The problem with HP scaling Hardened Ward in PvP

StaticWave

So I’ve been messing around with HP-scaling Hardened Ward for a while now and I’ve got a couple issues:

1) Minor Mangle will indirectly reduce your shield size by 10% when lowering your max HP by 10%. This is not a problem with Mag-scaling shield, but it is for HP-scaling one.

2) You’re sacrificing a lot of damage to have a decent sized shield. Other classes don’t have this issue as their heals scale with max offensive stats - meaning they could have 40k HP as long as their WD/SD are also high.

The extra HP is a nice buffer for situations where you might have died if you had normal HP, but I don’t like the limited option that you have with Hardened Ward. As a stamsorc who wants to use Hardened Ward, you either have to build max mag or accept having lower damage if you go for max HP.

I would like for this ability to scale with max Stam instead of max HP. Sorcs in PvE already have Bound Aegis and Clanfear for tanking. There is no need for shield to scale with HP.

Bushido2513

It's true this isn't a good solution to making a sorc with good damage, it's more of what they've already been doing which is just making things harder to kill.

So for people that want to live longer it's a great option but yeah not really much help if you're going for damage. Also it probably makes more sense to give a high health buff to a class that actually supports high health in other passives or skills as well.

OBJnoob

Scale with max stam? But how is that different from having scaled with max magicka?

At a time when HP-scaling defensive measures are being looked at by most people as OP you're telling me it's too hard to have health and damage on a sorc? So much so that you essentially just want to revert the change?

I can see how this would be a boon to stamsorc (compared to when it was only max mag,) but it effectively puts magsorc right back where it started. And puts stamsorc back where magsorc started as well. Stacking a stat that is entirely underwhelming for anything else... All for an ability that, according to most, was underwhelming anyway.

Propose something else. Anything else.

Soarora

Why not just change the mag scaling to be based off mag or stam, whichever is higher? Tada, everyone gets a shield, all sorcs happy?

StaticWave

When is HP shield OP? I’ve literally been using it for 2 weeks lol. HP shield is just tanky. Your damage is not as good as a pure magsorc build, and you still get destroyed by certain classes.

Scaling off highest resource mean you could have some insane high shield numbers and would need to be tone down.

Zabagad

In my opinion:
- Stamsorc is not supposed to fight with shields.
- That was always the main difference between stam and mag Sorcs. Stam were fighting melee with heal and no shield - Mag the opposite.
- Shields should scale from SD and max. mag only - not from stam or WD at all.
- Even with the hybrid blabla I still like the (last?) small "identity" of a magSorc: Shields

But that is only my opinion

Edit: I know that SD almost always equals WD. It's more about illustrating where we come from.

ItsNotLiving

Zabagad wrote: »

In my opinion:
- Stamsorc is not supposed to fight with shields.
- That was always the main difference between stam and mag Sorcs. Stam were fighting melee with heal and no shield - Mag the opposite.
- Shields should scale from SD and max. mag only - not from stam or WD at all.
- Even with the hybrid blabla I still like the (last?) small "identity" of a magSorc: Shields

But that is only my opinion

Edit: I know that SD almost always equals WD. It's more about illustrating where we come from.

One of the light armor “bonuses” should be an big increase to shield strength.

jaws343

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

In my opinion:
- Stamsorc is not supposed to fight with shields.
- That was always the main difference between stam and mag Sorcs. Stam were fighting melee with heal and no shield - Mag the opposite.
- Shields should scale from SD and max. mag only - not from stam or WD at all.
- Even with the hybrid blabla I still like the (last?) small "identity" of a magSorc: Shields

But that is only my opinion

Edit: I know that SD almost always equals WD. It's more about illustrating where we come from.

One of the light armor “bonuses” should be an big increase to shield strength.

That is actually an interesting idea. Maybe a passive that grants like 15% to all shield strength if you wear 6 or more light armor pieces. Could be part of the Spell Warding passive.

Make it 6 or more to push a near full light armor stack, but also to keep it 1 over the requirement to run the light armor shield.

i11ionward

Can someone explain to me why sorc's healing is considered weak? My opinion is that sorc has great offensive healing. How much and how sorc heals is normal for a DD class.
Sorc has great healing for DD, it's other DD classes that have overpowered healing, in my opinion. Sorc doesn't need to improve healing, other DD classes need to nerf their healing.

i11ionward

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

One of the light armor “bonuses” should be an big increase to shield strength.

Light armor definitely requires up for pvp. It's a good offer.

jaws343

i11ionward wrote: »

Can someone explain to me why sorc's healing is considered weak? My opinion is that sorc has great offensive healing. How much and how sorc heals is normal for a DD class.
Sorc has great healing for DD, it's other DD classes that have overpowered healing, in my opinion. Sorc doesn't need to improve healing, other DD classes need to nerf their healing.

It's 2023, there is no such thing as a DD class. Every class is meant to be able to perform every role.

Sorc healing suffers due to the following:

• No healing improvement passives, so even out of class sourced heals are less effective for a sorc than for other classes.
• Dark Deal: Has a cast time that can be interrupted. So, you need a heal immediately but you have to wait 1 second for the heal. And if an enemy interrupts you, including PVE enemies, you get stunned and locked out of the skill for a beat. So, so much for that heal you needed.
• Matriarch: Requires two bar slots. Can die. If it dies, see Dark Deal problems, only two fold. The recast can be interrupted. And even if you get the recast, which take a second, you still have to hit it again to heal. And again, two bar slots for a heal.
• Crit Surge: Great in PVE against a lot of enemies or with a lot of dots out. But awful in PVP. It requires you to always be on the offensive in order to get heals. It doesn't scale, and requires crit chance to be high to be useful. And Sorc doesn't have good class sourced crit chance.
• Blood Magic: I mean, if you are relying on this for your heals you are not really trying to heal yourself. Not only can the impacts of this heal be mitigated by your opponent, it requires a skill to hit in a skill line that only has one skill people actively use that hit other players, Frags. And Frags is only reliable for the heal if you are using it as the spammable. If so, good luck (see Dark Deal interrupt).

OBJnoob

StaticWave wrote: »

When is HP shield OP? I’ve literally been using it for 2 weeks lol. HP shield is just tanky. Your damage is not as good as a pure magsorc build, and you still get destroyed by certain classes.

Scaling off highest resource mean you could have some insane high shield numbers and would need to be tone down.

I'm not saying the HP shield is good. You'd know better than me.

I'm asking why you want it returned to the way it was.

Why not propose something new? Nobody was happy with mag-shields.

It's almost like you're saying the only problem with the old shields was that stamsorc couldn't use them. Is that what you're saying?

I don't think there are any ways to apply modifiers to max stam. Max stam shields would suck more than max mag shields ever did, LOL.

Dr_Con

Bone Shield

StaticWave

[quote

jaws343 wrote: »

i11ionward wrote: »

Can someone explain to me why sorc's healing is considered weak? My opinion is that sorc has great offensive healing. How much and how sorc heals is normal for a DD class.
Sorc has great healing for DD, it's other DD classes that have overpowered healing, in my opinion. Sorc doesn't need to improve healing, other DD classes need to nerf their healing.

It's 2023, there is no such thing as a DD class. Every class is meant to be able to perform every role.

Sorc healing suffers due to the following:

• No healing improvement passives, so even out of class sourced heals are less effective for a sorc than for other classes.
• Dark Deal: Has a cast time that can be interrupted. So, you need a heal immediately but you have to wait 1 second for the heal. And if an enemy interrupts you, including PVE enemies, you get stunned and locked out of the skill for a beat. So, so much for that heal you needed.
• Matriarch: Requires two bar slots. Can die. If it dies, see Dark Deal problems, only two fold. The recast can be interrupted. And even if you get the recast, which take a second, you still have to hit it again to heal. And again, two bar slots for a heal.
• Crit Surge: Great in PVE against a lot of enemies or with a lot of dots out. But awful in PVP. It requires you to always be on the offensive in order to get heals. It doesn't scale, and requires crit chance to be high to be useful. And Sorc doesn't have good class sourced crit chance.
• Blood Magic: I mean, if you are relying on this for your heals you are not really trying to heal yourself. Not only can the impacts of this heal be mitigated by your opponent, it requires a skill to hit in a skill line that only has two skills people actively use that hit other players, Frags and Curse. Curse is a delay, so you really can't rely on the heal from this passive, and Frags is only reliable for the heal if you are using it as the spammable. If so, good luck (see Dark Deal interrupt).

I want to put a lot of emphasis on the Crit Surge and Blood Magic points you've made because I have been playing 2 builds to utilize these sources of offensive healing and I think I can give a decent input from my first hand experience.

1) My first build is a melee DoT stamsorc with 3 sources of AoE DoTs: Hurricane, Caltrops, and Quick Cloak, and 4 sources of single target DoTs: Rending bleed, poisoned, hemorrhage, and burning. The proc rate for Crit Surge in this setup is decent and can be procced even when you're playing defensively from the DoTs ticking, but the downside is you are sacrificing bar slots for DoTs to maximize 1 heal, bar slots that could be used for Curse or Bound Armaments.

This downside will be apparent against players who can just cleanse away your DoTs like a templar, and you lack the burst power to finish off tankier opponents like a DK. It will also mask your weakness of not having a burst heal. While you may have great offensive healing, an opponent with stronger pressure than you WILL force you on your back bar and your lack of defensive heals will surface very very quickly.

2) My second build is a ranged build with Crystal Weapon as a spammable. I can stay on the offense for a long time as long as I'm landing my Crystal Weapon, and if that crits too then Crit Surge provides extra healing. HOWEVER, the downside is the moment I stop going on the offense, I cannot survive a high pressure class. This weakness is very apparent in Cyrodiil when multiple people are applying pressure on you. You obviously cannot stay and be offensive to heal because it's an outnumbered fight. The problem is, your defensive heal is also not strong either lol. This is why I do much better in duels when using a build like this because I only have 1 person to worry about. When there are multiple people, I would rather have something like Healthy Offering or Coag.

My last point has to do with the new Dark Deal buff. They are giving it Minor Force, implying that they want the class to follow a crit damage path. However, it's also hard to stack crit chance on this class, so I'm very much confused. I would rather them give Dark Deal just Major Berserk and Dark Conversion Minor Berserk.

StaticWave

OBJnoob wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

When is HP shield OP? I’ve literally been using it for 2 weeks lol. HP shield is just tanky. Your damage is not as good as a pure magsorc build, and you still get destroyed by certain classes.

Scaling off highest resource mean you could have some insane high shield numbers and would need to be tone down.

I'm not saying the HP shield is good. You'd know better than me.

I'm asking why you want it returned to the way it was.

Why not propose something new? Nobody was happy with mag-shields.

It's almost like you're saying the only problem with the old shields was that stamsorc couldn't use them. Is that what you're saying?

I don't think there are any ways to apply modifiers to max stam. Max stam shields would suck more than max mag shields ever did, LOL.

The thing is, proposal has already been made multiple times. You were there in those threads, you saw what many people wanted.

Then instead of giving what people wanted, they went ahead and make shields scale with max HP lol. Instead of making Dark Deal instant cast and a pseudo heal, they gave it Minor Force & Berserk, which is pretty ironic considering sorc's lack of crit sources outside of Minor Prophecy. It's not like stamsorc and HP shield sorc are gonna drop Camo hunter to get it from crit pots. Tri pots are too valuable, especially with Streak costing so much mag on stamsorc, and slotting Inner Light wouldn't do anything for either specs. The only benefiting spec is mag-dominant sorc.

You know what actually baffles me even more? It's how NB gets +10% dmg done on Concealed instead of Minor Force when it's a class with the best crit chance, and Sorc gets Minor Force instead of 10% dmg done when it can't even get its crit as high as a NB.

OBJnoob

Yes I was there. A lot was said, lol, I don't know if my memory of it is as good now as it was. But yea, it's weird how it got these little oddball buffs here and there... Basically none of which were asked for.

But still. Talking about Ward. It still got buffed for mag-scaling, right? Didn't it get buffed by like 10%? And also given an alternative way to scale?

I do think shields should scale with stam. It'd just be like another step towards full hybridization, because there are still some inconsistencies and shields are one.

But it wouldn't be as strong as mag-shields because I can't think of a single thing you can slot or do that'll provide you with max stam modifiers. It wouldn't be a buff.

Come on brother I feel like you're avoiding the question. You know what I'm asking!

Turtle_Bot

Bound armaments increases Max Stamina (commonly slotted already).

Tbh, the shield change was ok for magsorc, not enough to fix the class but enough to at least allow it to play again in the hands of skilled players, since they can now focus their build on max health, damage, crit chance, crit damage and recovery instead of trying to also force max magicka into the build as well, a stat that takes up far too much investment for the minimal payoff it grants.

OBJnoob

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Bound armaments increases Max Stamina (commonly slotted already).

Tbh, the shield change was ok for magsorc, not enough to fix the class but enough to at least allow it to play again in the hands of skilled players, since they can now focus their build on max health, damage, crit chance, crit damage and recovery instead of trying to also force max magicka into the build as well, a stat that takes up far too much investment for the minimal payoff it grants.

Aaaah, so it does. Well silly me then. I don't know why I was thinking it didn't, but the other morph granted max mag. My brain is stuck a year or two back I guess.

Still you can't stack it as high though, right? You can still slot inner light, other mages guild skills, and bound aegis for more mag right? It still seems like stam wouldn't be as good as mag. Not to mention the mag cost.

I'm surprised, honestly, a sorc can't run Clever Alchemist and make the HP ward work AND have reasonable damage.

But none of that is important to me. I'm still just curious why, more or less, Static wants it back to the way it was. Better or worse, at least now there's build options. Stacking stam instead of mag doesn't seem like a build option to me. Very much the same, isn't it?

Skoomah

Sorcs are in an excellent spot. The changes to how their shields work have given them the option to use shields again as an effective tool to mitigate damage long enough to outlast an opponent in PvP. If you look at it holistically, the shield power is strong enough now to build in a way that keeps you having enough health to stay alive to counter punch or get away effectively. In conjunction with the skills at their disposal like streak. There are real trade offs between damage mitigation and damage output, depending on how you build and invest into your sorc. These narratives about sorcs needing buffs or not competing well against other classes is not accurate. Sorcs absolutely murder in PvP in various playstyles. Bash Builds, Speed Builds, Overload Builds, Kill Steal Builds, Solo Builds, Group Builds, Healers. That’s some of the more prominent builds out there.

StaticWave

OBJnoob wrote: »

Yes I was there. A lot was said, lol, I don't know if my memory of it is as good now as it was. But yea, it's weird how it got these little oddball buffs here and there... Basically none of which were asked for.

But still. Talking about Ward. It still got buffed for mag-scaling, right? Didn't it get buffed by like 10%? And also given an alternative way to scale?

I do think shields should scale with stam. It'd just be like another step towards full hybridization, because there are still some inconsistencies and shields are one.

But it wouldn't be as strong as mag-shields because I can't think of a single thing you can slot or do that'll provide you with max stam modifiers. It wouldn't be a buff.

Come on brother I feel like you're avoiding the question. You know what I'm asking!

I’m not avoiding the question lol. It is really not that hard to get your max stam up.

There are sets that buff max stam, just as there are sets that buff max mag. I can get up to 40k max stam just from using Essence Thief + DDF and being an Imperial. I can get more if I use something like Hulking set (the equivalence of Crafty).

Most max mag builds slot Inner Light for the 5% mag, whereas I would be slotting Bound Arms instead, and I get both 8% max HP + 8% max stam. Hardened Ward will be on front bar, just like a regular magsorc build.

So answer me, why on earth do I need to stack max Mag or max HP if I want to be a melee stamsorc using shields? Asking for it to scale with stam is pretty reasonable if you ask me.

OBJnoob

It is reasonable. I think I've admitted that. It should scale with max stam OR mag, whichever is higher, as an extension of hybridization.

I just don't think it's going to really benefit anyone. It will be more proper, but in no way do I think it'll help sorcs.

Saying they can wear hulking draugr is like saying they can wear necropotence and crafty alfiq. Sure they can. And they will end up with a decent shield. But after years of this I thought most of you sorcs had reached the conclusion that stacking max stat is an inefficient tactic... Shields still are only borderline, and damage is sub-par.

So unfortunately I have to ask again: can we skip all this elementary talk about things we both already know and get to the crux of why you are proposing this now?

What has changed? What am I missing? Will it work better because stam is more useful than mag overall? Dodge rolls? I'm sorry I still don't see the difference. And this is what you seem unwilling to explain.

StaticWave

OBJnoob wrote: »

It is reasonable. I think I've admitted that. It should scale with max stam OR mag, whichever is higher, as an extension of hybridization.

I just don't think it's going to really benefit anyone. It will be more proper, but in no way do I think it'll help sorcs.

Saying they can wear hulking draugr is like saying they can wear necropotence and crafty alfiq. Sure they can. And they will end up with a decent shield. But after years of this I thought most of you sorcs had reached the conclusion that stacking max stat is an inefficient tactic... Shields still are only borderline, and damage is sub-par.

So unfortunately I have to ask again: can we skip all this elementary talk about things we both already know and get to the crux of why you are proposing this now?

What has changed? What am I missing? Will it work better because stam is more useful than mag overall? Dodge rolls? I'm sorry I still don't see the difference. And this is what you seem unwilling to explain.

Yes, stacking max stats is an inefficient tactic, but don't forget that unless you're going melee on mag sorc, it's going to be easier stacking max weapon/spell damage on a stamsorc while also having a high max stam pool than a traditional magsorc. This is the biggest difference between the two classes.

I'm not going to discuss the alternative to shield, aka healing, because let's face it, there have been many requests for a true burst heal and ZoS still does not answer. It's clear they aren't going to. This is further reinforced by the buff to Hardened Ward. It's evident that they want Sorc to remain being a class dependent on shield, and to an extent that's ok, but making it scale off HP is not the direction I would prefer.

I suggested Hardened Ward scaling with max stam instead of max offensive stats because it's very easy to get your wd/sd to 6k+ while also having high sustain and over 40k HP. I have no idea what the scaling would be if Hardened Ward scaled off max offensive stats, but it would have to be much lower than scaling with max mag.

This is due to the fact that ~100 stam/mag = 1 wd/sd, meaning a build with ~40k stam/mag is equivalent to a build with ~ 4000 wd/sd (the tooltip scaling difference between wd/sd and stam/mag is a different topic, but generally speaking max stam/mag should be ~10% lower in tooltip vs wd/sd builds).

4000 wd/sd is extremely easy to get on both mag and stam, with stam characters easily reaching upwards of 6500-7000 wd for a standard stat build, or ~65000-70000 stam/mag equivalance, while also having 40k HP and decent sustain by using Orzoga. So unless Zos makes shields scaling with wd/sd lower than with stam/mag, you're going to have stamsorc/magsorc builds running around with 40k HP, decent recoveries, and shield values equal to a build stacking 65k-70k max stam/mag. It's insane and would be OP.

OBJnoob

Okay. I think I get you. So basically it's easier to have innately high weapon damage using, for example, dual wield swords, so stamsorc stacking max stam would have higher weapon damage than a traditional fire staff magsorc stacking mag. See I knew you must be thinking of something I hadn't thought of. Nailed it

I will say though, I still think you can stack max mag slightly higher. And the fact that it costs mag would perhaps be a problem for stamsorc. If it scales with whichever stat is higher maybe it could cost that stat as well?

I don't know though, I still think the HP scaling option is a decent option. It may not be what you like and it might not be super good but, like you said, it isn't that hard to get 40k HP, 6k damage, with decent recoveries. I'm surprised that under these conditions it isn't fairly viable. Maybe not the build experienced sorcs will choose but perhaps nice for others. I wouldn't want to see the choice removed to be honest.

StaticWave

OBJnoob wrote: »

Okay. I think I get you. So basically it's easier to have innately high weapon damage using, for example, dual wield swords, so stamsorc stacking max stam would have higher weapon damage than a traditional fire staff magsorc stacking mag. See I knew you must be thinking of something I hadn't thought of. Nailed it

I will say though, I still think you can stack max mag slightly higher. And the fact that it costs mag would perhaps be a problem for stamsorc. If it scales with whichever stat is higher maybe it could cost that stat as well?

I don't know though, I still think the HP scaling option is a decent option. It may not be what you like and it might not be super good but, like you said, it isn't that hard to get 40k HP, 6k damage, with decent recoveries. I'm surprised that under these conditions it isn't fairly viable. Maybe not the build experienced sorcs will choose but perhaps nice for others. I wouldn't want to see the choice removed to be honest.

If it costs the higher stat that would be neat, kinda like one of the Arcanist abilities.

I’ve tried the 40K HP shield build for a while and you are correct, I could get my wd to about 6-6.5k, but then I’d sacrifice my max mag/stam severely. The drawback of that is you don’t have enough max mag to do what a magsorc can normally do, such as streaking 5-6x times in a row and still have enough mag to shield.

In a 1v1 it’s not a problem but in a 1vX or whatever you will have to use Dark Conversion a lot more, and your shield size will reduce if you run into someone with Bleed as they can apply Minor Mangle debuff.

I ended up dropping my wd lower so I could run a set that increases my max mag up while keeping HP the same.

Turtle_Bot

Skoomah wrote: »

Sorcs are in an excellent spot. The changes to how their shields work have given them the option to use shields again as an effective tool to mitigate damage long enough to outlast an opponent in PvP. If you look at it holistically, the shield power is strong enough now to build in a way that keeps you having enough health to stay alive to counter punch or get away effectively. In conjunction with the skills at their disposal like streak. There are real trade offs between damage mitigation and damage output, depending on how you build and invest into your sorc. These narratives about sorcs needing buffs or not competing well against other classes is not accurate. Sorcs absolutely murder in PvP in various playstyles. Bash Builds, Speed Builds, Overload Builds, Kill Steal Builds, Solo Builds, Group Builds, Healers. That’s some of the more prominent builds out there.

Not quite sure what sorcs you are seeing around, but apart from proc stacking bowsorcs (which pop up every few metas when the meta gets stale and people want something different to play), they aren't in a great spot right now outside of the few sorc mains who have the skills to make the class look OP.

- Bash builds haven't been a thing for well over a year now (cro does this better thanks to goliath form).
- Speed builds are laughable because all classes reach speed cap (basically for free) and have been able to for a long time.
- Overload builds haven't been a thing since ZOS reworked crystal weapon and crushing weapon to not stack with each other (about a year ago).
- Kill steal (mages wrath) builds only work against low level, new or unskilled players (plar also does it better with javelin into beam).
- Solo builds are limited exclusively to the very few mains who still make the class work (and the exact same build performs much better on the better classes).
- Group builds are essentially streak + negate bots with the bird heal sometimes thrown in (although this is rare because the bird is a walking (flapping) plaguebreak bomb waiting to wipe the group), also, outside of negate, this can be replaced by a NB with ranged fear and healthy offering/soul tether.
- healers see group builds above (wardens are also the best group healers currently, and far superior to sorcerers without any of the downsides, plars are also well above sorcerers for group healers).

The builds you have mentioned that are doing well, are a year old now (or even older in some cases) and outside of the overload build (which doesn't exist anymore) haven't really been a thing that is unique to sorc (or sorc does best) since back then either. Fyi, I'm not saying overload doesn't get used at all, but the build that focused on overload by stacking it with the crystal and crushing weapon skills got deleted a long time ago when those skills were prevented from stacking with each other).

You said it yourself in the bolded part, and while I agree that this inherent limitation in build decisions means the class is in good spot balance wise, the fact that the top 3 classes (currently DK, NB and warden) aren't bound by these same decision making limitations when building for them means that sorc is not in a good spot for actual gameplay.

Turtle_Bot

OBJnoob wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Bound armaments increases Max Stamina (commonly slotted already).

Tbh, the shield change was ok for magsorc, not enough to fix the class but enough to at least allow it to play again in the hands of skilled players, since they can now focus their build on max health, damage, crit chance, crit damage and recovery instead of trying to also force max magicka into the build as well, a stat that takes up far too much investment for the minimal payoff it grants.

Aaaah, so it does. Well silly me then. I don't know why I was thinking it didn't, but the other morph granted max mag. My brain is stuck a year or two back I guess.

Still you can't stack it as high though, right? You can still slot inner light, other mages guild skills, and bound aegis for more mag right? It still seems like stam wouldn't be as good as mag. Not to mention the mag cost.

I'm surprised, honestly, a sorc can't run Clever Alchemist and make the HP ward work AND have reasonable damage.

But none of that is important to me. I'm still just curious why, more or less, Static wants it back to the way it was. Better or worse, at least now there's build options. Stacking stam instead of mag doesn't seem like a build option to me. Very much the same, isn't it?

All good. Mag stacking still theoretically has a higher ceiling thanks to the mages guild line, but due to the weapon passives of DW and 2H, stacking into max magicka is much less efficient than stacking into max stamina because the magicka weapons lack the raw damage that stamina weapons provide and magicka skills tend to have lower tooltips than stamina skills due to the added utility most magicka skills get over stamina skills.

As static mentioned, to get a good amount of max magicka to make it worth using it for scaling the shields, you need to drop your weapon/spell damage by quite a bit overall, most magsorcs that build for max mag will have only 4.5k spell damage fully buffed (continuous, sorcery, etc) because of this.

It's the multiple little things that add up, things such as:
- swapping camo hunter to inner light (3% drop)
- overload to meteor (2% drop)
- DW to destro staff (loss of DW/2H passives or around 280 + 6% of off hand weapon/spell damage)
- 1 damage set to a set that has more max mag (damage drop depends on the set dropped and set switched to)
- jewelry traits from infused/bloodthirsty to arcane

For jewelry traits, assuming 1 weapon/spell damage is about 10.5 max stamina/magicka, infused grants an additional 104 weapon/spell damage per piece by increasing the potency of the attached glyph from 174 to 278 at gold level for a total increase of 312 weapon/spell damage from 3 pieces, this would be the equivalent to getting 1092 max magicka/stamina per piece or roughly 3276 of either max attribute from the combined 3 pieces, but the arcane trait at gold level only grants +877 max attribute per piece or the equivalent of 83.5 max weapon/spell damage per piece. This results in an overall drop of about 20 base weapon/spell damage if the infused trait is switched to arcane trait. As for bloodthirsty, it gets even worse, up to 350 weapon/spell damage (or 3675 max mag/stam per piece). Or if we take the median of 175 weapon/spell damage instead of the full 350, that's still 1837.5 max mag/stam per piece of jewelry to reach the equivalent of what giving up bloodthirsty's damage grants.

Both of these drops in damage values are also applied before accounting for remaining percentage modifiers such as sorcery/brutality, berserk, continuous, etc. which takes these values much higher.

The total drop can be as high as 340 (20 x 3 + 280) raw damage + roughly 11% (6% + 5%) from percentage modifiers + the additional loss from remaining percentage modifiers (sorcery, berserk, continuous, etc), if infused, or a lot more if switching from bloodthirsty to arcane, which becomes extremely significant in overall performance, calculations and tooltips.

These things (while individually they seem quite small) all add up to a significant reduction in overall lost damage potential (and healing potential from vigor as well) that makes attribute stacking (outside of max health) much worse than building for max damage and having max stam or mag as an afterthought that gets the left over points or passive buffs to increase it.

As a magsorc main, I've basically given up on building for max magicka and built into max health + damage and let the health scaling take care of shield size for me due to how inefficient it is to build for max magicka. At least with stamina scaling, while there's not as many max stamina options available, there are much better damage options allowing me to keep a lot more damage for slightly lower (but still solid) shield sizes or I can simply invest more into max stamina without giving up as much raw damage that helps other areas such as damage and healing thanks to the superior stamina options available for increasing damage.

This is why stamsorc has always been better than magsorc ever since they reworked the damage formula a few years back and why it always pops up with the proc builds every few metas instead of magsorc. Stamsorc can build into health and damage like the other classes much better to take better advantage of the current formula while magsorc that relies on shields for defense, hasn't had that option (until now with health scaling shields), but the health scaling simply means magsorcs are now HPsorcs (high health, damage and recovery) and magsorc (high mag, damage and recovery with average health) itself is basically gone.

Edit: I had my max stats scaling factor completely wrong, so adjusted my numbers to reflect a more accurate 1 damage = 10.5 max mag/stam, Thanks @Zabagad for letting me know about this.
While the drop is not as drastic as originally calculated, it's still significant drop when also accounting for the disparity between damage given from sets (+129 per line) to max stats, (1096 per line or roughly equivalent to 104 damage per line of max mag/stam).

StaticWave

For example this one of the stat builds I currently run for a melee stamsorc using HP shields. I won't include CP, continuous, or any non-self buffs for simplicity:





As you can see I have 6607 WD, 10% dmg done from Essence Thief, 1570 mag regen and 1751 stam regen, extra stam sustain from Essence Thief, 41436 HP, and 27455 stam for basically very little investment other than Tri-Stat enchants and Sugar Skull food. My penetration value without Lover Mundus, Balorgh proc, and before debuffs is still 7755, a very respectable number. It could easily get up to 25k with everything included. Of course, the WD value will also increase as well when I use Balorgh. The tooltip for Crystal Weapon is 10801 in no CP, which is great.

Note: I don't have Major Breach right now because of bar space issues, but I will have it next patch when I drop Camo Hunter as Dark Deal finally gives Minor Berserk. I would get Major Prophecy from using Spell Crit pots. My stam sustain will suffer a bit from not having Major Endurance, but I have Essence Thief to take care of that for me.

So the build works great, but I have to allocate literally all of my attribute points to HP to use the current Hardened Ward. Don't get me wrong, the damage is amazing for a stat build, but I'm gimping damage output just to be able to use the shield. This is what would happen when shield scaled with max stam instead of HP:



Just by reallocating 64 points into stam, my max stam went from 27455 to 35554. My effective power went from 10477 to 11352, a 875 increase in value. My Crystal Weapon tooltip went from 10801 to 11704. Let's say I tried to get my max stam to 40k. This is what my stats would look like:



Dropped some HP, max mag, and WD to get 40k stam, but my WD is still over 6.1k, and my effective weapon power dropped by 39 points, not even that much lol. Crystal Weapon tooltip dropped by a miniscule amount too:



Compared to the HP build, I lost 10.5k HP and 472 WD, but gained 12.7k stam and a lot more tooltip damage. Since most of my offensive abilities cost stamina, Hardened Ward would not be too taxing on my mag sustain as I could now Streak less and instead use that mag to pre-apply Hardened Ward when I enter a fight. I would still do everything as a stamsorc do, but now I have an HP buffer to make myself tankier.


Hope this explains why I wanted shields to scale with stam instead.

Zodiarkslayer

Zabagad wrote: »

In my opinion:
- Stamsorc is not supposed to fight with shields.
- That was always the main difference between stam and mag Sorcs. Stam were fighting melee with heal and no shield - Mag the opposite.
- Shields should scale from SD and max. mag only - not from stam or WD at all.
- Even with the hybrid blabla I still like the (last?) small "identity" of a magSorc: Shields

But that is only my opinion

Edit: I know that SD almost always equals WD. It's more about illustrating where we come from.

What? Who decided that?

Skoomah

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

Sorcs are in an excellent spot. The changes to how their shields work have given them the option to use shields again as an effective tool to mitigate damage long enough to outlast an opponent in PvP. If you look at it holistically, the shield power is strong enough now to build in a way that keeps you having enough health to stay alive to counter punch or get away effectively. In conjunction with the skills at their disposal like streak. There are real trade offs between damage mitigation and damage output, depending on how you build and invest into your sorc. These narratives about sorcs needing buffs or not competing well against other classes is not accurate. Sorcs absolutely murder in PvP in various playstyles. Bash Builds, Speed Builds, Overload Builds, Kill Steal Builds, Solo Builds, Group Builds, Healers. That’s some of the more prominent builds out there.

Not quite sure what sorcs you are seeing around, but apart from proc stacking bowsorcs (which pop up every few metas when the meta gets stale and people want something different to play), they aren't in a great spot right now outside of the few sorc mains who have the skills to make the class look OP.

- Bash builds haven't been a thing for well over a year now (cro does this better thanks to goliath form).
- Speed builds are laughable because all classes reach speed cap (basically for free) and have been able to for a long time.
- Overload builds haven't been a thing since ZOS reworked crystal weapon and crushing weapon to not stack with each other (about a year ago).
- Kill steal (mages wrath) builds only work against low level, new or unskilled players (plar also does it better with javelin into beam).
- Solo builds are limited exclusively to the very few mains who still make the class work (and the exact same build performs much better on the better classes).
- Group builds are essentially streak + negate bots with the bird heal sometimes thrown in (although this is rare because the bird is a walking (flapping) plaguebreak bomb waiting to wipe the group), also, outside of negate, this can be replaced by a NB with ranged fear and healthy offering/soul tether.
- healers see group builds above (wardens are also the best group healers currently, and far superior to sorcerers without any of the downsides, plars are also well above sorcerers for group healers).

The builds you have mentioned that are doing well, are a year old now (or even older in some cases) and outside of the overload build (which doesn't exist anymore) haven't really been a thing that is unique to sorc (or sorc does best) since back then either. Fyi, I'm not saying overload doesn't get used at all, but the build that focused on overload by stacking it with the crystal and crushing weapon skills got deleted a long time ago when those skills were prevented from stacking with each other).

You said it yourself in the bolded part, and while I agree that this inherent limitation in build decisions means the class is in good spot balance wise, the fact that the top 3 classes (currently DK, NB and warden) aren't bound by these same decision making limitations when building for them means that sorc is not in a good spot for actual gameplay.

I’ve encountered all the builds I’ve described recently. I wouldn’t feel the need to set the record straight if these types of threads were so successful at gaslighting the developers to giving into demands that in my opinion is a learn to play issue.

Turtle_Bot

Skoomah wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

Sorcs are in an excellent spot. The changes to how their shields work have given them the option to use shields again as an effective tool to mitigate damage long enough to outlast an opponent in PvP. If you look at it holistically, the shield power is strong enough now to build in a way that keeps you having enough health to stay alive to counter punch or get away effectively. In conjunction with the skills at their disposal like streak. There are real trade offs between damage mitigation and damage output, depending on how you build and invest into your sorc. These narratives about sorcs needing buffs or not competing well against other classes is not accurate. Sorcs absolutely murder in PvP in various playstyles. Bash Builds, Speed Builds, Overload Builds, Kill Steal Builds, Solo Builds, Group Builds, Healers. That’s some of the more prominent builds out there.

Not quite sure what sorcs you are seeing around, but apart from proc stacking bowsorcs (which pop up every few metas when the meta gets stale and people want something different to play), they aren't in a great spot right now outside of the few sorc mains who have the skills to make the class look OP.

- Bash builds haven't been a thing for well over a year now (cro does this better thanks to goliath form).
- Speed builds are laughable because all classes reach speed cap (basically for free) and have been able to for a long time.
- Overload builds haven't been a thing since ZOS reworked crystal weapon and crushing weapon to not stack with each other (about a year ago).
- Kill steal (mages wrath) builds only work against low level, new or unskilled players (plar also does it better with javelin into beam).
- Solo builds are limited exclusively to the very few mains who still make the class work (and the exact same build performs much better on the better classes).
- Group builds are essentially streak + negate bots with the bird heal sometimes thrown in (although this is rare because the bird is a walking (flapping) plaguebreak bomb waiting to wipe the group), also, outside of negate, this can be replaced by a NB with ranged fear and healthy offering/soul tether.
- healers see group builds above (wardens are also the best group healers currently, and far superior to sorcerers without any of the downsides, plars are also well above sorcerers for group healers).

The builds you have mentioned that are doing well, are a year old now (or even older in some cases) and outside of the overload build (which doesn't exist anymore) haven't really been a thing that is unique to sorc (or sorc does best) since back then either. Fyi, I'm not saying overload doesn't get used at all, but the build that focused on overload by stacking it with the crystal and crushing weapon skills got deleted a long time ago when those skills were prevented from stacking with each other).

You said it yourself in the bolded part, and while I agree that this inherent limitation in build decisions means the class is in good spot balance wise, the fact that the top 3 classes (currently DK, NB and warden) aren't bound by these same decision making limitations when building for them means that sorc is not in a good spot for actual gameplay.

I’ve encountered all the builds I’ve described recently. I wouldn’t feel the need to set the record straight if these types of threads were so successful at gaslighting the developers to giving into demands that in my opinion is a learn to play issue.

Still not sure how you're encountering a build that was literally made to physically not work anymore (overload build), but ok, seems like a perfect example of gaslighting to me.

As for gaslighting, I don't know why you think these threads are doing this. These threads are merely pointing out the issues the class has currently, especially when these issues are exacerbated for those who aren't top tier players, bringing them to the attention of the dev team so that they get looked at.
It's exactly what happened with magblade, dk, warden in the past and exactly what the threads about plar and cro are doing recently/currently.

As for gaslighting, that would be what those who constantly troll sorc threads like these are doing when they claim "the class is OP" when it is clearly not, if it truly was as OP as many try to claim it to be, we would be seeing 50%+ of cyrodiil population as sorcs and they would be cleaning up like DKs do, but we don't, its vast majority DKs, wardens and NBs, especially at the top levels of performance.

Skoomah

Overload sorcs still exist and to say they don’t is simply not true.