Magsorcs weak, or I doing something wrong?

Tesman85

When leveling my characters up during this event, I fully realized what I had suspected even earlier: Magicka sorcerers are the weakest class build. Or at least it feels like that. Grinding for XP at Sentinel docks was even with level 20-something sorcerers very slow. It seemed like killing even four enemies at the same time took forever, and my character had even to be careful not to die - which doesn't happen with my other characters, with whom I can blast happily away. Even my sneaky nightblades could manage better with groups of enemies. This weakness of sorcerers seems to be due to the fact that they simply don't have any good AoE or multiple-enemy attacks as class skills, and the only AoE in the Destruction staff line can be unlocked only at a very high level. Sadly, it means that playing my two sorcerers simply isn't as fun as the other classes.

My question is: Are sorcerers really this weak, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? How should they be played so that they would be even near as efficient as, say, templars?

Wildberryjack

Without knowing your build it's impossible to say, but my main is a MagSorc and he just deletes everything that gets in his way and I don't even have optimal gear on him.

CaptainVenom

Tesman85 wrote: »

Are sorcerers really this weak, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? How should they be played so that they would be even near as efficient as, say, templars?

It depends on a lot of factors... what sets are you wearing? What are its enchantments and traits? What's your mundus boon? How many points into Magicka? How's your CP distributed?

Dagoth_Rac

Are you talking about Impulse on the destro staff? That is garbage. Use Unstable Wall of Elements, which unlocks early in the destro staff line. Just spamming Unstable Wall alone will quickly kill most overland trash packs.

phaneub17_ESO

Lightning Flood to draw mobs together, Mages Wrath for quick executes which then does additional aoe, Crystal Fragment can be a spammable or when it procs, and keep the Volatile Familiar always exploding tends to wipe out large crowds of mobs fairly quickly in my experience. I don't think I ever run out of Magicka either, its like an infinite MP battery.

xaraan

Magsorcs are one of the strongest classes in both PvE and PvP.

Tesman85

Wildberryjack wrote: »

Without knowing your build it's impossible to say, but my main is a MagSorc and he just deletes everything that gets in his way and I don't even have optimal gear on him.

Well, my lvl 22 sorcerer has almost all stat points in magicka. Sets: Law of Julianos, Armor of the seducer plus frost staff of Magnus Gift. Front bar (if I remember correctly): Crystal Shard, Mage's Fury, Force Shock, Encase, Lightning form; as ultimate, Overload. Back bar is for restoration staff (as I'm thinking of making the character a healer also). Champion points - about 175 at the moment - are distributed spell damage and max magicka in mind.

The other lvl 28 sorcerer I don't remember as I haven't played that for ages and didn't understand anything of builds when creating that character. For sets she has Wyrd witch and whatever else she has picked up from the ground.

I've seen other sorcerers in action with world bosses and they indeed can melt enemies in seconds. That's what made me think I'm doing something wrong. But those I mentioned have been high CP lvl 50 characters. Do I really have to bite my teeth together and grind until that, or is it possible to make sorcs non-frustrating to play already in their 20's?

Gythral wrote: »

[Quoted post has been removed.]

How insightful of you, good sir!

axi

When it comes to AoE You have some options for that. Summon volatile familiar ability provides decent AoE plus stun on enemies , You can also use lightning flood and mages wrath as decent help with multiple opponents. Finally You dont need last skill from destruction staff tree to have spammable AoE from there. You can use unstable wall of elements as spammable AoE since recasting it earlier will cause final explosion to occur at that moment. Just spam it and You'll do more then enough AoE dmg.

itscompton

It's been awhile now but I remember my Magsorc being the most painful to level because two of the most important survivability skills, Hardened Ward and Streak, aren't unlocked until very late in the process. While you can setup for AOE damage Magsorcs to me seem to be best designed for single target burst.
Until then keep yourself alive with one of the Regeneration morphs from the Resto skill line and use unstable wall+haunting curse+lighting heavy attacks to clear mobs.

Gundug

I would consider replacing your ultimate with the atronach instead. That gives you an AOE hit plus stun to trash mobs over an area and it keeps attacking for a while.

Once you can unlock Surge, get that on your bar and as long as you have damage over time on mobs with Wall of Elements and whatever other AOE DOTs you use, not much will kill you. When you unlock the destruction staff ultimate, that is also good for erasing trash mobs.

Vlad9425

Mag sorc is one of the strongest classes in the game for both PVE and PvP right now so yeah you’re doing something far wrong if your one is weak.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

Oh dear. A big part of running a Sorc, Mag or Stam, is keeping Critical Surge and Hardened Ward up all the time.

Goregrinder

Uh Magsorc is EZ mode for PVE, especially for AoE grinding, soloing dungeons and world bosses. EZ mode.

phileunderx2

Low level sorc can be challenging as you don't have your shield or crit surge yet. I use the clanfear until I get surge for my heal and he also gets aggro on quite a few mobs. For ulti I use the storm atro and negate.

Zulera301

Magicka sorcerer has been the best performing class in PvE and PvP since 2014, even without pets. If you're struggling, you're definitely doing something fundamentally wrong.

If you have low or no CPs it can be really tricky, but that's everything, really.

ssewallb14_ESO

Tesman85 wrote: »

Well, my lvl 22 sorcerer has almost all stat points in magicka. Sets: Law of Julianos, Armor of the seducer plus frost staff of Magnus Gift. Front bar (if I remember correctly): Crystal Shard, Mage's Fury, Force Shock, Encase, Lightning form; as ultimate, Overload. Back bar is for restoration staff (as I'm thinking of making the character a healer also). Champion points - about 175 at the moment - are distributed spell damage and max magicka in mind.

You want a lightning staff for AOE grinding. Fire is for single target, lightning is for AOE, frost is for tanks. Your class passives also buff lightning staff. Your strongest AOE at that level will be the unstable wall morph of wall of elements, you can spam it to keep repeating the explosion. When you unlock impulse, get shock pulsar. This got buffed under the radar recently and is actually quite strong. You knock 10% of the target's health immediately, get extra damage for each enemy hit, and a 20% chance of applying concussion which is an extra 5% damage.

Starlight_Whisper

👀 I agree let's buff sorc?

etchedpixels

Tesman85 wrote: »

My question is: Are sorcerers really this weak, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? How should they be played so that they would be even near as efficient as, say, templars?

You can solo dolmens on a level 20 sorc with mother's sorrow, mad tinkerer and a couple of other bits but the skill set up and usage to get decent dps is way more complicated than say a stamplar or 2h skill spamming toon.

itscompton

xaraan wrote: »

Magsorcs are one of the strongest classes in both PvE and PvP.

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Mag sorc is one of the strongest classes in the game for both PVE and PvP right now so yeah you’re doing something far wrong if your one is weak.

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

Oh dear. A big part of running a Sorc, Mag or Stam, is keeping Critical Surge and Hardened Ward up all the time.

Goregrinder wrote: »

Uh Magsorc is EZ mode for PVE, especially for AoE grinding, soloing dungeons and world bosses. EZ mode.

Zulera301 wrote: »

Magicka sorcerer has been the best performing class in PvE and PvP since 2014, even without pets. If you're struggling, you're definitely doing something fundamentally wrong.

If you have low or no CPs it can be really tricky, but that's everything, really.

[snip]

OP is on a Lvl 20ish character and has less than 200 total CP. That means he/she doesn't have most of the abilities/passives that make Sorc so strong when fully leveled unlocked yet, nor the amount of CP to make standard mob PvE encounters trivial, so you can quit trying to skill shame them.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

etchedpixels

itscompton wrote: »

OP is on a Lvl 20ish character and has less than 200 total CP. That means he/she doesn't have most of the abilities/passives that make Sorc so strong when fully leveled unlocked yet, nor the amount of CP to make standard mob PvE encounters trivial, so you can quit trying to skill shame them.

At CP 150 you've got the 50 points in rejuvenation you need to work around the sustain over-nerf. Yes the dps will be a fair bit lower as penetration will be lower, critical will be lower and a lot of the sorc passives and general buffs are not there (although the key ones you can get via the mages guild skill line)

More important is going to be the skills slotted and the gear worn. The reason you can solo a dolmen on a level 20 sorc isn't primarily CP, and it's not rockstar keyboard skills. It''s a combination of

- A 5 piece set giving a load of extra spell critical, spell damage and AoE damage (eg mad tinkerer)
- A 5 piece set giving masses more critical (mother's sorrow)
- Lover mundus stone to get penetration up
- The right set of skills - which is not the same set you use at high level

The skills side I agree is more difficult at level 20 but you'd usually have obtained some of the important ones and passives in the process including the storm atronach ultimate, unstable wall of elements, haunting curse and mages wrath, plus some of the damage increasing passives and a good pet based heal. Mages wrath is really handy on trash because it's both an execute (does lots of damage to low health targets) and causes them to then explode on death.

What you probably don't have are the mid level range passives (worth a good 5%+), a class way to get major sorcery/prophecy - worth a good 25%+ together and all of amplitude and energized passives (again worth a lot).

Some of that you can get by other means. If you go read loads of books you'll get mages guild up a bit and at mages guild 2 you get magelight (slot but don't use so you get major prophecy) and at 4 you get access via degeneration to major sorcery.
(dedicated readers get fire rune at 6 which isn't a bad AoE and the volcanic rune version I tend to run on levelling mag toons mostly because it's so funny watching goblins go suborbital). You can view the mages guild book collecting two ways - it's either an incredibly irritating activity or a very convenient way to get a bunch of skills at low level.

Sustain is also hard at low level as unstable wall is expensive if you spam it too much, but you can mix in heavy attacks

Caligamy_ESO

*shrug* In PvE content my magsorc doesn't even have to stop running to wipe most mob packs, and there's a LOT of AoE options on sorc.

Daedric Prey
Volatile Familiar Pulse
Unstable Wall of Elements (I prefer lightning staff, because its made for AoE dmg)
Lightning Flood
Mystic Orb (Undaunted)
Lightning Heavy Attacks

Ultimates:
Shooting Star
Elemental Rage

Vlad9425

itscompton wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

Magsorcs are one of the strongest classes in both PvE and PvP.

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Mag sorc is one of the strongest classes in the game for both PVE and PvP right now so yeah you’re doing something far wrong if your one is weak.

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

Oh dear. A big part of running a Sorc, Mag or Stam, is keeping Critical Surge and Hardened Ward up all the time.

Goregrinder wrote: »

Uh Magsorc is EZ mode for PVE, especially for AoE grinding, soloing dungeons and world bosses. EZ mode.

Zulera301 wrote: »

Magicka sorcerer has been the best performing class in PvE and PvP since 2014, even without pets. If you're struggling, you're definitely doing something fundamentally wrong.

If you have low or no CPs it can be really tricky, but that's everything, really.

[snip]

OP is on a Lvl 20ish character and has less than 200 total CP. That means he/she doesn't have most of the abilities/passives that make Sorc so strong when fully leveled unlocked yet, nor the amount of CP to make standard mob PvE encounters trivial, so you can quit trying to skill shame them.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Who said anything about skill shaming? The op made a statement that Mag sorc is bad and we simply told them that that sorcs are amazing and that the op needs to work on their build.

Diminish

You are doing something wrong. Mag Sorcs have a ton of AoE... Unstable Familiar, Lightning Splash, Daedric Curse, and Lightning Form just to name a few. Toss is Destro skills like Wall of Elements, Destructive Clench, Force Pulse to add even more AoE. Then you have things like Necrotic Orb from the Undaunted skill line once you are high enough level for that. If you are simply leveling a character, you can literally heavy attack things to death with a lightning staff... In my opinion, I feel like Mag Sorcs lack in single target abilities. You end up relying on Crystal Frag, and your monster set to proc for some big damage output to single targets. Moral of the story is, if you are struggling to do any content in the game on a Mag Sorc rather it be questing, solo arenas, 4 man dungeons, trials, Cyrodill or BGs then you are doing something very wrong

Tesman85

Thanks for suggestions, everybody! So, it looks like my character's gear side is rather OK except for the destruction staff type. The main problem is that I've apparently used wrong skills in an incorrect way. Fortunately I've either got the skills mentioned here already unlocked and have some spare skill points. So, the next step is to try out different skills mentioned here in different combinations and see what works best.

Looks like the sorcerer needs a bit more thought than most other classes to be played effectively. I mean, for instance magicka templar with a 2h sword is practically easy mode compared to this. Just throw Sun Fire or one of its morphs and maybe Stampede for good measure at the start of the fight, then alternate Puncturing Sweep and heavy/light attacks until the enemies drop. With a sorc it's clearly not so easy. Well, I just have to adjust my thinking when playing sorcerer.

FriedEggSandwich

As others have said, magsorc is a pain to level in the early stages but gets much easier. Some people in the thread just read your title and freaked, without reading the bit where you said you're lvl22 (sorc hate exists). People who have never played sorc probs don't realise it can be tiresome to level. Use a pet, and wall of elements from destro skill line. Find a way to get major sorcery buff (spell pots if you don't yet have surge). Trying to single-target everything down with poor damage will take you ages. Your sorc will get good.

ThorianB

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

👀 I agree let's buff sorc?

No, that is not how this works. We don't buff things. Let's nerf all the other classes instead! We will use RNG to nerf though. I will flip a coin. You call it in the air for each class, heads= big nerf, tails= little nerf. That is how you balance classes!

geonsocal

ThorianB wrote: »

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

👀 I agree let's buff sorc?

No, that is not how this works. We don't buff things. Let's nerf all the other classes instead! We will use RNG to nerf though. I will flip a coin. You call it in the air for each class, heads= big nerf, tails= little nerf. That is how you balance classes!

super tough to decide whether this post is incredibly insightful, or simply awesome...

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Zulera301 wrote: »

Magicka sorcerer has been the best performing class in PvE and PvP since 2014, even without pets. If you're struggling, you're definitely doing something fundamentally wrong.

If you have low or no CPs it can be really tricky, but that's everything, really.

The first statement is simply nonsense. They are strong right now in both, but that is a long way from saying best performing class across the board since launch.

Sorcs do tend to struggle out the gate. Templar and Nightblade are the easiest classes to play at low level because their main spam skill is also a heal.

To the OP. You are going to want crit surge and hardened ward for a good chunk of overland content to feel tanky, unfortunately they don’t come until later levels. Definitely use pets early. You have good AOE in volatile familiar and a good heal in twilight matriarch. Use daedric prey to boost your pet damage and get comfortable with the mechanics of crystal frags. Mages wrath is also a nice execute, but with multiple pets, your bars are going to get cramped. Make sure you are also running unstable wall from the destro staff skill line. It’s one of the most important damage skills in the game for any magic class in PVE.

Fire staff is generally max damage, but a lighting staff is probably better to level. Heavy attacks go a long way when fighting packs of enemies (make sure you spend the passive for the splash damage from lightning heavys).

Cast volatile familiar, unstable wall, daedric prey, and 1-2 lighting heavy attacks and any 3 pack of mobs will be dead. Use frags when they proc, finish things off with mages wrath if you need to.

BalticBlues

[snip]

phileunderx2 wrote: »

Low level sorc can be challenging as you don't have your shield or crit surge yet. I use the clanfear until I get surge for my heal and he also gets aggro on quite a few mobs.

Good answer No. 1

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Sorcs do tend to struggle out the gate. Templar and Nightblade are the easiest classes to play at low level because their main spam skill is also a heal. To the OP. You are going to want crit surge and hardened ward for a good chunk of overland content to feel tanky, unfortunately they don’t come until later levels. Definitely use pets early. You have good AOE in volatile familiar and a good heal in twilight matriarch. Use daedric prey to boost your pet damage and get comfortable with the mechanics of crystal frags. Mages wrath is also a nice execute, but with multiple pets, your bars are going to get cramped. Make sure you are also running unstable wall from the destro staff skill line. It’s one of the most important damage skills in the game for any magic class in PVE.

Best answer.

[edited for rude comments]

LashanW

Diminish wrote: »

In my opinion, I feel like Mag Sorcs lack in single target abilities. You end up relying on Crystal Frag, and your monster set to proc for some big damage output to single targets.

It's the other way around. Magsorcs are a bit lacking in AoE damage compared to other classes. Not that magsorcs can't get the job done, it's just that all other 5 classes have more AoE options that hit harder.

Magsorcs do however, have the highest single target damage atm (among mag classes). They got some serious hard hitting single target skills, some of them are based on pets so they are automated; frags, twilight tormentor, storm atro (best single target ultimate in the game for PvE). Due to how their pet rotation works, magsorcs also get a lot more time with their spammable, which also leads to more single target dps.

Grandchamp1989

With this patch sorc is by far my weakest class.

in Markarth it hit like a truck.. now it slaps....

I don't really like frags.. I know everyone seem to use it this patch.. but it feels weird.

My sorc is not in a good place.