Suggestion for Bound Aegis

WrathOfInnos

I'd like to start by expressing my happiness about the changes to Bound Armaments. It was a underperforming skill that really deserved a buff, and now gives Stam Sorcs a little more class identity and a fun proc minigame. Now I think that some attention should be given to the other morph, Bound Aegis. Here is the tooltip of each morph as of 5.2.3 for comparison:



Now I don't think that Aegis needs any type of damage proc, Magicka Sorcerers already have Crystal Fragments to fill this role. The active part is fine, and is nice for tanking a massive hit.
Instead I would like to see the 10% Light Attack damage extended to both morphs. Let me explain the effects this small change would have:
- It would increase the damage of non-pet Magicka Sorcerer (one of the lowest DPS specs, about equivalent to Magicka Nightblade) by about 1.5%, while having no impact on the double pet Magicka Sorcerer (the top Magicka DPS spec currently) because they do not have the bar space to slot Aegis. This would make pets slightly less mandatory on Magicka Sorcerer to be competitive.
- It would allow Aegis to be useful both as a tank skill (with resistance bonus and block mitigation) and a DPS passive. And would not increase the tanking power of the skill because tanks have very low light attack damage. As a passive it would help builds that would prefer to use fewer active skills and not keep track of many DoTs (seemingly the intended direction of U24 from U23)
- If there were to exist a build that could fit two pets and Aegis then it would leave only 4 active skill slots, which means that it would most likely be using heavy attacks instead of a spammable skill, and therefore a light attack buff would have very little effect on the power of such a build
- It would have some synergy with Overload light attacks, which is a fairly underpowered ultimate currently. At the expense of using a bar slot for Aegis, Overload would effectively become about 6% stronger (not a true 10% due to the way % bonuses are additive)

Celestro

I kind of had a similar thought process some time after they changed Bound Armaments active ability. One spec is pretty narrowly shoehorned into being for stamsorcs more than it already was, while the second serves decently for both magsorcs and sorctanks given the higher resistances and block mitigation, helping those two specs to stay alive (one better than the other).

However while it helped stamsorcs gain a bit of additional identity, I felt like both morphs could've been instead changed to something along the lines of granting 8% max Stamina or Magicka, depending on the character's higher stat, while the Bound Armaments daggers changed to deal Physical or Magic damage in a similar fashion to Soul Trap. Then one morph could be DPS oriented and the other tank/maybe healer oriented versus how it is currently which a bit lopsided.

While the general idea of Stamina vs Magicka is that the former dealt higher damage while the latter possessed more utility, which certainly fits the current state of both morphs, I always felt it kind of sucked that magsorcs couldn't optimally benefit from the light attack damage boosts that Bound Armaments provides, which synergizes just as well for them as it does for stamsorcs due to Overload as mentioned (and even more so with the vMA staff). And then non-pet Magsorcs can benefit from Expert Summoner similar to stamsorcs that don't want to use the recently changed Clannfear.

Giving both the light attack boost wouldn't be too outlandish in my eyes just because the Bound Armaments active ability does feel a little more substantial than Bound Aegis' but it does make it feel iffy to me still with one morph having two passive effects while the other with one.

WrathOfInnos

Celestro wrote: »

I kind of had a similar thought process some time after they changed Bound Armaments active ability. One spec is pretty narrowly shoehorned into being for stamsorcs more than it already was, while the second serves decently for both magsorcs and sorctanks given the higher resistances and block mitigation, helping those two specs to stay alive (one better than the other).

However while it helped stamsorcs gain a bit of additional identity, I felt like both morphs could've been instead changed to something along the lines of granting 8% max Stamina or Magicka, depending on the character's higher stat, while the Bound Armaments daggers changed to deal Physical or Magic damage in a similar fashion to Soul Trap. Then one morph could be DPS oriented and the other tank/maybe healer oriented versus how it is currently which a bit lopsided.

While the general idea of Stamina vs Magicka is that the former dealt higher damage while the latter possessed more utility, which certainly fits the current state of both morphs, I always felt it kind of sucked that magsorcs couldn't optimally benefit from the light attack damage boosts that Bound Armaments provides, which synergizes just as well for them as it does for stamsorcs due to Overload as mentioned (and even more so with the vMA staff). And then non-pet Magsorcs can benefit from Expert Summoner similar to stamsorcs that don't want to use the recently changed Clannfear.

Giving both the light attack boost wouldn't be too outlandish in my eyes just because the Bound Armaments active ability does feel a little more substantial than Bound Aegis' but it does make it feel iffy to me still with one morph having two passive effects while the other with one.

Good points. From a PVE side the Minor Resistance is redundant with Combat Prayer, so I don’t give it much value on a DPS build. It can be helpful for the tank, so no reason to remove it from Bound Aegis. I don’t see any reason why the 1320 Physical and Spell Resistance couldn’t be part of both morphs, but I’ll have to defer to the PVP community whether this would make Stam Sorc too powerful. I’m not sure how well that build is currently performing in BG’s and Cyrodiil.

As far as how many passive effects it brings, there’s some subjectivity as to relevant effects. I’d say that currently Aegis brings one active effect and two passive effects for tanks (resistance and Magicka). Armaments brings one active and two passive effects for stam sorc (Light Attack buff and Stamina). While Aegis only brings one useful passive to Mag Sorc (the Magicka). Sure there exist situations where the active effect or the Minor Resistance buff will help them survive, but it doesn’t help with their primary job like the tank and stam sorc versions.

ealdwin

This would be a nice and welcome change to the Sorcerer class. Bound Armor/Aegis has always been a tempting skill based on the passives, but hasn't really had enough to warrant taking up a slot on each bar. The skill in general has felt like it's been missing something since it was changed from a toggle. Adding the boost to light attack damage would definitely help it out. I've also thought that increasing the duration to 10 or 20 seconds would be a very welcome change. Tanks wouldn't have to cast it as much, and it might provide an interesting alternative to shield stacking for pvp.

Celestro

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Celestro wrote: »

I kind of had a similar thought process some time after they changed Bound Armaments active ability. One spec is pretty narrowly shoehorned into being for stamsorcs more than it already was, while the second serves decently for both magsorcs and sorctanks given the higher resistances and block mitigation, helping those two specs to stay alive (one better than the other).

However while it helped stamsorcs gain a bit of additional identity, I felt like both morphs could've been instead changed to something along the lines of granting 8% max Stamina or Magicka, depending on the character's higher stat, while the Bound Armaments daggers changed to deal Physical or Magic damage in a similar fashion to Soul Trap. Then one morph could be DPS oriented and the other tank/maybe healer oriented versus how it is currently which a bit lopsided.

While the general idea of Stamina vs Magicka is that the former dealt higher damage while the latter possessed more utility, which certainly fits the current state of both morphs, I always felt it kind of sucked that magsorcs couldn't optimally benefit from the light attack damage boosts that Bound Armaments provides, which synergizes just as well for them as it does for stamsorcs due to Overload as mentioned (and even more so with the vMA staff). And then non-pet Magsorcs can benefit from Expert Summoner similar to stamsorcs that don't want to use the recently changed Clannfear.

Giving both the light attack boost wouldn't be too outlandish in my eyes just because the Bound Armaments active ability does feel a little more substantial than Bound Aegis' but it does make it feel iffy to me still with one morph having two passive effects while the other with one.

Good points. From a PVE side the Minor Resistance is redundant with Combat Prayer, so I don’t give it much value on a DPS build. It can be helpful for the tank, so no reason to remove it from Bound Aegis. I don’t see any reason why the 1320 Physical and Spell Resistance couldn’t be part of both morphs, but I’ll have to defer to the PVP community whether this would make Stam Sorc too powerful. I’m not sure how well that build is currently performing in BG’s and Cyrodiil.

As far as how many passive effects it brings, there’s some subjectivity as to relevant effects. I’d say that currently Aegis brings one active effect and two passive effects for tanks (resistance and Magicka). Armaments brings one active and two passive effects for stam sorc (Light Attack buff and Stamina). While Aegis only brings one useful passive to Mag Sorc (the Magicka). Sure there exist situations where the active effect or the Minor Resistance buff will help them survive, but it doesn’t help with their primary job like the tank and stam sorc versions.

Yep, that is true. That's why I was 'somewhat content' when both morphs basically provided the block mitigation, even though it wasn't often used by DDs and was there for tanks. But with the change to Armaments, it's just too emphasized that it's a morph for stamsorcs in almost all aspects while magsorcs don't get nearly as much for their role without a choice at least. Previously sorctanks were able to choose either without the biggest issue in terms of the non-resource passive effect. While Aegis was technically better in all respects, a lot of sorctanks complained about the change to Armaments which I found unusual but understandable somewhat. Just saw the potential to make it more flexible for all roles.