Sorcerer Feedback for Eric Wrobel and the Combat Team

Jahosefat

Brandalf wrote: »

Jahosefat wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

XEVENEX wrote: »

Hard casting Crystal Fragments is not a viable option for PvP DPS for two reasons. It is extremely vulnerable to interrupt and reflect abilities. If this is intended to be our main sustained DPS skill then it needs to be noninterruptible or instant cast. This would be overpowered so please, unnerf Crushing Shock or give us something similar as a class skill.

On the PTS, Crystal Fragments is no longer procing on many of our abilities including Streak and Encase. We've been quite vocal about this and haven't heard any feedback on the issue. If this is a bug, please confirm that. If this is a ninja nerf, then ninja unnerf that stuff posthaste.

If you are changing the Expert Mage passive, then the damage boost needs to be exceedingly powerful and/or the cost reduction it provides needs to be maintained. Anything less will be seen correctly as a direct nerf to the entire skill line (Bolt, Surge, Fury, Form, Splash and their morphs).

Lastly, the "buff" to Surge enabling it to proc on damage shielded targets implies that damage shields will now take critical damage. This combined with the 15% damage shield reduction in Cyrodiil is too heavy handed. Either they need to benefit from armor and spell resistance, or have 100% crit damage mitigation. Another option would be to remove the reduction altogether. I think it is too early to be making these changes, and I don't believe damage shields will scale as well as DPS will with the Champion System.

Thanks for reading!

Ummm..You realize Bow users have been dealing with this for a very long time right? Also please don't say "You have sneak attack" because all know Sneak Attack got gutted, and then they made Radiant Mage Light even more of a counter to it.

You better not use Snipe as a sustained damage skill in your opponent's range.

That comparison just makes no sense.

They have similar range/damage.... They're virtually the same attack...If you're going to say getting Crystal Shards off in PvP is hard, then you're saying Lethal Arrow is hard to get off (its not)

Snipe is not a giant purple crystal that anyone can see from a mile away. Snipe casting is much less obvious and difficult to see where it is coming from. Not the same.

Except it has a very distinct sound and you can usually hear it and dodge roll out of the way before it connects.

That happens right before it hits you. The interupt opportunity occurs while you are casting, during which time casting frags is much more obvious than a snipe (you glow purple and wave your hands around!). Also frags travels in straight lines; you may hear a snipe and dodge roll it but where it came from is not as obvious as a straight bright purple gas cloud leading directly to the caster.... again not the same frags is harder to get off (I've played both as a sorc).

rfennell_ESO

Xeniph wrote: »

I believe a lot of people took Eric's description out of context.

Sorcs do have the most controllable burst rotation in the game, even though they lack a hard hitting spammable. That's why the Morph "Crystal Shards" is there in the first place.

A Sorc has so many option to proc that buff, that shards virtually becomes "spammable" Thus un-interruptible AND it has a cc to it.

Secondly, we do have an entire tree devoted to constant damage, which equates to an ability, the pets. While not optimal since you have to spend more slots.

Now I will say, that I believe, that CS should only be able to proc off offensive abilities. Bolting/bubbling and whatnot should in now way proc that buff, imo.

And just to clarify, currently in 1.5 Wrecking Blow/Snipe/Crystal Shards all have nearly the same cast time, suffer from the same interruption weakness. Yet you only hear Sorcs say "That's not viable to hard cast" Keeping in mind only CS has the ability to become instant cast, and does more damage than ANY class ranged ability. Now in 1.6 Wrecking blow received an uninterruptable buff (as all melee abilities should be)

As to the bubble nerf, we will have to wait for the patch notes to see what was really changed, and if it went too far or not.

In pvp you can't use CS on the horde of dks as they just reflect it. The knockdown effect you see so rarely and once they break it they can't be knocked down again or just start dodge rolling as they see the spell and it hits nothing.

Also instant cast does not mean the spell hits instantly. The big freaking purple crystal shard is quite a telegraph that moves pretty slow.

Want to know what you do to a vamp dk? curse, and resto staff and hope someone else can do the damage for you to be able to mage's wrath on them, all while they spam devouring swarm and talons and whip things to death.

Think of how ridiculous it is, as a sorc, that with any dk the only thing you can do once they start spamming reflective is use your resto staff channel?

It's like ZOS doesn't even pvp or watch it and instead listening to some duelers that cried that loudest.

Aimelin

Dracane wrote: »

Aimelin wrote: »

this right here, if the effect of splash continue after using the synergy, why remove the visual ....

afaik it just goes away as in, you "use up" the splash for the synergy

So what does that mean ? I don't understand.

it means they're buffing a useless ability that no one uses caus it has a 4 meter radius and you can just side step out of it, sustain dmg my ass

Aimelin

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Xeniph wrote: »

I believe a lot of people took Eric's description out of context.

Sorcs do have the most controllable burst rotation in the game, even though they lack a hard hitting spammable. That's why the Morph "Crystal Shards" is there in the first place.

A Sorc has so many option to proc that buff, that shards virtually becomes "spammable" Thus un-interruptible AND it has a cc to it.

Secondly, we do have an entire tree devoted to constant damage, which equates to an ability, the pets. While not optimal since you have to spend more slots.

Now I will say, that I believe, that CS should only be able to proc off offensive abilities. Bolting/bubbling and whatnot should in now way proc that buff, imo.

And just to clarify, currently in 1.5 Wrecking Blow/Snipe/Crystal Shards all have nearly the same cast time, suffer from the same interruption weakness. Yet you only hear Sorcs say "That's not viable to hard cast" Keeping in mind only CS has the ability to become instant cast, and does more damage than ANY class ranged ability. Now in 1.6 Wrecking blow received an uninterruptable buff (as all melee abilities should be)

As to the bubble nerf, we will have to wait for the patch notes to see what was really changed, and if it went too far or not.

In pvp you can't use CS on the horde of dks as they just reflect it. The knockdown effect you see so rarely and once they break it they can't be knocked down again or just start dodge rolling as they see the spell and it hits nothing.

Also instant cast does not mean the spell hits instantly. The big freaking purple crystal shard is quite a telegraph that moves pretty slow.

Want to know what you do to a vamp dk? curse, and resto staff and hope someone else can do the damage for you to be able to mage's wrath on them, all while they spam devouring swarm and talons and whip things to death.

Think of how ridiculous it is, as a sorc, that with any dk the only thing you can do once they start spamming reflective is use your resto staff channel?

It's like ZOS doesn't even pvp or watch it and instead listening to some duelers that cried that loudest.

this right here, PLUS curse is blockable now ... high burst dmg lmao

rfennell_ESO

Aimelin wrote: »

this right here, PLUS curse is blockable now ... high burst dmg lmao

Yah it's like sorcs are up against people that lie or people that know nothing here.

prototypefb

all ranged interrupts will be weaker than other morphs, therefore will likely to be less common on the field, therefore boosting interruptable spells a bit/a lot maybe.
we'll see time will tell, eric will fix all the issues while balancing the game xD

Snit

I don't know how sorcs will compare to bow-wielding NB's. I do know I'm sick of fighting with them for the "not quite the worst" spot at everything.

It would be nice if there were some role in the game at which people considered sorcs a top-two class.

Darkonflare15

I always find it funny when someone talks about a skill not being useful and then they compare it to a skill they think is useful. Then someone tells them that it is not and then another person complains that they are hijiaking their thread when the topic is relevant since they compared the skills. If you do not want people from other classes hijacking your threads. Stop comparing moves with other classes because they are not same and will never be the same.

Jahosefat

prototypefb wrote: »

all ranged interrupts will be weaker than other morphs, therefore will likely to be less common on the field, therefore boosting interruptable spells a bit/a lot maybe.
we'll see time will tell, eric will fix all the issues while balancing the game xD

I really doubt this actually. With templar's new death ray, interrupts are going to be more important than ever.

angelyn

There are 3-4 things about the livestream that make it hard to place my sorc trust in you, but I still do:

1. Not seeming to know the name of the skill that you had nerfed previously (Crushing Shock)
2.Not seeming to know that the force pulse morph isn't working as you described (no 10% on the morph), even though this is all over the forums which apparently are read often.
3. Not seeming to know how boss mechanics/heals interacting with Sorc Pets is a problem in PVE
4. This is only conjecture, but the suspicion that testing balance changes is only done in PVP or single target PVE situations.

However,even at the end of this, I am still keeping my sorc and will be keenly testing out any changes. I am still remaining positive and I will continue to try to give constructive feedback. I always try to remember that there are people at the other end of the computer, so honestly, I have nothing against you guys or anyone. I'm just pointing out that stuff like the above isn't condusive to getting people to have confidence in what is to come. I also work in a massive corporation and realise that communication sometimes suffers and there are many teams that may work in isolation from each other. However, we continue to try to improve communication and joined up working across teams, which can only help in the long term.

angelyn wrote: »

Also one slightly negative final point. I know it is a large corporation and there are multiple teams. However, the lead combat guy(who is designing our pets and pet related skills)had to speak to the team creating bosses, since he did't realise that it is still a problem with bosses targeting pets and certain heals being taken up by pets.

It just seems a little sad, that the guy designing all of our combat skills has not taken all of the factors in combat into consideration, and shockingly even the most basic factor such as how the boss/healings would interact with sorc pets. His advice was to use certain heals to help players and other heals for pets. How many raid leaders will take along a pet sorc if their healer has now 1 more thing to concentrate on and that is the heals-workaround for the pet sorc? They will just drop the sorc since it will make the healer's life a nightmare.

This only leads me to think that the Combat team who design all of our skills, may work in isolation to the other teams (Boss team/End game PVE Team?), testing on single target dummies for PVE and testing within PVP which I mentioned in another thread:

angelyn wrote: »

I have a sneaking suspicion that devs test any balance changes only in PVP or on a single PVE target. Hence why they said in ESO live that pet build was giving massive DPS but "not king of DPS", and why no one considered how sorc dps is supposed to AOE trash mobs with no armour,no AOE skill as no space on bar due to toggles, and no block casting as our stamina drains to 0 in like a few seconds when blocking.

This would also explain why Paul Sage/Chris Strasz said in the recent Q&A that basically some people will always complain, when the subject of sorcerers was raised.Perhaps he's only thinking of how amazing sorcs are in PVP. Also I've yet to hear a dev say that sorc is their favourite class,when I've heard numerous times how much dk is fav class. (I'm not shouting for nerf of other classes). Maybe they just need to roll a sorcerer and see if they can dps an ENTIRE dungeon/trial successfully, with our only viable build-the toggle mancer,that relies on a set that only goes up to VR12,has sturdy on each piece and has just taken a nerf (Necropotence).

Again perhaps a more cohesive approach is needed between the combat team and the other teams since that would certainly help the situation.Or hell- why not go really crazy and get the Boss Team and the Combat Team to run dungeons together to test out any changes :P

However overall, I am interested to have a look at the sorcerer changes.

Samadhi

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

...
They have Funnel Health, which does less damage then Crushing Shock and Crystal Shards.

Way back when my Sorcerer was still leveling through Vet Ranks, first noticed something around v3-v4.

Despite having notably lower level, Max Magicka, and Spell Damage, my Sorcerer's Crystal Shards, or more notably Crystal Blast morph, was not only doing more single-target damage per hit than my v14 Nightblade's Funnel Health; the splash damage portion on the AoE explosion portion was doing comparable damage to the single-target damage of Funnel Health.

This is all well and good, but the issue comes up where ZOS has decided to base this game around skill spam + animation cancelling. This is okay for Crystal Blast's cast time since it gets AoE damage benefit, but it flounders when it comes to the Crystal Fragments mechanics.
The cast-time on the skill is also a pain in PvP where 1v1 matches sometimes result in my cast getting interrupted when my timing on casting the skill is poor, but this is easily my own fault.

Would be perfectly fine with seeing my Sorcerer's damage on Crystal Shard lowered down to the level of Nightblade's Funnel Health and made spammable instead of having a cast time.
Or, maybe give Frags morph lowered damage but 0 cast time and lowered skill cost all the time, without need for procs, and turn just the one morph into a single-target DPS skill.
It would be quite broken if it was made spammable without a damage nerf though.

Aimelin

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Aimelin wrote: »

this right here, PLUS curse is blockable now ... high burst dmg lmao

Yah it's like sorcs are up against people that lie or people that know nothing here.

and my wild guess is you play a DK & flap ur lil wings the moment you see a spell effect

Snit

Eric made a curious statement about balancing DPS, making sure that Time to Kill was even across classes.

OK. But how about TTL? If LA Magicka Casters and MA Stamina Users have balanced TTK, how do you compensate for the fact that medium armor offers better protection? Not to mention the utility in PvP (sneak!).

Glassier specs should have more cannon.

Dracane

Snit wrote: »

Eric made a curious statement about balancing DPS, making sure that Time to Kill was even across classes.

OK. But how about TTL? If LA Magicka Casters and MA Stamina Users have balanced TTK, how do you compensate for the fact that medium armor offers better protection? Not to mention the utility in PvP (sneak!).

Glassier specs should have more cannon.

Yea and medium armor provides not only more defense (which is okay basically) BUT it also provides more offense. Eric said: Light armor is more versatile.

Might be true, but we're not talking about healing spells and not about trash spells. So this is no excuse for myself. Light armor should be doing more damage than medium armor (yep, I've said it ) They are going to increase the spell penetration, which is not bad. But this is never going to be on par with the huge damage buff of medium armor.

The medium armor buff works everytime, spell pen only against unprotected enemies. And spell penetration is not as strong as direct damage.

Asgari

Don't forget cf can be reflected and doesn't provide a heal and the knock back can be blocked. Also in 1.6 insta cast is either bugged or removed from many skills.

rfennell_ESO

Aimelin wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Aimelin wrote: »

this right here, PLUS curse is blockable now ... high burst dmg lmao

Yah it's like sorcs are up against people that lie or people that know nothing here.

and my wild guess is you play a DK & flap ur lil wings the moment you see a spell effect

When I play my dk in pvp I do.

Oddly enough I'm WAY more surviveable in pve gear (no impen) and using dual staves on my dk than on my pvp geared and specced sorc. I scrapped my dk's pvp gear and meant to make vr14 alternate set, but never got around to it. Just having reflecting scales of ultimate win is enough...

Xeniph

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Don't forget cf can be reflected and doesn't provide a heal and the knock back can be blocked. Also in 1.6 insta cast is either bugged or removed from many skills.

And so can Crushing shock, Swallow/Funnel, Snipe and a whole host of other ranged abilities. In fact, the heal effect attached to Swallow/Funnel can be blocked even if it's not reflected.

I guess I am failing to see your point.

Look folks, I hear where most of you are coming from. But having a number of classes that I play exclusively in pvp, I simply do not agree with most of your assessments.

Some of the crystal fragments "proc" issues need to be addressed, no doubt.
But in no way is "hard casting" crystal shards, more or less difficult to pull off in pvp than similar skills. Also in no way does the Sorc NEED a spamable, to remain competitive.

There are so many options. What I am hearing though, seems to me is a concern about a change of peoples "preferred" playstyle. I can sympathize with that, as my preferred playstyle on my NB hasn't been effective since release, but 1.6 it looks like it may.

Now the one caveat may be the change to damage shields coming in 1.6.3.
We will have to look closely at that change so see if it goes to far.

rfennell_ESO

Xeniph wrote: »

Some of the crystal fragments "proc" issues need to be addressed, no doubt.
But in no way is "hard casting" crystal shards, more or less difficult to pull off in pvp than similar skills. Also in no way does the Sorc NEED a spamable, to remain competitive.

While I don't really want a change to CF's operation at all, I would have to say that claiming that a visual with a super slow and recognizable animation and a travel time with the same animation is certainly more difficult to pull off in pvp than any other spell. Not that hard casting it is hard, it's just far to easy for an opponent to see it coming and react to it.

Aimelin

Xeniph wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Don't forget cf can be reflected and doesn't provide a heal and the knock back can be blocked. Also in 1.6 insta cast is either bugged or removed from many skills.

And so can Crushing shock, Swallow/Funnel, Snipe and a whole host of other ranged abilities. In fact, the heal effect attached to Swallow/Funnel can be blocked even if it's not reflected.

I guess I am failing to see your point.

Look folks, I hear where most of you are coming from. But having a number of classes that I play exclusively in pvp, I simply do not agree with most of your assessments.

Some of the crystal fragments "proc" issues need to be addressed, no doubt.
But in no way is "hard casting" crystal shards, more or less difficult to pull off in pvp than similar skills. Also in no way does the Sorc NEED a spamable, to remain competitive.

There are so many options. What I am hearing though, seems to me is a concern about a change of peoples "preferred" playstyle. I can sympathize with that, as my preferred playstyle on my NB hasn't been effective since release, but 1.6 it looks like it may.

Now the one caveat may be the change to damage shields coming in 1.6.3.
We will have to look closely at that change so see if it goes to far.

it's not so much about "preferred" playstyle, or that we don't want to adapt, it's that they are forcing us into one particular path: pets

"Play the way you want, but we're going to buff pets so you'll have to use them" while other classes, DKs have nothing but spammable abilities, breath, whip, talons, searing strike, INSTA knockdown from that rock (granted its a slow projectile) most are in your face anyway to spam talons so they can easely throw that rock, which also has a morph for 15 meters, i can go on here

what do sorcs get? useless aoe cc that breaks on dmg and does poor dmg on its own with the explode morph, useless single target cc with a cast time, which they might have made a good morph for now with the reactive part, but still a cast time, still a slot we have to sacrifice with the few dmg abilities we have that are still somewhat usefull. useless 4 METER radius aoe "dps" .. i hit harder with my fists on my sorc, oh, and as we all love these as sorcs, TOGGLES weeeeewt, so usefull, the only good "ult" we have atm is overload, which people are allready whining about that it hits for too much.

NBs actually get usefull class abilities, all instant cast, all good dmg abilities, now with stam morphs to further make them better, templars that can now go both magicka or stam and do good amounts of dmg, even tho jabs got a cc "nerf" to it, but they get a new death ray which is almost like a second soul assault.

sure i can come up with stam builds, sure i could try to come up with a new magicka build, but they keep nerfing everything we attempt to use caus other people (hi DKs) don't want us to be even close to what they can do

Derra

Comparing fragments to snipe, wrecking blow or rapidstrikes is just ***. The two melee abilities are uninterruptable since 1.6. Snipe has a longer range than its interrupting counter skills (and not an animation screaming: "pink glow everywhere - interrupt this idiot sorc actually trying to hardcast CF - lololol").

Snit

Against DK's, Crystal Fragments is about 50% likely to come right back at you. Against good players who are not DK's, it's just a way to drain their stamina via dodge rolls or blocks. I'm not sure how apparent this is to people who haven't spent a lot of time playing a sorc in Cyrodiil, much less to those who measure CF's damage potential by casting it at the DPS target dummy.

It has maybe a 50% hit rate against good players, unless they are CC'd or unaware of your presence.

Derra

Snit wrote: »

I don't know how sorcs will compare to bow-wielding NB's. I do know I'm sick of fighting with them for the "not quite the worst" spot at everything.

It would be nice if there were some role in the game at which people considered sorcs a top-two class.

You might become top two magica dps in a game where every non stamina dps is considered sub par

Snit

Derra wrote: »

Snit wrote: »

I don't know how sorcs will compare to bow-wielding NB's. I do know I'm sick of fighting with them for the "not quite the worst" spot at everything.

It would be nice if there were some role in the game at which people considered sorcs a top-two class.

You might become top two magica dps in a game where every non stamina dps is considered sub par

Well, I'd give up one of my mudcrab pets to get a real answer. Templars are clearly designed to be the best healers, and they are. DK's are clearly designed to be the best tanks, and they are.

Are sorcs meant to even be in the top half at anything?

Tankqull

Snit wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Snit wrote: »

I don't know how sorcs will compare to bow-wielding NB's. I do know I'm sick of fighting with them for the "not quite the worst" spot at everything.

It would be nice if there were some role in the game at which people considered sorcs a top-two class.

You might become top two magica dps in a game where every non stamina dps is considered sub par

Well, I'd give up one of my mudcrab pets to get a real answer. Templars are clearly designed to be the best healers, and they are. DK's are clearly designed to be the best tanks, and they are.

Are sorcs meant to even be in the top half at anything?

yewp

having your qb cluttered with toggles.

Samadhi

Xeniph wrote: »

...
There are so many options. What I am hearing though, seems to me is a concern about a change of peoples "preferred" playstyle. I can sympathize with that, as my preferred playstyle on my NB hasn't been effective since release, but 1.6 it looks like it may.
...

Referring to Stamina-build Nightblade without having to resort to Bow?
It is interesting that Stamina build on a Nightblade has become fairly effective in this patch alongside the use of summons on a Sorcerer -- Nightblades have been shouting for their playstyle to be functional as long as Sorcerers have been shouting for summons to be buffed.

Now Sorcerers got their summons buffed, and Nightblades got their Stamina viability. Just took nearly a year for both of them.

ArconSeptim

Jitterbug wrote: »

My 2H Sorc needs surge to heal without cooldown again...

Right now she's afraid to pick up a torchbug

you have momentum

Xeniph

The "But it can be reflected" is not a valid argument, as can all ranged projectiles. Also the skill has an instant cast proc morph making it that much more useful.

Also, you can reflect it back via the S/B line, something some skills can't do.

I'm testing now, and casting any spell, excluding itself and BS (BS is clearly bugged), gives me nearly the proc 100% of the time. Interesting to note, Hardened Ward seems to generate this proc at a rate more than any other spell.

This is only taking Sorc abilities into account, adding any staff abilities into the mix means you should have this buff up every single complete rotation, sometimes more.

The Sorc does not need a high damage single target DD ability to remain competitive. No other class has this potential.

Nightreaver

Snit wrote: »

Eric made a curious statement about balancing DPS, making sure that Time to Kill was even across classes.
OK. But how about TTL? If LA Magicka Casters and MA Stamina Users have balanced TTK, how do you compensate for the fact that medium armor offers better protection? Not to mention the utility in PvP (sneak!).
Glassier specs should have more cannon.

I would expect Light armor to provide the best Magicka DPS.
I would expect Medium armor to provide the best Stamina DPS.
I would expect this testing to result in Stamina DPS and Magicka DPS becoming balanced.
In addition to best Stamina DPS, Medium armor offers greater protection and survivability.
In addition to best Magicka DPS, Light armor offers greater healing through lower magicka cost and greater magicka regen

prototypefb

Samadhi wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

...
They have Funnel Health, which does less damage then Crushing Shock and Crystal Shards.

Way back when my Sorcerer was still leveling through Vet Ranks, first noticed something around v3-v4.

Despite having notably lower level, Max Magicka, and Spell Damage, my Sorcerer's Crystal Shards, or more notably Crystal Blast morph, was not only doing more single-target damage per hit than my v14 Nightblade's Funnel Health; the splash damage portion on the AoE explosion portion was doing comparable damage to the single-target damage of Funnel Health.

This is all well and good, but the issue comes up where ZOS has decided to base this game around skill spam + animation cancelling. This is okay for Crystal Blast's cast time since it gets AoE damage benefit, but it flounders when it comes to the Crystal Fragments mechanics.
The cast-time on the skill is also a pain in PvP where 1v1 matches sometimes result in my cast getting interrupted when my timing on casting the skill is poor, but this is easily my own fault.

Would be perfectly fine with seeing my Sorcerer's damage on Crystal Shard lowered down to the level of Nightblade's Funnel Health and made spammable instead of having a cast time.
Or, maybe give Frags morph lowered damage but 0 cast time and lowered skill cost all the time, without need for procs, and turn just the one morph into a single-target DPS skill.
It would be quite broken if it was made spammable without a damage nerf though.

i'm sure if you ask nicely ZOS can make crystal shards spammable but take away some dmg and knockdown

prototypefb

Snit wrote: »

Eric made a curious statement about balancing DPS, making sure that Time to Kill was even across classes.

OK. But how about TTL? If LA Magicka Casters and MA Stamina Users have balanced TTK, how do you compensate for the fact that medium armor offers better protection? Not to mention the utility in PvP (sneak!).

Glassier specs should have more cannon.

so build max magicka, glass cannon your dmg will be higher but you will be 1-2 shot, that is your choice, go for it!