Sorcerer Dark Deal, still not worth the cast

benzenexz

All that I'm writing here are from a mid-level pve player perspective.
In terms of resource recovery from class skill, adding a sweet minor berserk is a good thing, compared with nothing at all. It works well with the mag regen morph, since now you get 20s duration of the buff for each cast.
However, the stam rengen morph, a 10s buff, even with minor force, really doesn't practically worth the cast every 10s. If we look into the regen rate, the stam regen skill is 600/s, twice more in par with resource regeneration skills from other classes, averagely 250/s. Not even to mention that there aren't many strong stam consuming skills in sorcerer's kit. Most of sorcerer's dps are mag skills with the dark mine costing 5k mag per cast

My personal sugesttion for some possible solution:
1. Reverse the stam and mag regen verison morph to make them REALLY worth the cast for each type
2. make the buff of the stam regen version 20s
3. make the clannfear stam summon and its activated skill an offensive one instead of healing off max health(since sorcerer tank now have a 45%max health shield which from my experience is better than the clannfear).
4. make one of the dark mine morph stam cast(I want to even make the Dark Tomb mine turning around the player instead of fixed on the ground, but that's another topic)

xNepo

benzenexz wrote: »

All that I'm writing here are from a mid-level pve player perspective.
In terms of resource recovery from class skill, adding a sweet minor berserk is a good thing, compared with nothing at all. It works well with the mag regen morph, since now you get 20s duration of the buff for each cast.
However, the stam rengen morph, a 10s buff, even with minor force, really doesn't practically worth the cast every 10s. If we look into the regen rate, the stam regen skill is 600/s, twice more in par with resource regeneration skills from other classes, averagely 250/s. Not even to mention that there aren't many strong stam consuming skills in sorcerer's kit. Most of sorcerer's dps are mag skills with the dark mine costing 5k mag per cast

My personal sugesttion for some possible solution:
1. Reverse the stam and mag regen verison morph to make them REALLY worth the cast for each type
2. make the buff of the stam regen version 20s
3. make the clannfear stam summon and its activated skill an offensive one instead of healing off max health(since sorcerer tank now have a 45%max health shield which from my experience is better than the clannfear).
4. make one of the dark mine morph stam cast(I want to even make the Dark Tomb mine turning around the player instead of fixed on the ground, but that's another topic)

Like you said it is of PVE perspective, the only suggestion that is viable in my opinion is number 2: stamina version to 20s. The morphs are ok'ish at the moment. Scaling clannfer heals to offensive stat does not help a sorc tank.

VvwvenomwvV

I would prefer the Clannfear to be left alone. We already have an offensive version, the other morph, Volatile Familiar.

HidesInPlainSight

Dark Deal is bread and butter Solo PvE and PVP sustain with an upside of also healing you.

It still has a spot on all my Solo Arena Builds and every 2 bar PvP build for Sorc.

The only time I drop the skill is in competent vet group.

Even when farming in IC, I will drop Vigor before I drop Dark Deal.

Vulkunne

Not at all. Back in the day when Sorc shields were actually strong I mean yeah you could make it work. But now you'll hang yourself trying to use it in PvP combat.

jaws343

HidesInPlainSight wrote: »

Dark Deal is bread and butter Solo PvE and PVP sustain with an upside of also healing you.

It still has a spot on all my Solo Arena Builds and every 2 bar PvP build for Sorc.

The only time I drop the skill is in competent vet group.

Even when farming in IC, I will drop Vigor before I drop Dark Deal.

You are far better off for Solo PVE to run a sustain set than rely on a cast time ability that some enemies can stun lock you while you use it.

El_Borracho

Disagree. Dark Deal is a great skill for stamsorc. Its a heal and a sustain source that costs magicka, the secondary resource for a typical PVE stamsorc build, which means its essentially free. The same is true for Dark Conversion for magicka characters. I typically use it as a heal instead of the pet, although the delay in the heal can be frustrating. Because again, its free.

As for the stamina vs. magicka version, your numbers are off. Dark Deal gives you 3600 stamina instantly and 2400 stamina over 10 seconds, or 240 stamina a second, and minor force. Dark Conversion gives you 4500 magicka instantly and 3000 magicka over 20 seconds, or 150 magicka per second, with no minor force, meaning you have to slot trap/acceleration or run a minor force set. Even if you were to factor in the extra 900 in instant magicka, that's only another 45 magicka per second over the duration of the skill, which is still less than Dark Deal. Or, even if we were to go with raw numbers, Dark Deal is 6,000 for 10 seconds, or 600 per second versus Dark Conversion at 7,500 for 20 seconds, which is 375 per second. Given those numbers, Dark Conversion is the skill in need of a buff.

But it all depends on the content. Most of the players I run vet DLC dungeons with with don't slot 2 pets and instead run an execute on the front bar, either Whirling Blades or Reverse Slice/Executioner, depending on the build, so you end up needing more stamina. Or as @HidesInPlainSight said, if you are in a Trial, don't run it at all because you will be getting resources from the group.

SkaraMinoc

I play a Stam Sorc in PvP and Dark Deal falls off way too fast even if you cast it right before your combo. 10 seconds is nowhere near enough time to burst and continue punching through block and heals.

At a minimum, Dark Deal should be at least 15 seconds and preferably 20.

KlauthWarthog

Well... from a PvE point of view, I am getting Minor Berserk passively from Camo Hunter, and Minor Force as a side effect from Trap.
I still use Dark Deal for sustain from time to time, but I am not going out of my way to use the clunkiest skill in the game every 10 seconds;
Dark Conversion would be better, but... my mag sorc also has Camo Hunter slotted, and gets Minor Berserk passively from that. And it is still too clunky to cast every 20 seconds.
And I am getting my Minor Prophecy from Crystal Frag procs anyway, so... not even that qualifies as a reason to cast something this clunky on cooldown.

CGPsaint

We asked for ZOS to look into providing more class specific buffs/defuffs for Sorcs and this is the best that they could come up with. There's a reason why everyone assumes that all of the devs play DKs...

OBJnoob

Well. I'm on console and I don't have the new minor buffs on dark deal yet. I'm running a max HP bowsorc in no proc.

I have dark deal slotted but honestly I hardly ever use it. I try to hit it occasionally, I dunno, call it practice for when I do have the buffs. I can see where 10 seconds isn't a very long time but I also think, well, at least it's something.

From my experience, the HP scaling shields are viable. All in all I think some decent changes were made recently. Sorc has a couple different build options available to it at the moment (standard crit max magic, lightning heavy pet, and HP,) and while they may fall short of a couple classes still they really aren't bad.

In short I'm just saying... My toon is already pretty good, so I'm excited about the buffs. It doesn't have to be a lot... It'll still help.

This is only from a Noproc perspective so it may not be the same elsewhere... But worth noting, because this is the CLASS I'm talking about, devoid of things like way of fire and arena weapons.

Dr_Con

cast times are fun

Quethrosar

Stamina and sorcerer words don't even belong together

BlackCatOnline-

Quethrosar wrote: »

Stamina and sorcerer words don't even belong together

Sure they do. Spellswords and spell archers exist 🤓

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Combat & Character Mechanics section, as it is better suited there.

Thank you for your understanding.

StarOfElyon

I try using this skill and I always end up feeling or actually getting desynced. I don't think I will ever like it.

phaneub17_ESO

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I try using this skill and I always end up feeling or actually getting desynced. I don't think I will ever like it.

That feeling is because of the cast time.

El_Borracho

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I try using this skill and I always end up feeling or actually getting desynced. I don't think I will ever like it.

That feeling is because of the cast time.

Yep. That is the major flaw with the skill. You don't get the instant heal, and the cast time can screw up your rotation. Swap bars too quickly, the skill does not fire or the skill fires and it won't let you swap bars. I don't understand the point of the cast time.

Turtle_Bot

Dark deal will never be usable in PvE unless it's buffed to insanely broken levels (release version of oakensoul levels).

It is 100% all down to the cast time of the ability. It is a full 1 second cast time, this difference of 0.2 seconds more than cast time damaging abilities (jabs, flurry, frags, snipe, dizzy/wrecking, etc) is huge when looking at PvE dps and tanking with weaving and blocking being a big part of those, casting dark deal doesn't give you the time required to weave a LA in between casts meaning that you lose that dps and any associated procs and it drops block and block cancels it so as a tank it's really rough to use most of the time.

Until the devs realise, understand and fix these flaws with the skill to allow weaving with it, this ability (including the other morph) will always be bad for PvE (outside of specifically non-HA solo PvE sorcerer gameplay) due to this cast time.

LittlePinkDot

Dark deal is necessary for my PvP stam sorc. Spin to win is hard on the stamina.

Quethrosar

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Dark deal will never be usable in PvE unless it's buffed to insanely broken levels (release version of oakensoul levels).

It is 100% all down to the cast time of the ability. It is a full 1 second cast time, this difference of 0.2 seconds more than cast time damaging abilities (jabs, flurry, frags, snipe, dizzy/wrecking, etc) is huge when looking at PvE dps and tanking with weaving and blocking being a big part of those, casting dark deal doesn't give you the time required to weave a LA in between casts meaning that you lose that dps and any associated procs and it drops block and block cancels it so as a tank it's really rough to use most of the time.

Until the devs realise, understand and fix these flaws with the skill to allow weaving with it, this ability (including the other morph) will always be bad for PvE (outside of specifically non-HA solo PvE sorcerer gameplay) due to this cast time.

Non ha solo play is 99% of eso

RedFireDisco

Run all tri sta glyphs and tri food and your "off-stat" gives you unlimited sustain with a heal and damage buff.

It's amazing. My stamsorc can build for massive damage and hits like a truck

Nihilr

Unpopular opinion: Every ability should have 1 second cast times. No more, no less. Why? Server performance would be so much better. All the animation cancelling happening at once in Cyro is the true culprate. Everyone knows it, but the ones who love it will fight tooth and nail to keep it the way it is.

I use a 1-bar stamsorc and they have Dark Deal slotted. It's used at the end of fights in PvE and if you aren't fighting someone with a bash/interrupt, you'll be fine in PvP. It's suprising how few actually interrupt you when you use it.


Edit: typos

WrathOfInnos

Nihilr wrote: »

Unpopular opinion: Every ability should have 1 second cast times. No more, no less. Why? Server performance would be so much better. All the animation cancelling happening at once in Cyro is the true culprate. Everyone knows it, but the ones who love it will fight tooth and nail to keep it the way it is.

We have a 1s global cooldown on all skills.