Sorcerer - is Zenimax killing the class on purpose? [PVE]

XEVENEX · January 2015

Goldie wrote: »

Want Answers?
Fast forward to 53:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LkeMacg-b0&feature=youtu.be

I'm excited for spellcrafting, but it's a ways off still.

Teargrants · January 2015

Thanks OP, I've now seen some of the dumbest replies in a while thanks to this thread.

jjf42001_ESO wrote: »

karma for all that wanna be mage blink BS lmao.
granted this example is pvp but i watched a sorc trapped in a keep being attacked by like 4-5 people and all i see is him bouncing from one wall to the next......., he wasnt hurting us persay but he was just being annoying as ***.

Boo hoo the big bad sorc killed every- oh wait, he just annoyed you? So what am I supposed to take away from this other than '4-5 people' were such baddies that they couldn't hold block and spam the gap closer button until the sorc ran out of magicka and died?

jjf42001_ESO wrote: »

my issue with bolt escape is it used to be impossible to catch, mainly from my experince due to a combat bug where i get stuck in combat longer then everyone around me..... nothing better then watching a sorc run out of range. mount up , yet i get told im still in combat?.....just keep runing on foot?

So nerf blink because...stuck in combat bug? Blink was never impossible to catch especially not after the updates to med armor. Crit Rush goes down to about 200 cost, Bolt Escape (w/ seducer + breton) is 208, then 403 on every recast. Crit Rush has a 22m range, Bolt Escape is 15m range. Any stam build will easily be able to spam Crit Rush twice as much as I can blink. As a stam build, literally all you have to do is hold block and press Crit Rush over and over until the blinking sorc blows up. The only counter to this sorcs have is using terrain to LOS/interfere with pathfinding for gap closers.

LonePirate wrote: »

If you have been in Cyrodiil, then you probably know how annoying Bolt Escape and Streak are. I sure wouldn't mind if ZOS eliminated those two skills.

Skill is annoying, delete from game? Hot damn, guess I wouldn't mind if ZOS deleted Scales/Cloak/Blazing Shield either.

Samadhi wrote: »

The biggest issue is the lack of counters more than issue with the skill itself at this point.

The game is replete with counters, it's not the devs fault that most people don't even hold block when they use gap closers.

Samadhi wrote: »

(a Nightblade with Retreating Maneuvers, speed potions and their Class speed buff cannot effectively catch and kill a Sorcerer properly built to spam Bolt Escape when both are expending all resources on the task).

That's silly, all NBs have to do is spam Ambush over and over. Most people will laugh at the idea, because most people have never seen it considering how few skilled magicka NBs there are compared to bowblades, let alone tried it.

Samadhi · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

...

Samadhi wrote: »

(a Nightblade with Retreating Maneuvers, speed potions and their Class speed buff cannot effectively catch and kill a Sorcerer properly built to spam Bolt Escape when both are expending all resources on the task).

That's silly, all NBs have to do is spam Ambush over and over. Most people will laugh at the idea, because most people have never seen it considering how few skilled magicka NBs there are compared to bowblades, let alone tried it.

When a Sorcerer is Streaking back and forth in a short range SpAmbush works great, because the pathing will follow the short distances. The skill activates before the Sorcerer teleports, but launches afterwards keeping me stuck to them.
I do this religiously when playing on my Nightblade's Magicka build, so I don't see it as laughable at all; my policy is that if someone is going to spam his or her teleport, I will spam my own.

When a Sorcerer is bolting to escape, SpAmbush will begin to fail; with the cast time on the skill, the range hiccups and it does not fire, and then it is quickly no longer possible to keep up.

Play both Nightblade and Sorcerer in Vet PvP; have been on both sides of it.

Joy_Division · January 2015

Samadhi wrote: »

When a Sorcerer is bolting to escape, SpAmbush will begin to fail; with the cast time on the skill, the range hiccups and it does not fire, and then it is quickly no longer possible to keep up.

All a NB ambusher has to do is blockcast and she has a cheaper more damaging method of pursuit that does not tank her magicka regen. As for "hiccups," try to bolt escape if a rock just happens to be in your path...

Aeratus · January 2015

Actually, ambush will fail to hit if the sorc bolts out of range before the cast time on ambush is over. Ambush has a long cast time, and is not instant-cast like shield charge. A lot of magicka NBs use shield charge instead of ambush since it's so much faster.

Samadhi · January 2015

Joy_Division wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

When a Sorcerer is bolting to escape, SpAmbush will begin to fail; with the cast time on the skill, the range hiccups and it does not fire, and then it is quickly no longer possible to keep up.

All a NB ambusher has to do is blockcast and she has a cheaper more damaging method of pursuit that does not tank her magicka regen. As for "hiccups," try to bolt escape if a rock just happens to be in your path...

Blockcasting does not increase skill range, so Ambush will still fail against an escaping Sorcerer even when block cast.
Ambush has issues if a rock is in your path as well, that problem is not unique to Streak. Have experienced it on both my Nightblade and my Sorcerer.

Leeric · January 2015

Pretty much, but on purpose? I don't think so. They first nerfed the class as a whole, then they nerfed staff abilities, both resto and destro. Somewhere in the middle of that they also buffed heavy and medium armor and still plan on buffing them while saying "light armor users will feel like light armor users" Which whatever that means, it probably is them telling us that light armor will be nerfed again.

So do i think they did it on purpose? No, they don't have a clue what they are doing on anything in my opinion. It just so happens they nerfed everything a traditional sorcerer uses after they nerfed the class. So now sorcerers are just negate droppers and bolt escape users.

That might been in preparation of the champion system, but its kind of a weak excuse for poor class balance.

Teargrants · January 2015

Don't forget, they also removed deer. There goes my mana regen.

kewl · January 2015

They buffed pets, great! Add Inner Light and we'll only have four skill slots left. Fantastic game design!

Teargrants · January 2015

kewl wrote: »

They buffed pets, great! Add Inner Light and we'll only have four skill slots left. Fantastic game design!

Don't forget Ward & Curse to buff pet dmg, now you have 2 slots left. Game on.

Weng · January 2015

The sorcerer class is in a ... well, let's say weird state at the moment.

Even though I'm not an expert in the ESO endgame pve, since I mainly play pvp, my research revealed that you can play a sorcerer with stamina based weapons with great success. I was even told that they do decent damage with dual wield (!) using a weapon crit build.

Now my expierence in pvp shows that my best sorc build is using a bow and a two hander (the only weapon with a guranteed crit by the way and enemies can't block for ever).

I even use my pvp build for solo pve now, I just swap gear around a bit for more impen in pvp and more weapon (!) crit in pve.

What are the class skills I use with this build? It is thundering presence, critical surge, liquid lightening (for stacking with other ranged AE from my bow), and streak (more for attacking than escaping, why was this skill called "escape" in the first place?).

I could go into detail why it is these skills, but my point is that's all of them. I tried other combinations, but tossed out dark magic (almost, Negate is still there

) and deadric summoning completely.

I tried once to play a traditional caster with robes and staff, but I won't touch it again in the current state.

And just to let you know, I am used to play casters (sorcs, mages, elementalist, what so ever) in melee range. You get this kind of build in Rift and GW2 for example, but there is a huge difference. These casters don't simply grab a warrior's weapon and armor, but they use specific spells for being tanky and attacking in melee range. If you wanted to be a glass cannon ranged dps though, well, just use different (but still caster specific) gear, change your skills and you were ready to go.

But back to ESO, with the pets buff, is the sorcerer the subsitute for a bow wielding ranger or necromancer (some ppl will understand what I am talking about)?

I found a way to play the ESO sorc as a melee class, but it's more like a warrior now, with a few spell extras. Now I won't blame ESO for having a battlemage that is more like a warrior. Let it be the ESO way then. But how are you going to play a glass cannon dps powerhouse with the sorcerer class?

I don't know, but shouldn't there be at least the option to do so?

--
edited because of typo ...

Digiman · January 2015

Samadhi wrote: »

Homm wrote: »

...
As for PVE - sorc is pure ***. 3rd worst dps, which will change to 4th after the templar buff next patch. ...

Must have missed an update on this, could you link to the dev post or patch notes that state they are nerfing Sorcerer DPS and buffing Templars?

Last word I caught on the subject (during ESO live) was that Sorcerer buffs meant the class was topping the DPS ranking on ZOS' in-house testing of 1.6.

With pet damage from Daedric Curse increasing damage from pets. Basically they said they were too good and scaled them back. Even if they didn't all that would do is pigeon hole a class into using just pets for DPS.

But I would wait for the patch notes from PTS before I said the sky is falling at least.

It's true though that the class has received a huge lack of attention after the nerf hit and most players who love the class a rightly worried, there are plenty of precedents in MMO's I played where they flat out left a sorcerer type class to die till finally no one was playing the class for PvE and PvP content to warrant heavy focus on overhauling it.

So history for range based spell casters haven't been promising for balance focusing.

sagitter · January 2015

Now tell me why, with proffs,that actually a sorc is placed in 3rd place for dps , when best dps u can get is from crushing shock+anim cancel and sorc got weapon dmg buff?

kewl · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

kewl wrote: »

They buffed pets, great! Add Inner Light and we'll only have four skill slots left. Fantastic game design!

Don't forget Ward & Curse to buff pet dmg, now you have 2 slots left. Game on.

My 1.6 max DPS build, "The Derp."

Teargrants · January 2015

kewl wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

kewl wrote: »

They buffed pets, great! Add Inner Light and we'll only have four skill slots left. Fantastic game design!

Don't forget Ward & Curse to buff pet dmg, now you have 2 slots left. Game on.

My 1.6 max DPS build, "The Derp."

You forgot Dawnbreaker, bro.

Erock25 · January 2015

The biggest Sorc issue in PVP is lack of stamina regen abilities. If you don't agree with this, then you're doing it wrong. The biggest issue in PVE is we have no buffs or impressive utility besides Negate.

Joy_Division · January 2015

Samadhi wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

When a Sorcerer is bolting to escape, SpAmbush will begin to fail; with the cast time on the skill, the range hiccups and it does not fire, and then it is quickly no longer possible to keep up.

All a NB ambusher has to do is blockcast and she has a cheaper more damaging method of pursuit that does not tank her magicka regen. As for "hiccups," try to bolt escape if a rock just happens to be in your path...

Blockcasting does not increase skill range, so Ambush will still fail against an escaping Sorcerer even when block cast.
Ambush has issues if a rock is in your path as well, that problem is not unique to Streak. Have experienced it on both my Nightblade and my Sorcerer.

Blockcasting prevents the stun from streak which is necessary to chase a sorc with gap closers. If people are having trouble using gap closers to catch a bolt-escaping sorcerer, then they are doing it wrong. I would not have a problem of other classes using their gap closers to catch a sorc, if the resources required to do so were commensurate with what the sorc must spend

VarilRau · January 2015

Lord_Wrath wrote: »

What? Im a sorc and I whoop PvP and PvE. Of course everyone dies, but I cant imagine its really that bad.

I have been playing a sorc since the beta. Now on xmas holiday i powerleveled a DK. It does 300-400 more dps with the exact same gear and rotation my sorcerer does. Not to mention that the class is insanely full of op. Realy. I knew it was op class, but this was like 3 times worse than i expected.

IceDread · January 2015

I read that the soft caps for magica/stamina are being removed.

If that's true, then sorcs will be the highest dps, and that is while being a safe ranged class on top of it all.

Get 60% crit chance for spells, put on heal on crit, go full magica, what can go wrong? Looks like sorcs for pve will be op.

If they however do not remove the softcap, then sorcs can still be very powerful. But I see no reason why a class with the safety of range should be the highest dps.

Darkonflare15 · January 2015

I guess everybody forgets that they did not state all of the information about the class skill changes. Must mean they are actually making some of the other skills they have not stated good as well. This is the info they have stated that benefit all classes.

Each Class is getting three stamina morphs
All skills have uses
They balance ultimates to the scale up to Dk's Standard instead of nerf them
Some skills get new buffs and some gets change to new abilites

So far this what have change from each class

Sorcerers

Pets can crit now. Have improved damage and defense.
Daedric curse has morph that improve damage for pets
Negate has Major Buff of Regeneration that buffs everybody in the area.
Negate is also getting a new buff/debuff it did not have before.
Surge will still buff Weapon Power, but the Critical Surge morph will give you the healing that is such a fan favorite. There is now a new morph that provides a Major Power buff for both Spell Power and Weapon Power, so it will be viable to use with Destruction Staves.

Dragon Knights

Inferno is changing to a floating ball that gives off spell crit like Mage light, and shoots out fire on nearby enemies.
Dk getting an execute
Reflective scales nerf
Standard cost is going up

Templar

Radial Sweep now adds a pulsing damage aura for 6 seconds and has good utility where you take less damage with each extra target hit if you take that morph.
Blinding flash is change to Radiant Destruction which is an execute.
Backlash has a stamina morph

Nightblades

Haste change to new move Grim Focus
Teleporting strike getting stamina morph
Shadow cloak is still being worked on.

So far this is the only information that has been release about the class skills. To me it makes sense for sorcerers to get more healing skills since they have stated they wanted all classes to be competent at dps, healing, and tanking. So they are being hush hush about the other skill and passives since they had to change a lot of them. So I do not think they are killing Sorcerers because they are making a lot changes for them.

VarilRau · January 2015

My grief with the upcoming sorc changes is that im WORRIED about it, so, your skillbar will look like:

bar 1: pet damage curse, spell damage surge, pet 1, pet 2 & mages light + Lightning atro
bar 2: elemental drain (swap for execute in trials if someone else is doing this), crushing shock, pet 1, pet 2 & mages light + Flawless

Does not make for an exciting gameplay.

And having seen some devs play the vet CoA i don't have much faith in their builds. We wont know for sure until we get the test server, but i DO hope they join me and other theorycrafters there and listen to us.. These changes just seem too scary unless something is changed (ie. pets being a buff on a timer instead activated and must have on both bars.)

Exstazik · January 2015

kewl wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

kewl wrote: »

They buffed pets, great! Add Inner Light and we'll only have four skill slots left. Fantastic game design!

Don't forget Ward & Curse to buff pet dmg, now you have 2 slots left. Game on.

My 1.6 max DPS build, "The Derp."

Or this one with
1) FInisher for Stamina
2) Dark Exchange Morph for stamina regen

eliisra · January 2015

sagitter wrote: »

Now tell me why, with proffs,that actually a sorc is placed in 3rd place for dps , when best dps u can get is from crushing shock+anim cancel and sorc got weapon dmg buff?

You cant stack weapon power indefinitely. Crushing Shock builds without Surge(other 3 classes) will easily get high weapon power from other sources. Casting Surge also costs time and magicka, slightly reducing the time you have to dps.

Other classes have skills that goes well in a Crushing Shock rotation, generally DoTs, boosting dps. Sorcerer lacks it.

NB: Gets 2 crit passives, one strong DoT, execute already at 25% and a skill that buffs light and heavy attacks.
DK: Can also buff weapon power. Has the best dps ultimate in the game, best DoTs in the game by miles and great synergy with fire destro.

That's some of the reasons why sorc casters are placed number 3, NB caster on second place behind the DK, king of dps.

Tankqull · January 2015

Artemiisia wrote: »

the only reason people put sorcerers in trials now instead of Dks and nightblades is the negate field, knowing this as a 900-1000 dps sorcerer blows.

we are right now the 3rd worst dps'er in the game with all the nerfs

1. Dragon knights 1200-1700 dps
2. Nightblade 1000 - 1400 dps
3. Sorcerer/Templar 600 - 1000 dps

and yeah I have seen templars already at this stage do 1k dps

so with the upcoming changes sorcerers will be number 4th worst dps in the game, and yeaaaaah we still have negate so great still reason to bring us to trials...

So lets look at the classes

Dragonknights, best dps, best survibility, great self heal
Nightblade, great dps, lots of stuns, decent self heal
Templar best self heal, great survibility and then good dps after patch

sorcerer we have negate who hooooo

you are missing one severe point, templar doing 1k dps in pve are using 2h builds, for them the addition of a magica based finisher wich on top is a channeld ability doesent matter (=no light attack weaving), so even without mentioning the extreme pet dmg increasements between sorc and templars nothing changes.

Nightreaver wrote: »

My concern here is due to my experience from past MMOs where pets were more often considered a liability to a raid than a boon. Can't remember any MMO where pets were highly desired much less required to boost raid DPS. Highest DPS means nothing if I can't bring it on a raid or is going to cause more trouble than it is worth.

pets in DAoC were awsome for raids...

Nijjion · January 2015

Really too early to say about anything due to 1.6 with skills changing and champ levels.

With Ult nerf DKs will prob be down there with you as can't stack 2 banners any more.

That's unless there's some other good stuff coming, as I said too early to say. Wait for 1.6 then lets wait to see what happens. Though will probably take weeks maybe months for community to figure stuff out.

Edit

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

[*] Standard cost is going up

Where did you read this?.... and why?

Skill has already been nerfed twice and countered so easily

XEVENEX · January 2015

This is freakin' depressing.

Homm · January 2015

XEVENEX wrote: »

This is freakin' depressing.

Nothing to add. This is NOT the sorc balancing we want. Sorc needs a viable dps build without using pets - want to use them? Sure, but don't force anybody.

Joy_Division · January 2015

Nijjion wrote: »

Really too early to say about anything due to 1.6 with skills changing and champ levels.

With Ult nerf DKs will prob be down there with you as can't stack 2 banners any more.

That's unless there's some other good stuff coming, as I said too early to say. Wait for 1.6 then lets wait to see what happens. Though will probably take weeks maybe months for community to figure stuff out.

Edit

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

[*] Standard cost is going up

Where did you read this?.... and why? Skill has already been nerfed twice and countered so easily

I find it ironic in the same post you say "Let's wait," and then afterward question why Standard has been changed.

I think that sums up all the posts telling sorcs to be patient and wait.

XEVENEX · January 2015

Joy_Division wrote: »

Nijjion wrote: »

Really too early to say about anything due to 1.6 with skills changing and champ levels.

With Ult nerf DKs will prob be down there with you as can't stack 2 banners any more.

That's unless there's some other good stuff coming, as I said too early to say. Wait for 1.6 then lets wait to see what happens. Though will probably take weeks maybe months for community to figure stuff out.

Edit

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

[*] Standard cost is going up

Where did you read this?.... and why? Skill has already been nerfed twice and countered so easily

I find it ironic in the same post you say "Let's wait," and then afterward question why Standard has been changed.

I think that sums up all the posts telling sorcs to be patient and wait.

Darkonflare15 · January 2015

Nijjion wrote: »

Really too early to say about anything due to 1.6 with skills changing and champ levels.

With Ult nerf DKs will prob be down there with you as can't stack 2 banners any more.

That's unless there's some other good stuff coming, as I said too early to say. Wait for 1.6 then lets wait to see what happens. Though will probably take weeks maybe months for community to figure stuff out.

Edit

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

[*] Standard cost is going up

Where did you read this?.... and why? Skill has already been nerfed twice and countered so easily

Not read but heard from here

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bXz2DBMtH8U