Following the same vein of the recent DK thread.. Aimed at ungrouped PVP
Dark Magic
Negate
Good for group play (unless opponents are all stam), useless for solo play.
Frags
Meant to be the sorc 'big hitter'. Easily dodged/blocked/cloaked etc. so when it hits, it should HIT. Recent nerfs have made it lacklustre.
Perhaps nerfmire will be better - but I'm not sure how the delay will play out.
Reliant on a proc - which means it cannot be spammed and so has to be part of a damage combo. (bar-space issue). Too expensive to hard-cast
Encase
The cleave root. Most targets are immune due to fwd momentum - and very expensive. Perhaps useful on a group-based negate/cc bot - but not for solo.
Rune Prison
Unblockable stun with a delay. Would have been useful vs the perma-block-tanks of pre-morrowind - too easy to avoid now, and difficult to justify a bar-slot since you cannot even cast it if the target is cc-immune. The damage component is too unreliable. So basically can only really be used every 5 seconds(or is it 7? - can never remember). Can still be used to ensure a meteor hit - but timing has to be dead on - if it isn't, its a long wait till you can try again.
The uncastability of it adds to sorc's bar-space issues.
Dark Exchange
This is odd. Magsorcs typically benefit from quite a few passive mag recovery bonuses(class/racial and armour) - so if you build to need dark exchange, you're losing some of the benefit of these. Imho, the cast time is too long and the 0.2 seconds delay at the end is clunky - stopping you from bar-swapping as the animation finishes. Getting some buffs in murkmire, but the clunkyness is still frustrating. Cannot be block-cast for a usable heal while frost-staff blocking..
Mines
Expensive - and not enough of a deterrent to the current tanky meta. Can be useful if you can time a burst with somebody running on to them. I prefer mobile combat more and hate the idea of an expensive cast being left as you move to another location.
I'd like to fit them on my bar more often - but its another non-spammable and also situational.. Bar is already full of non-spammable must-haves.
Tomb is useless for PVP - cannot target players - only the ground - so its really just like mines, but less of them. Useful at choke points.
Passives - All ok - except blood-magic which is underwhelming given you rarely hit with dark-magic abilities. Would be great if cage damage was changed to a dot.
Daedric Summoning
Atro
Too easy for opponents to move away from (for solo) - but can be useful for you to use it to los. Damage can build up if an opponent stays close enough.
But again, I don't like expensive stuff that I'll leave on the floor and move away from. Useful at choke-points.
Familiar
Useless for open-world.
Curse
Great in that it hits through block and dodge (which means its a must-have). Damage is mediocre, 2nd hit is pointless since you never wait for it. Casting on a second opponent removes it from the first, so truly not spammable, and so contributes to the bar-space issue. Will kill nothing on its own so needs combining with other damage abilites.
Twilight
Matriarch is useful currently on PC if you can keep it passive. Gives great heals. Not sure post-murkmire.. I suspect the shield will be too weak on it - and smaller magika pools will make the heals even weaker. Would love to be able to use it without shields on a tanky setup - but unfortunately shields are needed to keep the pet alive.
The damage pet is useless open-world.
Cunjored Ward
The magsorcs main class defence. Already nullified with oblivion damage (along with the secondary, light-armour defence). Getting a MAJOR nerf in murkmire for damage builds - and possibly a slight buff for tanky builds. Hard to see how the meta will go. I suspect that for sorcs to be able to use their class defence, they will have to become quite tanky - and lose a lot of damage in the process. But what can they combine with this for defence.. what heals? blocking doesn't reduce damage shield take.. dodging will be more limited as impen is needed rather than well-fitted..
Bound armour..
Annoying. Its a wasted slot used to get the kind of buffs that magblades get free from passives. (recovery boosts and max mag). The active effect of block damage reduction is useless in PVP for its cost/duration and lack of synergies with shields. Maybe cost reduction would be more useful? Inner Light is just better in all ways.
Passives - Mostly useless unless you have a pet build - apart from the ulti cost-reduction (but this is no better than what other classes get for ulti generation)
Stormcalling
Overload
Currently just used for the extra bar-space - which is most needed for long-term buffs.. Or on some 1-trick gank-builds. Too clunky to switch on and off in combat, denies access to both bars often leaving your defences unusable - and you cannot weave with it. slow, and easily avoidable.
Post Murkmire, that bar-slot is lost - not sure how useful it will be as a real offensive ulti - will see.
Mages Fury
Class execute. Currently broken in a number of ways - targeting dead bodies, losing the 4-second delayed effect, too much delay etc... Supposed to be fixed with murkmire.
The cause of a LOT of cries in BG's for kill-stealing (more a scoring issue than an ability issue). I love the animation and audio on it - satisfying to use. Not really spammable given the really low threshold (20%) - again contributing to bar-space issues with yet another non-spammable..
Lightning form
Major Resolve/Ward for sorcs, very small range, low damage AOE and 7 seconds of major exped. Sounds like quite a lot in one package, but its expensive - and those resolve/ward buffs are currently useless when shielded (not so for Murkmire). Damage rarely hits anything, and major exped deasn't really do much with all the snares today. Exped duration getting heavily nerfed with Murkmire - but skill will be necessary for resolve/ward creating another pain point for bar-space. Given the nerf - its too expensive for what it does. Needs to add a short dur snare removal, and have its damage aoe range increased significantly - just to proc surge if nothing else.
Lightning Splash
PVE ground AOE
Surge
Major sorcery and a small heal on crit (max 1 per second). Sounds good on paper, but the complete lack of dots, low Lightning Form range and the amount of cooldowns spent either shielding or setting up delayed burst can mean sorc does 0 damage for every 5 out of 6 seconds - meaning 0 surge procs. Even worse if you're forced on the defensive. Needs a buff imho for the heals to be useful. Perhaps make it heal more and on hit? Combine with lightning form range increase? Currently when you can get major sorcery from a pot, its VERY hard to justify slotting this without an overload buff-bar to put it on.
Bolt Escape.
Once upon a time this was the sorc's mobility. But in reality, it freezes you just before and after streaking, making it clunky, allowing any gap-closer to catch you or any stam sprinter. Useful to throw people of you as a target for a second when in melee. Breaks (your own) block when you use it if you try to block-cast. Only goes in the direction you're facing which can be bad when rooted (but being able to use it when rooted is one of its strengths). More of a misdirection tool than an escape tool in its current form. Useless when on a slope or curving ledge.
Doesn't work at all in high-lag scenarios. Can be useful to streak through AOE ball-groups or breaches.
Exponential cost increase makes it not-spammable (as are many other abilities)
Passives - Generally ok, but the shock damage bonus, for PVP only really affects the execute, and implosion is hugely overrated given that it only works on shock damage - and what is likely to proc it was gonna be an execute that kills the target anyway (death recaps are misleading as they apply overload damage before the hit that procced it). Only really useful for PVE boss-fights.
So, to summarise. for open-world, solo-play sorc has 8-9 useful abilities, all of which are non spammable, except the shield. Bear in mind having a non-spammable means filling in your cooldowns with another ability - in this case - another non-spammable, and another.. Is there any wonder sorcs struggle for bar-space?
Also worth mentioning that every non-spammable is expensive. Probably with the idea that they won't be used that often. But when you're stuck using expensive non-spammable after expensive non-spammable, is there any wonder sorcs have sustain issues?
As a side, there are no defensive sorc abilities that can be block-cast. except ward - which synergises extremely badly with blocking.. ie. block doesn't reduce damage done to the ward - but the block still costs you resources even if the ward took the whole full damage.
*Edit for some brief passives comments
Edited by Biro123 on October 12, 2018 2:18PM Minalan owes me a beer.
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