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

Murador178

Derra wrote: »

Murador178 wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Murador178 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

You can add the the main post given enough hp/resi:

Casting cloak after curse or fury will counter the combo (nightblade).
Casting wings/shimmering after curse or fuy will counter the combo (dk/warden).
Casting purge after curse + fury will counter the combo (templar).
Casting ball of lightnign after curse or fury will counter the combo (sorc).
Having a full stack of shields + reasonable resis will counter the combo (on sorc).

If the sorc meteor combos you - breakfree undo will counter it unless you´re in melee range.

Very good so i cloak after every curse as a stamina nb (will be oom after 30sec). Will be awesome pressure mate especially since curse double explodes.
On a stamplar u are toast anyways.

Probably indigitially's way of playing nb is best in slot now - with the increase of sorc players .

Derra wrote: »

unblockable cc on streak
cc back on frags
offensive cage becoming a dot + 30% snare
fixed defensive rune
rework/buff for boundless and powersurge to make it worth slotting over harness
rework of darkdeall to make it more useful incombat sustain (pve + pvp) while making it less "op" as kiting sustain
.

yeah i also rather would have will do double damage
claok permanent
and maybe ontop of it we could remove detection

What free, out of combat, never ending Merc, not good enough?

If u didnt get it these ideas are of course not meant serious so i also cant take derras ideas serious. That buffed surge +harness with hardened and healingward will be extreme annoying. Runecage with a dot+snare. Streak with unevadabke CC - sorc is atm def not the weak class .

Classes like stamplar need some changes (only class with no changes ...)

Take a deep breath - read again.
Understand what´s written realize it would be a nerf to the current state of sorc - or don´t. I´m not too optimistic in that regard considering the mental capabilities you display on average.

I won the bet - that escalated quite quickly

zParallaxz

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.

I agree 100%, another problem to add this is the inability to bash someone who is dark dealing or meditating when they have cc immunity.

Ishammael

@OdinForge covered all the necessary points in his first post.

@DDuke with the savage take down.

Rune Cage is absolutely indefensible in it's current form. A unblockable, 36m stun with 8k+ tooktip, on a class with an unblockable DoT, and a timed execute. LMAO

NBrookus

Ishammael wrote: »

@OdinForge covered all the necessary points in his first post.

@DDuke with the savage take down.

Rune Cage is absolutely indefensible in it's current form. A unblockable, 36m stun with 8k+ tooktip, on a class with an unblockable DoT, and a timed execute. LMAO

Yet people cry about Fossilize with it's 8m range and tiny damage.

Feanor

NBrookus wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

@OdinForge covered all the necessary points in his first post.

@DDuke with the savage take down.

Rune Cage is absolutely indefensible in it's current form. A unblockable, 36m stun with 8k+ tooktip, on a class with an unblockable DoT, and a timed execute. LMAO

Yet people cry about Fossilize with it's 8m range and tiny damage.

The immobilize is what makes Fossilize strong.

Thogard

Biro123 wrote: »

Game is in a sorry state at the mo regarding sorcs. As a reasonably experienced sorc, I find
fights go one of 3 ways..
1. Tanky or skilled mitigation-based opponent: nobody dies.
2. Noob or med relying on avoidance only - quick sorc' win.
3. Shieldbreaker/sloads/oblivion glyphs - quick sorc' loss.

The problem bring that 2 and 3 are way too polarised and depend too much on gear choice rather than player skill.

2. Means the loser has a horrible experience, gets frustrated so either plays sorc' or switched to 3. Switching to sorc' makes it s bigger problem for the remaining 2s so they go 3.

3 makes it horrible for sorc'. And more and more switching to 3 makes it worse. Result is that nobody is happy (except group 1 who are mostly unaffected. But they get bleeds/sloads -lol).

Result: nobody is happy and all are squabbling amongst themselves... It's like Zos is Ming the Merciless, and the players are the moon's of *** that he keeps fighting each other so they're never strong enough to challenge him...

Are you listening, Zos! Nobody is happy!

This is the most rational, unbiased, and accurate post that I’ve read on these boards in a long time and it makes me sad that it only had two agrees at the time of me posting this.

Derra

Murador178 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Murador178 wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Murador178 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

You can add the the main post given enough hp/resi:

Casting cloak after curse or fury will counter the combo (nightblade).
Casting wings/shimmering after curse or fuy will counter the combo (dk/warden).
Casting purge after curse + fury will counter the combo (templar).
Casting ball of lightnign after curse or fury will counter the combo (sorc).
Having a full stack of shields + reasonable resis will counter the combo (on sorc).

If the sorc meteor combos you - breakfree undo will counter it unless you´re in melee range.

Very good so i cloak after every curse as a stamina nb (will be oom after 30sec). Will be awesome pressure mate especially since curse double explodes.
On a stamplar u are toast anyways.

Probably indigitially's way of playing nb is best in slot now - with the increase of sorc players .

Derra wrote: »

unblockable cc on streak
cc back on frags
offensive cage becoming a dot + 30% snare
fixed defensive rune
rework/buff for boundless and powersurge to make it worth slotting over harness
rework of darkdeall to make it more useful incombat sustain (pve + pvp) while making it less "op" as kiting sustain
.

yeah i also rather would have will do double damage
claok permanent
and maybe ontop of it we could remove detection

What free, out of combat, never ending Merc, not good enough?

If u didnt get it these ideas are of course not meant serious so i also cant take derras ideas serious. That buffed surge +harness with hardened and healingward will be extreme annoying. Runecage with a dot+snare. Streak with unevadabke CC - sorc is atm def not the weak class .

Classes like stamplar need some changes (only class with no changes ...)

Take a deep breath - read again.
Understand what´s written realize it would be a nerf to the current state of sorc - or don´t. I´m not too optimistic in that regard considering the mental capabilities you display on average.

I won the bet - that escalated quite quickly

yeah i bet you´re real proud of yourself.

Tonturri

Just slot purge.

thankyourat

I fought a sorc yesterday running necro /lich /shadowrend/will power staff. He told me he has 50k Magicka and 4000 regen and honestly if I was playing a light or medium armor build there would've been no way for me to win. My current build we stalemated because I couldn't break through his shield stack. I think this is where alot of the mag sorc hate is coming from. If you are light or medium and you come across a sorc you are at a huge disadvantage. I just want a simple Nerf to sorcs and that's curse needs to be blockable now. With the new addition of a unlockable hard cc to the sorc toolkit there is no reason you shouldn't be able to block curse now.

Brrrofski

I've never had that much of an issue with sorcs. I've played sorc a lot up until two or three months after Morrowind.

Two things are overturned currently.

Runs prison - please, bring cc on frags back and revert this skill. It's insane. Cannot be blocked or dodged, has a crazy range and the longest stun in the game. It has no counterplay outside of cc immune pots. Medium armor is already hard enough at the moment because of how high damage is overall in PvP. Rune Prison makes it miserable to use because roll Dodge if your primary defence and this takes it away from you (stamblade has clock and shade but the other classes have no options, even Los on Stam sorc is hard because of the range). Other similar CCs have conditions. Fossilize breaks on damage and has much less range, vamp drain is melee range and channelled, fear is melee range etc. Reduce the range, make it break when taking damage or just give the stun back to frags (which nobody had an issue with in the first place).

Mages wrath - the high damage and going through Dodge roll is fine. It's the window I have an issue with. With it on you, if you drop to 19% health within 4 seconds you die. That it a long long time to have that hanging over you. It's completely rational that I can drop to 19% health and recover from that. Not with mages wrath though. Inst death. Especially with two guys on you. Not saying you should win the fight, but you effectively have 20% less health if a sorc is involved because any good sorc keeps it up almost 100% of the time.

Apart from that, I have no problems with sorcs. Their shield have never been an issue. Keep pressure up, make them use up their magica (shielding non stop is expensive) and time your cc wisely. Oblivion damage should not bypass them either imo (not totally against Oblivion damage because perma block heavy armor builds are the most boring thing to fight against). Shield breaker was the funniest thing when it got introduced because it was a Stam set. Fighting a sorc on a Stam build was never the issue - fighting one as a magica player was. At the time, harness only worked against magic damage. So Stam builds only had hardened Ward to break through while magica characters had hardened Ward AND harness. So shield breaker being Stam based was totally stupid. Also, it had no counterplay if you were outnumbered - either shield against other damage and eat 2k from bow light attacks or not take damage those 2k light attacks and get wrecked by the other guy hitting you.

I wish the streak nerf was undone as well to be honest. So what if they can streak away with ease? You can gap close to keep up and they're just escaping so no big deal. It actually hurts Stam sorc more to be honest. Mobility is their survival and you can pull off 2 maybe 3 on most builds without giving up damage or stam sustain.

Gilvoth

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

Brrrofski

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

Still, you have timestop now so that's basically irrelevant. Plus streak cc can be blocked (I think it can right) and if a very short stun (1.5 seconds iirc). So it has very small uptime if that's your main/only cc.

Gilvoth

Brrrofski wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

Still, you have timestop now so that's basically irrelevant. Plus streak cc can be blocked (I think it can right) and if a very short stun (1.5 seconds iirc). So it has very small uptime if that's your main/only cc.

no one was able to stay out of stun long enough for the time it takes to break through the shields of the sorc.
so they made streak stack to give people time to fight back, it was never about them being able to escape, it was about the ability to have a fighting chance.

Feanor

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

A 1.5 second stun never keeps a “zerg” from taking down a Sorc with 7 seconds CC immunity afterwards.

NBrookus

Brrrofski wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

Still, you have timestop now so that's basically irrelevant. Plus streak cc can be blocked (I think it can right) and if a very short stun (1.5 seconds iirc). So it has very small uptime if that's your main/only cc.

It can now, but there was a time when streak was unblockable.

And I'd much rather have that -- it would be a strong CC that rewards sorcs for the risk of close engagement. Standing 41m away spamming an unblockable and undodgable is stupid.

Killset

Getting hit with 7.5k curses (seen up to 10k), 7-9k frags, Meteor, Rune, and a 6-7k Endless Fury in 5 heavy two medium with 6 impen is the most fun I’ve had in ages! WTF ZOS.

Waffennacht

Killset wrote: »

Getting hit with 7.5k curses (seen up to 10k), 7-9k frags, Meteor, Rune, and a 6-7k Endless Fury in 5 heavy two medium with 6 impen is the most fun I’ve had in ages! WTF ZOS.

3k crit resistance for CP

Killset

Waffennacht wrote: »

Killset wrote: »

Getting hit with 7.5k curses (seen up to 10k), 7-9k frags, Meteor, Rune, and a 6-7k Endless Fury in 5 heavy two medium with 6 impen is the most fun I’ve had in ages! WTF ZOS.

3k crit resistance for CP

Im at 3026

ak_pvp

NBrookus wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

it wasn't about them being able to streak away and escape, that was not the problem.

the problem was that they could mass streak across an entire zerg repeatedly over and over stunning and keeping down the entire zerg repeatedly untill all of them were dead and at same time keeping themselves completely 3x shields making them untouchable supertanks.

Still, you have timestop now so that's basically irrelevant. Plus streak cc can be blocked (I think it can right) and if a very short stun (1.5 seconds iirc). So it has very small uptime if that's your main/only cc.

It can now, but there was a time when streak was unblockable.

And I'd much rather have that -- it would be a strong CC that rewards sorcs for the risk of close engagement. Standing 41m away spamming an unblockable and undodgable is stupid.

Likewise. Well, maybe make it so its the closest person or something in undodgable/blockable. Having it full AoE would be way too strong.

Waffennacht

Killset wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Killset wrote: »

Getting hit with 7.5k curses (seen up to 10k), 7-9k frags, Meteor, Rune, and a 6-7k Endless Fury in 5 heavy two medium with 6 impen is the most fun I’ve had in ages! WTF ZOS.

3k crit resistance for CP

Im at 3026

Then those numbers are because of penetration rather than crits. No way you're taking that much damage in your set up without them running a lot of penetration. Unless they have... What an 24k curse tooltip? Which is pretty insane....

Maybe alchemist and spinners? I dunno

IAVITNI

Can we just all agree that the major issue is Rune Cage and not something else in the sorc kit? (not implying the rest is perfect, just not nearly as broken)

Take away Rune Cage and mag sorc is easily lower-middle of the pack outside of solo pvp, where it excels only because of the ability to reset fights and farm potatoes.

Without Rune Cage, magsorc is outdone in both sustained damage and arguably burst by magblades. They are simply tankier with greater out of combat mobility.

The ONLY significant magsorc specific change was the increased damage on Rune Cage that no sorc ever asked for. Prior to Rune Cage buff (and post frag nerf), the only people really crying about sorcs were full divines medium nightblades.

Please please please stop crying over magsorcs (unless its to balance Rune Cage) and buff magdens.

Derra

IAVITNI wrote: »

Can we just all agree that the major issue is Rune Cage and not something else in the sorc kit? (not implying the rest is perfect, just not nearly as broken)

The issue is - cage has counterplay in 1v1 atleast for the majority of classes and builds.

Reverting the dmg would make it somewhat undesireable for 1vX and 1v1 because wasting 50% of your gcds on no dmg spells (2 shields + cc) usually doesn´t kill competent players.

However it would still remain potent in Xv1 because of it´s range and delay making it uncomfortable to break.

A change to cage would have to be accompanied by a few different changes. The problem being the cc through dodge + block on range needs to go.
However flatout reverting that would basically eliminate runecage alltogether again. That means the offensive morph would require a total rework.

ak_pvp

Derra wrote: »

IAVITNI wrote: »

Can we just all agree that the major issue is Rune Cage and not something else in the sorc kit? (not implying the rest is perfect, just not nearly as broken)

The issue is - cage has counterplay in 1v1 atleast for the majority of classes and builds.

Reverting the dmg would make it somewhat undesireable for 1vX and 1v1 because wasting 50% of your gcds on no dmg spells (2 shields + cc) usually doesn´t kill competent players.

However it would still remain potent in Xv1 because of it´s range and delay making it uncomfortable to break.

A change to cage would have to be accompanied by a few different changes. The problem being the cc through dodge + block on range needs to go.
However flatout reverting that would basically eliminate runecage alltogether again. That means the offensive morph would require a total rework.

Removing the damage wouldn't kill the ability, though as you said it'd hurt in a 1vX and remain OP in Xv1

1v1 maybe not, since you can take little breaks to guarantee a fuller burst, 1v1s are either running the opponent out of resources, or deleting them so quickly it doesn't matter. A guaranteed land of that level burst in a duel spec would be deadly even without the end of stun damage.

The issue is. Its not well designed. Its a roided rip of petrify, which encroaches on DK's turf, and to fit with sorc's style, it either has to be OP, or useless. Where the DKs version has an extra effect, but is balanced by melee range and lesser burst. Sorc has the damage, which makes or breaks it in the only situation that skill matters tbh.

That is why possible, though single target closet unblockable (And by current AoE, already undodgable) stun on streak seems plausible. Instead of it being a truly offensive ability, it would be on the offensive escape morph, allowing you to stun the targets, and make your escape more guaranteed or time it with a meteor at the cost of being melee. It reinforces the movement is a sorc's forte from early game, and unlike pure CC rune, it wouldn't be a wasted slot or cast for just a CC.

Derra

ak_pvp wrote: »

That is why possible, though single target closet unblockable (And by current AoE, already undodgable) stun on streak seems plausible. Instead of it being a truly offensive ability, it would be on the offensive escape morph, allowing you to stun the targets, and make your escape more guaranteed or time it with a meteor at the cost of being melee. It reinforces the movement is a sorc's forte from early game, and unlike pure CC rune, it wouldn't be a wasted slot or cast for just a CC.

The problem with that approach would be having your cc on a stacking cost increase ability that can also miss.
Then also streak stun is only 0.5s longer than cc break animation in the first place.

Imo it would have to be accompanied by atleast adding a "no cost increase on stunning a target" with streak?

Feanor

@Derra

Let‘s face it. Most people just don’t really want Sorcs to have any longer offensive potential at all. I mean, there were nerf Sorc posts even before Summerset.

SodanTok

I remember people used to defend sorcs by saying their combo is very telegraphed. Glad to see its time to defend sorc by saying people dont have enough HP and resistances.

usmguy1234

frostz417 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

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

15/16 of your comments on the forum are about how sorcs are op. Now that's funny.

Lord-Otto

SodanTok wrote: »

I remember people used to defend sorcs by saying their combo is very telegraphed. Glad to see its time to defend sorc by saying people dont have enough HP and resistances.

The telegraphed thing was very real and the reason sorcs were trash against skilled players. Every four seconds a dodge or block for the Frag and you could never die to a sorc.
We currently have the other extreme where the burst combo is unavoidable andcdeadly on a low-damage build. The optimal balance lies somewhere in the middle.

Derra

SodanTok wrote: »

I remember people used to defend sorcs by saying their combo is very telegraphed. Glad to see its time to defend sorc by saying people dont have enough HP and resistances.

You mean back in the days when the combo was actually threatening because we had higher overall dmg + higher critdmg higher frag dmg and higher penetration?

Just to give some perspective in that regard - back in 1 tamriel my procced frags had a tooltip of 21200dmg alongside 14% higher critdmg from old shadow mundus and 2500 more penetration from sharp.
Nowadays on a build with comparable sustain to the one mentioned above my procced frags is around 18500 tooltip and the whole combo is missing 14% flat dmg on crits.

This is not meant to defend the current state of cage - because it´s asinine. But it´s to show that statements from the good old days do not hold true anymore because how much the game changed.

Apart from the the combo is still telegraphed and therefor defendable if you have the right tools - so people could make that argument still (but it would be more along the lines of cloak counters).

Joy_Division

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

Nice list.

Where were you a year and a half ago when so many people were whining about templars, Radiant Destruction,
BoL spam," "unkillable" tank builds, etc.?