New Mist Form and easy access to movement speed killed Sorc identity

StaticWave

@Melzo

I can counter every single argument you’ve made quite easily, but knowing that you’ve commented on other Sorc threads before, there’s really no point to.

In fact, I don’t even need to make an argument. My previous comments towards other people’s arguments can also be used to counter yours. It’s your part to read them before making an argument against mine.

Melzo

StaticWave wrote: »

@Melzo

I can counter every single argument you’ve made quite easily, but knowing that you’ve commented on other Sorc threads before, there’s really no point to.

In fact, I don’t even need to make an argument. My previous comments towards other people’s arguments can also be used to counter yours. It’s your part to read them before making an argument against mine.

The author of the post claims that the foggy form spoils the personality of the sorcerer, but why are your arguments better ?? Most of the sorcerer's skills are in excellent condition and, unlike the necromancer, who has nothing, almost everything works fine for you. You need a skill with direct healing, but you literally equate the sorcerer with the rest of the classes. Sorcerers still use streak despite the changes in the misty form, then after changing the mana of the shield to a direct heal, you literally spoil your class. You deliberately want to take what others have and take away what is unique in you. This is some kind of nonsense, given that this topic was raised in order to preserve the uniqueness of the sorcerer.

StaticWave

Melzo wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

@Melzo

I can counter every single argument you’ve made quite easily, but knowing that you’ve commented on other Sorc threads before, there’s really no point to.

In fact, I don’t even need to make an argument. My previous comments towards other people’s arguments can also be used to counter yours. It’s your part to read them before making an argument against mine.

The author of the post claims that the foggy form spoils the personality of the sorcerer, but why are your arguments better ?? Most of the sorcerer's skills are in excellent condition and, unlike the necromancer, who has nothing, almost everything works fine for you. You need a skill with direct healing, but you literally equate the sorcerer with the rest of the classes. Sorcerers still use streak despite the changes in the misty form, then after changing the mana of the shield to a direct heal, you literally spoil your class. You deliberately want to take what others have and take away what is unique in you. This is some kind of nonsense, given that this topic was raised in order to preserve the uniqueness of the sorcerer.

Both Necro and Sorc need love, but make your own buff thread instead of bashing other people’s thread, especially when its intention is to buff their class.

It’s foul play and disrespectful. I will cease further discussion with you from now on. There is no point arguing with someone who can’t follow other arguments and quite frankly, I don’t want to repeat my arguments several times just because you can’t follow them.

LittlePinkDot

StaticWave wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

The streak is not intended to cross Cyrodiil in a couple of minutes. This skill is designed to either stun and break away from the enemy and perform your own combo, or use a streak as part of a combo to stun after applying a curse or finishing move. And all your arguments that they caught up with you there because now the developers have changed the mist form is nonsense. I can easily build a DK chain based build and add some speed to meet the 180-200 requirement. Any DK could have done this since the beginning of the game. And they didn't need the mist form. If you entered the game to run away from the enemy, you can take the 4th stage of vampirism and the set corresponding to the name of your gameplay.

No, they couldn't lol. The game didn't have Race Against Time, 3x Swift, or Celerity CP. If you tried to build for a max speed DK before Summerset you would sacrifice a lot of tankiness and still not even move as fast as a stamsorc in a regular build. I'm a strictly openworld PvPer, and I've played before and after Summerset to see the massive surge of uber-mobile builds AFTER Summerset came out. You're dead wrong on this.

Also, the only reason Streak is being used is for the stun. No mag or stamsorc would slot Streak if they had a better stun. BoL is a better defensive ability than Streak by a long shot.

Melzo wrote: »

Streak and mist form are similar skills but they are not the same. There are many similar skills and the situation with them is much worse. For example, the wings of the warden and the acceleration, or finishing the stamina of the NB and finishing off the two-handed weapon. The skills from the two examples are really a problem as they are almost exact copies of each other. And the identity of the sorcerer is unaffected in general, since the sorcerer has all the skills that are relevant to this day. If you want to find out who has identity problems, go to the necromancer. He only has one skill and that is broken.

Nobody is comparing Streak to Mist Form. The correct comparison is Ball of Lightning vs Mist Form, and I've analyzed in my previous comment why Mist Form is better for other classes and Ball of Lightning is better on Sorc.

The identity of a Sorc, both mag and stam, is the ability to get in and out of a fight quickly when they choose to. This is done with either Streak/Ball of Lightning for magsorc, or Streak/Ball of Lightning + fast movement speed for stamsorc.

Movement speed has been given to people for free over the years, and Mist Form has just been reworked to be a copy cat version of Ball of Lightning. These are the 2 main reasons why Sorc identity is lost. You can't just claim Shield or Curse or whatever is the identity of Sorc because Harness/Dampen Ward existed, and most other classes also have a delayed burst. But I could guarantee with you that up until now, nobody could replicate what Streak/Ball of Lightning could do as a defensive skill.

Melzo wrote: »

In fact, you don't use the mist form and don't want others to use it. But in my class there is not much choice. Do you want to ruin the gameplay for everyone else??

Your class has a reliable burst heal. A sorc does not. Should every sorc main ask for your burst heal to be removed too since there isn't much choice for Sorc in terms of healing? Do you see the irony here in your statement?

Your class can still perform well with or without Mist Form. I dare you to say the same about a Sorc not slotting Streak/Ball of Lightning.

I dare say it. I don't use streak or BoL.

But I do use a restoration staff back bar for healing.

Melzo

StaticWave wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

@Melzo

I can counter every single argument you’ve made quite easily, but knowing that you’ve commented on other Sorc threads before, there’s really no point to.

In fact, I don’t even need to make an argument. My previous comments towards other people’s arguments can also be used to counter yours. It’s your part to read them before making an argument against mine.

The author of the post claims that the foggy form spoils the personality of the sorcerer, but why are your arguments better ?? Most of the sorcerer's skills are in excellent condition and, unlike the necromancer, who has nothing, almost everything works fine for you. You need a skill with direct healing, but you literally equate the sorcerer with the rest of the classes. Sorcerers still use streak despite the changes in the misty form, then after changing the mana of the shield to a direct heal, you literally spoil your class. You deliberately want to take what others have and take away what is unique in you. This is some kind of nonsense, given that this topic was raised in order to preserve the uniqueness of the sorcerer.

Both Necro and Sorc need love, but make your own buff thread instead of bashing other people’s thread, especially when its intention is to buff their class.

It’s foul play and disrespectful. I will cease further discussion with you from now on. There is no point arguing with someone who can’t follow other arguments and quite frankly, I don’t want to repeat my arguments several times just because you can’t follow them.

Seriously? I don't care about the sorcerer. If you write how to strengthen the sorcerer, I do not mind. But the topic is about a specific skill. And anyone can use this skill. If you want to somehow help the sorcerer, then act, but you don’t need to break the general skills just because it is somehow similar to the sorcerer’s skill. My class has a very limited pool of skills that I can use. And the author of the post wants to destroy it just because it looks like a sorcerer's skill.

When you touch on the general skills that everyone can use then this applies to each player. At the same pace, you can remove the acceleration, because the warden has a practical copy of this skill, or finishing off the NB, since two-handed weapons have the same skill. There are a lot of skills similar to each other, and two examples of which I gave are even worse than the streak and mist form.

I have read a lot of arguments from both you and your partner, but you literally want everything and don't sacrifice anything at once. In the next patch, you will get 10 critical damage and a 5% damage bonus. I just read this today and was surprised because I didn’t expect that there would be a sorcerer who already has crazy damage to get a buff.

In another thread, you or someone else wrote that the health-dependent shield has a flaw, but it’s funny to me to look at it when only 10 percent of health is taken from you and this reduces the shield by 5-10%, on the other hand, I can remove 10 percent of health from the warden and reduce his healing by 24 percent. And at 45-50 thousand health, it will heal by 5 ka. That's the difference in the arguments. For one class, I reduce the shield by 5-10 percent, and for the other class, I reduce the heal by 30 percent (including health reduction).

Bushido2513

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Do you primarily play Cyrodiil or Battlegrounds with your sorc?

I prefer Battlegrounds. I don't have to worry about a 15 min horse simulator just to find some action.
Battlegrounds makes death have little consequence. In a few seconds I'll be back in the action.
So no point in trying to run. If you're going to die, just try to at least take somebody down with you.
On average I get more kills on my sorc than my tanky warden. But my sorc dies many more times than my warden.
So not dying seems to not have much value.

But I agree with turtle bot, I think a burst heal is a better way to go.
Only being good at running away doesn't sound too fun.

I play in IC and Battlegrounds mostly, only because Cyrodiil is laggy on my platform otherwise I would be there more. It's fairly easy to find action in IC and my skills work so it's almost my primary and I Q for BGs inbetween.


Well I think it works either way it's just that a burst heal could take away some of the cutting edge of what I enjoy about sorc. Running away for sorc used to mean that you got away from the opponent while building up ult and came back with a storm of overloads, db, or whatever burst combo. But this just doesn't work as well when you can't really get away from damage. That's why I say both could work.

If you add a burst heal you run the risk of just being pretty much any other class in the game at the moment with little identity.

StaticWave

Bushido2513 wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Do you primarily play Cyrodiil or Battlegrounds with your sorc?

I prefer Battlegrounds. I don't have to worry about a 15 min horse simulator just to find some action.
Battlegrounds makes death have little consequence. In a few seconds I'll be back in the action.
So no point in trying to run. If you're going to die, just try to at least take somebody down with you.
On average I get more kills on my sorc than my tanky warden. But my sorc dies many more times than my warden.
So not dying seems to not have much value.

But I agree with turtle bot, I think a burst heal is a better way to go.
Only being good at running away doesn't sound too fun.

I play in IC and Battlegrounds mostly, only because Cyrodiil is laggy on my platform otherwise I would be there more. It's fairly easy to find action in IC and my skills work so it's almost my primary and I Q for BGs inbetween.


Well I think it works either way it's just that a burst heal could take away some of the cutting edge of what I enjoy about sorc. Running away for sorc used to mean that you got away from the opponent while building up ult and came back with a storm of overloads, db, or whatever burst combo. But this just doesn't work as well when you can't really get away from damage. That's why I say both could work.

If you add a burst heal you run the risk of just being pretty much any other class in the game at the moment with little identity.

Not giving a burst heal to Sorc is fine, but they also need to remove the free sources of movement speed that they gave to everyone over the years.

We can’t really say Sorc is the fastest or most mobile class anymore when everyone can reach 200% speed cap or slot Mist Form to mimic Ball of Lightning.

acastanza_ESO

Melzo wrote: »

Seriously? I don't care about the sorcerer. If you write how to strengthen the sorcerer, I do not mind. But the topic is about a specific skill.

No, this is a thread about how the changes to this skill impacted Sorcerers specifically. If, as you've said, you don't care about Sorcerer please feel free to ignore the thread.

casparian

StaticWave wrote: »

Why play sorc when other classes have better healing and can also copy Sorc's identity?

At this point every class has rightly been able to ask a version of this question: "Why play [class] when other classes have better [gameplay feature] and can also copy [class's] identity?" We Templars started complaining about this back when Woeler gave DKs and Wardens better houses than we had, despite Templars being the only ones who needed to "build a house" in the first place because we were the only ones to lack mobility and disengagement options. It turned out that ZOS' plan was just to erase the class distinctions that we thought the game was supposed to come with: now Templars aren't immobile and don't need to build a house, because all classes are supposed to play the same and have the same tools.

This isn't an accident; on the contrary, ZOS has put years of study and effort into breaking down class distinctions. They want the difference between classes to be primarily about "class fantasy", not actual performance or gameplay. Yes, that's a bad goal, but it's their goal and they have been very intentional about it for years at this point.

What Sorcs are seeing now is just an artifact of the slow pace at which ZOS' homogenization program moves. Just give it another patch or two and Sorc will be the purple version of every other class.

OBJnoob

@casparian To be fair I think the players themselves have had an impact on this trend. Wardens begged until they got a stun. Templars are currently begging because they don't have delayed burst. Night blades begged until they got a decent heal. DKs begged until they became king of every mountain.

I mean now we're talking about how bad swift jewelry is and how sorcs aren't fast anymore but I think most of us recall when sorcs would streak from one side of the map to the other and nobody could catch up.

Everybody covets what other classes have and only the mains of that class complain when a reasonable facsimile is produced. So now every class has everything... Or is begging for what they don't.

We left the rock paper scissors rubric behind years ago. Now vampires and potions can make you go invisible. Detect pots have an absurd range. But hurricane doesn't bring NBs out of stealth. There's very few true counters left for anything. Which honestly exacerbates class balance issues. Because the balance has to be more perfect than it used to be back when, say, a sorc could bombard a DK all day and the DK just had to sit there and take it.

-shrug- just my opinion obviously. But it's what I've observed.

Bushido2513

StaticWave wrote: »

Not giving a burst heal to Sorc is fine, but they also need to remove the free sources of movement speed that they gave to everyone over the years.

We can’t really say Sorc is the fastest or most mobile class anymore when everyone can reach 200% speed cap or slot Mist Form to mimic Ball of Lightning.

I wouldn't say free but they certainly don't end up in much of a sacrifice. Not saying that to dispute your point but to more so note how there are just too many sources of speed.

CP
Jewelry
Expedition on multiple skills and sets

If some of the sources of speed were just removed or toned down at least there would be more of a requirement for sacrifice.

Of course some might say why try to kill of speed just so sorc can shine. I would say that I still believe it's a good idea to make something scarce so that it's more rewarding for those that sacrifice to go one direction or the other.

Bushido2513

OBJnoob wrote: »

@casparian To be fair I think the players themselves have had an impact on this trend. Wardens begged until they got a stun. Templars are currently begging because they don't have delayed burst. Night blades begged until they got a decent heal. DKs begged until they became king of every mountain.

I mean now we're talking about how bad swift jewelry is and how sorcs aren't fast anymore but I think most of us recall when sorcs would streak from one side of the map to the other and nobody could catch up.

Everybody covets what other classes have and only the mains of that class complain when a reasonable facsimile is produced. So now every class has everything... Or is begging for what they don't.

I don't think it was that simple. I feel like we started out asking for smart solutions to balance issues and then just begged for what we could get when those weren't available.

Obviously some people just want an I win button and I get that but I think overall more would be happy with a game that worked where all classes had a particular way of being competitive with identity.


Take for example sorc, on mag sorc people would of course take a burst heal but originally the request was mostly for better but not OP shields. On stam sorc yes a burst heal would be fine but I think those that main sorc would have just as much or more so been ok with a buff to crit surge or something that leaned into the theme / kit in general.

As players we don't always know or look for elegant solutions but I have feeling that most would prefer them over the dumbed down copy and paste solution.

OBJnoob

Oh I don't think it was ALL what I said. I think it's absolutely both. And I wasn't saying "begging" as an insult. Just the word I chose.

Basically if sorc gets a burst heal, NB gets a delayed burst skill, and Necro gets some buffs (like literally the buff they need is to have in class buffs,) then we're all the same.

I'm generalizing really heavily, so no doubt there are examples where I'm wrong. But still.

It's also probably true that as new guild skills and gear sets get introduced there are only so many creative ways the devs can phrase "does X damage" so things get a little redundant and duplicative after 8 years.

Anyway... I'll try to say something more on topic now.

I still think the new mist form is fine. The old one was terrible... Let's not forget people misting around 15 enemies for half an hour. Coming out to cast a burst heal and go right back in. So they changed it. Again, there's only so many creative ideas they can have. Does this kinda step on sorcs toes? Absolutely. But the skill is much better now.

Like I said earlier, I think it'd be cool if Ball of Lightning absorbed gap closers for a second or two. And I think you had countered that it'd be better if it left a shadow image but I don't like that as much. Too "engine guardiany" I'd rather it ONLY effect gap closers, as that pertains most to this discussion. The point isn't to have another thing to LoS around it's to have a mobility advantage.

Another idea... Just take swift jewelry out of the game. Give the trait a different effect... In keeping with its name of course. Something fun for SOME builds rather than beneficial to all. Increase light attack speed. Decrease channel time.

Anti_Virus

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

yeah, but the difference is that burst only takes 1 second of setup and can be delivered from range. 2 seconds if you want to use curse to make it a 30k damage 3 pointer. I've eaten some nasty shalks/bones+dawnbreaker combos but that's not in league with what sorcs can do... from relative safety... every other second.

Every piece of sorc's burst can be blocked, dodged, cleansed, and heck, even outrun. If you die to a Sorc burst alone, I'm sorry but that's a player issue.

You cannot block haunting curse

Turtle_Bot

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Things like this are why sorcs need a proper, reliable burst heal, mobility has become too free and too available for everyone without even needing to build for it that to not have a proper, reliable burst heal is just a complete hinderance at this point.

I will say that I think mobility as a whole needs a review because it's just too easy to reach cap without sacrificing that much and that just shouldn't be.

That being said, even with a burst heal you still don't likely win that fight just based on the description and classes involved. You'd just have an easier time but that's about it. Personally I'd rather see a scenario where your pursuers were either as slows as they used to normally be or were fast but then didn't have as much damage.

Sorry, work has kept me super busy past couple days.

But yes, it's highly unlikely I would have won that fight had I tried to turn and burn, but at least with a reliable heal I would have felt comfortable to at least give that fight a real go as a 2v1 instead of trying to get them to split up via creating distance, which didn't happen since they knew enough to know that splitting up would be detrimental to them.

Turtle_Bot

Melzo wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I just want to add to this, something I experienced during the last few days of MYM that shows just how absurdly free and available mobility is currently and why streak is just not as strong as it used to be.

On my sorc (my main), I had a plar and a DK chasing me from bleakers to aleswell (it started as a red faction stack chasing me as blues had just pushed bleakers but got repelled by the time I got there, but the DK and plar were the only 2 from that faction stack that were bloodthristy enough to continue the chase beyond the first 100m instead of breaking off to push aleswell farm).

Despite using LoS, rock formations, trees, terrain elevation and the stun from streak to my advantage to slow them down, both of these players on these supposedly slow "protect the house" classes were not only able to keep up with my streaking sorc, but were able to apply constant pressure and CC (fossilize and javelin) the entire length of the chase, enough pressure that had I stopped moving to actually properly engage them in combat, I would have easily been overwhelmed and killed. They also weren't even using mist form either, just simply sprinting and major expedition from RaT.

This is how free and absurd mobility has gotten in the game by now. 2 of the slowest classes in the game are not only able to easily keep up with what is supposed to be the most mobile class in the game, a streaking sorc, but also have the resources available to constantly apply pressure and CC the entire time over what was well over a kilometer of distance travelled through various terrain and obstacles that are supposed to favor the sorcs mobility.

Things like this are why sorcs need a proper, reliable burst heal, mobility has become too free and too available for everyone without even needing to build for it that to not have a proper, reliable burst heal is just a complete hinderance at this point.

The streak is not intended to cross Cyrodiil in a couple of minutes. This skill is designed to either stun and break away from the enemy and perform your own combo, or use a streak as part of a combo to stun after applying a curse or finishing move. And all your arguments that they caught up with you there because now the developers have changed the mist form is nonsense. I can easily build a DK chain based build and add some speed to meet the 180-200 requirement. Any DK could have done this since the beginning of the game. And they didn't need the mist form. If you entered the game to run away from the enemy, you can take the 4th stage of vampirism and the set corresponding to the name of your gameplay.

Streak and mist form are similar skills but they are not the same. There are many similar skills and the situation with them is much worse. For example, the wings of the warden and the acceleration, or finishing the stamina of the NB and finishing off the two-handed weapon. The skills from the two examples are really a problem as they are almost exact copies of each other. And the identity of the sorcerer is unaffected in general, since the sorcerer has all the skills that are relevant to this day. If you want to find out who has identity problems, go to the necromancer. He only has one skill and that is broken.

In fact, you don't use the mist form and don't want others to use it. But in my class there is not much choice. Do you want to ruin the gameplay for everyone else??

I suggest to read my post again, I said they caught up to me NOT using mist form.

I never said I wanted mist form to be removed.

I have also stated countless times on this thread and others that I like mist form, it's a fun ability, but it clearly does infringe on sorcerers class identity as a fast mobile class with a teleport ability.

I also said that because other classes have much better healing and defense than sorcerer, there is an imbalance created by giving other classes access to an ability that is very similar to sorcerers main defensive tool of streak/ball of lightning without giving sorcerers access to a reliable heal (the heal can be weaker than other class heals, but it must be reliable).

Turtle_Bot

Bushido2513 wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Do you primarily play Cyrodiil or Battlegrounds with your sorc?

I prefer Battlegrounds. I don't have to worry about a 15 min horse simulator just to find some action.
Battlegrounds makes death have little consequence. In a few seconds I'll be back in the action.
So no point in trying to run. If you're going to die, just try to at least take somebody down with you.
On average I get more kills on my sorc than my tanky warden. But my sorc dies many more times than my warden.
So not dying seems to not have much value.

But I agree with turtle bot, I think a burst heal is a better way to go.
Only being good at running away doesn't sound too fun.

I play in IC and Battlegrounds mostly, only because Cyrodiil is laggy on my platform otherwise I would be there more. It's fairly easy to find action in IC and my skills work so it's almost my primary and I Q for BGs inbetween.


Well I think it works either way it's just that a burst heal could take away some of the cutting edge of what I enjoy about sorc. Running away for sorc used to mean that you got away from the opponent while building up ult and came back with a storm of overloads, db, or whatever burst combo. But this just doesn't work as well when you can't really get away from damage. That's why I say both could work.

If you add a burst heal you run the risk of just being pretty much any other class in the game at the moment with little identity.

I do agree that toning down the abundant (and free) movement speed access would be preferable, but we have seen the outcry over various much more minor nerfs done to other classes (especially NB), I can only imagine the outcry if ZOS actually does tone down movement speed as much as would be required to give sorc its identity of speed back.

The other option, which would be even less popular, would be to add cast times to every classes burst heal. This would be even worse than toning down movement speed.

Hence why I think a reliable burst heal for sorcerer is just going to have be looked at and tested, it's the only thing that will not upset the majority of the playerbase while also fixing sorcerers healing issues in PvP.

The other option I can see them looking into could be the interrupt immunity mechanic when summoning pets/casting dark exchange/morphs, with arcanist introducing this new mechanic that could be what they do to fix sorcs healing issues (pets still unreliable since they can still die and take 2 slots, but at least dark deal/conversion would be much less punishing to use and actually work with CC immunity like its supposed to).

Whatever they decide to do though, they need to remove that hard lock on the skills when its interrupted, it's bad enough being stunned from an interrupt, but that 3 second hard lock preventing recasting even after breaking free is just way too much on-top of having the heal denied.

Turtle_Bot

Anti_Virus wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

yeah, but the difference is that burst only takes 1 second of setup and can be delivered from range. 2 seconds if you want to use curse to make it a 30k damage 3 pointer. I've eaten some nasty shalks/bones+dawnbreaker combos but that's not in league with what sorcs can do... from relative safety... every other second.

Every piece of sorc's burst can be blocked, dodged, cleansed, and heck, even outrun. If you die to a Sorc burst alone, I'm sorry but that's a player issue.

You cannot block haunting curse

You can block to reduce its damage, but it cannot be dodged like the rest of sorcs burst can. To make up for not being dodgeable it can be cleansed though, which is extremely common currently with wardens and Mara's balm everywhere.

Turtle_Bot

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Not giving a burst heal to Sorc is fine, but they also need to remove the free sources of movement speed that they gave to everyone over the years.

We can’t really say Sorc is the fastest or most mobile class anymore when everyone can reach 200% speed cap or slot Mist Form to mimic Ball of Lightning.

I wouldn't say free but they certainly don't end up in much of a sacrifice. Not saying that to dispute your point but to more so note how there are just too many sources of speed.

CP
Jewelry
Expedition on multiple skills and sets

If some of the sources of speed were just removed or toned down at least there would be more of a requirement for sacrifice.

Of course some might say why try to kill of speed just so sorc can shine. I would say that I still believe it's a good idea to make something scarce so that it's more rewarding for those that sacrifice to go one direction or the other.

true, it's technically not free (at least the in combat movement speed) for most classes (NB is the exception here since it would be slotting its 2 sources of expedition even if those skill didn't have those buffs included), but it is so abundant and cheap to add into a build without giving up anything significant in return that it is close enough to be considered free.

StaticWave

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I also said that because other classes have much better healing and defense than sorcerer, there is an imbalance created by giving other classes access to an ability that is very similar to sorcerers main defensive tool of streak/ball of lightning without giving sorcerers access to a reliable heal (the heal can be weaker than other class heals, but it must be reliable).

I believe both of us agreed that Dark Deal would be the perfect candidate for a reliable burst heal that's also weaker than other class heals. It's already used in almost every Sorc build, has a smaller but still decent burst heal, and gives decent recoveries.

One of the morphs needs to have its cast time removed completely, then its resource return reduced for balance. The other morph can stay the same as it is. Even if Dark Conversion/Dark Deal restore 50% or even 60% less resources per cast, it would still be a better ability than its current version just because of that cast time removal.

Turtle_Bot

StaticWave wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I also said that because other classes have much better healing and defense than sorcerer, there is an imbalance created by giving other classes access to an ability that is very similar to sorcerers main defensive tool of streak/ball of lightning without giving sorcerers access to a reliable heal (the heal can be weaker than other class heals, but it must be reliable).

I believe both of us agreed that Dark Deal would be the perfect candidate for a reliable burst heal that's also weaker than other class heals. It's already used in almost every Sorc build, has a smaller but still decent burst heal, and gives decent recoveries.

One of the morphs needs to have its cast time removed completely, then its resource return reduced for balance. The other morph can stay the same as it is. Even if Dark Conversion/Dark Deal restore 50% or even 60% less resources per cast, it would still be a better ability than its current version just because of that cast time removal.

Yep, this was one of my suggested changes, people still didn't like it and shouted it down without even bothering to read the nerfs it would get as a trade off for being instant cast. The other option I had was to have the tooltips kept the same, make it instant cast (or heavily reduced cast time of 0.3-0.5 seconds), but the heal and resource restore were delayed by 1 second, this keeps it resulting in the same overall time to heal as it currently is, just less detrimental to use and much harder to punish when going defensive than it currently is, allowing sorcs to not be forced to run away for ages at the first sign of pressure or die (or crutch on Mara's Balm proc).

I'm of the opinion that those people won't be happy no matter what is done to address this clear issue with sorcs and just want to see the class put into a state where it's completely unplayable (essentially removed), so at this point, just give sorcs the full power dark deal/conversion and make it instant cast, those people are not going to be happy if its done this way or done in a balanced way, so might as well make sorcs happy at least.

StaticWave

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I also said that because other classes have much better healing and defense than sorcerer, there is an imbalance created by giving other classes access to an ability that is very similar to sorcerers main defensive tool of streak/ball of lightning without giving sorcerers access to a reliable heal (the heal can be weaker than other class heals, but it must be reliable).

I believe both of us agreed that Dark Deal would be the perfect candidate for a reliable burst heal that's also weaker than other class heals. It's already used in almost every Sorc build, has a smaller but still decent burst heal, and gives decent recoveries.

One of the morphs needs to have its cast time removed completely, then its resource return reduced for balance. The other morph can stay the same as it is. Even if Dark Conversion/Dark Deal restore 50% or even 60% less resources per cast, it would still be a better ability than its current version just because of that cast time removal.

Yep, this was one of my suggested changes, people still didn't like it and shouted it down without even bothering to read the nerfs it would get as a trade off for being instant cast. The other option I had was to have the tooltips kept the same, make it instant cast (or heavily reduced cast time of 0.3-0.5 seconds), but the heal and resource restore were delayed by 1 second, this keeps it resulting in the same overall time to heal as it currently is, just less detrimental to use and much harder to punish when going defensive than it currently is, allowing sorcs to not be forced to run away for ages at the first sign of pressure or die (or crutch on Mara's Balm proc).

I'm of the opinion that those people won't be happy no matter what is done to address this clear issue with sorcs and just want to see the class put into a state where it's completely unplayable (essentially removed), so at this point, just give sorcs the full power dark deal/conversion and make it instant cast, those people are not going to be happy if its done this way or done in a balanced way, so might as well make sorcs happy at least.

Yea, since it doesn't scale with offensive stats, nobody has to worry about a sorc that can streak and have a powerful burst heal. It would just be a reliable heal that allows a sorc to stay in the fight longer instead of streaking away every time.

In the case that sorc does not receive any burst heal at all, then I think it's fair to ask for a removal of easy sources of movement speed.

Mayrael

Melzo wrote: »

Even combining two skills of a skeleton archer necromancer and a skill that gives 6k armor, it will still be worse than one skill of a sorcerer that gives armor.

Anti_Virus wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

yeah, but the difference is that burst only takes 1 second of setup and can be delivered from range. 2 seconds if you want to use curse to make it a 30k damage 3 pointer. I've eaten some nasty shalks/bones+dawnbreaker combos but that's not in league with what sorcs can do... from relative safety... every other second.

Every piece of sorc's burst can be blocked, dodged, cleansed, and heck, even outrun. If you die to a Sorc burst alone, I'm sorry but that's a player issue.

You cannot block haunting curse

Sorcerer has been my main for many years, and when I see rather biased discussions about how weak the Sorcerer class is, an ironic smile appears on my face. Ladies and gentlemen, let's respect ourselves; attempts to enchant reality will not change it.

Specifically, many strong properties of Sorcerer skills are presented here as weaknesses. For example, the Twilight Matriarch, which constantly dies in PvP. It's both true and false. In situations where the Sorcerer is surrounded by a much larger enemy force, yes, the Matriarch will die immediately. However, in 1v1 or 1v2 situations, things are completely different. Not only does the pet provide free damage over time, but it also acts as a kind of decoy because the opponent, in their attempt to kill the pet, stops focusing so much on the Sorcerer. Let's not deceive ourselves, summoning the pet again (even with a cast time) on a class that can stun you and create distance within one second is not particularly demanding.

Similarly, every time when discussing the removal of the cast time from Dark Deal/Conversion, it's conveniently overlooked that this skill provides unmatched sustain.

Likewise, Critical Surge. Only someone who hasn't played as a Sorcerer can believe that the heal from this skill is useless or weak. Even with a 30% crit chance, the heal procs almost every second - dots, weaving, enchantments/poisons, Crushing Shock (yes I do know it's not sorcerers skill, but it synergises well with critical surge and sroc in general) dealing damage three times per GCD, and so on. All of this significantly increases the Sorcerer's survivability.

I know I'll soon be shouted down, but the strength and uniqueness of the Sorcerer lie not in a single skill but in the combination of its still unique skills and options, unavailable to others.

That's why if someone tries to convince me that Mist Form is a threat to a Streak Sorcerer, all I can do is burst out laughing. Anyone who has used these two skills sees a huge difference in the power and ease of use of each.

If Mist Form is so good, why do so few people use it? Why haven't Sorcerers switched to it? Why don't they use it alternately with Streak, having two separate teleports with different cooldowns? The answer is simple: reality has verified Mist Form, and it turned out to be an interesting skill but nowhere near the power of Streak. So, the assumption that Sorcerer has had its identity stolen is incorrect.

PS. Someone mentioned earlier that if someone doesn't play as a Sorcerer, they shouldn't comment here. That's not true because each of us, even if we don't play as a Sorcerer, plays against them and has the right to express their opinion.

That's it, I've added my two cents and I don't intend to revisit this thread. Thank you for your attention.

LukosCreyden

I thought sorc's identity was the obnoxiously awful pets they are forced to use?

Mayrael

And one more thing. An anecdote from the past. Back when I used to play as a Sorcerer, I used a certain combo that almost nobody else was using at the time. It went like this: Endless Fury -> Curse -> Rune Cage (and here's where it was unique because most sorcerers used streak or destructive reach, which used to deal instant damage and knock back) -> Frags. Why was it unique and strong? Because back then, Rune Cage was an undodgeable and unblockable stun with one unique property - the cast was instant, but due to the animation, it had a slight delay. By the time it actually CC'd my target, Frags was hitting them simultaneously, allowing me to land Curse, Frags, light attack weaves, and Endless Fury (if they were in the execute range) all at the same time, while my target was unable to dodge or block. This combo was so deadly it almost felt like cheating to use it, and guess what happened?
Sorcerers complained that Rune Cage was too weak, and ZOS buffed it to deal damage when the stun was broken. This made the combo even stronger, and every single sorcerer started using it. However, a few months later, Rune Cage was changed to be dodgeable, which killed this combo.

The moral of the story? Don't ask for too many buffs when the class is in a good state, because you might end up weaker than before.

Bushido2513

Mayrael wrote: »

Sorcerer has been my main for many years, and when I see rather biased discussions about how weak the Sorcerer class is, an ironic smile appears on my face. Ladies and gentlemen, let's respect ourselves; attempts to enchant reality will not change it.

Specifically, many strong properties of Sorcerer skills are presented here as weaknesses. For example, the Twilight Matriarch, which constantly dies in PvP. It's both true and false. In situations where the Sorcerer is surrounded by a much larger enemy force, yes, the Matriarch will die immediately. However, in 1v1 or 1v2 situations, things are completely different. Not only does the pet provide free damage over time, but it also acts as a kind of decoy because the opponent, in their attempt to kill the pet, stops focusing so much on the Sorcerer. Let's not deceive ourselves, summoning the pet again (even with a cast time) on a class that can stun you and create distance within one second is not particularly demanding.

This is true however PVP usually doesn't happen on average in a 1v1 or 1v2 scenario when you look at the most common situations. So yeah you're right if I limit myself to those scenarios the pet becomes possibly useful. But this isn't really accounting for what mostly happens in game which are larger fights, multiple gankers, bombs, etc.

To put it another way let's just look at how many 1vx sorcs are doing it without the pet. Now these same players do come into 1v1 and 1v2 scenarios but still just don't find the pet worth the slot. So let's not make it out that something that's situational is good when it doesn't apply to a higher percentage of the actual pvp experience.

Mayrael wrote: »

Similarly, every time when discussing the removal of the cast time from Dark Deal/Conversion, it's conveniently overlooked that this skill provides unmatched sustain.

Static and others already said that they'd be ok with changing the sustain provided to offset this and most have agreed that it would be op to leave as is but remove the cast time.

Mayrael wrote: »

Likewise, Critical Surge. Only someone who hasn't played as a Sorcerer can believe that the heal from this skill is useless or weak. Even with a 30% crit chance, the heal procs almost every second - dots, weaving, enchantments/poisons, Crushing Shock (yes I do know it's not sorcerers skill, but it synergises well with critical surge and sroc in general) dealing damage three times per GCD, and so on. All of this significantly increases the Sorcerer's survivability.

I know I'll soon be shouted down, but the strength and uniqueness of the Sorcerer lie not in a single skill but in the combination of its still unique skills and options, unavailable to others.

Eh I would say that crit surge just needs a minor buff. In all my uses of it I've always felt like it just needed a wee bit more of a heal but I can admit that too much of a tweak could easily make it op

Mayrael wrote: »

That's why if someone tries to convince me that Mist Form is a threat to a Streak Sorcerer, all I can do is burst out laughing. Anyone who has used these two skills sees a huge difference in the power and ease of use of each.

If Mist Form is so good, why do so few people use it? Why haven't Sorcerers switched to it? Why don't they use it alternately with Streak, having two separate teleports with different cooldowns? The answer is simple: reality has verified Mist Form, and it turned out to be an interesting skill but nowhere near the power of Streak. So, the assumption that Sorcerer has had its identity stolen is incorrect.

I believe the better comparison was to ball of lightning. Though in your opinion above you're isolating the skill and I would think that the point has been made several times that it's not just about having mist form but having mist form in a situation where movement speed is so casually high. Mist for in a vacuum copies some of idea of BOL and that's one thing but it's adding movement in a game where movement is so plentiful already which further pulls sorc away from the identity of being highly mobile.

Personally I just think the issue is that they are too similar and even if the actual function isn't an issue that it's an issue in terms of class theme/identity being eroded.

Bushido2513

Mayrael wrote: »

And one more thing. An anecdote from the past. Back when I used to play as a Sorcerer, I used a certain combo that almost nobody else was using at the time. It went like this: Endless Fury -> Curse -> Rune Cage (and here's where it was unique because most sorcerers used streak or destructive reach, which used to deal instant damage and knock back) -> Frags. Why was it unique and strong? Because back then, Rune Cage was an undodgeable and unblockable stun with one unique property - the cast was instant, but due to the animation, it had a slight delay. By the time it actually CC'd my target, Frags was hitting them simultaneously, allowing me to land Curse, Frags, light attack weaves, and Endless Fury (if they were in the execute range) all at the same time, while my target was unable to dodge or block. This combo was so deadly it almost felt like cheating to use it, and guess what happened?
Sorcerers complained that Rune Cage was too weak, and ZOS buffed it to deal damage when the stun was broken. This made the combo even stronger, and every single sorcerer started using it. However, a few months later, Rune Cage was changed to be dodgeable, which killed this combo.

The moral of the story? Don't ask for too many buffs when the class is in a good state, because you might end up weaker than before.

I'm not sure that's a great example there but more indicative of ZOS' natural dev cycle. I mean it's been clear now that they don't exactly respond to player feedback in ways we'd expect. So it's equally possible those changes would have happened no matter what anyone said.

I'll give an example. Did anyone ask for the specific buffs they just listed in the pts for sorc? Not really, we asked for other buffs but getting buffs in this game is currently less about what the player says they want and more about just rolling dice and seeing what ZOS spits out.

So please don't ask like asking for buffs ever leads to much of a change in whatever direction ZOS had already planned to go in. They just do what they pretty much want regardless.

StaticWave

Mayrael wrote: »

Specifically, many strong properties of Sorcerer skills are presented here as weaknesses. For example, the Twilight Matriarch, which constantly dies in PvP. It's both true and false. In situations where the Sorcerer is surrounded by a much larger enemy force, yes, the Matriarch will die immediately. However, in 1v1 or 1v2 situations, things are completely different. Not only does the pet provide free damage over time, but it also acts as a kind of decoy because the opponent, in their attempt to kill the pet, stops focusing so much on the Sorcerer. Let's not deceive ourselves, summoning the pet again (even with a cast time) on a class that can stun you and create distance within one second is not particularly demanding.

I had 4 fights today against 4 separate pet sorcs, 1 was a healer and 3 were DPS. I wish I had recorded all of those encounters for you to see just how easy it is to counter a pet sorc.

Basically what happened in the fights against the DPS sorcs was: I killed their pet in 3-4 seconds, they instantly stopped their offense to try recasting it. I interrupted their channel, put it on a 3s cool down, and forced them to retreat. By killing the pet, not only did I remove their burst heal from the fight, but I also forced them to be defensive until they could recast the pet. This also indirectly allowed me to have some breathing room to heal myself up as I had already forced them off offense. You don’t have this issue on a class with a real burst heal, since it’s always there when you need it. You would just bar swap, block cast your burst heal until full HP, then resume your offense.

Against the healer pet sorc, what happened was: I was getting close to killing the pet, he would spam the heal to keep it from dying. Think about it, by just killing the pet, I forced him to waste resources just to keep it alive. None of his teammates were at low health, so he wasted his mag for literally nothing. Again, you don’t have this issue on another class because the heal is always there.

Mayrael wrote: »

Similarly, every time when discussing the removal of the cast time from Dark Deal/Conversion, it's conveniently overlooked that this skill provides unmatched sustain.

The problem with Dark Deal sustain in this meta is it’s not really needed. When fully buffed, my stam regen sits at 2k before Essence Thief, and my mag regen is over 1.6k. I don’t really use Dark Deal for the majority of the fight because I over-sustain. I even have trouble keeping up the 10s stam return because I’m always full of stam for most of my fights.

What I primarily use Dark Deal for is the burst heal, and this is where Dark Deal is really falling behind. It’s not because of the heal tooltip, it’s because of the channel. I can’t block cast when using it, and it can be interrupted and go on cool down, not good and reliable at all.

Mayrael wrote: »

Likewise, Critical Surge. Only someone who hasn't played as a Sorcerer can believe that the heal from this skill is useless or weak. Even with a 30% crit chance, the heal procs almost every second - dots, weaving, enchantments/poisons, Crushing Shock (yes I do know it's not sorcerers skill, but it synergises well with critical surge and sroc in general) dealing damage three times per GCD, and so on. All of this significantly increases the Sorcerer's survivability.

The heal is great, don't get me wrong. But it's also bad. You've indirectly said it yourself, the heal requires stacking multiple sources of damage just to have a chance of it proccing every second. Not even a guaranteed proc, but a chance to proc. Compared to Green Lotus or Leeching Strikes which guarantee a heal when you land a light attack, Crit Surge definitely sounds worse lol.

It doesn't help that ZoS changed Hurricane's tick frequency to once every 2 seconds instead of once every second, meaning you have less chances of proccing Surge. You would also have to stack DoTs, which limit build diversity, and you will still not have a decent up time. It also doesn't help that Sorc's "HoTs" are entirely offensive, so when the time requires you to be defensive you will literally not have any healing at all and have to rely on Streaking to create distance so you can be offensive again. But ZoS also gave everyone easier access to movement speed, so Streaking to create distance doesn't even function as it should anymore as everyone can just sprint up to you. Do you see the compounded issue here?

Mayrael wrote: »

If Mist Form is so good, why do so few people use it? Why haven't Sorcerers switched to it? Why don't they use it alternately with Streak, having two separate teleports with different cooldowns? The answer is simple: reality has verified Mist Form, and it turned out to be an interesting skill but nowhere near the power of Streak. So, the assumption that Sorcerer has had its identity stolen is incorrect.

Sorcs don't switch to Mist Form solely because of the slower activation. Sorc is a class with weak heals and requires everything to be fast to survive. Having an escape tool that activates slowly is not desirable, hence not many Sorc dropped Ball of Lightning for it. Not to mention Streak is almost mandatory because the class already lacks bar space for other abilities, and Streak just happens to give them a stun they need and an escape tool. If Frag got its stun back, people would drop Streak for Ball of Lightning.

Other classes don't use Mist Form because they haven't needed it yet. Think about it, if you can heal through damage on a Sorc, why would you use Ball of Lightning to create distance? The same logic applies to other classes. Most classes except Sorc have very good healing and can comfortably heal through damage, so they don't really need to slot it until they are overwhelmingly outnumbered. In that specific scenario, Mist Form will provide them a Ball of Lightning-like escape, Major Evasion, Major Expedition, and ~400 WD/SD for 6 seconds which also buffs their heals. It's just a better ability than Ball of Lightning for other classes.

OBJnoob

I enjoyed reading that @StaticWave that was a good circumspect explanation. Easy for me to say since I kinda agree anyway... But still, I think you explained it well.

Ultimately I think it's cool that sorcs are/were the class that heals through offense. It's a good identity to have. It's good to have any identity these days. But it does fail when there are more people hitting you than you can hit back, because the incoming damage doesn't stop if you can't force them to defend. Forcing 1 person out of 5 to defend still means you're being hit by 4.

Which... Honestly burst heals kinda have the same downfall. Easy to get trapped on your backbar spamming heals until you go OOM and die. Maybe the real problem is that all good sorc pvp abilities are single-target? Feel free to not respond to that. It's either insightful or just totally off topic and I'm not sure which.

And of course there's shields, which are kinda supposed to be the sorcs burst heal. They just aren't as efficient as healing because you can boost your damage and healing by the same margin with the same stat. Whereas to boost your shield you're using something that contributes to damage much less.

Turtle_Bot

Mayrael wrote: »

Sorcerer has been my main for many years, and when I see rather biased discussions about how weak the Sorcerer class is, an ironic smile appears on my face. Ladies and gentlemen, let's respect ourselves; attempts to enchant reality will not change it.

Love it how so many "Sorc mains" suddenly appear out of the woodwork to claim the class is strong any time an issue with the class is brought up yet you never see these same "sorc mains" trying to actually propose alternative balanced changes to the class that would allow the issue to be fixed without breaking the class.

Specifically, many strong properties of Sorcerer skills are presented here as weaknesses. For example, the Twilight Matriarch, which constantly dies in PvP. It's both true and false. In situations where the Sorcerer is surrounded by a much larger enemy force, yes, the Matriarch will die immediately. However, in 1v1 or 1v2 situations, things are completely different. Not only does the pet provide free damage over time, but it also acts as a kind of decoy because the opponent, in their attempt to kill the pet, stops focusing so much on the Sorcerer. Let's not deceive ourselves, summoning the pet again (even with a cast time) on a class that can stun you and create distance within one second is not particularly demanding.

Pets are so strong that nobody uses them outside of low level BGs, unorganized group play in a support capacity and cheesy dueling set-ups... Must be super OP..

As for actually responding to this, @Bushido pointed it out the best, pets are fine for 1v1 scenarios which is where they are supposed to excel in, but the problem is that those scenarios are not as frequent as people think outside of specifically forcing those scenarios (duels, sometimes in BGs or IC). As such, when building for an overall build that performs equally well under the most scenarios possible, pets just don't make the cut and as a result don't find their way onto the skill bars.

Similarly, every time when discussing the removal of the cast time from Dark Deal/Conversion, it's conveniently overlooked that this skill provides unmatched sustain.

Many times people proposing buffing dark deal/conversion by removing the cast time have said the sustain of this ability can be nerfed (sometimes by quite an extreme amount) to accommodate the instant cast time, but this proposed balance change (see nerf) gets completely ignored by everyone who is against fixing sorcs issues in favor of simply shouting "sorc is OP we can't buff it at all".

The other issue with this statement is that sustain in general has become insanely cheap and inherently easy to work into other classes builds currently thanks to sets like wretched vitality and abilities like battle roar passive, netch, rune, siphoning attacks, etc that dark deal and just isn't as overpoweringly strong in this area either (not saying it's weak, but other classes sustain options as well as sets have significantly reduced this gap).

Likewise, Critical Surge. Only someone who hasn't played as a Sorcerer can believe that the heal from this skill is useless or weak. Even with a 30% crit chance, the heal procs almost every second - dots, weaving, enchantments/poisons, Crushing Shock (yes I do know it's not sorcerers skill, but it synergises well with critical surge and sroc in general) dealing damage three times per GCD, and so on. All of this significantly increases the Sorcerer's survivability.

The issue with critical surge (and blood magic) is that it requires running multiple out of class abilities to have a chance of getting its healing where other classes just get that healing for doing nothing. Even similar abilities such as siphoning strikes, lotus flower only require landing regular light attacks (which are much more reliable than trying to build for crit on a class that has no inherent access to major prophecy/savagery to naturally grant proper crit chance).
Many times it has also been proposed that if sorcerers got easy in class access to this buff then crit surge could be reduced to compensate for this change, but it would tie this ability in to the class kit much better.

This is where another issue of class identity comes up (and is exacerbated by mist form being an alternative to ball of lightning), to reliably proc crit surge, you are now forcing sorcs to run out of class abilities for DoTs, spammable, breach, healing (vigor/resto staff) by which point, you're not even running a sorcerer anymore and this leads into your next point, uniqueness of sorcerer, you're not running a sorcerer, you're now running a blank class that slots 4 sorc abilities at most and the rest is global abilities that any other class can run.

I know I'll soon be shouted down, but the strength and uniqueness of the Sorcerer lie not in a single skill but in the combination of its still unique skills and options, unavailable to others.

see my point above, but sorcerer doesn't have a unique option that is unavailable to other classes via near equivalent methods. The closest remaining option is streak for its ability to gap close and stun, but considering the rest of sorcerers kit, this is mandatory on the class since without this combination, sorcerers would have to give up a stun, a gap closer/creator or damage, hence why mist form is compared to ball of lightning instead of streak.
- Ball of lightning = mist form
- Offense based healing, see jabs, siphoning attacks, swallow soul, burning embers, lotus flower, scythe, flurry, twin slashes morphs, draining shot, vamp ultimate, (probably more).
- Shields = dampen magic
- movement speed, see RaT, celerity CP, swift trait, wild hunt, refreshing path, concealed weapon, and more
- high burst, all classes rotate through having this or not, most other classes also get access to AoE versions of this (see NB/DK/cro bomb builds, wardens, DKs)

The things that sorc is supposed to have that is unique over other classes has long since been made available to other classes, but sorc was not given a reliable single bar slot burst heal to compensate for the other classes getting things to help them do what was supposed to be unique to sorcerers.

That's why if someone tries to convince me that Mist Form is a threat to a Streak Sorcerer, all I can do is burst out laughing. Anyone who has used these two skills sees a huge difference in the power and ease of use of each.

If Mist Form is so good, why do so few people use it? Why haven't Sorcerers switched to it? Why don't they use it alternately with Streak, having two separate teleports with different cooldowns? The answer is simple: reality has verified Mist Form, and it turned out to be an interesting skill but nowhere near the power of Streak. So, the assumption that Sorcerer has had its identity stolen is incorrect.

It was said before, but I will repeat it to ensure the message is understood. Other classes don't always run it because they don't need to run it.
Other classes have the healing available to them that they aren't forced into running away via mist form to try to survive and due to how free movement speed has become, mist form is not needed to keep up with a streaking sorc since they can simply run after the sorc and still keep up (as described in my example before).
As such, mist form has become an option for them to run if they want to, whereas sorc is forced to use streak because it has no other option available to it defensively speaking allowing it that reliable general survival in the majority of situations.

PS. Someone mentioned earlier that if someone doesn't play as a Sorcerer, they shouldn't comment here. That's not true because each of us, even if we don't play as a Sorcerer, plays against them and has the right to express their opinion.

That's it, I've added my two cents and I don't intend to revisit this thread. Thank you for your attention.

The person that was asked to not comment on here was asked because they have a history of baiting and bashing sorc threads in the past and refuse to play the class so only ever see it when it kills them (they have a negatively biased perspective of the class and use it to bash and derail threads without adding anything constructive to the discussion, just read their comments on this thread to see examples of this).

Mayrael wrote: »

And one more thing. An anecdote from the past. Back when I used to play as a Sorcerer, I used a certain combo that almost nobody else was using at the time. It went like this: Endless Fury -> Curse -> Rune Cage (and here's where it was unique because most sorcerers used streak or destructive reach, which used to deal instant damage and knock back) -> Frags. Why was it unique and strong? Because back then, Rune Cage was an undodgeable and unblockable stun with one unique property - the cast was instant, but due to the animation, it had a slight delay. By the time it actually CC'd my target, Frags was hitting them simultaneously, allowing me to land Curse, Frags, light attack weaves, and Endless Fury (if they were in the execute range) all at the same time, while my target was unable to dodge or block. This combo was so deadly it almost felt like cheating to use it, and guess what happened?
Sorcerers complained that Rune Cage was too weak, and ZOS buffed it to deal damage when the stun was broken. This made the combo even stronger, and every single sorcerer started using it. However, a few months later, Rune Cage was changed to be dodgeable, which killed this combo.

The moral of the story? Don't ask for too many buffs when the class is in a good state, because you might end up weaker than before.

The thing with this anecdote is that you're trying to say that asking for/proposing balanced changes that buff the class while at the same time scaling back the portions of the abilities that would become problematic would give the same result as a change that was not thought out and no balances were done to account for its buff.

I could say the same thing when in U33 I was using overload, frags, mages wrath and arterial burst as my combo on a melee DW magsorc build that could compete with other top classes of the time (even the recently buffed DK and pre-nerf plars).

If we want to talk about an OP range stun with no delay, and went through block and dodge, lets also talk about how fossilize used to have the same range as rune cage, but also had its current stun + root + damage, that was far more OP than rune cages strongest iteration, the only thing keeping it from being abused even more than it was, was due to DK being predominantly melee, meaning to combo with it you had to run destro or bow skills or gap closers which were ok, but not overpowered at the time, especially on a DK.

The point here is that asking for buffs without counter balance leads to issues (everyone knows this), but proposing buffs that also have good balance changes to prevent them from becoming issues is good for helping provide feedback for classes since they provide data on the issues of the class while also providing ideas for how to buff classes that need it without making them problematic if buffed at which point it then falls onto ZOS to actually think about making good balance decisions when they design their changes instead of always taking the lazy route and overbuffing abilities via adjusting tooltips without thinking about what is actually wrong with the ability itself.
It's the same with nerfs, ZOS needs to actually put effort into researching the why an ability is so strong, not just simply say oh, stun is too strong, nerf it into the ground. Rune cage was strong, but what it needed was either counter play (dodge roll) OR a delay (3 seconds) OR a smaller mix of both (1-1.5 second delay + able to be dodge rolled), instead they went to the extreme with both the counter play and the direct nerf (delay) which made it useless.
Again, this falls onto the combat and balance team to put in the effort and thought to get this right, to address the issue in a balanced way that will fix the issue that has been presented to them, without overbuffing or overnerfing the ability/set/class.