Power Surge Change?

AltmerGF

CambionDaemon wrote: »

Seriously WTF have they done to my Power Surge!

3 second cooldown and I lose my Major Sorcery!

Am I reading that correctly?

You still get Major Sorcery. There's just no real reason for a DPS to use it anymore over other sources of it, like, say, Degeneration.

I swear ZOS is trying to get rid of every single class ability on my skill bar until classes are just a set of passives and nothing more.

Quinnlyn

Welp this basically breaks my main's build.

Always fun when every patch is just a random diceroll of which build will get the axe. Why even bother making characters if your build is just going to get canned in a couple months? (if not less).

These sweeping skill changes need to stop. Stats changes I can understand but this constant changing of skills on a fundamental level is destroying any semblance of build creation.

Runefang

What do Magsorcs need heals for anyway? They have a shield....

Quinnlyn

Runefang wrote: »

What do Magsorcs need heals for anyway? They have a shield....

That got nerfed into uselessness a patch or two ago. It's now based off 10% of your max health - which for magsorcs is always low because they focus on magicka not health (obviously). Oh yeah, and they nerfed the duration so it only lasts a couple seconds.

Hardly ever see anybody using it anymore.

bardx86

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

it is beyond embarrassing and basically an admission that they have no clue what they are doing

the only good things about this patch are some of the changes to the guild skill lines - everything else is just horrible, makes no sense, feels all pver the place without direction

this so much

AltmerGF

Runefang wrote: »

What do Magsorcs need heals for anyway? They have a shield....

Conjured Ward has not been the class-defining power people make it out to be for a long while now, and certainly not enough to pull the slack for lack of self-healing.

FrancisCrawford

I've checked further. Power Surge will now be dead to me, even when I'm healing.

Quinnlyn

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I've checked further. Power Surge will now be dead to me, even when I'm healing.

Magsorcs can add it to the every-growing list of absolutely useless skills.

sentientomega

Runefang wrote: »

What do Magsorcs need heals for anyway? They have a shield....

...


Everyone needs self-healing! And by self-healing, I mean healing that results from dealing damage or using other skills that only affect oneself. Non-healer healing, basically. You just can't play this game without it, and with the loss of damage-induced self-healing with the change to power surge, that makes it useless for dps chars.

Kolzki

Fun facts from a quick test of power surge on pts:

• the blood magic passive can proc it but needs to crit off a crystal frags proc (totally unreliable) or mines.
• the critical leach cp passive can proc it every 5 seconds, if it crits.
• the healing morph of degeneration, structured entropy, can proc it reasonably reliably.
• the dual weild healing morphs and crushing weapon proc can proc it reasonably often for a small dps cost.
• orc's unflinching rage passive can proc it every 4 seconds if the heal crits (long live the orc master race).
• vigor and ring of preservation could work at the cost of lots of skill slots for a weird stam sorc off healer thing.

So, for a mag sorc, structured entropy is an option to proc power surge. I can't see another way to reliably proc it on a mag sorc without spamming pet heals (or being an actual healer with a resto staff/orbs). I would rather run degeneration with crit surge instead, but entropy is an option if you want to run power surge for some off healing. Weirdly, stam sorcs actually look like they might be able to proc power surge more reliably than mag sorcs.

Also, the self healing from structured entropy (or other self heal crits) can only activate power surge if you've taken damage. Over healing doesn't work. If there's no incomming damage or you're soaking it up with a shield then you won't proc power surge with a self heal.

DisgracefulMind

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

katorga

AltmerGF wrote: »

CambionDaemon wrote: »

Seriously WTF have they done to my Power Surge!

3 second cooldown and I lose my Major Sorcery!

Am I reading that correctly?

You still get Major Sorcery. There's just no real reason for a DPS to use it anymore over other sources of it, like, say, Degeneration.

I swear ZOS is trying to get rid of every single class ability on my skill bar until classes are just a set of passives and nothing more.

Don't worry, they are going to "audit" class passives next pts.

Aznarb

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

You'll have it with entropy or pot anyway.

DisgracefulMind

Aznarb wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

You'll have it with entropy or pot anyway.

That's not the point though. Why is magicka sorc getting a viable class skill morph taken away? They allow major brut. on power surge, they might as well put major sorc. on crit surge as well. Balance the two skills and their purpose evenly between specs.

AltmerGF

katorga wrote: »

AltmerGF wrote: »

CambionDaemon wrote: »

Seriously WTF have they done to my Power Surge!

3 second cooldown and I lose my Major Sorcery!

Am I reading that correctly?

You still get Major Sorcery. There's just no real reason for a DPS to use it anymore over other sources of it, like, say, Degeneration.

I swear ZOS is trying to get rid of every single class ability on my skill bar until classes are just a set of passives and nothing more.

Don't worry, they are going to "audit" class passives next pts.

Oh boy, I sure can't wait to be the same as everyone else.

Tsar_Gekkou

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

Then people would favor that morph over the other one, which would cause them to nerf it too. They're making it clear that they don't want magsorcs to have reliable healing since we have our dainty little shield that gets nerfed more and more.

Dagoth_Rac

One side of ZOS brain:
"We need an NDA for Class Rep program because it takes many months and iterations to reliably design and test and perfect skill changes"

Other side of ZOS brain:
"Let's make a massive change to a class-defining skill a week before stuff goes live!"

At least with the dumb change to shields in Nerfmire, it was at start of PTS cycle and they had time to work out alternatives. This is a huge, dumb change when they have no time to fix it before going live. So it will be stuck in this ridiculous state until at least Update 24.

Seriously, ZOS. Just revert all the Surge changes to match live and start over again with Update 24 PTS. This needs a lot more time and thought.

rasdasa

I have to pitch in and say this is a disappointing change, and I’m not adverse to change. If crit surge gets major prophecy, as others have mentioned, it would be okay.

ccfeeling

Runefang wrote: »

What do Magsorcs need heals for anyway? They have a shield....

Solo

4 Man dungeon - 1 Tank 3 DPS

AltmerGF

Raiden_Gekkou wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

Then people would favor that morph over the other one, which would cause them to nerf it too. They're making it clear that they don't want magsorcs to have reliable healing since we have our dainty little shield that gets nerfed more and more.

It's okay, at least healers have gotten nice buffs this update so they can easily pull the slack for the lack of self heali -

Oh.

Oh.

Xvorg

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Xvorg wrote: »

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

sigh. are any healers actualy stacking crit though? like.. I don't tend to on my healers because i personaly don't need or want random overhealing, i need reliable, steady output. in theory having another class based tool in you kit as a sorc healer is a good idea. in practice the way they are implementing it - its honestly, not good at all. so its not good for a sorc healer, its a nerf with no replacement for a sorc dps, what is even the point here?

You don't need to bend over backwards to get a lot of crit. You would have enough Crit for this to reliably proc off 4-6 group members easily and consistently, even if it was 1s as a CD it would be firing off continuously. 3s just sucks.

Orb ticks once/.5s , Grand Healing ticks once/1s. These 2 abilities are standard, average of 3 ticks/s, 6 people, that's 18 ticks a second.

Major Prophecy for +10% crit, Minor Prophecy for +6%, Light Armor for +10%, CP +9% Crit. Maybe your a sorc that's using a set like IA for Minor Vulnerability, +7.6% crit. That's a total of 42.6% with little investment. Pretty sure you start with 10%, that's already 52.6%

My question to ZOS as well, where is a Sorc Healer suppose to fit a Dark Magic ability to provide minor prophecy. They had an opportunity here and they missed it. The only thing I can think of, is they plan on redesigning that aspect in the next patch, but as it stands, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I have a better question: why this healing mechanics for sorcs is in their DPS/self buff skill line?

The original 4 classes don't REALLY have clearly defined skill lines like Warden and Necro anyway, Sorc possibly being the worst offender. I want a class overhaul, but not sure I want it to behave like the new classes. Warden's for example have many "When this Skill Tree ability is slotted gain ____". Where Sorc's passives just kind of work and mix with each other, minus a couple crappy ones.

If I were to say what's what, I would say Storm Calling is the closest to a dedicated DPS line, but then you have 2 dps pets, a DPS passive ability, and curse in Daedric Summoning for dps, which is kind of like a tanking/healing tree, but not really? Ward is in there too soooo idk. Let's not even get started on Dark Magic. It's all over the place and so many morphs are straight up hot garbage with no synergy.

That design is just a remnant of the original game design where DK = tank, Templar = healer, Sorc and NB = DD.

TBH at launch there were lines designed for supporting others, such as earthen heart on DK , syphon on NB or Dark Magic on sorc. Throwing a heal to a line that's just dedicated to dmgt deal and that has 0 passive for support seems wrong

Hotdog_23

Looks to be only a true healer skill now. My question is how large is the radius? 5-12 meters like most AOE heals or 28m.

Xvorg

Kolzki wrote: »

Fun facts from a quick test of power surge on pts:

• the blood magic passive can proc it but needs to crit off a crystal frags proc (totally unreliable) or mines.
• the critical leach cp passive can proc it every 5 seconds, if it crits.No passive crits anymore
• the healing morph of degeneration, structured entropy, can proc it reasonably reliably.
• the dual weild healing morphs and crushing weapon proc can proc it reasonably often for a small dps cost. the first one is not very reliable on a magsorc
• orc's unflinching rage passive can proc it every 4 seconds if the heal crits (long live the orc master race).No passive crits anymore
• vigor and ring of preservation could work at the cost of lots of skill slots for a weird stam sorc off healer thing.

Then you have to slot pelinal's to convert spell dmg to wpn dmg
So, for a mag sorc, structured entropy is an option to proc power surge. I can't see another way to reliably proc it on a mag sorc without spamming pet heals (or being an actual healer with a resto staff/orbs). I would rather run degeneration with crit surge instead, but entropy is an option if you want to run power surge for some off healing. Weirdly, stam sorcs actually look like they might be able to proc power surge more reliably than mag sorcs.

Also, the self healing from structured entropy (or other self heal crits) can only activate power surge if you've taken damage. Over healing doesn't work. If there's no incomming damage or you're soaking it up with a shield then you won't proc power surge with a self heal.

Beardimus

jypcy wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

Goodbye its use in vMA

Really don't get todays change. I'm all foe helping sorc healers but as a solo DD sorc i don't get the use for this skill. Fark.
Who thought sorcs had OP heals???? Anyone?

You can just use crit surge instead for even greater healing than you currently have on live. Entropy is also worth consideration now, so can be your source of major sorcery if you don’t have another source of it and want it (with the added bonus of additional heals or mag sustain).
Full disclosure, I did/do think surge is a bit much for self survivability, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to say overpowered.

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

Why ZOS?

Magicka Sorc will not rely on Power Surge for solo contents,

As power surge is destroyed, crit surge should grant Major Sorcery too.

See above. If you don’t want to run pots, just use entropy.

*edit to add:

Kolzki wrote: »

*And yes, spell power pots exist for difficult content. And we could slot entropy, which is completely op, but pet sorcs aren't really known for their spare bar slots. It would be nice to think that mag builds could exist without entropy, particularly in aoe situations.

Major sorcery really isn’t necessary to clear content. And if you’re trying to score push or optimize your build anyway, I can’t offhand think of a better potion to use than spell power pots.

I assume you suggest stashing the extra skill on the overload bar right...oh wait.

Bar space is the issue, (for both solo PvP DD & Sorc Healer in particular if you run a pet) this id a weird AF change.

Tine for pets to be one barred at the least

f047ys3v3n

Why this will end in tears:

1) The intention is clearly to make sorc healers viable and use this ability but I don't think this will do that. Sorc healers do not have a class big ground HOT and this does not give them one. They also don't have good major / minor buffs for the group as other classes do. Furthermore, healers do not tend to be that high in crit since they are wearing buff sets (many of which were never intended to be worn by healers) so the proc will be rather uncertain for an efficient background HOT. I think sorc healers will remain undesirable relative to templars and wardens.

2) Stam sorcs are strong and vigor looks OP to me now. They will be able to stack both of these and do heals comparable to healers while being dps's. I think it more likely that stam sorc dps's use this to stack heals in PVP to make the sort of unkillable groups your trying to get rid of then mag sorc healers use it in PVE which looks like the intention. Are we trying to make some parity between dedicated mag healers and stam dps's passively healing? I know, that sounds like a stupid thing to ask, but here we are.

3) Why are mag sorc DD's now going to be using an ability that gives a major weapon damage buff but no major spell damage one? I mean, that is what they will be doing if they somehow fit any utility on their bar with 3 new DOT's. They certainly can't use the new morph as the only heal on their bar is power surge so it wouldn't be able to proc off anything.

All in all this looks pretty half baked. Actually, a lot of this patch looks pretty half baked. I don't think it will go well.

mocap

so sorc healer with Mother's Sorrow could be a thing? At least as a hybrid dd-heal for dungeons...

DisgracefulMind

Raiden_Gekkou wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Why not just toss Major Sorcery onto Crit. Surge with Major Brutality, leave that morph for self-healing, the other morph for whatever their idea for it is and just leave it alone.

Then people would favor that morph over the other one, which would cause them to nerf it too. They're making it clear that they don't want magsorcs to have reliable healing since we have our dainty little shield that gets nerfed more and more.

Pretty sure their reasoning for changing power surge was to give sorc "healers" some variety, not ruin the skill for magicka and not for stamina.

Kolzki

Xvorg wrote: »

Kolzki wrote: »

Fun facts from a quick test of power surge on pts:

• the blood magic passive can proc it but needs to crit off a crystal frags proc (totally unreliable) or mines.
• the critical leach cp passive can proc it every 5 seconds, if it crits.No passive crits anymore
• the healing morph of degeneration, structured entropy, can proc it reasonably reliably.
• the dual weild healing morphs and crushing weapon proc can proc it reasonably often for a small dps cost. the first one is not very reliable on a magsorc
• orc's unflinching rage passive can proc it every 4 seconds if the heal crits (long live the orc master race).No passive crits anymore
• vigor and ring of preservation could work at the cost of lots of skill slots for a weird stam sorc off healer thing.

Then you have to slot pelinal's to convert spell dmg to wpn dmg
So, for a mag sorc, structured entropy is an option to proc power surge. I can't see another way to reliably proc it on a mag sorc without spamming pet heals (or being an actual healer with a resto staff/orbs). I would rather run degeneration with crit surge instead, but entropy is an option if you want to run power surge for some off healing. Weirdly, stam sorcs actually look like they might be able to proc power surge more reliably than mag sorcs.

Also, the self healing from structured entropy (or other self heal crits) can only activate power surge if you've taken damage. Over healing doesn't work. If there's no incomming damage or you're soaking it up with a shield then you won't proc power surge with a self heal.

@Xvorg you might have missed the bit on the first line where I said

Kolzki wrote: »

Fun facts from a quick test of power surge on pts:

The critical leach cp passive:


The orc's unflinching rage passive:


My comment on the stamina skills was for a pure stamina character that provides some group healing. You don't need pelinals for that. I'm really just suggesting that stamina sorcs probably have better ways to proc power surge than double destro staff mag sorcs do.

Olupajmibanan

They really should just put Major Sorcery on the base ability and both morphs and everyone is happy. ZoS can experiment with Power Surge as a healing tool and we can use Critical Surge on both Mag and Stam sorc just the way we are used to.

shandybj

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

They really should just put Major Sorcery on the base ability and both morphs and everyone is happy. ZoS can experiment with Power Surge as a healing tool and we can use Critical Surge on both Mag and Stam sorc just the way we are used to.

That's the best option Mage dps sorcs needs self heal