PTS Feedback Thread for Sorcerer Balance Improvements

Jsmalls

I've never seen a single thread trying to address curse. I have never been told by a single player, wow your curse is OP.

The only difference between prey and "haunting" is I save 2.5k Magicka over the course of 12 seconds... At least by recasting it with prey I can change targets if I want... Doing the save with haunting makes me "waste" the second "burst".

It's 100% useless against Templars...
Any stam build can out heal a 7k burst once ever 6 seconds... ANY BUILD can out heal that garbage.

Honestly I'll replace it with bound armor if this goes live (yay another toggle). Maybe that'll buff my frags enough to not need that embarrassing skill.

You buff our frags 8% (not needed) then nerf the other ability that was fine the way it was.

I hate to be THAT guy, but do you guys seriously play your game?

You're changing our burst from 4 seconds to 7 seconds... Don't think that is really necessary...

covenant_merchant

CyrusArya wrote: »

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.

You won't be the only one dude. Yeah sorcs adapted after Dark Brotherhood, and after the streak nerfs. Because we still had some things left.
Right now, it doesn't even feel like taking a candy from a kid. It's more like forcefully taking the only food the kid had and that should've fed him for a week, while breaking his fingers to keep him from taking it back, punching him in the gut for good measure, and then sitting back eating and watching him squirm in pain on the ground, clutching his broken fingers to his chest like little birds, and lighting his dog on fire for the lolz.

jarydf

I like using a pet but most people don't. Please stop pushing pets so hard. Most sorcs don't want to be a pet sorc. Let them play sorc the way they want. Even if you take away sorc build diversity and buff pets to a point that the meta jumpers start using them you will just ruin it for everyone. Pets will just be another form of proc set.

Betheny

Yep totally feel like I'm rattling my cell bars right now, hoping someone is coming to help.

I hope you guys listen to us - surely you can see we have serious issues here, and we all agree on what those issues are.

jasonteck

reducing hurricane seems to make things unbalanced. Stam sorcs only have a few sorc skills that we can use. all other races have so many. this is the one skill that gives us any time of advantage. Seems that this should be left alone.

Dracane

AsheronRealaidain wrote: »

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.

Curse is still not affected by thaumaturge, I just tested it.

StopDropAndBear

Right now, the pet system is so clunky that you could give these things 5 times as much health and defense and I still can't justify giving up valuable skill slots (on both bars ) for them. Summoning them is awkward, desummoning them is even more awkward, you have barely any control over what they do, the AI is not great, they steal buffs intended for players..buffing them is not the solution, and when other sorc skills keep getting nerfs alongside these buffs, it just feels like salt in the wound.

Aliniel

Do not touch Velocious Curse! You made one of the few useful skills we have total garbage. It's gonna be useless in both PvE and PvP. We don't have a spammable and now you took one of the closest things we had to it. Thanks! -.-'

I don't care about buffs to pets. Harder to kill but the dmg stays the same. No control over them granted. It's gonna be 3 years soon and they are still bad. Minimal control... Come on... Copy WoW controls if you can't think of anything...

Akimbro

Haunting curse is an okay change, but not in replacement of velocious curse. Let's look at why in both a PVE and PVP perspective.

PVE: It's essentially a dps nerf, which sorcs really do not deserve at this point. Via tooltip, velocious curse can explode 3 times in 10.5 seconds. Haunting curse will explode 2 times in 12 seconds. Sorcs are basically losing an entire proc of velocious curse this way.

PVP: I can see this ability being too strong. Since curse is currently unblockable, the new 6s/12s explosions make it easier for sorcs to stack up burst damage. Haunting curse, inevitable det, mages wrath, and frag procs will be the new mag sorc one-shot meta (or nearly one-shot). With velocious curse's shorter duration, it was much more difficult for players to line up that many skills to burst at once.

If haunting curse is to remain, have it be in addition to daedric prey. The 12s duration is better suiting for those who play a summoner role, as they have more time to many their pets without worrying about recasting.

Force-Siphon

Nerfing curse and pushing magicka sorc as a strictly summoning class was a terrible idea that no one called for, this is one of the most unpopular nerfs to happen in a long time, you have given absolutely ZERO explanation for this change THAT NO ONE ASKED FOR. What are you guys actually thinking? Curse on PTS now is a joke. Why would you continue to nerf sorcs so hard? You have taken most of our defensive abilities and torn them up (shelds, streak) and now you are doing the same over time to the damage of the class. Pets do no damage, pet builds make you basically a tank...and what did you do to pets? you buffed their tankiness (which pet sorc already has plenty of) besides atro WHICH IS AN ULTIMATE and the damage is still laughable. At least give us an explanation as to why you thought this nerf was necessary.

We dont want to play pet sorcs which is why barely anyone runs them. If some people do thats fine they had that choice, quit pushing it down our throats and revert this change. Quite a few people are considering leaving this game if you don't (i personally wouldnt give you another dime of my money), we play this game to play our favorite class which you have continued to gut over and over.

covenant_merchant

Akimbro wrote: »

Haunting curse is an okay change, but not in replacement of velocious curse. Let's look at why in both a PVE and PVP perspective.

PVE: It's essentially a dps nerf, which sorcs really do not deserve at this point. Via tooltip, velocious curse can explode 3 times in 10.5 seconds. Haunting curse will explode 2 times in 12 seconds. Sorcs are basically losing an entire proc of velocious curse this way.

PVP: I can see this ability being too strong. Since curse is currently unblockable, the new 6s/12s explosions make it easier for sorcs to stack up burst damage. Haunting curse, inevitable det, mages wrath, and frag procs will be the new mag sorc one-shot meta (or nearly one-shot). With velocious curse's shorter duration, it was much more difficult for players to line up that many skills to burst at once.

If haunting curse is to remain, have it be in addition to daedric prey. The 12s duration is better suiting for those who play a summoner role, as they have more time to many their pets without worrying about recasting.

Inevitable deto ? Please, it does 2k damage tops and is useless unless you're fighting a large stacked up zergball.
And you all seem to forget that curse is purgeable, which is easier to do in 6 seconds than 3.5.

Also atm, a player timing his burst in 3.5second is arguably more skilled than in 6/12 one. That's what makes a good/pug sorc difference.

GlassHalfFull

I played around a bit with my Sorc to investigate the changes, and I have concluded these items:

1. The time nerf change to Velocious Curse is unneccesary and makers the skill far less useful, if at all.
2. The quantity change to 500 for ultimates, meaning Overload is really strange, and makes this skill far less usefull, especially in long duration PvE.
3. In the five guilds I belong to, only the newbie players use pets, why are you still pushing them?
4. The change to the staffs is interesting, but makes it a requirement to have multiple staffs and switch them out based on solo or group. I wont use the frost tank staff, but i can ssee other using it. I do wonder if the tri-focus was the best passive to base this on.

PF1901

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.

If whoever came up with this atrocious redesign had any brains (left) then yes, this would have been the way to go. Just awful and absolutely disappointing.

Betheny

It would be really helpful if you stopped with making pets take two slots (one on each bar) to keep active - they die - don't see any reason they need to pretend they're a toggle item.

If you don't have them slotted on other bar they should stay active as long as you can keep them alive, and just have to switch weapon bars to cast their skill (or resummon them). They should not take two slots of your bars.

It's great they finally got some hp and resistances, but their damage still needs to properly scale with our stats however.

Dracane

Haunting curses approach would fit daedric prey so much better.
Velocious curse should remain as it is.

bardx86

Dracane wrote: »

Haunting curses approach would fit daedric prey so much better.
Velocious curse should remain as it is.

Agreed.

maboleth

Nobody is pushing Pets for the sake of other sorc builds, they only made Pets more instantly useful in fight. That being said, even now, there's some great pet sorc players that are almost unkillable in 1v1 or 3v1 PVP, Dueling and vMaelstrom Arena. It all depends on how good or bad you play.

On the other hand, Velo curse. is strange indeed and can't wait to see what it's all about. Not looking good as is.

Shader_Shibes

silky_soft wrote: »

You buffed eots.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

This. It's not nerfed at all lol, i mean, how the hell did you not realise this? I just...

Dyride

I really dislike the Force Pulse change to being unreflected. I think it is very unfair to mDKs considering how buggy Wings already are.

I don't use pets but they should persist for 4 secs after a bar swap. This can allow a brief backbar switch.

The Velocious Curse change also makes no sense even as a Stam sorc.

Gobsta

Dracane wrote: »

AsheronRealaidain wrote: »

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.

Curse is still not affected by thaumaturge, I just

Dracane wrote: »

Haunting curses approach would fit daedric prey so much better.
Velocious curse should remain as it is.

So is it safe to say from your findings Curse got a blanket nerf?

Are there any positives that you can forsee? (besides curse being on the back bar if that is even a positive).

arkansas_ESO

Couldn't you just add the "echo" effect of the new curse morph to Daedric Prey and then leave Velocious Curse as it is on live? It's not like Velocious is overperforming or that adding the echo to Daedric Prey will suddenly make pet sorcs DPS powerhouses.

Minalan

Denial - This must be a mistake.
Anger - WTF ZOS? Someone fire the designer.
Bargaining - Please ZOS don't do this, it doesn't make sense to nerf one of sorc's two DPS abilities!
Depression - I'm leaving this game. It's over.
Acceptance - So, what do we replace curse with? I guess I'm a lightning staff EoTS and negate bot.

Might as well skip to the last one boys, The ZOS devs team has never. Not once. Ever. Reverted a nerf. This is going live.

CyrusArya

Minalan wrote: »

Denial - This must be a mistake.
Anger - WTF ZOS? Someone fire the designer.
Bargaining - Please ZOS don't do this, it doesn't make sense to nerf one of sorc's two DPS abilities!
Depression - I'm leaving this game. It's over.
Acceptance - So, what do we replace curse with? I guess I'm a lightning staff EoTS and negate bot.

Might as well skip to the last one boys, The ZOS devs team has never. Not once. Ever. Reverted a nerf. This is going live.

Thats simply not true. They reverted extended ritual and also reverb bash from the original pts design in the past because of logical and coherent posts that were made explaining why the proposed changes were bad. That is why I encourage every single sorc who cares about the class to speak up.

Minalan

Dyride wrote: »

I really dislike the Force Pulse change to being unreflected. I think it is very unfair to mDKs considering how buggy Wings already are.

I don't use pets but they should persist for 4 secs after a bar swap. This can allow a brief backbar switch.

The Velocious Curse change also makes no sense even as a Stam sorc.

I actually agree on force pulse, it does so little damage, people wove it with light attack to quickly burn wings off. Now it's there for the duration.

spudblack

Please please please I have tried the new morph of curse and it is terrible, the echo good idea, but 6 seconds!? You are basically killing magic sorcerer. First you take our shields and dawnbreaker and our proxy, now you want our curse?
To top it off you are constantly trying to push sorcerers towards pets.. please stop with the bs.
Increase our ward time to 8 or 10 seconds, give us curse with 3.4 seconds and an echo and if you want to buff pets stop them being a toggle!
No one will run them if they are on both bars.
Thank you please achknowledge this as sorcerer is the only class I like on this game anymore and if you kill it I will quit completey
Nice houses though!:)

Ancientrock

The velocious curse change is bad. Come on. You are really killing the skill, an important one.

Really want to change it? Make it deal less damage. I'm ok with it. But don't make the skill useless.

riVALry9

And what, pray tell, is the reason you feel that Sorcs need to be nerfed even more than they already have been? General consensus, both in PVE and PvP is that Mag Sorcs are no longer the top DPS class, so why reduce our damage output even more? This Haunting Curse is an absolute joke that will effectively kill off dual wield (which still for some inane reason gives me more
SD than a staff?!?) Sorcs in every imaginable way. It is utterly useless in PvP (kinda like that proc set "nerf") as any player can now easily purge it or otherwise mitigate against it. But thank the divines pets got a "buff"....here's a novel idea, maybe we don't want pets. Maybe we just want to play a class that we love, even if it is not the most OP, without it being nerfed further into the ground for absolutely no reason! Seriosuly, ZOS, revert this change if you know what's good for you. I promise you're not ready for the *** that will occur otherwise.

Akimbro

@Dracane wrote: »

Haunting curses approach would fit daedric prey so much better.
Velocious curse should remain as it is.

Mentioned the same in my post. Haunting curse is definitely much more suiting in addition to what daedric prey currently is.

Akimbro

@GlassHalfFull wrote: »

I played around a bit with my Sorc to investigate the changes, and I have concluded these items:

1. The time nerf change to Velocious Curse is unneccesary and makers the skill far less useful, if at all.
2. The quantity change to 500 for ultimates, meaning Overload is really strange, and makes this skill far less usefull, especially in long duration PvE.
3. In the five guilds I belong to, only the newbie players use pets, why are you still pushing them?
4. The change to the staffs is interesting, but makes it a requirement to have multiple staffs and switch them out based on solo or group. I wont use the frost tank staff, but i can ssee other using it. I do wonder if the tri-focus was the best passive to base this on.

Ah I forgot to mention the 500 ulti cap in my post. This is just terrible. For people who solo, this just sucks. Overload is one of the only burst-on-command ability that sorcs have. Everything else is a dot or support ability. Sorcs that use overload in vMA have just gotten gimped, whereas other classes get to keep their burst potential.

Alaztor91

Please revert the velocious curse changes.

Also, while not entirely sorc exclusive I was expecting a few balance changes on armor passives and/or actives, so here are my humble suggestions.

Light Armor:

- Change Evocation to something like this:
Increases your Spell Critical rating for each piece of Light Armor equipped(using the same formula as the dexterity passive I guess)

-Add the effects of the old Evocation passive to the Recovery passive(so it works like the wind walker passive)

-Change the Spell Warding passive to something like this:
Increases your damage shields duration for each piece of light armor equipped. Rank 1 = 0,5 seconds. Rank 2 = 1 second. You can call it Damage Warding or something.

-Change the Prodigy passive to something like this:
Increase the strength of you damage shields by X% (You can then nerf damage shields by the same X% so it stays the same if you think it's too OP) or instead of increasing the shield strength you can reduce the cost and increase the skills cost accordingly.

These changes would make running 7 light more viable because you get more crit instead of always sticking with 5/1/1, and also help with the annoyingly low damage shield durations, and since I guess that you expect light armor users to use damage shields as a form of defense the spell resistance passive was not making any sense.