8 Ways to Counter "Uncounterable" mSorc Burst - ZOS please read

Dionysus

I hate to come out of the woodworks and post this as I main a magsorc (and magblade), but this needs airing out to avoid some out-of-nowhere nerf to one of sorcs abilities (probably would end up being something other than Rune Cage). I think there are also a lot of out-of-proportion complaints about sorc burst because dying from a sorc (mines, curse animation, cage falling from heaven, exploding into 0 HP) is a very visually impressive way to die, and dying from several other OP specs right now (bleed, stam, oblivion) just looks like getting hit with swords until your recap screen loads.

This is what others abbreviate as the "L2P" that others reference in the whine threads. You need to adapt to the current game. For instance, many sorcs now slot HoTs for Sloads. Many good players dropped vamp due to increased light attack damage. They don't want to lose the bar space or vamp perks, but changing with the game is what sets good players apart. There are less streamers now, making this tougher to do on your own.

So in the interest of us all getting better:

1. Have enough effective HP (HP x Resistance x Crit Resistance) to mitigate the current increased levels of damage output in the game. In my experience as an msorc, this is about 24k HP with about 18k spell resist or 22-23k with 25k spell resist for an unshielded player. I'm sorry Sypher told you in 2016 that you need 20k HP for Cyrodil with "all points into stam."

2. In hand with the above, take advantage of tri-stat armor glyphs and the brand-new Triune trait that net-benefits almost every spec but magsorc. These math-advantaged glyphs benefit almost everyone more (especially DKs and Argonian race); msorc is uniquely balanced (which some call an "advantage") where our primary defense (max magicka/shields) goes from good to useless if we drop our magicka, thus we have to give up essentially 4k of free HP/stam.

3. The 3 light attacks in the magsorc burst combo amount to ~9k player damage with recent light attack buffs. This is probably more harmful than Rune Cage. They are dodgeable, blockable, and reflectable, and taking 2 out of 3 of them in the face is completely voluntary. Whether you prefer HoTs, dodge rolling, cloak, or blocking, eliminating this damage and the 2-3k initial Fury hit is easy for good players. If you avoid all of these, and have any reasonable effective HP, you will not die to sorc burst without a chance to retaliate.

4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons.

5. If you are running an Xv1 build (Eye of the Storm, resource poisons, not enough stam to break free more than twice, low HP with all damage sets, roll dodge as your only defense), don't expect to win alone vs. a competent player of any class with a 1v1 or 1vX build.

6. If you are a DK and you are not slotting wings, you are not adapting to the game.

7. If your build uses primarily HoTs, roll dodge, or cloak for defense, and you are dying to light attacks and direct damage more than DoTs, put CP into Direct Damage AND Light/Heavy Attack mitigation stars rather than DoT or physical defense stars. This is adapting.

8. The main way to counter sorc burst, even if you completely ignore every single point above, is to time your CC as soon as you see their Curse. A sorc's burst window (Shield-Shield-swap-Curse-Fury-Cage-Frag) takes 6 seconds if executed perfectly, and that is conveniently also the CC cooldown time.

If a sorc slots immovable pots, then you use your immovable pot, then both wait 10 seconds, and a sorc gets his full 6-skill burst combo in and times it perfectly so that not a single HoT tick occurs in between procs, and your effective HP is low enough to go to execute, and you haven't CC'd him, and haven't gotten your burst combo in first, and neither did your friend, then you didn't get cheesed. You got outplayed.

Signed,
Sorcs of Tamriel

- Dionysus

Beardimus

Is it possible to click Insightful, Agree AND Awesome? If not why not.

If not Can i award you 10 additional Awesome's even if they in internet points. +10

Well played sir!!!!

raasdal

Well thought out and well-written. Totally agree. This community is simply too unwilling to adapt in general. No.1 on your list, cannot be repeated enough.

ak_pvp

The "cc them" is the only real counter here. Immovable is a solid maybe. 10s isn't a whole lot, so you are prone to RIP for the other 35s.

The others are basically: Just heal bro, or just tank it bro. In no way ever is that a counter. Good luck getting your wings/shields up reactively with a full combo at you within 1s. (Also, wings, lul) Just change your entire build around some overpowered mechanic, sacrificing a lot where the other class doesn't to get that strength is not a good way to deal with OP mechanics. Its like "just run hots and don't die" isn't really a counter to things like sloads, bleeds, procs, defile.

Defending your OP clutches as a L2P problem for others is how we had the NB problem, and the prior sorc problem, which leads to sets like sloads/SB coming around, since people complain about the class, but not the specifics, and ZOS throws in a stupid hard counter to fix that.

ChunkyCat

I’ve solo killed a handful of Mag Sorcs in BG using sword and board ult that reflects their DD nukes.

I chuckle every time.

kek

WillhelmBlack

How do I avoid the 7k Fury's at half health (13k in my case) and unbreakable CC from Rune Cage with full stam?

I always have 3 HoT's running, +4k weapon damage and 4.5k health regen at under 50% health with 2700 crit resist and 20k spell resistance unbuffed.

I'm not QQ'ing all over the forums about Sorcs, not recently anyway because I know they're broken AF since Summerset. Anyone who has experience or is good at PvP knows this.

Power creep happened, Mag Sorcs were obviously going to benefit the most as Zenimax have been balancing Sorc around Staves as a 1 pc for 4 years. Instead of doing class balance with Summerset major changes (2h counts as 2pc, buffing Rune Cage to lol mode) it'll probably come 6 months later and screw up everything again.

OdinForge

Sorc here.

You cannot pretend that building high HP and wearing tankier sets is proper counter-play to rune cage, it isn't. Short of using immovable pots you cannot actually do anything to prevent rune cage from hitting you and setting up curse and frag + ult, at least fear has melee range and NB burst is front loaded.

Crystal fragments had legitimate counter-play as it could be blocked, dodged or even reflected. This set of mechanics existed through several sorc metas where sorc was either extremely powerful or weak or somewhere in-between. A sorc was never guaranteed to land a frag, justifying its high damage and stun. Thanks to rune cage and the buffs it received to damage and among other misc damage buffs to things like light attacks, you can now guarantee frags impact.

I mostly play well rounded and sustain oriented sorc builds but even I can effortlessly delete many types of builds with a rune cage combo. The only types of builds I generally cannot mindlessly delete in one rune cage combo are builds like stamdks in fury / seventh / BS with a 1H backbar, and even those tankier builds I can get super low in one combo. And just swapping to a pure damage build will do the trick, with minimal need to sustain if you pick your battles.

Now these players are sacrificing damage to not insta-die to various mechanics, and they are unable to kill a sustain sorc as a result. Every time I get into a fight with a stamina build like that as a sustain sorc the fight just stalemates as frags doesn't do enough damage vs them, and it takes too long to build ult to combo with rune cage if I can't kill them with the first two combos, and they can't build enough damage to kill me because if they try I'll just delete them in one rune cage combo even as a sustain sorc with lower damage.

Rune cage never needed the changes that it got, fragments never needed the damage and stun nerfs it got.

Rune cage is not fun or dynamic to fight against and it's just boring to use. If you are defending current rune cage now it's just because you have resigned yourself to how easy it is to use.

Ragnaroek93

Sorcs are telling other classes that they need to stack health and resis

Ender1310

So I just want to take everything you are saying with a grain of salt. There were a lot of people saying sloads was fine. That people should adjust. Its getting nerfed. Maybe you are lobbying right now but your extremely biased because you want to keep the same play style and you don't want to adapt. Sorcs gear choice really hasn't changed. The rest of us have spent thousands upon thousands of gold trying things to adapt to this new meta. Don't be surprised if your burst is nerfed. All these scenerio's you mention are baseline without real world implementations. They don't take into account a BG setting an open world PVP setting. Nope just a one on one where you can clearly see each other and nothing else interferes. I don't know one game that balances around that. I know you like one shotting people with your voluntary light attacks and it feels right to you and it feels just but to the vicitms of it they see it a different way.

Emma_Overload

What about Mist Form? Wouldn't running that prevent the CC from the Rune Cage you know is coming?

React

>When you admit to being a magsorc main and proceed to tell every other class why they're wrong about something overperforming.

LA->curse->LA->meteor->LA->cage->LA->endless fury.

This burst combo right here is a death sentence to medium armor stam, from any sorc running at least one damage oriented 5 piece set (not those silly "shackle/lich/eg" or "amberplasm/shackle" sorcs). Sure there is the immoveable potion option, but you really can't be serious in suggesting slotting the immoveable skill. I'm sure you're also the type of player to complain about heavy armor stam (which i personally disprove of, but you've suggested stacking more health and resists, which heavy armor stam is the answer to). You keep saying "6 second burst combo", but the first curse explodes after 3 seconds and the cage will be hitting you around that same time, effectively turning it into a 4.5 second burst by the time you're actually able to break the cage, which has a very delayed CC function in open world.

The simple fact is that while sorcs DID need some sort of buff from the state they were in during HOTR and DRB, unavoidable damage on an unavoidable hard CC was not the answer. They could have given the CC and damage back to frags, they could have buffed the actual curse damage, or a number of other things. But rune cage's new state, in addition to the light attack buffs from which sorc benefits more than any other class, is just too much unavoidable burst in a toolkit that was already powerful.

I play with a handful of sorcs considered to be among the "best" on my server, and they unanimously agree that the rune cage has made the sorc burst far too easy to use. To say that it is fine simply implies to me that you were one of the sorcs who struggled in general prior to this patch.

Torbschka

Dionysus wrote: »

I hate to come out of the woodworks and post this as I main a magsorc (and magblade), but this needs airing out to avoid some out-of-nowhere nerf to one of sorcs abilities (probably would end up being something other than Rune Cage). I think there are also a lot of out-of-proportion complaints about sorc burst because dying from a sorc (mines, curse animation, cage falling from heaven, exploding into 0 HP) is a very visually impressive way to die, and dying from several other OP specs right now (bleed, stam, oblivion) just looks like getting hit with swords until your recap screen loads.

This is what others abbreviate as the "L2P" that others reference in the whine threads. You need to adapt to the current game. For instance, many sorcs now slot HoTs for Sloads. Many good players dropped vamp due to increased light attack damage. They don't want to lose the bar space or vamp perks, but changing with the game is what sets good players apart. There are less streamers now, making this tougher to do on your own.

So in the interest of us all getting better:

1. Have enough effective HP (HP x Resistance x Crit Resistance) to mitigate the current increased levels of damage output in the game. In my experience as an msorc, this is about 24k HP with about 18k spell resist or 22-23k with 25k spell resist for an unshielded player. I'm sorry Sypher told you in 2016 that you need 20k HP for Cyrodil with "all points into stam."

2. In hand with the above, take advantage of tri-stat armor glyphs and the brand-new Triune trait that net-benefits almost every spec but magsorc. These math-advantaged glyphs benefit almost everyone more (especially DKs and Argonian race); msorc is uniquely balanced (which some call an "advantage") where our primary defense (max magicka/shields) goes from good to useless if we drop our magicka, thus we have to give up essentially 4k of free HP/stam.

3. The 3 light attacks in the magsorc burst combo amount to ~9k player damage with recent light attack buffs. This is probably more harmful than Rune Cage. They are dodgeable, blockable, and reflectable, and taking 2 out of 3 of them in the face is completely voluntary. Whether you prefer HoTs, dodge rolling, cloak, or blocking, eliminating this damage and the 2-3k initial Fury hit is easy for good players. If you avoid all of these, and have any reasonable effective HP, you will not die to sorc burst without a chance to retaliate.

4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons.

5. If you are running an Xv1 build (Eye of the Storm, resource poisons, not enough stam to break free more than twice, low HP with all damage sets, roll dodge as your only defense), don't expect to win alone vs. a competent player of any class with a 1v1 or 1vX build.

6. If you are a DK and you are not slotting wings, you are not adapting to the game.

7. If your build uses primarily HoTs, roll dodge, or cloak for defense, and you are dying to light attacks and direct damage more than DoTs, put CP into Direct Damage AND Light/Heavy Attack mitigation stars rather than DoT or physical defense stars. This is adapting.

8. The main way to counter sorc burst, even if you completely ignore every single point above, is to time your CC as soon as you see their Curse. A sorc's burst window (Shield-Shield-swap-Curse-Fury-Cage-Frag) takes 6 seconds if executed perfectly, and that is conveniently also the CC cooldown time.

If a sorc slots immovable pots, then you use your immovable pot, then both wait 10 seconds, and a sorc gets his full 6-skill burst combo in and times it perfectly so that not a single HoT tick occurs in between procs, and your effective HP is low enough to go to execute, and you haven't CC'd him, and haven't gotten your burst combo in first, and neither did your friend, then you didn't get cheesed. You got outplayed.

Signed,
Sorcs of Tamriel

- Dionysus

Just read the first 2 and stopped lol

"Just become a tank and stack HP to..." OK OK full DMG soeccd, yet more tanky mag sorc

Grimhallow

I disagree with the OP.

If the only answer to the fundamental sorc combo is "build tanky and suck it up", then it isn't fun or dynamic to use or have used against you.

Remember, this is a combo that you can't dodge, block, or interrupt, and it takes minimal effort to cast. All you can do is keep your hots up and hope you have more defense than the sorc has damage.

I am in favor of returning to a high power stun frag, where there was legitimate counter play, but serious punishment if you made mistakes- for both sides.

Jimmy_The_Fixer

How is someone supposed to stack high defenses, heal constantly to stay above 22k HP, block/dodge all light attacks and stun the sorc on cooldown while also breaking through 20k worth of shields?

Anybody who follows your advice is just gonna be sitting there doing nothing offensively while you lay your burst into them over and over again until the stars align and they finally die.

It's like saying "Counter Sorc burst by hiding behind a tree"

Minno

Torbschka wrote: »

Dionysus wrote: »

I hate to come out of the woodworks and post this as I main a magsorc (and magblade), but this needs airing out to avoid some out-of-nowhere nerf to one of sorcs abilities (probably would end up being something other than Rune Cage). I think there are also a lot of out-of-proportion complaints about sorc burst because dying from a sorc (mines, curse animation, cage falling from heaven, exploding into 0 HP) is a very visually impressive way to die, and dying from several other OP specs right now (bleed, stam, oblivion) just looks like getting hit with swords until your recap screen loads.

This is what others abbreviate as the "L2P" that others reference in the whine threads. You need to adapt to the current game. For instance, many sorcs now slot HoTs for Sloads. Many good players dropped vamp due to increased light attack damage. They don't want to lose the bar space or vamp perks, but changing with the game is what sets good players apart. There are less streamers now, making this tougher to do on your own.

So in the interest of us all getting better:

1. Have enough effective HP (HP x Resistance x Crit Resistance) to mitigate the current increased levels of damage output in the game. In my experience as an msorc, this is about 24k HP with about 18k spell resist or 22-23k with 25k spell resist for an unshielded player. I'm sorry Sypher told you in 2016 that you need 20k HP for Cyrodil with "all points into stam."

2. In hand with the above, take advantage of tri-stat armor glyphs and the brand-new Triune trait that net-benefits almost every spec but magsorc. These math-advantaged glyphs benefit almost everyone more (especially DKs and Argonian race); msorc is uniquely balanced (which some call an "advantage") where our primary defense (max magicka/shields) goes from good to useless if we drop our magicka, thus we have to give up essentially 4k of free HP/stam.

3. The 3 light attacks in the magsorc burst combo amount to ~9k player damage with recent light attack buffs. This is probably more harmful than Rune Cage. They are dodgeable, blockable, and reflectable, and taking 2 out of 3 of them in the face is completely voluntary. Whether you prefer HoTs, dodge rolling, cloak, or blocking, eliminating this damage and the 2-3k initial Fury hit is easy for good players. If you avoid all of these, and have any reasonable effective HP, you will not die to sorc burst without a chance to retaliate.

4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons.

5. If you are running an Xv1 build (Eye of the Storm, resource poisons, not enough stam to break free more than twice, low HP with all damage sets, roll dodge as your only defense), don't expect to win alone vs. a competent player of any class with a 1v1 or 1vX build.

6. If you are a DK and you are not slotting wings, you are not adapting to the game.

7. If your build uses primarily HoTs, roll dodge, or cloak for defense, and you are dying to light attacks and direct damage more than DoTs, put CP into Direct Damage AND Light/Heavy Attack mitigation stars rather than DoT or physical defense stars. This is adapting.

8. The main way to counter sorc burst, even if you completely ignore every single point above, is to time your CC as soon as you see their Curse. A sorc's burst window (Shield-Shield-swap-Curse-Fury-Cage-Frag) takes 6 seconds if executed perfectly, and that is conveniently also the CC cooldown time.

If a sorc slots immovable pots, then you use your immovable pot, then both wait 10 seconds, and a sorc gets his full 6-skill burst combo in and times it perfectly so that not a single HoT tick occurs in between procs, and your effective HP is low enough to go to execute, and you haven't CC'd him, and haven't gotten your burst combo in first, and neither did your friend, then you didn't get cheesed. You got outplayed.

Signed,
Sorcs of Tamriel

- Dionysus

Just read the first 2 and stopped lol

"Just become a tank and stack HP to..." OK OK full DMG soeccd, yet more tanky mag sorc

i stopped after "use immovable pots". nothing says "countering cheese" like using immovable pots whose only counter is a short duration on a long pot cooldown :P

Lord-Otto

Counter back? Kill them first? You have four seconds, FOUR seconds to take any countermeasure. If it's not in your capabilities to build some sort of pressure in four seconds, then sorcs are doing exactly what they've always done - making mashed potatoe out of you.

mursie

if there is one thing i'm sure about - it's that we'll see more mag sorcs than already present due to the rune cage threads on the forum.

get ready for the snowball effect. ezmode inc.

Gilvoth

im sure there is a reason for this thread, but i do not believe it is what the title says it is about.
something is afoot.

WillhelmBlack

OdinForge wrote: »

Sorc here.

You cannot pretend that building high HP and wearing tankier sets is proper counter-play to rune cage, it isn't. Short of using immovable pots you cannot actually do anything to prevent rune cage from hitting you and setting up curse and frag + ult, at least fear has melee range and NB burst is front loaded.

Crystal fragments had legitimate counter-play as it could be blocked, dodged or even reflected. This set of mechanics existed through several sorc metas where sorc was either extremely powerful or weak or somewhere in-between. A sorc was never guaranteed to land a frag, justifying its high damage and stun. Thanks to rune cage and the buffs it received to damage and among other misc damage buffs to things like light attacks, you can now guarantee frags impact.

I mostly play well rounded and sustain oriented sorc builds but even I can effortlessly delete many types of builds with a rune cage combo. The only types of builds I generally cannot mindlessly delete in one rune cage combo are builds like stamdks in fury / seventh / BS with a 1H backbar, and even those tankier builds I can get super low in one combo. And just swapping to a pure damage build will do the trick, with minimal need to sustain if you pick your battles.

Now these players are sacrificing damage to not insta-die to various mechanics, and they are unable to kill a sustain sorc as a result. Every time I get into a fight with a stamina build like that as a sustain sorc the fight just stalemates as frags doesn't do enough damage vs them, and it takes too long to build ult to combo with rune cage if I can't kill them with the first two combos, and they can't build enough damage to kill me because if they try I'll just delete them in one rune cage combo even as a sustain sorc with lower damage.

Rune cage never needed the changes that it got, fragments never needed the damage and stun nerfs it got.

Rune cage is not fun or dynamic to fight against and it's just boring to use. If you are defending current rune cage now it's just because you have resigned yourself to how easy it is to use.

Exactly. They really dumbed down Sorc over the years, took away the skill needed to truly be a great Sorcerer. ZOS's recent addition was giving Sorc a ridiculously OP version of Petrify, which is an amazing skill in itself. They'll nerf shields next or replace it with Cloak, I wouldn't be at all surprised. It's nerf-buff-nerf-buff.

Remember when you couldn't stack shields but could streak forever? Enable shield stack - nerf streak.

When Frags hit so hard? Nerf Frag - buff Curse.

Curse is doing too much damage - nerf CC on Frag.

We've no stun - give em Petrify but give it 28m range.

Waffennacht

Am I in 2016 again?

DDuke

First posts defending Sload and now Rune Cage... what is it with people and their desire to have unskillful gameplay with completely unavoidable damage?


Yes, let us all become tanks with Sload, Bleeds & Defiles. What a brilliant solution you have there.

In case you didn't know, the tank playstyle is synonymous with slotting the strongest DoTs available as it becomes impossible to burst people down without that pressure after you give up most of your burst damage to gain health/mitigation.


As if the meta wasn't full enough of them already.

Biro123

mursie wrote: »

if there is one thing i'm sure about - it's that we'll see more mag sorcs than already present due to the rune cage threads on the forum.

get ready for the snowball effect. ezmode inc.

The snowball effect is more sorcs closely followed by more shieldbreaker.
There was a ton of shieldbreaker out this morning.. even the good players.

ak_pvp

Emma_Overload wrote: »

What about Mist Form? Wouldn't running that prevent the CC from the Rune Cage you know is coming?

Mist was expensive and a pain to use. But I legit miss it. Made me feel like a tank shrugging of meteors and roots if I could react fast enough.

Asmael

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

im sure there is a reason for this thread, but i do not believe it is what the title says it is about.
something is afoot.

It's because he forgot to mention Purge as a viable counter.

arkansas_ESO

"4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons."


see, i said the same thing about detect pots and cloak but sorcs said they shouldn't have to rely on a consumable to counter a skill, so....

Vaoh

Grimick wrote: »

I disagree with the OP.

If the only answer to the fundamental sorc combo is "build tanky and suck it up", then it isn't fun or dynamic to use or have used against you.

Remember, this is a combo that you can't dodge, block, or interrupt, and it takes minimal effort to cast. All you can do is keep your hots up and hope you have more defense than the sorc has damage.

I am in favor of returning to a high power stun frag, where there was legitimate counter play, but serious punishment if you made mistakes- for both sides.

^^^

bardx86

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

"4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons."


see, i said the same thing about detect pots and cloak but sorcs said they shouldn't have to rely on a consumable to counter a skill, so....

Well I said the same thing about cloak and NB"S seem to think detect Pots are fine. See I can do the same thing.

bardx86

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

im sure there is a reason for this thread, but i do not believe it is what the title says it is about.
something is afoot.

See #4, you will be fine.

KingJ

Yea sorcs like you is the reason why everyone say sorc are easy mode because bad players like you say dumb crap like this.

Ocelot9x

Lol I disagree with almost everything you said. I have no problems with sorc but it's only because I play a tank and spank stamina dk with wings.
Since I was curious about msorc so after the patch I respecced my orc stamina sorc into a (very smart ) orc magsorc . and I feel the pain for low resistance classes as you can literally one shot a 19-22k non heavy armor target with no counterplay.
So yeah,something needs to be done. Giving back frag his stun and bonus DMG as many have suggested could be the best solution.
But sorc is fine,funny class and totally not op like many sorc haters says.

frostz417

Dionysus wrote: »

I hate to come out of the woodworks and post this as I main a magsorc (and magblade), but this needs airing out to avoid some out-of-nowhere nerf to one of sorcs abilities (probably would end up being something other than Rune Cage). I think there are also a lot of out-of-proportion complaints about sorc burst because dying from a sorc (mines, curse animation, cage falling from heaven, exploding into 0 HP) is a very visually impressive way to die, and dying from several other OP specs right now (bleed, stam, oblivion) just looks like getting hit with swords until your recap screen loads.

This is what others abbreviate as the "L2P" that others reference in the whine threads. You need to adapt to the current game. For instance, many sorcs now slot HoTs for Sloads. Many good players dropped vamp due to increased light attack damage. They don't want to lose the bar space or vamp perks, but changing with the game is what sets good players apart. There are less streamers now, making this tougher to do on your own.

So in the interest of us all getting better:

1. Have enough effective HP (HP x Resistance x Crit Resistance) to mitigate the current increased levels of damage output in the game. In my experience as an msorc, this is about 24k HP with about 18k spell resist or 22-23k with 25k spell resist for an unshielded player. I'm sorry Sypher told you in 2016 that you need 20k HP for Cyrodil with "all points into stam."

2. In hand with the above, take advantage of tri-stat armor glyphs and the brand-new Triune trait that net-benefits almost every spec but magsorc. These math-advantaged glyphs benefit almost everyone more (especially DKs and Argonian race); msorc is uniquely balanced (which some call an "advantage") where our primary defense (max magicka/shields) goes from good to useless if we drop our magicka, thus we have to give up essentially 4k of free HP/stam.

3. The 3 light attacks in the magsorc burst combo amount to ~9k player damage with recent light attack buffs. This is probably more harmful than Rune Cage. They are dodgeable, blockable, and reflectable, and taking 2 out of 3 of them in the face is completely voluntary. Whether you prefer HoTs, dodge rolling, cloak, or blocking, eliminating this damage and the 2-3k initial Fury hit is easy for good players. If you avoid all of these, and have any reasonable effective HP, you will not die to sorc burst without a chance to retaliate.

4. Use immovable pots (and/or the Immovable skill) nullifying the sorc burst for 10.4 seconds. Go from being an Xv1er slotting resource-drain poisons to slotting Immovable poisons.

5. If you are running an Xv1 build (Eye of the Storm, resource poisons, not enough stam to break free more than twice, low HP with all damage sets, roll dodge as your only defense), don't expect to win alone vs. a competent player of any class with a 1v1 or 1vX build.

6. If you are a DK and you are not slotting wings, you are not adapting to the game.

7. If your build uses primarily HoTs, roll dodge, or cloak for defense, and you are dying to light attacks and direct damage more than DoTs, put CP into Direct Damage AND Light/Heavy Attack mitigation stars rather than DoT or physical defense stars. This is adapting.

8. The main way to counter sorc burst, even if you completely ignore every single point above, is to time your CC as soon as you see their Curse. A sorc's burst window (Shield-Shield-swap-Curse-Fury-Cage-Frag) takes 6 seconds if executed perfectly, and that is conveniently also the CC cooldown time.

If a sorc slots immovable pots, then you use your immovable pot, then both wait 10 seconds, and a sorc gets his full 6-skill burst combo in and times it perfectly so that not a single HoT tick occurs in between procs, and your effective HP is low enough to go to execute, and you haven't CC'd him, and haven't gotten your burst combo in first, and neither did your friend, then you didn't get cheesed. You got outplayed.

Signed,
Sorcs of Tamriel

- Dionysus

Are you a troll? You really don’t know PvP outside your endless shield spam.. smh sorc fanboys are funny.