Give me a good reason to stick to my Sorc

Gyudan · November 2014

I have to agree with OP. If it wasn't for the (awesome) ability to move extremely quickly with streak, I would have probably left my sorcerer for another class long ago.
Please give us a real direct damage ability or a DoT

Teargrants · November 2014

Nala, I am very confused. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you didn't actually watch my vid through, cuz only the first 2 fights are pre 1.5 w/ harness magicka. I don't even have harness magicka on my bar for the other half of my vid from 1.5.

If you wanna say my build is cheese, ok but what's your point? Every class has 'cheese' builds. All that it is is about specing for the max synergy between your skills/gear/playstyle.

Insurrektion · November 2014

Teargrants wrote: »

Nala, I am very confused. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you didn't actually watch my vid through, cuz only the first 2 fights are pre 1.5 w/ harness magicka. I don't even have harness magicka on my bar for the other half of my vid from 1.5.

If you wanna say my build is cheese, ok but what's your point? Every class has 'cheese' builds. All that it is is about specing for the max synergy between your skills/gear/playstyle.

Nala is a troll disregard their statements

ToRelax · November 2014

Fix impen.
Change useless (if not for horse trolling) prison into a decent DoT.
Done.

olsborg · November 2014

Well I can agree that there are quite alot of class spells that are not very viable in pvp, and the lack of direct damage spells without some timer or cast time.
That said I find Streak to be a great spell in pvp even after the nerf. I'll stay on my sorc even after 1.5 despite the issues it may have atm.

Deadric mines is good, and would be even better if it actually benefitted from spell penetration, wich it currently doesnt.

Atronach is a good ultimate, negate and overload is so so. Very, very situational.

olsborg · November 2014

Btw, impenetrable trait should be changed to instead of decreasing chance to recieve a crit, it should just decrease the dmg from the actual crit. So 300 impenetrable score would mean you take 30% less dmg from crits. (just the bonus dmg not the actual hit)

shebali · November 2014

Pixysticks wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Pixysticks wrote: »

Out of the 10 abilities on my bar in PvP, the only class abilities I use are Crit surge and Streak.

Out of the 10 abilities on my bar in Serpent/Vet DSA the only class ability I use it Crit Surge.

Probably says a little something about the state of the class atm.

Come now pixy you also use execute!!! SOOO MANY SORC ABILITIES OMGAWD

I don't actually use execute in PvP. In PvE it doesn't even do great DPS because I have to go weapon damage for the best crushing shock damage, and our execute scales off of spell damage -____________-

Sorc would honestly be fine until the end of time if they just changed Impenetrable so that 500 Impen would mean you take ~25% less damage from players, instead of 50% less chance to be crit.

There are a few gear sets that do that plus heavy armor can reduce up to 30% of physical attacks while also lower spell attacks. But I am sure you don't want to lose light armor, which is a choice you are making. Now that sharpen has been fixed heavy armor does an ok job in lowering damage.

Erock25 · November 2014

Teargrants wrote: »

This is why you should stick with your sorc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-TEERPEm8

Not impressed by all of those 550 dmg crystal frag casts for the post 1.5 fights.

Sharpened fix did the same to me.

astro74 · November 2014

I used to play sorc. In my case i leveled all crafting skills and was afraid id gimp him.. turned out sorc are the gimps of pvp anyway so now I have a vr 14 ubercrafter and im currently level a DK for pvp.

Reroll DK, just sooo much more fun than the gimped sorc

shebali · November 2014

olsborg wrote: »

Btw, impenetrable trait should be changed to instead of decreasing chance to recieve a crit, it should just decrease the dmg from the actual crit. So 300 impenetrable score would mean you take 30% less dmg from crits. (just the bonus dmg not the actual hit)

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

Heavy armor. With the fixes of sharpened heavy armor can lower physical damage up to almost 30% with correct passives.
PVP gear set. A few sets of gear can lower the amount of damage you take by 25%.

Just with those two you can lower damage by a high amount without giving up too much. People just want everything without giving up anything. If you wanna do good damage, you should have the risk of low hp and low armor.

Impen should be balanced to the way stones are. Max impen should be 7% reducing of crit change.

Nala_ · November 2014

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

shebali · November 2014

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

He is saying it should lower the damage instead of lower crit.

Nala_ · November 2014

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

He is saying it should lower the damage instead of lower crit.

so he can heal himself with crit surge, google the ability

shebali · November 2014

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

He is saying it should lower the damage instead of lower crit.

so he can heal himself with crit surge, google the ability

You don't get it, never mind. I know what the move does. What he wants is a bad solution. This games does not have enough ways to improve crit bonus damage. So, lowering the damage from a crit is a bad idea. While I agree impen needs to be reworked, the correct fix should be to cap it at 10% or 7% at max total. Then people can only lower your crit by 7% or 10%.

Erock25 · November 2014

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

He is saying it should lower the damage instead of lower crit.

so he can heal himself with crit surge, google the ability

You don't get it, never mind. I know what the move does. What he wants is a bad solution. This games does not have enough ways to improve crit bonus damage. So, lowering the damage from a crit is a bad idea. While I agree impen needs to be reworked, the correct fix should be to cap it at 10% or 7% at max total. Then people can only lower your crit by 7% or 10%.

If a full suit of impen only gave you 10% max reduction of crit % it would be useless. Changing it to reduce crit dmg is a much better solution. 50% total crit dmg reduction with 8 piece legendary set up sounds right to me. This would mean your 1k regular hit that would crit for 1.5k (unless you were NB with crit dmg bonus or you had a set that increased crit dmg bonus) will now only crit for 1.25k.

Samadhi · November 2014

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

Nala_ wrote: »

shebali wrote: »

To make impenetrable that way is a terrible idea. Currently there are lots of ways to lower incoming damage.

hes saying it should be changed so he could heal himself with crit surge, incoming damage is fine

He is saying it should lower the damage instead of lower crit.

so he can heal himself with crit surge, google the ability

You don't get it, never mind. I know what the move does. What he wants is a bad solution. This games does not have enough ways to improve crit bonus damage. So, lowering the damage from a crit is a bad idea. While I agree impen needs to be reworked, the correct fix should be to cap it at 10% or 7% at max total. Then people can only lower your crit by 7% or 10%.

As someone who used to main a Nightblade, can agree with the point that buffing Impenetrable to reduce crit damage is a bad idea in the current game setup. We need more build options to increase crit damage to deal with such a change before it would be viable.
Also fully recognize that there is a Heavy Armour set that reduces Crit Damage as a 5 piece bonus.

As someone who rerolled and now mains a Sorcerer, don't give a crap about balance or what is a good or bad idea, just want my Critical Surge buff to work in PvP so that my character can go full crit build and get constant healing while attacking people.
Whether or not gameplay mechanics can currently accommodate such a change does not matter to me; also don't really care about Nightblades having a decent crit build option, because that's not my Class.
No point in me wearing a Heavy Armour set that reduces Crit Damage taken from other players, because it's not an issue of designing a new build to increase my survivability against crits, it's about changing other player's stats to make my self-heal buff more effective for me.

Personally, my Sorcerer uses Power Surge morph and a Restoration Staff as my backup weapon (Now that Rally has a self heal, Two Handed also works as a decent alt weapon option though).
Weapon heals scale up with Weapon Damage stat, so my Sorcerer performs self-heals far better than my Nightblade did on the same sort of build.
Power Surge + Resto Staff is far more reliable to me than trying to pit Critical Surge against Impenetrable stat. Power Surge has the bonus of lasting 40 seconds, so it is incredibly Magicka-efficient as a buff.
Run Critical Surge in PvE to faceroll Impulse spam all the mobs though.

Pixysticks · November 2014

Impen just needs to be a flat damage reduction, problem fixed. 500 Impen = 25% reduced damage from players, now everyone is happy.

shebali · November 2014

Pixysticks wrote: »

Impen just needs to be a flat damage reduction, problem fixed. 500 Impen = 25% reduced damage from players, now everyone is happy.

That would be wayyyyyyyyyyy too much. You have gear that does that. Go wear it. The counter to Impen is mundes stones which only gives 7% of whatever you have. So, until they fix that impen it should only give a max of 7%-10% of whatever they choose for it to do.

Erock25 wrote: »

If a full suit of impen only gave you 10% max reduction of crit % it would be useless. Changing it to reduce crit dmg is a much better solution. 50% total crit dmg reduction with 8 piece legendary set up sounds right to me. This would mean your 1k regular hit that would crit for 1.5k (unless you were NB with crit dmg bonus or you had a set that increased crit dmg bonus) will now only crit for 1.25k.

Mundes stones only give 5-7% that is unless. They don't have a problem with it being useless. Why should impen be better than everything else? As of now it is out of line of all other gear items. It should be 10%. When you combine everything it will balance out and the is the point of fixing something.

Columba · November 2014

lol nothing wrong with sorcs. you just dont dominate dps anymore, lol.

Mojomonkeyman · November 2014

Columba wrote: »

lol nothing wrong with sorcs. you just dont dominate dps anymore, lol.

It is very sad that while you are able to express a very educated opinion on other issues you fall back to your biased med armor NB view of balance to please your agenda gainst sorcs.

Which is just not accurate, yes sorcs eat med armor sneaky NBs for breakfast if we survive first attack, yet thats pretty much the only thing we can eat right now.

Sorcs dominating dps? When did sorcs do that, one month after release? Or with mines (which got fixed and not possible anymore)?

It seems to me you follow a long ongoing grudge against a class which most common setup is very strong against your classes` setup and you don`t even bother to reevaluate your opinion.

Itoq · November 2014

I'm with those that think the other armor traits should be buffed so that if we go high on impen we are losing out on something fairly desireable.

Destro moving to spell damage will help some builds.

Teargrants, which add on for the health bar? Looks quite a bit slicker than the one I have.

Teargrants · November 2014

Itoq wrote: »

Teargrants, which add on for the health bar? Looks quite a bit slicker than the one I have.

It's ggframes. I scaled the bars to max size and changed the shield color from orange to green.

Joy_Division · November 2014

The OP's premise is correct despite the understating of the abilities sorcs do have and the contradictory claim that he somehow can beat DKs (typically considered the strongest class) seven out of ten times.

The best theory-crafted DPS sorcs will not use their own damage skills in non-executable situations. Too many of their skills are too expensive/underwhelming for what they do (encase, daedric mines, lightning flood), too situational (curse can only be cast once and is only cost-effective vs DKs), or too cute as opposed to effective (summons).

In PvE they are really only wanted for their Negate ultimate (though I personally feel the mage's fury execute is undervalued).

I think they perform better in PvP though because bolt escape is a very strong skill vs. human opponents, the dps loss from crystal shards (as in using it instead of crushing shock, i.e. i'm not commenting on sharpened trait) is tolerable due to the knockdown effect, and players don't have many hit points which means many opportunities for Mage's fury.

Edit: clarity

Maulkin · November 2014

Joy_Division wrote: »

I think they perform better in PvP though because bolt escape is a very strong skill vs. human opponents, the dps loss from crystal shards doesn't matter , and players don't have many hit points which means many opportunities for Mage's fury.

What in the..I don't...what?

Are you saying somehow that the 20%-25% damage loss on frags over the last month does not matter? The only damage skill in the arsenal with some instant burst?

The way sorc operates is by creating bursts of damage with frags and curse, by timing gaps in the opponents reflects and utilising the delay of the curse and coupling it with the high damage of the frags. If you can't do burst, you can't do anything as a spell-dmg sorc. Which is precisely why the meta now is to stack weapon power and use destro instead.

Also heals have become better in this game through time. Healing Ward now crits and can deliver insta-heal of up to 2k on situations if double-cast. So while healing has increased burst, the damage burst (for magicka sorc) has taken a huge dip. Not to mention that the nerfs to Harness Magicka have hit both sustainability and survivability.

At the moment the best sorc builds in order are:
1) Weapon damage based bow sorc
2) Weapon damage based destro sorc
3) spell damage & class skill based sorc

That's how it is, and it's sad to anyone except ganky NBs as evidenced in this thread.

Bramir · November 2014

I run a healer bar on my sorcerer that has streak and negate. I run a dps bar that might have streak on it, but sometimes is devoid of class skills. Streak is great for positioning as a healer, and negate can a couple times a day turn the tide of a battle. It does seem kind of silly that I am mostly using everything but my class skills because they are mostly weak or useless, all because I used to have the option of running away using one of my class skills.

Luckily I enjoy healing, so at least I have something fun to do while they get this rebalanced.

Thechemicals · November 2014

Rookie thread i suppose. Sorcs are good. Try adding something outside your tree against Dks....there are like 30 other skills you can use against them.

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 · November 2014

I think for me it is a combination of issues. I love sorcerer and there is so much unrealized potential in the class but it needs major overhaul by Zenimax.

1. The sorcerer synergies suck - Atronach can get you killed in both PvE and PvP if you choose to use the synergy. The Lightning Splash synergy is so short many miss the opportunity to use it.
2. Staves - This is the first MMO I have played where the arcane class (Sorcerer) is out DPS'd using a stave by a class that seemed to be the "warrior / fighter" class in this game (Dragon Knight) wearing bathrobes. Yes I know this fits into all the customization Zenimax intended for ESO & the classes & weapon skill lines but seriously why are sorcerers not the most potent user of Destruction Staffs? Just never felt right but as I said I also know it was intended that any class in ESO should be viable with any weapon or armor type but we know there is MAJOR balance issues still with this customization dream they have for the game.
3. Daedric Summoning of pets is more of a PvE solo novelty as no Sorcerer should be using pets in PvP and PvE group dungeons and raids as we all know they take heals from the players.
4. No viable AOEs. Curse is meh, Lightning splash meh, Daedric mines meh, the AOE damage from the Crystal Shard morph is splash damage. Atronach does do a good bit of AOE damage but when your Negates are in higher demand and the synergy for Atronach can get players killed well . . . .

Now I haven't played my sorcerer hard for months but when AA came out and I was looking for groups the only reason I got into AA was for the Negates nothing else. One ultimate does not make for a class and yet in ESO it seems this is where we are right now for Sorcerer. Just my 2 cents and yes it has been a long time since I played my sorcerer hard in PvE, let alone PvP but it seems Sorcerer is due some love from the developers to bring them up to par and yes I know the NB still has a plethora of issues also.

AhPook_Is_Here · November 2014

To the OP, while I think you underestimate some of the sorcs base abilities; like mines, curse timed with a heavy staff weave (resto/lightning), CF proc and mages fury, and the potential for highest crit rate in the game, as well as a very solid class based shield with a low cost and long duration.

I have a DK in addition to my sorc and I enjoy playing both. Having the perspective of a DK as well, I know how to kill DKs, and don't really find them that problematic.

I don't see this game as a dueling game, though dueling is fun. I tend to make my build around what works best in a group environment with good defense, damage pressure and utility such as negate magic. In most large scale engagements with big stacked groups, the group with the most negates almost always wins. Even with players gaining the ability to weapon swap in a negate field now it still remains extremely powerful, and most stacked group disintegrate before they know they are standing in them if you coordinate well with your team on voicecoms.

If you are tired with your sorc, try another class, maybe you just need a chance of perspective. I think you will find though that every class has this same list of complaints that give most players the perception that their class is ineffective, or should be more effective than what it is currently.

Erock25 · November 2014

I know it isn't how they're supposed to be played ... but I just wish I could have a bit more utility/survivability/escapability with my stamina focused Sorc. Streak was nice before the nerfs and balanced cost wise for a stamina Sorc. Stamina DKs can still use their heal to great effect because it is based on missing health. Stamina Temps can still use Blazing Shield to great effect because it is based on total health. NB's synergize better overall for stamina gameplay and I'd gladly take one use of Cloak over one use of Streak any day as I believe the use of one Cloak has a greater chance of saving yourself than one use of streak/ball of lightning. There are just too many Sorc class abilities that are completely useless without stacking magicka/spell power.

Jahosefat · November 2014

OP is very right, people just like hating on sorcs because streak annoys them. I have exclusively played sorc pvp since beta and I can confirm we are the weakest we have been ATM. I am still very successful in pvp on my sorc, but that is because I am spamming crushing shock and there are a ton of squishy bowmen running around since the snipe changes.

Crushing shock/streak/flawless dawnbreaker are the only damage abilities on my bar ... It is a very effective build (against a lot of people) but not much fun.

Also, the pain of the harness magicka nerf was compensated by broken healing ward. Healing ward was outstanding, and exactly what we needed (a little on demand burst healing) but now that they have fixed this the effectiveness of sorcs is going to take a plunge.

ATM Sorc are good at 1.) dropping absorption field 2.) annoying people with streak 3.) spamming crushing shock at squishy bowmen.

NB does better damage, Templar heals better, DK tanks better. I do like annoying people with streak, but sorcs need a better niche than being a silence bubble drop bot.