Is Critical Chance the answer for Sorc Shields?

Duke_Falcon

So, I've been messing around with Mag...ish Sorc lately and trying to make Hardened Ward work some way without just stacking mad amounts of MaX Mag. and trying to utilize the passive healing from Crit Surge. Then an idea hit me, why not increase your damage shields by 1/2 of your Crit Chance. So if you have a 30% crit chance your damage shields would be 15% stronger scaling off of Crit Chance. I'm very interested in hearing peoples thoughts and ideas about this. I'm not a Sorc main, I don't have any "Skin in the game" for Sorcs. I've only heard from many sources that Sorcs are a hurting class.

Duke_Falcon

My apologies, I should have mentioned this above, but I pretty much just pvp, so my thoughts were in regard to that aspect of game play, not the pve aspects of it.

OBJnoob

I mean... An out of the box thought for sure.

Yup, I think I like it. Waiting to see what some of the smarter people have to say, but tentatively you have my vote.

Turtle_Bot

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

So, I've been messing around with Mag...ish Sorc lately and trying to make Hardened Ward work some way without just stacking mad amounts of MaX Mag. and trying to utilize the passive healing from Crit Surge. Then an idea hit me, why not increase your damage shields by 1/2 of your Crit Chance. So if you have a 30% crit chance your damage shields would be 15% stronger scaling off of Crit Chance. I'm very interested in hearing peoples thoughts and ideas about this. I'm not a Sorc main, I don't have any "Skin in the game" for Sorcs. I've only heard from many sources that Sorcs are a hurting class.

it's an interesting idea for sure, the main issue I can see with it is the lack of inherent access to major prophecy/savagery within the class kit meaning sorc would still be reliant on using a non-existent bar slot for magelight/camohunter. In saying that though, granting the class access to those buffs in the class kit on usable skills would make this work for sure with the classes access to minor sorcery through passives and at least allow for a critsorc build to maybe become an option. It would still require a lot of reworking of abilities though as it doesn't solve the other issue of a lack of viable sets for the class since all the good (or better) sets currently buff/scale off raw damage or crit damage instead of crit chance.

Unfortunately, magsorc is just all over the place for what it needs to build into to work (crit chance for the class "HoT", max mag for the class mitigation, raw damage for dealing damage, etc), while every other class can just build for raw damage and everything else just fits in seamlessly.

katorga

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

So, I've been messing around with Mag...ish Sorc lately and trying to make Hardened Ward work some way without just stacking mad amounts of MaX Mag. and trying to utilize the passive healing from Crit Surge. Then an idea hit me, why not increase your damage shields by 1/2 of your Crit Chance. So if you have a 30% crit chance your damage shields would be 15% stronger scaling off of Crit Chance. I'm very interested in hearing peoples thoughts and ideas about this. I'm not a Sorc main, I don't have any "Skin in the game" for Sorcs. I've only heard from many sources that Sorcs are a hurting class.

Or let shields critical hit just like healing abilities do.

That would restore a lot of the balance with healing abilities, provide synergy with critical surge, and undo some of the nerfs that are no longer relevant with the current state of the game.

PhoenixGrey

It will be helpful but not good enough. Need major protection on hardened ward

Duke_Falcon

I've continued my exploration of Sorc, other than the 1 star I've earned as a negate bot for pvp balls groups, which I think is not really the way to play sorc, but none the less very effective for ball groups. I digress.

I'm really leaning toward this idea more and more. Crit will boost damage, thru obvious crit damage. Crit will boost heals thru Crit Surge. The down side to Crit for Mag Sorcs is that it lowers your damage shield strength, as you have to give up max mag for it. I'm thinking 1/2 your Crit Chance being a percentage increase to your damage shield strength is just the little boost Sorc needs to balance it out with all the other classes.

I'm in the middle of farming Bright Throats to pair with Order's Wrath, because on the ESO build editor it looks pretty strong, but we will see....

Didgerion

That will definitely shift the meta from magica stacking sorcs to crit stacking sorcs.
If they do that I need a race change token as well.

On paper it sounds cool but changes like that is what breaks the balance in the first place.
You don't imagine how creative players can be with stacking the stats.

I'd rather prefer the original implementation of shields, they wouldn't crit but so is the damage it absorbs.

PhoenixGrey

Didgerion wrote: »

That will definitely shift the meta from magica stacking sorcs to crit stacking sorcs.
If they do that I need a race change token as well.

On paper it sounds cool but changes like that is what breaks the balance in the first place.
You don't imagine how creative players can be with stacking the stats.

I'd rather prefer the original implementation of shields, they wouldn't crit but so is the damage it absorbs.

Balance is not what comes to mind when the forums are cheering the oakensoul ring, 30k bow procs from nightblade or making battle spirit exceptions for nightblades.

I am not sure why you care about balance when it comes to buffing a garbage class.

I would rather focus on raising the floor in this game rather than balancing coz balace is boring af. Players prefer playing strong classes like "nightblade" and not thrash tier or balanced classes like sorc

Duke_Falcon

Didgerion wrote: »

On paper it sounds cool but changes like that is what breaks the balance in the first place.
You don't imagine how creative players can be with stacking the stats.

8-) I am one of those creative players. lol

Well in my exploration of the famed Sorc, I farmed Bright Throats and ran Crit pots, but honestly the crit surge passive healing is really bad still. I have to much max mag and not enough crit chance. If I give up Max Mag for Crit Chance, then my Damage Shields are garbage.

I get that stacking mad amounts of Max Mag and 3 shields at once could seem a little broken, not really, but a little unbalanced. If it was really broken everyone would be doing it, and almost no one is doing it. Buffing damage shields out right is a bad idea, because everyone would be stacking 3 shields again.

However if Sorcs are giving up Max Mag and increasing Crit Chance, then there's a balance to that, shield strength shouldn't increase and the passive heals from Crit Surge should increase. Crit Surge heals are awful. Passive healing from Dark Magic skills isn't enough to compensate for it either.

Could just give Sorc more Crit Chance in its passives, like 6% increase crit chance per X amount of skills slotted. That might be even tougher to balance though.

I guess I think the real problem with Sorc is the passive heals are super bad.

Solariken

I'm not sure I like the OP suggestion, but I think allowing shield values to "crit" like heals do could be cool. So if my normal Hardened Ward value is 10k, I could potentially get a 15k shield if it crits (or more if my build's crit damage is higher than 50%).

Duke_Falcon

Solariken wrote: »

I'm not sure I like the OP suggestion, but I think allowing shield values to "crit" like heals do could be cool. So if my normal Hardened Ward value is 10k, I could potentially get a 15k shield if it crits (or more if my build's crit damage is higher than 50%).

That might be an interesting change. Its not my preference because of the unpredictability of chance.

To update my exploration of the famed Sorc. I'm now running Structured Entropy, Hardened Ward back bar, w/ Twilight. Heals are fine now, but I've had to give up my Execute ability to make it work.

Sorc works now for me, but I have to say not like a Warden, Templar, DK, or Necro. Its really skewing towards single target dps, to be effective as a class. For example in Cyrodill clearing npcs off a resource is like fighting 8 River Trolls in pve land at once that can all heal themselves and stun the hell out of you. Sorc takes at least twice as long for me to clear them. In 1v1's with other players, I'd say I'm on par with those classes that can pump out that AoE damage with out changing their skills or build.

Damage Shields are still a bit weak in my opinion atm. We will see though maybe I can figure out a way to get my execute back on my bar and drop Structured Entropy.

My current set up is as follows.... 2 Heavy, 2 Light, 3 Medium/ 3 Impen, 2 Reinforced, 2 Well fitted.
2pc Balorghs Medium Impen.
3pc Mara's Balm Chest, Legs Heavy Reinforced & Protective Ring w/ Spell damage.
(with some creative rearranging you can swap out 3pc Mara's for 3pc Nocturnals Ploy)
1pc Trainee Feet, Medium Impen.
5pc Bright Throats Boast Well Fitted Hands & Waist, Protective Ring w/ Spell damage, Sharpened Fire Staff, Defending Resto.
...and the ole Markyn Ring of Majesty.

Front Bar... Boundless Storm, Twilight, Elemental Susceptibility, Streak, Force Pulse, and Ice Comet
Bark Bar... Crit Surge, Twilight, Hardened Ward, Structured Entropy, Haunting Curse, and Temporal Guard

Honestly I had to really tank up on gear, and run Crit/Health/Mag pots for Major Prophecy and Minor Prophecy from the Sorc Exploitation Passive. I think thats giving me just enough crit to give me just enough heals from Crit Surge and Sturctured Entropy to keep me off my back bar, but thats really how I'm staying alive with a burst Twilight heal as needed.

My Hardened Ward isn't for me, its to keep my Twilight alive. lolol Which seems like it should be for me too??? ...but its not. Eventually people figure out the Twilight Heals are OP and they go after it, but cycling Hardened Ward and the Twilight heal w/ Resto heavy attacks draws their attention back to me, because they figure out they can't kill the Twilight. You can't let them kill the Twilight or your dead too.

All that being said I still wish that Hardened Ward could be a little stronger and be on my front bar and function more like Living Dark, Living Trellis, Cauterize, or the Guardian Mender do. A skill that holds off the enemy damage w/ passive heals for a bit so you can put damage into them before you have to heal and buff up again.

All in all I can make it work against most players I encounter.

Duke_Falcon

I'm still endeavoring to explore the Mag Sorc. 8-)

Had a thought this morning, in pve Mag Sorc seems stupid strong, but with Battle Spirit on in pvp its seems stupid weak. Maybe the way Battle Sprint affect damage shields should be changed and then damage shields on all classes should be tweaked to be less strong to varying degrees.