PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Sorcerer

qbit

I stopped reading and scrolled down to comment when I read someone say “speechless”. I started three months ago with a magsorc main. I picked at random based on how I play Skyrim. Like so many players do. Didn’t know anything about the game.

I got my ilambris shoulder and helm this weekend to complete my Alcast PvE meta.

My mag sorc is my only character.

Considering how I play, I won’t be able to play the class anymore in PvE. I don’t PvP. Never have.

I started doing vMA this weekend after I got my ilambris set. I got a little ways.

Knowing how I play, I won’t be able to function at all with a one second cast time.

Yep, L2P, right? Okay.. thinking of making a new character.

No, not really. ESO was also my first ever MMO. Given how rolling a new character was not in my short term plans, I think I’ll branch out and try new MMOs.

I feel anxiety and frustration thinking about my future game play in ESO or leveling a new character.

But I feel anticipation and excitement over the idea of trying out a new MMO.

So the choice is simple. You got three months of ESO+ out of me, $10 base game plus Morrowind, full price for Summerset. And a couple of crown store purchases.

I would roll a new character if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that the designers are intentionally changing the class to make it unplayable. It’s been consistent. Very consistent. It was funny at first the conspiracy theories. They’re not so funny anymore.

The company’s decision makers are unethical.

Minno

BaylorCorvette wrote: »

Cres wrote: »

Remove Dark deal cast time!

This.

Would give a StamSorc a nice burst heal similar to Stamdens Soothing Spores.

Should make DD instant cast. Would allow for a nice burst heal for StamSorc, keep the change to stamina you get back (2k up front and 2k over 20 seconds) but perhaps adjust the mag cost of this ability to make up for the instant cast change.

I agree. This would be the compensation for the shield cast time.

And remove streak cost increase.

Ragged_Claw

I can't find it now, but it states somewhere in the patch notes that the cast time on shields is to make them more of a 'pre-buff' or to be cast at an 'opportune' moment during battle. So when is there exactly an opportune moment in VMA, for instance? When you are being peppered with arrows, poison, huge fireballs and uppercuts, what do you do? Ask them all to stop a sec so you can re-apply your shields, oh and tell them not to interrupt you whilst you're doing it? I struggle to be fast enough on the buttons as it is.

Fml, my squishy vamp sorc is so dead.

Alpheu5

Myux wrote: »

1. making damage shields crittable + take resists into account. this is a straight nerf to pvp magsorcs as their resists are always comically teeny and most players will pretty much entirely penetrate the resists anyway. the concept of the change is fine, making damage shields consistent with HP, but for light armor users all you've done is make their shields break easier. if you wanna keep this change i'd recommend scaling up the defense the shield functionally has depending on the more light armor pieces or the less resists you have, in addition to making crits do less damage on them. or you could just increase the size of the mag-scaling shields if you wanted to bother with less math.

5-1-1 with main light, a boundless, and a shield. I'm not the only one that does this.

2. revamped overload. to be honest i love the idea of it. giving magsorcs a pressure ult and making overload actually useful aside from joke builds is a great idea, but the details on it are messy. if it still costs the same ult as it does now for each shot (75 ult, 64 with passives) thats entirely too expensive for the amount of damage it does when its reduced by 50%. the fact that you cant gain ult while in THE STANCE is a really big gimp to it as well. if you decrease the cost and let you regen ult during it, its pretty close to worth a slot, the only thing holding it back at that point is that going in and out of the stance takes a global cooldown. if you got rid of that, it could be great! tho i think getting rid of the 3rd bar is gonna make a lot of people sad. if you could bring that back somehow while still keeping the new overload, sorcs would be real happy i think.

It costs 64 to enter Overload mode, but each shot only costs 22. The fact that you can swap bars seamlessly and still use all your skills like normal is a massive boon that should not be overlooked. You can even cast your ultimate on the other bar without deactivating Overload first.

3. SHIELD CAST TIMES OH GOD. this is completely and utterly pointless for the reason written on the PTS notes. it already takes time to pop a shield. its called the "global cooldown". using a shield isnt a free action in its current state, theres absolutely no need to add a cast time!!!! it leaves absolutely no counterplay when magsorcs are facing high pressure builds or multiple enemies, and is way too long to properly play defensively! in addition, it means that they wont be able to barswap cancel while using ward, which is an incredibly important part of magsorc play. this change in addition to the functionally weaker shield defense (see section 1) means magsorcs will be forced to play like heavy destro magblades except with worse damage and burst. this change alone removes all of their kill potential, and all of their defense. for the love of god revert it

To put it softly, this is hyperbole. The integration of resistances to the damage calculation is going to play a huge part in how the wards behave, even if they are crittable by players. The cast time probably means the wards are bashable, yes, but seeing how almost every sorc I see runs healing, harness, and hardened, if you get bashed out of one, you're bash-immune to cast the other 2 and then the initial one again since it'll be able to get cast again by that point.

Of course, these are all just words and the only thing that really matters is how everything performs in the field.

NBrookus

I haven't mained a sorc in years, so the following isn't salty sorc tears:

Yes, sorcs infinately stacking shields was annoying. But this is too much. Sorcs don't have crap for defense and heals aside from shields.

At a minimum, Hardened/Empowered Ward need to be instant. Go ahead and make Harness have a cast time so sorcs can't stack stack stack, but if Hardened isn't instant sorcs have no way to defend reactively and no way to burst heal in combar aside from a pet they have to double bar.

Templars have complained and complained about cast time abilities... why do you think adding this pain to other classes is a good idea?

Thraben

I´ll make it short. Both StamSorc and MagSorc.

1. PvE solo: I´m Petsorc. The loss of Overload forces me to do basically heavy attacks only, as there is not enough bar slots for.. anything. Good to know that Magblades can at least proc assassin´s will with 2 heavy attacks, while I can proc an instant desire to delete the game from my computer.

2. PvE group content I: As a TANK, I don´t have enough skill bar space to be viable as a StamSorc compared to warden/ DK. Thank you again, for deleting my Overload bar.

3. PvE content II: As a HEALER, I stopped using the Psijik healing skill when you made it a clunky toggle.Brilliant idea to do the same to Overload. I won´t heal anymore since the Twilight matriarch now really HURTS, given my bar space.

4.Summary PvE content: The loss of the OL bar significantly reduces the flexibility of the class, brutally punishing everyone with a non-meta build and Pet Sorcs in general.

5. PvP summary: I hate the loss of my overload bar and the changes of my damage shields. If a game makes me hate my own class of 4+ years, I won´t consider playing it.

Savos_Saren

So shields have a 1 sec delay... but you can still instantly spam cloak..?

Iki

Cast-time to damage-shields would be biggest mag-sorc nerf in history of this game. Totally unreasonable and not needed. It`s so bad idea that you should make a hotfix for tomorrow to delete it.

Minno

Keeping you all focused, can you all list 5 changes that will compensate for the cast time on shields?

(it's highly likely that you won't win this fight due to the impacts to PVE, so might as well get buffs elsewhere. ZOS typically doesn't revert PVE balance changes during PTS as much as PVP balance changes. Look at morrowind sustain changes for an example.)

Skander

What you all complaining. They probably will revert the changes and buff sorc instead

Schattenfluegel

Thraben wrote: »

I´ll make it short. Both StamSorc and MagSorc.

1. PvE solo: I´m Petsorc. The loss of Overload forces me to do basically heavy attacks only, as there is not enough bar slots for.. anything. Good to know that Magblades can at least proc assassin´s will with 2 heavy attacks, while I can proc an instant desire to delete the game from my computer.

2. PvE group content I: As a TANK, I don´t have enough skill bar space to be viable as a StamSorc compared to warden/ DK. Thank you again, for deleting my Overload bar.

3. PvE content II: As a HEALER, I stopped using the Psijik healing skill when you made it a clunky toggle.Brilliant idea to do the same to Overload. I won´t heal anymore since the Twilight matriarch now really HURTS, given my bar space.

4.Summary PvE content: The loss of the OL bar significantly reduces the flexibility of the class, brutally punishing everyone with a non-meta build and Pet Sorcs in general.

5. PvP summary: I hate the loss of my overload bar and the changes of my damage shields. If a game makes me hate my own class of 5+ years, I won´t consider playing it.

Ive never played Pet Sorc with an Overload Bar...Overload was good on a Time long ago. And it could be funny, if you play it right now.

WreckfulAbandon

All around terrible changes for sorc. 1 second cast time on shields single-handedly makes light armor mag sorc 1vX impossible. Or 1v1 for that matter. If these changes go through will completely lose faith in this combat team to make good balance changes. And either the Class Rep program doesn't have enough influence or they are influencing things negatively. Not enough transparency to tell at this point.

Third bar gone too? I'm just done with sorc if these changes go through, not gonna spend time worrying about them. Time to main Templar again. And Templar is cool but if I have to do that then my ESO Plus will be cancelled.

Heavy armor bleedblade got so many indirect buffs this patch it's not even funny.

Giraffon

Ankael07 wrote: »

Whats the point of providing feedback when the next changes will be nonsense anyway. Cast time for hardened ward? No Overload bar? Im speechless

I'm Speechless too! I can live with a lot, but the cast time on hardened ward is really a bad, bad idea. My sorc won't be able to survive so many dungeon situations much less PvP. The is really awful news for sorcs.

Malamar1229

I cancelled eso + on my two PC accounts and both xbox accounts (though my wife isnt happy as she plays here), I cant support these changes any more.


I get stacking was an issue but this wasnt the way to address it. We cant cast shields anymore as counterplay.

arasysb14_ESO

I just logged on PTS to really see how I feel about the shields.. 1 second cast time is absolutely unnecessary and boring. It's interruptable and can instantly be destroyed by another player or in veteran content (there are tons of places where you actually have to spam shields to survive at times).

Playing sorcerer never felt this stale since beta, it makes no sense to play the class. Might as well just remove the other skills and have us only heavy attack to see if anyone would still play the class as a psychological test ...

ssewallb14_ESO

ZoS this shield cast time is bad. Like, real bad. Like proc set stacking in One Tamriel bad, but worse.

A cast time defensive mechanic is useless in a fast paced game like eso that revolves around burst damage. You've effectively turned shields into the old healing ritual. No one will be playing mag sorc in PvP outside of large raids at this point if this goes through. Actually I'm pretty sure even organized raids now run Stam for negates, so you probably won't see a magsorc in Cyrodiil. Hopefully something will be done once the Sorc count drops to almost nothing.

pieratsos

Skander wrote: »

What you all complaining. They probably will revert the changes and buff sorc instead

Like last patch? Oh wait now i realised that you are one of those trolls still finding sorcs OP af.

wuka91

Sorry to be so aggressive and harsh but I have a few things to say about the changes to the sorcerer class. Since runecage was nerfed in the wolf patch - I have since migrated to a stam sorc and am enjoying this class tremendously so I honestly don't care what they do to the mag sorc at this moment.

The rune cage visual effect and being able to cast it on somebody even if they dodge is imho an extremely good change. This now effectively allows counter play for rune cage without it being utter *** skill in the wolf patch. Thank you for this change and this change makes a lot of sense.

What doesn't make sense is the change to the shields. Crittable shields and resistance changes to shields are reasonable and we shall see how they perform in the PTS.

The most absurd thing about these changes is the 1 second cast time for Annulment and Conjured Ward. All I have to say about this is if it actually goes through to the official murkmire patch notes then you can just kiss mag sorcs good bye. And if it actually does pass the official patch notes then I have lost all hope for ZoS combat design team and I will truly have to label them as literal ret@rds. Sorry for this language but in my eyes they are considered *** to allow such an absurd change to go through.

The only world in which a 1 second cast time would make sense would be if they increased shield duration to 15seconds + and also increase shields by 50-100% more mitigation

qbit

ezio45 wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

I don't think they understand that the cast time on shields will screw up all magicka people in PvE. Our main defense against almost ALL mechanics in trials and dungeons. The crit change was enough.

monsters dont crit in pve

We know that @ezio45. The issue is we can’t PvE anymore content like vMA with a one second cast time on shields. Company has hired designers with an agenda and leadership is too out of touch to see it.

Hixtory

NBrookus wrote: »

I haven't mained a sorc in years, so the following isn't salty sorc tears:

Yes, sorcs infinately stacking shields was annoying. But this is too much. Sorcs don't have crap for defense and heals aside from shields.

At a minimum, Hardened/Empowered Ward need to be instant. Go ahead and make Harness have a cast time so sorcs can't stack stack stack, but if Hardened isn't instant sorcs have no way to defend reactively and no way to burst heal in combar aside from a pet they have to double bar.

Templars have complained and complained about cast time abilities... why do you think adding this pain to other classes is a good idea?

The change to crit should be enough, but if they so much want the 1s delay make it that harness is the only one instant. So if you want to stack shields you have to go harness first and then hardened.

This way all builds can have at least 1 shield, I dont need it in my magDK but certainly yes in the sorc. MagDK can have a lot of heals going on, sorc doesnt.

I dont like this change, and I hope they revert it back to just crit allowed

Didgerion

Hutch679 wrote: »

Great changes tbh. The shield stacking has gotten out of control.....

I wander how many times you couldn't outplay a shield casting sorc compared to a high-damage/high-resistance templar?

Oh let me tell ya, you just figured it out that you cannot kill a sorc because of his shields while you don't have the slightest idea why you couldn't kill a templar.

qbit

Let’s see a video of someone at ZOS completing vMA with a magsorc using only 300 CP points on PTS. Actually, it can be anyone with any build. As long as it’s magsorc. And if that’s not possible do it with CP 780.

If you can’t do that in PvE, then your nerfs are out of line. They’re wrong. And your choice of streamer for lead designer just cost you a lot of players. And earned you a very bad reputation.

Sandman929

Reading everyone's reactions, I guess the bottom line for me is that I'll just never applaud adding a cast time to anything no matter how much it annoys me. Cast times are not fun experiences. Channels aren't either, but cast times are just wasted time and really make the game play suffer.

WreckfulAbandon

ZOS balance quote: "We want Sorcerers to feel like they have access to their full arsenal while in Overload mode. This ability is updated to better integrate with other abilities. As soon as you Overload light attack you can cast an ability, just like the light attacks of any other weapon set."

If you really want us to feel like we have access to our "full arsenal" then why are you removing the third bar???? This literally is having the opposite effect of what is intended! That description of your intentions is just an extra slap in the face!

Witar

The plan is (at least i think) to give two *** options (crits on shields AND 1 second cast time) and then remove one under pressure from gamers. People will feel much much better, one *** nerf will still pass. Everyone is happy again. Cause no intelligent being on planet earth can think that adding cast time to only defence light armor magicka users have is ok thing to do.

DrScott59

I play only PVE and main a magsorc -- can't comment on PVP.

The shield duration increase is useless. There are many cases (wb, vet dungeons, trials) where empowered ward (and even hardened ward) is completely destroyed in a single hit, meaning true duration has been, and will still be, 1-2 seconds.

Adding a 1-second cast time translates to many, many one-shot sorc deaths in dungeons and trials.

Getting one-shotted in dungeons and trials is a great combination of "not fun" and "useless to the group".

Please @ZOS, reconsider the 1-second cast time change and revert to instant-cast on hardened and empowered.

mook-eb16_ESO

sorry to say but this is one of those implementations that begs the question"did the devs even play sorc on pvp or pve". there was already oblivion damage, shield breaker, sloads, poisons, why was this not already enough. the 1 second is huge deal especially because any cast time can be interrupted pretty easy. Even if you survive the initial strike of nb you try to put up shield you will be interrupted. Basically any sorc without a shield will be a confirmed kill. I haven't played pts yet but def a shield in its current state is bad enough in lag. and pts wont simulate the lag you get due to blob hroups on main cp campaign. ever tried hard casting crystal frags in high lag enough said.
It would be good devs actually elaborate about there new strategies for sorc play that informed their decision to implement this beyond all the crying about shield spamming. for instance ok we wont make sorc so tanky but we can make it more nimble and quick and give it give it back cheap streak so it can get in and out fast. personally I feel completely betrayed by these patch notes.

frags nerfed
curse nerfed
streak nerfed
shields nerfed
overload bar nerfed
etc
I'm sure that's more other classes.

Somewhere

Well... I can at least say there was one good thing for Sorcerer's in this patch notes: played around with my rotation a bit on PTS, Crystal Frags feels much nicer to use. There's no more blending time or whatever it was at the end of the instant cast anymore, so you can use it and it's much easier to instantly go onto your next skill or bar swap or what have you.

The Overload changes might make Energy Overload a viable option to help with a non-pet sorc's sustain, but I'm not really sure when the best time is to use it vs your regular ultimate. That said, it looks like it doesn't blend well, but when you use it to animation cancel it actually works quite well.

DeathStalker

I tested this and it takes longer than one second to cast. It's more like 2-4 second cast time. It's easy to test. If you have empowered ward it should have now a 14-second duration. cast empowered ward then recast it and see how many seconds have passed on the 14-second timer countdown of empowered ward. Either slow down how fast the 14- seconds tick or reduce the cast time. I mean I would love for you to eliminate the cast time because the only thing you have accomplished is making empowered ward useless.

BaylorCorvette

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

ZOS balance quote: "We want Sorcerers to feel like they have access to their full arsenal while in Overload mode. This ability is updated to better integrate with other abilities. As soon as you Overload light attack you can cast an ability, just like the light attacks of any other weapon set."

If you really want us to feel like we have access to our "full arsenal" then why are you removing the third bar???? This literally is having the opposite effect of what is intended! That description of your intentions is just an extra slap in the face!

This.

As a StamSorc, removing the overload 3rd bar removes one of the few remaining things from the class identity of StamSorc.