Sorcer need revamp

ZhuJiuyin

I like Sorc very much, but it's sad that Magic Sorc is still struggling and at the bottom no matter in PvP or PVE.
Even though Sorc's Bound Armaments were enhanced in U39, the records on the eso log show that not many people actually use Bound Armaments. The records of VSE HM show that only one player used Bound Armaments. We can also see that all Sorcs that cleared VSE HM are stam Sorcs, and magic Sorc seems to have become extinct.


The same is true for other trials, such as VSER HM and VRG HM. All records are about stam Sorc, as if magic Sorc does not exist at all.Obviously, Sorcer's stam and magic's build are seriously imbalanced and need to be completely Revamped


I suggest：
1. Let Shattering Prison become the Sorcer version of the elemental wall. After casting, it will cause one direct damage + continuous damage for 20 seconds, and after receiving continuous damage for 2 seconds, let the target Off Balance or immobilize enemies. And While slotted, gives Major Savagery and Prophecy.

2.Unholy Knowledge and Persistence should be merged and give new passive
For example, when Sorc uses Dark magic to cause Disabling Effects, Partially Disabling Effects, increase X% crit for Y seconds.
In this way, since most BOSS have the ability to resist Disabling Effects and Partially Disabling Effects, this new passive will not be too powerful in PVE.
But it can well make up for the crit that Sorc lacks in PVP, and it can also enhance the use efficiency of Critical Surge.

3.Rune Cage should cause immediate direct damage, instead of causing damage after the stun lasts for the full time. And it also needs the same effect as Crystal Weapon, reducing the target's Armor [700 / 800 / 900 / 1000].

4. Increase the HP recovery of Blood Magic from 800/1600 to 1500/3000.

5. Turn Boundless Storm into continuous damage on the target, similar to Wardens' Growing Swarm. Let Boundless Storm cause continuous damage to the target, and Shock damage to the surroundings every two seconds, and continuously restore player magic or stam (based on the maximum resource).

6. Expert Mage should increase from the current 2% Weapon and Spell Damage to 3%, which is the same as Fighters Guild's passive. Reduce Sorc's passive dependence on Fighters Guild, and encourage players to use Sorc's Classes skills more.
The Magicka Recovery given by Capacitor should be increased from 5/10% to 10/20%, making it the same as the 10/20% Health and Stamina Recovery given by Daedric Protection. It should also provide 5/10% of the maximum Magicka value, making Hardened Ward easier to increase.

7. The consumption cost of Lightning Splash becomes the same as that of Arcanists, with Cost Determined by Highest Max Resource. Increases radius, increases damage dealt and gives channel time (makes it match Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge)


What are your thoughts on how to modify Sorcer? Please provide your opinions, how you want Sorcer to change, or the dilemmas and problems you encounter while playing Sorc.

Turtle_Bot

I posted this on another thread taking about the state of magsorc, but its relevant here too.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

For sorc, it needs a lot as a class to bring it up to par, especially to not force it even further into pets or heavy attack builds which seems to be all the devs will ever buff (that sticks around for more than 1 patch) for sorc.

What sorc needs to move away from pets and heavy attacks and function more on its own as a class would be:

Rune Cage

- Change rune cage into a sticky DoT. It can still keep the 3s delay on the stun attempt, but by making it a sticky DoT that deals consistent damage over its duration it gives sorc a more reliable way to proc the blood magic passive and crit surge proc heal a bit more often.

Frags/fury

- Change frags or 1 morph of fury into a proper class spammable. Sorcs entire burst window is completely back ended with curse and bound armaments for delayed burst, it doesn't need both morphs of frags/weapon and fury to also fall under this condition as well. If need be, make it a shorter range spammable (22m instead of 28m, or even melee if they can do some sort of cool lightning blade type of ability), but it needs to have some sort of cleave (or chaining) component to it as the class just doesn't have that cleave option in its kit at the moment.

Lightning Form

- Buff lightning form (mag morph) to be more inline with hurricane. Lightning form is still only a 5m radius even after all the melee attacks got buffed to 7m meaning melee opponents can simply outrange lightning form to avoid lightning form from proccing crit surge.... This would also be a targeted buff to magsorc in particular since stamsorc would still run hurricane anyway.

Major prophecy/savagery

- Add an easy to obtain reliable source of major prophecy/savagery to the class kit. Sorcs "HoT" in crit surge requires dealing critical damage to proc it, yet sorc struggles to gain any meaningful crit chance in PvP without investing into it and that requires giving up bar space that is too valuable.

Lightning Splash

- Lightning splash needs a rework, if need be, remove the synergy from 1 morph and increase its damage, but most importantly remove or drastically shorten the cast delay on the skill (you can keep the animation, but have it cast the skill at the start of the animation instead of waiting for the animation to finish before casting it similar to how wall of elements is animated), it effectively has a 0.5 to 1 second hidden cast time that is not shown anywhere in the tooltip because of this cast animation (similar to most of sorcs abilities...) that while it looks nice to use when not trying to weave, it makes the skill clunky to use and very jarring to weave properly.

Passives

- The passives need a lot of work. Capacitor is 10% mag recovery, daedric protection is 20% health and stam while a daedric summoning ability is active, meanwhile NB gets a flat 15% to everything for just existing. Combine capacitor with daedric protection and give sorc a new passive for crit chance and/or shields.
- Persistence should work off either blocking or dodging an attack. Sorc is not supposed to sit there face tanking damage since it doesn't have the reliable healing capabilities to do this effectively, sorc is however good at dodging incoming damage.
- Expert mage needs to be increased to 3% per sorcerer ability slotted, why a global passive is stronger than a class passive is boggling....

Lastly, and this is more around helping to address other issues in the PvP meta at the moment, make negate dampen non-permanent buffs on top of preventing casting while enemies are inside its AoE. This means that things like radiating regen, echoing vigor, and other sticky buffs that were applied before entering don't apply their effects while inside the negate, but will resume their effects (assuming they are still active) once the enemy leaves the negate AoE.

This serves multiple purposes:
- It affects stamina builds who right now can easily walk through a negate with no fear of repercussion like it's not even there.
- It gives ball groups a reason to actively avoid those negate areas (including the NPC negates) as their 50k/sec HoT stacking won't tick while they're inside the AoE leaving them vulnerable to getting burst/sieged down if they sit there for too long or try to force their way through it too many times, which provides some actual counter play to that playstyle that has completely taken over PvP lately.
- It forces troll tanks to actually move around (dropping their block while they attempt to get out of it quickly) or avoid certain areas for a period of time instead of standing there blocking everything since if they decide to remain in the negate AoE, their buffs won't be applied making them much weaker and more susceptible to incoming damage should they choose to remain in its AoE.
- This already has inherent counter play. There's no direct CC attached to the negate so its as easy as simply walking (or rolling/sprinting) out of its AoE so it no longer applies, yes it can be used by ball groups, but they are already doing this anyway, so making it actually threatening to those organised groups means they might actually fight each other more often instead of zerging down and dumping 12 ultimates on every solo player they pass while leaving other ball groups alone.
- It has a less drastic effect on the unorganised groups since most of those players barely have many buffs or stacked heals applied to them already anyway so at most they lose major resolve/sorcery/brutality that was already down 50% of them time while they stand in the AoE (might also help them to learn how to kite better too improving their PvP skills).

In regards to your points:
1. I don't mind this, but personally I'd rather see lightning splash buffed since it gets buffed by sorcs passives unlike shattering prison.

2. unholy knowledge seems fine to me, but persistence needs updating to reflect sorcs more mobile playstyle instead of being limited primarily to tanking.

3. I'd rather make rune cage into a sticky DoT, sorc is lacking this currently to make the best use of crit surge and being this skill specifically, it gives better uptime on blood magic.

4. Rather than increasing the recovery, make it so that it also procs off any dark magic ability dealing damage (up to once per second or half second) as well as its current on application of dark magic ability condition. This way having the aforementioned rune cage ticking will proc this heal more frequently. Can adjust scaling of the heal as required to keep it balanced.

5. With rune cage being a sticky DoT, keep lightning form as the armor buff. Increase its radius to 7m at base (in keeping with the recent melee range changes) and have it grant major prophecy/savagery for its duration.
- Hurricane is kept mostly as current, but with the 7m base radius and major prophecy/savagery.
- Boundless storm keeps its 4 seconds of major expedition and has a chance to lash out at a nearby enemy (within 10m) that chains to 1 additional nearby enemy (within 7m of initial target) once every 5 seconds dealing 1.5 times its damage (the chain hit damage is reduced back to its normal damage).

6. Agree with expert mage, its baffling this is still like this. As for capacitor, this is what I would merge to make room for a new passive. Merge capacitor with daedric protection (make protection give 10/20% to all 3 recoveries while a daedric summoning ability is active) and make capacitor into a new passive (something to do with crit chance or shields).

7. Read up on my quoted changes regarding lightning splash, it needs its animation delay (hidden cast time) removed/adjusted and damage increased, otherwise it doesn't need much else.

Faint_One

There are 3 problems I think sorc have
1、The unique crit buff from passive is depend on cast dark magic skills，but in pve it's nearly only from fragments.You may know for U39，best front bar skills slot is［FP+curse+armaments+2pets］，but in group，we need to use frags，that's way still less ppl use armaments.
Turn shattering prison to ground aoe dot is an impressive way to solve this.

2、lightning splash has bad animation，you also see no one use it in most boss fight，above that it can not compare with hurricane even caltraps as it drain magicka too much.

3、Double pet stacks slot，makes sorc have to give up skills.Pet should take with some general passives，like clanfear reduce damage taken by provide minor protect、familiar gain minor force to equal traps、tormentor gain major prophecy like inner light or fighter’s light、matriarch can also gain minor mending or something boost healing.

ZhuJiuyin

Before the new patch was released, I checked the eso log again. The following is the number of sorcers in the top 100 in the trial (HM).

VSE HM =0
VDSR HM =2
VRG HM =0
VKA HM =3
VSS HM =0

Ironically, that's a pretty good report card, right?
Sorcers, especially magicka sorcers need to be redone and need more buffs, otherwise they won't be able to compete fairly with other classes.

I wouldn't ask to nerf DK or Arcanist because they are really good.
But those classes who are struggling at the bottom need more care. We demand fairness so that socrers have a chance to compete with other top classes!

Pelanora

Sorcerer

S*o*r*c*e*r*e*r

Hagrett

Conceptually, I still to this day don't understand why lightning splash (the skill where a bolt of lightning hits the ground) doesn't have an upfront damage component and instead requires a synergy.

On a similar note why does the Atro rely on a synergy for a self major berserk buff? Could it not at least auto buff the sorc and just require a synergy to buff the group?

These are two minor things in the grand scheme of things as far as a sorc refresh goes, but both seem like low hanging fruit.

SandandStars

Dedicated, well-informed players have been politely asking for improvements to Magsorc for 3 years.

At this point I think it’s wise to save your time and effort.

El_Borracho

You have the Oakensoul ring which is pretty much a sorc-specific mythic, which allows for a one-bar build to do HMs to begin with. While I would love to see classes get buffed instead of nerfed, I don't know how you accomplish that without nuking the Oakensoul ring, which would upset a lot of players.

Zabagad

El_Borracho wrote: »

You have the Oakensoul ring which is pretty much a sorc-specific mythic, which allows for a one-bar build to do HMs to begin with. While I would love to see classes get buffed instead of nerfed, I don't know how you accomplish that without nuking the Oakensoul ring, which would upset a lot of players.

Best argumentation ever - Don't buff an underperforming class, because of an item.

If Oaken is "pretty much a sorc-specific mythic" then they can buff sorc and nerf Oaken without "upset a lot of players", because they would stay in the same range.
If other classes would be "upset" then Oaken is not "pretty much a sorc-specific mythic".

And honestly I don't even see any requested sorc buffs which would boost an Oaken-Build to a point where Oaken needs to be "nuked"? (Maybe because I don't play Oaken-Sorc-Builds?)
- Named buffs are already inside Oaken and would only be doubled
- More healing(-options) would not hurt anybody - because dummy-DPS-parse don't care about defense at all...
- Buff an Sorc AOE which would boost an Oaken-parse from 80K to 82K?

So, what buffs exactly are we talking about here?

El_Borracho

@Zabagad Sorcerers, as a class, were underperforming before the Oakensoul ring. With the ring, the Oakensorc went from underperforming to a viable endgame PVE DD, to the point that a one-bar build can make the scoreboard, and even be an option in PVP.

You asked which skill would be affected? All of them. The primary ask is to increase the overall crit damage from passives. The secondary ask is to increase the passives to allow for more HP and resource regen. And since its class passives, that means all of them, including non-class skills, just as Exploitation does now but on a much larger scale. The OP used Crit Surge as an example of how the increased passives would work. Wonder how this list would further impact those changes:

Empower
Major Brutality
Major Prophecy
Major Resolve
Major Savagery
Major Sorcery
Minor Aegis
Minor Berserk
Minor Courage
Minor Endurance
Minor Force
Minor Fortitude
Minor Heroism
Minor Intellect
Minor Mending
Minor Protection
Minor Slayer

Since you asked for specifics, the one skill that really popped was making Boundless Storm stick on the target. I love it, but it will never happen because that would be so OP, I can't even process it. That skill is on a lot of Oakensorcs right now. 30 seconds of damage, increased by class passives, increased resource recovery from the skill after increasing resource recovery passives, all guaranteed by being glued onto the target, on top of the constant damage, crit damage, and resource recovery from the primary damage of the lightning heavy attack. I don't know if you even need another skill, but you have 4 more slots to choose from, all benefitting from the passives changes. But Major Resolve is duplicated, so its not that big a change. LOL.

To use another mythic that is class-specific, the Velothi amulet, if you buffed the Arcanist class passives to increase base crit damage and resource recovery, as asked for in this thread, you would buff the entire class twice for those wearing the amulet. Without question.

Am I against Oakensorcs? Nope. Am I against Sorcs in general? Nope. Would I absolutely LOVE these changes? Every single one of them. But when you have a mythic that has been proven to work really, really well on one specific class, buffing that class will result in much larger gains than anticipated, which will lead to either the class getting nerfed, the ring getting nerfed, or both. Believing otherwise is naive, given the history of this game. Especially since we already saw this happen with the Oakensoul ring when it first came out.

Maybe try out an Oakensorc and see how easy it is right now before arguing buffing the class as a whole will not have a major impact on the game because of that mythic.

Daoin

sorcs had thier moment before it got nerfed, which i still think is a shame i would still have played on with other classes too wether or not it was very powerful without complaint but it was just fun and around here things like what happened to sorc happen alot, few months ago too strong now too weak. never going to change for any class no matter how many changes are made over the next 10 years. if you ask me its just better now if they start to pay more attention to what new players like more than older players with eso being pretty old too now and for the future of the game

BHoth_

El_Borracho wrote: »

@Zabagad Sorcerers, as a class, were underperforming before the Oakensoul ring. With the ring, the Oakensorc went from underperforming to a viable endgame PVE DD, to the point that a one-bar build can make the scoreboard, and even be an option in PVP.

You asked which skill would be affected? All of them. The primary ask is to increase the overall crit damage from passives. The secondary ask is to increase the passives to allow for more HP and resource regen. And since its class passives, that means all of them, including non-class skills, just as Exploitation does now but on a much larger scale. The OP used Crit Surge as an example of how the increased passives would work. Wonder how this list would further impact those changes:

Empower
Major Brutality
Major Prophecy
Major Resolve
Major Savagery
Major Sorcery
Minor Aegis
Minor Berserk
Minor Courage
Minor Endurance
Minor Force
Minor Fortitude
Minor Heroism
Minor Intellect
Minor Mending
Minor Protection
Minor Slayer

Since you asked for specifics, the one skill that really popped was making Boundless Storm stick on the target. I love it, but it will never happen because that would be so OP, I can't even process it. That skill is on a lot of Oakensorcs right now. 30 seconds of damage, increased by class passives, increased resource recovery from the skill after increasing resource recovery passives, all guaranteed by being glued onto the target, on top of the constant damage, crit damage, and resource recovery from the primary damage of the lightning heavy attack. I don't know if you even need another skill, but you have 4 more slots to choose from, all benefitting from the passives changes. But Major Resolve is duplicated, so its not that big a change. LOL.

To use another mythic that is class-specific, the Velothi amulet, if you buffed the Arcanist class passives to increase base crit damage and resource recovery, as asked for in this thread, you would buff the entire class twice for those wearing the amulet. Without question.

Am I against Oakensorcs? Nope. Am I against Sorcs in general? Nope. Would I absolutely LOVE these changes? Every single one of them. But when you have a mythic that has been proven to work really, really well on one specific class, buffing that class will result in much larger gains than anticipated, which will lead to either the class getting nerfed, the ring getting nerfed, or both. Believing otherwise is naive, given the history of this game. Especially since we already saw this happen with the Oakensoul ring when it first came out.

Maybe try out an Oakensorc and see how easy it is right now before arguing buffing the class as a whole will not have a major impact on the game because of that mythic.

Oakensorcs have a damage cap of around ~100k. Not close to being able to do scorepushing in vet trials.
Arcanists, DKs, on the other hand, can parse above 130k.
I know not of a single trifecta group in the current patch that even allow Heavy Attack builds.

I would also argue that there are ways of buffing Sorc that don't translate into buffs for HA sorc, such as making the spammable stronger, or buffing any of the skills that literally don't fit in a single bar during group content. The recent changes to bound aegis and armaments being a good example of this.

El_Borracho

@BHoth_ Agree with everything you said. I think Oakensorcs are in a good spot right now. Its an accessible build, not a top DPS build, even though some have cracked the scoreboard. Also think there are ways Sorcs could be buffed to get around inadvertently making HA sorcs stronger in the ways you suggested.

While I like the fact that the Oakensorc has made content easier for many who could not do that level of DPS before, I don't think pushing a one-bar build to the level of the Arcanist or DK is a wise move, and as I said, doing so would be begging for nerfs. Not saying the Arcanist is super hard to play, but it is harder than the Oakensorc in many ways.

Along with Templars, Sorcerers are in need of some love as a class and should be done in a way to not put the Oakensoul ring back on the chopping block. But as long as there are these mythics like the ring or the Mages' amulet, buffing base damage is not going to be the way to accomplish it.

ZhuJiuyin

Increasing base damage will not give Oakensorc a nuke, nor will making useless skills useful make Oakensorc stronger.
Let’s see what skills Oakensorc is using now:
Hurricane
Daedric Prey
Barbed Trap
Volatile Familiar
Twilight Tormentor
Storm Atronach
Optional: Wall of Elements, Mystic Orb


Then we look at how most sorter recommend changing skills:
lightning splash buff
unholy knowledge and persistence improvement or buff
Rune Prison improvements or buffs
expert mage buff
capacitor buff
shattering prison improvement or buff
Let pets give buffs (such as minor force, major prophecy, etc.)

None of these will affect Oakensorc, or at most increase it by 2~3K DPS.

So, no, improving the sorcerer skills across the board won't make Oaken lose control. And don't forget, Oaken works with all classes. The audience of Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is even smaller. Only classes builds such as Arcanist and Templar that use channeled effects and have a low proportion of light attacks can benefit from Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet without suffering serious DPS losses.

RoxyPhoenix

my wet dreams consist of changing mages' fury in to these morphs:
- mages wrath - stays as is but does not disappear after recast, gcd is 1 sec so you can have an active execute state on max 3 targets anyway.
- Endless Fury - make it a spamable, remove execute, increase dmg and make it undodgeable, it has no travel time and its lightning bolt from the sky, how ppl can dodge it is beyond me.

so ye, one can dream.

Quethrosar

mages wrath disappears? i do not think so, i use it on AOE packs by trying to land it on a few mobs and then nuke 1 of them so it triggers and starts a chain reaction.

Turtle_Bot

Quethrosar wrote: »

mages wrath disappears? i do not think so, i use it on AOE packs by trying to land it on a few mobs and then nuke 1 of them so it triggers and starts a chain reaction.

It's more of a PvP thing, but yes, Mages Wrath has a lot of issues with not firing.
It can be:
- dodged (despite being a sticky debuff proc)
- blocked
- purged
- and a lot of the time it just fails to proc altogether due to server desyncs where the targets health will drop below 20% for the caster, but not for the target.

The reason you're not seeing this issue is because of the following:
- PvE mobs don't heal (especially trash/pack mobs)
- they don't block outside of specific mobs (typically PvP NPC guards) who only block for melee heavy attacks
- they don't dodge roll
- they don't purge outside of bosses going through specific phases
- and because they don't heal, there's no desync with them to prevent the skill from proccing

The skill just fails against every single defensive mechanic in the game (which is horrendous for an "execute" ability) and with skills like frags proc hitting much harder while still getting its proc at any percentage of health instead of only below 20%, mages wrath is just not worth slotting, especially in PvP where those defensive mechanics are used all the time.

Mour

- No burst heal
- No decent spammable
- No Major Savagery/Prophecy in class kit
- Pets taking 2 spaces (also they are useless in open-world PVP)
- Exploitation passive is completely useless on stamsorc
- Rebate passive is bad
- Storm Atro ulti not granting Major Berserk to the user

Nah sorc is fine

Araneae6537

Sorc doesn’t feel at all the same to play. So many skills are on a delay or have cast time but used to make up for that by being hard hitting, but now I only get satisfying damage with heavy attacks with a heavy attack Oakensoul build. I fee like a lot of skills were overnerfed.

Now I’m glad that sorc doesn’t have a dedicated heal ability line as I think it’s boring when the skills are divided up that way, but I think we need SOME class heal that isn’t dependent on a pet or proc.

I used to tank on a sorc a lot but have been doing more solo content of late so I’m not sure to what degree that’s been diminished.

L33T_BEANS

Sorcerers are not even bad. They are very strong single-target damage, even to this day. They have a place in meta groups, and if it weren't for how stupid-level-busted Arcanist stacking was, they'd be even more in demand. They are still easily parsing over 120k on the Iron Atronach. Stamina sorcers now perform a bit better than the magicka counterparts because they can spam silver-shards and sustain pretty well since the only magicka skill they need to cast is Daedric Prey and Crystal Frags (yup they don't use crystal weapon).

I could get pretty wordy and explain the nuance of why they aren't popular but I think I'll just simplify it to Arcanist being OP, people stacking weapon damage / weapon crit instead of spell damage / spell crit, and fights being cleave-focused instead of single-target focused.

Honestly, every class that isn't DK or Arcanist right now has been getting shafted hard but I guess some harder than others.

Duke_Falcon

El_Borracho wrote: »

@Zabagad Sorcerers, as a class, were underperforming before the Oakensoul ring. With the ring, the Oakensorc went from underperforming to a viable endgame PVE DD, to the point that a one-bar build can make the scoreboard, and even be an option in PVP.

Brother, I tried OakenSorc in pvp and it works, but poorly. Sorc has so many skills necessary to line up a kill that one bar isn't enough.

Araneae6537

L33T_BEANS wrote: »

Sorcerers are not even bad. They are very strong single-target damage, even to this day. They have a place in meta groups, and if it weren't for how stupid-level-busted Arcanist stacking was, they'd be even more in demand. They are still easily parsing over 120k on the Iron Atronach. Stamina sorcers now perform a bit better than the magicka counterparts because they can spam silver-shards and sustain pretty well since the only magicka skill they need to cast is Daedric Prey and Crystal Frags (yup they don't use crystal weapon).

I could get pretty wordy and explain the nuance of why they aren't popular but I think I'll just simplify it to Arcanist being OP, people stacking weapon damage / weapon crit instead of spell damage / spell crit, and fights being cleave-focused instead of single-target focused.

Honestly, every class that isn't DK or Arcanist right now has been getting shafted hard but I guess some harder than others.

It could be a misperception or misremembering… I played my sorc DPS most back while light armor and specifically Bahsei was still BiS for magicka sorc…

In any case, I wish that more of the class skills were useful, as it would be fun to play a storm mage. And while I’m glad that the skill lines are themed and not role based and that you can summon pets for damage or healing, I would like to be able to play a healer or DPS without them.

KaironBlackbard

Stam-Sorcs are best without the pets. When I use pets instead of other abilities, I end up losing a lot of my damage.
Using the Exchange ability grants a big heal and some other resource.
I want to try the bound armor morph, since it has 33% more block mitigation. Though you'd have to spam that every 3 seconds... Bound Weapons also seems fun. I don't have the level for that yet.

Turtle_Bot

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

Stam-Sorcs are best without the pets. When I use pets instead of other abilities, I end up losing a lot of my damage.
Using the Exchange ability grants a big heal and some other resource.
I want to try the bound armor morph, since it has 33% more block mitigation. Though you'd have to spam that every 3 seconds... Bound Weapons also seems fun. I don't have the level for that yet.

Depends what morphs of the pets you are using, heal or damage morphs, but currently every single top sorc dps on any of the leaderboards (and they are all stamsorcs) are using the pets.

The pets are just that much stronger than everything else sorc has access to, especially once you factor in deadric prey, hence the constant complaints by many sorcs about being forced to use pets.

I'm also guessing you mostly do casual level content, questing, overland, occasional normal dungeons? It's fine if that is what you do and it's great if that's what you enjoy, but that does honestly skew your perception of the class by quite a lot.

Personally I run a lot of different fun themed builds for doing overland content and questing since they are significantly more fun to play and they all perform just fine for that content, but I always have to switch up to more meta builds for anything even remotely harder (vet DLC dungeons, PvP, trials, etc) and all the hard PvE content involves using the pets since nothing else keeps up.

KaironBlackbard

I do mostly do overland...
My pets only do 600 damage on average, whereas by abilities do over 5k each. Crystal Weapon itself is a cheap 6k damage onto my 2.5k light attack.
I also use daedric curse, the double blast morph, dealing 12k per blast last time I checked.
Can't yet get bound armor unfortunately.
Though the matriarch has a massive heal, dark exchange is better, and gives me more stamina. Matriarch never deals more than 1k damage.
I use mostly timed abilities, with Crystal Weapon as my primary spammable.
I use Overload with Silence on backbar. I rarely use the Atronach, but it can be useful for Crowd Control / ad clearing.
And now I'm forgetting my other abilities...

KaironBlackbard

O.O Well I need to check it again. Last time I used CW, it was a one shot and done with high damage. ESO Hub says its different than when I last used it.
Crystal Weapon
Dark Deal morph of Dark Exchange.
Mages Wrath.
Power Overload. - ultimate.
Haunting Curse
Streak.
That's my main bar.

Back bar has
Critical Surge
Hurricane
Charged Atronach / Negate Magic
Shattering Prison
Might have Ward
Silver Bolts

Turtle_Bot

ahh, ok.

It seems you're still levelling your sorc as well, since those damage numbers are quite low, indicating zero to minimal CP, probably mixed gear sets, low quality gear, etc.

The tormentor (other morph of the matriarch) deals twice as much damage with its regular attacks compared to the matriarch and its secondary ability makes it deal significantly more damage against targets above 50% health for a duration.

The scamp pet also deals quite a bit of damage with its regular attacks (similar to hurricane) and it has a secondary ability that deals more damage in an area around the scamp and stuns enemies after a certain amount of time.

Both of these pets also get their damage buffed by a further 45% against targets afflicted by daedric prey (other morph of haunting curse).

Daedric prey is kind of annoying since its a short duration single target ability with only 1 damage instance at the end where the recast of it doesn't always line up nicely with the pets attacks, but the combined damage of it + the pets is a lot higher than relying exclusively on casting abilities like shattering prison, silver bolts and mages wrath.

Outside of daedric prey, the pets are fairly passive damage as well with long timers on their secondary abilities making them very easy and cheap to keep up compared to something like shattering prison and streak.

If you want to keep the ranged aspect (I'm guessing you use bow front bar?), you could do something like:
front bar:
daedric prey
crystal weapon
silver bolts (take the shards morph to make it area once you can morph it)
scamp
tormentor
overload

back bar:
Hurricane
scamp
tormentor
dark deal
critical surge
atro/negate

If you want to keep streak + mages wrath, replace scamp with mages wrath front bar and streak back bar.

This should give you a lot more damage passively from the pets + prey, while still having crystal weapon + silver shards as your main casted abilities with dark deal to heal and crit surge + hurricane for the basic damage/armor buffs.

Atro would be the better ultimate for the back bar, but if you like overload + negate, feel free to keep those as they are.

If you want to try out bound armaments (the damage morph), you could replace scamp with it.

Next would be to look at your gear sets/quality, but using abilities will provide the most immediate damage increase while you level up your skills and character.

KaironBlackbard

He's Champ 356, but he's not my main. Also he's Breton.
He's a secondary character.
I main a T4 Vamp Argoni Nightblade.

Mage's Wrath is execute, tends to one shot when it procs that.
I like the double blast curse because so much damage.
I really need to check his skills again, mostly to see how Crystal Weapon works on him, and the damage of Curse.
Those are my main abilities.
Last time I played him, Crystal weapon applied a 3 second effect where the next light or heavy attack you made dealt an additional high amount of damage. Never fell below 3.5k no matter what mishmash I was using. I had it around 6k.
The effect always seemed to end just before I could finish charging a heavy attack, so I only used it with light attacks.
Cast, fire, cast, fire, cast, fire, waste everything on the field.

Of course, Now I've obtained the game on PC and am trying to setup my first character with a Nice build.
Khajiit Nightblade. level 49. Gonna try for Maximum block mitigation at no block cost with some sets for block = retaliation damage, like Thews and Frozen Watcher.

I really need to check my Sorc again.