Nice first step, but....

Turtle_Bot · April 22

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_MattFiror

I want to say, that I appreciate the team listening to and providing an early response to the early feedback regarding Sorcerer and Sub-classing. I really hope the feedback will continue to be listened to and acted upon over the remaining 5-6 weeks of PTS we have left until U46 releases in June (this also applies for the feedback for the other classes too, but Sorcerer will be the focus of this thread).

The updates to Daedric Summoning line are a nice first step forward, but there are still some remaining concerns regarding the state of the 2 remaining Sorcerer skill lines, Dark Magic and Storm Calling.

The main concerns with these 2 lines are as follows:

Storm Calling:
Overall, this line has the best passives for Sorcerer damage dealers, but the active damage abilities in this skill line are just very mediocre for PvE DPS outside of Hurricane (stamina morph of Lightning Form) and Surge (class access to Major Brutality/Sorcery and some conditional healing over time).

Dark Magic:
Overall this skill line is just confusing and outdated in its design. It has the class "Spammable" in Crystal Shards, but has no DPS passives outside of the class's "unique" group support of Minor Prophecy in the Exploiter passive. The other active skills and the passives lean more into support and/or tanking, but the active skills are typically not worth slotting for the support/tank role due to a number of factors.

The main issue stems from Sorcerers skill lines being designed around the 3 Sorcerer sub-themes (Dark Magic based on Crystals/Runes, Destruction Magic specifically Lightning and Conjuration which is Summoning) instead of the 3 different roles (tank/healer/damage dealer) and as such the abilities that are required for the different roles are all spread out hodgepodge across all 3 lines and not even properly split between Conjuration (pets) and "other magic".

I'm not sure how easy it would be to swap skills between different skill lines as I don't have access to the games code, however there are a few very easy swaps that would go a long way towards achieving the "swapping pets out" while not completely removing the Sorcerer theme as an option when not using pets.

Swap Conjured Ward (skill and morphs) from the Daedric Summoning line with Daedric Mines (skill and morphs) from the Dark Magic line.
Can call this ability Dark Ward and give it a more crystal like visual (can reuse the rune cage visuals to prevent needing to add new visual resources).
This allows non-pet Sorcerers to have a reliable "self heal" that fits with the tanking and support aspects of the Dark Magic skill line. By moving Daedric Mines to Daedric Summoning line this then gives pet sorcerers the ability to have group shields that also shield their pets from the refuge morph, or an AoE delayed burst from the tomb morph.
This ability being in the dark magic line and triggering the blood magic passive also makes the removal of the heal be more sensible. This combo of heal + shield will be more balanced since they scale off different stats (ward off mag, heal off health) or scale off health only, (which means sorcs that build max health will lack the damage that came with stacking max magicka) which was one of the biggest issues current live ward has that makes it so strong.
Swap Curse (skill and morphs) from the Daedric Summoning line with Rune Prison (skill and morphs) from the Dark Magic line.
This ability is really more of a dark magic themed ability anyway, cursing your enemy is not really summoning something and sounds more dark magic thematically.
This allows non-pet Sorcerers to keep their delayed burst and Rune prison can be adjusted to support the pets as a single target debuff or other pet support skill.
Move the max Health/Magicka/Stamina effect from the Expert Summoner Passive in the Daedric Summoner line to the Exploiter passive in the Dark Magic line.
This splits the max stats of Bound Armor and Expert Summoner into different skill lines, meaning it becomes much harder to stack those max stats unless you stick with both skill lines. This gives a reason to run "pure" sorcerers for the additional max stats of using both lines while not being such a huge loss to non-pet sorcs who wish to not engage with the Daedric Summoning line and will subsequently lose out on the max stats from bound armor and morphs.
Move the bonus pet damage from the Daedric Prey morph of Curse to be the new effect of the Expert Summoner passive, have it also increase the pets max health.
This helps reinforce the theme of the expert summoner passive being all about summoning pets, fairly simple here really.

It also allows the Exploiter passive to be a viable alternative for the minor crit chance buff to NB's Hemorrhage passive by providing a small buff to max stats so players can make a decision of 10% crit chance or 5% max stats instead of just always choosing Assassination due to it being objectively better.

This also allows the Daedric Prey morph of Curse that is now part of the Dark Magic line to be changed into something new, maybe something for stamina sorcerers who will lose bound armaments if they drop the daedric summoning line. This particular aspect of this change could be part of a longer term goal if it would take too long to create a brand new ability for this morph to get it done this PTS.

Alongside these adjustments above, a few simple buffs/changes to some underutilized sorcerer abilities would also help.

Rework 1 morph of Negate such that it's DPS is comparable to Atronach, remove the "Silence" that is useless in PvE since Monsters that would need things silenced are all immune to silence anyway and replace it with it's own group buff (Major Force?). Leave the other morph as is.
This splits the morphs of this ability into "PvE" and "PvP" similar to how the morphs of the Dragon Knight ultimate Standard is split into those functions (shifting standard for PvP and standard of might for PvE).
Rework Lightning Splash and morphs, this will require a few things:
1. Most important is to fix the hidden cast time of this ability that is not mentioned on the tool tip and causes the ability to cancel itself when weaving it, especially when bar swapping
2. Significantly reduce the damage of the synergy and add that damage into the base damage over time of the ability itself and add a debuff to the synergy that increases shock damage taken by targets affected by Lightning Splash.
3. Have 1 morph allow for self-activation of the synergy.
This serves 2 functions, it reinforces the shock damage theme that is severely underpowered and underrepresented compared to the flame and frost damage counterparts. It also brings this ability up to the same standard as templars shards and other AoE damage over time abilities. It keeps the synergy that groups currently exclusively use this ability for, while making the base ability itself worth slotting for more than just being another synergy for the group.

While these changes would not be completely perfect, likely won't please everyone and will likely require further adjustments in the future, they would go a long way towards truly splitting Sorcerer into "Pets" and "Non-pets" while keeping both Pet and Non-pet versions of Sorcerer as viable base level options that can then truly subclass to lean further into their preferred playstyles while maintaining some semblance of being a Sorcerer, which is what the current changes made in V11.0.0 and V11.0.1 of U46 are currently failing to achieve.

ZhuJiuyin · April 22

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_MattFiror

I want to say, that I appreciate the team listening to and providing an early response to the early feedback regarding Sorcerer and Sub-classing. I really hope the feedback will continue to be listened to and acted upon over the remaining 5-6 weeks of PTS we have left until U46 releases in June (this also applies for the feedback for the other classes too, but Sorcerer will be the focus of this thread).

The updates to Daedric Summoning line are a nice first step forward, but there are still some remaining concerns regarding the state of the 2 remaining Sorcerer skill lines, Dark Magic and Storm Calling.

The main concerns with these 2 lines are as follows:

Storm Calling:
Overall, this line has the best passives for Sorcerer damage dealers, but the active damage abilities in this skill line are just very mediocre for PvE DPS outside of Hurricane (stamina morph of Lightning Form) and Surge (class access to Major Brutality/Sorcery and some conditional healing over time).

Dark Magic:
Overall this skill line is just confusing and outdated in its design. It has the class "Spammable" in Crystal Shards, but has no DPS passives outside of the class's "unique" group support of Minor Prophecy in the Exploiter passive. The other active skills and the passives lean more into support and/or tanking, but the active skills are typically not worth slotting for the support/tank role due to a number of factors.

The main issue stems from Sorcerers skill lines being designed around the 3 Sorcerer sub-themes (Dark Magic based on Crystals/Runes, Destruction Magic specifically Lightning and Conjuration which is Summoning) instead of the 3 different roles (tank/healer/damage dealer) and as such the abilities that are required for the different roles are all spread out hodgepodge across all 3 lines and not even properly split between Conjuration (pets) and "other magic".

I'm not sure how easy it would be to swap skills between different skill lines as I don't have access to the games code, however there are a few very easy swaps that would go a long way towards achieving the "swapping pets out" while not completely removing the Sorcerer theme as an option when not using pets.
Swap Conjured Ward (skill and morphs) from the Daedric Summoning line with Daedric Mines (skill and morphs) from the Dark Magic line.
Can call this ability Dark Ward and give it a more crystal like visual (can reuse the rune cage visuals to prevent needing to add new visual resources).
This allows non-pet Sorcerers to have a reliable "self heal" that fits with the tanking and support aspects of the Dark Magic skill line. By moving Daedric Mines to Daedric Summoning line this then gives pet sorcerers the ability to have group shields that also shield their pets from the refuge morph, or an AoE delayed burst from the tomb morph.
This ability being in the dark magic line and triggering the blood magic passive also makes the removal of the heal be more sensible. This combo of heal + shield will be more balanced since they scale off different stats (ward off mag, heal off health) or scale off health only, (which means sorcs that build max health will lack the damage that came with stacking max magicka) which was one of the biggest issues current live ward has that makes it so strong.

Swap Curse (skill and morphs) from the Daedric Summoning line with Rune Prison (skill and morphs) from the Dark Magic line.
This ability is really more of a dark magic themed ability anyway, cursing your enemy is not really summoning something and sounds more dark magic thematically.
This allows non-pet Sorcerers to keep their delayed burst and Rune prison can be adjusted to support the pets as a single target debuff or other pet support skill.

Move the max Health/Magicka/Stamina effect from the Expert Summoner Passive in the Daedric Summoner line to the Exploiter passive in the Dark Magic line.
This splits the max stats of Bound Armor and Expert Summoner into different skill lines, meaning it becomes much harder to stack those max stats unless you stick with both skill lines. This gives a reason to run "pure" sorcerers for the additional max stats of using both lines while not being such a huge loss to non-pet sorcs who wish to not engage with the Daedric Summoning line and will subsequently lose out on the max stats from bound armor and morphs.

Move the bonus pet damage from the Daedric Prey morph of Curse to be the new effect of the Expert Summoner passive, have it also increase the pets max health.
This helps reinforce the theme of the expert summoner passive being all about summoning pets, fairly simple here really.

It also allows the Exploiter passive to be a viable alternative for the minor crit chance buff to NB's Hemorrhage passive by providing a small buff to max stats so players can make a decision of 10% crit chance or 5% max stats instead of just always choosing Assassination due to it being objectively better.

This also allows the Daedric Prey morph of Curse that is now part of the Dark Magic line to be changed into something new, maybe something for stamina sorcerers who will lose bound armaments if they drop the daedric summoning line. This particular aspect of this change could be part of a longer term goal if it would take too long to create a brand new ability for this morph to get it done this PTS.

Alongside these adjustments above, a few simple buffs/changes to some underutilized sorcerer abilities would also help.
Rework 1 morph of Negate such that it's DPS is comparable to Atronach, remove the "Silence" that is useless in PvE since Monsters that would need things silenced are all immune to silence anyway and replace it with it's own group buff (Major Force?). Leave the other morph as is.
This splits the morphs of this ability into "PvE" and "PvP" similar to how the morphs of the Dragon Knight ultimate Standard is split into those functions (shifting standard for PvP and standard of might for PvE).

Rework Lightning Splash and morphs, this will require a few things:
1. Most important is to fix the hidden cast time of this ability that is not mentioned on the tool tip and causes the ability to cancel itself when weaving it, especially when bar swapping
2. Significantly reduce the damage of the synergy and add that damage into the base damage over time of the ability itself and add a debuff to the synergy that increases shock damage taken by targets affected by Lightning Splash.
3. Have 1 morph allow for self-activation of the synergy.
This serves 2 functions, it reinforces the shock damage theme that is severely underpowered and underrepresented compared to the flame and frost damage counterparts. It also brings this ability up to the same standard as templars shards and other AoE damage over time abilities. It keeps the synergy that groups currently exclusively use this ability for, while making the base ability itself worth slotting for more than just being another synergy for the group.

While these changes would not be completely perfect, likely won't please everyone and will likely require further adjustments in the future, they would go a long way towards truly splitting Sorcerer into "Pets" and "Non-pets" while keeping both Pet and Non-pet versions of Sorcerer as viable base level options that can then truly subclass to lean further into their preferred playstyles while maintaining some semblance of being a Sorcerer, which is what the current changes made in V11.0.0 and V11.0.1 of U46 are currently failing to achieve.

Perhaps developers are worried that enhancing non-pet sorc will further enhance pet sorc, but this is actually unnecessary worry.
First, as sorces have complained about in the past, pet sorcs are limited in the number of skill slots they can have, which leaves them with limited options to fill the few remaining slots and forces them to rely on potions to obtain the necessary buffs. After U46 Daedric Prey was weakened, pet sorc can only rely on sorc pets, which means that if you want to maximize Daedric Prey, you can only use sorc pets that cost a total of 4 grids.

In contrast, non-pet sorcs, that is, the rest of the Sorc skill line, are rarely used and only have prominent effects in specific environments. Just buff those skills and make sure they don't benefit your pet. For example:
1. Negate. I always think this is one of the two most regrettable skills in Dark Magic. Since Negate lacks sufficient damage and team gain, Negate cannot be used in PVE and it is difficult to see him in PVP. Since Negate will compete with Atronach for Ultimate, redesigning Negate to make its damage comparable to Atronach after the Daedric Prey buff (even more Negates should cost more Ultimate points), and providing a rarer debuff such as Major Brittle, will give non-pet sorcs a reason not to use Atronach.

2. Shattering Spines is also one of the two most regrettable skills in Dark Magic. The problem with Shattering Spines is also the lack of sufficient damage, so it cannot be used in PVE and it is difficult to see it in PVP. The Shattering Spines are a good idea, but I think maybe we could remove the Major Maim and give it a 10 second dot damage effect, like DK's Burning Talons. And because Shattering Spines consume a lot of Magicka, it will make the most popular stam pet sorc currently have to decide whether to change to a Magicka pet sorc for more aoe. Magicka pet sorcs are relatively weak, so they don't get a crazy power boost, and non-pet sorcs can benefit from it, while also giving the sorc more area damage.

3. Lightning Splash, should change Lightning Splash to the same level as Spear Shards, increase damage, and allow own synergy. It may slightly enhance pet sorcs, but for the same reason as enhancing Shattering Spines, since Lightning Splash consumes a lot of Magicka, it will be difficult for most mainstream stam pet sorcs to use, but it can enhance Magicka pet sorcs and non-pet sorcs.

4. Exploitation. Compared with NB's Hemorrhage, Exploitation is weaker. But only a slight buff is needed to strengthen Exploitation and avoid overdoing it. For example, adding "Increases the damage caused by your Dark Magic by 4%/8%" can avoid strengthening the pet sorc and interact with the Negate and Shattering Spines mentioned above. As a balance, Crystal's damage may need to be reduced by 8%, but due to the new passive, Crystal's overall damage will remain the same.

5. Power Surge. To be honest, I hardly see anyone using this skill in PVE and PVP. This skill is definitely one of those that needs a rework, but it only needs to be given enough conditions to avoid the pet sorc being enhanced. For example: Gain Major Brutality and Major Sorcery for 30 seconds. Every time you deal critical damage with an area attack, you deal additional electrical damage to that target. This effect occurs every 3 seconds (similar to Scholarship in Arc). Since pets usually deal single-target damage, pet sorcs will not be overly empowered, while non-pet sorcs can benefit from the aforementioned reworks of range abilities such as Negate, Shattering Spines, and Lightning Splash.

6.Unholy Knowledge: Unholy Knowledge can be moved to Persistence and merged with it, and a new passive ability be added to Unholy Knowledge: When you deal damage with a Sorc class skill, increase the damage your target takes by 3/6% for 10 seconds. This effect will be triggered every 10 seconds. This could result in a pet sorc buff, but would just require resetting Daedric Prey from 50% in U46 to 45% pet buff in U45, or even go a bit bolder and increase the damage taken by the target to 5/10% and reduce Daedric Prey from 50% to 35%, but allowing the buff to all pet types. This still doesn't overpower pet sorcs, and still helps non-sorc pets, promoting the use of subclassing, while giving non-pet sorcs and those who wish to pure class a reason to continue using the Dark Magic skill line.