Reworking Sorcerer class sets should be a priority

Pelanora · August 25

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66547

I see the problem.

There's so much investment before it's hitting PTS..... turning that bull around and getting it out of the china shop... is clearly just too hard (expensive).

They need to find a way to talk to players much much MUCH earlier.

Players who can test things a thousand times more in a week than zos ever can.

Galeriano2 · August 25

Kisakee wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

People complain about Beacon of Oblivion because the set is complete garbage. It is useless in PVP and PVE.
Need defense and max health? Sorc's toolkit includes Ward, Aegis, and Expert Summoner, and all three of them belong to the Daedric Summoning skill lines.

Beacon of Oblivion, a set classified as the Daedric Summoning series,
Not only will it punish players who use this skill line, causing them to reduce damage, but it will also restrict players from using related sets, such as Maw of the Infernal. When the player has a pet, the weak buffs obtained can be completely replaced by other sets, such as Iceheart, Hexos' Ward can give players better survivability, and there are no other restrictions.

Lalothen wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

Asdara wrote: »

...there is currently no set in the game that specifically increases lightning damage. The absence of such a set...

Yes there is. It's called Netch's Touch.

Technically, but that set's so outdated it's not worth wearing for the very paltry bonus to shock damage. I don't know why sets like Strength of the Automaton & Netch's Touch were never buffed to the 600 wpd/spd boost that sets like War Maiden, Sword-Singer et al were boosted to. They would then at least have made niche filler sets for builds that dedicate themselves to a single damage type.

That aside, I found this quite interesting from the WoW devs:

https://www.eurogamer.net/world-of-warcraft-boss-i-think-we-should-have-listened-more-to-the-player-base

Perhaps the ESO devs should take note before continuing to alienate their playerbase with incredibly sparse communication and zero reaction to blatant issues identified by players during PTS cycles.

You're getting 15% flat damage to simply everything plus a ton of defense bonusses in PvE when not using pets, show me any other set providing that much. And of course it's meant to be a trade off, if your pets a doing the damage you can't get even more damge on top or this set would be broken beyond repair.

And not everything is about damage even if so many people always claim that it is. You only want something that adds even more to the power creep, no matter if it's healthy for the game.
Even if the defense bonusses aren't what you want why don't you simply switch your defense skills for something more offensive instead.

Problem is You can still make a petsorc that will be noticably better at all these aspects than a non petsorc with mentioned set.

Bold claim. Who says you can't do somehing similar with BoO?

Numbers.

The gap in terms of DPS between non pet and petsorc is just too massive for additive 15% dmg buff (in reality it's 10-12% dmg increase) to cover it especially that atro ulti is also considered as pet which means it disables Beacon of Oblivion set for it's duration so non petsorc will have to either drop his best ultimate or to loose 15% dmg buff every time atro is active. Pets offer also better survivability because when You have pets active You gain +10% max HP which already nulifies defensive bonuses on Beacon of Oblivion. Slotting BoO also means unslotting some other set so YOu need to loose DPS from other set to gain it from BoO.

This is why at the end of the day in PvE the generic petsorc build already have better dmg and better survivability than any setup a non petsorc can make with beacon of oblivion.

CP5 · August 25

Pelanora wrote: »

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66547

I see the problem.

There's so much investment before it's hitting PTS..... turning that bull around and getting it out of the china shop... is clearly just too hard (expensive).

They need to find a way to talk to players much much MUCH earlier.

Players who can test things a thousand times more in a week than zos ever can.

At all would be nice, but considering how long they've gone not talking to people it is very likely any such talk would go badly at first, but all that does is make this kind of situation worse. Responding to silence with more silence won't help things in the long run, they need to realize. This is applicable to many topics, not just this easy one that's only about two gear sets.

Asdara · August 25

Pelanora wrote: »

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66547

I see the problem.

There's so much investment before it's hitting PTS..... turning that bull around and getting it out of the china shop... is clearly just too hard (expensive).

They need to find a way to talk to players much much MUCH earlier.

Players who can test things a thousand times more in a week than zos ever can.

Making and designing video games should at the very least be a labor of love and passion, there's so many talented folks out there full of ideas and who DREAM to work in the video game industry.
Why give the creative tools to people completely burned out and who don't give a damn?
Both class sets are screaming "Yeah that'll do it, it vaguely looks like sorc thing, whatever Steve"
At this point, i just don't get it anymore

Lalothen · August 25

Pelanora wrote: »

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66547

I see the problem.

There's so much investment before it's hitting PTS..... turning that bull around and getting it out of the china shop... is clearly just too hard (expensive).

They need to find a way to talk to players much much MUCH earlier.

Players who can test things a thousand times more in a week than zos ever can.

Yes, they absolutely should talk to the players earlier. The community is a huge untapped creative resource; something I have rapidly learned over the past few years as a worldbuilder. One of the best implementations in the last year for the game I work for, came from a member of our community. It was also tweaked over a period of a few months based on incoming data and a constant flow of constructive feedback from the community, and the result is a balanced implementation that pretty much everyone is happy with.

I'd also just like to highlight the following sentence from that deep dive on item sets:

Nadav: Class sets are typically harder to design than other types of item sets, as they need to be both mechanically and thematically tied to specific classes and skill lines, narrowing our design scope and limiting what type of abilities we can create for each set.

The point about mechanically & thematically tying sets to specific class & skill lines isn't being followed consistently, and frankly if a multi-disciplinary team can't come up with a bunch of viable ideas that are mechanically & thematically on-point for every single class & their associated skill lines, then I'd suggest they're not really in tune with the classes & how they play on the live servers, or paying enough attention to the creative goldmine that is the sets they've already produced - because class sets don't necessarily have to remake the wheel to be viewed positively by players.

The problem sets (and other problems, like the spreadsheet standardisation approach being using for Scribing) making their way through to Live could be avoided in the first instance if they bothered to solicit ideas from the community before going into the brainstorming & prototyping phase - but for whatever reason that doesn't happen, the result being we end up with silly, out-of-touch sets that have PTS testers facepalming from day one of testing (another pain point since PTS testers are seemingly not being listened to in numerous respects) right the way through to Live, at which point exactly the same issues raised in the PTS forum start being reiterated by disappointed/confused/angry players on the main Live forums.

Theist_VII · August 26

Too right, @Pelanora and @Lalothen.

Why even have a PTS if player feedback isn’t acted upon? We’re free labor; take advantage of us. I am more than happy to help sculpt my favorite game into a fun place for everyone.

Pelanora · August 26

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/664035/official-discussion-thread-for-eso-developer-deep-dive-item-sets-part-1#latest

Another place to comment, in case they read that thread.

Kelenan7368 · August 26

Yes many of the Sorc sets especially the IA sets really are crappy

Ren_TheRedFox · August 26

@Asdara I'd say they have to rework the sorcerer first and then their class sets. Imagine giving them a stronger class set in their current state

"The Elder Sorcs Online" all I'm gonna say

Vaqual · August 26

Sorry guys, the designers just called, best they can do is slap some permanent glow effects on those things. Hope that is fine.

Tannus15 · August 26

This is just salt in the wound

just replace monolith of storms 5pc with this. It's way better and 1 stack isn't OP.
it's about on par with other sets and looks way cooler. have it trigger off any storm calling ability and we're gold.

Clearly the dev team can come up with cool ideas that look great, just not for sorc sets.

Asdara · August 26

Tannus15 wrote: »

This is just salt in the wound

just replace monolith of storms 5pc with this. It's way better and 1 stack isn't OP.
it's about on par with other sets and looks way cooler. have it trigger off any storm calling ability and we're gold.

Clearly the dev team can come up with cool ideas that look great, just not for sorc sets.

Oh lord when i've seen this passiv, this is literary what monolith of storm should have been

Asdara · August 26

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Asdara I'd say they have to rework the sorcerer first and then their class sets. Imagine giving them a stronger class set in their current state "The Elder Sorcs Online" all I'm gonna say

Sorc overall isn't op, "META Magsorc" is strong in pvp on the contrary.
You can't cherry-pick a single situation of an entire game and call a class op based on that.
Let's say i want to play a full lightning sorc or a no pet sorc in pve, you wont go above 50/60k parse.
How is that op?
(PvP balance has nothing to do with class set and its not like the thing that makes sorc op (aka shield) are either in storm calling ou daedric invocation.)

Major_Toughness · August 27

The Devs had a program in which they spoke with players with some merit. It was the Class Rep program and it was scrapped years ago. Allegedly barely any feedback through that program was actually acted upon, and that's with players they have selected.

Theist_VII · August 27

Asdara wrote: »

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Asdara I'd say they have to rework the sorcerer first and then their class sets. Imagine giving them a stronger class set in their current state "The Elder Sorcs Online" all I'm gonna say

Sorc overall isn't op, "META Magsorc" is strong in pvp on the contrary.
You can't cherry-pick a single situation of an entire game and call a class op based on that.
Let's say i want to play a full lightning sorc or a no pet sorc in pve, you wont go above 50/60k parse.
How is that op?
(PvP balance has nothing to do with class set and its not like the thing that makes sorc op (aka shield) are either in storm calling ou daedric invocation.)

So many people have never touched a Sorcerer nor followed the most recent patches.

No other class is so completely polarized. There are “either/or” conditions that people have not the slightest clue about when they try to reference the class as this unstoppable thing.

Let’s take a look at these…

So, if you use a pet you are forced away from the one skill that is the source of everyone’s problems with the class in PvP, or it’s strength.

Then to make matters worse, your max resources are lowered to boost your health with pets. Know what you need maximum magicka for? Your shield strength. So not only are you forced to use the weaker morph of Conjured Ward in order to keep a baby version of the heal that gave the skill it’s value, you are also gimped on the scaling towards it as it’s weighted much heavier towards magicka than health.

While pet Sorc is strong in single-target dps, it is not the highest option for actual content despite the parse cheating you can do with Overload and now Highland, and when it comes to PvE anything other than optimal is roleplaying a boxer in a punching bag simulator which we could get into an entire debate about that.

Turtle_Bot · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Asdara I'd say they have to rework the sorcerer first and then their class sets. Imagine giving them a stronger class set in their current state "The Elder Sorcs Online" all I'm gonna say

Please keep your complaints about ward in PvP to the relevant threads...

Threads like this one are asking for the sorc class sets to be actually functional and to fit the themes of their respective skill lines. Threads like this are asking for the class sets to fill their role of being fun niche sets that facilitate fun theme builds revolving around their respective skill lines.

Threads like this are not asking for the sorc sets to be Rallying Cry/Tarnished Nightmare 2.0 and assuming as such is just wrong.

Ren_TheRedFox · August 27

you guys are literally complaining about a set that will boost your healing and damage done by 15% ... a unique major and minor berserk ... almost a whole major mending ... and guess what you can get all those on top of that ... seriously stop complaining about ... you know what set needs a rework ... the templar one ... cause guess what ... it's the only set where you have a drawback loosing 50% of your magicka at full stack on a class that already has sustain issues .... so yeah ... poor sorcs guys

Theist_VII · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

you guys are literally complaining about a set that will boost your healing and damage done by 15% ... a unique major and minor aegis ... almost a whole major mending ... and guess what you can get all those on top of that ... seriously stop complaining about ... you know what set needs a rework ... the templar one ... cause guess what ... it's the only set where you have a drawback loosing 50% of your magicka at full stack on a class that already has sustain issues .... so yeah ... poor sorcs guys

What are you talking about? 😂

Now here is the new class set…

Can you highlight and share with us where on that picture the set gives a unique damage mitigation?

Turtle_Bot · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

you guys are literally complaining about a set that will boost your healing and damage done by 15% ... a unique major and minor aegis ... almost a whole major mending ... and guess what you can get all those on top of that ... seriously stop complaining about ... you know what set needs a rework ... the templar one ... cause guess what ... it's the only set where you have a drawback loosing 50% of your magicka at full stack on a class that already has sustain issues .... so yeah ... poor sorcs guys

And you are literally complaining about an entire class including fun/themed builds that don't run ward just because you hate 1 specific ability that has been over buffed.

Like I said before, stick to ward threads with that nonsense, because that is completely off topic for this thread.

As was asked, where in the class set does it give a unique Major + Minor Aegis?
I'll, wait.

As for the set itself, IN PvE! where this set has the biggest bonus, no-pet sorc even with the set is still 10% behind pet sorc in terms of damage because of how bad no-pet sorc is compared to pet sorc and how much it loses by not getting to run atro ultimate or the pets which are the class's best abilities for PvE content.

Meanwhile Pet sorc (the build whose skill line this set is supposed to be themed around) would never use this set because it only gives a mediocre 1840 health and 1980 armor, zero damage, zero healing. You get better defensive stats from any base game, non-DLC defensive set.

Also what is your excuse for Monolith of Storms? That set is so horribly designed that it can't even be used for role playing purposes, let alone anything combat related, something that can't be said for the plar sets.

Ren_TheRedFox · August 27

@Turtle_Bot oh sry just mixed up buff names and still you get the damage done bonus from major and minor berserk not saying it's the best set out of all but I think it's still better than wrathsun ... you don't have to agree with me on this but I think the set is ok

Hapexamendios · August 27

While your idea for the class set was well thought out and presented, I disagree with you that it should be a priority. Performance and QoL issues should be addressed first.

Tannus15 · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot oh sry just mixed up buff names and still you get the damage done bonus from major and minor berserk not saying it's the best set out of all but I think it's still better than wrathsun ... you don't have to agree with me on this but I think the set is ok

that's because you're only looking at the bonus, but not the cost of using it.
for perspective, imagine this is as a templar set and the damage / healing bonus only applies if you don't slot beam on any bar.

it's a massive dps loss for sorc to not run pets, including their best ult the atro, which in pve you want to use because the group gets major berserk.

the 15% damage buff without pets is less damage than a generic damage set with pets.

Turtle_Bot · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot oh sry just mixed up buff names and still you get the damage done bonus from major and minor berserk not saying it's the best set out of all but I think it's still better than wrathsun ... you don't have to agree with me on this but I think the set is ok

The thing is the set is only ok when under 1 very specific condition that completely invalidates the bonus obtained from the set:
Completely give up all pets (the entire theme of that skill line and Sorcs best (and only truly strong) PvE build)

This set, that was designed around the Summoning skill line that is all about pets/summons, becomes completely useless when those summons (or any summons including from other sets) are active.

It is that same contradictory design that plagued Monolith of Storms (sorcs first class set) where that set wants to be a front bar proc set that creates an electric field as you cast storm calling abilities on enemies, but the only way to meet the conditions to proc it semi-reliably are to run back bar abilities (DoTs/Buffs) on the front bar or to spam the execute that only functions for the final 20% of the fight.

It is horrible design that automatically makes the set a very bad set.

At the very least with Wrathsun, the set is:
1. Functional
2. Synergizes with the skill line and it's theme
3. Easy to proc/use (dealing damage is literally the same thing in PvE as just being alive)
4. Has synergistic and useful 2-4 piece bonuses (2 lines of damage + 1 line of crit chance)
5. Attempts to mitigate its downside (doesn't completely do this, but it attempts to)
6. Provides Major + Minor Berserk + Major Slayer as a unique buff (that also buffs beam of all things)

Can't really say the same for most of these points for either sorc set

To make it clear since all people ever look at when trying to defend BoO is that 15% number:
Think of beacon of oblivion like this:
What if, to use Wrathsun didn't have the drawback, but to be able to get that 5 piece bonus, templar could never use any of its Dawn's Wrath abilities (this includes beam, barrage, PotL, living dark, etc), otherwise the set just reverted to what is essentially a worse day 1 defensive set.

That is what BoO is like as a set, that is why it is a bad set. The 15% number means literally nothing if you have to give up everything in that skill line to get it.

It's not like ZOS can't design a balanced set with even bigger numbers either. Just look at the first NB set that gives 18% to healing, damage AND cost reduction to all of the siphoning skills. 18%!!!!!
Now downsides of "cannot use those skills" or sets that have similar effects, no downsides of forcing NB to remove all of its best abilities from its bars. Also, that NB set gets to keep its full 18% bonus in PvP too and that bonus applies to Offering which is already too strong and needs toning down and power extraction which is one of the most overloaded sources of brutality/sorcery in the game.

Tannus15 · August 27

same deal with monolith.

the numbers, on paper, for monolith are fine. I'd love to run monolith with ansuul as a proc set, but the proc conditions are terrible.

there is no way to keep enough pylons in play to make monolith work without either overcasting lightning flood and hurricane or cutting a pet to slot mages wrath and then casting it every 10 seconds even when not in execute to spawn pylons.

it's a garbage set. it simply doesn't work as it is right now, because you have to gimp the hell out of your build to reliably spawn pylons to get average proc set damage.
it makes no sense at all.

i've run it in content. i've tried to make it work. it's garbage. in content it's worse than on the dummy.

Ren_TheRedFox · August 27

well let's be real here ... the sets aren't the best in general. Although I have to admit the arcanist, dk and nb ones are in my opinion the best ones ... the good thing in my opinion with the new sorc set is at least that you get that damage and healing boost if you don't wanna run pets. When I run my sorc I don't like running them cause that's basically 4 skill slots and I rather have other skills filling those slots like force pulse for my magsorc or bloodthirst for my stamsorc and that 15% bonus is just sweet for it ... Like I said ... this is my opinion and you guys don't have to agree with it but for those people who don't like using the pets it's nice to have.
I have to admit that the battle spirit part might be a bit harsh, but I totally understand it considering sorcs are already OP, and I think it's a nice adjustment. I wish they would do that with every set and ability, but that's another topic. Overall I think the sets need a rework, but taking into consideration how people can “abuse” them in different aspects of the game, because for example basalt warrior is too strong in my opinion, as dks don't need the ulti gen nor the heals and shields because they are tanky in general.
But like I said, I think they need to adjust the sorcs in general first before they rework the class set, because imagine if they rework the class sets and make them extremely strong, and the next thing you know they're buffing the sorcs more and more. Changes to classes affect the whole game. Blood magic, for example, may not be a big deal for you PvE players, but it is for PvP players. Imagine if they changed the class set like this:
While you have pets active, you gain 300 WD/SD and 15% magicka and stamina recovery. As long as you have this set active, your pets are automatically summoned back and if you don't use a pet, there is the 15% damage and healing. Now imagine someone using this in PvP. Not only does that person get the health bonus when the matriarch is active (and yes, there are people who use pets in PvP), but they also get 15% magicka and stamina recovery. That's 35% more stamina and magicka recovery with an active pet, which is insane.
For PvE players, the 15% recovery and recall may not be a big deal, but for PvP players it is. And considering the fact that PvP doesn't get the “love” it deserves from the devs, I think it's okay to say that the rework should be the priority, not the set. And I know this post is focused on PvE but unfortunately I have to remind you that PvE and PvP are connected in this game and any small change to one will add drastically to the other. I think that in general PvP and PvE should have different systems but this thread is not about that.

Theist_VII · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

…But like I said, I think they need to adjust the sorcs in general first before they rework the class set, because imagine if they rework the class sets and make them extremely strong, and the next thing you know they're buffing the sorcs more and more. Changes to classes affect the whole game. Blood magic, for example, may not be a big deal for you PvE players, but it is for PvP players. Imagine if they changed the class set like this:
While you have pets active, you gain 300 WD/SD and 15% magicka and stamina recovery. As long as you have this set active, your pets are automatically summoned back and if you don't use a pet, there is the 15% damage and healing. Now imagine someone using this in PvP. Not only does that person get the health bonus when the matriarch is active (and yes, there are people who use pets in PvP), but they also get 15% magicka and stamina recovery. That's 35% more stamina and magicka recovery with an active pet, which is insane.

Complete lack of understanding how Sorcerer works.

30% recovery would be the least beneficial set that you could run on a Sorcerer and that’s your “strong example”? While it’s great that you’re bumping the thread, it would be better if you got on a Sorcerer and actually looked at it’s kit before making all of these presumptions.

Beacon of Oblivion and Monolith of Storms are demonstrations of incompetence in set design. Anyone who has played a Sorcerer for five minutes would be aware of that.

Ren_TheRedFox · August 27

@Theist_VII and again ... not everything is about PvE you know

you gotta remember that buffing a set for PvE purposes can drastically make a class op in PvP ... the recovery was just an example ... all I'm saying is that buffing a class set before reworking the class would only lead to more imbalance and since we don't have separated systems for PvE and PvP you have to keep both aspects in mind.

Theist_VII · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Theist_VII and again ... not everything is about PvE you know you gotta remember that buffing a set for PvE purposes can drastically make a class op in PvP ... the recovery was just an example ... all I'm saying is that buffing a class set before reworking the class would only lead to more imbalance and since we don't have separated systems for PvE and PvP you have to keep both aspects in mind.

The goalposts are a semi-competitive pet build with strengths and weaknesses in PvP, and that should have been the objective of Beacon of Oblivion, the Daedric Summoning class set.

PvE pet builds do NOT need attention. They are fine, the floor is higher than every other class besides Arcanist, and the roof is level with every single target class.

When you consider this, and then look at the pet penalty, yes that’s what I’m calling it now… a 30% pet penalty and the further associated Battle Spirit penalty, it was clear they never had the intent for it to be a PvP set.

The design for Beacon of Oblivion is a detachment from reality, it demonstrates two things.

Nobody at Zenimax plays a Sorcerer.
Nobody at Zenimax monitors the community.

When it comes to Daedric Summoners, the set builds into neither a need area, nor a strength, showing complete aimlessness.

Ren_TheRedFox · August 27

@Theist_VII taking into consideration how much they're buffing nightblades, sorcs and dks I'm pretty sure it's clear which classes are their favorites. Sorcs literally got a curse buff for PvE so don't tell me they don't play sorcs.

Theist_VII · August 27

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

@Theist_VII taking into consideration how much they're buffing nightblades, sorcs and dks I'm pretty sure it's clear which classes are their favorites. Sorcs literally got a curse buff for PvE so don't tell me they don't play sorcs.

Curse buff? They made it blockable, now you are forced to run Streak. That’s a bigger nerf to pet sorc… you don’t have the bar space for Streak.

I have made it quite clear I’m not talking about PvE. By building armor and health with pets active, Beacon of Oblivion is clearly not designed with PvE in mind. Those are PvP stats, and nowhere near enough of them.

Beacon of Oblivion tries to be a PvE set without pets, and a PvP set with them, and splits it’s power budget into failure as a result.

Even worse, that 15% damage bandaid to a severed limb will create a serious problem down the road when we finally start seeing Damage-Over-Time as a Focus with Scribing.

What we have is a set that is useless now and a comparison problem later down the road for Daedric Summoners, from the Daedric Summoning class set.