Fixing Sorceres in 1.6

NotSo

The reason I state that the current Lightning Splash only hits 4 times and the 1.6 Lightning Splash only hits 9 times is because, in my experience, the first .5 seconds has always been the cast time and so the remaining 2 seconds allows for only 4 hits or 9 hits respectively.

Also 10x multiplier needs to have rebalances taken into consideration. I decided to give you values based on the screen shots alone as we don't know what the rebalances are making simple 10x multipliers an obsolete way of figuring damage numbers.

---

Here is how Nightreaver got his math. If I hit 92 damage every .5 seconds you only need to double that for damage per second. As most of us can guess, 92 x 2 = 184 not 153.3 (wtf? Just wait for it). If we include the .5 second cast time then you get a wopping 147.2 dps (this is considering 2.5 seconds where only 4 damage tics happen). If we include a .5 second cast time with 5 tics of damage (3 seconds total) we get 153.3¯.

(92) x (5) / (6) x (2)
(460) / (6) x (2)
(76.6¯) x (2)
(153.3¯)
(damage tic) x (number of tics) / (number of half seconds) x (2)

[because we are working with .5 seconds and the x2 is on the end to change it to damage per second instead of damage per half second]

But I've still only been able to get 4 tics of damage so while Nightreaver's math is right, the dps is still wrong because I'm doing 147.2 dps.

Joy_Division

Gorthax wrote: »

Nightreaver wrote: »

DeLindsay wrote: »

Not one single ability that NB's have can be remotely considered an emergency heal. Yes we have abilities that heal us, all but one require an enemy target to activate/heal.

If someone is in combat and they're not targeting an enemy then Healing may not be their biggest problem.

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

My Lightning Flood hits for around 92 damage four times (368 damage) which is a little over 10% of a high hp player (before resistances).
This Lighting Pool hits for 382 damage nine(?) times (3438 damage) which is like 24% of this guy's hp seen below; or, if all his attribute points were health (around 20000 health) then it's like 17%.

This is assuming that the Lightning Pool seen above is cast by a vr14 in a magicka spec. If not, then it is probably a lot stronger than this.
Obviously this isn't doing more damage if we look at just four tics but the increased duration definitely makes a difference.

Your Lightning Flood should be hitting 5 times so at 92 damage it should be doing 460 damage. (153.3 DPS)
In 1.6 it looks like everything is 10x what it is on Live so to compare the damage in the picture to Live I divided the damage by 10 which results in 38.2 x 9 for 343.8 damage. (68.7 DPS)
I personally would much rather have a targeted AOE that does 460 damage over 3 seconds than one that does 343 over 5 seconds. The AOE is small enough that if the enemy is concerned about the damage all they need do is take a step in any direction and they'll be out of it.

your math is ALL wrong @Nightreaver‌ lol look at the screen cap I quote BELOW




this picture shows 382 EVERY .5 seconds for FIVE seconds. Either get your info correct, or stop bringing doom and gloom here. The more you know makes ignorance a non existing issue my friends

link to see it blown up is here

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/357/8/f/untitled_1_by_notsoaccurateno1-d8azmcm.jpg

So thats 382 damage every .5 seconds for five seconds is 3820 damage IF they are stupid enough to stand in it. I am assuming that this character they shown is NOT geared out. So every other characters results may vary.

You are aware that ZoS is in essence adding an extra "0" to all numbers to deceive the non-mathematically inclined that 0.5% of whatever actually means something?

So your "382" damage every half-second is more akin to 38...

Tolerable if all enemies were kind enough to stand in the thing the whole time. But that word kind of fits the state of sorcs ATM. They are tolerable DPS companions if they bring along their negates...

Gorthax

Joy_Division wrote: »

Gorthax wrote: »

Nightreaver wrote: »

DeLindsay wrote: »

Not one single ability that NB's have can be remotely considered an emergency heal. Yes we have abilities that heal us, all but one require an enemy target to activate/heal.

If someone is in combat and they're not targeting an enemy then Healing may not be their biggest problem.

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

My Lightning Flood hits for around 92 damage four times (368 damage) which is a little over 10% of a high hp player (before resistances).
This Lighting Pool hits for 382 damage nine(?) times (3438 damage) which is like 24% of this guy's hp seen below; or, if all his attribute points were health (around 20000 health) then it's like 17%.

This is assuming that the Lightning Pool seen above is cast by a vr14 in a magicka spec. If not, then it is probably a lot stronger than this.
Obviously this isn't doing more damage if we look at just four tics but the increased duration definitely makes a difference.

Your Lightning Flood should be hitting 5 times so at 92 damage it should be doing 460 damage. (153.3 DPS)
In 1.6 it looks like everything is 10x what it is on Live so to compare the damage in the picture to Live I divided the damage by 10 which results in 38.2 x 9 for 343.8 damage. (68.7 DPS)
I personally would much rather have a targeted AOE that does 460 damage over 3 seconds than one that does 343 over 5 seconds. The AOE is small enough that if the enemy is concerned about the damage all they need do is take a step in any direction and they'll be out of it.

your math is ALL wrong @Nightreaver‌ lol look at the screen cap I quote BELOW




this picture shows 382 EVERY .5 seconds for FIVE seconds. Either get your info correct, or stop bringing doom and gloom here. The more you know makes ignorance a non existing issue my friends

link to see it blown up is here

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/357/8/f/untitled_1_by_notsoaccurateno1-d8azmcm.jpg

So thats 382 damage every .5 seconds for five seconds is 3820 damage IF they are stupid enough to stand in it. I am assuming that this character they shown is NOT geared out. So every other characters results may vary.

You are aware that ZoS is in essence adding an extra "0" to all numbers to deceive the non-mathematically inclined that 0.5% of whatever actually means something?

So your "382" damage every half-second is more akin to 38...

Tolerable if all enemies were kind enough to stand in the thing the whole time. But that word kind of fits the state of sorcs ATM. They are tolerable DPS companions if they bring along their negates...

how are you only getting 38 damage every .5 seconds, every .5 seconds it tics for 382....... Seriously, explain this

Gorthax

I mean literally read the damn skill lol even the current one in live is 112 damage every .5 seconds and it IS 112 damage every .5 seconds. but by your number crunching it is only 11 in live right now?

NotSo

Also I think everybody would benefit if we all got into the mind set of using the raw numbers in the screen shots instead of dividing or multiplying everything by 10 to see how well it matches up with our current numbers.

Reason being that by these numbers, in the image below, it's not going to be as simple as x10 because of rebalancing.

In the image we can see that this vr14 character has 9755 (+4270) health and will have 14025 health after applying 35 attribute points. Each health attribute point is worth 122 health, which, if we take 10x into consideration is less than our 15 health per point we are getting now.
4270 / 35 = 122
Stamina is at 9623 (+2997) with 27 attribute points. That's 111 per point.

If... these numbers are constant then with the total 62 attribute points we could have either 17,319 health or 16,505 stamina (I have currently 2716 health and 2194 stamina as raw naked numbers that I can max with).

recap:
____________current______ x10_______actual_______% difference
health______2716________27,160_____17,319______-36.23%
stamina_____2194________21,940_____16,505______-24.77%
'current' is while naked and no food (may have some cyrodiil buffs but it can't be much because AD own one scroll and 3 keeps in Thornblade)
'actual' is as shown in the image plus 62 attribute points but also includes whatever bonus effects that are not shown.
This particular character has armor equipped so we cannot tell if this also includes extra stamina or health enchantments. But if 'yes' then the % difference is even lower.

The point I'm trying to get across is that while DPS looks like it will be the same or even lower than now, it is still more % damage versus this lower amount of health in 1.6
To further illustrate, here is my previously posted damage maths versus the healths.
____________damage________health_________% damage
now(4 tics)__368____________2,716_________13.549%
1.6 (4 tics)__1,528__________17,319_________8.822%
1.6 (9 tics)__3,438__________17,319________19.851%

Oh wait 1.6 is actually weaker DPS but not because of 10x math and I think the extended duration on Lightning Splash more than makes up for that. IT'S LIKE A 40% INCREASE IN DAMAGE OVERALL



@everybody crying about folks just stepping out of aoe's, yuh that's going to happen no matter what aoe is on the floor but Lightning Floods' aoe is huge so why wouldn't you pick that over Liquid Lightnings measly 70% bonus damage for the first tic? People who constantly block will be taking an awfully long time walking out of a lightning flood, and if they dodgeroll that's more stamina loss for them.

NotSo

AAAAAllllssssoooooo lemme just double post here
Because of the way the diminishing returns works with champion points, it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that attribute points also function relatively the same way now; so while I said health was worth 122 and stamina was worth 111, that might be true at a moderate amount of points spent, they might be worth a lot less with more points in a given attribute.

Lets just assume that after the first point spent giving 150, the next subsequent point in that attribute would have a 1% reduced effectiveness.
1st point is worth 150
2nd point is worth 148.5
3rd point is worth 147.015
. . .
10th point is worth 137.027
. . .
35th point is worth 106.583
. . .
OK I actually wrote all the -1%s 35 times and I added it all up (I did some previous rounding to shrink numbers to 3 decimals) then divided by 35 and I got an average of 123.859 so this is pretty f***ing close to the 122 point worth.

I'm only doing this to keep everybody open minded about how these stats might have changed. No more maths for me today please.
Also can I get a +insightful for my bad work?

Dymence

Gorthax wrote: »

I mean literally read the damn skill lol even the current one in live is 112 damage every .5 seconds and it IS 112 damage every .5 seconds. but by your number crunching it is only 11 in live right now?

You don't really seem to get it at all. Look at the image. All the numbers are inflated. People will have around 10000 hp and perhaps magicka, the skill is costing 2485 mana, damage is extremely inflated, so everything is like x10 from what it is on live. If you then look at the damage per second on the ability in the image, you can divide it by 10 to get a number that could be accurate on live.

Nightreaver

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

But I've still only been able to get 4 tics of damage so while Nightreaver's math is right, the dps is still wrong because I'm doing 147.2 dps .

According to the tooltip the duration is 3 seconds so (5 x 92) / 3 = 153.3
Not sure what I am doing differently but I've tried on both Live and PTS, using the base ability and both morphs and in EVERY configuration it hits 5 times EVERY time.

Edit: I think I see why you might only be seeing 4 ticks. If you are casting the Large AOE version from a distance then it seems to be taking mobs 2 seconds to run across only hitting them for 3 or 4 ticks. But if a mob remains in the AOE for the duration it should be getting hit 5 times.

Gorthax wrote: »

how are you only getting 38 damage every .5 seconds, every .5 seconds it tics for 382....... Seriously, explain this

It's been explained multiple times now, all you need do is actually read someone's post other than your own. As you said "The more you know makes ignorance a non existing issue my friends "
Look at the Spear Shards shown in your link from ESO live. It states "restoring 25% Stamina plus an additional 1700 Stamina over 10 seconds." Now look at the tooltip for the same Templar ability on Live and you will see "restoring 25% Stamina plus an additional 170 Stamina over 10 seconds." I use that example since it isn't affected by different amounts of Magicka, Stamina or Health. For 1.6, most numbers are being increased by a factor of 10.
For a more realistic idea you need to look at the pictures in terms of what it would be like on Live and to accomplish that you need to divide the number by 10.

Gorthax wrote: »

I mean literally read the damn skill lol even the current one in live is 112 damage every .5 seconds and it IS 112 damage every .5 seconds. but by your number crunching it is only 11 in live right now?

Um no, the numbers on Live are the numbers on Live. A difficult concept to grasp I know. Except that it ISN'T damage every 0.5 seconds. The tooltip states that the ability has a duration of 3 seconds which implies it should hit 6 times but it only hits 5 times.

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

Also I think everybody would benefit if we all got into the mind set of using the raw numbers in the screen shots instead of dividing or multiplying everything by 10 to see how well it matches up with our current numbers.
Reason being that by these numbers, in the image below, it's not going to be as simple as x10 because of rebalancing.

I agree.
The purpose of my post is so people won't look at that picture and think "WOW, they really listened to Sorcerers and buffed our Lightning AOE from 92 to 383 per tick AND extended the duration."

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

Oh wait 1.6 is actually weaker DPS but not because of 10x math and I think the extended duration on Lightning Splash more than makes up for that. IT'S LIKE A 40% INCREASE IN DAMAGE OVERALL.

In a straight comparison with no influence from other factors the new AOE would be a decrease in both overall damage and DPS. But....

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

The point I'm trying to get across is that while DPS looks like it will be the same or even lower than now, it is still more % damage versus this lower amount of health in 1.6

This and any number of other factors we know nothing about yet could make the new version better than its current form in comparison to other abilities and classes.
I also noticed the difference in the Stamina and Health attributes and came up with the same numbers but had no way to explain the difference so chose not to raise the issue. Diminishing returns might explain the difference for Health but not the increase in the Stamina attribute. My guess is they decided to assign different values to the attributes for balancing concerns. But whatever the new allocation will be for Attributes it will still be 10x what it would be currently on Live.

ian92415b14_ESO wrote: »

@everybody crying about folks just stepping out of aoe's, yuh that's going to happen no matter what aoe is on the floor but Lightning Floods' aoe is huge

Just want to say before someone starts crying "Nerf the Sorcerer AOE with huge radius that it is only huge relative to the base ability. Even with the *Huge* increase it would remain one of the smaller AOEs in the game.

And finally, @ian92415b14_ESO...
+1 Insight for catching that change to attributes.

zaria

Gorthax wrote: »

Now that I think about it, Lightning Splash is very lack luster compared to that shard they are showing in the picture. one is INSTANT 1600+ damage, and the other is only going to hurt them for 382 damage....

WTF @zos ..... what are you thinking? The shards cost less and is instant damage. Lightning splash cost more and will usually only hit people for the first tic....so 382 damage for 2566 magicka?!

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Please have them look into this......this is crazy! @DeLindsay‌ did you notice that?

Do not get it, they said they should increase lighting flood duration from 2.5 to 5 seconds, if they also drop the dps to the less of the half it would be an obvious nerf making it less relevant than now, not only would it do less damage but also take longer time doing that damage.

Now as the AOE cap is increased this will do increased damage against huge groups however the same is true for spear shards who has the benefit of twice the radius or four times the area,

Currently the only benefit of lighting splash over impulse is that its targetable and it don't require the destruction staff active.
The longer duration might make it relevant as an DoT effect against groups, so you drop it do impulse or hit an single target, then recast it.

Flaminir

I don't know if anybody has read the article on Tamriel Foundary today where they did an interview with Eric Wrobel about update 6... the interview was done BEFORE last weeks ESO live so a few questions that came out of that haven't been answered, but there is more info & detail that will affect us poor neglected Sorc's... I've put the highlights in this post:

"In addition with ability re-balancing, we picked a better ultimate like Dragonknight Standard as an example of where we want Ultimates to be and worked to push other Ultimates to that level of power instead of bringing things down. So some Ultimates will be more powerful in 1.6."

"We’ve done some cool stuff with Negate. The morph that gave resources back now gives Major Regeneration to everyone in the area, and in addition, we gave it a new Major Buff or Debuff it didn’t have. It’s really good now, Negate’s solid."

" Like, with the Storm Atronach now gives you and the person who activates the synergy and the Storm Atronach a damage buff, so people are now fighting to press that button."

"We’ve changed Destructive Touch into a damage over time effect, so now it’s useful to have both going at the same time." Ok... It's not a Sorc specific skill... but we are hardly using those now anyway... we may finally have a DoT we can use! (yeah yeah I know it sthe same for everybody... but at this stage I'm just greatful for anything we can get our hands on!).

" Are there going to be changes to the Restoration Staff to help balance it more with the Templar Breath of Life ability? We feel that non-Templar healers have a rough time in many fights, so it will be interesting to see what 1.6 brings in that regard.
EW: The Restoration ability that provides the shield is the ability that supposed to fill that role because it scales up in effectiveness the lower the health the target was. There was a crucial bug that was hurting that where if you recast a damage shield on a target that already had a damage shield, it wouldn’t refresh the value of the damage shield. So if a target had a damage shield value of 200 and it got knocked down to 100, recasting the ability wouldn’t raise it back up to 200. We have gone in and buffed a lot of the weaker used class abilities. For example, the Siphoning Nightblade Ultimate, there is a morph now that heals all your allies when you use it, it also gives them the Major Healing Taken buff, so that’s a really powerful tool that Nightblades have to heal now. We’re looking at having all of the characters fulfill all of the roles."

" Right now, one of the top builds in our DPS test has been the Sorcerer pet build, specifically we made a new morph of Daedric Curse to increase the damage pets do, and then you can also get the shield morph that increases damage that pets do, and those things synergize really well. We’ve also made other general improvements, like they look at your critical attacks. We’ve made some tweaks so that build is effective, but not the king of damage"

"We have gone in and buffed a lot of the weaker used class abilities." So even though we are worried after last friday's 'pet-gate'... it sounds like there may have been tweaks to a number of other skills....

The source is here: tamrielfoundry.com/2014/12/champion-system-qa-pt2/

Whilst I'm still very very concerned... there was enough here for me to be able to at least buy into the position of 'lets wait till the patch notes are released & see'.

DeLindsay

@davedwildebeast ty for the post. I'm one of the few that isn't worried about any of the changes because it's all hearsay and speculation until it's live, we'll all get a better handle on it once it's on the PTS here in a week or 2.

Flaminir

Hey @DeLindsay .... I'm somewhere in the middle... whilst we don't know much, the changes they had said about on ESO live made me very VERY concerned! But that's been mixed with a load of hearsay & speculation now as you say...

I still don't like the changes they mentioned (Surge changes being at the heart of that).... but at least now I can see a couple of other things that sound pretty good... and enough to make me able to wait & see without being as worried..

(I'm still levelling a DK now just incase though! )

NordJitsu

davedwildebeast wrote: »

Hey @DeLindsay .... I'm somewhere in the middle... whilst we don't know much, the changes they had said about on ESO live made me very VERY concerned! But that's been mixed with a load of hearsay & speculation now as you say...

I still don't like the changes they mentioned (Surge changes being at the heart of that).... but at least now I can see a couple of other things that sound pretty good... and enough to make me able to wait & see without being as worried..

(I'm still levelling a DK now just incase though! )

Im hopefull but not expecting much. The change to surge is a pretty big hit if you're a magicka sorc and it will take a lot of buffs in other places to overcome that.

NordJitsu

I've been thinking about this and the best thing to do may be to just make the existing damage skills hit harder. Buff crystal frags damage and make it proc 50% of the time you cast a spell. Buff curses damage.

Obviously still fix Bolt Escape.

Exstazik

Current bugs:
-volatile familiar didn't stun after explosion
-Crystal Fragment proc not instant

Kilandros

I just wish they weren't forcing Pets builds for Sorc DPS. I don't want to use pets. There should be alternatives to pet builds.

NordJitsu

Kilandros wrote: »

I just wish they weren't forcing Pets builds for Sorc DPS. I don't want to use pets. There should be alternatives to pet builds.

Like, idk, a DPS caster?

Boy that would be a weird thing to have in an mmo.

Kilandros

NordJitsu wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

I just wish they weren't forcing Pets builds for Sorc DPS. I don't want to use pets. There should be alternatives to pet builds.

Like, idk, a DPS caster?

Boy that would be a weird thing to have in an mmo.

Crazy, right? I dunno man, maybe the notion of a Sorcerer caster DPS is just wild of an idea. The world isn't ready.

Gorthax

If you are a sorc and NOT using melee then you are doing something wrong. At least that is what I am constantly being told..... What is wrong with wanting to be a viable staff user? Is that not an option anymore lol

Derra

Put on some heavy armor dude. Thats what the sorc is about.

Gorthax

Derra wrote: »

Put on some heavy armor dude. Thats what the sorc is about.

Not appropriate for my character, so why would I compromise the way he is meant to be? That goes with the logic of "just grab sword and shield if you want to be good"

Now for my melee sorc (whom I greatly despise btw) he is wearing heavy armor and I remember why I do not like melee. Not for me.

Jahosefat

Derra wrote: »

Put on some heavy armor dude. Thats what the sorc is about.

Link please?

Septimus_Magna

Gorthax wrote: »

If you are a sorc and NOT using melee then you are doing something wrong. At least that is what I am constantly being told..... What is wrong with wanting to be a viable staff user? Is that not an option anymore lol

Lol, I've seen about 0 successful melee sorcs in trails so far. It might be fun for veteran dungeons but it has no place in end game pve.

Septimus_Magna

Jahosefat wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Put on some heavy armor dude. Thats what the sorc is about.

Link please?

No just kidding, heavy armor is useless if you're not tanking. If you die from melee attacks just make an jewelry enchantment with +600 armor but dont bother with heavy armor.

NordJitsu

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Gorthax wrote: »

If you are a sorc and NOT using melee then you are doing something wrong. At least that is what I am constantly being told..... What is wrong with wanting to be a viable staff user? Is that not an option anymore lol

Lol, I've seen about 0 successful melee sorcs in trails so far. It might be fun for veteran dungeons but it has no place in end game pve.

Melee/bow Sorcs can be good in PvP as well.

Stamina builds are great right now. It's magicka builds that need the most work, which is why this nerf to Surge (only affecting magicka sorcs) is so concerning.

Septimus_Magna

Stamina builds often lack ultimate gain and Negate is sorcs best skill so that makes stamina builds less viable imo, especially for end game pve.

I agree the surge changes will have a big impact on many sorcs, also with the nerf of light armor sorcs will become a lot more squishy without self-heals. Hopefully the spell power buff from the new surge will be substantial so at least the dps will be good.

NordJitsu

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Stamina builds often lack ultimate gain and Negate is sorcs best skill so that makes stamina builds less viable imo, especially for end game pve.

Only true when they focus on single target. Have you heard of Carve?

Jaerlach

Gyudan wrote: »

DeLindsay wrote: »

Leon119 wrote: »

of course because when you hear the word sorcerer you think : thats someone with a huge sword. No way he casts spells....

It doesn't matter what you or I or 100 other people think Sorcerers should be like, I just stated what ZoS designed them to be like, and that's using a 2H and Crit Surge meshes perfectly with that concept.

If templars are supposed to have a restoration staff for healing, DKs a sword and shielf for tanking, NBs dual daggers for assassination and Sorcerers a 2-Handed sword for trolling around, who's wielding the destro staff?

When I look up "sorcerer" on google image, I do not see many swords. Maybe the class should have been named battlemage if it was intended to benefit more extensively from a melee weapon.

I agree with @Leon119 though. The new morph granting both spell and weapon damage will be at best half useless for staff users, since neither the weapon skills nor the light/heavy attacks will be scaling based on weapon damage.

Every class in this game is intended to be played in all 4 roles. Sorcerors do not have any more design preference for magicka dps over stamina than dks have preference for tanking over either dps variant.

Magicka sorc dps is a bit lacking, as is templar. Stamina is good on all 4 classes. All 4 classes can also succeed as tanks and healers.

While magicka sorc needs some help, let's stop talking as though it isn't performing as it should in the other 3 specs. Stamina dps sorcerors are probably the 2nd strongest stamina dps due to critical surge. Sorc tanking is even fine though quite rare.

Jaerlach

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Jahosefat wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Put on some heavy armor dude. Thats what the sorc is about.

Link please?

No just kidding, heavy armor is useless if you're not tanking. If you die from melee attacks just make an jewelry enchantment with +600 armor but dont bother with heavy armor.

The fastest vet dsa time on north America features ajyn, a dual wield khajit sorc.

High end stamina dps is rarer because it needs more trials drops to shine, like two fanged snake.

A magicka dk uses crafted gear and green soulshine.

Xendyn

I'm just crossing my lightning bolts and hoping for the best here. I def do Not want to be a pet-herder, had enough of that junk with Loremasters in LOTRO. One of the things that attracted me to ESO was the ability to be a nuking caster dps again.
Please dont take that away ZOS

signed, your friendly neighborhood Glass Cannon