Stamina Sorcerer changes - a plea

Jar_Ek

Stamina Sorcerer’s

This is a little bit of a pre-emptive strike, but it seems that zos are not making anywhere near the necessary level of changes to make stamina sorcerers a viable build – both in comparison to other classes stamina builds and sorcerer magicka builds.

This post seeks to present a set of suggestions that would (hopefully) bring the stamina sorcerer up towards the same levels as these other builds. The suggestions seek to allow for a diversification of sorcerer builds, a strengthening of stamina builds – without significantly impacting magicka builds.

Although the suggestions focus on stamina sorcerer builds, they also consider quality of life issues and other non-standard (i.e. non-magicka dps) sorcerer builds.

TLDR:

Stamina sorcerer’s will still be weak after the changes stated by zos. These are the (real) changes that are needed – with the key points highlighted in bold.

Make the following changes to passives:
• Change Expert Mage to provide Weapon Power as well as Spell Power.
• Change Blood Magic to 7% heal +2% heal per additional target hit to a max of 15% heal
• Change Exploitation to (also?) apply a minor mangle debuff to all targets hit for 5/10s (+ Persistence bonus)
• Remove Rebate and Change Expert Summoner to incorporate Rebate into its effect.
• Add Expert Conjuror:
o Bound armour provides a minor vitality buff (4/8%) buff whilst active.
o Daedric Curse applies a minor defile effect on the target until it explodes.
o Conjured ward increases pets shields by 5/10% (but not your own shield).

Make the following changes to actives:
• Change Endless Fury into a stamina morph which restores magicka on a kill.
• Make one morph of Lightning Form stamina based [this is being done].
• Change Surge to provide a Spell Power buff and reduce the healing cool-down to 0.05s / remove healing cool-down but prevent simultaneous heals from AOE abilities.
• Change Critical Surge to provide a Weapon Power buff and a major Endurance buff whilst active.
• Change Power Surge to provide a minor berserk and mending buff (on top of the Spell Power one now in the base ability).
• Change Bolt Escape to require both stamina and magicka to cast
• Change Power Overload to give back stamina rather than increase heavy attacks or have Energy Overload give back both magicka and stamina.
• Change Crystal Blast to fire multiple crystals as an AoE ability.
• Change Restraining Prison to remove the CC effect delay and change the shape to be a ground targeted circle.
• Change Dark Deal/Exchange/Conversion to be a toggle and remove the snare and channel effect.
• Make Daedric Mines stealthed and ensure they always trigger and cause damage / effect when dodge rolled through, charged through or bolted over. [And do the same with all “trap” abilities]
• One morph of Daedric mines should scale off stamina
• Make all summoned pets damage scale of either magicka or stamina
• Make all summoned pet health scale up with summoner health.
• Make all toggle abilities (esp. pets) that are hosted on both weapon bars (not including overload) have a special (active) ability.
• Change Daedric Curse to scale off stamina or magicka
• Change Bound Armour to provide a minor protection buff rather than an resolve buff.

Overall effect:
The changes should improve stamina builds whilst not making magicka builds significantly more powerful (esp. in PvP).

The main changes that impact magicka builds are:

• Loss of one Mages Fury morph option, Critical Surge morph option and one Lightning Form morph option
• Slight improvement to self-healing with increased Blood Magic healing from AoE and reduction in Surge randomness.
• Slight improvement in survivability from Bound Armour being a direct damage mitigation and providing minor health increase.
• Slight damage boost from minor berserk in Power Surge.
• Slight improvement to healer role with minor mending from Power Surge.
• Bolt Escape tied to stamina and magicka

However some these changes come at a relative cost requiring the use of Power Surge rather than Entropy for example.

The main changes that impact stamina builds are:

• Gain a Mages Fury morph
• Slight improvement to self-healing with increased Blood Magic healing from AoE and reduction in Surge randomness.
• Sources of stamina regeneration (Critical Surge and Overload morph)
• Slight improvement in survivability from Bound Armour being a direct damage mitigation and providing minor health increase.
• Improvement to pets damage
• Additional damaging abilities (daedric curse scaling, daedric mines morph)
• Additional weapon power (Expert Mage)
• Bolt Escape tied to stamina and magicka

The long version

Background
The sorcerer class was originally designed around a high burst potential magicka playstyle with a class shield substituting for a heal. Due to the soft-cap mechanism pre-1.6, the class could be played as an effective stamina / melee playstyle, despite the fact that all class skills were magicka based. The introduction of the champion system and the removal of soft-caps (post 1.6) has made single resource stacking the most effective playstyle (i.e. magicka or stamina builds). This was recognised by zos and some class morphs were changed to stamina morphs… unfortunately this was not done with a full understanding of the impact of the changes in 1.6 on all playstyles – in particular the stamina build playstyles for sorcerers.

In general there were a few common stamina build playstyles per-1.6:
a. Reaver playstyle built around melee weapons (normally Dual Wield) with high critical, stacked weapon power and healing from Critical Surge and mobility from Boundless Storm. Potentially with Crystal Fragments or Restraining Prison for the added critical chance to Dual Wield.
b. Pet playstyle built either melee or ranged stamina weapons with support from one of two Pets.
c. Tank playstyle built around sword and shield, with a Lightning Form morph and Bound Armour for armour, potentially with Deadric Minefield and Restraining Prison. This also tended to have a 2-handed weapon one the second bar for Rally and damage purposes.
d. Ranged playstyle with Restraining Prison and Daedric Tomb.

All of these playstyles have been reduced in relative effectiveness post 1.6 (i.e. compared to other classes and compared to magicka builds). This is in part to do with the single resource stacking meta (no soft caps), in part to do with the champion system which promotes one resource / playstyle and discourages hybrids (at least initially), and in part to do with skill changes (and also the lack thereof).

This thread is an attempt to both look at and address these issues – without destroying any currently viable builds. To this end I shall start by looking at the passives as these are where you can start to see the synergies of a class…

 
Passives
To understand the current issues with stamina sorcerer builds post 1.6, we must first look at the passive class skills whilst considering the single resource meta and all possible playstyles.

Storm Calling Passives
These passives are entirely designed to support magicka builds without any tangible benefits to stamina builds as they currently stand – although this will change (very) slightly with the introduction of a stamina morph.

Energised
This passive provide little to no effective benefit to non-magicka builds because all the lightning abilities that benefit from the passive are magicka based and scaled… which means that they are unlikely to be selected by a stamina build and if they are the impact of the passive is significantly less than for magicka builds (due to their significantly smaller magicka resource pool).

With the addition of a stamina scaled Lightning Form morph there is now one non-ultimate (maybe two if you include both morphs of Lightning Form) ability that benefits from this passive for stamina builds – compared to the 6 abilities that benefit for magicka builds.

Disintegrate
This passive provide little to no effective benefit to non-magicka builds because all the lightning abilities that trigger this passive are magicka based and scaled… which means that they are unlikely to be selected by a stamina build with the possible exception of Lightning Form (and morphs) as it provides utility rather than just damage.

With the addition of a stamina scaled Lightning Form morph there is now one non-ultimate (maybe two if you include both morphs of Lightning Form) ability that benefits from this passive for stamina builds – compared to the 6 abilities that benefit for magicka builds.

Expert Mage
This passive provides no effective benefit to stamina builds because spell power only impacts magicka abilities. However as stamina builds do not stack (or really need) spell power or have any effective sorcerer damaging abilities that will be impacted by this passive – it is of no benefit. The pre-1.6 version which reduced the costs of these abilities at least benefitted stamina sorcerers to some extent.

This passive is only going to be of benefit to stamina builds if the same effect is also applied to weapon power (i.e. 2% bonus to weapon power per sorcerer skill on the bar).

Capacitor
Although this passive does not greatly benefit non-magicka builds it is still of some use as they can still make use of some utility magicka abilities – and hence faster regeneration of magicka is still of some benefit.

Although it would be nice if this had more benefit to stamina builds – I cannot see it happening. If something were to be done the logical thing would be to provide a stamina regeneration bonus commensurate with the magicka one (i.e. 7.5% increase to both magicka and stamina regeneration for example).

Dark Magic Passives
These passives are somewhat magicka biased as most require a Dark Magic skill to be cast or to “hit” an opponent to take effect. As the dark magic abilities are all magicka based, they are more likely to be effective for, and affordable by, magicka builds.

Unholy Knowledge
This passive is excellent as it benefits all builds equally without bias.

Blood Magic
This passive is okay (but biased towards magicka builds as noted above). It would be better if it supported the use of AoE abilities as a single cast currently only provides a single heal based on max health regardless of the number of targets hit. If this heal were to heal 7% when one target is hit and to increase the heal by 2% per additional target hit with the ability (to a maximum of 4 additional targets and hence 15% heal) it would promote the use of Dark Magic AoE abilities and morphs more (to provide a greater heal).

Persistence
This passive is okay (but biased towards magicka builds as noted above). Currently it is of limited benefit to a number of the dark magic abilities as their existing duration is either very short (and hence a percentage increase is even smaller), or they are self-targeted.

Exploitation
The current passive, which is a group spell critical buff, does not benefit stamina builds directly - which the pre 1.6 exploitation passive did. Although this is a group buff (and hence stamina builds can provide some support in groups), it is unlikely to be applied by most stamina builds as there are no stamina friendly skills within the tree (the exception being stamina tanks who might use Restraining Prison).

This passive is thus relatively poor for stamina builds – partly because the buff is for spell critical only, and partly because spell critical (and critical in general) is relatively easy to get anyway and hence the buff is not required. This passive might be more interesting if it applied a minor mangle debuff to opponents struck by a dark magic ability. This debuff would be applied for a fixed time (5/10s) even if the ability was broken free from – and would be affected by Persistence.

Alternatively it should provide both a spell and weapon critical buff.


Daedric Summoning Passives
These passives are somewhat magicka biased as most require a pet to be active to take effect. The daedric pet summoning abilities are all magicka scaled and hence more likely to be effective for, and affordable by (on recast), magicka builds.

Power Stone:
This passive is excellent as it benefits all builds equally without bias.

Daedric Protection:
This is one of the few passives that arguably supports non-magicka builds better than magicka ones, as the improved health recovery with a summoning skill slotted supports health / Tank builds more than magicka builds. And Tank builds tend to be stamina based (although they do not need to be with Conjured Ward and Inner Rage).

Expert Summoner:
This passive is relatively poor in real terms (and slightly biased towards magicka builds as noted above) as it provides increased pet capabilities that should really be part of the baseline abilities. In addition, because it only affects pets, it only supports half the skill tree.

This passive would be a good passive if it incorporated the effects of Rebate and provided its existing capability.

Rebate:
This passive is relatively poor in real terms (and slightly biased towards magicka builds as noted above) as it only provides an effect on the death of a pet - thus it only affects half the skill tree and then only occasionally (unless you are spamming a Clannfear for the heal).

This passive should be rolled into Expert Summoner to enable another passive to be added (see Expert Conjuror below) that supports the use of the non-pet skills within the tree.

Expert Conjuror:
This passive would replace Rebate. It would provide a passive effect based on the use of the non-pet skills within the tree. Thus:
Bound Armour provides a minor vitality (4/8%) buff whilst active.
Daedric Curse applies a minor DoT effect on the target until it explodes.
Conjured ward increases pets shields by 5/10% (but not your own shield).

This passive supports both magicka and stamina builds better as it affects utility skills (although it still supports magicka builds better due to the prevalence of magicka abilities).



Overview
Well it has been several months now and we still have not seen any changes to the Sorcerer to support stamina builds. However there have been a few rumours…

So I would like to put forward a set of suggestions to overhaul the sorcerer class trees to both provide better support for stamina builds without gutting magicka builds and to provide a general overhaul of sorcerer abilities to improve them in a more general sense.

As a general comment / note:
The main issues with sorcerer skills for stamina builds is that they do not scale with stamina and that they are relatively expensive (esp. with the Expert Mage change).

Storm Calling

Endless Fury
Current: Magicka scaled lightning based single target ranged execute.
Killing an opponent with this restores magicka
Suggestion: Change this to a stamina ability (but it still restore magicka).
Reason: This would provide a spammable direct damage ability for stamina builds that can benefit from and trigger Energised and Disintegrate passives. Plus it would provide some timed burst potential.

Surge:
Current: Provides major brutality (weapon) buff and healing on critical with a 0.25s cool-down
Synergy: None
Suggestion: Change the base skill to provide a spell power buff
Change the healing cool down to 0.05s
Reason: This fits with most traditional sorcerers far more than weapon power.
The cool-down change should soothe out the healing when using bleeds, DoTs, etc (but still prevent AoE attacks from providing large burst heals).
Currently the cool-down imposes a high level of randomness to the heals if you use DoTs, low damage attacks or AoE fields which effectively cripples this ability for certain builds (anything using Bows, Dual Wield, Lightning Form/Splash, Lightning staff, Caltrops, WereWolf, amongst others).

Critical Morph
Current: Increases the healing return by 10% to 20% at rank IV.
Suggestion: This now provides a weapon power buff and not a spell power buff.
Whilst active this provides a major Endurance (stamina regen) buff.
Healing return from critical is not increased
This should either be made a stamina morph (i.e. cost stamina) or have a magicka cost reduction built in (i.e. 5% per morph rank).
Reason: This would make it useful skill for stamina builds (due to the stamina regen), and with the cost reduction, affordable.

Power Morph
Current: Also provides major sorcery (spell damage) buff
Suggestion: This would gain a minor berserk and mending buff (on top of the Spell Power one now in the base ability).
Reason: This would provide an alternative to Structured Entropy that would support healers and DPS.

All: The current cool-down makes the use of this ability somewhat problematic as a critical can trigger a heal from any damage source – which in turn means that low damage DoTs and attacks are detrimental to the healing – which forces all builds using it for healing to avoid attacks that include DoTs – and hence avoid certain weapons / skills. Changing the cool-down mechanic such that DoTs do not reduce the healing is necessary to make the skill useful for healing again.
Magicka: Currently this ability is overshadowed by Structured Entropy which has the Mages Guild passives synergising with it. Providing buffs for healing and DPS into Power Morph would go some way towards making it a useful skill.
Stamina: As it stands this is not particularly useful for stamina builds due to cost and the cool-down issues associated with the healing, especially when compared to Rally. Providing a stamina regeneration buff would make it useful regardless of the healing, or comparative lack thereof.

Bolt Escape
Current: A short range teleport that causes a stun at the launch point. It has a stacking magicka cost penalty on multiple use.
Synergy: None
Suggestion: The problem with this ability is that it can be spammed (in PvP) to provide an effective escape for the sorcerer. The current intended “fix” to this issue is to increase the cost with each cast past the first. If this is the direction zos wish to take, it will cripple the spell use for stamina sorcerers (who already have huge issues with the cost).
Instead I suggest that this could have its cost modified as follows:
Initial cast = magicka (as current)
Additional casts within a 4s period from the last cast cost 50% magicka and 50% stamina (or potentially 75% / 75%). If either cost cannot be made, the residual cost is made up from health.
Reason: This is a very difficult skill to balance across all user groups.
However with these changes it means that a magicka build cannot bolt across the map without worrying about running out of stamina and then health. It also means that stamina sorcerers can afford to bolt more than once.

Magicka: This is a useful and effective skill for PvP magicka builds.
Stamina: Usable only in a tactical manner – and then relatively infrequently.

Overload
Current: An ultimate that provides an separate action bar on activation, and changes light attacks into powerful single target strikes and heavy attacks into AoE attacks. It does not allow any weapon abilities to be cast whilst active.
Synergy: Energised, Disintegrate and Expert mage passives
Suggestion: None
Reason: As a general point, if no sorcerer abilities are stamina scaled, then the usefulness of the Overload action bar is greatly reduced.

Power Morph
Current: Increases range and damage of heavy attack
Suggestion: Rather than improving the heavy attack effect of the ultimate have the strikes replenish stamina in the same way that the other morph replenishes magicka.
Alternatively the Energy Morph could provide stamina return on cast as well as magicka.
Reason: This is the counterpoint to energy overload.

Magicka: This ultimate is very useful for regeneration of resources (Energy morph), for utility (additional skill bar), and for damage.
Stamina: This ultimate provides good damage and some utility (in an additional skill bar) – but is lacking compared to the same ultimate for magicka builds.

Dark Magic

Crystal Shards
Current: A high damage ranged attack with a cast and flight time that causes a knockdown
Synergy: Blood Magic, Exploitation, Persistence (minor)
Suggestion: Reduce the flight time and make the animation / particle effect somewhat less obvious.
Reason: This skill is currently quite easy to dodge, reflect or block (even whilst in flight)

Crystal Blast
Current: Provides an AoE version of the baseline crystal shards.
Suggestion: Rather than the current implementation.
Reduce the cost by 5% per rank in this morph
This morph now increases the number of crystals fired by 1 per rank in this morph (so 5 at max rank).
Reduce the cast time by 5% per rank in this morph?
Reason: This better supports stamina builds as it has a reduced cost and an AoE CC effect.
It also makes for a more viable option to take instead of Fragments.

Magicka: Generally a useful skill for magicka, especially the Crystal Fragments morph (“instant” cast and reduced cost).
Stamina: As it stands this is not particularly useful for stamina builds due to the magicka scaling. However I do not suggest changing this to include a stamina morph, but to make it more affordable for a stamina build would be good.

Encase
Current: This is a cone shaped area effect root which can be dodged / avoided.
Synergy: Blood Magic, Exploitation, Persistence
Suggestion: Make the effect instant and hence unavoidable (can be CC broken).
Reason: This skill is can be (relatively easily) avoided in PvP, which it should not be the case.

Restraining Prison
Current: Adds a snare after the base effect ends.
Suggestion: Also changes the shape/targeting to be a circular, ranged, ground targeted AoE (as per Lightning Splash targeting) that has exactly the same effect as the base Encase effect.
Reason: This supports tanks and melee builds as it allows it to be self-targeted (esp. if zos provide a means to enable self-targeting by default for such abilities); and provides a more flexible skill for everyone else.

All: The relative unreliability (due to both targeting shape and effect occurrence delay) and high cost make this a less used and less desirable CC effect (compared to DK Talons for example). This would be somewhat offset by the suggestions above.

Rune Prison
Current: Disorientation CC that breaks on damage.
Synergy: Blood Magic, Exploitation, Persistence
Suggestion: Reduce the cast time by 50%.
Reason: The cast time makes this a pre-combat cast (or when opponents are CCd) and it has minimal applicability in PvP. A lower cast time would help a lot, especially with Runic Cage.

Dark Exchange
Current: This is supposed to a heal that restores magicka at the cost of stamina. However as it also CCs the sorcerer by applying a snare and being a channel (i.e. cannot use any other skills / attacks) it is generally not very useful. On the plus side blocking cancels it.
Synergy: None
Suggestion: Change the skill into a toggle. Whilst toggled on, the ability swaps stamina for magicka and health. However it does not snare the sorcerer, or stop them using skills. It is automatically toggled off by a performing a weapon swap, or when the sorcerer is hit by an interrupt (or by re-pressing the toggle). Whilst the toggle is active the sorcerer’s normal regeneration is halted (i.e. 0 magicka, stamina and health regeneration). Whilst on the skill bar (regardless of being on or off), it provides a minor maximum health increase (8%). The exact level of conversion should be modified to be good enough to be worth slotting regardless (i.e. always better than your natural recovery rates).
Reason: This is supposed to be channelled heal and resource regeneration mechanic, but it is completely ineffective for that task. This is because it snares the caster and they cannot do anything whilst it is active – and any form of defence cancels it (dodge roll or block). Whilst it is running it is a huge DPS loss, and a liability in all serious endeavours – in PvP it can only be used whilst in a “safe” location, as you are a sitting duck when using it; and in PvE it is of no use as it is either a dps/hps loss and/or it means you take additional damage (standing in an AoE without any defence).

The changes means that the ability does not CC the caster or snare them and only lasts for as long as the caster desires without sacrificing defences / dps / hps. These changes make it more controllable and less of a self-CC – but with a downside in terms of rengeration.

All: The idea behind this ability is one that sounds good on paper, but is impractical and unworkable in reality. Dark Exchange is intended to be used either when your foes are safely CCd or when you are safely behind a suitable shield (conjured ward). However the reality is that when the ability is required, it is generally a death sentence to use (i.e. you are taking heavy damage from a boss, multiple mobs, or in PvP).

An alternative (and rather easier to implement) would be to reduce the channel time by 66% and increase cost and return by 300%. So it takes 1/3 the current time to get the same level of health / magicka back.

“Stamina” Morph
Current: Converts magicka into stamina / health as a channel – at the same rate as the improved conversion rate morph.
Synergy: None
Suggestion: See above
Reason: There is no reason that being a stamina user should be penalised compared to a magicka user.

Daedric Mines (magicka)
Current: This generates 3 daedric mines that explode on contact causing high damage and a short immobilisation. They have a 3 second activation period and are generated in a PBAoE around the caster. Boss mobs are not affected by multiple mines hit within a specific time period.
Synergy: Blood Magic, Exploitation, Persistence
Suggestion: Bosses should be affected by multiple mines, but additional mines past the first should have their damage calculated on a diminishing returns basis against such bosses– such that each subsequent mine hit within a 0. 5 second timescale causes 50% less damage than the previous (so 100%, 50%, 25%, etc).
In addition the mines (when active) should immobilise (stop) and damage charging attacks (including streak / bolt escape and dodge roll).
All mine morphs should be stealthed, such that they can only be seen via stealth detection (plus the caster and allies).
Reason: Currently an expensive ability that should have utility but does not as it can be avoided far too easily – or does very limited damage.

Negate Magic:
Current: This now negates abilities on initial activation only.
Synergy: Blood Magic, Exploitation, Persistence
Suggestion: Compared to the pre-1.6 version of Negate, this ultimate is a shadow of its former self.
Allow negate magic to negate all abilities on initial activation and then have a charge system where additional negation use up 1 charge per standard ability, 5 per boss ability, and 10 per ultimate ability. The negate field has X charges after the initial negation and hence could negate the next X regular abilities, the next X/5 boss abilities, or the next X/10 ultimates used – at which point it collapses (even if it would have had duration left). My initial suggestion would be 10 charges and/or to tweak with ultimate / boss charge destruction.
Reason: It makes negate a bit more useful again, currently it is a bit too weak.

Daedric Summoning
In order to offset the impact of the Daedric Summoning toggles (i.e. 2 slots on your bars) and the casts times, I suggest the following:

The damage of all summons should scale off maximum magicka or stamina.
The health of all summons should scale up with maximum health (using current pet health values as the lower limit)

All summoning toggles should gain an active ability (a little like defensive posture has a passive effect from being slotted and an active) when slotted on both weapon bars (overload doesn’t count). The initial activation of the ability sets the toggle on and to actively de-toggle it is a double press (or a dual key press). Any use of the normal activation key after the toggle has been set on, activates a secondary ability based on the nature of the skill.

Example abilities are
Familiar:
Activation ability: Daedric flames
Active ability: Fire-based AoE DoT at familiars location.
Costs magicka.
Clanfear:
Activation ability: Tail swipe.
Active ability: AoE knockdown at clanfear location.
Costs stamina.
Unstable Familiar:
Activation ability: Unstable explosion
Active ability: Fire-based AoE DoT with an heavy tick at end of DoT at familiar location.
Costs magicka.
Winged Twilight:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability: Casts a HoT on caster.
Costs magicka
Restoring Twilight:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability: Casts a HoT on caster.
Costs magicka
Morph provides a magicka regeneration aura
Twilight Matriarch:
Activation ability: Azura's light
Active ability: Casts a HoT on caster
Costs stamina?
Morph provides a stamina regeneration aura
Bound Armour:
Activation ability: Daedric Staff
Active ability: Provide a minor spell power buff for 10s
Costs magicka
Bound Armour:
Activation ability: Bound Weapon
Active ability: Provide a minor weapon power buff for 10s
Costs stamina

Daedric Curse:
Current: Causes a delayed AoE damage explosion.
Suggestion: This should scale with either stamina or magicka (i.e. the higher of either one).
Reason: The addition of a new passive will provide a defile debuff.
Plus it would provide some timed burst potential.

Bound Armour:
Current: Provides a minor armour buff and improves maximum magicka.
Suggestion: Instead provides minor protection buff and improves maximum magicka.
Reason: To be of any real use in a build, toggles almost always have to be on all bars – which means that they need to be good, rather than “okay”. If bound armour is changed to a minor protection buff it actually provides some damage mitigation which is not true of the current armour buff.
Bound Aegis:
Current: Adds minor spell resistance buff (Ward).
Suggestion: Adds minor armour and spell resistance buffs.
Reason: The baseline change improves the ability, and the new passive supports the change.
Bound Armaments:
Current: Improves maximum stamina instead of magicka and provides additional damage on heavy attacks.
Suggestion: No change beyond the baseline changes
Reason: The baseline change improves the ability, and the new passive supports the change.

Please read and provide reasoned comments from your perspective as a stamina or magicka sorcerer or another class.

Jar_Ek

No-one has any thoughts?
@erock24
@Dracane

Dracane

Jar_Ek wrote: »

No-one has any thoughts?
@erock24
@Dracane

I was reading this yesterday. And well

I like some of your passive skill ideas. But I don't even understand most of your stuff. What do you mean by removing Rebate ? What do you mean by Pets giving you active effects ?

I think, they should finally fix Mages Fury. I'm going to make a thread, showing how useless and weak Mage's Fury is. This is the most lackluster ability in the game and NO, 10% more damage will not change anything. With that being said, Magicka Sorcerer should have priority. Sorcerer is a mage after all. I would like to see Expert Mage also giving 2% weapon damage and the changes for Bound Armor. But everything else is over the top.

You know me, Stamina Sorcerer is not my favorite topic

Jar_Ek

The spoiler tag covers the more detailed elements of the suggestions. However the crux of the issues are twofold.

1. Most passive abilities do nothing for non magicka stacking builds.
2. None of the abilities provide a stamina damage scaled effect.

Magicka sorcerers are currently in a good place compared to their stamina counterparts, and in general in PVP - although in high end pve they are lacking. However as stamina sorcerers have been targeted for some changes, then it is logical to look at them... but within the context of all sorcerers abilities.


In order to be even remotely competitive, stamina sorcerers need some serious love.

Dracane

I think, your suggestion for Expert Mage is very reasonable and I can see them doing this. Up to 10% more weapon damage or 12% if you are crazy. Imagine this pared with the insane weapon damage values you can reach.... I think this would be more than enough to make Stamina Sorcs the strongest melee fighters. Strong when it comes to Weapon usage and the stamina lightning form should also help a lot.

I really like the Expert Mage idea.

Emma_Overload

"• Change Blood Magic to 7% heal +2% heal per additional target hit to a max of 15% heal"

This is a really good idea, and would be very helpful to players such as myself who use Crystal Blast as their main damage spell. They also need to fix Encase (and morphs) so that Blood Magic procs every time you hit something with it. There seems to be some kind of bug or invisible cooldown that prevents it from proccing when it should.

eventide03b14a_ESO

Some of them are not bad. I am all in favor of giving up and changing the morphs that none of us use anyway into stamina morphs. I don't think pet's health should scale off of our own health. That doesn't even make sense. What's the point of having a tank pet if it's dependent on our own HP? I absolutely hate your idea on bolt escape, especially since they are increasing the cost (again) on it and you know damn well they are going to give the speed morph of lighting form to the stamina sorcs anyway. Other than that, all your other suggestions would only make us way too OP.

Dracane

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

"• Change Blood Magic to 7% heal +2% heal per additional target hit to a max of 15% heal"

This is a really good idea, and would be very helpful to players such as myself who use Crystal Blast as their main damage spell. They also need to fix Encase (and morphs) so that Blood Magic procs every time you hit something with it. There seems to be some kind of bug or invisible cooldown that prevents it from proccing when it should.

Yes, Blood Magic has a cooldown. I don't think, it would break the game if Blood Magic would proc for each target hit. Sorc has no self heal, so why not ?

Dracane

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

they are going to give the speed morph of lighting form to the stamina sorcs anyway. .

I hope you only made a mistake. They want to give thundering presence to Stamina Sorcs, not boundless Storm. Or am I wrong ?

How are Magicka Sorcs supposed to escape without boundless storm, when the bolt escape nerf 3.0 hits us ?

Jar_Ek

@eventide03b14a_ESO
Well my bolt escape suggestion was instead of the incoming cost increases and I would think it would be better than them (but that is just a personal opinion), and the health scaling of pets was more of an increase rather than a reduction - such that tanky characters have tankier pets (cause they will do less damage) - so the base health of pets would be unchanged.

eventide03b14a_ESO

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@eventide03b14a_ESO
Well my bolt escape suggestion was instead of the incoming cost increases and I would think it would be better than them (but that is just a personal opinion), and the health scaling of pets was more of an increase rather than a reduction - such that tanky characters have tankier pets (cause they will do less damage) - so the base health of pets would be unchanged.

Having it scale off of both would be horrible for both stamina and magicka builds. Magicka builds need their stamina for break free and stamina builds need their stamina for both offense and defense. Having it scale off of magicka at leas allows for the stamina sorc to have a mobility that doesn't drain their main resource.

Jar_Ek

Maybe the bolt escape idea wouldn't work. The problem is the incoming bolt escape change will mean it has a 4s cooldown for all stamina builds is the concern for me. However if I'm honest I don't think it can be balanced.

Jar_Ek

Any comments (or lurking) as to what you guys think?
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Waffennacht

I found your ideas interesting. I am a magicka/stamina sorc. Heavy armor sword and board. The up coming changes worry me.

I like your bound armor idea. I use it, and at the moment im not entirely sure ill keep it. I do like the boost to stats as thats why im running it, but it seems lackluster esp compared to the lightning version.

Im not well versed enough to judge most other ideas. Pets scaling off health i dont like, i put so little points into health

Waylander

I have been testing stamina sorc in PvP for a while now and I find it to be quite effective. Not as good as a NB, but still very capable.

The main areas that are lacking are:
(1) Lack of effective stamina sustain
(2) Lack of reliable self healing
(3) Lack of instant cast cc
(4) Lack of stamina focussed active abilities results in stamina sorcs using mostly weapon abilities and few class skills

To address these I would propose:
(1) Lack of effective stamina sustain
(a) Bound aegis. Make this an active ability rather than a toggle. One morph gives +20% dodge chance and +10% stamina regen for 20 seconds. Other morph gives +20% damage to heavy attacks for 20 seconds
(b) Overload - make one morph return magica, one morph return stamina.
(2) Lack of reliable self healing
(a) Surge: Remove cooldown, limit healing done to 25% of max health per ability cast. Promotes higher health to benefit more.
(b) Dark exchange: Make this an instant cast heal that exchanges either 50% of your magica or stamina pool for 50% of your health. Big instant heal but at the cost of depleting a useful resource. If the pool you are casting from has less than 50% you get the remaining % converted to a heal (eg 37% magica left = 37% heal). Unmorphed uses 25 % of both resources to heal 50% health. This skill would then also be useful for sorc tanking.
(3) Lack of instant cast cc
(a) Rune cage and defensive rune are made instant cast. They break on direct damage but dots don't break them.
(4) Lack of stamina focussed active abilities results in stamina sorcs using mostly weapon abilities and few class skills
(a) Lightning form. Both morphs give +20% speed and armour/spell buff. One morph purges 3 negative abilities on caster. Other morph lasts longer and does more lightning damage.
(b) One of the morphs for deadric mines becomes deadric trap. Cast 1 deadric trap (the size of 1 mine). Mine is invisible to enemies unless they are in stealth. Costs stamina to set. The trap immobilizes enemy on activation, gives a 4 second snare and does X AoE damage on activation. Damage is increased by 60% for deadric or undead enemies. This ability also activates the dark magic 8% heal.
(c) make pet damage scale on the higher of magica or stamina. Make the cost to summon a % of total magica pool cost. Make rebate return magica and stamina.
(d) Make hardened ward scale off health so it is suitable for magica or stamina builds.

Jar_Ek

@Waylander So we are broadly in agreement on much of what is needed and on some of the ways of achieving them. Hopefully if more sorcerers can comment we can form a broad consensus that zos may listen to.

Jar_Ek

Please @zos provide some feedback as to your intentions of for stamina sorcerer builds! Do not just give us a single stamina scaled skill and assume it will all be good. It won't.

Erock25

Jar_Ek wrote: »

No-one has any thoughts?
@erock24
@Dracane

@Jar_Ek You missed me by one number!

Your changes are good, I guess. The only one I don't agree with is Bolt Escape costing magicka and stamina.

The only thing I care about with the upcoming changes and how the relate to stamina sorcs, is that I want to feel like a Sorc while playing my stamina Sorc. The proposed changes of stamina based Lightning Form and a better Dark Deal do absolutely ZERO for making me feel more like a Sorc. Lightning Form is literally the only Sorc spell I use as a stamina Sorc already and honestly it is a great magicka dump. It will be nice if it adds significant DPS for PVE, but it doesn't make me feel more like a Sorc since I'm already using it.

Stamina Sorcs needs some love with Sorc passives. Stamina Sorc needs Crit Surge to actually be worth using as compared to Rally. Stamina Sorc needs one direct damage (or DOT - just anything besides an at least 14 second fire and forget Lightning Form) attack scaling off of stamina. Stamina Sorc needs some other way to manage stamina returns other than Dark Deal because channeling and melee fighting DO NOT MIX.

Right now, playing a stamina sorc feels like playing a generic weapon ability user as there is close to zero reason for you to actually be a Sorc and that is the main problem. @ZOS_RichLambert If you talk to Eric Wrobel, please inform him of at least that problem. He doesn't seem to understand stamina sorcs and what we are missing if the two talked about changes were a Lightning Form stamina morph and a better Dark Deal.

Jar_Ek

@Erock25 doh! Sorry.

Btw I agree fully that just doing a lightning form change really doesn't cut it. But then I actually play a stamina sorcerer. Hell I play an Argonian stamina sorcerer, so I know about dreadful passives. Atm I run with clannfear, lightning form and liquid lightning for sorcerer abilities and that is it... Oh and I sometimes use overload.

SturgeHammer

I've never felt weak or inviable as a Stam Sorc. That being said, I definitely wouldn't mind getting buffed and would like to have a little more support for stam within the Sorc class skills and passives. Ideally, I've always wanted to play a spellsword (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Spellsword), having prowess in physical combat and destructive magic to become a versatile damage dealer at the cost of defensive capabilities. Currently, Stam Sorc is the closest to that style of play that can be achieved. Adding more elegant ways to combine magical and physical combat is what I am asking for. A great place for ZOS to start would be to make surge more appealing, or at least more mechanically different, than momentum.

Jar_Ek

@SturgeHammer Although I do agree that you can run stamina builds that work as a sorcerer in pve they are strictly worse than all other class stamina builds and all magicka builds - that is why I state they lack viability... it's relative. However regardless of semantics, I find it simply unbelievable that zos think that a stamina version of lightning form will magically fix the issues that stamina sorcerers have.

gimpdrb14_ESO

i do just fine dps 15-20k on my stam sorc, dont know whats everyones problem is. with the class and build.

Jar_Ek

gimpdrb14_ESO wrote: »

i do just fine dps 15-20k on my stam sorc, dont know whats everyones problem is. with the class and build.

And how many sorcerer abilities do you use for that? Is that aoe, static or mobile fights? Versus what?
The point is not that you cannot do passability, any stamina build can. The point is that the class adds very little to support the build... unless you have a great build for stamina sorcerers - in which case would you mind sharing it so I can use it