@ZOS - any timeframe on Sorc changes?

Samadhi

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

I know that Soon is trademarked around here and fully understand, but could the amount Soon be quantified in any way? I ask because my play time is limited and so is my in game gold and honestly, I've been waiting on these stamina/tank/healer updates for a couple of months now so that I can finally craft a set of fully pimped out gear. I've been rolling magicka focused ever since 1.6 and I am hesitant to use my gold tempers on any of my gear because I'd much rather play a stamina build and do not want to invest in magicka gear right before changes are introduced that make me want to switch back to a stamina build. There have been quite a few patches since 1.6 went live and quite a few class tweaks in those patches, none of which addressed Sorc in a stamina/tank/healer build. Are we waiting for the next major update for Sorc changes (2.1?) or are these changes something that can be sneaked in during these incremental patches?

I know with the console versions coming out that we won't be getting a major update for quite a while and I'm just wondering if I should expect Sorc stamina/tank/healer changes before or after the next major update?

Hey @Erock25! We're currently planning to have a lot of these Sorcerer changes accompany the next major update, which will be sometime after our console launch. No concrete details yet, though we can tell you that stamina Sorcs will have some more viable DPS options.

We'll continue to use the weekly incremental patches to address any broken abilities or particularly egregious balance issues.

My Bosmer Sorcerer is looking forward to these changes.
She's going to stick to a Magicka build until then though.

Emma_Overload

Samadhi wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

<<<<<<< Still praying every day for the Surge Cooldown to be completely removed.

@ZOS_GinaBruno as you can see from posts all over the forum, the Cooldown has in no way satisfied the PvP whiners who are always calling for nerfs, but I can assure you it has had a TERRIBLE effect on the play style and survivability of PvE Sorcs. Our ability to fight large scale AOE battles (and win) against PvE mobs has been completely crippled by the Surge Cooldown, and none of the gimmicky remedies that have been offered come anywhere close to offering the same utility as the old Surge heals.

Please remove the Surge Cooldown ASAP!

.

Fairly certain this cooldown is associated with the Impenetrable changes in PvP that many Sorcerers spent so long asking for due to Surge not functioning in PvP.

Do not expect to see them repeal the cooldown unless they end up reducing the effectiveness of the heals in the process as well.

I've heard other people on the forums say something like this, but ZoS has NEVER offered any explanation for the cooldown, so we don't really know. I can assure you I was not one of those Sorcerers asking for any kind of change to Impenetrable because PvE mobs don't wear it, and I don't care about PvP!

It would be great if ZoS developers could explain the purpose of the Surge Cooldown... then we could maybe have a productive discussion that leads to a solution that doesn't involve totally gimping combat survivability against large groups of PvE mobs.

xSkullfox

The surge cooldown was needed for PvP, -> nerfed trains that was needed. PvE mhhh nice to have but costs only much ,usefull for bomber player.

Digiman

Bfish22090 wrote: »

Sorcs need to be nerfed, hard

Crystal frags hitting for 20k+
Bolt escape
Shield stacking
Power surge


All of these skills need to be nerfed in some way

Christ, okay here a list to solve your problems for you.

Crystal Frags: You see a purple projectile coming towards you, then block. Even newb sorcerers learn this when frags is reflected back at them. Quit being a chump and learn to dodge also when trying to get away. If your a deer in the head lights when you see it coming you deserve the burst death that follows.

Bolt escape: Put pressure on them to force them to use BE before 4 seconds is up. That second BE is 50% more cost and 50% resources burnt. If its BoL, use AoE or physical attacks, two handed and bows turn Sorcerers in cloth to shreds.

Shield Stacking: CC, burn, when immunity is off CC and burn. Nightblade experts can turn an unsuspected sorcerer in a red blood stain with Hardened ward and annulment, if they can't they retreat to the shadows with dodge and vanish. Infact an expert Nightblade was able to hold off 5 guys and me and still wipe the floor with me.

Power Surge: Already has been gutted, the self healing is a .25 second CD and the ability doesn't stack. Entropy with Mages' Guild passives makes Power Surge look weak.

Only Bows and Stamina sorcerers can make Power surge effective for them.

Digiman

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

I know that Soon is trademarked around here and fully understand, but could the amount Soon be quantified in any way? I ask because my play time is limited and so is my in game gold and honestly, I've been waiting on these stamina/tank/healer updates for a couple of months now so that I can finally craft a set of fully pimped out gear. I've been rolling magicka focused ever since 1.6 and I am hesitant to use my gold tempers on any of my gear because I'd much rather play a stamina build and do not want to invest in magicka gear right before changes are introduced that make me want to switch back to a stamina build. There have been quite a few patches since 1.6 went live and quite a few class tweaks in those patches, none of which addressed Sorc in a stamina/tank/healer build. Are we waiting for the next major update for Sorc changes (2.1?) or are these changes something that can be sneaked in during these incremental patches?

I know with the console versions coming out that we won't be getting a major update for quite a while and I'm just wondering if I should expect Sorc stamina/tank/healer changes before or after the next major update?

Hey @Erock25! We're currently planning to have a lot of these Sorcerer changes accompany the next major update, which will be sometime after our console launch. No concrete details yet, though we can tell you that stamina Sorcs will have some more viable DPS options.

We'll continue to use the weekly incremental patches to address any broken abilities or particularly egregious balance issues.

I don't want the main focus of Sorcerers ranged magical casters to be forced to shift into stamina for me optimal DPS. We already have vary glaring problems when it comes to being magicka healer with healing staff with no support from our abilities.

Merlin13KAGL

Paulington wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Why are you exaggerating? It doesn't help your argument.... at all. I'm currently running a 40000 Magicka Necropotence build, and my Wards are barely 15000 HP. And when I run a Regen build with 3500 Magicka regen, I still only can cast Bolt Escape around 10 times in rapid succession before running dry.

He isn't exaggerating when it comes to wards.

I play a Sorc and in Cyrodiil I can easily ward for more than my health (25-28k) when stacking, it's not difficult to keep them up either especially 1v1. However I don't believe this requires a nerf as wards are very magicka intensive and even with high regen we can be OOR quite fast.

But the whole "infinite Ball of Lightning" is an absolute myth, obviously. The cost of Ball of Lightning increases exponentially when you want to cast fast. You only need to cast BoL six times in rapid succession for it to cost 20,000+ magicka.

What people complain about is the fact that you can cast BoL, use the sphere as another ward against spell damage whilst you re-cast your actual wards, then BoL again when the "costs 50% more next time" debuff is gone, and that is why people think we can "infinitely" blink.

Honestly, at any rate, none of it is nerf worthy. If you can play correctly against Sorcs we are easy targets. We have zero stamina (as a Magicka Sorc anyway) and that is our weakness.

@Paulington, you're not getting 28k out of hardened ward alone - the only class shield. Healing Ward is available to anyone else with a restro staff, so it's hardly Sorc specific. Annulment available to anyone in LA.

They don't need any help overestimating the numbers the way it is.

BTW, cost for BoL doesn't continue to rise, or you'd never get 6 casts out of it. It goes up 50% once. Next cast (within 4 seconds of last cast for the third cast, etc) will stay at the +50% cost, but it doesn't go up again.

And BoL orbs don't protect against spell damage, they protect against spell projectiles only. Channels and targeted casts (curse, Detonation) aren't absorbed. Channeled attacks, not absorbed.

I think you might be a little mixed up about some of your Sorc skills. Again, most are confused enough with the way they percieve Sorc skills to work vs how they actually do.

Vahrokh

deathpandax_ESO wrote: »

Simzani wrote: »

Bfish22090 wrote: »

Sorcs need to be nerfed, hard

Crystal frags hitting for 20k+
Bolt escape
Shield stacking
Power surge


All of these skills need to be nerfed in some way

Indeed. Bolt escape need to be removed. A spammable teleport + cc has no place in a mmo. Crystal fragment need to be an ultimate with high cost. Then ZOS will be able to begin to work on balancing the sorc. As long as these 2 skills still exists, sorcs can't be balanced.

This x1000

It makes no sense that every class is limited by positioning except Sorcs.

It doesn't even get the LoL treatment where mobility has an inverse relationship with offense and/or defense. In any game with balance, mobile characters are always squishier then less mobile ones. In ESO, nope, Sorc shield stacking makes them nearly unkillable.

RE shields: It's funny because people see the same 10 cheaters and assume the class IS made like that and thus needs a nerf everywhere. So everyone who don't cheat (vast majority) are going to be devastated.

jelliedsoup

Valymer wrote: »

Guy posts about improvements needed for stamina sorc/tank issues in PvE

People instantly start QQing about magicka sorcs in Cyrodiil

Cuz logic

..Is something you appear to not be familiar with.

Pve buffs apply in pvp and vice versa.

joshisanonymous

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

deathpandax_ESO wrote: »

SurprisedFour91 wrote: »

Bfish22090 wrote: »

Sorcs need to be nerfed, hard

Crystal frags hitting for 20k+
Bolt escape
Shield stacking
Power surge


All of these skills need to be nerfed in some way

Stop with the Nerf Sorcs Seriously
L2P

Gotta love the people who don't realize how broken their class is. What do you think it looks like from our perspective when a Sorc with a 30K damage shield and infinite blinks approaches? The only way you can die with that is to be ***.

Why are you exaggerating? It doesn't help your argument.... at all. I'm currently running a 40000 Magicka Necropotence build, and my Wards are barely 15000 HP. And when I run a Regen build with 3500 Magicka regen, I still only can cast Bolt Escape around 10 times in rapid succession before running dry.

Only 10 times, eh? That easily puts you out of reach of any other player other than another sorc. Half that many bolt escape basically makes you uncatchable. I'm not sure if that's too much or if it shouldn't be that way, but it seems like the removal of caps and the CS have helped move BE much closer to what it used to be at launch.

Vahrokh

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

deathpandax_ESO wrote: »

SurprisedFour91 wrote: »

Bfish22090 wrote: »

Sorcs need to be nerfed, hard

Crystal frags hitting for 20k+
Bolt escape
Shield stacking
Power surge


All of these skills need to be nerfed in some way

Stop with the Nerf Sorcs Seriously
L2P

Gotta love the people who don't realize how broken their class is. What do you think it looks like from our perspective when a Sorc with a 30K damage shield and infinite blinks approaches? The only way you can die with that is to be ***.

Why are you exaggerating? It doesn't help your argument.... at all. I'm currently running a 40000 Magicka Necropotence build, and my Wards are barely 15000 HP. And when I run a Regen build with 3500 Magicka regen, I still only can cast Bolt Escape around 10 times in rapid succession before running dry.

Only 10 times, eh? That easily puts you out of reach of any other player other than another sorc. Half that many bolt escape basically makes you uncatchable. I'm not sure if that's too much or if it shouldn't be that way, but it seems like the removal of caps and the CS have helped move BE much closer to what it used to be at launch.

I could blink much more on my frost mage, while also slowing down and rooting and ofc with a shield (slow down on hit) and nobody complained about that.

Alcast

I guess I will start leveling up a Sorc Redguard so it will be ready for September no time pressure at all

Valymer

jelliedsoup wrote: »

Valymer wrote: »

Guy posts about improvements needed for stamina sorc/tank issues in PvE

People instantly start QQing about magicka sorcs in Cyrodiil

Cuz logic

..Is something you appear to not be familiar with.

Pve buffs apply in pvp and vice versa.

Lol so you want sorcs nerfed because you think that their strength in PvP directly correlates to gaining buffs that carry over to PvE?

You might want to have your head examined.

WrathOfRegicide

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

I know that Soon is trademarked around here and fully understand, but could the amount Soon be quantified in any way? I ask because my play time is limited and so is my in game gold and honestly, I've been waiting on these stamina/tank/healer updates for a couple of months now so that I can finally craft a set of fully pimped out gear. I've been rolling magicka focused ever since 1.6 and I am hesitant to use my gold tempers on any of my gear because I'd much rather play a stamina build and do not want to invest in magicka gear right before changes are introduced that make me want to switch back to a stamina build. There have been quite a few patches since 1.6 went live and quite a few class tweaks in those patches, none of which addressed Sorc in a stamina/tank/healer build. Are we waiting for the next major update for Sorc changes (2.1?) or are these changes something that can be sneaked in during these incremental patches?

I know with the console versions coming out that we won't be getting a major update for quite a while and I'm just wondering if I should expect Sorc stamina/tank/healer changes before or after the next major update?

Hey @Erock25! We're currently planning to have a lot of these Sorcerer changes accompany the next major update, which will be sometime after our console launch. No concrete details yet, though we can tell you that stamina Sorcs will have some more viable DPS options.

We'll continue to use the weekly incremental patches to address any broken abilities or particularly egregious balance issues.

You guys plan on fixing NB too right? It's not a mere coincidence it's usually at the bottom of all the polls in terms of strong and balanced classes. Sorcs are doing just fine. Everyone who is a sorc in my PvP guild will be first to say if you're having trouble playing a sorc you're bad. Sorc does not need anymore buffs. If people want some stamina versions for skills than so be it. But other than that, all these fools asking for no C/D or toggles on skills should quiet down and let ZoS worry about more important things. Like their servers.

Zos is mainly worried about console release, they haven't done much in terms of fixing the servers. Cyrodiil is still a lag fest, people are getting frozen screen bugs, and crashes, we won't see anything fixes for a while. Also saying that sorcerers do not need fixing is just ignorance, most sorcerers i see use about 25% of the sorcerers actual skills.

Glurin

Paulington wrote: »

But the whole "infinite Ball of Lightning" is an absolute myth, obviously. The cost of Ball of Lightning increases exponentially when you want to cast fast. You only need to cast BoL six times in rapid succession for it to cost 20,000+ magicka.

What people complain about is the fact that you can cast BoL, use the sphere as another ward against spell damage whilst you re-cast your actual wards, then BoL again when the "costs 50% more next time" debuff is gone, and that is why people think we can "infinitely" blink.

Actually what people complain about is the fact that a sorcerer can teleport at all. The short version is that they are mad that they don't get credit for killing an enemy that ran away, but it's goes much deeper than that. The very concept of running away from a fight is an anathema to them. Even disengaging from an enemy that is running away from you is something that some people seem to have difficulty comprehending. Which is why you sometimes see people talking about chasing sorcerers for half an hour or longer on the PvP forums.

Thus, to them, any ability that makes leaving a fight at all easier is considered overpowered and has no place in an MMO, regardless of it's actual mechanics or counters or overall balance within the class. They don't want battles or open world PvP (aside from being able to gank low level people who won't survive long enough to try to run anyway). They want arenas and cage fights. Two men enter, one man leaves. Because to them, the only true measure of "skill" is nothing more than ambushing someone who doesn't stand a chance or standing there punching each other in the face until somebody falls over.

Vahrokh

Glurin wrote: »

Thus, to them, any ability that makes leaving a fight at all easier is considered overpowered and has no place in an MMO, regardless of it's actual mechanics or counters or overall balance within the class. They don't want battles or open world PvP (aside from being able to gank low level people who won't survive long enough to try to run anyway). They want arenas and cage fights. Two men enter, one man leaves. Because to them, the only true measure of "skill" is nothing more than ambushing someone who doesn't stand a chance or standing there punching each other in the face until somebody falls over.

Yeah, this is what I have read in other MMO PvP forums as well.

Usually the big, manly big club guys, wearing 4 tons of super-thick armor demand somebody else bare handed and wearing cloth to just be pinned down and stuck there. To them, killing such a guy would equal to prove their superior skill.

Erock25

This topic is about following up on a prior quote from someone at ZOS about stamina/tank/healer improvement to the Sorc. There are plenty of other topics out there discussing discussing magicka build Sorcs in PVP. I suggest you use one of them to shout 'nerf sorc'. While I have run into some dangerous stam Sorcs in Cyrodiil, I believe it's hard to argue that they get the least benefit from their class skills/passives/ultimates (PVP and PVE) compared to other classes in a stam build. Sorc Healer and Tank?? I know less about that as I haven't attempted either since 1.6, but based on conjecture, they seem like they could use a boost. Healer Sorc lost his biggest advantage, which was the ability to stack weapon damage higher than other classes for better resto heals. I'm less certain about Tank Sorc. I'm sure for some fights they might do well, but as long as Wards are hit with unmitigated damage and block costs stamina, Sorc will never be best tank overall tank.

If you want to complain about magicka Sorc who got away, Crystal Fragged, and Light attacked you to death in PVP, I suggest you post HERE.

CP5

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

I know that Soon is trademarked around here and fully understand, but could the amount Soon be quantified in any way? I ask because my play time is limited and so is my in game gold and honestly, I've been waiting on these stamina/tank/healer updates for a couple of months now so that I can finally craft a set of fully pimped out gear. I've been rolling magicka focused ever since 1.6 and I am hesitant to use my gold tempers on any of my gear because I'd much rather play a stamina build and do not want to invest in magicka gear right before changes are introduced that make me want to switch back to a stamina build. There have been quite a few patches since 1.6 went live and quite a few class tweaks in those patches, none of which addressed Sorc in a stamina/tank/healer build. Are we waiting for the next major update for Sorc changes (2.1?) or are these changes something that can be sneaked in during these incremental patches?

I know with the console versions coming out that we won't be getting a major update for quite a while and I'm just wondering if I should expect Sorc stamina/tank/healer changes before or after the next major update?

Hey @Erock25! We're currently planning to have a lot of these Sorcerer changes accompany the next major update, which will be sometime after our console launch. No concrete details yet, though we can tell you that stamina Sorcs will have some more viable DPS options.

We'll continue to use the weekly incremental patches to address any broken abilities or particularly egregious balance issues.

I've given this reply a good amount of thought and have come to this to say. Again, I would like to say its nice having a reply after the gap in feedback from February and likely share the same degree of disappointment in the time frame given. However your feedback does say a bit on what the combat team is thinking and I think that there are plenty of "particularly egregious balance issues" in regards to the sorcerer as of now.

As of now, with many people getting effectively infinite resources it is difficult to really balance skills. Raising the cost of skills will only impact those that don't have limitless resources without addressing the problem. So first I would suggest that this gets looked into before a large amount of re-balancing since it will likely skew any results.

As for sorcerers, in ESO Live - Episode 11 at the 40m mark Eric begins talking about the sorcerer class (after talking about the 'change' to negate that he seemed very enthusiastic about). He mentions how they intended to buff sorcerer sustained damage without raising their burst potential since it was already strong. However the changes that went into 1.6 go against this.

From 1.6 sorcerers got:

• A 20% damage buff to Crystal Frags procs, despite sorcerers having high burst damage and Crystal Blast being generally unused
• A buff to Deadric Curses damage, 25% on target and 15% on the aoe, despite the fact that again, sorcerers had high burst damage as is
• A 50% damage buff in Overload light attacks, however I personally found the removal of the GCD from 1.6.1pts to be a good enough change but with this sorcerers have another high damage projectile
• Pets were a main focus but only scale off of magicka (save for the atronach) which effectively renders most of the Daedric Summoning skill tree 'less useful' for any sorcerer other than those with large amounts of magicka
• Expert Mage, 2% spell power per sorcerer skill slotted (arguably less valuable than the mages guild equivalent given that several sorcerer skills are seen as inferior versions of the mages guild equivalents) and with this change any sorcerer that used storm calling skills for utility the loss of 10% cost reduction hit harder than any amount of bonus spell damage could be worth

*among other things like the duration on liquid lightning, lightning form, the interesting change to weakening prison

With these changes it seems the combat team was deliberately aiming to buff sorcerer burst damage and in their time doing that did not address several other, in my opinion, glaring class issues. Daedric Summoning is restricted almost exclusively to magic casters given how expensive those skills are and that pets primarily scale off of magicka. Dark Magic skills are very expensive for their utility and again, only a high spell damage caster can make use of those abilities well. And Storm Calling skills effectively received a blanket cost increase with the loss of Expert Mage, whose change only helps a portion of the classes builds rather than the prior version that helped any that used that trees skills.

Aside from the fact that sorcerer burst damage was buffed in 1.6 it seems a lot was set aside and did not recieve much attention. Out of the remaining sorcerer skills:

• Negate Magic: I think i've seen a player cast this skill, maybe 3 times since 1.6? Maybe. Yes, it made many pve encounters laughable given the powerful area of denial and in pvp could turn battles, but now it seems like no one can be bothered to use it.
• Crystal Blast, despite being so under used didn't get any attention but its, from what i've seen, far more popular morph Crystal Fragments, got a buff... That gives sorcerers more burst damage, when that was something Eric said wasn't their goal...
• Encase remains very expensive and with that cost remains useful for only a few select builds.
• Dark Exchange is still a gamble to use but requires so many things to be going your way to be used effectively. And how its nice to be able to trade magicka for stamina its not a good idea for a stamina build (likely melee ranged) to stand around, waving their arms around leaving themselves defenseless while using the skill.
• Endless Fury, kind of a minor one but when nightblades got killers blade to give health if the target dies within 4s, why didn't endless fury get a similar treatment?
• Surge is easily replaced in most builds by either Entropy or Momentum (and with so many people running medium & 2h having to make the choice to use 2h for a melee build is, lets say, a very easy choice, and again, this goes against the idea Eric mentioned in ESO Live 11 where they didn't want to see one combination (34:45))
• Bolt Escape is either seen as overpowered or worthless given the heavy cost related to it. This shows the problem that the new resource regeneration brings, since with the high cost a sorcerer build of it can use Bolt Escape frequently but if not then this skill becomes an expensive utility that's unlikely to be used.
• Pets continue to have issues that limit their value in many situations, either remaining out of stealth in pvp giving away your position, drawing agro from mobs without you commanding them to attack, scaling only off of magicka rendering most of the skill tree useless outside of casters, or standing around in combat requiring a re-summon to be useful (with a cast time on all pets now as well).
• And another thing shown in the changes from 1.6 was with the Clannfear's heal, an odd thing to add and with it came several tree wide 'changes.' Unstable and Volatile Familiar's got a cast time reducing their effectiveness, the Clannfear being your tank it seems to be odd design that you dismiss it when you need it most, and Rebate got changed to provide less magicka making a pet build less sustainable. Not to mention how havin 3+ toggles on both your bars makes for a less than engaging build.
• Also to add, the Twilight Matriarch uses up 40% of its health in its heal (which heals 40% of yours) however pets have 0 health regen. The Twilight is easy enough to kill as is, is there any particular reason that a power that has a 30s cooldown needs to cost my pet a large portion of its already poor health pool? Also, if you refresh Conjured Ward before your pets shields are destroyed they won't get refreshed, just a random thing i've noticed.

These thoughts just came to mind while thinking over this reply which again I would like to thank you for, I just hope the combat team does realize that sorcerers are a horrendously lop sided class right now. Insane burst damage because of the 1.6 buffs to popular skills and resource generation changes, and mostly seen as a joke in other areas. It is my opinion that 1.6 did more to restrict class build diversity and only provided people a way to argue for nerfs to the class. They do one thing exceedingly well and most everything else poorly, and I feel that's a good example of a "egregious balance issue."