Hardened Ward heal making it to live is a mistake and needs to be changed

StaticWave · July 2

Tcholl wrote: »

One more player here that believes the ward buff is totally busted and this change should NEVER have reached the main server. You work hard to get the sorc in execute range, even spending your ulti in the process and it pops right back to full health will massive shields and infinite sustain. If you manage to survive the damage, this goes on over and over. Someone here said that the class was revived and by this comment you can tell how much difference one skill buff is making to the class at expense of the whole game experience (you are supose to die in pvp). It is getting to the point where we see much much more sorcs if compared to patches prior to this change. I really hope we see some correction to this awfull buff asap.

Exactly this. As I've said before, an average magsorc will see this as a necessary buff. A good magsorc will see this as an unnecessary buff. There has to be a middle ground, which is why I suggested turning the burst heal into a HoT. Keeping it as it is makes the class borderline unfair and not fun to play against or on it.

TechMaybeHic · July 2

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Zabagad · July 2

.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Your wish comes true

:

But it's not significant at all for U42 - the trend can be missleading and we need more campaigns to have enough data.
At the same time it was the first campaign where PC/EU sorc population was > NB since I do this tracking.

Tcholl · July 2

This chart shows that ppl is moving to sorc massively after the Ward buff, while DKs are disapearing. Dragonknights have no identity right now: everyone is tanky but with better shields, the class lacks mobility, combustion nerfed and the damage is not on par to sorcs that still can use ranged skills and streak or with the burst attack from NB. We can notice that half of the pop is either playing NB or Sorc. We need correction immediately. Personally, I am getting to the point where I avoid to fight sorcs in the same way that I avoid tanks. If you main Sorc and think this is good, think twice because less and less ppl will want to engage in any gameplay with you.

TechMaybeHic · July 2

Zabagad wrote: »

.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Your wish comes true :

But it's not significant at all for U42 - the trend can be missleading and we need more campaigns to have enough data.
At the same time it was the first campaign where PC/EU sorc population was > NB since I do this tracking.

Thank you. It confirms most of my suspicions, but Warden is not as high up as it seemed to me.

Jsmalls · July 2

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Why are some ppl arguing that a combo that’s 100% blockable is somehow better than combo that’s only 50% blockable.

I have 60% block mitigation. Let’s say for argument’s sake, I limit Curse + cFrag combo to deal the same damage as Merc Resolve. I will then take these damage values:

1) A 13.3k Merc Resolve
2) A 7.7k cFrag and 5.6k Curse (scaled down proportionately from 9.6k cFrag and 7.7k Curse), totaling 13.3k

Apply the 60% block mitigation, I now take 5.3k Merc Resolve. In contrast, I will take 3k cFrag and 5.6k Curse since Curse is unblockable, totaling 8.6k.

8.6k > 5.3k

Even if Curse isn’t critting, it’s still going to do equal or more damage thru block than Merc Resolve, while having the potential to do even more damage when critting.

So you're looking at the damage but how long does each of those take to complete?

Also these days with the way the game is built are people better at healing through damage or timing out block. Personally I block some specific things but tend to mitigate others in other ways. I have a little time to mitigate a curse frag in a few ways where I tend to not think too much about blocking bows especially when a player is good at feints.

Just offering perspective but yes some players will mitigate curse with back to back frags and others will block your bow like they are reading your mind. It's just relative

It takes 5 seconds to get full Merciless Resolve stacks. It takes 3.5s to get a cFrag + Curse combo if lucky, or slightly more if not. Even if you don’t get cFrag within that window, there’s still the spammable + Curse combo.

When not blocked, 4k spammable + 5.6k Curse deal 9.6k total damage. When blocked with 60% block mitigation, 1.6k spammable + 5.6k Curse deal 7.2k total damage.

7.2k spammable + Curse > 5.3k Merciless Resolve.

As long as a large portion of Sorc’s damage is unblockable, it’s always going to outperform Merciless Resolve.

Yeah but what are we doing with the higher crit damage and chance multipliers that the NB will have? That math still has to be accounted for right?

It doesn’t matter. A crit Merciless Resolve before 140 Balorgh ult and Incap debuff was hitting me for 13.3k CRIT. With Balorfh and Incap debuff, it was hitting me for 17k. Curse + cFrag were hitting me for 7.7k and 9.6k CRIT, totaling 17.3k damage. Even higher than an amplified Merciless Resolve and can be consistently applied at anytime lol.

That magsorc had no Minor Brittle, and probably no Shadow either, so his crit damage was definitely 55-65%. Even if both Curse and cFrag didn’t crit, they would still do 15k+ total damage, almost 2k higher than a CRIT Merciless Resolve.

This is again, not going into the details of which combo is more avoidable, which I’ve already explained previously.

@StaticWave

I've been away from this thread for a bit but geez how are they letting you get away with comparing TWO skills against ONE.

13.3k crit from ONE ability.

17.3k damage from TWO abilities.

That means Merciless is doing 70% of the damage of TWO abilities.

Yeah curse is unblockable. You know what curse also is? A roll now indicator.

It's also a GCD of NO damage (delayed). So it backlogs pressure but in the meantime prior to that damage going off it allows your opponent to have a GCD of NO damage often allowing them to get to full health.

You also spoke on curse and frag being able to be used every 3.5 seconds. That's laughable. Trust me I reapply curse a lot before the second one goes off, but it's a waste of resources and the second curse is more likely to go unnoticed by your opponent.

Here's some statistics for you since you think it's a guarantee. The odds of hitting a 33% chance in either your cast of curse or your spammable is 56%. So pretty much half the time you'll get it, half the time you won't. Keep that in mind got the next comment.

So that's MAYBE 2 perfect combo every 12 seconds or 6 seconds on average (higher than the 5 seconds for Merciless).

Let's go to the maybe, so ~44% of the time you aren't getting your frag after curse. So that 6 seconds average now becomes 12 seconds (rough math cuz you're failing to get one every other combo attempt).

So let's rather compare your 12 seconds average of a perfect combo compared to merciless 5 seconds for a guarantee. And keep in mind merciless just needs to land period to do 70% of the damage of a TIMED, RNG, CLEAR indication, combo.

Frag also has a timer (unlike merciless) and can be lost if stuck defensive.

Sorcs also have a passive that deals more damage at higher health thresholds. So one of your values are inflated for this.

This passive is counter productive against the oh so common undeath passive. I often get crit frags for 6k damage against opponents around 10k health. And that's with 16k Pen 5500 weapon damage and 51k Magicka. Go figure.

Merciless will hit for that 13.3k at 50% health.

Curse and frag at 50% health will do 5% less damage for the first ability that hits, and likely 7.5% less damage for the second one.

So your 17.3k damage is likely inflated by roughly 6% or 1000 damage bringing it to 16.3k

Which means merciless ALONE does 82% of the damage of both skills when it matters most.

NONE of this is considered in your comparison (because it hurts your claim).

Bias is bias. Which at this point you're just having bias for the sake of bias cuz you aren't even a Nightblade main.

Edit: I respect you very much as a player, and part of the community. Think your analysis of stuff is great. I just really think you have an agenda against Sorcs right now.

xylena_lazarow · July 2

My group chat the other day:

Just landed a 17k Dawnbreaker

nice, one hardened ward down

Tcholl · July 2

It is very rich to see ppl trying to come with arguments to hide the obvious truth to anyone that play pvp right now which is the buffs for the sorcs, specially the Ward, made the class almost unkilable. The only exceptions are the players that have no idea of what they are doing whatsoever.

As per the comments about mistakes, that is exactly the issue. You have a BAIL for your mistakes with Ward. Even if somenone capitalize on the error, it is just a matter of pressing Ward and get back to full health, massive shield and infinite sustain. The other classes either get killed or get bored fighting a sorc solo. This is not pvp at all, to say the least.

What is already happening is that other players are avoiding sorcs on pvp or changing to sorcs themselves. No one likes to start a fight to end in a stalemate at best. Everyone that plays this class will either have to deal with groups, sorcs or play alone.

Galeriano2 · July 2

StaticWave wrote: »

- 10% max mag and stam (meaning bigger shield size and better healing)
- Blood Magic rework which allows you to proc the heal from this passive everytime you cast a Dark Magic ability. You're no longer limited to LANDING a cFrag to proc the heal anymore.
- Vibrant Shroud, which has the same tooltip as Artic Blast, but also applies Minor Vitality and Major Maim on targets. This skill also procs Blood Magic passive, giving you a competitive burst heal with similar tooltips to a single target burst heal, but is AoE
- Healing Contingency or Healing Soul from the scribing skill line are also very powerful and are being used by many builds. They even replaced some class burst heals because they are THAT strong

Not that I completly disagree but I have few corrections here

-10% mag and stam works only if You don't have pets which excludes some sets and skills from sorc's toolkit. While it's not end of the world it's still a drawback that limits build options

- blood magic rework is really not that strong change. For example a magsorc that relies on shield usually gets around 3-5% of overall healing from that passive. The more heavily shield is used the less healing sorc will get from blood magic. The only sorc setup that truly benefits from it is a sorc that prior to this change was not using shield and crystal weapon

- Vibrant shround does not have the same tooltip as Arctic Blast. Arctic blast have around 10% higher scaling formula and if we're bringing passives into the equation than warden's easy acces to major mending and major toughness also would have to be mentioned. If we're mentioning secondary effects than arctic blast is also applying a fair amount of these. Vibrant Shroud is also one the most expensive heals in the game, so at the end of the day it's a decent tool for a group play but mediocre tool for a solo play. You don't even see it being used that often by non shield sorcs.

- Healing Contingency or Healing Soul are used not because they're "THAT" strong. In terms of raw healing they're usually comparable or often weaker than class burst heals. What they do is usually providing user with a bit of utility that for example allows to create 1 flex spot on user's bar. The issue with sorc when compared to some other classes is that sorc does not have so much freedom as some other classes to easily unslot some ability. It's no coincidence that sorc is the main class where mighty chudan is considered as one of the top PvP choices.

DrNukenstein · July 2

Zabagad wrote: »

.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Your wish comes true :

But it's not significant at all for U42 - the trend can be missleading and we need more campaigns to have enough data.
At the same time it was the first campaign where PC/EU sorc population was > NB since I do this tracking.

I like this chart. It confirms that about 5% of the community are meta slaves that jump on the flavor of the month every patch. Look at all those DKs getting on the night blade bandwagon for update 40, only to convert to magsorcism by update 42. Truly an astonishing study.

Firstmep · July 2

DrNukenstein wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Your wish comes true :

But it's not significant at all for U42 - the trend can be missleading and we need more campaigns to have enough data.
At the same time it was the first campaign where PC/EU sorc population was > NB since I do this tracking.

I like this chart. It confirms that about 5% of the community are meta slaves that jump on the flavor of the month every patch. Look at all those DKs getting on the night blade bandwagon for update 40, only to convert to magsorcism by update 42. Truly an astonishing study.

I honesty nevér understood meta hopping. I've been main plar thru thick and thin since 2015, although I play all classes.

DrNukenstein · July 2

Firstmep wrote: »

I honesty nevér understood meta hopping. I've been main plar thru thick and thin since 2015, although I play all classes.

Why theory craft ways to compete with:

-Permanent god mode (DK's pre corrosive nerf)
-Constant major berserk and zoom zooms for one skill slot (NB pre concealed weapon nerf)
-Healy shields with free mobility and stacked ranged burst damage (The modern magsorc)

Are they stupid for making the competitive environment more toxic with their over representation of flavor of the month-ism or are we stupid for not jumping on what's out of line?

xylena_lazarow · July 2

Firstmep wrote: »

I honesty nevér understood meta

Meta isn't copy pasting some streamer build. It's knowing what the strongest builds are, and either just piloting them, tuning them, or designing something that can beat them. You need to understand concepts like minmaxing and stat density, and be able to develop a playstyle that is coherent with your build. Even when Templar is less powerful, it still has meta builds that represent the best it can play, and there's always a meta niche for its support kit.

Joy_Division · July 2

Firstmep wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I'd be curious to see the class population the one player was tracking. It's getting to where the kill 20 class quests, it's only worth whike to take sorc, NB, or Warden. I even feel like there are much fewer DKs

Your wish comes true :

But it's not significant at all for U42 - the trend can be missleading and we need more campaigns to have enough data.
At the same time it was the first campaign where PC/EU sorc population was > NB since I do this tracking.

I like this chart. It confirms that about 5% of the community are meta slaves that jump on the flavor of the month every patch. Look at all those DKs getting on the night blade bandwagon for update 40, only to convert to magsorcism by update 42. Truly an astonishing study.

I honesty nevér understood meta hopping. I've been main plar thru thick and thin since 2015, although I play all classes.

It's not so meta-hopping than not relishing the thought of banging a head against the wall.

I got hit for 46K damage in 1.3 seconds the other night on a build with 30K resistance and over 20% damage reduction. I got to compete with that? 'Plar right now is just a nostalgic thing I do once in a while

Vaqual · July 3

Jsmalls wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Why are some ppl arguing that a combo that’s 100% blockable is somehow better than combo that’s only 50% blockable.

I have 60% block mitigation. Let’s say for argument’s sake, I limit Curse + cFrag combo to deal the same damage as Merc Resolve. I will then take these damage values:

1) A 13.3k Merc Resolve
2) A 7.7k cFrag and 5.6k Curse (scaled down proportionately from 9.6k cFrag and 7.7k Curse), totaling 13.3k

Apply the 60% block mitigation, I now take 5.3k Merc Resolve. In contrast, I will take 3k cFrag and 5.6k Curse since Curse is unblockable, totaling 8.6k.

8.6k > 5.3k

Even if Curse isn’t critting, it’s still going to do equal or more damage thru block than Merc Resolve, while having the potential to do even more damage when critting.

So you're looking at the damage but how long does each of those take to complete?

Also these days with the way the game is built are people better at healing through damage or timing out block. Personally I block some specific things but tend to mitigate others in other ways. I have a little time to mitigate a curse frag in a few ways where I tend to not think too much about blocking bows especially when a player is good at feints.

Just offering perspective but yes some players will mitigate curse with back to back frags and others will block your bow like they are reading your mind. It's just relative

It takes 5 seconds to get full Merciless Resolve stacks. It takes 3.5s to get a cFrag + Curse combo if lucky, or slightly more if not. Even if you don’t get cFrag within that window, there’s still the spammable + Curse combo.

When not blocked, 4k spammable + 5.6k Curse deal 9.6k total damage. When blocked with 60% block mitigation, 1.6k spammable + 5.6k Curse deal 7.2k total damage.

7.2k spammable + Curse > 5.3k Merciless Resolve.

As long as a large portion of Sorc’s damage is unblockable, it’s always going to outperform Merciless Resolve.

Yeah but what are we doing with the higher crit damage and chance multipliers that the NB will have? That math still has to be accounted for right?

It doesn’t matter. A crit Merciless Resolve before 140 Balorgh ult and Incap debuff was hitting me for 13.3k CRIT. With Balorfh and Incap debuff, it was hitting me for 17k. Curse + cFrag were hitting me for 7.7k and 9.6k CRIT, totaling 17.3k damage. Even higher than an amplified Merciless Resolve and can be consistently applied at anytime lol.

That magsorc had no Minor Brittle, and probably no Shadow either, so his crit damage was definitely 55-65%. Even if both Curse and cFrag didn’t crit, they would still do 15k+ total damage, almost 2k higher than a CRIT Merciless Resolve.

This is again, not going into the details of which combo is more avoidable, which I’ve already explained previously.

@StaticWave

I've been away from this thread for a bit but geez how are they letting you get away with comparing TWO skills against ONE.

13.3k crit from ONE ability.

17.3k damage from TWO abilities.

That means Merciless is doing 70% of the damage of TWO abilities.

Yeah curse is unblockable. You know what curse also is? A roll now indicator.

It's also a GCD of NO damage (delayed). So it backlogs pressure but in the meantime prior to that damage going off it allows your opponent to have a GCD of NO damage often allowing them to get to full health.

You also spoke on curse and frag being able to be used every 3.5 seconds. That's laughable. Trust me I reapply curse a lot before the second one goes off, but it's a waste of resources and the second curse is more likely to go unnoticed by your opponent.

Here's some statistics for you since you think it's a guarantee. The odds of hitting a 33% chance in either your cast of curse or your spammable is 56%. So pretty much half the time you'll get it, half the time you won't. Keep that in mind got the next comment.

So that's MAYBE 2 perfect combo every 12 seconds or 6 seconds on average (higher than the 5 seconds for Merciless).

Let's go to the maybe, so ~44% of the time you aren't getting your frag after curse. So that 6 seconds average now becomes 12 seconds (rough math cuz you're failing to get one every other combo attempt).

So let's rather compare your 12 seconds average of a perfect combo compared to merciless 5 seconds for a guarantee. And keep in mind merciless just needs to land period to do 70% of the damage of a TIMED, RNG, CLEAR indication, combo.

Frag also has a timer (unlike merciless) and can be lost if stuck defensive.

Sorcs also have a passive that deals more damage at higher health thresholds. So one of your values are inflated for this.

This passive is counter productive against the oh so common undeath passive. I often get crit frags for 6k damage against opponents around 10k health. And that's with 16k Pen 5500 weapon damage and 51k Magicka. Go figure.

Merciless will hit for that 13.3k at 50% health.

Curse and frag at 50% health will do 5% less damage for the first ability that hits, and likely 7.5% less damage for the second one.

So your 17.3k damage is likely inflated by roughly 6% or 1000 damage bringing it to 16.3k

Which means merciless ALONE does 82% of the damage of both skills when it matters most.

NONE of this is considered in your comparison (because it hurts your claim).

Bias is bias. Which at this point you're just having bias for the sake of bias cuz you aren't even a Nightblade main.

Edit: I respect you very much as a player, and part of the community. Think your analysis of stuff is great. I just really think you have an agenda against Sorcs right now.

The GCD without damage is not really a disadvantage when you are setting up for a 100 (or whatever HP the opponent considers safe enough to play offensively) to 0 nuke. I am a strong supporter of the "Merciless is the main reason why NB power budget is weird"-movement, but comparing the purely CD based Sorc combo reset to the active NB "combo" reset makes no sense in many practical scenarios. Every second spent fully disengaged or in LoS is $ on the Sorcs bank, while merciless can be actively denied.

Of course this is circumstantial (speed, terrain, off-targets), but to act like it's a big deal for Sorc to reset is just ...

And even though comparing hits is also again very circumstantial (block, dodge, streak, gear caster, gear target), even the 20 % difference you are willing to concede (it's not like you weren't gonna bring those skills) is huge in the world of oneshot bs.

Edit:
Wanted to add these points without making a new post:

-Even an imperfect combo can often be enough to prompt a defensive rotation on the opponent, netting you the opportunity for a soft reset.

-This sentence doesn't really mean a lot, since it is a pears and apples comparison: "Which means merciless ALONE does 82% of the damage of both skills when it matters most." Equates basically to: Getting up to 2 Curse proc chances from a prior cast means you have to use only one GCD to exceed merciless damage when it matters most. This is just hollow semantics.

Vaqual · July 3

I also wanted to add, that I think that every class deserves good offensive and defensive abilities, simply because I deem a large selection of playstyles to be very appealing. Extraordinary offense should ideally not be balanced by attaching strings to the rest of the kit, but by including a defensive penalty to that extraordinary offensive element. The same applies to extraordinary defensive tools. If players really want to keep ward disproportionally loaded, it should come with some kind of tangible offensive drawback. A class wide balance is really a subpar solution with the highly modular build system.

This is by far not the only ability that deserves this treatment, but it is clearly messing up balance atm.

LaintalAy · July 3

As a normal eveyday PvE player who has struggled along with an under performing magsorc for most of the past eight years, I'm now enjoying what I see as competitive performance.

It may well be that PvP players weren't the intended beneficiaries of this change.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

LaintalAy wrote: »

It may well be that PvP players weren't the intended beneficiaries of this change.

As has been said, surely there are ways to help casual PvE Sorcs without completely breaking PvP.

LaintalAy · July 3

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

It may well be that PvP players weren't the intended beneficiaries of this change.

As has been said, surely there are ways to help casual PvE Sorcs without completely breaking PvP.

I like this one. I've put up with many nerfs over the years, it's not often that the advantage goes my way.

The fact that it was reported by PTS players and still released into production, suggests that ZOS wanted this change, as is.

Tcholl · July 3

I also play PvE and I have never seen sorcs underperforming as DDs or Solo. Maybe they dont make the perfect Tanks for high end content but up to normal dungeons and trials does not make any difference which class you play in any of the 3 roles.

I am sure that solo content is easier now but hey this is exactly the issue with PvP. If this skill makes it so much easier to survive to monsters, it also makes it much easier to survive to player damage.

Also, as many people stated here before, the Sorc class also have the best mobility and deal massive damage from great distance. Check the parses and you will see that sorcs are the ones dealing more damage right now in PvE.

This skill as it is just dont make any sense in the actual context of the classes for PvP or PvE.

StaticWave · July 3

Jsmalls wrote: »

I've been away from this thread for a bit but geez how are they letting you get away with comparing TWO skills against ONE.

13.3k crit from ONE ability.

17.3k damage from TWO abilities.

That means Merciless is doing 70% of the damage of TWO abilities.

They aren't "letting me get away" because what I said is true.

You simply cannot compare the two skills in a limited view like that. As I've already stated, you need to consider 3 criteria before making an accurate assessment.

Curse is unblockable, which ignores dodge roll and block. A 13.3k crit Merciless Resolve will only deal 5320 damage to a blocking player, and 0 damage to a roll dodging player. A 7.7k Curse will deal 7.7k damage to a blocking and roll dodging player. Why are you not considering this fact when comparing the two abilities?

One skill is heavily countered by basic defensive mechanics that EVERY class has access to, while the other is only negated by Cleanse, which not every class has access to. You can't just say "dodge" as if I'm somehow mitigating the actual damage of Curse. Sure I'm mitigating whatever comes afterwards, but that doesn't diminish the fact that I'm still taking the full value of Curse.

Jsmalls wrote: »

Yeah curse is unblockable. You know what curse also is? A roll now indicator.

I can literally say the same thing about Merciless Resolve. Just dodge or block it man.

Jsmalls wrote: »

It's also a GCD of NO damage (delayed). So it backlogs pressure but in the meantime prior to that damage going off it allows your opponent to have a GCD of NO damage often allowing them to get to full health.

Okay let's look at two examples using Elemental Weapon and Curse over 3 GCDs. Both deal 7k damage individually.

First example:

Elemental Weapon > Elemental Weapon > Elemental Weapon

Second example:

Curse > Elemental Weapon > Elemental Weapon + Curse goes off

Both examples occur in 3 GCDs and deal identical max values, but the 1st example is pressure-over-time and the 2nd example is burst.

So please explain to me why it should matter when in both examples, the target will receive 21k damage, regardless of the method of delivery?

It doesn't matter if they get back to full health. Once that Curse goes off they are instantly back to whatever HP they were at when you cast the skill. What it does is give you the opportunity to front-load damage into 1 GCD and ignore their HoT ticks. I can guarantee you that in the 1st example, someone with a good amount of HoTs will LITERALLY IGNORE THAT PRESSURE.

A very realistic example is ball groups. Do you think with the amount of HoTs they have, they're gonna die via pressure? No, they die because they get ult-dumped with burst procs and fat ticks of unblockable/undodgable damage (Northern Storm, Eye of Storm). You know what is also unblockable and undodgable? Curse.

Jsmalls wrote: »

Here's some statistics for you since you think it's a guarantee. The odds of hitting a 33% chance in either your cast of curse or your spammable is 56%. So pretty much half the time you'll get it, half the time you won't. Keep that in mind got the next comment.

So that's MAYBE 2 perfect combo every 12 seconds or 6 seconds on average (higher than the 5 seconds for Merciless).

Let's go to the maybe, so ~44% of the time you aren't getting your frag after curse. So that 6 seconds average now becomes 12 seconds (rough math cuz you're failing to get one every other combo attempt).

So let's rather compare your 12 seconds average of a perfect combo compared to merciless 5 seconds for a guarantee. And keep in mind merciless just needs to land period to do 70% of the damage of a TIMED, RNG, CLEAR indication, combo.

Frag also has a timer (unlike merciless) and can be lost if stuck defensive.

Sorcs also have a passive that deals more damage at higher health thresholds. So one of your values are inflated for this.

This passive is counter productive against the oh so common undeath passive. I often get crit frags for 6k damage against opponents around 10k health. And that's with 16k Pen 5500 weapon damage and 51k Magicka. Go figure.

Merciless will hit for that 13.3k at 50% health.

Curse and frag at 50% health will do 5% less damage for the first ability that hits, and likely 7.5% less damage for the second one.

So your 17.3k damage is likely inflated by roughly 6% or 1000 damage bringing it to 16.3k

Which means merciless ALONE does 82% of the damage of both skills when it matters most.

NONE of this is considered in your comparison (because it hurts your claim).

I've already said you don't need to use Frag in the comparison. You can even use a spammable and Curse + spammable will still be better than Merciless Resolve simply because Curse is unblockable. Even if you include all that in my analysis, my claim will not be hurt because again, Curse is unblockable lol.

Jsmalls wrote: »

Bias is bias. Which at this point you're just having bias for the sake of bias cuz you aren't even a Nightblade main.

My NB is alliance rank 32. I mained it for 6 months before switching to stamsorc. I know their combo by heart, both from playing on it and against it. I can hop on it now and take 1-2 days to re-learn the defensive pattern of the class and will be as good as other NB mains. Your point?

Jsmalls wrote: »

Edit: I respect you very much as a player, and part of the community. Think your analysis of stuff is great. I just really think you have an agenda against Sorcs right now.

I respect you too, but don't think for one moment I'm against Sorc. I main the class. Why would I go out of my way to hurt my own class unless it's severely imbalanced?

divnyi · July 3

LaintalAy wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

It may well be that PvP players weren't the intended beneficiaries of this change.

As has been said, surely there are ways to help casual PvE Sorcs without completely breaking PvP.

I like this one. I've put up with many nerfs over the years, it's not often that the advantage goes my way.

The fact that it was reported by PTS players and still released into production, suggests that ZOS wanted this change, as is.

They never listen for balance issues from PTS, they fix bugs at best (if even that).
I imagine they don't put much dev time in that, and maybe need final versions to be available before specific dates.
So no, I don't think that means anything. If past experience teaches us anything, they will wait for half a year and nerf this skill to the ground and below.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

LaintalAy wrote: »

I like this one.

And I would like god mode.

TechMaybeHic · July 3

I would like if jabs stunned on each hit again with no CC immunity. Would be a much needed change to make jabs work. Seems reasonable considering the context.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I would like if jabs stunned on each hit again with no CC immunity.

Agreed. Great QoL change, especially for overworld PvE trash mobs.

Tcholl · July 3

I just want to PvP players that also can die, which is not the case of the broken Buffed Ward Sorc in decent hands.

TheRedRavenTR · July 14

I love how this really long thread is static slaughtering everyone with actual stats and proof and people going "NUH UH DONT TOUCH MY BROKEN CLASS, WHAT ABOUT THIS CLASS?!" hahahahhahaha

xylena_lazarow · July 15

TheRedRavenTR wrote: »

WHAT ABOUT THIS CLASS?!" hahahahhahaha

And it's always mid Arcanist, with its strictly worse shield, strictly worse PvP damage, and strictly worse mobility.

Tcholl · July 15

What those ppl dont realize is they will touch the class anyway and without proper feedback might become worst to play than before the ward change.

I see them reducing the sorcs burst damage, for example, if they keep this busted skill as it is.

xylena_lazarow · July 15

Tcholl wrote: »

I see them reducing the sorcs burst damage, for example, if they keep this busted skill as it is.

During the Warden DK meta a few years back, they gutted NB damage to preserve its spammable cloak.