The problem with HP scaling Hardened Ward in PvP

Turtle_Bot · May 2023

then what exactly is an overload sorc in your opinion?

I've described what is an overload sorc build is to me, it is a sorc that is specifically building into overload to stack overload with as much damage as possible, which was changed a year ago when ZOS made it so that crushing weapon and crystal weapon don't stack with each other anymore. You have yet to describe what is an overload sorc to you.

If you think that any sorc running overload is an overload sorc, that is not an overload sorc, that is a sorc that is using overload as its "cheap burst ultimate" same as DK using leap, NB using incap, any class using DB, plar using crescent, etc.

OBJnoob · May 2023

@Turtle_Bot @StaticWave

Yes very good breakdowns by both of you. I understand the stam thing now. Still think that HP scaling wards was a good addition though and wouldn't want it to change though. I was never against stamina being an option... As I've said, it seems only right, and what should be a natural extension of hybridization.

But so the discussion made me finally get my HP sorc together so that maybe in the next day or two I could provide my own insights instead of just theorizing. I think I found something very useful already that hasn't been mentioned. I was looking through the sorc passives because I haven't played one in a while and wanted to make sure I was slotting the obligatory things on each bar... And I noticed the Blood Magic passive scales with max HP.

With about 42k HP the tooltip was like 4400 I think. So that's 2100 healing in PvP. Nothing to sneeze at really, especially if you're weaving Crystal Weapon off a ranged bar. It's basically a replacement for crit surge if you want to wear a lot of heavy armor. So that means I can use Rally as a burst heal and just kinda not worry as much about building into crit.

It's seeming to have potential I think. I think something like Clever Alchemist 2H backbar, Way of Fire Bow front bar, Gaze of Sithis is going to be pretty viable. Orc being the preferred race probably.

StaticWave · May 2023

Skoomah wrote: »

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

Your name is familiar, I think I’ve seen you on PC NA playing a WW?

I suggest you try it for a day against NBs, Wardens, DKs, and see for yourself.

Skoomah · May 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

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

Your name is familiar, I think I’ve seen you on PC NA playing a WW?

I suggest you try it for a day against NBs, Wardens, DKs, and see for yourself.

I won’t name names but the overload sorc I see in PC NA wipes the floor with everyone every time I see them on the battlefield.

Sorc shields are strong and sorcs comfortably have access to many different effective playstyles. Everyone I know when sorc gets buffs just roll their eyes at ZOS for falling for the forum warrior complaints.

PhoenixGrey · May 2023

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.

There is only one sorc build in bgs which is actually competitive and it relies on masters dw and keeping up your heals with crit surge

Other builds you could just face tank on a dk or even nb these days

There are some overload setups which are decent but it’s just not good enough compared to what other classes can do

PhoenixGrey · May 2023

Skoomah wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

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

Your name is familiar, I think I’ve seen you on PC NA playing a WW?

I suggest you try it for a day against NBs, Wardens, DKs, and see for yourself.

I won’t name names but the overload sorc I see in PC NA wipes the floor with everyone every time I see them on the battlefield.

Sorc shields are strong and sorcs comfortably have access to many different effective playstyles. Everyone I know when sorc gets buffs just roll their eyes at ZOS for falling for the forum warrior complaints.

There is nothing special with that overload setup.

Nb’s are a major weakness for that build as that build has hot’s but lacks defense to dd. Relies on blood spawn and minor heroism pots to keep overload up.

Imagine running minor heroism pots on a dk and now you really know the overload sorc is nothing special

PhoenixGrey · May 2023

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.

That’s because other classes like nb don’t really need gas lighting when the class is buffed for 9 straight patches

StaticWave · May 2023

Skoomah wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

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

Your name is familiar, I think I’ve seen you on PC NA playing a WW?

I suggest you try it for a day against NBs, Wardens, DKs, and see for yourself.

I won’t name names but the overload sorc I see in PC NA wipes the floor with everyone every time I see them on the battlefield.

Sorc shields are strong and sorcs comfortably have access to many different effective playstyles. Everyone I know when sorc gets buffs just roll their eyes at ZOS for falling for the forum warrior complaints.

Which one? I play with MetallicMonk and some of the best remaining magsorcs on PC NA. Wiping pugs? Sure. Wiping decent players? Not really lol.

Please private message me the individual you are talking about. I am curious to know how this sorc can disable people’s roll dodge and force them to eat Overloads.

StaticWave · May 2023

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot @StaticWave

Yes very good breakdowns by both of you. I understand the stam thing now. Still think that HP scaling wards was a good addition though and wouldn't want it to change though. I was never against stamina being an option... As I've said, it seems only right, and what should be a natural extension of hybridization.

But so the discussion made me finally get my HP sorc together so that maybe in the next day or two I could provide my own insights instead of just theorizing. I think I found something very useful already that hasn't been mentioned. I was looking through the sorc passives because I haven't played one in a while and wanted to make sure I was slotting the obligatory things on each bar... And I noticed the Blood Magic passive scales with max HP.

With about 42k HP the tooltip was like 4400 I think. So that's 2100 healing in PvP. Nothing to sneeze at really, especially if you're weaving Crystal Weapon off a ranged bar. It's basically a replacement for crit surge if you want to wear a lot of heavy armor. So that means I can use Rally as a burst heal and just kinda not worry as much about building into crit.

It's seeming to have potential I think. I think something like Clever Alchemist 2H backbar, Way of Fire Bow front bar, Gaze of Sithis is going to be pretty viable. Orc being the preferred race probably.

Believe it or not, I’ve used an HP shield build with Cwep 2 weeks ago. It has very good offensive heals in a 1v1. It’s weakness surfaces when you’re outnumbered though. You simply can’t afford to benefit from the offensive heal when you’re playing defensive.

I had to swap back to Cfrag because the extra burst was more useful. Most of my fights ended being a bunch of kiting so I couldn’t really heal a lot from the Blood Magic passive anyways.

LittlePinkDot · May 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

[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.

Camo hunter is mandatory. Or toothrow set.

Jsmalls · May 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

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

Your name is familiar, I think I’ve seen you on PC NA playing a WW?

I suggest you try it for a day against NBs, Wardens, DKs, and see for yourself.

I won’t name names but the overload sorc I see in PC NA wipes the floor with everyone every time I see them on the battlefield.

Sorc shields are strong and sorcs comfortably have access to many different effective playstyles. Everyone I know when sorc gets buffs just roll their eyes at ZOS for falling for the forum warrior complaints.

Which one? I play with MetallicMonk and some of the best remaining magsorcs on PC NA. Wiping pugs? Sure. Wiping decent players? Not really lol.

Please private message me the individual you are talking about. I am curious to know how this sorc can disable people’s roll dodge and force them to eat Overloads.

I wouldn't consider my setup an Overload Sorc setup, but when it is toggled on it can't be dismissed, the damage is high. That being said a good player will know how to counter it in a 1v1, but under group play circumstances it becomes increasingly difficult to counter.

But MagSorcs aren't in a bad spot, and I think minor berserk on dark conversion will make us an even bigger threat. I still would have preferred minor or major breach / major prophecy on a class skill to free up some bar space / give more options but minor berserk isn't bad by any means.