Lack of support for melee sorcerer.

Erock25

I agree with the OP entirely. One of the main issues with Sorc trying to use melee is that we are the only class with 0 class skills that work on physical crit. Combine that with the fact that our really only significant in combat healing derives from crits, and you are stuck with a below average melee dps that also can not sustain HP.

@crescent I have spent countless hours as a Sorc in melee build and I feel your pain. Every single class spell that has any utility what so ever for a melee build has some ridiculous magicka costs.

Lightning Form and Daedric Mines need to be switched to physical crit and Deadric Mines needs its magicka cost significant reduced.

That would allow us to have use for Crit Surge, Lightning Form, Bound Armaments, and Daedric Mines to supplement our melee DPS role.

Crescent

I don't think they need to switch the crit stats. What they need to do is merge them. One crit stat alone.

Merge spell damage and weapon damage to be the highest of whatever you have for skill damage consideration as well.

Those two changes alone would go so far in opening up build variety. Splitting stats is always a bad idea. It forces highly specialized itemization and in turn a boatload of obsolete spells dependent on your gear.

Nerf the robes trait for magicka reduction costs and in turn reduce restoration staff spell costs if healers suffer from lossing passive magicka reduction from traits.

Reduce the cost of most dark magic and daedric summoning lines. The summons should scale off weapon/spell power, whichever one is higher.

The shield from Daedric Ward should be groupwide from some utility. Daedric Mines and Encase need heavy cost reductions.

Critical Surge should be halved in cost and have its duration increased to at least 35 seconds.

Daedric Curse needs to be 3 second detonation baseline and the aoe portion should be the same as its current direct damage. Make a morph take the place of velocious curse that makes the target take increased damage or reduce resistance after detonation.

The summons need not only better aoe protection but their HP needs to be increased so they're not worthless in dungeons, and the matriarch needs to be removed from the priority list for aggro. It's silly that mobs are rushing to the matriarch as soon as they spawn instead of the tank.

I would personally prefer that summons no longer are toggles and instead are a 30 second summon with proportionate power to its duration. That way sorcere play isn't so boring because 2 slots of their bar are taking up by passive pets so you only have 3 skills to use, one of which will be utility so really at most you have 1-2 attack skills if you have summons.

That way, it frees up slots for the sorcerer to have more interesting rotations while still calling on summons.

guybrushtb16_ESO

eliisra wrote: »

I actually wanted to make a battlemage archetype myself at some point. But my sorcerer was my first character, so I didn't know any better. I eventually understood the amazing flexibility of sorcerers, there's lighting staff or lighting staff, to choose from as dps.

But I think the upcoming buff to 2-Hander might make a mele sorc more interesting, especially with the buff to Cleave for AoE. That's really what you lack as sorc when you equip anything outside of Destruction Staff.

I too hope for a melee sorc buff, but I already fear the ramifications of not having the right racial. If I changed him to a stamina build, my altmer sorc would effectively not use his racials at all anymore, losing out on 22% stat points compared to an imperial. To me, that is kind of a big deal when it comes to stats.

Crescent

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

I actually wanted to make a battlemage archetype myself at some point. But my sorcerer was my first character, so I didn't know any better. I eventually understood the amazing flexibility of sorcerers, there's lighting staff or lighting staff, to choose from as dps.

But I think the upcoming buff to 2-Hander might make a mele sorc more interesting, especially with the buff to Cleave for AoE. That's really what you lack as sorc when you equip anything outside of Destruction Staff.

I too hope for a melee sorc buff, but I already fear the ramifications of not having the right racial. If I changed him to a stamina build, my altmer sorc would effectively not use his racials at all anymore, losing out on 22% stat points compared to an imperial. To me, that is kind of a big deal when it comes to stats.

Welcome to the world of Bosmer, Orcs and Nords, and to a lesser extent Khaajit (many people think Argonians are bad, but at endgame with pots their racial is actually one of the strongest racials).

As an Altmer you'll still get the benefit of a larger magicka pool as even stamina builds need to use a class skill or two.

Meanwhile Bosmer get 3% stamina boost with a crappy poison/disease resist, Nord don't get anything of worth at all, and Orcs well they're on the same boat.

Breton, Altmer,Redguard and Dunmer all provide potent 10%+ boosts (9%/6% for dunmer split on top of the actually useful fire resist) to either stamina or magicka. Imperial are plain OP with a 10% boost to both stamina and health on top of recovering 5% of their health on a melee proc (and redguards are the supreme stamina builds with the stamina recovery proc on TOP of their increased stamina).

Racials are some of the most lopsided character gains, and once they remove the softcaps the issues will become even more glaring.

Varicite

Which class currently functions "competitively" w/ a stamina build in Trials?

I'll wait. : )

Crescent

Varicite wrote: »

Which class currently functions "competitively" w/ a stamina build in Trials?

I'll wait. : )

The closest to that standard is the Nightblade. What pointless bait. The comparison is between melee builds not the obvious gap between range and melee.

Quite honestly part of the reason for the disparity boils down to encounter design and the amount of lethal crap thrown in melee range, drastically decreasing uptime on a boss.

Mendoze

I tried 2h full stamina medium armor sorcerer build myself, and it was pretty good in PVE grind. Nothing spectacular, but playable. I really liked Cleave Ultimate gain and Critical Surge was plenty enough to keep you alive. Even wrecking blow is good DPS in PVE, and Executioner to finish mobs, so everything looked quite rosy.

Then I tried it in PVP, and that was end of that try. All your support skills are so expensive that there's no way you can use them without light armor. So no shields, roots or thundering presence without constantly quaffing potions. Bound Armor you can use, but since it's power scales with magicka, it's already weaker than in magicka build. With luck after Critical Surge you maybe can use 1-2 Streaks before going OOM, and you can just forget roots and stuff. Everything is way too expensive. Wrecking Blow has way too long casting time to use unless your opponent is AFK or first time in Cyrodiil.

Also you are so squishy that it's not even funny. You don't have shields, Critical Rush is the only way to heal yourself, and against perma blocking you are totally useless. It's just like banging your head against a brick wall, and then the wall kicks you in the nuts. Your DPS is so pitiful that you can't even take out the shields from magicka build sorcerers, and DKs and Templars just laugh at you while they beat you to the pulp.

If Critical Surge was changed to heal 25% of damage done instead of critical hits, then maybe 2h stamina build sorcerer might be playable in PVP, but still nowhere near the magicka build. Currently it's only working build if you like to sneak and use wrecking blow on AFK enemies, but other than that, it's trash. But I think I read from guild summit news that devs are buffing 2h skill line, so maybe later....

dodgehopper_ESO

I have no idea why the OP didn't mention Conjured Ward/Hardened Ward. What an amazing ability. Combined with Bound Armor, and you're talking. Through in Crit Surge and huge chance to proc self heals on all your attacks and all I can say is Booyah. Sorc Tanks are awesome, and I've seen quite a few amazing ones in pvp. I have no idea what you're talking about. I've also seen some really scary things done by Sorc tanks who stack Hardened Ward with Harness Magicka (the morph from Annulment). Its just sick. You can even layer in more shields with other weapon skills or set bonuses. The only reason I think many Sorcs complain about the lack of melee magical abilities, is that they don't like getting Reflected (by DK or weapon skill). This is really small potatoes though, and overall I personally find Sorc to be an amazing class.

Erock25

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I have no idea why the OP didn't mention Conjured Ward/Hardened Ward. What an amazing ability. Combined with Bound Armor, and you're talking. Through in Crit Surge and huge chance to proc self heals on all your attacks and all I can say is Booyah. Sorc Tanks are awesome, and I've seen quite a few amazing ones in pvp. I have no idea what you're talking about. I've also seen some really scary things done by Sorc tanks who stack Hardened Ward with Harness Magicka (the morph from Annulment). Its just sick. You can even layer in more shields with other weapon skills or set bonuses. The only reason I think many Sorcs complain about the lack of melee magical abilities, is that they don't like getting Reflected (by DK or weapon skill). This is really small potatoes though, and overall I personally find Sorc to be an amazing class.

Hardened Ward is not worth the Magicka as a stamina/melee focused Sorc. Your whole post is directed towards a light armor/magicka focused Sorc which as you said, can get pretty tanky with shield stacking. This post is about an in your face 2h or dual wield build focusing on stamina and the lack of Sorc class abilities that complement that style. Hardened Ward is just plain awful for that build as it scales off a spell power / magicka.

Also I'm surprised you mention Crit Surge for PVP as if you are fighting anyone of even a mediocre level of skill/understanding in pvp, you will rarely crit at all as they have AT LEAST 40% crit reduction and usually much more.

Crescent

Hardened Ward costs more magicka than Thundering Presence and has a longer animation to boot.

I don't think these people get it, because most of them probably play with robes or they have not played something like a DK. All the other classes' skills costs significantly less magicka than most sorcerer skills.

And I've yet to see one convincing post about group utility on a sorcerer other than a single ultimate.

Nerouyn

Crescent wrote: »

There are TWO skills you can get out of any of your class trees on a melee sorcerer. Critical Surge and Thundering Presence/Boundless Storm. That's it.

I don't think that's true.

It is true that compared to other classes, sorcerers have fewer short range abilities. They've been designed as "casters". With shorter range abilities generally doing higher damage (to balance the lack of range) if you just used long range sorcerer abilities in melee combat you would be gimping yourself.

But it's not like you have to do that.

Bound armor increases armor. Sounds melee oriented.

Conjured ward would provide more defence.

Daedric mines / minefield is pbaoe, i.e. melee oriented.

That is a fairly limited pool of melee abilities compared to the other classes but that also means they have fewer long range abilities.

Crescent wrote: »

Critical Surge is just an inferior Igneous weapons. The entirety of a sorcerer's survival options is critical surge, the spell costs a metric ton more mana than the DK version, is single target so not even group support, and lasts far less time than the minute long DK enchantment.

I think you have that backwards because you're missing the most crucial difference - surge is much stronger than igneous weapons in the weapon damage bonus department.

I don't have a same level sorc/dk to tell you exactly how much stronger but I did last week and compared them and the difference was huge - as you'd expect given the other differences.

Surge also provides indirect group support because it significantly boosts your restoration staff heals.

Voodoo

I agree that sorcerer screams skirt/stick! BUT ZOS motto is "play the way you want". So with that motto they have really raised the bar in expectations and well... are falling way short!

With the play the way you want mentality I cant for the life of me understand why they chose to offer classes to begin with? They should have used Skyrims model and just let us build the class we wanted!

And so with that in mind even tho I'd say you are a sorcerer and should not be as good in melee as a NB or DK or even a Templar but ..hey they said "play the way you want"! So .. I am confused..

Crescent

Nerouyn wrote: »

Crescent wrote: »

There are TWO skills you can get out of any of your class trees on a melee sorcerer. Critical Surge and Thundering Presence/Boundless Storm. That's it.

I don't think that's true.

It is true that compared to other classes, sorcerers have fewer short range abilities. They've been designed as "casters". With shorter range abilities generally doing higher damage (to balance the lack of range) if you just used long range sorcerer abilities in melee combat you would be gimping yourself.

But it's not like you have to do that.

Bound armor increases armor. Sounds melee oriented.

Conjured ward would provide more defence.

Daedric mines / minefield is pbaoe, i.e. melee oriented.

That is a fairly limited pool of melee abilities compared to the other classes but that also means they have fewer long range abilities.

Crescent wrote: »

Critical Surge is just an inferior Igneous weapons. The entirety of a sorcerer's survival options is critical surge, the spell costs a metric ton more mana than the DK version, is single target so not even group support, and lasts far less time than the minute long DK enchantment.

I think you have that backwards because you're missing the most crucial difference - surge is much stronger than igneous weapons in the weapon damage bonus department.

I don't have a same level sorc/dk to tell you exactly how much stronger but I did last week and compared them and the difference was huge - as you'd expect given the other differences.

Surge also provides indirect group support because it significantly boosts your restoration staff heals.

Armor is an extraneous feature in a raid group. If everyone is doing their job correctly you should not be worrying about armor, because you will barely get hit.

DPS are brought to a group to kill things, kill them fast, and enable their group to do so quickly and efficiently as well.

And once again you just list skills without context.

I mean, have you used daedric mines at all? Those things costs literally 75% of your magicka bar for a single cast as a melee build. You can cast it exactly once before ruining your magicka bar, half of which you need to upkeep critical surge, and you want to have an extra reserve in case for endless wrath as an execute.

khele23eb17_ESO

bellanca6561n wrote: »

I'm lost. It's a sorcerer. Every definition I can find says magic user. Give me one, just one definition of the word that has sword, blade, or bow in it.

Does every class have to be able to do every single thing?

Sorry if I sound like one of those dismissive jerks but I honestly am puzzled. If you could help me understand where the expectation came from that magic users should have pronounced melee weapon skills I'd both appreciate it and be much less confused.

I suppose there was Peter Jackson's interpretation of Gandalf using a sword in some scenes but I've always looked at character creation as a series of decisions, opting for one thing at the expense of another. I never saw them as Swiss Army Knives.

You have to keep in mind each ESO class is supposed to contain several Elder Scrolls archetypes. There definitely should be place for a Spellblade build in the Sorc repertoire.

With that said, as a stam based NB im very envious of SRC's crit surge. I have very minor self healing in comparison and the damage bonus is just crazy

Varicite

Crescent wrote: »

Nerouyn wrote: »

Crescent wrote: »

There are TWO skills you can get out of any of your class trees on a melee sorcerer. Critical Surge and Thundering Presence/Boundless Storm. That's it.

I don't think that's true.

It is true that compared to other classes, sorcerers have fewer short range abilities. They've been designed as "casters". With shorter range abilities generally doing higher damage (to balance the lack of range) if you just used long range sorcerer abilities in melee combat you would be gimping yourself.

But it's not like you have to do that.

Bound armor increases armor. Sounds melee oriented.

Conjured ward would provide more defence.

Daedric mines / minefield is pbaoe, i.e. melee oriented.

That is a fairly limited pool of melee abilities compared to the other classes but that also means they have fewer long range abilities.

Crescent wrote: »

Critical Surge is just an inferior Igneous weapons. The entirety of a sorcerer's survival options is critical surge, the spell costs a metric ton more mana than the DK version, is single target so not even group support, and lasts far less time than the minute long DK enchantment.

I think you have that backwards because you're missing the most crucial difference - surge is much stronger than igneous weapons in the weapon damage bonus department.

I don't have a same level sorc/dk to tell you exactly how much stronger but I did last week and compared them and the difference was huge - as you'd expect given the other differences.

Surge also provides indirect group support because it significantly boosts your restoration staff heals.

Armor is an extraneous feature in a raid group. If everyone is doing their job correctly you should not be worrying about armor, because you will barely get hit.

DPS are brought to a group to kill things, kill them fast, and enable their group to do so quickly and efficiently as well.

And once again you just list skills without context.

I mean, have you used daedric mines at all? Those things costs literally 75% of your magicka bar for a single cast as a melee build. You can cast it exactly once before ruining your magicka bar, half of which you need to upkeep critical surge, and you want to have an extra reserve in case for endless wrath as an execute.

Well, sure, if you don't put any points / enchants / etc into Magicka, you won't be very effective at using your class skills.

My Sorc does just fine w/ just Crit Surge, Boundless Storm, and Bound Armaments as magicka skills (sometimes Degeneration) and the rest of the lineup is all stamina skills. Sometimes I throw Crystal Frag on the bar because it's cheap when it procs, and still hits decently hard.

The thing is that those buffs are all incredibly good, though they may be few. You don't need to spam any of those skills, so the magicka that they cost shouldn't be a huge concern as long as you are managing it properly.

It's true that Sorc doesn't have any great passives for stamina though, but they have some truly great magicka-based passives to make up for it. Power Stone, Capacitor, Disintegrate, Unholy Knowledge, Exploitation are all still very good passives for a stamina build.

dodgehopper_ESO

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've seen some Sorc Tanks that are absolutely beasts, both in terms of damage and resiliency. If conjured ward costs too much juice, then please don't ever play a Templar, you'll go insane with Templar power costs... and Blazing Shield only lasts six seconds. Cry me a river. I have a Vet Sorc, and I love it. I really can't understand why there is this bizarre notion that Sorcs can't use weapons, be tanks or even do exceedingly well in those areas.

If a Templar tank can manage to use his magical abilities, a Sorc can manage to do it (easier).

Hypertionb14_ESO

Melee on any class is boiled down to only a few class skills that boost damage or defense.

ON sorc that is Surge, lightning Form, and bound armor in general. most skills in use on a "melee" build is generally stamina based.

this is quite universal across all classes. Sorcs skills are fewer in number, but are effective enough that used smartly are all they really need. Surge alone is enough to soft cap weapon damage even on mage builds. Lightning form will soft cap both resistances.

Really, the small number of melee viable sorc skills is a none issue considering how effective the few they have are. on terms of what they can do with the same weapons as other classes, they have the advantage in terms of raw damage and defense.

in reality, the biggest lack of skills for sorcerer is melee viable offensive class skills, not moves that boost melee combat. Sorc was more made for ranged combat, not up close.

There is nothing wrong with the classes a having unique feeling to them.

eventide03b14a_ESO

Crescent wrote: »

Considering there are melee powerhouse mobs in game that are sorcerers, no I think it's you who hasn't played elder scrolls games. In every elder scrolls game melee sorcerers have been a thing.

I usually play as a thief type with conjuration and illusion actually. But no other TES game has made classes this linear. Don't get mad at me because that's the direction ZOS decided to take. I never wanted classes to begin with, but I'm playing their game the way they designed it. If you wanted to play your sorcerer as a DK then you should have rolled a DK instead of being angry that it doesn't perform like one.

So what if I get some defensive class skills that cost significant magicka to upkeep? In A group content PvE environment sorcerers are not brought in to tank (that would be DK and templars), I'm brought to DPS. So if my class isn't functioning competitively with a melee build, I get to complain.

I have seen very effective sorcerer tanks in PvE groups. But again this goes back to making poor choices to begin with. It really sounds like you wanted to play a DK all along.

I mean Nightblades moaned and cried about not having stamina builds until they got buffed through the roof, when they had the same option of going robe and staff and outputting 1300+ DPS. Why do you get to demand that your melee playstyle be supported when you have robes and staff options, yet when a sorcerer wants the same build variety you say I should have expected to be pigeonholed into robes and staves?

Blah, blah, blah... Same tired argument all over again. Again this is because they did a *** poor job of giving their rogue class the ability to use weapons and armor that is typical of similar classes in the genre. Did you somehow miss that there were 4 classes and that they happen to coincide with the 4 archetypes that are well established in the genre?

This is just outrageous, if my sorcerer is to be stuck with class skills that only synergize with a perceived role (ranged caster), then I demand both NB and DK's lose any synergy they can have with robes and staves, since dragonknights should obvious be using just plate and a 2hander and NB's only leather and dual wield/bow.

It's not outrageous, it's completely expected and no you don't get to demand anything. I didn't like the class idea from the beginning, even before beta. I have posted multiple times on this and other forums that we should just abandon the classes.

What a ridiculous argument and seriously this was the big mistake of dividing the schools/skills into 4 classes with a name, that people would start presuming about what each name should mean when in the elder scroll universe there was always flexibility.

My argument was actually well thought out. Your argument on the other hand was based solely on emotion. If you stopped your crying for even a minute and gave it some serious thought you would realize that the classes are the problem. No not the name of the classes but the entire idea of having classes. Nobody has to presume anything, the class descriptions and the skill lines are well defined. There were two options for this game.

1. You have classes. 1 for each archetype and they fall in line with the abilities established in the genre.
2. You have no classes and make it strictly a skill based game.

The problem lies in this illusion that it's not supposed to matter what class you take. I have no idea how ZOS ever got away with selling people on this, but the majority didn't say a word about it and that's how it stayed. If people had been more vocal about what was clearly a terrible idea from the beginning we might not even be having these pointless debates. I don't disagree with you that you shouldn't be able to play the way you want. I am just telling you that your expectations are unrealistic.

Nerouyn

So it seems at least you concede that surge isn't craptastic like you first claimed. That's something.

Crescent wrote: »

Armor is an extraneous feature in a raid group. If everyone is doing their job correctly you should not be worrying about armor, because you will barely get hit.

Crescent wrote: »

I mean, have you used daedric mines at all? Those things costs literally 75% of your magicka bar for a single cast as a melee build.

These two claims are contradictory.

If armor is extraneous then you could be wearing full light armor with all its associated magicka benefits, no?

I think I got you there

Crescent wrote: »

And once again you just list skills without context.

Pardon? Once again? When did I do it before?

And it has to be said, you didn't provide a context beyond "melee". So if your anti-melee-sorc rant has a context you chose to not to provide, who's at fault there?

Mendoze

If only our pets were better, then we could play Battlemages...Blades, Destruction, Conjuration etc. For example if that healing pet would actually heal you more in PVP, that would be threat enough so people would have to take it out first. If our tank/dps pet could do some nasty CC, those would actually be realistic targets for other players. Now they are just annoyances, and nothing more.

Varicite

Mendoze wrote: »

If only our pets were better, then we could play Battlemages...Blades, Destruction, Conjuration etc. For example if that healing pet would actually heal you more in PVP, that would be threat enough so people would have to take it out first. If our tank/dps pet could do some nasty CC, those would actually be realistic targets for other players. Now they are just annoyances, and nothing more.

Well, there's the Volatile Familiar.

That thing was pretty successfully used up for a while.

Still, I agree that Sorcs may not have a lot of skills that lend themselves to stamina-based melee combat, but the ones they do have are extremely good.

If we're talking about magicka-based melee combat, then yeah... Sorcs get the shaft there.

Crescent

Varicite wrote: »

Mendoze wrote: »

If only our pets were better, then we could play Battlemages...Blades, Destruction, Conjuration etc. For example if that healing pet would actually heal you more in PVP, that would be threat enough so people would have to take it out first. If our tank/dps pet could do some nasty CC, those would actually be realistic targets for other players. Now they are just annoyances, and nothing more.

Well, there's the Volatile Familiar.

That thing was pretty successfully used up for a while.

Still, I agree that Sorcs may not have a lot of skills that lend themselves to stamina-based melee combat, but the ones they do have are extremely good.

If we're talking about magicka-based melee combat, then yeah... Sorcs get the shaft there.

Volatile familiar was never successfully used by any stamina build, ever.

The explosion at something genereous like 1600 magicka (most actually run with around 1300 magicka) gives you a 320 potency AoE, which is pitiful and also expensive considering the costs of summoning.

Not to mention the pets do no damage whatsoever until you start stacking upwards of 2300 magicka.

You just bring the restoring twilight for the 10% extra magicka regen aura.

Varicite

Crescent wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Mendoze wrote: »

If only our pets were better, then we could play Battlemages...Blades, Destruction, Conjuration etc. For example if that healing pet would actually heal you more in PVP, that would be threat enough so people would have to take it out first. If our tank/dps pet could do some nasty CC, those would actually be realistic targets for other players. Now they are just annoyances, and nothing more.

Well, there's the Volatile Familiar.

That thing was pretty successfully used up for a while.

Still, I agree that Sorcs may not have a lot of skills that lend themselves to stamina-based melee combat, but the ones they do have are extremely good.

If we're talking about magicka-based melee combat, then yeah... Sorcs get the shaft there.

Volatile familiar was never successfully used by any stamina build, ever.

The explosion at something genereous like 1600 magicka (most actually run with around 1300 magicka) gives you a 320 potency AoE, which is pitiful and also expensive considering the costs of summoning.

Not to mention the pets do no damage whatsoever until you start stacking upwards of 2300 magicka.

You just bring the restoring twilight for the 10% extra magicka regen aura.

I never said that Volatile Familiar was used widely by stamina builds, please don't put words in my mouth. Or anything else, for that matter. : P

I was replying to a post talking about the uselessness of all of the pets, so I mentioned probably the only non useless pet in PvP situations.

The thread is just talking about "melee sorcerer". I'm not sure if you realize this, but there's a huge number of melee builds that are focused on magicka / spell damage as well.

I did, however, specify that as far as a magicka-based melee goes, Sorc gets the shaft.

Habbal

I've played dw sorc since launch. Recently I've reached vr14 and I can do around 800+ dps, with having legendary weapons. Disappointing really, when other classes that meant to be melee (DK, NB) can do insane dmg with magicka builds.

I use Crit surge and rapid strikes in Trial boss fights. I've tried Thundering presence on normal mobs, but I just did less dps than without it. Strange... it might be just a dps meter issue.
Keeping up both Crit surge and Thundering presence in Trials is quite impossible IMO, due to lack of magicka.
I use medium armor 7/7, Hunding's Rage (4) and Night's Mother's Gaze (5). My weapon dmg is on the soft cap, so I thought permanent armor decrease is better. My ultimate is Flawless dawnbreaker.
I'd have some questions if you don't mind.

I'd be curious what's your avarage dps in Trials, what build, rotation and gear you use?

What are your stats (HP, stam, magicka)?

Any nice Accessory set you would recommend?
Also does Encase work on Bosses?


Thanks for your reply in advance.

khele23eb17_ESO

Habbal wrote: »

I've played dw sorc since launch. Recently I've reached vr14 and I can do around 800+ dps, with having legendary weapons. Disappointing really, when other classes that meant to be melee (DK, NB) can do insane dmg with magicka builds.

Youre saying that as if dk and nb melee dps was much better...

Khivas_Carrick

Aye, to the men above me here, this is an issue stemming from a dire imbalance between melee and ranged

Crescent

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Habbal wrote: »

I've played dw sorc since launch. Recently I've reached vr14 and I can do around 800+ dps, with having legendary weapons. Disappointing really, when other classes that meant to be melee (DK, NB) can do insane dmg with magicka builds.

Youre saying that as if dk and nb melee dps was much better...

Yeah, no, melee NB are very capable of 1-1.2k DPS on their melee builds.

Melee NB will always be better than sorcerer because:

- It has more self buffs that boost damage and more debuffs that decrease resistance.

With Power Drain you outmatch critical surge alone.

- On top of that you get Haste, which along with changes now also decreases animation times. 30% attack speed increase is immense.

- Mark Target is one of the best debuffs in the game.

- Actual stamina regen. Sorcerer has no stamina regen sources AT ALL. You get 15% extra from a trait. 37% stamina recovery increase from haste morph.

- And if by some reason you are really bad at stamina management with all that, you get 15% increased effect from any potion and leeching strikes.

The difference between a stamina sorc and a stamina NB is night and day.

Also, your finisher is stronger to boot and can be used at 25% instead of 20%.

What sorcerers were supposed to have to make up for that was the daedric summons, but Daedric Summoning sucks big time, the pets are single target whereas the NB's powers apply to his AoE as well. And the pets die if something as much sneezes on them.

And said pets take on 2 slots instead of one while doing miserable DPS and for some reason the twilight has massive threat generation, a 2 sec cast time, and both summons cost 60% of a magicka bar each to resummon.

Varicite

Crescent wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Habbal wrote: »

I've played dw sorc since launch. Recently I've reached vr14 and I can do around 800+ dps, with having legendary weapons. Disappointing really, when other classes that meant to be melee (DK, NB) can do insane dmg with magicka builds.

Youre saying that as if dk and nb melee dps was much better...

Yeah, no, melee NB are very capable of 1-1.2k DPS on their melee builds.

Melee NB will always be better than sorcerer because:

- It has more self buffs that boost damage and more debuffs that decrease resistance.

With Power Drain you outmatch critical surge alone.

- On top of that you get Haste, which along with changes now also decreases animation times. 30% attack speed increase is immense.

- Mark Target is one of the best debuffs in the game.

- Actual stamina regen. Sorcerer has no stamina regen sources AT ALL. You get 15% extra from a trait. 37% stamina recovery increase from haste morph.

- And if by some reason you are really bad at stamina management with all that, you get 15% increased effect from any potion and leeching strikes.

The difference between a stamina sorc and a stamina NB is night and day.

Also, your finisher is stronger to boot and can be used at 25% instead of 20%.

What sorcerers were supposed to have to make up for that was the daedric summons, but Daedric Summoning sucks big time, the pets are single target whereas the NB's powers apply to his AoE as well. And the pets die if something as much sneezes on them.

And said pets take on 2 slots instead of one while doing miserable DPS and for some reason the twilight has massive threat generation, a 2 sec cast time, and both summons cost 60% of a magicka bar each to resummon.

Surge is better in any single-target situation than Power Drain, by far.

Haste is pretty meh atm, but it may become nicer w/ the proposed changes. Currently, it's not really worth a slot on your bar unless you're using it for one of the morphs (heavy attack damage or stam regen).

Agreed about the stam regen, Sorc has 0. What Sorc does get are much better magicka-based passives than NB, allowing you to maintain buffs better.

Mark Target doesn't work on bosses, afaik. I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that it's been tested in the past.

Impale is better by itself than Mage's Fury simply due to being able to use it 5% faster, however... why are we completely discounting Disintegrate procs now, which are resource free mini-executes that fire passively for Sorcs?

Melee NB is better than Sorc because it actually has a few melee range skills and good stam regen. However, those melee range skills aren't going to come into play often in a stamina build.

If your Sorc can only do 800 dps, that's a problem w/ you, not the class. Even melee Sorcs should have no issue breaking 1k dps in legendary gear, because let's just face it - the high dps melee specs are very similar.

There's nothing preventing a Sorc from running a similar build to Templars and NBs who are parsing 1k+.

Crescent

I didn't say melee sorcerers were doing 800 DPS. Talk about putting words in people's mouths. I said NB were better.

And quite honestly, how many encounters in this game don't involve more than one target? Part of the reason why staff builds are so dominant is because the game's content is an AoE fest and nothing beats Impulse spam.

30% attack speed increase including on animations is not "meh". Sorry if you have trouble understanding its significance. Disintegrate is a tiny contribution on a 6% proc chance. Impale not only happens faster, it does more damage and guess what, it scales with weapon crit, as all the melee range NB class skills do.

Sorc pulling 1k-1.1k DPS is still pretty terrible when you consider a 200 DPS difference against other stamina builds, and the only utility that melee sorcerer brings is Suppression Field.

Moreover, in any fight where bursting down targets is important, the melee sorcerer is at a disadvantage, unlike caster sorcerer and melee NB and Templar and DK, who have skills that spike very well. All you have as a sorcerer is your flying blade spam.

Varicite

Crescent wrote: »

I didn't say melee sorcerers were doing 800 DPS. Talk about putting words in people's mouths. I said NB were better.

This part wasn't referring to you personally. Earlier in the thread, someone had said their Sorc could only do 800 dps w/ legendary weapons. Sorry for the confusion.

Crescent wrote: »

30% attack speed increase including on animations is not "meh".

Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. But that's not how Haste actually works currently.

It decreases the time between attacks; the ~1.3 second cooldown before you can light attack again, it's 30% taken from that. So now you are attacking every 0.91 seconds instead of 1.3, which is still decent. But it's not what you are describing.

I don't disagree w/ the rest of your post, honestly. I never said that Sorcs were better than NBs anywhere in my post, and am pretty sure that I actually said they were worse.

I just don't feel the differences are quite as glaring as some.