PTS Feedback Thread for Sorcerer Balance Improvements

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the Sorcerer for Update 13. Please let us know how you feel about the changes we made to this class, if you ran into any bugs, and any other feedback you'd like to give.

Earendal

This should be fun.

ku5h

What you did to Velocious Curse made me hyperventilate......in a bad way.

Dracane

Thank you for the thread.
I wanted to take the chance to mention again, that pet base attacks are still the only abilities not being affected by Champion passives such as elemental expert, spell erosion etc.

Their tooltip takes the 25% increase into account, but their actual damage dealt remains the same.

Also, they are supposed to deal 18% additional damage (that's what the tooltip says) But this damage bonus is not added to their damage.

covenant_merchant

• Don't change Velocious Curse
• Don't nerf Overload
• Stop trying to make pets the go-to thing for a sorc

Curse can be applied to only one target at a time. And 3.5sec was perfect for that open world - burst down one target, move to the next..
If the curse will still apply to only one person at a time with a 12 second duration, the sorc doing it will get busted by other targets he can't focus because he's busy waiting for the burst to go off on one. Sorcs don't do battles of attrition. We're outsustained and outdamaged by anything in heavy armor. We cannot "protect the house". And you cannot keep pressure on someone while reapplying your shields every 6 seconds. (Just fyi: 8k shield from harness magicka is less one light attack + viper + selene combo).

Not to mention that 6 seconds is more than enough time to cleanse the curse, whereas with 3.5sec it was trickier.

silky_soft

You buffed eots.

AlphaAbsol

I think Velocious Curse should get a damage nerf (if it needs a nerf at all, which I don't think it does) instead of a time nerf.

gibous

Haunting curse an absolute joke. Buy 1 get 1 free - really? That was someone's idea? Is the combat designer who came up with that a former executive at Wal-Mart?

Betheny

Increase shield length already.

Betheny

Oh, and fix light armour. My God.

jeffm47

i agree shield length should be increased, maybe not back to 20sec but 6 is too short making it hard to maintain and and a magic burner. Why is curse getting a nerf?

Betheny

And while we're here, how about making two hand weapons like staves count as two pieces of a set so we all have access to 12 set items.

And why do two one handers give more spell damage than a staff?

How does that make sense?

Minalan

Revert the velocious curse nerf.

We don't want it. It's not necessary. All of our builds rely on it.

Why? We have TWO good attacks under our skill lines, and ONE execute. Frags, velocious curse, and wrath. That's IT. And you're ruining 50% of our primary class DPS abilities.

Curse at 3.5 second makes up for not having a spammable class DPS ability, it allows us to maintain pressure and a modicum of damage. With a six second burst window, most players will just shield, outheal, purge, or ignore curse completely (by killing us). Nobody is going to be hit by an 'echo' at 12 seconds.

Furthermore with a six second wait for an explosion, we aren't applying any real pressure to an enemy. We can't force them to heal, purge, or shield every 3.5 seconds, that leaves them in control of the fight, and we don't have the tools to regain that momentum. Every duel will be a slow shield-spam grind into death.

I know you won't reconsider because you designers never ever have before. But this one time, surprise me. Please.

If you want to take something away, make pulse reflectable again.

JasonSilverSpring

Is it correct per the tooltip that Ancient Knowledge now requires a Destruction Staff ability slotted? Before it did not and I used it for the reduced heavy attack charge time. If it now only affects destruction staff abilities (of which I use none) then it is pointless to me.

Will there be a cheap/free respec allowed once this goes live?

CaptainVenom

Haunting Curse is just bad. Please revert it back to Velocious. The idea of auto-cast a second curse makes no sense at all!

bardx86

What improvements? All i see is a nerf to curse that wasn't needed.

AsheronRealaidain

Sooo will Curse go back to being able to scale with Thaumaturge now or ??? Why do you guys want to destroy one of the most important magicka sorc skills in our rotation? 3.5 seconds is perfect. This change makes no sense at all.

You also made destro ults do more damage with a lightning staff? 5% damage nerf but an 8% AoE buff with lightning?

STOP PUSHING PETS.

So confused.

Xsorus

There needs to be a way to have your pets target who you want in pvp, they're fine in duels but in cyrodiil pvp they're ass

SanTii.92

As many I don't understand the need of a velocious curse change, but if for some reason it has to stay consider reducing those timers. Something like 5 secs for the first proc and 3 for the second one, would be somewhat more reasonable.

covenant_merchant

Dracane wrote: »

Hey folks. Sorry to tell you, I was wrong
Haunting Curse is not refreshable after the first curse exploded.

Okay, now I'm really pissed. You know, I held out a small shred of hope that curses would be stackable. But no, you actually did it. You actually made a 3.5second vital sorc skill a 12 second stupid one. WTF ZOS. Get your s. together. Come on, team! Revert it back.

We lost shields, detonation, dawnbreaker, streak. We have been outsustained and outdamaged by every *** in heavy armor. The frags + curse + execute combo was the only thing we had left. And now you're taking it away too.

Where is the stamina balance that was promised? The proc sets fix? WHERE ARE THEY? What kind of New Year resolution is that?
"Hey guys, lets nerf sorcs. I feel there's still too many of them."
"Oh Matt, you're trying a stamsorc?"
"Let's leave the proc stacking, tremorscale, and Wrath passive in then. Surely people will be more excited about magicka nerfs."

jarydf

The change to maximum stored ultimate reduction from 1000 to 500 is unneeded and reduces the effectiveness of sorcs that actually use overload rather than just use it as a 3rd bar.

Please don't make this change.

It limits a "frugal" resource management play style where you choose to avoid wasting ultimate and use it as a 3rd dps pool to draw on and use carefully.

This is good for battling bosses. It allowed the creation of very simple but effective builds.

It did not matter that it isn't the strongest dps out there. It was a build design idea I really liked and not like other build ideas in the game. It adds to the divesity of the game.

Father_X_Zombie

I really don't believe it, why curse??? Ive heard more people complain about mages fury! Did you make a special effort to kill duel wield Sorcs? You took away Dawnbreaker twice, inevitable det, trapping webs, buffed the destro staff and overall nerfed Sorcs to pretty much pigeonhole us into destro staffs. All duel wield Sorcs have for burst is curse and frags but now you took that. Wtf is the reasoning behind this nerf!? Nobody asked for it, its not needed and its not wanted, revert it.

The overload nerf is just as damaging to us. You have just killed the magicka Sorcs ability to complete VMA. Without overload to burn bosses we cannot put out enough dps. If you can complete VMA as a sorc with this change, your ether stam or have a very low score.
Do this and Sorcs will be fine:

1: Curse is fine as it is, revert it back
2: don't try to force Sorcs to use pets
3: increase shield duration to 10s
4.Revert the overload nerf

Beardimus

The changes really pigeon hole Sorcs into needing to go cookie cutter builds..knowing the justification would be good. Who had a problem with Overload??

The changes punish DW, punish Overload with no real reason.

No PvPer's were moaning about Overload, its easy to dodge / reflect. The world was angry about Proc sets and the change to Proc sets is meaningless for PvP as we dont see Crits, yet Overload gets cut in half and proc sets hardly touched.

Id love to know the reasoning. Right now DPS sorcs feel like they are pushed Into Destro staff, proc set, bland build with an odd burst / rotation now with Curse change.

Don't get me wrong, 8% more damage done on Inferno bar, brilliant, and that Force Pulse is a beam so not reflectivle / dodge, that's great. It's just odd to have smashed Overload so badly.

Pets getting buffed is good, but damage needs a review too, and the Champion Point buffs don't fully apply.

Lastly - WHY NO PET TARGETING for consoles??

Betheny

Let's not try to bargain with a bad change here.

Revert Velocious Curse changes and just bin Haunting Curse.

covenant_merchant

SanTii.92 wrote: »

As many I don't understand the need of a velocious curse change, but if for some reason it has to stay consider reducing those timers. Something like 5 secs for the first proc and 3 for the second one, would be somewhat more reasonable.

Just don't change it. What's wrong with it that needed changing in the first place?
They left the Tremorscale 50% proc chance and 70% snare, but decided to nerf curse. Out of all the incredibly stupid decisions they've made, all their failed attempts at RNJ, and pushing pet sorcs, and making destro ulti blobs a thing, that's gotta be the worst.
It just doesn't make sense, no matter how you look at it.

Blacksheepart

I main a stamsorc, please for the love of Akatosh STOP PUSHING PETS!

Make combative pets available to everyone via quest or something and give sorcs a new skill line or something.

Betheny

Oh yeah - Overload.

Don't screw with the Ultimate bar, leave it at 1000. No need to nerf Overload.

Father_X_Zombie

maboleth

As far as I'm concerned, having 3 sorcs types is good and adds variety. We have mag sorc, stam sorc and pet sorc. It's fun. Buffing the pets should be very fun and finally worth having 2x2 slots with them.

However, I'd like to hear from @ZOS_GinaBruno what's the reason for a V. curse change? I don't remember anyone complained about it. We obviously cannot see the bigger picture as you guys at ZOS, but really - what's the logic behind this change? I don't think it will be used in PVP though.

I'm downloading the PTS so I'm yet to try it and see it in action.

CyrusArya

You are completely gutting curse, a staple skill of the magicka sorcerer. I have not seen Zenimax completely destroy a staple class skill like this before and it is unacceptable. Furthermore, the compensation 'buff' you gave to the skill is completely irrelevant because reapplying curse is a non factor within a 3.5 second duration..let alone a 6 second one. Either scrap this change or give an appropriate secondary affect to compensate for the massive nerf to sustained damage and the play style that is being dealt to the class here. The echo effect literally makes no sense what so ever..

I have defended your developers in the past and always sought to give you guys the benefit of the doubt but analyzing this change I can't help but feel like a fool.

If curse goes live like this I will cancel my subscription and not spend a single dollar more on this game. Not because my favorite class is 'dead' or that it will be 'unplayable'..no I will persevere and still manage. Rather I cannot justify funding and investing in such utter incompetence.

Zanen

I'm going to tell you the same thing I did last year, and the year before that, all the way back to PC beta.

You have a 12 slot game for actives, which is fine, works great on consoles, but you need to maximize the gameplay possibilities within those limitations.

That means asking your players to double slot abilities is terrible game design, slotted buffs aren't much better. I'll never understand why you continue to use awkwardness as a balancing tool.

Should have put a limit on the number of passives a player can have at the same time, provide choices for them to make, and then put the slotted buffs there. Make toggles persist through weapon swap if the toggles are necessary at all, make all abilities function as smoothly and efficiently as possible (spectral bow) and THEN make a balance pass.

Buff durations are too short, shield durations are too short, having more slottable actives will drastically improve the way the game plays. Balance damage and mitigation AFTER the mechanical/rotational stuff is worked out.

Put a 4 second global cooldown on armor damage procs and then balance the damage between sets. One damage proc is plenty, particularly if everyone has a couple more actives slotted. Stop trying to fix symptoms through battle spirit and nerfing crit and fix the underlying problems.

I do love what you've done with sorc passives lately though. Have no idea where you're coming from with any of the active changes this patch, on any class really.