I agree with almost everything you said. Yet i don´t know how you could balance shields (atleast for both scenarios of 1v1 AND XvX). I´m playing mainly in a small grp with 2 to 5 people. As soon as you´re able able to focusfire a sorc they are dead meat or have to withdraw completely from the fight (which they will no longer be able to in 2.1).
Sorc offers no grp utility apart from healing ward + bol (both are heavily nerfed on pts and rightfully so) and being a durable dps in small grp encounters.
If you´re going to take their survivability too there will simply be no reason left to bring a sorc into grp play because they don´t offer anything unique.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Sorcs need nerfed the scaling needs fixed and I think on PTS it was fixed (The math behind the Cyrodiil buff).
Sorcs should be just as survivable as any other class but right now they are far more survivable than any other class. In 2.1 this appears to be fixed so lets test and see.
I've never been a believer that sorc shields should scale of health and I still don't believe that.
Septimus_Magna wrote: »The way I see it the overal sorc class is too much burst orientated, great for pvp but bad for pve.
Problem 1: too much toggled ablities. This needs to change, make them 1-2 minute active buffs or highly increase their usefulness. For bound aegis sorcs have to sacrifice 20% of their skill bars for 8% magicka and little to no added protection, seriously?
Problem 2: only one (useful) damage mitigating ability. Yes, hardened ward is strong, perhaps even too strong. But what else do sorcs have to mitigate damage? Sorcs wont survive anything with bound armor, lightning form, dark deal or defensive rune. These skills are poorly designed and need to be changed into something useful.
Problem 3: no spammable attack. It would be great if sorcs had an attack to weave with. Also, the word sorcerer kinda implies that you would be able to do instant damage to a target. Easy solution is to change one of the Mages Fury mophs to a lightning strike, preferably with a small effect or DoT.
Problem 4: only one DoT/aoe ground ability. The change to lightning splash was much needed but one small aoe ground effect is not enough. It only works on stationary targets so its not always useful. My suggestion would be to change daedric prey to a longer curse (10-12 seconds) wih DoT ticks. This wouldnt effect pvp because DoT are useless in pvp but this would boost sorc pve dps, incl pet builds.
Most posts above have valid points but lets try to keep this a sorc improvement thread.
@Darnathian I think you missed the point that @Glantir was making. It was that DK do more dps then sorcerers - which is especially true for stamina builds... but then all classes (magicka and stamina) do more dps than stamina sorcerers.
I agree with most of the thingsBound armor, pets. Both require 2 or 3 slot per skill for a tiny effect. They must be improved, or be changed to be buffs that last 1-2 minutes or so.
And Daedric Prey.... Would be interesting if it was a DoT. But this would make it even more useless for pvp, where Nightblade just push the I win button and cloak it. Even though Daedric Prey is much worse than Velocious Curse, it explodes and this helps a bit. If it was a DoT, Pets would be even weaker in pvp and we all know, pets barely deal any damage and without Daedric Prey, you can forget them entirely.
Septimus_Magna wrote: »
True, the morph choice for curse would be between pvp (velocious curse) or pve (daedric prey). Which is already the case pretty much, not a lot of sorcs use daedric prey in pvp.
The benefit would be that pve sorcs (even builds without pets) would have a DoT to increase their single target dps without buffing pvp sorcs.
Even though such a change would be welcome, I would prefer an instant damage ability from the storm calling skill tree.