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

Joy_Division

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.
Cyrodiil is already dying for Years and will continue dying for years without ever finishing, I dont think magsorcs are a major reason for that as there have always been stronger and weaker classes.

I would agree that mag sorcs aren't the major reason (low pop caps, power of organized groups, broken nature of AvAvA scoring are bigger offenders).

But it's more than that there have always been stronger and weaker classes. When it has always been the same stronger and weaker classes, that gets really frustrating. And the gap is too far in ESO. It's one thing to know you're going into a fight with a slight disadvantage, quite another when a class has such strong survivability, is so maneuverable, and does so much ranged damage that the game is basically saying "you picked the wrong class."

And the idea that mag sorcs have been perpetual victims of ESO balancing is very misleading. From update 6 to 35, that's years and years, they have consistently been a top tier class, and this was when Hardened Ward had zero heal. For a few updates after that, they were mediocre: welcome to what everybody who isn;t a NB had to deal with from 6 to 35. But now there is nothing mediocre about mag sorc at all.

xylena_lazarow

Joy_Division wrote: »

From update 6 to 35, that's years and years, they have consistently been a top tier class, and this was when Hardened Ward had zero heal.

It was before u35, it was when they reworked CP to remove the 20% max pool buff, before you had sets like Rallying Cry or Wretched Vitality to fill the stat density that a max mag build normally lacks. I'd argue that ranged specs absolutely should be weaker on purpose though, no matter how many Sorc mains insist it's totally cool to bring a knife to a gun fight.

Aces-High-82

Do not forget you have to opt for Staff/Bow if you want to use LA at range....ppl tend to forget the lower damage provided.
Proc CF cast is still clunky and the projectile travel speed is not the fastest.
You wanna stay at ~14m range to your target to land your stun on time....thats only double of melee range (positional desync won't help with that optimal range either).

TechMaybeHic

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.
Cyrodiil is already dying for Years and will continue dying for years without ever finishing, I dont think magsorcs are a major reason for that as there have always been stronger and weaker classes.

There are a lot more ways for sorc to get healing now. I feel like the heal on shield has become irrelevant. It's the max stat and range damage being too good. Not really a sorc problem, but more of melee damage and defense of being plinked by masses at range is way down.

Bushido2513

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Cyrodiil is already dying for Years and will continue dying for years without ever finishing, I dont think magsorcs are a major reason for that as there have always been stronger and weaker classes.

I'd argue they're definitely part of the problem because constant ranged damage spam is miserable to play against, it encourages players to stay on the roof or inside the zerg where they won't immediately be nuked by someone they can't possibly engage or even see on their screen.

There was a MagSorc player on my 8v8 BGs team yesterday who went 30-0 one match, then 10-9 the next, and not because of teammates. That much volatility tells me there's still something very wrong with the way this class is designed. I haven't fought enough good MagSorcs yet to judge the Ward nerf but it might be more effective than it first looked.

You're both mostly saying the same thing. Sorc is part of the problem but overall balance is also messed up. It's tough being hit by ranged damage but it also sucks to get caught in a charm storm or hit with a ton of ranged crit damage from stealth or nuked by proc sets from stealth by a player that has movement speed and heals. There's a lot to complain about and sorc is part of the issue but there's more than enough issues to go around.

I don't agree with the NB cloak change being a toggle and I don't like how this heal was implemented on sorc. Game just needs better balance and overall design.

But yeah everyone has pain points and sorc is up there along with at least two other prominent ones.

StaticWave

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

Bushido2513

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

So no prophecy?

StaticWave

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

So no prophecy?

Spell crit potion

Turtle_Bot

StaticWave wrote: »

Spell crit potion

That is an option, but not really a good one. Magsorc is much more dependent on good stam rec when not building for ward than other classes (this is from first hand experience since wardless magsorc is my main playstyle).

Most classes don't need to use stam for their heal or sustain (on mag or stam builds), as such, magsorc (using conversion) tends to require higher stam recovery (or at least a bigger base stam pool) to match other classes core combat when not using ward.

This isn't to say magsorc is bad without ward with things like heal soul and can definitely build that sustain with things like wretched, but running crit pots is very rough on sustain (losing major endurance) and makes it significantly easier to stamcheck wardless magsorcs than other classes/specs that don't need to run crit pots.

If Ward gets gutted to as bad as (or worse than) before, most magsorcs would probably end up going prophecy/savagery on wield soul (as a spammable or a heal) with ele sus back bar for breach and just drop defile entirely, as to not lose the tri-pot sustain or detect pots to fight NBs.

Their bars would likely look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Prophecy/Savagery (or crushing shock or shield throw/trav knife if those get shock damage), Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud (or heal soul with proph/sav)

Again, this is all from first hand experience running a wardless magsorc as my main build (and have done for years now). Such a build will still be ~A tier, middle of the road, definitely not S tier (due to lacking a broken gimmick like RoA northern), but also definitely not Necro tier either.

For context, my current bars are:

Front: Curse, shield throw (frost damage, class script, prophecy/savagery), contingency (burst scripts, or frags), vigor, streak, spell wall

Back: Aegis, ele sus, conversion (or defensive contingency or RaT), heal soul (with vitality), boundless, overload

Ideally I'd love to run shock damage shield throw or shock damage travelling knife, but ZOS seems to be ignoring shock damage again, despite adding a bunch of frost/flame damage to scribing skills the past few patches.

StaticWave

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Spell crit potion

That is an option, but not really a good one. Magsorc is much more dependent on good stam rec when not building for ward than other classes (this is from first hand experience since wardless magsorc is my main playstyle).

Most classes don't need to use stam for their heal or sustain (on mag or stam builds), as such, magsorc (using conversion) tends to require higher stam recovery (or at least a bigger base stam pool) to match other classes core combat when not using ward.

This isn't to say magsorc is bad without ward with things like heal soul and can definitely build that sustain with things like wretched, but running crit pots is very rough on sustain (losing major endurance) and makes it significantly easier to stamcheck wardless magsorcs than other classes/specs that don't need to run crit pots.

If Ward gets gutted to as bad as (or worse than) before, most magsorcs would probably end up going prophecy/savagery on wield soul (as a spammable or a heal) with ele sus back bar for breach and just drop defile entirely, as to not lose the tri-pot sustain or detect pots to fight NBs.

Their bars would likely look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Prophecy/Savagery (or crushing shock or shield throw/trav knife if those get shock damage), Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud (or heal soul with proph/sav)

Again, this is all from first hand experience running a wardless magsorc as my main build (and have done for years now). Such a build will still be ~A tier, middle of the road, definitely not S tier (due to lacking a broken gimmick like RoA northern), but also definitely not Necro tier either.

For context, my current bars are:

Front: Curse, shield throw (frost damage, class script, prophecy/savagery), contingency (burst scripts, or frags), vigor, streak, spell wall

Back: Aegis, ele sus, conversion (or defensive contingency or RaT), heal soul (with vitality), boundless, overload

Ideally I'd love to run shock damage shield throw or shock damage travelling knife, but ZOS seems to be ignoring shock damage again, despite adding a bunch of frost/flame damage to scribing skills the past few patches.

Yes, my point is wardless magsorc will still be A tier. It's not trash tier like some of the people here claimed it to be. I know this for a fact because my hybrid Sorc doesn't run a shield and can still compete against the top tier builds and classes right now.

Iriidius

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Cyrodiil is already dying for Years and will continue dying for years without ever finishing, I dont think magsorcs are a major reason for that as there have always been stronger and weaker classes.

I'd argue they're definitely part of the problem because constant ranged damage spam is miserable to play against, it encourages players to stay on the roof or inside the zerg where they won't immediately be nuked by someone they can't possibly engage or even see on their screen.

There was a MagSorc player on my 8v8 BGs team yesterday who went 30-0 one match, then 10-9 the next, and not because of teammates. That much volatility tells me there's still something very wrong with the way this class is designed. I haven't fought enough good MagSorcs yet to judge the Ward nerf but it might be more effective than it first looked.

While constant ranged spam is miserable to play against it it also comes from range nbs, beamplars and shieldless sorcerers. In zerg max magsorc with shield was also viable before hardened ward buff. I think most zerglings do not even know how to play it right and rather die from forgetting to shield than shield breaking and even did before hardened buff. More dangerous are the magsorc smallscalers instakilling soloplayers before they can even dismount.

If they stay on the roof or inside the zerg where they won't immediately be nuked are we still talking about hardened ward as the problem or sorcerers offensive kit and ranged zerglings? A lot of players complain the sorcerer offensive kit is too blockable, dodgeable and predictable and while most classkits and skills are blockable/dodgeable and can still kill by draining other players stamina and I can kill bad players fine I feel like my magsorc has not much kill potential on good players (compared to other classes even in tanksets). I rather fight an enemy magsorc than a procsorc or aprocanist.
On roof or inside the zerg they dont need hardened ward at all as they will rarely get hit.

Some players regularely get 30-0 in battleground on any class and if this player had unimpressive 10-9 in next match hus 30-0 was probably because of easy to kill enemy players and luck.

Turtle_Bot

StaticWave wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Spell crit potion

That is an option, but not really a good one. Magsorc is much more dependent on good stam rec when not building for ward than other classes (this is from first hand experience since wardless magsorc is my main playstyle).

Most classes don't need to use stam for their heal or sustain (on mag or stam builds), as such, magsorc (using conversion) tends to require higher stam recovery (or at least a bigger base stam pool) to match other classes core combat when not using ward.

This isn't to say magsorc is bad without ward with things like heal soul and can definitely build that sustain with things like wretched, but running crit pots is very rough on sustain (losing major endurance) and makes it significantly easier to stamcheck wardless magsorcs than other classes/specs that don't need to run crit pots.

If Ward gets gutted to as bad as (or worse than) before, most magsorcs would probably end up going prophecy/savagery on wield soul (as a spammable or a heal) with ele sus back bar for breach and just drop defile entirely, as to not lose the tri-pot sustain or detect pots to fight NBs.

Their bars would likely look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Prophecy/Savagery (or crushing shock or shield throw/trav knife if those get shock damage), Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud (or heal soul with proph/sav)

Again, this is all from first hand experience running a wardless magsorc as my main build (and have done for years now). Such a build will still be ~A tier, middle of the road, definitely not S tier (due to lacking a broken gimmick like RoA northern), but also definitely not Necro tier either.

For context, my current bars are:

Front: Curse, shield throw (frost damage, class script, prophecy/savagery), contingency (burst scripts, or frags), vigor, streak, spell wall

Back: Aegis, ele sus, conversion (or defensive contingency or RaT), heal soul (with vitality), boundless, overload

Ideally I'd love to run shock damage shield throw or shock damage travelling knife, but ZOS seems to be ignoring shock damage again, despite adding a bunch of frost/flame damage to scribing skills the past few patches.

Yes, my point is wardless magsorc will still be A tier. It's not trash tier like some of the people here claimed it to be. I know this for a fact because my hybrid Sorc doesn't run a shield and can still compete against the top tier builds and classes right now.

Yep, my point is that on the flipside to this, wardless magsorc also won't be S+ tier/god-mode/easy-win either without ward, something that so, so many have also tried to claim it to be, and like you, I know this for a fact for the exact same reasons you do, that being first hand experience.

StaticWave

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Spell crit potion

That is an option, but not really a good one. Magsorc is much more dependent on good stam rec when not building for ward than other classes (this is from first hand experience since wardless magsorc is my main playstyle).

Most classes don't need to use stam for their heal or sustain (on mag or stam builds), as such, magsorc (using conversion) tends to require higher stam recovery (or at least a bigger base stam pool) to match other classes core combat when not using ward.

This isn't to say magsorc is bad without ward with things like heal soul and can definitely build that sustain with things like wretched, but running crit pots is very rough on sustain (losing major endurance) and makes it significantly easier to stamcheck wardless magsorcs than other classes/specs that don't need to run crit pots.

If Ward gets gutted to as bad as (or worse than) before, most magsorcs would probably end up going prophecy/savagery on wield soul (as a spammable or a heal) with ele sus back bar for breach and just drop defile entirely, as to not lose the tri-pot sustain or detect pots to fight NBs.

Their bars would likely look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Prophecy/Savagery (or crushing shock or shield throw/trav knife if those get shock damage), Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud (or heal soul with proph/sav)

Again, this is all from first hand experience running a wardless magsorc as my main build (and have done for years now). Such a build will still be ~A tier, middle of the road, definitely not S tier (due to lacking a broken gimmick like RoA northern), but also definitely not Necro tier either.

For context, my current bars are:

Front: Curse, shield throw (frost damage, class script, prophecy/savagery), contingency (burst scripts, or frags), vigor, streak, spell wall

Back: Aegis, ele sus, conversion (or defensive contingency or RaT), heal soul (with vitality), boundless, overload

Ideally I'd love to run shock damage shield throw or shock damage travelling knife, but ZOS seems to be ignoring shock damage again, despite adding a bunch of frost/flame damage to scribing skills the past few patches.

Yes, my point is wardless magsorc will still be A tier. It's not trash tier like some of the people here claimed it to be. I know this for a fact because my hybrid Sorc doesn't run a shield and can still compete against the top tier builds and classes right now.

Yep, my point is that on the flipside to this, wardless magsorc also won't be S+ tier/god-mode/easy-win either without ward, something that so, so many have also tried to claim it to be, and like you, I know this for a fact for the exact same reasons you do, that being first hand experience.

Which is perfectly ok. We don’t need another trash tier or S tier class imo

Bushido2513

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

So no prophecy?

Spell crit potion

Yeah but I've tried this before and with the stam skills you mentioned I'd have be to then give up damage to build into stam recovery or use a sustain set. I do this sort of already but I'd rather the class have have prophecy and that I didn't have be to use skills I have to buy to reach maximum effectiveness.

xylena_lazarow

Iriidius wrote: »

range nbs, beamplars and shieldless sorcerers

Don't worry I have things to say about that idiotic beam, but not ITT. The NB problem has been largely dealt with thanks to the nerfs to Tarnished and Cloak, praise Sithis. And you're 100% correct that Sorc is still cracked without Ward.

Bushido2513

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

range nbs, beamplars and shieldless sorcerers

Don't worry I have things to say about that idiotic beam, but not ITT. The NB problem has been largely dealt with thanks to the nerfs to Tarnished and Cloak, praise Sithis. And you're 100% correct that Sorc is still cracked without Ward.

I consider cracked to be something more so dangerous on the hands of even below average players which is where min max ward is now but I don't think the same player would do anywhere near as well without ward. They'd hit hard but struggle a bit with defense rotation. I'm curious to see more results on nerf.

xylena_lazarow

Bushido2513 wrote: »

I consider cracked to be

Semantics are the tool of a scoundrel. They're still a teleporting ranged nuke with access to extremely powercrept generic defensive tools and buff compression like never before. They can even make hp regen effective.

Bushido2513

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

I consider cracked to be

Semantics are the tool of a scoundrel. They're still a teleporting ranged nuke with access to extremely powercrept generic defensive tools and buff compression like never before. They can even make hp regen effective.

So the challenge then is to find a mediocre player that can be carried by the bars described above in the same way a min maxed ward sorc can be carried. It's not going to really work out because yes their damage will be the same but they won't have the same offensive pressure as they try to maintain a defensive rotation.

The fight would be what it was before. Best way to deal with magsorc before ward change was to just stay on them because the ones who can only go offensive folks easily to direct pressure.

I could probably run the bars above and be fine but I main sorc and enjoy sorc. Those the coast on ward at the moment probably in majority wouldn't enjoy the same success.

There's a big difference in having a burst heal and a hot slotted vs having a massive shield with built in heal.

StaticWave

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

So no prophecy?

Spell crit potion

Yeah but I've tried this before and with the stam skills you mentioned I'd have be to then give up damage to build into stam recovery or use a sustain set. I do this sort of already but I'd rather the class have have prophecy and that I didn't have be to use skills I have to buy to reach maximum effectiveness.

Yea that would be a downside for sorc in general, not just mag. My hybrid sorc is more stam based (stacking max stam, using stam skills), but uses spell crit pots instead. That's more of ZOS not finishing up hybridization imo. If they could just combine the Prophecy/Savagery in potions and let people choose whether to get stam regen or mag regen then I think it would be solid.

When will ZOS finally give this class a built in source of Major Savagery/Prophecy lol. I'm pretty sure Sorc and Arc are the only classes rn that do not have access to it. Even Necro gets Major Brutality/Sorcery and Savagery/Prophecy.

Iriidius

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

Magsorc with(out) shields was one of the worse classes almost as bad as templar/necro before hardened ward buff and the few other buffs are not enaugh to make magsorc good class without hardened ward.
10% maximum magicka/stamina is not much use if you do not stack it and have only 20k like other classes.
Seems like you also want every magsorc to drop Hardened Ward. It was a class defining skill and is already used by much less people than it used to but it should stay useable at all without a major disadvantage.
Vibrant Shroud is an AOE burst heal and not balanced for selfhealing, it costs more and heals less than any other class burst heal even with blood magic passive. Not much better than use dark deal and hope it does not get interrupted. Dark deal having a cast time to prevent permablocking does not make much sense if nb gets leeching strikes and necro gets expunge and modify without cast time and sorc is not good tank anyway. Dark deal without cast time would be better burst heal.
You could get major breach on spammable even before scribing with crushing weapon.
Should rather use wield soul as healing soul if you have bad burstheal like vibrant shroud. But actually sorcerer should also be viable without scribing skills. Otherwise we can also remove spammables or burst heals of other classes because they can use scribing.

Major_Mangle

Iriidius wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

Magsorc with(out) shields was one of the worse classes almost as bad as templar/necro before hardened ward buff and the few other buffs are not enaugh to make magsorc good class without hardened ward.
10% maximum magicka/stamina is not much use if you do not stack it and have only 20k like other classes.
Seems like you also want every magsorc to drop Hardened Ward. It was a class defining skill and is already used by much less people than it used to but it should stay useable at all without a major disadvantage.
Vibrant Shroud is an AOE burst heal and not balanced for selfhealing, it costs more and heals less than any other class burst heal even with blood magic passive. Not much better than use dark deal and hope it does not get interrupted. Dark deal having a cast time to prevent permablocking does not make much sense if nb gets leeching strikes and necro gets expunge and modify without cast time and sorc is not good tank anyway. Dark deal without cast time would be better burst heal.
You could get major breach on spammable even before scribing with crushing weapon.
Should rather use wield soul as healing soul if you have bad burstheal like vibrant shroud. But actually sorcerer should also be viable without scribing skills. Otherwise we can also remove spammables or burst heals of other classes because they can use scribing.

Magsorc was nowhere near the bottom even before the hardened ward buff and claiming it was is objectively false. The class just had a much higher skill-cap than other playstyles which made it harder for the average player to succeed with it. That doesn´t mean it was in a bad spot. Hardened ward never needed a buff to begin with.

Bushido2513

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

Magsorc with(out) shields was one of the worse classes almost as bad as templar/necro before hardened ward buff and the few other buffs are not enaugh to make magsorc good class without hardened ward.
10% maximum magicka/stamina is not much use if you do not stack it and have only 20k like other classes.
Seems like you also want every magsorc to drop Hardened Ward. It was a class defining skill and is already used by much less people than it used to but it should stay useable at all without a major disadvantage.
Vibrant Shroud is an AOE burst heal and not balanced for selfhealing, it costs more and heals less than any other class burst heal even with blood magic passive. Not much better than use dark deal and hope it does not get interrupted. Dark deal having a cast time to prevent permablocking does not make much sense if nb gets leeching strikes and necro gets expunge and modify without cast time and sorc is not good tank anyway. Dark deal without cast time would be better burst heal.
You could get major breach on spammable even before scribing with crushing weapon.
Should rather use wield soul as healing soul if you have bad burstheal like vibrant shroud. But actually sorcerer should also be viable without scribing skills. Otherwise we can also remove spammables or burst heals of other classes because they can use scribing.

Magsorc was nowhere near the bottom even before the hardened ward buff and claiming it was is objectively false. The class just had a much higher skill-cap than other playstyles which made it harder for the average player to succeed with it. That doesn´t mean it was in a bad spot. Hardened ward never needed a buff to begin with.

That's a bad spot when you're going up against classes that have more well rounded kits. Before the buff to shields a magsorc could barely if at all survive a meteor javelin combo where other classes could burst heal out of it. If you were doing 1vx it was advisable to go for the sorc early because they would likely be an easier kill.

I played long before the buff and had fun playing sorcerer but definitely while making sacrifices other classes didn't have to.

I wouldn't have called or bottom tier but you were definitely playing at a large disadvantage at times.

The damage is overall good but the mobility claim to fame is suspect at times and before the ward change, shroud, and scribing, burst healing was not in a good place. Which isn't bad all together but not fun depending on the class you're up against.

The heal and shield change were too much and better changes have been suggested but there was definitely an issue before ward change.

StaticWave

Iriidius wrote: »

Magsorc with(out) shields was one of the worse classes almost as bad as templar/necro before hardened ward buff and the few other buffs are not enaugh to make magsorc good class without hardened ward.
10% maximum magicka/stamina is not much use if you do not stack it and have only 20k like other classes.
Seems like you also want every magsorc to drop Hardened Ward. It was a class defining skill and is already used by much less people than it used to but it should stay useable at all without a major disadvantage.
Vibrant Shroud is an AOE burst heal and not balanced for selfhealing, it costs more and heals less than any other class burst heal even with blood magic passive. Not much better than use dark deal and hope it does not get interrupted. Dark deal having a cast time to prevent permablocking does not make much sense if nb gets leeching strikes and necro gets expunge and modify without cast time and sorc is not good tank anyway. Dark deal without cast time would be better burst heal.
You could get major breach on spammable even before scribing with crushing weapon.
Should rather use wield soul as healing soul if you have bad burstheal like vibrant shroud. But actually sorcerer should also be viable without scribing skills. Otherwise we can also remove spammables or burst heals of other classes because they can use scribing.

I'm not saying you guys should drop Ward, I'm saying Ward was overperforming and needed a nerf. Refusing to accept this fact puts you on the same boat as the NB mains that say Cloak is bad and doesn't need a nerf.

Like I said before, magsorc has gotten several buffs to survivability and damage, making non-shield builds very competitive. Here is a simple non-shield build every magsorc can run:



If I convert this same build to a stam variant:



You can literally see that the effective power isn't that much different. The only difference is which skills I'm using and what max resource pool I'm investing in.

This is what I'm currently running on my hybrid melee Sorc:



I have more stam skills, but my spammable costs HP. If I wanted to use more mag skills, it would look like this:



The effective power is only 100 less because I lost the extra 8% max stam. Everything else is identical. I can guarantee you both versions are tanky and deal good damage. I've fought top tier players in this build and done just fine.

StaticWave

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Cyrodiil will die before U45 if no meaningful nerf to Hardened Ward is made.

Practically all of my friends quit because the only thing they like to do is solo/small-scale in Cyrodiil but playing Call of Duty against invincible magsorcs is no fun.

Hardened Ward just lost a third of its heal threw a nerf, another 2 of those nerfs and heal will be gone and it will be back to previous state before heal added and we know that magsorc was not a good class back then standing in the shadow of stamsorc and it needed a buff, so a balanced version of magsorc should be somewhere between big heal and no heal on shield which it is now.

Nah you’re wrong. Magsorc won’t be weak after all the buffs it just got. In fact it would be just as strong as other classes

Magsorc could simply drop Ward and build into spell damage for better tooltips. Their bars would look like this:

Front: Shocking Soul with Major Defile, Cfrag, Curse, Streak, Hurricane

Back: Surge, Dark Conversion, Vigor, Ele Sus, Vibrant Shroud

They could also just drop Ele Sus completely and slot Race Against Time there for 4s of Major Expedition, Minor Force, and snare/root immunity. Major Breach will be on Shocking Soul instead.

Magsorc will be just fine.

Magsorc with(out) shields was one of the worse classes almost as bad as templar/necro before hardened ward buff and the few other buffs are not enaugh to make magsorc good class without hardened ward.
10% maximum magicka/stamina is not much use if you do not stack it and have only 20k like other classes.
Seems like you also want every magsorc to drop Hardened Ward. It was a class defining skill and is already used by much less people than it used to but it should stay useable at all without a major disadvantage.
Vibrant Shroud is an AOE burst heal and not balanced for selfhealing, it costs more and heals less than any other class burst heal even with blood magic passive. Not much better than use dark deal and hope it does not get interrupted. Dark deal having a cast time to prevent permablocking does not make much sense if nb gets leeching strikes and necro gets expunge and modify without cast time and sorc is not good tank anyway. Dark deal without cast time would be better burst heal.
You could get major breach on spammable even before scribing with crushing weapon.
Should rather use wield soul as healing soul if you have bad burstheal like vibrant shroud. But actually sorcerer should also be viable without scribing skills. Otherwise we can also remove spammables or burst heals of other classes because they can use scribing.

Magsorc was nowhere near the bottom even before the hardened ward buff and claiming it was is objectively false. The class just had a much higher skill-cap than other playstyles which made it harder for the average player to succeed with it. That doesn´t mean it was in a bad spot. Hardened ward never needed a buff to begin with.

That's a bad spot when you're going up against classes that have more well rounded kits. Before the buff to shields a magsorc could barely if at all survive a meteor javelin combo where other classes could burst heal out of it. If you were doing 1vx it was advisable to go for the sorc early because they would likely be an easier kill.

I played long before the buff and had fun playing sorcerer but definitely while making sacrifices other classes didn't have to.

I wouldn't have called or bottom tier but you were definitely playing at a large disadvantage at times.

The damage is overall good but the mobility claim to fame is suspect at times and before the ward change, shroud, and scribing, burst healing was not in a good place. Which isn't bad all together but not fun depending on the class you're up against.

The heal and shield change were too much and better changes have been suggested but there was definitely an issue before ward change.

Sorc didn't just get a Ward buff though. It also got 10% extra max mag + stam and Vibrant Shroud. Albeit Vibrant Shroud was no where near as good as it is now, it was still a decent option for shieldless Sorcs.

After the buff to Blood Magic, shieldless Sorc is in a very competitive spot. Vibrant Shroud now heals you for similar tooltips as a single target burst heal and also heals your allies (without the Blood Magic tooltip of course). It also applies Major Maim on targets and Minor Vitality on you and your allies. That's a whole lot of survivability in 1 skill. Casting CFrag or Dark Conversion also gives you Blood Magic heal too, which is again very huge.

Now if ZOS can just finish up hybridization by giving us Major Prophecy on a class skill, then it would be solid imo.

Turtle_Bot

Bushido2513 wrote: »

That's a bad spot when you're going up against classes that have more well rounded kits. Before the buff to shields a magsorc could barely if at all survive a meteor javelin combo where other classes could burst heal out of it. If you were doing 1vx it was advisable to go for the sorc early because they would likely be an easier kill.

I played long before the buff and had fun playing sorcerer but definitely while making sacrifices other classes didn't have to.

I wouldn't have called or bottom tier but you were definitely playing at a large disadvantage at times.

The damage is overall good but the mobility claim to fame is suspect at times and before the ward change, shroud, and scribing, burst healing was not in a good place. Which isn't bad all together but not fun depending on the class you're up against.

The heal and shield change were too much and better changes have been suggested but there was definitely an issue before ward change.

The problem with so many comments on the forums is they stem from very biased perceptions that are a result of an unfortunately all too common misconception surrounding sorc.

When the class is bad/mediocre (before ward buff), the only players you see playing the class are insanely talented players who can make any class they play look S+ tier (these are the sorcs that get remembered), or very casual players who don't really care and just run in the zerg (these get ignored/forgotten as being sorcs). There is no in-between when it comes to sorc.
As such it creates a huge false impression that the class is completely fine because every time that class is remembered for doing anything when it's in a meh state, is all due to the skill of the player playing it making it look OP and not the class itself, yet putting an average player on the class in that state and it will easily look/feel necro-tier to play.

On the flip side of this, when the class is good (post ward buff), you see many more players on the class, many of which are of average skill that still won't do well, but also a significant number of good players that are also "meta-chasers" that also jump on the class. So it creates a false impression the other way that sorcerer as a whole is massively overpowered, instead of just the 1 build/ability being overpowered, because there are far more of the good players on that class than there usually is.

This is because sorc has such a high skill cap compared to the other classes, that most (meta chasing) players don't bother trying to play it at all unless it gets something very overpowered.

The reality is that the class (outside of specifically ward) is currently now so close to being in the perfect spot and is only in need of some very small tweaks, 1 of which @StaticWave mentioned, the other I will mention below too.

StaticWave wrote: »

Now if ZOS can just finish up hybridization by giving us Major Prophecy on a class skill, then it would be solid imo.

This here, exactly. Give the class major prophecy in the class kit on a skill that is worth running on any sorc build (imo replace max stats on bound armor/morphs) and this would be have wardless sorc in an ideal spot balance wise (at least for PvP).

The other point is if ZOS would finish balancing the damage types in ESO.

There are countless physical damage options for stamsorc to choose from for their spammable that allows stamsorcs to have the best of everything, freedom, synergy with class passives, flexibility. Spammables such as silver shards (ranged physical damage fighters guild spammable that doesn't restrict weapon choice and has super strong passives), 4 different weapon line skills (options such as range (bow), melee, tanky (1h+s) , DPS (2h/DW)), and even the majority of scribing skills that can be used as spammables have physical damage options that all allow for massive flexibility/freedom in weapon choice/playstyles.

Yet wardless magsorc is limited to shocking soul (meaning no heal soul) or crushing shock (no freedom/flexibility of weapon choice being limited to destro staff), or run a non-shock damage spammable and give up the energized passive (+5% physical and shock damage) just to have some build flexibility while also keeping heal soul. Shock reach/clench is not an option, it doesn't have the damage boost frost reach/clench got, so it's just bad as a spammable and frags is a delayed burst ability similar to armaments but pure rng, not a spammable.

Fix these 2 things (prophecy/savagery in the class kit and shock damage spammable options) and magsorc will be in the perfect spot on its own (for PvP), on par with stamsorc, without ward. What they do with ward after that I couldn't really care, but I would hope it remains a viable option for those who enjoy the ward playstyle (just not overpowered).

VinnyGambini

Can't we just remove heal from ward in PvP? Make it work only in PvE? Then it can be even buffed to what is was before.