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Sorcerer - Suggestions and Concerns
Grao
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Before reading my suggestions, please keep in mind this comes from a PvEr point of view. I do enjoy PvP and take part in many Cyrodiil skirmishes, but my main focus in ESO is end game PvE content.
Right now, on Live, the general consensus is that Sorcerers are unnecessary, even useless to any serious Trial Group. Unfortunately the many changes implemented with patch 1.6 are not likely to revert that impression. Quite the contrary, some of those changes are likely to make sorcerers even less desirable in PvE as we hold no utility for the raid.
What do I mean by Utility? Well, every class has certain skills unique to them that are not only useful, but needed to complete certain PvE content (such as Trials, DSA and even dungeons). Sorcerers had Negate, Nightblades have Veil, Templars have Nova and Dragonknights have Chains and Corrosive Armor - all extremely powerful mitigation or heals.
What Utility a 1.6 Sorcerer brings to their allies? The most I can think of is the 3% critical chance we give after casting a Crystal Fragment proc, since that is the only useful Dark Magic skill. I am sure Zenimax will claim the new Negate gives damage Mitigation, but how do our numbers compare to DK's Shield and to Nightblade's Veil? Both mitigate 30% or more damage while Negate mitigates 8%.
So we have a neglectable Damage increase to the group and even more neglectable Damage Mitigation. If Negate still dispelled all within it for its full duration that wouldn't be a problem, but as it is in PvE, we sorcerers dispell an ability only to have it recast on the raid 2 seconds later by the same mob. From a great spell, it was made useless.
That is all I have to say about our Utility, now to the class damage.
Currently on the PTS the only viable sorcerer build relies heavily on pets. Those are toggles, so they have to be kept on both bars (Just like Inner Light), that alone is already a problem, after all, counting Inner Light, Bound Aegis and both pets sorcerers have two remaining slots on their bars for other abilities.
With 1.6.3 Zenimax has promised one of our passives will be changed to increase the character's spell power greatly, allowing for pure magicka DPS. We hope those changes will bring some diversity and viability back to Sorcerers, but at the same time we are very concerned. The Passive Zenimax chose to change used to reduce the cost of Storm Calling abilities; we still haven't been told if those abilities are having their cost readjusted to reflect the loss of such important passive.
To top that and related to Magicka Costs, Power Surge still hasn't been fixed. The ability offer the same spell power buff as Entropy and costs almost 4 times more; it is absurd, specially considering entropy, on top of offering the buff to spell power, also deals damage, heals consistently and increases the base health of the caster (in case of Structured Entropy). Is any Magicka Sorcerer still running Power Surge?
Another buff being implemented with 1.6.3 targets our class AoE, Lightning Splash an ability that is currently almost as terrible as its accurate name. The Ability Tree is called Storm Calling, but the best we can summon is a little pool of lightening that does very little damage unless some generous soul activates its synergy (which we all know never happens).
Where is the Lightning Chain we saw displayed by the Elf Sorcerer on the ESO videos? I want that ability for our class AoE. Actually, that ability could solve many of our class issues, like the lack of a single target, instant, damage spell.
So here goes my little suggestion, taken both from other posts and from Zenimax's video on how a real sorcerer should be!
Remove Lighting Splash all together, the spell doesn't even have a respectable name, so no one will ever take it seriously. Instead, give us Chain Lightning.
Chain Lighting: Releases a Electric Charge causing X damage to the target. The remaining energy jumps from target to target dealing reduced damage with each jump.
Storm Bound (1st morph): At the expense of constantly draining Magicka, the caster damages and snares all targets bound to the lighting chain. Channeled ability that can be interrupted by the caster and enemies - can be roll dodged like any other snare, but that does not break the lighting chain, it only transfers it to the next target.
Storm Impact (2nd morph)? Releases a power bolt charged with X damage. The damage is distributed from the first target to other enemies around it if any are present. X = Y/2 (damage to primary target) + Y/4 (secondary Target) + Y/8... And so on. Assuming there are other enemies around your primary target this spell would be an AoE, but if there was only one target, the ability does all its damage to the one target, becoming the sorcerers spammable ability, replacing the accursed crushing shock.
Now, I know this new ability would not give Sorcerers more Utility, but it would be a great improvement, starting by unchaining us from Crushing Shock and giving us a unique AoE that can be balanced out to match other class AoEs.
Anyway, I can only hope Zenimax reads this and finds it interesting. As a last concern I have as a sorcerer that actually likes the pet build.
- Sorcerer pets still drain healers resources and channel boss attacks. I've witnessed the clannfear wipe a raid by going too close to the tank in The Mage fight in AA. I've also tried casting Steadfast Ward on an ally and ended up with it going to my pet instead, which resulted on a dead and rather annoyed ally. Zenimax, please make so that bosses can't target pets directly or channel spells through them and to compensate for that buff, make pets immune to heals not provided by their summoners.
Thanks for listening!
EDIT: Image extracted from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MySC13H_2cE - 2:30 - Watch it and tell me that isn't an awesome looking ability!
Edited by Grao on February 15, 2015 6:14AM
Right now, on Live, the general consensus is that Sorcerers are unnecessary, even useless to any serious Trial Group. Unfortunately the many changes implemented with patch 1.6 are not likely to revert that impression. Quite the contrary, some of those changes are likely to make sorcerers even less desirable in PvE as we hold no utility for the raid.
What do I mean by Utility? Well, every class has certain skills unique to them that are not only useful, but needed to complete certain PvE content (such as Trials, DSA and even dungeons). Sorcerers had Negate, Nightblades have Veil, Templars have Nova and Dragonknights have Chains and Corrosive Armor - all extremely powerful mitigation or heals.
What Utility a 1.6 Sorcerer brings to their allies? The most I can think of is the 3% critical chance we give after casting a Crystal Fragment proc, since that is the only useful Dark Magic skill. I am sure Zenimax will claim the new Negate gives damage Mitigation, but how do our numbers compare to DK's Shield and to Nightblade's Veil? Both mitigate 30% or more damage while Negate mitigates 8%.
So we have a neglectable Damage increase to the group and even more neglectable Damage Mitigation. If Negate still dispelled all within it for its full duration that wouldn't be a problem, but as it is in PvE, we sorcerers dispell an ability only to have it recast on the raid 2 seconds later by the same mob. From a great spell, it was made useless.
That is all I have to say about our Utility, now to the class damage.
Currently on the PTS the only viable sorcerer build relies heavily on pets. Those are toggles, so they have to be kept on both bars (Just like Inner Light), that alone is already a problem, after all, counting Inner Light, Bound Aegis and both pets sorcerers have two remaining slots on their bars for other abilities.
With 1.6.3 Zenimax has promised one of our passives will be changed to increase the character's spell power greatly, allowing for pure magicka DPS. We hope those changes will bring some diversity and viability back to Sorcerers, but at the same time we are very concerned. The Passive Zenimax chose to change used to reduce the cost of Storm Calling abilities; we still haven't been told if those abilities are having their cost readjusted to reflect the loss of such important passive.
To top that and related to Magicka Costs, Power Surge still hasn't been fixed. The ability offer the same spell power buff as Entropy and costs almost 4 times more; it is absurd, specially considering entropy, on top of offering the buff to spell power, also deals damage, heals consistently and increases the base health of the caster (in case of Structured Entropy). Is any Magicka Sorcerer still running Power Surge?
Another buff being implemented with 1.6.3 targets our class AoE, Lightning Splash an ability that is currently almost as terrible as its accurate name. The Ability Tree is called Storm Calling, but the best we can summon is a little pool of lightening that does very little damage unless some generous soul activates its synergy (which we all know never happens).
Where is the Lightning Chain we saw displayed by the Elf Sorcerer on the ESO videos? I want that ability for our class AoE. Actually, that ability could solve many of our class issues, like the lack of a single target, instant, damage spell.
So here goes my little suggestion, taken both from other posts and from Zenimax's video on how a real sorcerer should be!
Remove Lighting Splash all together, the spell doesn't even have a respectable name, so no one will ever take it seriously. Instead, give us Chain Lightning.
Chain Lighting: Releases a Electric Charge causing X damage to the target. The remaining energy jumps from target to target dealing reduced damage with each jump.
Storm Bound (1st morph): At the expense of constantly draining Magicka, the caster damages and snares all targets bound to the lighting chain. Channeled ability that can be interrupted by the caster and enemies - can be roll dodged like any other snare, but that does not break the lighting chain, it only transfers it to the next target.
Storm Impact (2nd morph)? Releases a power bolt charged with X damage. The damage is distributed from the first target to other enemies around it if any are present. X = Y/2 (damage to primary target) + Y/4 (secondary Target) + Y/8... And so on. Assuming there are other enemies around your primary target this spell would be an AoE, but if there was only one target, the ability does all its damage to the one target, becoming the sorcerers spammable ability, replacing the accursed crushing shock.
Now, I know this new ability would not give Sorcerers more Utility, but it would be a great improvement, starting by unchaining us from Crushing Shock and giving us a unique AoE that can be balanced out to match other class AoEs.
Anyway, I can only hope Zenimax reads this and finds it interesting. As a last concern I have as a sorcerer that actually likes the pet build.
- Sorcerer pets still drain healers resources and channel boss attacks. I've witnessed the clannfear wipe a raid by going too close to the tank in The Mage fight in AA. I've also tried casting Steadfast Ward on an ally and ended up with it going to my pet instead, which resulted on a dead and rather annoyed ally. Zenimax, please make so that bosses can't target pets directly or channel spells through them and to compensate for that buff, make pets immune to heals not provided by their summoners.
Thanks for listening!
EDIT: Image extracted from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MySC13H_2cE - 2:30 - Watch it and tell me that isn't an awesome looking ability!
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