U38 Sorcerer changes

Aces-High-82

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

...
It isn't a flashy solution but it does make a lot of sense from a design standpoint.

No. Doesn't make sense. It doesn't give one percent more chance or damage.

If anything you are calling for an unnamed buff to crit chance, that stacks it further up, but not Major Prophecy.

It also doesn't free any bar space in group content, because one is required to use spell power potions anyway.

Plus 5 and even ten percent more do not make any difference to how often crit surge procs. Because, even at 50% it is the parallel damage instances that come from DoTs that will guarantee the one crit damage per second needed for the Crit surge heal proc. Need an example?
You have two pets, wall, hurricane and caltrops. That makes 5 DoTs plus light attacks and a spammable (eight with the poison or burning). That is a total of six damage instances within one second plus hurricane every two seconds. Only one of these six/seven needs to crit in order to proc the crit surge heal.
That crit surge argument is outdated. And obviously wrong.

Thats true for PvE

Tannus15

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

...
It isn't a flashy solution but it does make a lot of sense from a design standpoint.

No. Doesn't make sense. It doesn't give one percent more chance or damage.

If anything you are calling for an unnamed buff to crit chance, that stacks it further up, but not Major Prophecy.

It also doesn't free any bar space in group content, because one is required to use spell power potions anyway.

Plus 5 and even ten percent more do not make any difference to how often crit surge procs. Because, even at 50% it is the parallel damage instances that come from DoTs that will guarantee the one crit damage per second needed for the Crit surge heal proc. Need an example?
You have two pets, wall, hurricane and caltrops. That makes 5 DoTs plus light attacks and a spammable (eight with the poison or burning). That is a total of six damage instances within one second plus hurricane every two seconds. Only one of these six/seven needs to crit in order to proc the crit surge heal.
That crit surge argument is outdated. And obviously wrong.

pets attacks don't proc anything. that's why they are worse than dots.

the point of putting major proph / sav on something is that you can do a build that uses something other than spell power pots.

sorc is fine as long as it's a single target parse fight, basically as long as you're killing the trial dummy the class is great. the more cleave matters or the less support you have the more sorc drops off.

Something i see come up a lot is that sorc needs "higher chance to proc concussed" as though that'll help. Can we just accept the fact that it didn't do squat for warden until they gave the warden a passive that does huge damage when proccing chilled. increasing concussed status procs won't do anything for our dps. concussed does hardly any damage on proc and we already have high minor vuln uptimes. the whole thing is pointless without some other change to cause sorcs to do more damage vs concussed targets or something.

@Turtle_Bot i don't think it's a misconception, i think it's a pretty accurate statement of fact that sorc pet builds have less bar space. the bare minimum is 5 skills, 4 pets and prey. if you're running matriarch then you've losing more than half your flappy bird dps.

The problem is that non pet sorc builds don't have strong skills or passives to counter the pet setups. they definitely have the bar space to slot inner light or camo hunter but even running a full bar of dots they have less dps than a pet setup, so it's a non starter.

Turtle_Bot

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

I think that Major Savagery/Prophecy is already available to every Sorcerer. Putting them on an ability that everybody uses anyway seems redundant. Doubly redundant, actually.

Sorcerer needs more reliable sources for more crit damage, not crit chance. Ideally from a passive, not an ability.

If you want to improve the class, you need to add things that are currently unavailable, come at too high a cost or are simply inefficient/ineffective in their current from.

I don't know if Major and Minor Berserk are the best solution for the classes damage problem. Especially slamming these on a disliked ability with such a long cast time, combined with these durations seems counterproductive.

Instead, more synergy with the Lightning Element would be a real benefit. A higher proc chance for concussed status effect from class skills, like the Warden has.
Or flat damage increases like the Dragonknight has.
A ground DoT in the heavy weight class, like Templars or Nightblades have, would diversify the damage options away from the pets.
The same goes for the scaling of the execute skill. Just bonus damage is the wrong way. It needs to be at least as powerful as Impale. Maybe not as much as Radiant Oppression, but definetly follow an effectiveness standard for ranged Magicka executes. Which, btw., the entire game doesn't have!

My guess is you are speaking from a PvE perspective? I am strictly speaking from a PvP perspective in regards to the changes I made and I made them that way because those particular changes would have minimal impact on sorcerer in PvE because in PvE (outside of no pet builds) sorcerer is just fine for majority of content.

In PvE, sorcerer has a lot more free bar slots to slot abilities like camo hunter or inner light (or even both if desired) because unless you're doing hard solo content (vet arenas) the requirement of having lots of utility, defense and healing just isn't there for PvE like it is for PvP.

Therefore, in practice, this buff isn't really that accessible to the class unless the sorcerer is giving up something else extremely valuable in return. This is particularly apparent in PvP where significantly more bar slot space is needed for utility, healing and defense than what is required for PvE. To fit major prophecy into a PvP build the sorcerer currently has to give up 1 of the following:
- an ability slot (significantly reduces damage or other more important utility)
- a monster set (significantly reduces options available to the class)
- an entire bar by running oakensoul ring (great for PvE, but a really underperforming option for PvP)
- better potions (this loses a lot in survivability since you lose access to immovability, healing, stamina restore and more to get crit chance)
- Or the sorcerer is being heavily supported by the group that can provide that buff or others for them.

As for damage, sorcerer needs better non-pet sources of damage, but the main issue for sorcerer's damage is not the amount of damage itself, it's that all the modern content that has been created over the past few years requires a large amount of cleave (or AoE) damage to perform at the highest level and sorcerer was just not designed for that type of content.
This is not an issue that can be solved by changing abilities, but will only be properly solved by the combat, balance and design teams sitting down together and properly coordinating new content and balance/combat changes that give a good mix of single target and AoE damage requirements so that sorcerer isn't left out due to being designed for single target only and not being allowed to be significantly stronger in this area to compensate for the large lack of cleave.

Turtle_Bot

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

...
It isn't a flashy solution but it does make a lot of sense from a design standpoint.

No. Doesn't make sense. It doesn't give one percent more chance or damage.

If anything you are calling for an unnamed buff to crit chance, that stacks it further up, but not Major Prophecy.

It also doesn't free any bar space in group content, because one is required to use spell power potions anyway.

Plus 5 and even ten percent more do not make any difference to how often crit surge procs. Because, even at 50% it is the parallel damage instances that come from DoTs that will guarantee the one crit damage per second needed for the Crit surge heal proc. Need an example?
You have two pets, wall, hurricane and caltrops. That makes 5 DoTs plus light attacks and a spammable (eight with the poison or burning). That is a total of six damage instances within one second plus hurricane every two seconds. Only one of these six/seven needs to crit in order to proc the crit surge heal.
That crit surge argument is outdated. And obviously wrong.

technically speaking the pets don't proc anything outside of concussed status so those 2 can be ignored.

So sorcerer has wall, hurricane and caltrops. This is fine for PvE where you have the freedom to build into crit chance via sets, free bar space for camo hunter/inner light and have the freedom to run crit potions and enemies will stay inside your AoEs to give you a reliable proc for crit surge.

But these abilities have their issues in PvP. Wall and caltrops will always be walked out of, no-one is going to deliberately stand inside those abilities unless forced to (CC) and the same goes for hurricane which also contradicts the ranged mobile playstyle of magicka sorcerer as well since it needs enemies to be close to hit them to have a chance to crit and then a chance to proc crit surge.

This leaves magicka sorcerer with only 1 option, elemental susceptibility, which gets purged very frequently thanks to Mara's Balm being everywhere and warden being very strong right now with their netch being a free purge.

Crit chance is also much harder to acquire in PvP with battle spirit reducing pretty much everything except max health and the requirements of needing to build a lot tankier than what is needed for PvE which barely leaves any room to build into even 30% crit chance on most builds and getting that crit chance in PvP requires giving up a lot as I mentioned in my last post.

Turtle_Bot

Tannus15 wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

...
It isn't a flashy solution but it does make a lot of sense from a design standpoint.

No. Doesn't make sense. It doesn't give one percent more chance or damage.

If anything you are calling for an unnamed buff to crit chance, that stacks it further up, but not Major Prophecy.

It also doesn't free any bar space in group content, because one is required to use spell power potions anyway.

Plus 5 and even ten percent more do not make any difference to how often crit surge procs. Because, even at 50% it is the parallel damage instances that come from DoTs that will guarantee the one crit damage per second needed for the Crit surge heal proc. Need an example?
You have two pets, wall, hurricane and caltrops. That makes 5 DoTs plus light attacks and a spammable (eight with the poison or burning). That is a total of six damage instances within one second plus hurricane every two seconds. Only one of these six/seven needs to crit in order to proc the crit surge heal.
That crit surge argument is outdated. And obviously wrong.

pets attacks don't proc anything. that's why they are worse than dots.

the point of putting major proph / sav on something is that you can do a build that uses something other than spell power pots.

sorc is fine as long as it's a single target parse fight, basically as long as you're killing the trial dummy the class is great. the more cleave matters or the less support you have the more sorc drops off.

Something i see come up a lot is that sorc needs "higher chance to proc concussed" as though that'll help. Can we just accept the fact that it didn't do squat for warden until they gave the warden a passive that does huge damage when proccing chilled. increasing concussed status procs won't do anything for our dps. concussed does hardly any damage on proc and we already have high minor vuln uptimes. the whole thing is pointless without some other change to cause sorcs to do more damage vs concussed targets or something.

Agree with this, concussed needs a complete rework, especially now that its niche of minor vulnerability and off balance are so freely available to so many things now.

@Turtle_Bot i don't think it's a misconception, i think it's a pretty accurate statement of fact that sorc pet builds have less bar space. the bare minimum is 5 skills, 4 pets and prey. if you're running matriarch then you've losing more than half your flappy bird dps.

The problem is that non pet sorc builds don't have strong skills or passives to counter the pet setups. they definitely have the bar space to slot inner light or camo hunter but even running a full bar of dots they have less dps than a pet setup, so it's a non starter.

True, if non-pet builds had better options then for sure they would have the bar space for camo hunter/inner light, but as it stands those builds don't have those options available to them so they need the additional skills slotted to fill that gap. That was my point and why I was putting the buff on a commonly used skill (the armor skill), because being on that skill it won't force pet builds to make room for it since they already run that skill and (for PvP specifically) it allows for the flexibility in bar space to not be forced into running chudans + inner or lightning form + crit potions just to have access to what are staple buffs (resolve + prophecy/savagery) that every class should have access to in their class kits alongside brutality/sorcery.

If we were talking about niche, unique, or rare buffs such as berserk, force, exepdition, vulnerability, unnamed buffs, etc, then yeah, I would be putting those onto other skills to force a decision about what to run, but with something so generic and staple, it should be easily accessible on already widely used class skills.

StaticWave

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

My guess is they only base their balance decisions on year+ old data from the live servers

Hate to say it but this seems like how ZOS gathers feedback. I mean, we had a whole Class Rep program with actual seasoned players voted by the majority of the community to help identify key problems with each class in PvE and PvP, but their efforts went on deaf ears.

If they were really basing their balance decisions on data from the live servers, then I would expect them to know that sorc is mostly a newbie class because of that old school sorcerer theme, and as the playerbase progresses the class becomes less played and nearly non-existent at the top level.

Not saying class isn't playable, but it's just not fun by today's standards.

Zodiarkslayer

@Tannus15 and @Turtle_Bot
You are telling me that the pets attacks can NOT crit? Really?

Zabagad

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@Tannus15 and @Turtle_Bot
You are telling me that the pets attacks can NOT crit? Really?

Mhhh - is it so hard to read what they said?
They both said that they don't proc anything - not that they don't crit:

Tannus15 wrote: »

pets attacks don't proc anything.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

technically speaking the pets don't proc anything outside of concussed status

And without the one exception I know - unstable familiar - (which almost nobody plays) that's correct.

Turtle_Bot

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@Tannus15 and @Turtle_Bot
You are telling me that the pets attacks can NOT crit? Really?

Pet attacks can crit, the issue is that when pet attacks crit, they don't proc the crit surge heal because the pets count as different units, not the character that cast/has crit surge active. It's the same thing with proc sets, the pets are not wearing the sets so their attacks won't proc those sets.

That's why they should not be counted when looking into damage instances that can proc crit surge or proc sets on a sorc, they count as different units and not the caster/set wearer so they won't proc any additional things.

The only exception that I know of is the unstable familiar that can proc the concussed status effect and that is because it is specifically stated that it does that on its tooltip.

Turtle_Bot

StaticWave wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

My guess is they only base their balance decisions on year+ old data from the live servers

Hate to say it but this seems like how ZOS gathers feedback. I mean, we had a whole Class Rep program with actual seasoned players voted by the majority of the community to help identify key problems with each class in PvE and PvP, but their efforts went on deaf ears.

If they were really basing their balance decisions on data from the live servers, then I would expect them to know that sorc is mostly a newbie class because of that old school sorcerer theme, and as the playerbase progresses the class becomes less played and nearly non-existent at the top level.

Not saying class isn't playable, but it's just not fun by today's standards.

Yep, sorcerer is in a really awkward spot right now.

Sorcerer is hard to balance because it's good for new players thanks to the pets/HA carrying the class for them in PvE content and it looks amazing in the hands of masters since they are just so skilled and knowledgeable with the class to not need to rely on the pets, but that middle ground is missing because sorcs either never reach this point, or they drop the class and move on to another class that's better suited to this level of play.

Not sure what the solution is here, maybe bring back the class rep program or something, idk, but something needs to change because as it stands, their current balancing methods are not working for sorc.

Zodiarkslayer

Zabagad wrote: »

Mhhh - is it so hard to read what they said?
They both said that they don't proc anything - not that they don't crit:

Sure. Sure. Because you can believe every claim some random guy makes on the forum without an explanation or even proof. Yeah...
🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
Its called being sceptical...

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

...
Pet attacks can crit, the issue is that when pet attacks crit, they don't proc the crit surge heal because the pets count as different units, not the character that cast/has crit surge active. It's the same thing with proc sets, the pets are not wearing the sets so their attacks won't proc those sets.
...

Thank you for clearing that up. I honestly didn't know that. And I think it is counterintuitive, that an ability that one casts behaves not like all other abilities that one casts.
It makes sense, though. In a weird, lore conformative way, anyways.

Zabagad

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Its called being sceptical...

It had nothing to do with being sceptical
They said "proc" you answered "crit" - just 2 different topics.

ZhuJiuyin

In v9.0.3 we still haven't seen any changes regarding wizards, it seems like they haven't listened to anything
Have we been forgotten because of the birth of the Arcanist?

StaticWave

There were many threads before this with heavy discussions on what buffs Sorc needs, but I believe we can all agree on 3 things:

1) Sorc needs better reliable self heals (in PvP at least). This may compromise their mobility for balancing, but it’s a compromise I think many people are willing to make

2) Sorc needs higher crit rate

3) Sorc needs its passives reworked

Fixing just 1 of these 3 things will improve the class by a mile. Fixing all 3 of them (and making compromises as necessary), and you will have a class that’s not only up-to-date, but also playable by the majority of players.

Zodiarkslayer

Zabagad wrote: »

It had nothing to do with being sceptical
They said "proc" you answered "crit" - just 2 different topics.

Seriously? That part of the discussion was about what abilities proc Crit Surge... By CRITTING ...
... Same topic ...

Tannus15

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

In v9.0.3 we still haven't seen any changes regarding wizards, it seems like they haven't listened to anything
Have we been forgotten because of the birth of the Arcanist?

there will be no further sorc changes this update. they pretty much laid that out on week 1. we rest our hopes on balance changes next update

NuarBlack

StaticWave wrote: »

There were many threads before this with heavy discussions on what buffs Sorc needs, but I believe we can all agree on 3 things:

1) Sorc needs better reliable self heals (in PvP at least). This may compromise their mobility for balancing, but it’s a compromise I think many people are willing to make

2) Sorc needs higher crit rate

3) Sorc needs its passives reworked

Fixing just 1 of these 3 things will improve the class by a mile. Fixing all 3 of them (and making compromises as necessary), and you will have a class that’s not only up-to-date, but also playable by the majority of players.

Sorc needs to be willing to think outside the box and I don't think the compromises need to be that heavy. Primarily the solution doesn't have to come within the sorc kit itself and as has been shown there might not be room there anyway.

I'd suggest the mages guild skill line. It is due a rework and would be fitting. First make Mage light do something else so it is useful to other classes. Then completely rework Fire rune into a spammable that grants Major prophecy in some way. Sorc needs to slot a spammable to proc crystal frags and current options don't do much for sorc. The animation of fire rune is already sweet. Just make it Firball, lighting bolt, or ice bolt instead of the gimmick skill that hardly anybody uses.

i11ionward

I think these are good changes, especially Dark Deal changes.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin
But for god's sake, increase the duration of Minor Berserk and Minor Force on the Dark Deal morph to 20 seconds. It's terribly tedious and not fun to maintain a 10 second buff with a cast time skill.

ZhuJiuyin

NuarBlack wrote: »

I'd suggest the mages guild skill line. It is due a rework and would be fitting. First make Mage light do something else so it is useful to other classes. Then completely rework Fire rune into a spammable that grants Major prophecy in some way. Sorc needs to slot a spammable to proc crystal frags and current options don't do much for sorc. The animation of fire rune is already sweet. Just make it Firball, lighting bolt, or ice bolt instead of the gimmick skill that hardly anybody uses.

I disagree. When other classes can obtain most of the basic functions from their own classes skill line, why only Sorc has to abandon its own skill line and class features?

Turtle_Bot

i11ionward wrote: »

I think these are good changes, especially Dark Deal changes.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin
But for god's sake, increase the duration of Minor Berserk and Minor Force on the Dark Deal morph to 20 seconds. It's terribly tedious and not fun to maintain a 10 second buff with a cast time skill.

I'm going to disagree here, the buffs given are far too easy to obtain through better ways and don't add enough for what you lose when using the skill, especially since it's cast time is the full 1 second GCD, not 0.8 seconds like other cast time/channel abilities have.

Since it has a full 1 second cast time (not 0.8 like other channeled/cast time abilities) you don't get to weave a LA in that GCD. So by using it for those 2 buffs, you potentially lose out on:
1 ability cast (this can be used for barbed trap which lasts longer and provides a good DoT)
1 LA weave (+ associated weapon type status effect procs)
1-2 glyph procs (depending on equipped weapon)
1 second of LA ulti gen (assuming it runs out when you go to cast dark deal)
and the rotation becomes significantly harder to perform.

I don't see this being used at all in PvE at all and not really mattering that much for PvP:
- Bird heals for more + heals others and has a passive DoT (and doesn't get focused by enemies so it actually lives long enough to matter)
- Camo hunter passively gives minor berserk + major prophecy (sorely lacking buff for the class) + FG passives for damage (higher than sorc class passives that do the same thing) and no GCD required to get these buffs
- Barbed trap fills minor force + gives 1 of the best single target DoTs in the game (or for AoE, RaT/CA which lasts significantly longer and also grants movement speed and snare immunity).

To make this change an actual buff, it should have also given major prophecy/savagery passively all the time + both buffs on the active, or at the minimum, the major versions of those 2 buffs (force and berserk) on the active.

NuarBlack wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

There were many threads before this with heavy discussions on what buffs Sorc needs, but I believe we can all agree on 3 things:

1) Sorc needs better reliable self heals (in PvP at least). This may compromise their mobility for balancing, but it’s a compromise I think many people are willing to make

2) Sorc needs higher crit rate

3) Sorc needs its passives reworked

Fixing just 1 of these 3 things will improve the class by a mile. Fixing all 3 of them (and making compromises as necessary), and you will have a class that’s not only up-to-date, but also playable by the majority of players.

Sorc needs to be willing to think outside the box and I don't think the compromises need to be that heavy. Primarily the solution doesn't have to come within the sorc kit itself and as has been shown there might not be room there anyway.

I'd suggest the mages guild skill line. It is due a rework and would be fitting. First make Mage light do something else so it is useful to other classes. Then completely rework Fire rune into a spammable that grants Major prophecy in some way. Sorc needs to slot a spammable to proc crystal frags and current options don't do much for sorc. The animation of fire rune is already sweet. Just make it Firball, lighting bolt, or ice bolt instead of the gimmick skill that hardly anybody uses.

I'm going to have to disagree with this as well. In terms of out of class spammables, destro staff cushing shock/force pulse needs to be reworked is all, although a mages guild line rework to be closer in power to fighters guild line would be welcome.

But the main disagreement I have with this is something already mentioned, other classes get to fully utilize the majority of their kits for whatever role they want to build for but sorc has to lean significantly more on out of class abilities to fill the basic functions of those roles when compared to the other classes.
I can understand when building a tank needing a taunt (since sorc is supposed to be a dd by design) and HoTs as a healer since the class lacks group HoTs and burst heals are the primary basic function of healers and the bird is good for PvE healing, but the fact the class has to also rely on out of class abilities for a spammable (the primary ability for its primary role as DD) it is quite absurd to think about.
Other classes rely on 1-2 out of class abilities to fill gaps and some functions for 1-2 roles that the classes weren't designed for, but sorc relies on out of class abilities for the basic functions of all 3 roles including the role it was designed for.

Lucifer9th

i11ionward wrote: »

I think these are good changes, especially Dark Deal changes.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin
But for god's sake, increase the duration of Minor Berserk and Minor Force on the Dark Deal morph to 20 seconds. It's terribly tedious and not fun to maintain a 10 second buff with a cast time skill.

I agree the duration is too low for a cast time of 1 sec, they need double it on both morph for best user experience
For example Channeled Acceleration time have 60 sec minor force with 1,3s cast time

i11ionward

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

i11ionward wrote: »

I think these are good changes, especially Dark Deal changes.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin
But for god's sake, increase the duration of Minor Berserk and Minor Force on the Dark Deal morph to 20 seconds. It's terribly tedious and not fun to maintain a 10 second buff with a cast time skill.

I'm going to disagree here, the buffs given are far too easy to obtain through better ways and don't add enough for what you lose when using the skill, especially since it's cast time is the full 1 second GCD, not 0.8 seconds like other cast time/channel abilities have.

I agree that everyone sorc was waiting for Major Prophecy and Savagery . But we have what we have.

StaticWave

Just for a little insight, let's compare a hybrid Sorc vs a hybrid NB using the same build with U38 changes. This is the build:



Fairly standard crit damage build with some defensive capability of Rallying Cry and Major Breach from Night Mother set, which frees up a slot for a defensive/offensive ability.

Let's look at the skills I could use, the self-buffed front bar stats of the build in No-CP, and the tooltip of the main spammable for each class. Starting with Sorc:






And then NB:






So using the same build, with all passives accounted for (including Amplitude for Sorc and Strike From the Shadows for NB), the NB has 700 more HP, 509 more weapon/spell damage, 4% more crit chance, and 1974 more pen (if we count the pen from Crystal Weapon). The tooltip for NB's spammable is also 1277 more than Sorc's spammable.

Not only that, the NB also has Major Evasion, Minor Cowardice, off-balance, free well-fitted, Minor Maim, a unique 20% damage taken debuff, most of which the Sorc either doesn't have due to bar space or not having decent abilities to provide those buffs/debuffs. Most importantly, the NB has a decent and reliable burst heal. I mean just look at this:



vs this:



One could argue that Blessing of Restoration is an AoE heal and needs to have a lower tooltip, but the Sorc needs to slot a resto staff for that ability, whereas a NB can not only slot it as well for the AoE heal, but it can also slot a non-resto staff weapon and still have access to a decent and reliable burst heal.

Ironically, NB also has one of the best survivability in the game with Cloak + Shadow Image along with a decent and reliable burst heal. A full damage NB is just as slippery as a full damage Sorc, while also being tankier.

It's time Sorc needs to be buffed to NB standards, or NB and other dominating classes need to be nerfed to Sorc standards.

gariondavey

StaticWave wrote: »

There were many threads before this with heavy discussions on what buffs Sorc needs, but I believe we can all agree on 3 things:

1) Sorc needs better reliable self heals (in PvP at least). This may compromise their mobility for balancing, but it’s a compromise I think many people are willing to make

2) Sorc needs higher crit rate

3) Sorc needs its passives reworked

Fixing just 1 of these 3 things will improve the class by a mile. Fixing all 3 of them (and making compromises as necessary), and you will have a class that’s not only up-to-date, but also playable by the majority of players.

@ZOS_Kevin please pass this on to the devs

NuarBlack

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

i11ionward wrote: »

I think these are good changes, especially Dark Deal changes.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin
But for god's sake, increase the duration of Minor Berserk and Minor Force on the Dark Deal morph to 20 seconds. It's terribly tedious and not fun to maintain a 10 second buff with a cast time skill.

I'm going to disagree here, the buffs given are far too easy to obtain through better ways and don't add enough for what you lose when using the skill, especially since it's cast time is the full 1 second GCD, not 0.8 seconds like other cast time/channel abilities have.

Since it has a full 1 second cast time (not 0.8 like other channeled/cast time abilities) you don't get to weave a LA in that GCD. So by using it for those 2 buffs, you potentially lose out on:
1 ability cast (this can be used for barbed trap which lasts longer and provides a good DoT)
1 LA weave (+ associated weapon type status effect procs)
1-2 glyph procs (depending on equipped weapon)
1 second of LA ulti gen (assuming it runs out when you go to cast dark deal)
and the rotation becomes significantly harder to perform.

I don't see this being used at all in PvE at all and not really mattering that much for PvP:
- Bird heals for more + heals others and has a passive DoT (and doesn't get focused by enemies so it actually lives long enough to matter)
- Camo hunter passively gives minor berserk + major prophecy (sorely lacking buff for the class) + FG passives for damage (higher than sorc class passives that do the same thing) and no GCD required to get these buffs
- Barbed trap fills minor force + gives 1 of the best single target DoTs in the game (or for AoE, RaT/CA which lasts significantly longer and also grants movement speed and snare immunity).

To make this change an actual buff, it should have also given major prophecy/savagery passively all the time + both buffs on the active, or at the minimum, the major versions of those 2 buffs (force and berserk) on the active.

NuarBlack wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

There were many threads before this with heavy discussions on what buffs Sorc needs, but I believe we can all agree on 3 things:

1) Sorc needs better reliable self heals (in PvP at least). This may compromise their mobility for balancing, but it’s a compromise I think many people are willing to make

2) Sorc needs higher crit rate

3) Sorc needs its passives reworked

Fixing just 1 of these 3 things will improve the class by a mile. Fixing all 3 of them (and making compromises as necessary), and you will have a class that’s not only up-to-date, but also playable by the majority of players.

Sorc needs to be willing to think outside the box and I don't think the compromises need to be that heavy. Primarily the solution doesn't have to come within the sorc kit itself and as has been shown there might not be room there anyway.

I'd suggest the mages guild skill line. It is due a rework and would be fitting. First make Mage light do something else so it is useful to other classes. Then completely rework Fire rune into a spammable that grants Major prophecy in some way. Sorc needs to slot a spammable to proc crystal frags and current options don't do much for sorc. The animation of fire rune is already sweet. Just make it Firball, lighting bolt, or ice bolt instead of the gimmick skill that hardly anybody uses.

I'm going to have to disagree with this as well. In terms of out of class spammables, destro staff cushing shock/force pulse needs to be reworked is all, although a mages guild line rework to be closer in power to fighters guild line would be welcome.

But the main disagreement I have with this is something already mentioned, other classes get to fully utilize the majority of their kits for whatever role they want to build for but sorc has to lean significantly more on out of class abilities to fill the basic functions of those roles when compared to the other classes.
I can understand when building a tank needing a taunt (since sorc is supposed to be a dd by design) and HoTs as a healer since the class lacks group HoTs and burst heals are the primary basic function of healers and the bird is good for PvE healing, but the fact the class has to also rely on out of class abilities for a spammable (the primary ability for its primary role as DD) it is quite absurd to think about.
Other classes rely on 1-2 out of class abilities to fill gaps and some functions for 1-2 roles that the classes weren't designed for, but sorc relies on out of class abilities for the basic functions of all 3 roles including the role it was designed for.

You won't get that. Sorc is too bloated because of pet build accommodation. Also crystal frags. It occupies the spammable slot. That's 2 extra features the class kit is trying to accommodate that other classes do not. Pet sorc is really holding the class back. Only possible room might be a dichotomous passive change like the rebate one that refunds resources when a pet dies. It might be fair to grant major prophecy when no pets are summoned but that seems quite powerful and pet sorcs probably won't like that.

StaticWave

You know what could be a solution to solve Sorc issue? Bring back the Overload 3rd bar.

Lucifer9th

just change the active part of bound aegis in a hot or burst heal which gives major prophecy/savagery for 20 sec in replace of the 5 sec damage block bonus and the minor protection buff

it will result a good skill to slot for access major prophecy/savagery on both bar which can help reduce the healing problem of the class

LukosCreyden

Is no-pet sorc back yet?

Dr_Con

combat prayer already provides minor berserk. Major Berserk on demand for 10 seconds seems like it would be a lot until you consider the fact that the ability has a cast time of 1 second, not 0.8 seconds, they kept it at 1 second. More than likely it will take up 2 GCD, so you can't realistically add it to any rotations for the sake of getting the minor berserk and increasing dps (and in PVP you'll just get interrupted so GL)

Lucifer9th wrote: »

just change the active part of bound aegis in a hot or burst heal which gives major prophecy/savagery for 20 sec in replace of the 5 sec damage block bonus and the minor protection buff

it will result a good skill to slot for access major prophecy/savagery on both bar which can help reduce the healing problem of the class

maybe put it on bound armaments instead. leave the sorc's 1 tanking ability alone imo.



Overall, nothing of note was done to sorc this patch unless you are solo a PVP stam sorc who wants to use dark deal as a prebuff for your burst abilities for the 5% boost. The other changes that occurred are so miniscule that they don't deserve this topic nor do they deserve a mention in the patch notes. These are really small tweaks and don't really address any of the chief complaints players have with the class (yes, "lack of buffs" was a complaint, but you put a buff that is already provided by all groups running combat prayer on a resource management skill)

Edit: in re-reading the original post from ZOS on release, they acknowledge they aren't doing much for sorcs and that the focus is on arcanist and the new sets being released, so keep that in mind

Heymexa

Dear developers! Give sorcerers a small chance to be useful in pve content. Sorcerers have long been out of the leaderboards. This class is not required. There is very little time left before the release of a new chapter. You still have time.
1. Sorcerers are hated for their pets.
2. Sorcerers no longer stand out in solo damage.
3. Sorcerers don't have AoE damage.

This class is dead in pve content.