ · July 28

I’d like to raise a concern about certain class passives—particularly in subclass builds and setups focused on stacking Health. At the moment, some passives seem a bit over the top, letting players deal plenty of damage while prioritising survivability, which ends up blurring class roles and reducing build variety.

Sorcerer – Storm Calling

Energized I: Increases your Physical and Shock Damage by 3%.
Energized II: Increases your Physical and Shock Damage by 5%.
Last updated in patch 2.4.5.
Amplitude I: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 20% current Health they have.
Amplitude II: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 10% current Health they have.
Last updated in patch 4.3.5.

These passives, especially when combined, give Health-stacking builds a big advantage, allowing them to hit hard without much compromise. It feels off, considering the usual trade-off between damage and survivability.

Warden – Winter’s Embrace

Piercing Cold I: Increases the amount of damage you block by 4% and increases your Frost Damage by 7%.
Piercing Cold II: Increases the amount of damage you block by 8% and increases your Frost Damage by 15%.
Last updated in patch 8.2.5.

The Warden’s passive is much more focused and in line with the other passives, as Frost Damage simply isn’t as prevalent as Physical damage (Energized), or “all damage” (Amplitude). It’s also the only significant percentage-based damage increase in this particular Warden line, whereas Sorcerer can stack multiple damage-increasing passives in Storm Calling alone.

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Suggestions

Review how these passives stack, especially for Health-focused builds that don’t sacrifice damage.
Consider introducing trade-offs, such as reduced damage boosts for high Health, or making these bonuses more specific to certain playstyles.
Revisit the overall intent of these passives to ensure they reinforce unique class identities and encourage meaningful build choices, rather than enabling generic tanky damage builds.

A few tweaks here could really improve balance and make different builds more interesting.

To clarify, this means that this passive should be more of a Sorcerer's tool, than a 40,000 Health tank's tool of having comparable damage to damage dealers.

universal_wrath · July 28

Not sure if this is a meme post or is it serious?

Storm calling energized and and amplitude passives fall behind nightblade assassination passives: master assassin, pressure point, and hemorrhage. Also Templar Aedric spear passives: balanced warrier, piercing spear, and burning light.

Other classes have far better passives and even far better skills. I do not see anyone choosing storm calling particularly for the energized or amplitude passive, because if they do, they are gimbing themselves for 2 good passives while they can choose far better skill line with both great skills and passives.

Tbh, I do not mind if amplitude is removed completely and replaced with implosion or disintegrate. As for energized physical damage is common, but so is flame damage which is best damage against vampires (top damage in pvp) and poison is also strong with its excute dot both buffed up by dragonknight ardent flame passives: combustion, warmth, and world in ruins.

Heren · July 28

Amplitude I: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 20% current Health they have.
Amplitude II: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 10% current Health they have.

Maybe I'm wrong but reading your post I'm under the impression that you have missread the Amplitude passive : it don't increase your damages based on your health, but on the health of your targets. Stacking health won't change anything about that.

Dagoth_Rac · July 28

Heren wrote: »

Amplitude I: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 20% current Health they have.
Amplitude II: Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 10% current Health they have.

Maybe I'm wrong but reading your post I'm under the impression that you have missread the Amplitude passive : it don't increase your damages based on your health, but on the health of your targets. Stacking health won't change anything about that.

Yeah. It's a reverse execute. You hit targets harder when they are at full health than when they are at low health.

MincMincMinc · July 28

The phys and shock damage passive was intended because sorc never had a spammable. The intent was always that sorcs had to play into weapon skill lines to get a spammable.

I dont understand how health plays into this at all. Everyone has been at about 30k hp for the past like 7 years. Triglyphs and food creep drove the 30k hp mark back in summerset(2018) If anything amplitude helps against the supposed "high hp meta"

How about we bring surprise attack and merciless down to earth before we do anything else? We have a spammable that does 2x more than any other spammable and a burst skill that does more than every ult in the game twice in a row.

WuffyCerulei · July 28

They’re both balanced IMO. DK and Warden both have elemental damage buffs. Sorc should keep theirs. As for amplitude, it’s not as great as one thinks. For PVE, it only makes the start of the fight stronger. For PVP, it’s a good and needed passive against high-health tanky builds. Yeah that Crystal Frags or Grim Focus arrow hurts when you’re a 25k health light armor wearer at 100% health, but there’s worse builds out there.

ZhuJiuyin · July 28

Seriously I never thought Energized and Amplitude would be considered too powerful, especially after we got Master Assassin and Relentless Focus.
What's next? Is it unfair for Sorc to be able to equip weapons, or is it that Sorc can block and make you unable to one-shot?

MashmalloMan · July 28

What a joke lol.

If these passives were so strong, Storm Calling would be meta with Herald of the Tome + Assassination, yet those builds take Aedric Spear or Dawn's Wrath instead. Storm Calling is typically taken when you want a hybrid line for good utility, a major resolve skill, and great all around damage passives, with even a bit of flat recovery.

Also, why on earth would you need a negative to either of these passives in proportion to your max health, when they already do that by default because they're % multipliers that only improves skills and sets that scale from a base of ws damage or max resource. There is very few competitive max health sources of damage I'd even be consider being a threat. This argument was only relevant years ago when proc sets had flat values, so you'd use them to supplement all the damage you lost when going for 40k health. You do that now and your proc sets hit like a wet noodle.

Operativ wrote: »

Review how these passives stack, especially for Health-focused builds that don’t sacrifice damage.

I would love for you to show us proof with build editor of a "heath focussed build that doesn't sacrifice damage". Everything has an opportunity cost, including stacking 40k+ health. I guarantee whatever you come up with can be done better by a parallel 28-31k HP build which most people aim for.

LukosCreyden · July 28

Nope.

Thumbless_Bot · July 28

People slot this line for streak and hurricane... and maybe overload if you like cheese... I dont think anyone cares about the 5% and UP TO 10% damage.

The passives are a or b tier.

Major_Mangle · July 28

As S-tier as stormcalling is as a skilline for PvP, the passives are not where the problems are.

MincMincMinc · July 28

Major_Mangle wrote: »

As S-tier as stormcalling is as a skilline for PvP, the passives are not where the problems are.

Streak will just always be inherently useful. Until they make mistform a copy of it, or something similar on other gap closers like Sword and shield we will always see people use it. Even as a 10 year sorc I could get behind something like the vengeance tone down to limit the stun and damage to the end location. People fixate on the movement aspect, but in reality player speed is so high its negligible.

Hurricane is hard picked now in pvp because it is the only damage line with major resolve with the bonus of minor expedition. Other options could be added like the ARMOR skills should provide major resolve and lower the limit needed for the skills to be slotted.

madmufffin · July 28

In what world does sorc need any form of nerf let alone to its only good passives? Energized's values should be doubled as is.

Yudo · July 28

This direction of nerf and changing classes is exactly what we want to avoid.
Blurred class roles and identity comes from the flattening you are asking for.
There is clearly issues with subclassing vs pure classing and people tend to make arguments in favor of their own class or combination.

Besides that are clear outlines that deserve attention even if we go this way, look at herald and assassination.
I wish I had a clear answer, but I think we need to find a way to make skill lines interesting individually per class to keep build variety and player choice now that subclassing exists.

Changing sorc to be worse now will not help, in fact I think it deserves more love.

hoangdz · July 28

Who told you high health builds don’t sacrifice damage? Unless specified, most damage skills in the game scale off both max attributes and spell/weapon damage. That means high health builds sacrifice damage, just not enough to care about because the benefit of high HP outweighs the damage loss for Cyrodiil PvP (due to the fact that the skill level in Cyro isn’t that high to begin with)

Remember that 1 spell/weapon dmg = 10.5 mag/stam. If I have 30k HP and 30k stam, and I give up 8k stam for 9k HP, then I’m losing an equivalent of 761.9 spell/weapon dmg. I’m not magically gaining that damage back unless I add more spell damage to my build.

This means if spell/weapon damage remain constant, a build with 39k HP and 22k stam will do significantly less damage than a build with 30k HP and 30k stam. I run Storm Calling and when I put 64 pts into health, I notice a significant drop in damage and healing. The only reason I would even consider high health at all is with HP scaling abilities and to prevent being one shotted (which is prevalent in Cyrodiil because of gankers and outnumbered fights). Other than that, it’s not worth it.

Teeba_Shei · July 28

The storm calling line is meant for damage, while that warden line is meant for tanking. You can't compare the two.

Renato90085 · July 28

I think you don't know this passive how work...
this 2 passive need buff... this skill line only 2-3 skill is good...
Other all Dps line have better passive and skill ,but you think dps passive need weak then warden tank passive?

gc0018 · July 31

Replace the Storm Calling passive with Assassination, Aedric Spear, Animal Companions or Herald of the Tome and modify them into Sorc version. Any of these changes will make Sorcs way happier.

Operativ · July 31

I've made a very small edit to the main post. To clarify - Sorcerer's definitely should have something useful, I agree with that. What I don't think is reasonable, is that a 40k HP tank can slot this tree, get the % damage passives, have comparable DPS to damage dealers, and just obliterate anything in PvP.

Having a third class line just for passives is not gimping yourself, because there are plenty of very useful, non-class lines. These passives should be reworked so that they benefit Sorcerer more, rather than a "no obligations required" type of passive. They don't even require a Sorcerer ability slotted for the flat damage increase they provide.

preevious · July 31

Operativ wrote: »

I've made a very small edit to the main post. To clarify - Sorcerer's definitely should have something useful, I agree with that. What I don't think is reasonable, is that a 40k HP tank can slot this tree, get the % damage passives, have comparable DPS to damage dealers, and just obliterate anything in PvP.

Having a third class line just for passives is not gimping yourself, because there are plenty of very useful, non-class lines. These passives should be reworked so that they benefit Sorcerer more, rather than a "no obligations required" type of passive. They don't even require a Sorcerer ability slotted for the flat damage increase they provide.

Comparable DPS to damage dealers? With just those passives?
That's a bit of an overstatement. You can reach comparable damage to a dps by building like one. Wich means you'll be tanking nothing.
You can of course reach 40k hp while built like a DPS set-wise .. but the passives have very little to do with it.

Also, if you consider the sorc passives problematic in that regard .. aren't all the other classes's damages passives bringing the same issue? Because yeah ... a 40k hp tank can also slot assassination, heh?

Post is weird.