PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Sorcerer

Fantalior

Please return the light overload attacks 50% damage !! This change is so drastic, which makes Ulti more than 50% less damage. Especially in PVP, the 3rd bar is often vital and regeneration. But just against these 4 Zerg noob groups of which never 1 player dies because the 2 tanks and 2 healers have it with them and yet do enough damage and overrun everything only to 4. It sometimes took a proper damage spike (2 light overloads) to kill a healer and even have a chance as a solo player against those noobs that are so op.

and can not even be broken by a whole group of four. For comparison, a meteor races in without causing any visible damage to a player, you hear the impact but the player stays at 100%

keeno9881

Mishkaiel wrote: »

Since cast times are starting to be added...expect these soon

PERFECT keep this post up guys

BaylorCorvette

Dark Deal change seems solid now in 4.2.1, IF I'm understanding it correctly.

still a 5k burst heal, now ~3.2k burst stam retrun and also 2.4k stam over 20 seconds. All for ~2k mag? Love it. Again I don't have access to PTS atm and doing this off of memory from DD change in 4.2.0. Hopefully someone can look at 4.2.1 DD and post exact numbers.

Doctordarkspawn

So, the changes are out, they didn't reverse the cast time nerf, they buffed dark exchange back to what it was, but what I found interesting was...

"Soldier of Anguish: Reduced the healing absorption value to 4800 from 5500, and the healing absorption debuff from this set can no longer stack with itself.
Developer Comment:
Spoiler
Damage shields from multiple sources cannot be stacked. We want healing absorption to follow this same ruleset."

Does this mean that the -aim- was to make sure damage shields cant stack, or did they allready -make- it so damage shields couldn't stack, and just didn't tell us?

jerrodbuffington

My perspective is pve related. The shield cast time to me is horrible. It will make content way harder. If I cant instantly shield when I need it then I will die more. Maybe some are just not smart enough to know when the damage is coming all the time. It can be learned I geuss, but this game already takes way more time to learn than any other. If the conal poison blast from vas lands on me as mag character I block cast shield. If a stam toon gets targeted they block and cast vigor..but if the shield has a cast time I cant block cast it. can other stats be learned? Yes.. but it further widens the gap between the great teams and the casual teams. Vma will be rediculous with a vast time shield for those of us who dont memorize everything.

The cast time shield
1) widens the gap between top players and the players who struggle.(me)
2) makes the hardest content in the game even more frustrating.
3) will require even more time to learn how to survive.

There has to be other options for the shields. Cast time makes us more vulnerable in a time we need a rescue.

My 6 month eso subscription is up and I'm not gonna renew it until I see how these changes are when they go live. I like playing this game, please dont make it so difficult that it's not fun.

Would the company miss my subscription? No.. they will continue on, no doubt.. but if this causes people to quit then the people left will also suffer by not having people to run the content with.

keeno9881

that cant be they wouldn't so something that dumb

JadonSky

So new patch notes still show how much the developers don't play the game. They think being able to be interrupted was the reason why "CAST TIME" made shield users vulnerable for "TO LONG" not the fact they added a "CAST TIME" to force shield user to be vulnerable longer. Like who the hell is coming up with these changes and the reasoning. Still will not renew my subscription until the cast time is removed this is still not acceptable. There are better ways to nerf shield stacking that would not destroy a class. They have been provided throughout this forum and other threads but are ignored without any feed back from the developers to show they are actually listening to our concerns and ideas to better the game. For a game who needs their subscriber base and their plays they sure show a lack of caring for their player base with these type of changes.

Daedric Summoning
Conjured Ward: This ability and its morphs can no longer be interrupted.
Developer Comment:
Spoiler
Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but now allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

ku5h

Guys we are saved:

Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but now allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

After first pts notes i was 90% sure they will revert 1 sec cast time. But this makes me worry.
I was the one stating that critting shields was more then enought to totally screw up magSorc, but if they keep 1 sec on top of that is just loool.
On a second thought, why do i even bother worrying, I'll simply quit.

bardx86

Cously wrote: »

I've had my fun watching sorcs squirm. They got to taste what dks went through all these years. Cheesy class got cheesed!

Seriously though the cast time on shield looks very clunky, especially that your game most of the time can be unresponsive

Let's face it: the problem why this nerf being applied is PVP. Sorcs are cheesy for having best defense / attack with same resource, cheesy streak, cheesy execute, a lazy and lame class. Now what made them annoying was the shield stacking. That can easily be solved by not allowing shields to stack, much like when you applied the new system of Major and Minor buffs. That way people who did PVE, both healers and cheesy vma sorcs wouldn't be hit so hard with the nerf, if at all.

Another fair solution in my opinion could be make it work like streak, increase costs if ability is used again within short time. That would add more tactical thinking to sorc play in pvp (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA) so they would have to actually think before cheese around. Bonus: you could also *** off more than half of your player base by making Cloak costs increase through the roof as well! That would be lovely. Pesky NBs. Throw a bone and increase duration though.

Thus preventing shield stacking would be the less impactful change and deal with the real problem why everyone complain about sorcs in pvp. Cast time, can't do. It also affect healers. We can live in a world without cheesy sorcs but we need the healers comfy to heal us, I suppose you got it covered by not touching healing ward and it seems like you are relentless about removing the cast time as posted in other thread...hmm that got me worried, to be honest I thought the cast time would be removed on PTS4 but seems you guys serious about it.

Horrible Idea. So if I get attack I have to wait to recast shields? If there were other from of defense then maybe. Shields aren't even that strong with the amount of damage in this game. Leave shield alone,

laurajf

I don't do PVP or end-game stuff, so this is coming from a simple casual quester. I'm not great at quick reactions or quick bar swapping. I've mained a sorc since the beginning because it was perfect for someone like me. I loved her for quite some time but starting with the stun being taken from frags and then the knock to sustain with Morrowind and now a cast time on my shield, I now can barely tolerate the thought of her. As more and more changes are made to make her less fun, I find myself playing less and less. She's a shell of her former self.

I use crafted gear and I have never stacked shields. I use 1 shield to cover my pet(s) and myself and obviously for myself when I play without the pets and take all the damage as I like to switch between pets and no pets at times. I find I NEED my quick shields when I'm solo in public dungeons and have multiple enemies beating on me and the same for when I'm the only one at a dolmen. There have been a few changes over the years that have made her less fun to play, but this cast time on shields might be too much for me. I suppose I could equip a resto staff for when my pets die due to not being able to shield quickly enough and I lose their heals, but when I'm getting beat on by enemies, I'm just not great at keeping track of incoming stuns, red circles, watching my health bar, etc., and then swapping bars quickly to get to a heal and back again to actually do damage.

Because I don't have much time to play due to real life, it took years to get my sorc leveled (she's still only about CP500 and I've been playing since beta). I really hate the thought that I have to start over with another class just so I can have one with an instant heal that is not reliant on a pet that may die. I've heard theories about why they made this change, whether it's because of shield stacking or because of healers not feeling needed, but I participated in none of the activities where that may apply and I'm still getting affected.

And just for the record, in response to the dev comment about them feeling like this makes the gameplay more interesting, I don't know who they're referring to. Based on the comments I've seen here and my own, I'm going to say that NO, no it does not. It makes it more frustrating and less fun. It would probably be a good idea to listen to the people who play this game, in all aspects (PVP, end-game PVE, and casual questers) and see what they say and understand that you may have a skewed view on what constitutes fun. I'm just disappointed.

keeno9881

ACTUALLY they should make shields 20% stronger and take off the cast time

Lord_Eomer

RIP Sorcerer, ZOS why even care about feedback?

As protest, I will unsubcribe from ESO + (PC and PS4)

The_Lex

Lord_Dexter wrote: »

RIP Sorcerer, ZOS why even care about feedback?

To make it seem like they care

AsNied

After reading patch notes 4.2.1 I can only say that ZOS only hears the cheers of players who can fight on the forum and call for nerfs when they lose.

ZOS read it again:
Shields are not OP in themselves, but only in a few cases when you can apply two at a time. You have turned off every Sorc skill to eliminate one stupid combination of skills: Curse -> Star -> Cage -> Frag -> Wrath. Only you forgot that it was the only thing Sorc had to kill anything at all. We do not have good sustain, we do not have good defense outside the shield, now we have nothing in what we would be a little better than other classes. You can also delete Sorcs and forget that they ever existed - along with the players. You will have a base of players you deserve.


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Feric51

So let's see here...

• Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but not allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

Contradictory statements much?

Sennecca

Without a shield, light armor wearers are one shot material in pvp. this means that in order to keep a shield up (if the duration is 9 seconds), light armor wearers will need to cast a shield every 8 seconds to prevent the shield from falling off and becoming an instant casualty instead of fighting. 13-15% of the fight. if a player has lag, they will probably have to cast it more frequently in order to survive.
With one shot mechanics in some of the pve content, light armor users are one shot materal without their shields. Again, they will be casting spending seconds casting non damaging ablilities to prevent dying which will lower their dps. one second off your rotation if you know you are going to need the shield to survive due to a healer's inability to heal or protect through one shot mechanics. if playing solo material, it will be clunky and remove the smooth flow to rotations. Less people will want to play a class that spends nearly 15% of it's time not dying. Animation cancelling - killed any time a shield may need to be applied.
Wouldn't healers be more viable if instead of removing all light armor survival skills, healers had better healing skills? cast times will cause disruption in animation cancelling which while some still think is controversial, will still be done by classes that do not have to spend one second casting a shield because the healer can not protect them from some effects.

killmove

I think this is a bad move from ZOS as they can't assume their decisions.
Shields are game breaking for about 3 years. Now that a good change seems to came, they lost their balls in front of players.
Don't you understand that they don't represent the whole population and because of them most of other players are disgusted of PvP.

Adding a cast time to shields and make it impossible to interrupt wont change anything.
Guess what ??? Sorcs will now cast healing ward and then after cast Conjured Ward and Annulment.

RaddlemanNumber7

Patch 4.2.1 - Hardened Ward cast time

I tried some intense solo combat against a lot of resource and flag guards in Cyrodiil. I'm losing a lot of fights that I know I can regularly win on live.

The cast time on Hardened Ward is too much. Stopping for what seems like a very long second to lay an egg in the middle of intense solo combat just turns you into a sitting duck. Hardened Ward is now a liability, and without it the whole character will need to be rethought and rebuilt.

I haven't tried it in PvP, but the effect of the cast time must be even worse given the added high mobility and split second reaction times required for PvP combat.

The fighting style that makes Mag Sorc distinct from other classes is going to be impossible to use, except for fighting trash mobs and delve bosses.

IMHO I think that adding cast times to shields is a big mistake.

The_Lex

I don't know. These changes in survivability across the board (pve and pvp) make little sense unless ZOS's aim is to make the Sorc class more like a traditional TES Sorcerer. Traditional TES sorcerers wore heavy armor and were less the glass-cannon spell casters that they are in ESO.

I still don't like it, though.

bardx86

killmove wrote: »

I think this is a bad move from ZOS as they can't assume their decisions.
Shields are game breaking for about 3 years. Now that a good change seems to came, they lost their balls in front of players.
Don't you understand that they don't represent the whole population and because of them most of other players are disgusted of PvP.

Adding a cast time to shields and make it impossible to interrupt wont change anything.
Guess what ??? Sorcs will now cast healing ward and then after cast Conjured Ward and Annulment.

Nerfing shield by artificially slowing my reaction time is a terrible way to handle this. Are shield the problem or how good I'm at stacking them the problem?

kadar

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Patch 4.2.1 - Hardened Ward cast time

I tried some intense solo combat against a lot of resource and flag guards in Cyrodiil. I'm losing a lot of fights that I know I can regularly win on live.

The cast time on Hardened Ward is too much. Stopping for what seems like a very long second to lay an egg in the middle of intense solo combat just turns you into a sitting duck. Hardened Ward is now a liability, and without it the whole character will need to be rethought and rebuilt.

I haven't tried it in PvP, but the effect of the cast time must be even worse given the added high mobility and split second reaction times required for PvP combat.

The fighting style that makes Mag Sorc distinct from other classes is going to be impossible to use, except for fighting trash mobs and delve bosses.

IMHO I think that adding cast times to shields is a big mistake.

On live, every pvp build is built to centered around 1-3 shields instant cast shields defensively. It makes sense that the same build on PTS wouldn't work.

The point of the change was to change the way large, cheap shields are used, not to make them weaker. It is for this reason I don't believe zos will respond to the suggested alternatives to the cast time: they all either prevent shield stacking or hurt shield sustain. These are both things the devs are not (at least primarily) trying to do.

bardx86

The_Outsider wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Patch 4.2.1 - Hardened Ward cast time

I tried some intense solo combat against a lot of resource and flag guards in Cyrodiil. I'm losing a lot of fights that I know I can regularly win on live.

The cast time on Hardened Ward is too much. Stopping for what seems like a very long second to lay an egg in the middle of intense solo combat just turns you into a sitting duck. Hardened Ward is now a liability, and without it the whole character will need to be rethought and rebuilt.

I haven't tried it in PvP, but the effect of the cast time must be even worse given the added high mobility and split second reaction times required for PvP combat.

The fighting style that makes Mag Sorc distinct from other classes is going to be impossible to use, except for fighting trash mobs and delve bosses.

IMHO I think that adding cast times to shields is a big mistake.

On live, every pvp build is built to centered around 1-3 shields instant cast shields defensively. It makes sense that the same build on PTS wouldn't work.

The point of the change was to change the way large, cheap shields are used, not to make them weaker. It is for this reason I don't believe zos will respond to the suggested alternatives to the cast time: they all either prevent shield stacking or hurt shield sustain. These are both things the devs are not (at least primarily) trying to do.

Sustain will be hurt in a big way. No longer can shield be used reactively which mean that shield will have to be maintain every sec of play. This will cause an over pay for shields.

ezio45

@ZOS_RobGarrett Lets have a conversation,

In your honest opinion please answer the following questions for me.

If you were a player looking to make a new character for update 20 why would you consider a magsorc.

If you were a score raid lead in update 20 why would you choose to include a magsorc dps as part of the group?

Galarthor

killmove wrote: »

I think this is a bad move from ZOS as they can't assume their decisions.
Shields are game breaking for about 3 years. Now that a good change seems to came, they lost their balls in front of players.
Don't you understand that they don't represent the whole population and because of them most of other players are disgusted of PvP.

Adding a cast time to shields and make it impossible to interrupt wont change anything.
Guess what ??? Sorcs will now cast healing ward and then after cast Conjured Ward and Annulment.

Somebody is confusing sorcs with stamblades.

And you think casting healing ward before using a real shield is not going to affect sorcs? You are either clueless and trolling. Wasting a global cooldown to apply a very weak healing ward each time you want to apply a shield means you will spent at least 2 out of 6 global cooldowns applying your 1 shield. That's 1/3 of your time given a 5 to 6 sec cycle. If you factor in the 1 sec cast time and the already inherent delay that goes up to 3 sec, which is 1/2 of your time. You are right ... that's going to be so OP ...

Lord_Eomer

• Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but not allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

ZOS is actually thinking Players have 50k shield in light armor but in PVP its hardly 5K -10K shield!

nuttytom

"Because combat pace is quick" so here's a cast time to slow it down and interrupt the flow of sorcerer combat.

Kerioko

Link to thread about how changes affect sorc support healer!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/437267/sorc-healers-are-not-viable-anymore

dagonbeer

nuttytom wrote: »

"Because combat pace is quick" so here's a cast time to slow it down and interrupt the flow of sorcerer combat.

Well it was interrupting the kills from gankblades and heavy stam builds...

JadonSky

Lord_Dexter wrote: »

• Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but not allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

ZOS is actually thinking Players have 50k shield in light armor but in PVP its hardly 5K -10K shield!

Exactly what i meant by I don't think the people making these changes even play the game. It's like they think shields are really strong but in reality once your shield is not available its instant death. Anyone who runs shields know they only last 1-2 seconds in a fight and with the ability to crit will now last even less time. Adding a cast time prevents a light armor class from having an instant defense like NB with cloak and Templar with breath of life.. sorcs had harden ward. It may seem fare if they added the same cast time to those classes as well to make it "balance" and it would make their logic make more since, but thats not the case.

They killed the sorc light armor builds. You could run heavy but good luck with sustain.

Jsmalls

The sheer fact that is thread is almost to 1000 posts should speak volumes.

You have sorc mains, non sorc mains, sorc haters, etc all saying this is a poorly thought out attempt at balancing.

If you want to remove damage shields effectiveness for light armor, you have to give light armor players SOMETHING. They cannot survive in the current meta as is, and they will go extinct for many classes.

The only way to run light armor is with 25k resistances through other means, 1.5k-2k crit resistance, and 25k+ health if this patch goes live. And to stack these stats you are giving up so much you'll be a wet noodle.

Playing a heavy armor or medium armor stamina player will be significantly more effective in any competitive situation.

Lastly. It was stated that they wanted to give counterplay to damage shields. Consistent high damage from a single source or multiple sources was counterplay to this defense mechanism. Problem is cyrodiil meta is mediocre damage, high defense, and running in large groups, and these players CANNOT kill a great Magicka Sorc (or really any skilled player) on their own. Skilled players had no problem dealing with average MagSorc, MagNbs, or MagWardens. But to kill a skilled light armored Magicka player it required skill as well. One incap, dawnbreaker, meteor, leap, or hard hitting ability or CC when the damage shield was down was a death sentence. If a player casts a vigor and rally precisely as needed coupled with roll Dodge and blocking, they would become very hard to kill. But a Light armor Magicka player doing the same isn't balance? Nothing but hypocrisy.