Sorc Pain Points and ideas on buffs, changes and reworks to skills to bring the class up to par.

Turtle_Bot

With U35 completely gutting magsorc for pvp despite the buffs we were promised towards the end of that PTS cycle and U36 doing nothing to provide any of the afore promised buffs either, it's time to look forward to U37 to fix this class. We have a long time (at least 3 months) between now and U37 so this would be the perfect time to put forward ideas and possible changes and reworks to the sorcerer class to bring it up to par with the other classes and make it work and be more enjoyable to play in the current state of the game with the current mechanics and metas within the game.

First thing's first, this topic is to provide ideas for buffs and improvements to non-pet builds and for pvp, pets have always been the strongest way to play sorc, but not the way that most players have wanted to play or enjoyed playing the class.

Secondly, no, I don't want streak buffed either and would be more than willing to see some adjustments to streak (which I did propose as well) assuming the rest of the kit is made viable first (or at least at the same time) so that the class is not completely unplayable.

Thirdly, and I want to be very clear about this, I don't want to be forced even more into pets that just don't work in pvp, so, I have avoided mentioning ideas for pets here outside of the main pain point being daedric prey making it less accessible and instead focused on the rest of the class kit.

Fourth, this is not calling for any nerfs to any of the other classes, leave that discussion for other threads please folks.

Fifth, I am aware that bow/bow sorc still does decent this patch, but that build still has its issues and barely uses any class abilities, meanwhile when you look at the currently strong classes like dk, nb, warden (and last patch plar) where almost every bar slot has a class ability slotted in it and those ability's function, synergize and help the class to perform well, which is what I want to see for sorc.

Sixth, if anyone has interesting ideas for buffing pets, please do post them as I am interested to hear those as well, but as mentioned personally I would like to see the other playstyles of sorc be brought up to compete with pet builds and be viable in pvp, which is why I didn't post any myself outside of a small tweak to atro to make it better for solo play.

Now, let's get on with the discussion. I'm going to go through each of the sorc skills individually and give a brief mention of their pain points and some potential ideas to fix the issues and possible improvements to help bring the class kit into the modern game.

Daedric Summoning Line:

Actives:

Atronach: One of the stronger skills remaining in the kit, the main pain point with this skill was the increased cost and decreased duration without any real compensation for this nerf for most players. The nerf was done due to oakensoul allowing for some insane ulti-gen which allowed for multiple atronachs to be up at once, but this is no longer obtainable outside of a group composition that specifically builds for it. The skill doesn't need too many changes, however, the skill itself can be improved without reverting the nerfs. Simply make the synergy activatable by the caster as well as an ally (similar to necro boneyard).
Note: This improves the skill for solo play through granting the class access to a strong and fairly rare buff that doesn't require an ally to activate it while keeping the skill at its current power level for group play. This is also one of my lowest priorities for buffs to this class.

Familiar: A pet skill, the main pain point is the very low health and almost nonexistent damage in pvp.
I'm not a fan of the pets, however I'm going to leave this alone as I don't want to see these skills nerfed for those who do enjoy this playstyle.

Daedric Curse: The main pain points of this skill are prey causing a very noticeable damage loss if you don't time the recast perfectly and haunting curse being very mediocre for a delayed burst ability that provides very little utility compared to the delayed burst of every other class while having very mediocre damage on top of no utility.
First, add major breach to the base ability and morphs.
- For accessibility, change prey into a single target, 10 second duration, DoT effect instead of a single burst after 6 seconds, this seems to be the biggest complaint among pet sorc players, so I will add this for them.
- For haunting curse however, this is where the big changes will be. First, either focus the skill to be either single target or AoE instead of trying to awkwardly have one proc the other, second, have the first instance of damage trigger if the curse is cleansed, but it won't start the second proc timer if it is cleansed to leave some counter play to this skill but not have it completely countered.
Note: These changes to curse in general are to provide class access to what should be a universal debuff (major breach) as well as make the ability (haunting curse) do what its name entails. This curse is supposed to haunt its target, so the fact that it does nothing if it is cleansed makes no sense at all, especially since it has the longest delay to deal any damage out of every single delayed burst ability in the game at 3.5 seconds for the first instance and a 12 second total for both instances.

Twilight: See familiar.

Conjured Ward: The main pain points of this ability is how weak the shields are compared to how strong healing is currently.
Make the shields scale off weapon/spell damage or perhaps crit damage (at the very least, increase the value it scales off max magicka by, to make them more viable without requiring hitting 55k+ max magicka to give a shield that worth using, which severely limits building into more impactful stats for other abilities). Also increase the base duration to 10 seconds to help with accessibility.
Note: Shields have become severely lackluster as a defensive tool. The required investment to get them to a level that matches the level of healing that other classes have is far too high for the payoff.

Bound armor: Very niche in its usage and the loss of the boost to light attacks in bound armaments made it into a strictly weaker carbon copy of the nightblade spec bow ability.
Move the passive max mag/stam bonus to the Expert summoner passive and have this skill grant major prophecy and savagery while slotted.
- Reduce the cost of bound aegis or change it to grant major protection for 10 seconds
- slightly increase the damage or travel speed of bound armaments projectiles. add a scaling increase to crit chance of say 1% per stack of bound armaments to reinforce it as the damage morph of this skill.
Note: this skill is rather lackluster at the moment and is only really slotted due to how bad the rest of the kit is. Giving it a unique buff will bring it closer in line in power to the nb spec bow while retaining its fit into the rest of sorcs kit and not being a carbon copy (it grants crit chance instead of raw damage). The crit chance on the base skill will also help the tanking aspect of bound aegis since tanks can now slightly more reliably get a crit on their self-healing or healing from crit surge combined with hurricane/lightning form.

Passives:

Rebate: Increase from amount restored from 150/300 to 300/600 given how long the durations are on most actives in this skill line.

Power stone: This passive is fine as is.

Daedric protection: Add magicka recovery to this passive (removing it from the capacitor passive) and reduce to 15% down from 20% to account for now granting magicka on top of stamina and health recoveries.

Expert Summoner: As mentioned previously, take the max magicka/stamina granted from bound armor active and add it to this passive. Can reduce its values from 4/8% to 2/5% to account for the fact it now gives all 3 stats instead of only health.


Dark Magic Line:

Actives:

Negate: The obvious pain point of stamina specs just completely ignoring an ultimate ability.
Change silence to also affect non-core combat stamina abilities. It is rather absurd that stamina specs can just completely ignore an ultimate ability.

Crystal shard: The projectile travels far too slow and is far too easy to interrupt or dodge with how free core combat is now.
Remove the cast time on this ability and morphs, increase the travel speed of the projectile and replace the cost reduction effect with off balance.
- Crystal weapon morph, remove the second trigger of this ability and increase its damage to better match the power level of a regular spammable.
- Crystal Fragments, increase the proc chance to 50% and reduce the proc bonus damage to 33%, also make the proc damage spread over a small AoE (say 5-6 meters).
Note: the skill is called crystal fragments so it would make sense for the proc to break up on impact and spread itself over a small AoE at the target.

Encase: This does nothing in pve and essentially nothing in pvp.
Change this ability to be an AoE DoT.
- Shattering prison, make this morph into a support ability that provides a small HoT and minor expedition to allies in its area instead of dealing damage to enemies.
- Restraining prison, enemies in the area are now also snared and will become immobilized if they are snared for 2 seconds by this ability.

Rune Prison: The 3 second delay on this ability is a remnant of 2018 where the game was slower and core combat was much more expensive and could be punished much easier and burst was much lower meaning that 3 seconds was enough to force an enemy to choose to continue their combo and risk the stun or stop mid combo and avoid the stun which is not possible now with most classes having the ability to burst you down in 2 seconds or less.
Reduce the delay on the stun attempt to 1 second max down from 3 seconds.
- Rune Cage: It deals its initial damage on cast and attempts to stun the target after a 1 second delay. A DoT is applied if the stun ends that also snares the target by 30% for 10 seconds.
- Defensive Rune: Provides a passive self HoT for 10 seconds upon cast. if you take damage while this skill is active on you, it attempts to stun the target after a 1 second delay and heals you for an amount equal to 3 ticks of the HoT.
Note: Rune cage becoming a DoT creates better synergy for the dark magic passives, specifically blood magic and defensive rune will help to fix sorcs severe lack of passive healing. The reduced delay on the attempted stun also leads into a better burst rotation that is much less punishable or predictable (rune cage) or actually being able to defend yourself from attacks (defensive rune).

Dark Exchange: The cast time on the ability makes it almost unusable in lag, and completely unusable while under pressure (when it's needed the most) and without some form of CC immunity. The payoff is also far too small for such a punishing detriment to using it.
- Remove the cast time from this ability and its morphs
- Either make it scale off weapon/spell damage like all other class burst heals or make it unaffected by battle spirit so that it's actual heal value matches to the burst heal values of every other class.
Note: The values on the resource restore can be tweaked to compensate for the improved healing this skill now offers.

Daedric mines: This skill is far too expensive for its cost opportunity after the nerf it received in U35 which prevents it from being able to stack its damage into a single burst.
Reduce the cost of this skill by 1/3 to better match its current power level, that being equal to 1 cast of a spammable every 2 seconds on a target.


Passives:

Unholy knowledge: This passive is fine as is.

Blood Magic: With the proposed changes to Rune prison, encase and dark exchange, this passive could possibly be reduced to once per second instead of once per half second now that there are many more ways to proc it and there is also passive healing from defensive rune and a reliable burst heal from dark exchange and morphs.

Persistence: Make this passive also proc when an attack is successfully dodged. Sorcerer being a highly mobile class that is supposed to avoid damage, it makes no sense for this to only proc when trying to face tank enemies.

Exploitation: This passive is fine as is and provides a unique buff to groups that only sorc can grant.


Storm Calling Line:

Actives:

Overload: Slow projectile travel time, lost its uniqueness and utility when it lost the 3rd bar option, doesn't work with any of the commonly used ultimate proc sets (see balorgh), often bugs with the heavy attack bug that gets you stuck in the heavy attack animation which requires relogging to fix.
2 options with this skill.
1. Increase the speed of the projectile and fix all bugs associated with this skill.
2. Completely remake this skill into a proper burst ultimate for sorcerer.
Something like, cost 150: Fire a bolt of lightning out in front of you that deals X damage to all enemies it hits, inflicting concussed status on any enemies hit.
- Morph 1: Increase the damage and also inflicts major vulnerability on enemies hit.
- Morph 2: Ability no longer fires in a line and instead now targets a single enemy and then chains to nearby enemies (can only chain to each enemy within the radius once and likely a cap on the total number of times it can chain).

Mages Fury: This skill is too inconsistent for pvp, with a super low threshold to trigger the execution damage as well as being dodgeable, cleansable, blockable and even at times just doesn't proc for no reason at all.
Increase the percentage at which the proc can trigger to 30% up from 20%.
- Mages Wrath: Increase the proc damage and remove the ability for the skill to be cleansed or dodged.
- Endless Fury: Change this to a classic execute that no longer applies a proc, instead dealing its damage up front and that damage scales up to 300-400% increased damage for enemies under 50% health with an increase to its base damage to better match other similar execute skills.
Note: this aims to make the proc more reliable and apply pressure instead of just stealing kills that were already dead and also provides the option of a more traditional execute ability should players prefer that instead.

Lightning Form: The skill just doesn't do enough to make it worth running anymore with most sorcs opting to run chudans over this to free up a valuable bar slot.
Both morphs now grant major expedition for 5 seconds.
- Hurricane: change minor expedition to major and reduce the duration for expedition buff down to 6 seconds from 15 and also on cast grants allies within its radius major expedition for 3 seconds. Everything else stays the same.
- Boundless Storm: Now grants snare immunity for 5 seconds and snares for 30% for 1 second upon dealing damage with a target only able to be snared by this skill once every 3 seconds max.
Note: Hurricane would be a potential group buff, bringing your allies along with you giving them the wind at their backs to keep up with you, while boundless storm is literally lightning passing through enemies, that should slow them down while being pure lightning yourself should make you immune to snares/soft cc for a short duration.

Lightning Splash: Typical ground based AoE, not much wrong with this current skill for pve, its main issue in pvp is that it provides nothing other than damage and a damage burst synergy.
If it was to get any changes, make this skill inflict concussed on enemies in its AoE with the synergy dealing 10% more damage to concussed enemies, otherwise it is ok as is.

Surge: The heal is far too unreliable as it requires you to be on the offense, which means it does nothing when it's needed and you're under pressure.
Keep crit surge as it is but change power surge to give a smaller heal upon dealing any damage with both morphs having a 1 second cd on their heal. This allows players to choose a smaller but more consistent heal from power surge or they can risk the bigger heal that requires dealing critical damage but will be less consistent from crit surge.
Note: With defensive rune now being a passive heal and dark exchange being a reliable burst heal, I didn't want to buff/change this skill too much, instead I have opted for a risk reward change to this skill where players can choose a lower heal value that is consistent or risk a less frequent but bigger heal on dealing critical damage, both morphs should provide roughly equal healing over the long run.

Bolt Escape: Fitting and slightly ironic that this is the final active skill in the class kit to go over. However, even this skill has a couple of pain points. first is being a gap closer, it falls to every single location desync and gap closer bug in existence, which gets exacerbated by lag/poor performance. Second is vertical terrain, this skill is hilariously bad when trying to move around terrain that is not a flat open field, often landing short (if even moving at all) if trying to go up hill, then essentially stunning yourself as you fall down when streaking across a down-hill surface.
However, with the above changes made, sorc now have options, so a few adjustments can be made here to tone down the power level of this skill.
Streak: no longer stuns but inflicts a snare on enemies hit and has its range increased from 15m to 20m. The fatigue cost is also decreased from 33% to 25% due to no longer having a stun.
Ball of Lightning: Keeps its 15m range and the 33% fatigue cost. No longer provides snare immunity (since this is now on boundless storm), instead it causes you to dodge all incoming projectiles for 1.5 seconds on cast.


Passives:

Capacitor: with this passive now included in Daedric protection, there is a free passive slot. So, an idea for a new passive could be.
When you deal shock damage to an enemy, gain 1 stack of capacitance (max 4), you can only gain 1 stack per second. Upon dealing non-shock damage to an enemy, remove all stacks and deal an additional 250/500 shock damage to that enemy per stack removed.
Note: capacitors are supposed to store up charge to then release at a later time, this would be an interesting option for a new passive to fit the name of the passive as well as the shock damage theme of sorc as you are essentially storing up damage to use at a later time.

Energized: This passive is fine as is.

Amplitude: Increases damage done to enemies by 0.5% for every 20%/10% current health they have. This bonus doubles to 1% for every 20%/10% health they have if the enemy is concussed or off balance.
Note: with a fair increase in the reliability of the sorc damage output, this was toned down for the base value, but with the large amount of ways to inflict concussed and off balance now in the class kit, the buff from this passive will mostly remain the same as it currently is for those healthy enemies.

Expert Mage: Why is this lower than the generic and freely available fighters guild passive.
Increase to 1.5/3% weapon/spell damage per sorcerer ability slotted to at least match the fighters guild passive.


Keep in mind that with all the changes, buffs and reworks to everything, streak would get nerfed at the same time, since the class would now have options to choose from in regard to both defense and offense to make it far less reliant on streak as an ability.

WrathOfInnos

Agreed Sorcs need a buff. One minor correction is that pets have not always been the strongest way to play Sorc. Pets were weak for the first few years of ESO, and IIRC it was around 2017 when they were buffed to the point of usefulness. For a while longer they were optional, and have just become more and more mandatory as the rest of Sorc's toolkit has been watered down.

Sorc before pets was by far the most fun build I've experienced in ESO, I don't know why the devs are so determined to keep it buried. Very few players seem to like the zookeeper build, with its boring rotation and visual clutter.

Turtle_Bot

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Agreed Sorcs need a buff. One minor correction is that pets have not always been the strongest way to play Sorc. Pets were weak for the first few years of ESO, and IIRC it was around 2017 when they were buffed to the point of usefulness. For a while longer they were optional, and have just become more and more mandatory as the rest of Sorc's toolkit has been watered down.

Sorc before pets was by far the most fun build I've experienced in ESO, I don't know why the devs are so determined to keep it buried. Very few players seem to like the zookeeper build, with its boring rotation and visual clutter.

This, I really miss those days on my sorc. It was super fun to play and some of the most fun I ever had in ESO.

I never paid too much attention to the meta back then, so I didn't realise pets were so weak (I mostly started to really focus on making proper builds etc late 2017/early 2018), but sorc was so much fun to play back then, the class flowed well, skills were reliable and felt good to use.

I'm hoping the changes I've suggested will help to push the class back in that direction a bit for those of us who miss the old school petless sorc.

kapachia

For love of God, please dont force a pet build on magsorc. Most players do not want to play pet/pets herding shepherd in Cyrodiil.

ZOS doesn't force Warden into a bear toting zookeeper. Why must magsorc suffer?

"Damn it Jim. I am a Magsoc, not a pet herding shepherd!"

Aces-High-82

A very solid writeup. Most urgent tweaks imo:
1. Major Breach via class kit. Application via Haunting Curse plus the early detonation while removed sounds like the way to go.
2. Pets: simplest fix - raise hp significantly.... 50k
3. Shields: a no to scaling via spell/weap dmg. Don't wanna see ppl running around with 50k shield strength total. If you wanna do something for magsorc only introduce a different mag scaling for Conjured Ward (~3.5:1) without the HP cap. This way it can be considered to be worth the gcd/cost if stacking max mag. Honestly I'd like to become shields simply buffs eg Dampen Mag now 30s duration and restores X amount of mag whenever hit.
4. Streak : fatigue has to be lowered to 20%. You already have to Streak twice (even with streakjump <- not possible via controller) to get out of gap close range. Honestly it's range should stay 15m bc I don't want to traverse off platforms/towers all the time. I like your idea for Ball Lightning but the fatigue again is too high.
5. CFrag: proc chance up to 50% while bonus dmg lowered to 50% AND faster projectile travel
6. Fury: should be a true finisher like you suggested

acastanza_ESO

Petition to make @Turtle_Bot the new combat designer when?

SkaraMinoc

The following would improve Sorc quality of life.

• Pets should remain active when slotted on only 1 bar and you toggle bar.
• Pets needs a survivability buff. Either mitigation or health. They die in 1 global cooldown.
• Sorc shields need a buff. They don't mitigate nearly enough damage anymore. Increase shield strength by 10% or provide Major Protection when active.
• If you're not going to buff pets and you're not going to buff shields, then you need to make Dark Deal/Conversion an instant cast heal. Every other class gets one. Having to rely on a cast time for your burst heal is not good.

jaws343

Copied over my thoughts from the other thread on a handful of skills. I think Sorc really suffers from predictability and a shake up to predicting sorc burst would help a lot. Plus some shield rework ideas

Shields: Make them crit and remove the battle spirit penalty. Keep the health/mag scaling as is currently, but allow crit chance and crit damage to effect crit chance of shield and size of shield after crit. This will allow players to still stack mag/health for shield strength, or allow them to build for crit (more burst damage here too) to get a larger shield.

Streak: Remove the stun, and replace it with a snare.

Rune Cage: Make it undodgeable again. But, remove the damage.

Crystal Frags: Remove the cast time. BUT, decrease the frag proc chance for SELF proc to 10%. Make it proc more on other skills than it does on itself. Allows for the base skill to be a better spammable, especially one that cannot be interrupted, while also reducing the self buff power of the skill with the proc.

Fury: Make the explosion of it undodgeable. The application should still be dodgeable. But once applied, it should not be able to be dodged. Increase the time it sticks to an opponent to 5 seconds, to open the burst window a bit better. And, have it provide a 5% damage increase from the player to targets over 50% health while it is active. This will help with the lack of scaling, while providing some front end burst to even get the target under 20%

Haunting Curse: Remove the double explosion. Make it a 9 second debuff of some sort, breach maybe. But, allow sorcs to reactivate the skill to cause the explosion within that 9 seconds. Taking the explosion off the timer makes the burst less predictable, removing the second explosion makes it less sustained power. But, you also get an option of just not using it for the burst damage and just using it for the debuff. Or, you activate the skill again on target and get that burst damage. Give it a 3 second or so cool down per target to prevent it being spammed. (This cooldown would make the explosion similar to the current initial one, where you have to wait the first 3 seconds to gain anything from the skill before recasting)

lQrukl

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

First thing's first, this topic is to provide ideas for buffs and improvements to non-pet builds and for pvp, pets have always been the strongest way to play sorc, but not the way that most players have wanted to play or enjoyed playing the class.

The only way I see is to focus on Electromancer's part of sorc.
Pets cannot proc status effects by itself, only their abilities can. So, reverting their abilities to deal magic damage again would prevent them to be undeniable meta if sorc will gain profit from Concussion status effect and its own-casted damage skills.

But there are a few pitfalls.
Offbalance cooldown is a big problem for anyone who tries to use Exploiter & Lightining Staves outside of killing trial trashpacks with optimized group. Offbalance lasts only 7 seconds and then sets to 15 sec cooldown.

Also, dont forget about people who like pets. It is still part of class and it also has problems, e.g. stuns from Volatile Familiar is pointless both in pve and pvp. In pve it is only an issue, I dont morph this pet at all to help our tanks at HM trials be able to pull mobs like flame atronaches in vSS who can wipe whole group. In PvP this is even more useless beause you can't control this stuns.

So my suggestions:

General:
All pet damage increased by approximately 5% to fetch changes of passive abilities .

Energized (passive)

Increases your Physical and Shock Damage by 5%.
Increase chance of applying Concussion to enemies with Storm Calling abilities by {X}%. Increases the damage of your Concussion status effect by {Y}. This effect scales off your highest offensive stats.

Amplitude (passive)

Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 10% current Health they have.
Your fully-charged Heavy Attack to Off-Balanced enemy deals an additional {Z} damage. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds. Enemies who have recently been Off-Balanced take 2% more Damage from you, which increases to 12% when wielding a Storm Staff.

Note: Enemy who have recently been Off-Balanced = enemy is Off Balance or immune to Off Balance

Note: Pets unaffected

Summon Volatile Familiar

Command the powers of Oblivion to send a Daedric familiar to fight at your side. The familiar's attacks deal 358 376 Shock Damage. Once summoned, you can activate the familiar's special ability for 3510 Magicka, dealing 435 Shock 457 Magic Damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds to enemies near him. The fourth and final hits stun all enemies hit for 3 seconds. apply damage shield on you and familiar for 100% of damage done. The familiar remains until killed or unsummoned.

Summon Twilight Tormentor

Call on Azura to send a twilight tormentor to fight at your side. The twilight tormentor's zap deals 478 502 Shock Damage and its kick deals 478 Shock 502 Physical Damage. Once summoned, you can activate the twilight tormentor's special ability for 2700 Magicka, causing it to deal 60% more additional 300 magic damage to enemies above 50% Health for 20 seconds. The twilight tormentor remains until killed or unsummoned.

Mages' Fury

Call down lightning to strike an enemy, dealing 870 Shock Damage. If the enemy falls to or below 20% Health within 4 seconds of being struck, an explosion deals an additional 3195 Shock Damage to them and 695 1438 Shock Damage to other enemies nearby.

Endless Fury (morph)
Reduces the cost and restores Magicka if the target dies after this ability dealt damage to them.
Increases inital damage and reduces cost, but no longer explodes.

Note: Lightning PvE spamable!

Mages' Wrath (morph)
Increases the damage dealt to other enemies nearby.
Inital hit sets the enemy off-balance. Restores Magicka if the target dies.

Note: PvP burst morph!

Overamera

I just want them to buff shields because even with 50k+ mag and around 30k health its defense isnt that good and the dmg you get from building like that isnt that good either. So you have bad def and bad offense. Buff shields without having stam/bowsorc being able to abuse it because stam/bowsorc is in a good spot atm.

Turtle_Bot

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

A very solid writeup. Most urgent tweaks imo:
1. Major Breach via class kit. Application via Haunting Curse plus the early detonation while removed sounds like the way to go.
2. Pets: simplest fix - raise hp significantly.... 50k
3. Shields: a no to scaling via spell/weap dmg. Don't wanna see ppl running around with 50k shield strength total. If you wanna do something for magsorc only introduce a different mag scaling for Conjured Ward (~3.5:1) without the HP cap. This way it can be considered to be worth the gcd/cost if stacking max mag. Honestly I'd like to become shields simply buffs eg Dampen Mag now 30s duration and restores X amount of mag whenever hit.
4. Streak : fatigue has to be lowered to 20%. You already have to Streak twice (even with streakjump <- not possible via controller) to get out of gap close range. Honestly it's range should stay 15m bc I don't want to traverse off platforms/towers all the time. I like your idea for Ball Lightning but the fatigue again is too high.
5. CFrag: proc chance up to 50% while bonus dmg lowered to 50% AND faster projectile travel
6. Fury: should be a true finisher like you suggested

Add to this making dark exchange (and morphs) into an instant cast ability with better healing. But yes, these are the most prominent things to fix (well, except pets), I do agree that giving pets more health is the simplest way to increase their viability, but I also want to see other builds to become as strong as pet builds, so pets would be left on the back burner for now.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Petition to make @Turtle_Bot the new combat designer when?

There are definitely more knowledgeable sorc mains out there than I am, but thanks for the vote of confidence for my idea

Turtle_Bot

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

The following would improve Sorc quality of life.

• Pets should remain active when slotted on only 1 bar and you toggle bar.
• Pets needs a survivability buff. Either mitigation or health. They die in 1 global cooldown.
• Sorc shields need a buff. They don't mitigate nearly enough damage anymore. Increase shield strength by 10% or provide Major Protection when active.
• If you're not going to buff pets and you're not going to buff shields, then you need to make Dark Deal/Conversion an instant cast heal. Every other class gets one. Having to rely on a cast time for your burst heal is not good.

Yep, ideally pets would not "unsummon" themselves by bar swapping, but I think that has something to do with how they are coded which means to fix them would take a complete rework. Pets have also been the strongest build for sorc for a long time now, so I wanted to buff the rest of the skills first before reworking pets.

Completely agree with the final point, it's time the class got a proper reliable burst heal to give them some equal defensive options that every other class already has access to.

Turtle_Bot

jaws343 wrote: »

Copied over my thoughts from the other thread on a handful of skills. I think Sorc really suffers from predictability and a shake up to predicting sorc burst would help a lot. Plus some shield rework ideas

Shields: Make them crit and remove the battle spirit penalty. Keep the health/mag scaling as is currently, but allow crit chance and crit damage to effect crit chance of shield and size of shield after crit. This will allow players to still stack mag/health for shield strength, or allow them to build for crit (more burst damage here too) to get a larger shield.

Streak: Remove the stun, and replace it with a snare.

Rune Cage: Make it undodgeable again. But, remove the damage.

Crystal Frags: Remove the cast time. BUT, decrease the frag proc chance for SELF proc to 10%. Make it proc more on other skills than it does on itself. Allows for the base skill to be a better spammable, especially one that cannot be interrupted, while also reducing the self buff power of the skill with the proc.

Fury: Make the explosion of it undodgeable. The application should still be dodgeable. But once applied, it should not be able to be dodged. Increase the time it sticks to an opponent to 5 seconds, to open the burst window a bit better. And, have it provide a 5% damage increase from the player to targets over 50% health while it is active. This will help with the lack of scaling, while providing some front end burst to even get the target under 20%

Haunting Curse: Remove the double explosion. Make it a 9 second debuff of some sort, breach maybe. But, allow sorcs to reactivate the skill to cause the explosion within that 9 seconds. Taking the explosion off the timer makes the burst less predictable, removing the second explosion makes it less sustained power. But, you also get an option of just not using it for the burst damage and just using it for the debuff. Or, you activate the skill again on target and get that burst damage. Give it a 3 second or so cool down per target to prevent it being spammed. (This cooldown would make the explosion similar to the current initial one, where you have to wait the first 3 seconds to gain anything from the skill before recasting)

The shield idea is interesting, I kept it to weapon/spell damage to make it easier and allow easier access to the better sets currently in the game, but with the increases to crit chance allowing for building into crit damage this could work for shields as well.

pretty much my changes with streak (but I also gave it a slight buff in other areas to account for no longer stunning)

I think I discussed rune cage changes more in-depth on the other thread, but yeah, rune cage in general needs much more than just becoming undodgeable, especially with how much is loaded into similar skills like javelin, fossilize and even magnum shot.

interesting take on frags, agreed that the self proc for my idea may require the percentage chance being toned down to balance it, but I wanted to lean into that proc for this morph to give magsorc a better spammable that would closer match the stamina options currently available. I also wanted to give the class a bit of extra cleave to help it be more viable in more pve content that requires the AoE, but I didn't want to flat out make it AoE only, hence the proc becoming an AoE attack.

Fury, the explosion being dodgeable is an issue, but the main issue with the skill is the low threshold for it to proc, it makes it almost useless in pvp since enemies will not drop below the 20% threshold unless they are already dead. Hence why I wanted to make 1 morph into a more traditional execute and increase the threshold for the other morph to still allow the current idea to stay but also become more viable in general.

Interesting take on curse, agreed its currently very predictable, but the changes to other skills I made, alongside the proc on cleanse was to help with this. I also wanted to avoid giving skills a cd on activations as that doesn't really fit into eso's baseline design for skills, that being you can use them as long as you have the resources for them.

Turtle_Bot

lQrukl wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

First thing's first, this topic is to provide ideas for buffs and improvements to non-pet builds and for pvp, pets have always been the strongest way to play sorc, but not the way that most players have wanted to play or enjoyed playing the class.

The only way I see is to focus on Electromancer's part of sorc.
Pets cannot proc status effects by itself, only their abilities can. So, reverting their abilities to deal magic damage again would prevent them to be undeniable meta if sorc will gain profit from Concussion status effect and its own-casted damage skills.

But there are a few pitfalls.
Offbalance cooldown is a big problem for anyone who tries to use Exploiter & Lightining Staves outside of killing trial trashpacks with optimized group. Offbalance lasts only 7 seconds and then sets to 15 sec cooldown.

Also, dont forget about people who like pets. It is still part of class and it also has problems, e.g. stuns from Volatile Familiar is pointless both in pve and pvp. In pve it is only an issue, I dont morph this pet at all to help our tanks at HM trials be able to pull mobs like flame atronaches in vSS who can wipe whole group. In PvP this is even more useless beause you can't control this stuns.

So my suggestions:

General:
All pet damage increased by approximately 5% to fetch changes of passive abilities .

Energized (passive)

Increases your Physical and Shock Damage by 5%.
Increase chance of applying Concussion to enemies with Storm Calling abilities by {X}%. Increases the damage of your Concussion status effect by {Y}. This effect scales off your highest offensive stats.

Amplitude (passive)

Increases your damage done against enemies by 1% for every 10% current Health they have.
Your fully-charged Heavy Attack to Off-Balanced enemy deals an additional {Z} damage. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds. Enemies who have recently been Off-Balanced take 2% more Damage from you, which increases to 12% when wielding a Storm Staff.

Note: Enemy who have recently been Off-Balanced = enemy is Off Balance or immune to Off Balance

Note: Pets unaffected

Summon Volatile Familiar

Command the powers of Oblivion to send a Daedric familiar to fight at your side. The familiar's attacks deal 358 376 Shock Damage. Once summoned, you can activate the familiar's special ability for 3510 Magicka, dealing 435 Shock 457 Magic Damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds to enemies near him. The fourth and final hits stun all enemies hit for 3 seconds. apply damage shield on you and familiar for 100% of damage done. The familiar remains until killed or unsummoned.

Summon Twilight Tormentor

Call on Azura to send a twilight tormentor to fight at your side. The twilight tormentor's zap deals 478 502 Shock Damage and its kick deals 478 Shock 502 Physical Damage. Once summoned, you can activate the twilight tormentor's special ability for 2700 Magicka, causing it to deal 60% more additional 200 magic damage to enemies above 50% Health for 20 seconds. The twilight tormentor remains until killed or unsummoned.

Mages' Fury

Call down lightning to strike an enemy, dealing 870 Shock Damage. If the enemy falls to or below 20% Health within 4 seconds of being struck, an explosion deals an additional 3195 Shock Damage to them and 695 1438 Shock Damage to other enemies nearby.

Endless Fury (morph)
Reduces the cost and restores Magicka if the target dies after this ability dealt damage to them.
Increases inital damage and reduces cost, but no longer explodes.

Note: Lightning PvE spamable!

Mages' Wrath (morph)
Increases the damage dealt to other enemies nearby.
Inital hit sets the enemy off-balance. Restores Magicka if the target dies.

Note: PvP burst morph!

Yeah, I deliberately left pets out of receiving direct buffs due to them becoming stronger with the changes to passives I made, while already being the strongest build overall.

Granted, the long downtime of off-balance would be an issue for pve, but for pvp it is very strong while it is up, assuming running the associated cp with it and focusing on improving sorc for pvp was one of the main directions I was going with my changes.

Agreed, people do like the pet builds, but there is a large amount that don't, my changes were aimed towards improving gameplay for the latter of the 2 without focusing on 1 skill line only. I also didn't want the pets nerfed either since there are players that enjoy that build so I specifically left the pets out.

Energized passive:
I like this idea, perhaps make it into the new passive that replaces capacitor since that slot was freed up and sorc being the lightning mage should really keep its buff to lightning damage (like dk with flame and warden with frost). Maybe if it replaces the 5% increase to shock and physical it could keep a smaller bonus to those damage types of say 2%.

Amplitude:
I didn't want to tie anything to "fully charged heavy attacks" (even though sorc is technically one of the better classes for that build), as it is a niche playstyle. I would rather a change like that be made into a set bonus that those builds can run but other builds aren't forced into.
The rest of this passive is too similar to the current warden changes (interesting idea, but very controversial, especially with such a large difference between baseline bonus and conditional bonus), if I were to do something like this, it would be a bigger upfront buff (around 7%) with a slightly higher conditional of (around 9% if wielding a lightning staff) that way the lightning staff would be stronger for those who completely min max but it would not be overwhelmingly stronger like frost staff is for wardens currently.

Interesting change for the familiar, I like this one, it gives the pets an option for different roles (familiar + matriarch for support role, clanfear + tormentor for dps role).

For the tormentor, would a reverse scaling option work? that is, it deals up to 100% more damage to enemies above 20% health, so for full health enemies, it deals double damage, but that reduces as the enemy's health reduces. (Numbers can be tweaked for balance).

I've thought about a lightning damage pve spammable, but mages fury isn't the answer for this, especially if we want to keep an execute in the class kit and ideally lightning staff abilities would be buffed to fill this slot. It's the unreliability of the proc and the very low HP threshold for it to even attempt to trigger that is holding it back. I think a higher threshold on one morph (say 25 or 30%) and the other morph becoming a more traditional execute ability (X damage that scales on enemies below 50% health) would fix this pain point and depending on the numbers/scaling it may go some way to making this into lightning spammable as well. (Especially if it has higher base damage and lower scaling on its execute percentage damage increase).

Overall, I like most of the ideas and the info for pets was insightful, especially to give a pve perspective too.

Aces-High-82

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

A very solid writeup. Most urgent tweaks imo:
1. Major Breach via class kit. Application via Haunting Curse plus the early detonation while removed sounds like the way to go.
2. Pets: simplest fix - raise hp significantly.... 50k
3. Shields: a no to scaling via spell/weap dmg. Don't wanna see ppl running around with 50k shield strength total. If you wanna do something for magsorc only introduce a different mag scaling for Conjured Ward (~3.5:1) without the HP cap. This way it can be considered to be worth the gcd/cost if stacking max mag. Honestly I'd like to become shields simply buffs eg Dampen Mag now 30s duration and restores X amount of mag whenever hit.
4. Streak : fatigue has to be lowered to 20%. You already have to Streak twice (even with streakjump <- not possible via controller) to get out of gap close range. Honestly it's range should stay 15m bc I don't want to traverse off platforms/towers all the time. I like your idea for Ball Lightning but the fatigue again is too high.
5. CFrag: proc chance up to 50% while bonus dmg lowered to 50% AND faster projectile travel
6. Fury: should be a true finisher like you suggested

Add to this making dark exchange (and morphs) into an instant cast ability with better healing. But yes, these are the most prominent things to fix (well, except pets), I do agree that giving pets more health is the simplest way to increase their viability, but I also want to see other builds to become as strong as pet builds, so pets would be left on the back burner for now.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Petition to make @Turtle_Bot the new combat designer when?

There are definitely more knowledgeable sorc mains out there than I am, but thanks for the vote of confidence for my idea

The problem with Dark Ex could be fixed if the functionality of the skill would match its description/wording as it states that health is restored. If it restored a true value unaffected by Battlespirit the cast time is justified imo and I'd happily drop Twilight for it.

lQrukl

The rest of this passive is too similar to the current warden changes (interesting idea, but very controversial, especially with such a large difference between baseline bonus and conditional bonus), if I were to do something like this, it would be a bigger upfront buff (around 7%) with a slightly higher conditional of (around 9% if wielding a lightning staff) that way the lightning staff would be stronger for those who completely min max but it would not be overwhelmingly stronger like frost staff is for wardens currently.

I completely disagree with the argument "it is such more difference".

Its not. Lighining stuff buffs only Wall of Storms (+10%), any other other sorc abilities are focused primarily on single target, so 10% from Amplitude just lets storm stuff fetch difference between fire staff passive & wall of fire (+10% base bonus, +11% Engulfing & Behemoth). And thats without speaking of dual wield that is better then anything now by default.

Also, another part of passive was added exactly to not hurt non-storm-staff builds.

15s HA cooldown its not about "make sorc heavy attack class", its all about sustain in PvE (for any build) that not hurts DPS, and even increase it if you are smart and use Empower.

It also could be part of boorst combo in PvP. Heavy attack to offbalace enemy basically deals 70% more damage & knock down, it's a good niche were sorc could realize its class personality by playing around offbalace

Turtle_Bot

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

A very solid writeup. Most urgent tweaks imo:
1. Major Breach via class kit. Application via Haunting Curse plus the early detonation while removed sounds like the way to go.
2. Pets: simplest fix - raise hp significantly.... 50k
3. Shields: a no to scaling via spell/weap dmg. Don't wanna see ppl running around with 50k shield strength total. If you wanna do something for magsorc only introduce a different mag scaling for Conjured Ward (~3.5:1) without the HP cap. This way it can be considered to be worth the gcd/cost if stacking max mag. Honestly I'd like to become shields simply buffs eg Dampen Mag now 30s duration and restores X amount of mag whenever hit.
4. Streak : fatigue has to be lowered to 20%. You already have to Streak twice (even with streakjump <- not possible via controller) to get out of gap close range. Honestly it's range should stay 15m bc I don't want to traverse off platforms/towers all the time. I like your idea for Ball Lightning but the fatigue again is too high.
5. CFrag: proc chance up to 50% while bonus dmg lowered to 50% AND faster projectile travel
6. Fury: should be a true finisher like you suggested

Add to this making dark exchange (and morphs) into an instant cast ability with better healing. But yes, these are the most prominent things to fix (well, except pets), I do agree that giving pets more health is the simplest way to increase their viability, but I also want to see other builds to become as strong as pet builds, so pets would be left on the back burner for now.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Petition to make @Turtle_Bot the new combat designer when?

There are definitely more knowledgeable sorc mains out there than I am, but thanks for the vote of confidence for my idea

The problem with Dark Ex could be fixed if the functionality of the skill would match its description/wording as it states that health is restored. If it restored a true value unaffected by Battlespirit the cast time is justified imo and I'd happily drop Twilight for it.

I agree that would be an improvement, it still doesn't resolve the issue that every other class has a burst heal that tooltips for double the value Dark Ex does on an instant cast ability, with other bonuses on top of the bigger heal as well. That means that when battle spirit is active all other classes have burst heals that heal for what Dark Ex tooltips for while being instant cast.

If they're not going to adjust the healing value or remove the cast time, they should at least reduce the cost down to like 1k to reflect just how small the heal is compared to all other classes burst heal.

Turtle_Bot

lQrukl wrote: »

The rest of this passive is too similar to the current warden changes (interesting idea, but very controversial, especially with such a large difference between baseline bonus and conditional bonus), if I were to do something like this, it would be a bigger upfront buff (around 7%) with a slightly higher conditional of (around 9% if wielding a lightning staff) that way the lightning staff would be stronger for those who completely min max but it would not be overwhelmingly stronger like frost staff is for wardens currently.

I completely disagree with the argument "it is such more difference".

Its not. Lighining stuff buffs only Wall of Storms (+10%), any other other sorc abilities are focused primarily on single target, so 10% from Amplitude just lets storm stuff fetch difference between fire staff passive & wall of fire (+10% base bonus, +11% Engulfing & Behemoth). And thats without speaking of dual wield that is better then anything now by default.

Also, another part of passive was added exactly to not hurt non-storm-staff builds.

15s HA cooldown its not about "make sorc heavy attack class", its all about sustain in PvE (for any build) that not hurts DPS, and even increase it if you are smart and use Empower.

It also could be part of boorst combo in PvP. Heavy attack to offbalace enemy basically deals 70% more damage & knock down, it's a good niche were sorc could realize its class personality by playing around offbalace

Heavy attacks in pvp (especially channeled attacks like lightning staff) are not good anymore for trying to burst someone down, especially since empower no longer works there. So, it won't become part of a burst combo without getting absurd damage buffs.

The other issue is that this passive conflicts with itself. Lightning staves have a channel time for heavy attacks, and they deal 3 instances of damage over that 1.8 second duration with the damage spread out across the 3 instances. This means that only 1 instance of the heavy attack will get the bonus damage (or 1/3 of the heavy attack gets buffed compared to 100% of an inferno staff's heavy attack), so while you would want to equip a lightning staff for the additional +10% damage to everything, you would ideally want an inferno staff, bow or 2handed weapon to maximize the bonus damage of your heavy attack. Unless you make it so it's not just fully charged heavy attacks, but then you get the whole medium weaving argument that initially made the empower changes so controversial in U35. Changing the bonus damage to all ticks of the lightning staff would also create huge issues in pvp with a potential return to the heavy attack builds sorcs used to run that got lightning staffs nerfed in the first place.

Again, this is the same issue with wardens currently for pve, they want to run frost staff for that 12% bonus damage from their passive while a frost staff is equipped, but dual wield and/or inferno staves are just mathematically better for dps.

There are just too many issues currently with buffing heavy attack damage, especially after they went to great lengths to nerf light and heavy attacks in U35, so I would rather steer clear of that mechanic when proposing changes.

AdamLAD

Buff me

PhoenixGrey

AdamLAD wrote: »

Buff me

You most definitely need a *** ton

AdamLAD

Oh absolutely.

Overamera

AdamLAD wrote: »

Oh absolutely.

What’s with the ego? Watched your vid and I can see why you are in need of a buff.

Overamera

Your vid only proved that the class really need a buff lol.

AdamLAD

What ego ? I literally said buff me and agreed with grey. I'm certain that means the opposite.

PhoenixGrey

AdamLAD wrote: »

What ego ? I literally said buff me and agreed with grey. I'm certain that means the opposite.

One thing I m certain from the video is mag sorc is an ideal bystander while the mag dk is 1vX 'ing.

PhoenixGrey

Overamera wrote: »

AdamLAD wrote: »

Oh absolutely.

What’s with the ego? Watched your vid and I can see why you are in need of a buff.

Was it a mag sorc video? I saw a magdk 1vx'ing and a sorc was streaking about in the sidelines.

AdamLAD

PhoenixGrey wrote: »

Overamera wrote: »

AdamLAD wrote: »

Oh absolutely.

What’s with the ego? Watched your vid and I can see why you are in need of a buff.

Was it a mag sorc video? I saw a magdk 1vx'ing and a sorc was streaking about in the sidelines.

Did you not watch the one where I killed 30 players solo ? Or are you purposely being salty. What about my previous 1vXs ? I guess other players are 1vXing for me. Lol. I've been on your YouTube. Show me some lovely new sorc gameplay. Been years since you uploaded.

Bergzorn

This discussion should be about the performance of the class in general and not about the performance of individuals.

Bergzorn

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

[*] If you're not going to buff pets and you're not going to buff shields, then you need to make Dark Deal/Conversion an instant cast heal. Every other class gets one. Having to rely on a cast time for your burst heal is not good.

This is something I can fully agree with. Originally, Sorc not having a reliable burst heal (no pet, no cast time) was good design because the class had strong wards combined with a strong HoT via Surge to heal chip damage. This changed. IMO, a reliable burst heal would do a lot for PvP MagSorc.

PhoenixGrey

AdamLAD wrote: »

PhoenixGrey wrote: »

Overamera wrote: »

AdamLAD wrote: »

Oh absolutely.

What’s with the ego? Watched your vid and I can see why you are in need of a buff.

Was it a mag sorc video? I saw a magdk 1vx'ing and a sorc was streaking about in the sidelines.

Did you not watch the one where I killed 30 players solo ? Or are you purposely being salty. What about my previous 1vXs ? I guess other players are 1vXing for me. Lol. I've been on your YouTube. Show me some lovely new sorc gameplay. Been years since you uploaded.

I wouldn't touch the class until its halfway decent. And it has not been since I last uploaded tbh. Why will I play a class solo if it's not A or S tier? Waste of time IMO.

If you want to x a bunch of players in PVE gear who die to almost nil damage, you can continue doing so. But in no way does it indicate class tier

ZOS_Suserial

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