PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Sorcerer

CritsTheBed

What about removing one morph of storm atro and adding air atro for stamsorc ulti?

Illuvatarr

Been playing "pet sorc" all day in Cyrodiil. Tested out the spec the developers are trying to force down our throats.

I stick to my prior decision. The developers of this game have taken the most well designed class (the warhammer archmage is maybe tied with it) in the history of mmo's and utterly destroyed it.

Glad I unsubbed.

Kerioko

Funny how sorc is the only class to:

- Have class defensive and sustain skills that have cast times
- Lack a damage spammable
- Have a class skill that increases in cost the more it is used

Tonturri

Kerioko wrote: »

Funny how sorc is the only class to:

- Have class defensive and sustain skills that have cast times
- Lack a damage spammable
- Have a class skill that increases in cost the more it is used

You forgot

-' Still gets nerfed over and over despite all of the above'

UrQuan

Everyone, read Gina's comment at the start of the class reps meeting notes (and read the rest of the notes, because you should know what they talked about):
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/437982/class-reps-meeting-notes-september-25
The 1 second cast time on annulment & conjured ward is going away.

Feanor

A 40% HP shield size cap is a pretty substantial nerf on top of being able to take crits though. It’s less pronounced in noCP, but I’d call it a nerf there too. At least the cast time seems to have been abandoned as an idea.

UrQuan

Feanor wrote: »

A 40% HP shield size cap is a pretty substantial nerf on top of being able to take crits though. It’s less pronounced in noCP, but I’d call it a nerf there too. At least the cast time seems to have been abandoned as an idea.

It is, and of course whether it's the appropriate nerf or not is another topic of discussion (one that I would suggest people don't get too worked up about until they see the patch notes for the patch that makes this change - Gina's comment about what they're going to do didn't necessarily indicate that those were the only changes they would make to those 2 abilities). But I'm just happy that they actually took the feedback that a cast time was a very problematic way of nerfing those shields and realized that it was legitimate criticism.

Alaztor91

Feanor wrote: »

A 40% HP shield size cap is a pretty substantial nerf on top of being able to take crits though. It’s less pronounced in noCP, but I’d call it a nerf there too. At least the cast time seems to have been abandoned as an idea.

Well, at least the cast time is going away. I can work around the 40% hp shield cap in PvP, trading a bit of magicka for health I guess.I would have preferred a 50 or 60% HP cap but I'll take it if that means no cast times. For PvE it's a heavy nerf tho, that's like a 7.2k cap if you have 18k health, I know that shields will be stronger because they will take your resistances into account and mobs in PvE have no pen afaik, but still I don't know how that's gonna work in places like vMA/vet Trials/vet DLC dungeons,etc.

Massacre_Wurm

Feanor wrote: »

A 40% HP shield size cap is a pretty substantial nerf on top of being able to take crits though. It’s less pronounced in noCP, but I’d call it a nerf there too. At least the cast time seems to have been abandoned as an idea.

Yep, 40% hp CRITABLE sheild just useless trash. 1 second cast time is better imo.

On the other side - maybe we will se some interesting light armor tanking builds. Stack resists + hp + this sheilds. Curious.

Anken5

40% max health cap is really weak, and i finally prefer the cast for PVE. My shield is actually 30k+, and will be just 7k with my 17k health sorc. Its a very huge nerf.

Maybe a morph with cast and big shields, and a morph with health cap and instant cast, is the best solution. It seems a good idea from devs.

And a 40% health cap means that some stam with bone shield could have a better shield than magicka. Seems strange.

Why play magicka if you can have better shields with stamina character ?

Doctordarkspawn

FOR THOSE NOT AWARE.

The thing to take away from the class rep meeting which you can read in the above link, is that the cast time will be removed, the shield will be capped at 40%, and shields can now be critted.

Now, anyone on the PVE side know if that can survive trials? Because if it is, I think we're done here. With healer assistance is fine, after all, healers said they wanted to be appreciated more. Now they gonna have to hustle.

The only thing it needs to do in PVE is help sorcs survive groupwide one-shots, and I think it's in a good place now with that.

Also: If they need fine tuning, go ahed and make the 'bastion' CP star add resistances to shields so that people can cope.

Class reps finally talked ZOS down. This is good. This means we can actually -talk- and communicate.

Anken5

Choose between two morphs, with and without cast and health cap, seems a good compromise, and could help build diversity.

UrQuan

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Now, anyone on the PVE side know if that can survive trials? Because if it is, I think we're done here. With healer assistance is fine, after all, healers said they wanted to be appreciated more. Now they gonna have to hustle.

The only thing it needs to do in PVE is help sorcs survive groupwide one-shots, and I think it's in a good place now with that.

I can't say for sure, but my gut tells me that with shields having resistance values, and with PVE damage not having any penetration IIRC (or possibly just very little) a 40% of health damage shield should be enough for survival in trials. It may require significantly more healing than is needed currently and/or ultimates like Nova or Veil of Blades where those aren't as necessary currently, but I think it should be enough to keep magicka DPS alive through vet trials mechanics with support.

Cronopoly

Question for CP...??

-- Bastion adds to Cap of 40% allowing > 40% ??
or
--Bastion adds to size of shield up to a hard CAP of 40% ??

I cannot imagine the second scenario unless there's some hybrid Stam/Mag use case.

ruikkarikun

Thanks for reading and your changes. But 40% HP shield is pretty low for PVE, maybe you can increase it a little bit after testing.
Or if you leave 40% cap can you buff a little sustain then?

Doctordarkspawn

UrQuan wrote: »

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Now, anyone on the PVE side know if that can survive trials? Because if it is, I think we're done here. With healer assistance is fine, after all, healers said they wanted to be appreciated more. Now they gonna have to hustle.

The only thing it needs to do in PVE is help sorcs survive groupwide one-shots, and I think it's in a good place now with that.

I can't say for sure, but my gut tells me that with shields having resistance values, and with PVE damage not having any penetration IIRC (or possibly just very little) a 40% of health damage shield should be enough for survival in trials. It may require significantly more healing than is needed currently and/or ultimates like Nova or Veil of Blades where those aren't as necessary currently, but I think it should be enough to keep magicka DPS alive through vet trials mechanics with support.

Well they -did- want healers to be more useful.

And vet trial boys are allready running specific classes for damage reduction ults, so. Not much has changed. Think we might be good on a PVE front if that's the case.

PhoenixGrey

Fantastic change yet again . Just keeps getting better

Before (with cast time) :- Get one shot before casting the shield
After (without cast time) :- Get one shot after casting the shield

On a serious note, in regards to PVP balancing, its probably best to think of balance keeping open world PVP in mind not some duel environment.

ezio45

I honestly dont know if id rather have the cast time......

Morgul667

ezio45 wrote: »

I honestly dont know if id rather have the cast time......

cast time is clunky and easy to die right away, at least with this you have a chance to fight back... much smaller than before, but you have one

ezio45

Morgul667 wrote: »

ezio45 wrote: »

I honestly dont know if id rather have the cast time......

cast time is clunky and easy to die right away, at least with this you have a chance to fight back... much smaller than before, but you have one

dude.....

my shields is now 6k.... 3k if battle spirit still effects it....

Sorcs have 0 heals... and it doesnt even cover my health bar.......

Alaztor91

ezio45 wrote: »

dude.....

my shields is now 6k.... 3k if battle spirit still effects it....

Sorcs have 0 heals... and it doesnt even cover my health bar.......

Battle spirit will probably cut it in half before the 40% HP cap is calculated ,so for example:

- You have 20k health and a 25k shield in PvE, shields gets reduced to 8k(40% of 20k which is your max health)

- You have 25k health and a 12.5k shield in PvP(reduced to 1/2 because of battle spirit), shield gets reduced to 10k(40% of 25k which is your max health)

I mean it HAS to work that way, otherwise the shields in PvP would be completely useless.

RMerlin

My current shield is actually close to 40% in PvP, so I'm fine with that.

And note that you can increase that limit by simply increasing your health, so it's not as if there was a hard cap.

Not sure if that will be enough in PvE however, I don't play any endgame content. I worry however that this might encourage sorcerors to stack multiple shields to compensate (for those, like myself, who weren't already).

SenorCrouch

40% Max HP shields...dunno how I feel about this yet, BUT cast time is removed. It is a long ways off from being an ideal change, but in this day and age where an EA style relationship with its community is becoming an industry standard, I will take this as a small victory for now.

Tonturri

Feels like a band aid fix. I bet they're gonna up it a little to 50 or 60%, but make it so that Anuulment + Hardened can't go past that cap, in the end making it so that you can stack the two shields but it won't actually do anything for you. Bonus points for making healing ward not contribute to the cap.

As is though, this is still heavily nerfing light armor builds.

Now can we get that 8% healing bonus on heavy armor to have another bonus towards shields now that sorcs can run heavy without gimping the heck out of themselves?

Derra

Galarthor wrote: »

@Derra

I don't dislike the idea in general. It actually sounds interesting, hower, I think there are several issues that have to be address first in order to implement such a shield change.

1) 10000 PvE turns in 5000 PvP which is pretty much nothing.
2) 3000 each second in PvE turn into 1500 each second in PvP, which is not even worth mentioning.
3) There is no space on sorc bars for HoTs to actually suppelement the "Shield HoT".
4) 1vX / outnumbered survivability is already very bad on live and will be exorbitantly worse due to the lower inital shield.
5) Shields on live are already pretty weak where you have to recast them every 1 or 2 sec even in many 1v1 situations. Cutting shield strength in half will make the problem only worse, increasing the need to shield stack - something we want to get rid off.
6) Lack of bar space to compensate for lower shields.

A solution could be something very similar to the Warden Shields, just not only for ranged attacks - i.e. have shields have a large size, but only absorb 3 to 5 attacks. At the same time get rid off stacking Ward + Annulment.

Though I still believe, there isn't really an issue with shields other than the psychological issue of not seeing HP drop when you hit the target thus depriving the opponent of a sense of accomplishment. Sorcs stacking Ward + Annulment can be annoying, but so can be templars combinging block + BoL, DK combining block + heal, NBs combining dodge + cloak, ....
The principle is the same, these combos are even often times far stronger than stacking 2 shields, but they don't deprive the opponent of a sense of accomplishment and are thus not perceived as strong as / stronger than shields.

1)You´re forgetting about hardened additional 23% - same goes for dampen.
2)You´d be getting about 6200 shield as spammable + 1850/s (if you ever played with an infused shield glyph you know this is substential dmg mitigation). This is also on a build with low bastion and only 43k magica so on the low to mediocre shieldstrengh end of the spectrum.
3)There is space if you´re no longer forced to slot harness over any alternative (the change would imo achieve this).
4 + 5 +6) have nothing to do with changes to shields and are general class problems and i don´t think you can make an actual argument around 1vX.
I personally think it would improve sorc playing experience if you´re smart instead of shieldbuttonmashing.

You´re also focusing way too much on the numbers - original posts says it´s an example and that would be very easy to adress if it proves to be too potent or too weak.

I do think there are problems with shields - albeit they´re exaggerated a lot on the forums and i do think changing them will improve gameplay experience for sorcs and when fighting them.

Personally i think a shield absorbing x attacks with no dmg would be downright horrible - have you ever thought about how many attacks a dot build dk or templar gets on you per second?
Embers, volatile (x2 if you attack him), breath, inferno, skoria whip aaand you´re already dead :P

Cronopoly

Today, In Light Armor on Live, Swift Stamblades are wrecking everyone with Bleeds, Dawnbreaker, Spin to Win. Hard to target them with very fast Sonic play and as soon as you do, "smoke", they dissappear. Kudos to them for their awesome tools. I just want to compete a little.

Crittable shields, 40% and scalable off Health..., which I think was the goal all along. Negotiating 101, initially propose something ridiculous, then settle on what you wanted , and have it seen like a compromise. Meanwhile the other side gets screwed.

This whole scalable off health, which is interesting that LA gets nothing that synergises with Health unlike Heavy.
Why run Light Armor and Magicka at all in PVP for any class? What is the upside I'm missing.

Bergzorn

Cronopoly wrote: »

What is the upside I'm missing.

Same as before, sustain and penetration. We'll see if it's still worth it.

Edit: that's for the light armor part, missed the general magica part

Tonturri

Hello. I wanted to share the build I'm going to have to run on my sorcerer if the PTS changes go live. I'm super happy they reverted the cast time fix, but I feel like the 40% is a band-aid 'we'll do what we can, might not have enough time' fix.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=66496

Notice I'm in heavy armor an argonian, and have enough tri-stat glyphs to reach 27k health. This puts my shield cap at 10,800. I have a 17,189 Hardened Ward tooltip * 1.23 = 21,142.47. /2 For Battle Spirit and I get a 10,571 shield, just barely under the cap.

I also have ~26k resists, or 28k if I put on a frost staff (42-43% mitigation). If my opponent has 10k penetration (reasonable for a magicka build with with major pen and 5 light armor. Ish.) A stam with mace (20% - 5600 if I have 28k res) major pen (5480) will penetrate a little more - I'll have around 19k res sor 29%-ish mitigation. Gets a bit worse if they have spriggans (3450) and/or sharptened (2700). In that case, I'll be down to around 11k or so armor, or ~17% mitigation.

Anyway, so assuming the above. If there's just a mace and major pen debuff, my 10,500 shield with 29% mitigation is worth 13,545 points total, about what the shield would be before all these changes. Worse case scenario where my opponent is stacking all the pen they can and my 10,500 shield is worth about 12,500 points total. Not applying minor/major prot etc etc.

In other news, my Crystal Fragments tooltip has dropped from 16k to 14k (again, an estimation ^^).

My Haunting Curse has lost about the same amount of tooltip damage, going from ~15k to just a little under 12k.

I'm also hovering at around 4.2k penetration, down from the usual around 10k (my CP are a little off, I admit ^^). Were I optimized properly I'd probably be around 5k or so. Fair to assume about half, or if you factor in the major pen buff (I like to run ele drain, not everyone does). Anyway!

This also isn't taking into consideration the amount of extra critical damage shields are now taking.

66 crit resist = 1% crit modifier mitigated.
So 2.500 ÷ 66 = 37.8% less crit modifier.
1.70 - 0.378 = 1.322x damage taken from a crit.
Critting with 40% rate means damage is normal in 60% of cases
0.4×1.322 + 0.6×1.0 = 1,128 average damage taken.

According to the above math, if I had 2500 critical resistance my shields would be taking 12.8% more damage in general. My UESP build is at 2802 critical resistance, but I think it's safe to say the build will be taking a net increase in dmg due to incoming crits.

Without the critical damage change, I manage to break even - my above setup is taking the exact same amount of incoming damage as before the patch. However, with the critical damage change, he's given up MORE resources to become tankier but is still squishier than before...only this time in heavy armor and with an added 4-5k health, and significantly decreased tooltip damage.

In short, sorcerers have to sacrifice more in order to get less. I switched to heavy armor, ran blood spawn (Instead of 1 infernal guardian 1 domihaus for 2k extra mag and 1k stam), and ran a 'soft' sustain set (Shacklebreaker isn't quite considered a sustain yet, but neither is it pure damage), in addition to a PURE sustain set.

I also switched from a lightning or inferno staff over to frost, which gives me increased armor but loses out on a significant chunk of damage.

Don't get me wrong, I am overjoyed that ZOS has reverted the cast time change. It's an amazing turn of events that I totally didn't expect to happen, and I'm glad they're willing to listen. However, a lot of magicka builds are just plain weaker in places they could not afford to be weaker in, especially considering the prevelance of bleeds still used in stamina setups. Those bleeds can crit AND ignore the extra armor I've painstakingly acquired in order to break even with previous incoming dmg on a light armor setup.

So not only if my build taking more damage than before in general due to the crit change, despite sacrificing ~5k magicka and gaining a decent chunk of health in order to reach the point where the 40% shield limit isn't biting off any of my shield, but bleeds will absolutely shred the defenses. I'm GLAD to invest more into defense, but I don't feel as if I'm being rewarded appropriately for doing so, especially considering things like oblivion damage in general and the CP star that increase dmg to shields still exist.

And last but certainly not least - Bright-Throat's Boast, the magicka version of Bone Pirate. I would love to run that in place of Amber Plasm, and in fact I totally would have that in there except it's not actually in UESP at the moment >.> But if my build gained 3k magicka (2k from last bonus, another 1k from having 1 more mag bonus than amber plasm), well...that probably wouldn't even work, as I'd have to invest even more into health in order to get the benefit, whih would in turn decrease the benefit.

In summary, I switched from running one psuedo-sustain set (shacklebreaker), a damage oriented (stat wise) oriented monster set, and one damage or 'support' (like WIzard's Riposte) to running two sustain sets (Heck with it I'm counting shacklebreaker as sustain) and a tanking monster set. AND a tanking weapon in the form of a frost staff. I also switched from heavy to light armor. Despite all this, I'm still going to take more damage after the patch than a full light armor build does before the patch, when shields were already considered on the squishier side.

I'm also an Argonian instead of an Altmer and there isn't even enough room on my bars to try and fit in Crit Surge so I can have a smol heal.

My Sorcerer is going to be shredded into paste next patch despite investing heavily into tankiness. My sustain is also worse. Everything is worse....but slightly better than cast time! Keep pushing, folks!

Edit: Sorry if the UESP build is a little off, I've been having a little trouble making it save. I think it's currently missing the frost staff or something, for example.

Tonturri

And a double post for something completely unrelated.

Was derping around in the sorc discord and an idea came up.

For Dark Deal: Instead of the current incarnation, remove the cast time and have it convert a regen value into regen for the other resource, as an instant toggle that stays active when you bar swap away. Convert stam regen into magicka regen or vice versa.

Or have Deal conver stam regen into mag regen, then shove the mag regen into stam regen onto the morph of bound armaments.

Sange13

Tonturri wrote: »

And a double post for something completely unrelated.

Was derping around in the sorc discord and an idea came up.

For Dark Deal: Instead of the current incarnation, remove the cast time and have it convert a regen value into regen for the other resource, as an instant toggle that stays active when you bar swap away. Convert stam regen into magicka regen or vice versa.

Or have Deal conver stam regen into mag regen, then shove the mag regen into stam regen onto the morph of bound armaments.

Or incur your health regen as a penalty, but gain that much stam or mag regen, depending on morph. (Don't leave it on or you could die!)

=D