Even as a sorc myself I think this change may have been necessary. The power of the ability was just too high for the cost and the fact that it can be spammed so often makes it the best damage aoe by far. Now it will probably be more in line with elemental wall and lightning storm so that there is a bit more balance there. It's true our overall aoe damage will go down but some extra volcanic runes as you said can make up for it.

There's one more very important aspect to this and that was the ability being used by DKs in pvp. With their synergy giving magicka regen they could spam it almost non-stop and just wipe out entire groups of people with very little effort. So this may have been a pvp fix that hits pve a little harder than it might have otherwise.

Oh noes... now all the uber faceroll is over

Innocente wrote: »

And so it begins. The nerfs to skills to balance PvP that will make PvE a nightmare for many players. And down the road Z/B goes that all amateur MMO companies take. "Those who don't learn from the past..."

yes and i wonder how many of those "no no everything is fine with vet mode" folk actually said this cos they were drinking the impulse spam cool-ade.. take away their crutch and i'm guessing things won't be so fine.

Alpha_Protocol wrote: »

Oh noes... now all the uber faceroll is over

Guess there had to be one guy in there. Admittedly from 1-50 and maybe even V1-V3 it was pretty faceroll. However, I'm finding it not-so-much-faceroll anymore, and has transitioned to essential in the later zones where packs abound. This change will probably transition it to life-threatening for anything over 3 mobs, which is most of what we face in later V-content.

hamon wrote: »

Innocente wrote: »

And so it begins. The nerfs to skills to balance PvP that will make PvE a nightmare for many players. And down the road Z/B goes that all amateur MMO companies take. "Those who don't learn from the past..."

yes and i wonder how many of those "no no everything is fine with vet mode" folk actually said this cos they were drinking the impulse spam cool-ade.. take away their crutch and i'm guessing things won't be so fine.

I was never one of those guys. Even when I play the flavor of the month builds I'm still not strong lol, just one of those casual players.

Indeed it is a crutch, as there really isn't any other AOE that does enough damage to take out packs, at least for a sorcerer (that I've found, good to preface everthing with that).

Not a whine thread, just a "concern" right now, as I have no idea of the degree of the change. It may have little impact. It may wreck the skill entirely. Hopefully it's somewhere in the middle.

And please guys, the community is what usually makes or breaks a game, especially MMOs. Why the everlasting need to jump in and be so nasty?? Let's keep the flaming down and have an actual conversation please. Thanks in advance

This, plus the reduction of the ultimate generation, will certainly affect the AOE face-rolling (and yes, I took advantage of it), but I don't think it will eliminate my ability to take on the 5-pack mobs.

Like you said, another volcanic rune, maybe paying more attention to hardened ward, or thundering presence, possibly a different armor set, maybe adding some magicka armor and switching to the Thief mundus (now that they fixed it) instead of the Mage to get the extra crit.

I might have to actually pay attention to what types of mobs are in the group instead of just running in, tossing a volcanic rune and spamming Impulse.

When I see patch notes like this I take it as a challenge. It means I figured out a way to beat the game, and ZOS is pissed so they took it away. No worries, I'll adapt my play style, find another way. There's always a way .

They clearly don't want AoEs to be good in this game. Impulse was pretty much the last decent AoE.

I'll have to see how much they increased the cost, but I imagine its significant.

They've done nothing but nerf AoEs since September.

Just spec for single target and understand that this is their intention and likely won't change.

NordJitsu wrote: »

Just spec for single target and understand that this is their intention and likely won't change.

The fact that they decreased ultimate generation from AOE's but increased it for single target certainly gives credibility to that statement.

I will say that being able to face-roll a V9 public dungeon (which I noticed they are also making harder) as a V7 probably wasn't the intended way to play the game, but it literally was 1) head into group of mobs 2) toss volcanic rune 3) spam impulse 4) loot 5) laugh and 6) repeat till inventory full.

I am only VR2 so have not had to face the higher HP VR5+ content so my rotation may change, but for now I use:

Surge-> Harness Magika-> Volcanic Rune->Elemental Ringx3->Volcanic Rune ->Elemental Ring x ?

My initial VR is at range, timed to explode just after my first ER hits.

Think of the second VR as your main form of CC. The only time you should be placing it at your feet is when you are up against all melee mobs.

I place the second VR, then myself, with 2 goals in mind.

1. Interrupt the spell caster
2. Get the melee mobs to run into the rune circle.

If you have a ranged mob that backs away, VR him for 3+ sec CC but continue to burn the group down with ER

When I am down to 1 mob, I switch to my single target bar and MW to finish.

If there is a healer mob in the group, you need to get the second VR on it before it recovers from the first VR.

Absorption Field Ultimate makes this rotation easy mode. It was usually available every other rotation so I agree with the nerf.