Sorcerer Skills evaluation

Crescent

I'd like to discuss something other than how sorcereres can spam bolt escape in light armor in pvp or spam crystal shards ad nauseam for a dps rotation.


So I'm going to look at the skills themselves and evaluate the skill lines.

Starting with the strongest:

Storm Calling

This is the strongest skill line by virtue of having the least useless skills. Bolt Escape is the bigger highlight, but the others have their place and decent use.

Endless Fury

Is a rather nice execute skill. The morph makes it refund a nice set of mana if you kill your target.

Its alternative morph however is weak as the splash damage on explosion is not only niche, but the splash damage us negligible and 180 splash magic damage isn't much in VR levels. Not even 10% of a regular mob's HP.

Lightning Form

Great skill. The damage ticks are negligible and probably meant to work with Disintegrate, but since Disintegrate is so bad, about 350 damage over 9 seconds with Thundering Presence is not that great.

Lightning Splash

This skill alongside Overload are the real stinkers of the skill line. Simply put, as long as the spell doesn't trigger the synergy by itself after it ends, it will be a crap skill unless the actual damage is buffed. The original size is pitiful, so you have to morph it to Lightning Flood for it to actually be a functional AoE, albeit a really low damage one in its current state.

Surge

I know most people swear by this skill. Critical Surge is strong, yeah. But I hate it. The skill by itself, without being morphed into Critical Surge.

So let me summarize what is so terrible about this skill.

This skill has double the mana cost, is single target based on caster, and has one third of the duration of Molten Weapons.

So you have to morph Surge into Critical Surge to get the only real functional heal a Sorcerer has, it has no group utility, will wipe out your mana bar in no time for its outrageous cost and shorter duration, and on top of it provides less bonus than a DK's Igneous weapons because it is not group wide and Igneous Weapons adds additional fire damage that is not hit by a low weapon damage softcap.

And it forces you to gear full crit stacking in order to have a heal worth something in veteran content, and a heal contingent on staying offensive to be effective.

Most insulting is that one of our morphs is to make surge last about 10 less seconds less than Molten Weapons, which is a group buff, and provides no other benefit. Just terrible.

Bolt Escape

Good for casters mostly because of their cost reduction in light armor. As melee, this skill makes for an awkward initiator that would be much better if you made it a targeting reticle teleport with a 3 second cooldown to prevent spamming. Add an AoE damage component like those PvE battlemage mobs do when they port to a target and do an aoe explosion.

That could replace Streak considering Streak does really bad damage anyways and will never be taken over Ball of Lightning.

Overload

This ability is so bad. The damage is actually worse than just casting impulse. On a non-magicka stacking build, it doesn't even do more damage than a single melee light attack on its heavy attack cast.

The Overload skill also disables all your weapon passive bonuses, which is a huge loss.

This is an ultimate skill but it sure doesn't feel much like it.

Stormcalling Passives

Disintegrate

The really bad passive. 10% chance to disintegrate low health targets. What a waste considering low health mobs will likely die on a single impulse cast or steel tornado. A 10% chance is just bad. Even if you raised it to 60% the skill would not make for a good investment. This skill needs a revamp.

Capacitor and Expert Mage are fine. The only good passives really

Energized

Energized is not a good passive actually. It's a 5% boost on a skill line whose only damaging skill is a 20% HP and under execute. This will only ever be good when Storm Calling has an actually good nuke other than an execute.

This could instead be changed so that whenever you cast a Stormcalling spell your magicka, stamina, and health regen is increased by 50% for 5 seconds or soemthing like that.

Or you could turn it into a passive that gave the skills more offensive utility.

Dark Magic

This skill line has Negate Magic, Crystal Shards, and Encase that are the only standout skills. Encase costs a metric ton of magicka and is only use for Exploitation Passive as Volcanic rune is much better and cheaper for CC.

Dark Conversion is overshadowed by Spell Symmetry, and as a heal in a game where damage is so high, a 4 second self CC means you lose more health tanking damage without block than you actually recover. Hell, this spell can very easily kill you. So it's not used for the heal but for the magicka return, which is inferior to spell symmetry, and dark conversion is a skill that cannot be used by melee, stamina using sorcerers.

Rune Prison


A single target 1.5 sec cast CC in a game where some classes can spam AoE CC. Moderate cost.

This skill is completely outclassed by volcanic rune, because a single target CC does nothing in a game whose encounters center on large packs of mobs, and in an encounter where there are 3-4 mobs, those mobs are usually immune to CC so the skill cannot shine.

It also regens the target's health unlike volcanic rune, and volcanic rune does AoE damage to boot on top of a launch and 4 sec aoe stun.

Daedric Mines


Easily the worst sorcerer skill right after the pets, and that's kind of a tie. This thing has such a horrendous magicka cost for what it actually does.

I don't know why someone would want to wipe out 60% of their magicka bar on a single skill that takes 3 seconds to arm baseline or loses its area function to serve as an instant line skill that's overpriced.

The damage would be great if you wasted the time running a mob over all the mines, waiting 1.5 seconds of immobilize between each tiny explosion that doesn't even have much radius to affect nearby mobs.

Its cost needs a drastic reduction, the explosion radius to other mobs should be increased, the arming time should be 1 second baseline, and the immobilize could certainly be 2-3 seconds and interrupt casting.

Passives

Persistence only affects encase with Restraining Prison since it doesn't have much meaning for Rune Prison.

Exploitation is again used only in tandem with Restraining Prison. The other Dark Magic spells have barely any lasting effects to benefit from this passive.

Daedric Summoning

This is easily the worst skill line out of all classes in-game.

The summons will never be used in serious play until you revert the change making summons costs two skill slots. There's no way around it in a game with 10 total skill slots and several critical self buffs and cc and maintainance skills on top of offensive ones.

With that out of the way, here's why even then summons will be bad:

-They are made of wet toilet paper. A single charge up skill from a regular mob will wipe out a Twilight Matriarch, and she costs 1.5 sec cast time and a crapload of mana to resummon even with rebate.

2 melee swings from an elite mob kills a Matriarch. The Clannfear, the tankiest pet, can take slightly a couple more hits and that's not saying much. You need to make pets scale with our health stat and make them immune or take greatly reduced aoe damage.

- The AI is terrible. You can't sneak with a pet out, so you can't initiate combat from stealth, and you have to desummon a pet to skip past dungeons for leaderboard speed runs.

The pet will attack whatever it wants to attack, and all the summons do single target damage in a game where AoE is essential in most encounters.

- It's very telling that the only current use for a summon is summining and immediately despawning a volatile familiar to act as point blank aoe. Because out of abusing a detoggling interaction that treats it as a pet death to trigger the volatile familiar's explosion, the pet and Twilight Matriarch's actual attacks are actually pretty measly.

Bound Armor

Overshadowed by Storm Form. Costs 2 skill slots and while it doesn't cost magicka to activate every 9 seconds, it handicaps your max magicka by 10% while it is toggled, and the thing with armor is you only need it when you expect to get hit.

Costing 2 skill slots alone on top of covering your character's armor and currently bugging out and disabling disguises whenever you weaponswap is part of the reason why few people use it.

Its morphs are also weak. Bound Armament only benefits with heavy attack spam, which won't happen much once stamina builds actually have stamina dumps.

And Bound Aegis is worthless considering you already softcap armor with medium armor with just bound armor.

Most importantly bound armor returns less mitigation as many builds use either storm form or Immovable for the necessary spell resist, which bound armor does not provide.

Conjured Ward

Shields are not that great because they don't take into account mitigation before absorbing damage. And this is a selfish self-targeted shield with no group benefit, ends up mitigating less damage than storm form and costs a good bit of mana.

This could be a lot better if it was the group utility sorcerers need urgently.

Daedric Curse

Awful skill only made less bad but still bad as Velocious Curse. 6 second activation time for a skill that does less damage than a 1.3 second crystal shard and doesn't even stun. With mediocre splash damage. Even with 3.5 seconds its only used to bait crystal shard procs and even then its use is marginalized versus crystal shard spam.

This skill needs more utility and damage. A snare or power reduction/Concussion on detonation would be a good start.

Passives

Power Stone is the only worthy passive. Daedric Protection is a 20% increase to an incredibly weak stat (health regen). Health regen capped amounts to about 86 health every 2 seconds. A single veteran leve mob hits for triple to quadruple of that value. Bumping 76 health regen to say 84 is a blip in the radar and a complete waste of 2 skill points.

Expert Summoner needs to affect bound armor and twilight ward and daedric curse in some way, and will only be of use when summons themselves are of use.

Pets need to scale with gear and all stats better.

Class utility

Negate Magic is the only real utility a sorcerer brings to a team. You've got Lightning Flood's unremarkable synergy and that's about it as far as sorcerer group benefits.

The sorcerer needs better team utility, or its use after DK and Templar group utility dominance will be for raw DPS, in which it doesn't even beat the other classes, especially DK.

Once NB gets buffed to be the best single target class, sorcerer will only have ranged options to boast about, and that's not much to boast about if a healer can keep up DK's and NB's up through encounters and bosses die faster as a result.

Dymence

You've made a lot of fair points, though there are a few things that I'd have to disagree on. Let's just follow the order in which you posted the various skills.

Starting with the Overload ultimate from Storm Calling. The damage increases when morphed to Power Overload, and perhaps you're right in saying that it deals less than just spamming impulse even if not by a lot, but the main thing is that you can use it for lenghty durations without it costing any mana. It also works quite well in tandem with Critical Surge on crit builds.

The next thing I would like to adress, is the fact where you mention that the Persistence passive would only work with encase, and the same for the Exploitation passive. This is actually not the case, as persistance also works with the Negate Magic ultimate, increasing it's duration from 9.5 seconds to 11.4 seconds. Furthermore Negate Magic also benefits from the Exploitation passive.

Lastly you stated that Daedric Curse would be an awful skill. On it's own, yes, I would have to agree on that. Though when you morph it to Velocious Curse, it's really not that bad. The damage from it isn't as low as you think, and it doesn't cost that much mana either. It also works wonders in proccing Crystal Fragments.

Also, I noticed you didn't mention the Storm Atronarch from Daedric Summoning at all. Any reason for this? It's quite a nice ultimate, at least for PVE, as with the current rate of ultimate gain you can throw them down like no tomorrow. They can take quite a few hits, and their damage isn't that bad either. It starts getting pretty funny when you have three atronarchs up at once.

Still, as I've said earlier, you made a lot of fair points. It's not that hard to set up a strong build for a sorcerer, but there aren't that many builds to choose from as a lot of skills are inferior to their counterparts from other classes. Some damage adjustments here and there could be well in place.

Erock25

I agree with most of what the OP said and also the second poster. Something that has been bothering me lately while I level up my DK is that Sorc has no instant cast spells that work well in all situations allowing you to hold block while using the instant. What I mean is, a DK can run up to a mob while holding block, insta cast searing strike, Engulfing Flames, and spam Molten Whip all while holding down block. Because of the Dots and synergy between these skills, this is a huge amount of damage all while hiding behind your shield. Sorc on the other hand has nothing comparable besides hoping for Crystal Frag procs. Thundering Presence doesn't do enough damage to be useful as a attack, Vel Curse takes too long to do its damage, Mage's Fury is useless unless <25% HP, so you are left with no real option. I find myself either spamming Crystal Frag (forces me to not block for 1.3 seconds often), or layering V Curse with Endless Fury to proc Crystal Frag. It is a clunky an unreliable way to do damage while hiding behind block, which is WAY too effective.

Ytterin

Actually:

Streak. Yes, it is a little low on the damage end. However, it is extremely useful compared to BL morph in much of the PvE content. In AvA, the absorb is better. A little adjustment to this would be fine.

Dark Conversion. If this gets removed for the caster side of Sorc's, it would be bad. It may not fit with all niches, but not every skill needs to.

Rune Prison. You are doing this so wrong... The only 2 problems with Rune Prison is that ranged mobs can attack after the spell has gone off, and that pets/followers break the cc almost as a priority while there are other targets to attack. This is applicable under the following conditions: Rune Prison is the first thing cast *On a pull, if you cast Rune Prison on a mob which is ranged it will usually get a light attack. This does not happen if you attack a different mob with a spell that has travel time, and then cast Rune Prison on the same mob you would have.* Rune Prison is an excellent way to help control larger pulls, and has been extremely useful in VR content IMO.
For this skill persistence works for both morphs. Taking Rune Prison does not mean you need to break it immediately!

Daedric Mines. It's not that bad. The mana cost to damage is fairly balanced IF you are hitting with all the mines on single target. As an aoe it is rather high cost. What it needs: A longer disorient/stun. A little more damage for aoe, maybe an aoe damage component to a mine going off.

Pet summons. They do enough damage to make them a boost to your dps on bosses. They are almost worthless in AvA, yes. For a pure DPS setup, focused on PvE, they could maybe do a little more damage, and yes... the Twilight does need more hp as it melts super fast when hit. However, this again is only useful for a ranged 2-bar dps build for single target with execute setup on the off bar and 80% nuke on the main. Still, they have their role.

Bound Armor. Having it on both bars is your choice, to keep it up. It does not normally cost 2 slots. I suppose if you are going with 2 stamina based builds, and want the heavy attack bonus... but then you really wouldn't care about the mana costs that much. Also, I think you are confused about soft caps... you still get some benefit, making the skill still somewhat useful. As for tanking, it may/may not be worth much depending on your setup and the fight involved.

Conjured Ward. It's great for solo, especially when morphed for better self shielding as a full out caster type. Honestly this is a nice 'Oh crud' button for Sorc's without needing to have a resto staff equipped or go running away. There are better spots for group utility, although giving the pet shields to allies if pets are not summoned might be nice (ie. shields 2 allies, pets as priority targets.)

What Sorc's really need is: Some utility additions to some of our abilities, a few adjustments here and there, some fixes to a few abilities, a couple passives replaced with something useful *Namely Disintegrate and the Daedric passives,* and a little bit of damage adjustment in general. We do decently on sustained damage, but the numbers could use a little boost... compared to melee which just seem to get that edge late in the game in terms of overall dps (bugged NBs excluded.) This could easily be fixed by boosting the magicka soft caps late in game a little as a temporary measure, or by adjusting coefficients, or by giving Sorcs a boost to base spell power via replacement of one of the worthless passives. This is largely due to weapon damage, which goes up in the VR areas normally and is essentially useless to caster Sorc builds... whereas the other stats see a reduction in the benefits as you go higher. Itemization changes could fix this too... although it would be more work.

As it is, however, you can do solid if not quite top of the line dps as a Sorc... and many of the skills are not as broken as indicated above. I'm more concerned about skills not firing, not hitting when fired, and Rune Prison's pull issue.

Erock25

Ytterin wrote: »

Conjured Ward. It's great for solo, especially when morphed for better self shielding as a full out caster type. Honestly this is a nice 'Oh crud' button for Sorc's without needing to have a resto staff equipped or go running away. There are better spots for group utility, although giving the pet shields to allies if pets are not summoned might be nice (ie. shields 2 allies, pets as priority targets.)

I just want to use this as an example of complete lack of balance.

Conjured Ward vs Obsidian Shield (DK) using values from esohead skill calculator. Conjured Ward is 0 dmg shield for 20 seconds on pets and self for 46 magicka. Obsidian Shield is 0 dmg shield for 20 seconds on allies and 100% more powerful shield on self for 20 seconds for 53 magicka. Now 100% more of 0 is still 0 but we know how those esohead tooltips are. Still, I expect the base value of this shield to be equal so right off the bat unmorphed version, DK gets their group shielded and 100% stronger shield on themselves. Now if you are lucky enough to be a Sorc, you can spent a skill point to morph Conjured Ward into Hardened Ward for a whopping 30% increase in shield strength on yourself. LUCKY YOU... only 70% less powerful than DK unmorphed version. The other morph buffs your pets but I find pets to be completely unusable in Vet Ranks so it is pointless. DK is morphs to have a stronger shield on self and teammates or for dmg to proc when shield is used up or time expired.

It is almost humorous to me that Sorc has to level Daedric Summoning to 42 to be able to unlock this skill when DK gets a vastly superior (stronger and wards group members) one at lvl 20 of Earthen Heart line.

Surinen

your evaluation lacks points about the visual effects/animation. iaccording to the numerulesepiarchint of the infinite in their wisdom and reflection Thalmor, objective preference truth should be considered as one of the most important aspects of the class. I care nothing for stats and similar sillliness. here I pass my verdict: Sorcerer's spells look weak, unnatractive and without passion. Class lacks onomatopoeic "WOAHHH".

Crescent

Conjured Shield is worthless and I'm inclined to think that people praising it haven't done veteran content.

The shield even with 30% extra shielding is gone in about 2 hits from a single regular veteran rank mob.

The shield won't even fully mitigate an uppercut from a mob, much less a shuriken toss.

Ruddertail

Calling Velocious Curse bad kinda shows you don't really play a sorcerer.

You weave it in with shard spam and spell symmetry for a nice DPS boost.

Additionally Rune Prison isn't used like volcanic rune, it's for taking a single strong mob out of the game for 24 seconds.

@Surinen personally I think sorcerer spells look the most impressive. Nothing quite beats calling down the atronach in graphical oomph.

Erock25

Ruddertail wrote: »

Calling Velocious Curse bad kinda shows you don't really play a sorcerer.

You weave it in with shard spam and spell symmetry for a nice DPS boost.

Additionally Rune Prison isn't used like volcanic rune, it's for taking a single strong mob out of the game for 24 seconds.

@Surinen personally I think sorcerer spells look the most impressive. Nothing quite beats calling down the atronach in graphical oomph.

I have confirmed on many DPS tests that you do not gain any DPS weaving in Vel Curse with your Crystal Frag and Symmetry Spam. It's only use is to make the Frag spam less boring.

Ruddertail

Despite it proccing instant cast shards? I highly doubt your DPS tests are accurate.

Surinen

@Ruddertai Dragonknight standard looks twice as powerful, trembling, fires and some more burning animation on yourself. Dragonknight is the king of spell animations; inferno, mentioned standard, fiery breath, searing strike, lava whip, spuiked armor, dragon blood, inhale, ash cloud - - -you know what, I will stop. most of the DK's spells look heavens above rogue&powderhouse Sorcerer

steinernein

Ruddertail wrote: »

Despite it proccing instant cast shards? I highly doubt your DPS tests are accurate.

Nah, if you think about it, it makes sense; velocious still costs animation time and deals about 70-80% of what crystal fragments deals every 3.5 seconds, the procs make up for that. So, basically you need to proc in order to make up for the loss in damage. It ends up being neutral thanks to animation time costs. That and it still costs mana.

Crescent wrote: »

Mostly correct stuff

Crescent has the right of it for the most part, though he's missing about a couple or so edge cases that makes those skills shine in particular.

Conjured Ward (for me at V8) blocks around 900~ damage and lasts for 17 some odd seconds which is enough to absorb most major attacks and also eat red abilities. Ultimately, this means less investment in HP and more in magicka to bolster DPS in situations where your skill bar has extra slots since your rotation ultimately boils down to a core of mage light/symmetry/fragments.

Power Overload, the one that restores magicka, is great to use in certain boss fights because it provides well over 600 DPS while restoring magicka from the base ability combined with any other debuffs. So yeah, 600+ DPS on a single target as a baseline for restoring magicka isn't bad. With the proper gear you'll end up hitting closer to 750 DPS. Compared to Light Attack -> Symmetry -> Light Attack -> Nuke it's competitive.

Daedric mines are the one of the few ways we can reach 1k+ sustained DPS, though the drawbacks are pretty obvious as we have to be fighting targets that are large sized or have the tank drag over the mines.

Twilight Matriarch and its morphs are great for tank and spank boss fights or any boss fight where you're relatively safe as it provides an additional 50-75 dps throughout the fight. Again, not bad considering your base rotation. Resummoning the pet also may remove the cool down on the heal.

Bound Aegis is primarily meant for a pathway to reach the hardcap and doesn't require constant recasting. Furthermore, Bound Armaments may see good usage pending Craglorn gear. However, overall, it either is boring to use or it underperforms.

Crescent

Bound Armaments was working pretty well before this patch. Heavy attack with some clipping bolstered by flawless dawnbreaker, night mother's gaze and other debuffs was putting out what I saw as slightly more damage than flying blade spam.

And visually it was more entertaining than seeing your toon doing some dumb dagger throw spam.

Then they patched something and broke melee haste and heavy attacks are now casting much slower as DW, so the bound armament build is dead for the time being until they fix melee haste.

I just hope down the line they realize that it's better for build variety if they untie attack damage from resource pool, and have both stamina and magicka skills scale off whatever you have that is larger, melee or spell damage. That is, stamina and magicka will still increase offensive stats, but for the purpose of a damage formula your highest offensive stat is used.

That way, both melee and caster builds can use all the skills more or less effectively, but the difference in magicka/stamina allocation is how much you can use of these attacks.

Ultimates at the very least need to work for stamina builds. Power Overload is what I'm specced in. It's pretty decent as a caster but as a stamina build it is beyond worthless and pitiful in damage. And as a caster I'll be using either Storm Astronach for single target or Negate Magic for AoE. If AoE damage is necessary I'll just Impulse spam (and if I'm playing melee, well I'm screwed because melee stam based builds have no AoE capacity until someone knocks the mobs down to >50% health).

steinernein

Well, I think Sorc has the unique problem of having only one viable build path while also being the only class that offers nothing for other teammates

Crescent

We just got stuck with a bunch of redundancy. Before the game released, looking at the calculator I feared that rolling a melee sorcerer instead of a nightblade, I'd end up regretting it because I saw no skills that synergize with a variety of builds. Yeah, NB's are weak right now but that's more an issue of number tweaking and fixing bugged skills.

Looking at each NB tree, for example:

Assasination

- An execute
- Defensive buff (currently weak, but it can be fixed by doubling or tripling the effect)
- A damage increasing debuff
- A haste buff which synergizes with leeching strikes and weapon enchantment builds
- A burst teleport gap closer/initiator

Shadow
- An invisibility skill used to halt AI or escape. Can be comboed with veiled strike for CC
- Bread and Butter damage strike that does an additional effect from stealth
- AoE CC
- Summons with the purpose of AI distraction, damage reduction, and with a morph mobility
- AoE damage spell with mobility buff

Siphoning
- Drain DoT with group healing utility
- Single Target long CC
- Snare+ Speed Boost
- Resource Pool Recovery
- AoE power drain

----
Needless to say there is hardly overlap in those skills. Every skill has its niche. If one of those is not used, it's a simple numbers tweak.

Now let's look at the Sorcerer Trees:


Storm Calling
- An execute
- An armor buff
- An AoE spell
- Weapon damage buff (single target, no damage, no additional effects to the group or against mobs). Used especially for the heals.
- A teleport usable for initiation (inferior since it doesn't home in) and escape (superior because it needs no target). Linear CC

Dark Magic
- A cast time damage spell+knockdown
- An AoE root
- A single target disorient (inferior to stun)
- A 4 second channel costing stamina to recover HP/Magicka. Caster only skill and situational due to self-CC
- Another AoE spell with roots. Even more magicka expensive than Encase, not even instant activation baseline.

Up to this point we are already starting to see some redundancy in CC and extraneous AoE spells. Critical Surge already far outperforms Dark Exchange without the self CC.

Daedric Summoning
- A pet that does...damage.
- A flying pet that does...damage. Morphed it can heal every 30 seconds. Most of the time it's still....damage.
- A 6 second delayed detonation spell that does.... damage, and a negligible AoE splash much like Mage's Fury.
- Another armor buff.
- A shield (more self targeted damage mitigation) with a cast time.

Daedric Summoning is the biggest offender by far. The skills themselves do nothing special! They're fancy DoT's with poor AI that can die to a single veteran mob uppercut. The other 2 skills are inferior damage absorption/reduction skills relative to storm form.

If anything, Daedric Summoning and the pets should have been our utility tree! They should have had baseline auras for a group, and not useless ones like magicka recovery increase when the softcaps are so low to begin with!

And the worst part is that while the NB can be fixed with numbers and bug fix tweaks, the sorcerer skill lines will need a redesign!

You can't fix the fact that Sorcers have poor group utility or no spammable magicka based spell to use as a melee caster or any debuffs that support anything besides a crystal shard spamming build!

There's nothing they can do to Velocious Curse numbers-wise. The skill should add a debuff of some sort on top of a numbers increase. Conjured Ward should have affected the whole group! Bound Armor should have provided some more interesting benefit than an armor capping spell which cannot synergize with storm form.

So much overlapping and poor synergy, and our only real healing forces us to only itemize a certain way -- crit stacking. As a melee sorcerer, other melee can pick weapon speed enchants but we gimp our survival severely by choosing any weapon trait other than precise!

Halrloprillalar

Agree with most but not all:

Lightning flood is excellent in a group. It's pretty meh on its own, but restraining prison + LF when someone can pop the synergy is higher dmg/magika than pulsar or fire rune. Its own damage could use a slight buff though.

Daedric curse is decent damage/magika and it procs shards. It'd be nice if it did something else, like snare or weaken the target or something, but it's far from terrible, especially in pvp (I've killed people that escaped through doors with it before, curse, fury, proc shards - get that nice "700 mage's fury explosion... +248 AP" after losing target = good feels)

Crit surge is excellent for maintaining wicked high single target dps if your crit is high enough via spell symmetry (life tap) without having to pop out to dark exchange. Each shards crit should give you back about one life tap's worth of health, and you can supplement with potions for the difference.

Lightning form is pretty garbage unless you really think you are going to get hit for a lot in the next few seconds - in which case you really should just bolt escape the *** away in the first place. Dark exchange (the armor/SR morph of stam tap) gives me over double what lightning form does, while also replenishing hp/magika (granted, I can't move and it can be interrupted in pvp... oh well). I don't use LF in pve or pvp, ever, just not worth its cost.

Ciedoc

Got as far as you saying Overload stinks. Give me a second to catch my breath from the laughing fit that triggered......................

Ok. Obviously you do NOT know how to use the skill. Overload is probably one of the BEST abilities of the class. Not only do you get a 3rd quickbar out of it, it lets you be situational with your ultimate usage. Build it right and Overload can do sick damager on its own and even border on OP with the right combination of other abilities.

Take morph that increase damage and range of Overload is the first thing to do. This will help you use long attacks from mid range vrs in your face. Second, Surge is good..Critical surge is god mode with heavy attack overload. Questionable if magelight actually increase Overload dmg...is it spell dmg or is it melee damage? I beleive its spell dmg in which case Magelight boosts it more. Bound armaments morph again increases dmg of the heavy attack "lightning hands" of Overload and boosts armor. Lightning form armor boost, spell resist boost, minimal dmg increased and speed to circle strafe around larger groups.

So when I build up the ultimate I activate Overload, load 3rd quick bar then trigger magelight, bound armaments, critical surge, lightning form, then bolt escape into a pack of mobs. 3 mobs way to easy...5 mobs still very easy. 8 or 10 mobs is where it gets fun (well until the aoe nerf). If you have full ultimate built up, and go into "sith" mode or Emperor Palatine mode as some call it you can melt targets, regen health taken from having agro on multiple enemies, have more armor than most heavy armor wearers, and if in full light armor, and the right racial passives have INSANE amounts of spell resists while you destroy enemies or melt bosses health like nothing. I have parsed over 2300 dps against a group of Veteran mobs in Banished Cells with this setup. Too bad it "stinks" right?

Bolt escape not good for a distance closure? You just need to learn how to use it. Obviously its great for getting out of trouble much to the QQ's of the solo PvP gankers. But in PvE its still good if you get too much agro to escape. To provide mobility during boss fights to move out of aoe dmg or mechanics, as well as to mini kite strong mobs during quests and proccing crystal fragments to give you a knock down so you can keep range.

Even your comments on mages fury and vicious curse are laughable but I guess it depends on your use. I am a vampire now so I also use drain a lot. My typical pull is to start with crystal fragments and target the mob or one of the mobs if its a multi pull. Cast fragments, cast curse, cast fury to start execute timer. If I proc a fragments I send that freebe to a secondary mob to "CC" it for a second or two, or I throw it at my primary target. Goal is to get the mob low enough that once the 3.5 second curse expires and blows up it will bring the target below 20% and trigger the execute and BOOM mob blows up and falls over dead. IF no proc then I bolt escape towards the target to get into room to vamp drain which will also bring the mob below 20% when the curse blows up triggering the execute and again BOOM mob falls over dead. Rinse and repeat with next target.

Its all about timing the curse with the execute and getting the target below 20% to get them to blow up. Learn your skills and how to maximize your damager. Not everyone uses the same rotation...for my play style, fragments --> curse --> Mages fury ---> bolt escape ---> Vamp drain works quite well and I kill very quickly. Deal with fragment procs as they come up as additional dmg against primary target, or use it to knock down secondary targets in a pull.

There are other skills in the Sorc class that are lack luster, but there are also so many diamonds in the rough that it makes the class very dynamic and fun to play.

Erock25

Ciedoc wrote: »

Take morph that increase damage and range of Overload is the first thing to do. This will help you use long attacks from mid range vrs in your face. Second, Surge is good..Critical surge is god mode with heavy attack overload. Questionable if magelight actually increase Overload dmg...is it spell dmg or is it melee damage? I beleive its spell dmg in which case Magelight boosts it more. Bound armaments morph again increases dmg of the heavy attack "lightning hands" of Overload and boosts armor. Lightning form armor boost, spell resist boost, minimal dmg increased and speed to circle strafe around larger groups.

So when I build up the ultimate I activate Overload, load 3rd quick bar then trigger magelight, bound armaments, critical surge, lightning form, then bolt escape into a pack of mobs. 3 mobs way to easy...5 mobs still very easy. 8 or 10 mobs is where it gets fun (well until the aoe nerf). If you have full ultimate built up, and go into "sith" mode or Emperor Palatine mode as some call it you can melt targets, regen health taken from having agro on multiple enemies, have more armor than most heavy armor wearers, and if in full light armor, and the right racial passives have INSANE amounts of spell resists while you destroy enemies or melt bosses health like nothing. I have parsed over 2300 dps against a group of Veteran mobs in Banished Cells with this setup. Too bad it "stinks" right?

I have to disagree with this. Anything you explain here with Overload can be done better with Impulse. With Impulse you also have the bonus of being able to block since it isn't channeled. I find it funny you are championing this ultimate when you don't even know if Mage Light / Inner Light benefit it, not to mention Mage Light / Inner Light do not affect spell dmg anyway.

For me, overload went from being my most used ultimate to completely forgotten around lvl 45. Its AOE dmg can easily be surpassed with other skills and its single target damage is laughably bad.

Ciedoc

Guess we have to agree to disagree. First of all Magelight boosts critical dmg which when you crit increases dmg yes? Splitting hairs. Surge increase weapon dmg which applies to overloads attacks which appear to be counted as spell dmg which magelight increases crit percentage of which means your crit is higher, you do higher base dmg so the crit calculation increases and with critical surge means you regen that much more health.

Impulse I don't bother with. I only use dest staff if I am doing AoE for wall. My weapon is mostly a stat stick, I rarely use weapon skills I am full class/guild skills in my play. Don't know much on impulse but it does not fit into my play style. Biggest thing is that Overload uses ultimate not magicka so if you are low on magicka but have the ultimate built up you can still burn targets. I would like you to show me a parse with Impulse that will give you over 2k dps against a group. Yes the light attack Overload is not that impressive but if you take into account the mobility and speed of the tap it's not that bad...not great but again in the right situation its an option. To me Overload is for heavy attacks and again with the right setup I would put it against any other aoe dmg attack in game that Overload will win out. That is another benefit of Overload in its AoE dmg. Again its all situational. I use bat swarm as one ultimate and overlad as my secondary ultimate. If I want to pop my load at once I use bat swarm or soul assult or metor etc. If I want to manage my ultimate as a secondary power pool its Overload the whole way. Again use it with other abilities and it shines and looks darn cool as well. Running vet content when we need burst dmg I can provide it in spades with Overload more than I can any other combination of abilities. It works for me and my vet group your milage may very but that is the great thing about Elder Scroll games is that people can do things differently. But to say Overload stinks...you are just showing yourself either narrow minded or a fool. Used correctly it can over power anything else you can think of in a given situation.

And trying to compare anything to DK's right now is a joke in itself. The whole world (even those that don't play games) know DK's are OP broken (its that obvious).

ljb2k5_ESO

I have gotten tired of bosses with full cc immunity forcing me to spec back into a sustain/heal build. The sorc has come great CC built into alot of their DPS skills, enough that it would seem logical that it was intended that a dps/cc build with enough regen and like Dark Exchange could hold up. Then bosses show up who are completely cc immune (in the solo content), forcing me to go back to resto/summoner spec which is really hard to kill, but really boring to play, just to get past them. With the cost of respeccing etc, and the limited number so skills/skillbars it would be nice if there weren't elements that completely invalidate certain play styles and builds entirely in the game.

NordJitsu

First, two things I disagree with:

Daedric Curse

This is an excellent skill. Its the only good skill in the Daedric Summoning tree (which is the worst skill line in the game, by far.)

I think some people don't realize this damage CANNOT BE BLOCKED. That makes it a great counter to shield bash spammers who perm-block.

Bolt Escape

Making this target based or adding a cool down would destroy this skill. There is absolutely no place in this game for cool downs. Making this require a target would be silly as that would transform it from an escape skill (that can double as a gap closer) into a pure gap closer. Its simply not what its designed to be.

Also, Ball of Lightning is not the better morph. Only cowards use it to escape. Streak is actually quite a nice skill. It doesn't do a lot of damage (though it does when it procs Disintegration) but its great for the stun, battlefield mobility, and the little bit of added DPS it does provide.

Second, here's the changes I'd like to see, since I mostly agree with your feedback.

Daedric Summoning

All the pets should take only 1 skill slot. There's no way around it. No matter what else you do, pets will NEVER be useful as long as they take double skill slots.

Pets also need better AI. They should sneak when you go into stealth. The should not attack targets that are under a breakable CC. You should be able to direct their attack, such as by pressing CNTRL + The corresponding skill button while targeting an enemy.

Clanfear

Needs more health. Needs more spell resistance. Needs more damage. Needs to scale with my health and damage.

Daedric Curse

Although I think its a decent skill already, it could use a damage buff. Its one of our only options to counter Reflective Scales and shield-spammers. It needs to hit hard.

Maybe don't increase the AoE but just increase the single target.

Twilight

Same as Clanfear. More everything. Should only take 1 slot.

Bound Armor

Should also increase Spell Resistance by a small amount (less than Lightning Form.)

Conjured Ward

Like all damage shields, it needs to take your spell resistance and armor into account when calculating its mitigation.

Storm Atronoch

Is pretty much fine as is.

Dark Magic

Three of the 5 skills in this line are fairly solid (Shards, Encase, Exchange) and 2 are pure garbage.

Crystal Shard

Crystal Blast just needs to be better. It needs to hit way harder against the other targets to make it any kind of contender for Fragments.

Encase

I think it could use a cost reduction. Crescent is right that its not worth it a lot of the time since other AoE CC (like Volcanic Rune) are better for cheaper.

Rune Prison

There needs to be some sort of damage allowance so AoEs and/or pets don't accidentally break your targets out of their Prison.

Maybe they could take 150 points of damage before the shield breaks.

Dark Exchnage

Keep the cast time but make it mobile. Basically, have it work like Restoring Ritual from the Templar line.

Daedric Mines

Replace it. Seriously cannot think of a way to salvage this skill without a major revamp.

Maybe turn it into instant cast in its base form....idk. I think this would be a good spot for an AoE nuke. Daedric Bomb instead. You call it down from the sky and it immobilizes and damages enemies in a radius.

Storm Calling

Mages Fury

Again the only problem is that one of the morphs is useless. No who knows what they are doing would ever pick Mages Wrath.

Lightning Form

Slight damage increase.

Near the end of Beta this got hit with a ridiculous nerf that both reduced the armor and spell resistance as well as drastically reducing the damage. The first nerf is okay but the skill needs that damage back to make this a tanking skill to rival DKs.

Lightning Splash

Increase the damage....like double. Maybe tripple.

Seriously, this thing barely tickles right now. What were you thinking? Its a ground based AoE. They can just walk out of it. But right now there's hardly a reason to move out of it.

Surge

I think this skill and both morphs are pretty much fine as is. Crescent is right that Molten Armaments is a bit better (longer duration, also buffs group) but the skill is still good as is. Could maybe increase the duration on based skill and both morphs.

Bolt Escape

I'm happy with it. Streak could maybe hit a bit harder. I still don't think the mana regen debuff is necessary and it encourages people to use this skill to run rather than fight.

steinernein

Erock25 wrote: »

I have to disagree with this. Anything you explain here with Overload can be done better with Impulse. With Impulse you also have the bonus of being able to block since it isn't channeled. I find it funny you are championing this ultimate when you don't even know if Mage Light / Inner Light benefit it, not to mention Mage Light / Inner Light do not affect spell dmg anyway.

For me, overload went from being my most used ultimate to completely forgotten around lvl 45. Its AOE dmg can easily be surpassed with other skills and its single target damage is laughably bad.

Its AoE damage actually can't be surpassed by anything but volatile familiar. Unfortunately, since it's conal you have to pay attention more to your surroundings than with impulse.

However, the reason why impulse is better is because you can block and that's mostly it.

It's single target damage pretty much rivals crystal fragments. So I wouldn't really call it laughable, 600 base DPS is kind of good you know?

Erock25

steinernein wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

I have to disagree with this. Anything you explain here with Overload can be done better with Impulse. With Impulse you also have the bonus of being able to block since it isn't channeled. I find it funny you are championing this ultimate when you don't even know if Mage Light / Inner Light benefit it, not to mention Mage Light / Inner Light do not affect spell dmg anyway.

For me, overload went from being my most used ultimate to completely forgotten around lvl 45. Its AOE dmg can easily be surpassed with other skills and its single target damage is laughably bad.

Its AoE damage actually can't be surpassed by anything but volatile familiar. Unfortunately, since it's conal you have to pay attention more to your surroundings than with impulse.

However, the reason why impulse is better is because you can block and that's mostly it.

It's single target damage pretty much rivals crystal fragments. So I wouldn't really call it laughable, 600 base DPS is kind of good you know?

600 single target? I haven't used overload in a while now but I gave up on it because it seemed like the dmg was getting worse and worse compared to mob hp and dmg increase. I'll have to try again.

Dymence

Ciedoc wrote: »

Guess we have to agree to disagree. First of all Magelight boosts critical dmg which when you crit increases dmg yes?

No?

No idea where you got this from, but magelight boosts critical strike chance, not critical damage.

Ruddertail

NordJitsu wrote: »

Mages Fury

Again the only problem is that one of the morphs is useless. No who knows what they are doing would ever pick Mages Wrath.

Both of the morphs are useless. The choice is either "wow, extra splash damage on a skill that'll probably only get used on single mobs" and "wow, the whole spell cost returned for the last attack, after which the mob dies and I can just regen in peace anyway".

The skill in itself is good but the morphs are both... well, they just don't really improve it at all.

NordJitsu

@Ruddertail‌

That's not true in group situations.

Endless Fury is great because you kill something and then get that magicka back. This is great in group PvP because you finish off an opponent and still have magicka to fight the rest. Especially in like 1v2s. You kill one guy and get some magicka back to hit the remaining one.

Or in dungeons when you're taking out trash.

Finishing one mob doesn't always mean the fight is over.

Dymence

NordJitsu wrote: »

@Ruddertail‌

That's not true in group situations.

Endless Fury is great because you kill something and then get that magicka back. This is great in group PvP because you finish off an opponent and still have magicka to fight the rest. Especially in like 1v2s. You kill one guy and get some magicka back to hit the remaining one.

Or in dungeons when you're taking out trash.

Finishing one mob doesn't always mean the fight is over.

Endless fury is actually *** right now because if you kill the target with the execution explosion (which you usually do) it doesn't refund any magicka. Getting fixed in the Craglorn patch though, good stuff.

steinernein

Erock25 wrote: »

600 single target? I haven't used overload in a while now but I gave up on it because it seemed like the dmg was getting worse and worse compared to mob hp and dmg increase. I'll have to try again.

Your mileage may vary, I am at ~2500 magicka with 109 spell power wearing full light armor with 40% crit.

This is of course using the heavy attack. Try it out in comparison to usual rotation of light attack -> crystal fragments. You'll find it quite competitive.

Crescent

That's kind of the problem though, that in order for Overload to be worth much, you have to stack magicka way beyond the softcap. The base values for the skill are absolutely horrendous.

I'm really not exaggerating when I say on a 1950 stamina/1800 magicka melee sorcerer build, POWER morph Overload does less damage on its heavy attack to a mob than a single DW light attack swing.

And a lot of counters to point I made, not specifically you, but NordJitsu and others made only seem to treat the sorcerer as a caster. And that's a damn problem considering the battlemage archetype is just as valid in Elder Scrolls games, and right now people are fine with all sorcerer players being pigeonholed into a light armor caster build.

I mean, an unblockable spell is worthless to me as a PvE player. One can't justify the status of a spell in PvE by saying it has use in PvP.

And I as a sorcerer want to use a weapon other than the staff and crystal shard spam.

steinernein

Well, it's actually pretty prolific issue across the board; if you examine skills like wrecking blow, crystal fragments, dark flare etc, they don't really pull ahead by much until you start poking at the soft cap by a decent amount. Otherwise, they're pretty lack luster in performance. In essence, you won't really see their true potential until you hit something 2200 which many people are unwilling to go near or go over due to sacrificing HP ( which for PvE is a toss up but for PvP it's totally understandable).

Sorc is a problem class when it comes to diversity compared to other classes and it's a damn pity because I wanted to roll up a battle-mage as well but it's really hard to justify at the moment.

Nukeyak

Does exploitation not work with negate magic? That's what I got it for.