1.6 PvP sorc testing/results, by Teargrants [Updated with video]

Teargrants · January 2015

First off, I will be testing my sorc in Cyrodiil on Thornblade extensively and would like to find some AD/DC to test with. Don't msg me here, pm @Kirsi in game if you want to set something up.

Anyway I got a couple hours in on the PTS so far fighting blues between bleaks/aleswell so I'll share my sorc observations for now.

-Bolt Escape tool tip no longer lists 50% magicka regen penalty, need more testing to see if it's actually gone.

- Streak's disorient breaks on dmg.

Weakening Prison: This ability now puts an aura of protection on you that lasts for one minute. The first player character to attack you during that one minute will be put in a Rune Prison. Each additional rank increases the duration of the aura by 20 seconds.

- Weakening Prison seems to be pretty wonky, I'm having trouble getting it to work in a consistent manner. For example, a Templar opened on me with Jabs, but the Prison didn't proc on it, then several seconds later the Prison proced on another attack. Not sure if it's a delay or bug. On the other hand Prison does proc from dots on you and also procs if you reflect a spell back at yourself. Need to do more testing to see if the proc is blockable/reflectable. On the whole it feels like a useful skill for kiting, but I need it to work consistently, predictably.

- Encase now costs about the same as Shards, so that's definately an improvement.

- With the change to health scaling, people's health pools tend to be 30% lower in relation to their magicka/stamina pools in 1.6 than in live (22k health/23k magicka compared to 3k health/2.4k magicka that my build has on live). This combined with increased Curse and proc'd Shards dmg makes my rotation feel more bursty to me. Keep in mind most ppl in PTS are just running their live build so things may change as we discover new metas.

- Ulti gen: Only tested my sword/board & resto build (dps on resto bar) so far, using the same rotation my ulti gen doesn't feel much different, but that's because light atking was part of my rotation and I wasn't relying on dots/crits.

- Champion System: All skill costs are comparably higher now in comparison to your resource pools than on live. You have to spec into cost reduction in the Champion System to get your skills back down to a comparable cost/resource ratio. 6.4% magicka cost reduction so far helps a lot.

- The champion passive for 'guarantee crit with next spell after blocking 3 spells' is obviously powerful combined with 20% dmg boost for proc'd Shards and just makes impen even more important now that it lowers crit dmg.

- Being a Breton is even nicer now, giving 3k spell resist for a total of 10k in Cyrodiil w/ light armor. (Compared to 5k armor in LA)

- Overall resource management just feels really floaty/wonky. How much is to do with increased costs in relation to resource and recovery pools vs all the changes remains to be seen.

That's it for now, I'll update this post further as I do more testing.

EDIT 1:

- After playing around, Degeneration is insanely useful for the spell dmg/HoT/max health boost/procing might of the guild that it provides, which is pretty much what I expected after seeing the patch notes. Crit Surge is garbage in comparison.

- Shield stacking is more important than ever, because of faster TTK as I laid out in another thread.

EDIT 2:

Some 1v1 clips showing how I play my build on PTS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWQs6IXlzcM

EDIT 3:

More 1v1's from today, this time vs Mojar Stalker, -Rinzler, Azoi, Sabre Ali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSpMGw-Ya8Y

EDIT 4:

New vid, this time duoing w/ our NB around WRX's group, King Richard jumped in to help too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSXK0lO9u6E

EDIT 5:

Duel vs Jagoblade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdD2iqFb-jE

NotSo · January 2015

Glad to see a down-to-earth post on sorc. Gonna be another 3 days for me until I get my hands on pts.
I'm AD and I might come message you.

Sanct16 · January 2015

Does the Volatile Familiar work now? Like does it crit and count as your damage?

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

Have you noticed that stamina just seems to drain at a surprisingly fast rate? /:
I'm not a sorc, but was wondering if other classes felt this all around.

aco5712 · January 2015

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Have you noticed that stamina just seems to drain at a surprisingly fast rate? /:
I'm not a sorc, but was wondering if other classes felt this all around.

@DisgracefulMind‌

Could be due to block costing more?

Teargrants · January 2015

Sanct16 wrote: »

Does the Volatile Familiar work now? Like does it crit and count as your damage?

I have no interest in testing pets, *** pets and *** ZOS for trying to push them on sorcs. Maybe if you gave me a sweet roll. Also the other thing is I can't reliably test anything in regards to crits. On PTS my crit values are like 410% spell crit 220% wep crit, I am most certainly not landing crits that much so this must be a display error in regards to how they multiplied all the numbers by around 10ish. So that might be 41%/22% but I can't be certain.

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Have you noticed that stamina just seems to drain at a surprisingly fast rate? /:
I'm not a sorc, but was wondering if other classes felt this all around.

You're correct, stamina does drain faster for several reasons. Scaling wise, 137 mag / 78 stam recovery on live became 1200 mag / 580 stam recovery in 1.6, while mag/stam pools are basically multiplied by 10. So you have lower mag and even lower stam recovery comparatively (7/7 LA).

Also, magicka and stamina recovery glyphs are absolute trash now. 17 recovery in live becam 58 recovery in 1.6. As you can see, the scaling is way off compared to the 10x increase of most other numbers. So if you relied on glyphs to push recovery rates, you've just been bent over and asked to pick up the soap.

This is all part of the Champion System; recovery rates are lowered and skill costs are increased, in order to force you to invest heavily in champion passives over the long term for increased recovery and reduced skill cost just to get back to where you are with your resource management on live.

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

Sanct16 wrote: »

Does the Volatile Familiar work now? Like does it crit and count as your damage?

I have no interest in testing pets, *** pets and *** ZOS for trying to push them on sorcs. Maybe if you gave me a sweet roll. Also the other thing is I can't reliably test anything in regards to crits. On PTS my crit values are like 410% spell crit 220% wep crit, I am most certainly not landing crits that much so this must be a display error in regards to how they multiplied all the numbers by around 10ish. So that might be 41%/22% but I can't be certain.

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Have you noticed that stamina just seems to drain at a surprisingly fast rate? /:
I'm not a sorc, but was wondering if other classes felt this all around.

You're correct, stamina does drain faster for several reasons. Scaling wise, 137 mag / 78 stam recovery on live became 1200 mag / 580 stam recovery in 1.6, while mag/stam pools are basically multiplied by 10. So you have lower mag and even lower stam recovery comparatively (7/7 LA).

Also, magicka and stamina recovery glyphs are absolute trash now. 17 recovery in live becam 58 recovery in 1.6. As you can see, the scaling is way off compared to the 10x increase of most other numbers. So if you relied on glyphs to push recovery rates, you've just been bent over and asked to pick up the soap.

This is all part of the Champion System; recovery rates are lowered and skill costs are increased, in order to force you to invest heavily in champion passives over the long term for increased recovery and reduced skill cost just to get back to where you are with your resource management on live.

Ughhh this just seems like a mess. Even with arena gear I was using almost half stam to break free. I guess here comes the champion point grind...

Thank you for the detailed description, it clarified a lot.

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

aco5712 wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Have you noticed that stamina just seems to drain at a surprisingly fast rate? /:
I'm not a sorc, but was wondering if other classes felt this all around.

@DisgracefulMind‌

Could be due to block costing more?

Yeah, could be a part of it. I put points in the block reduction piece in one of the trees, but saw no difference.

Teargrants · January 2015

Yes, block too - don't forget, there's a chanpion passive to decrease block cost. Have fun grinding!

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

Yes, block too - don't forget, there's a chanpion passive to decrease block cost. Have fun grinding!

Yeah, I stuck a bunch of points in it to see if it made a difference. Not too much, but slightly. Guess we'll see how this all forms out with everything.

saintmurray · January 2015

Could you please find out if blocking and bash begins the unlti gen sequence?

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

saintmurray wrote: »

Could you please find out if blocking and bash begins the unlti gen sequence?

It does not, I tried.

saintmurray · January 2015

Its pretty annoying im being forced to light attack...

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

saintmurray wrote: »

Its pretty annoying im being forced to light attack...

I'm interested to see how this affects bomb groups. Guess we'll see in the days to come.

Teargrants · January 2015

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

saintmurray wrote: »

Its pretty annoying im being forced to light attack...

I'm interested to see how this affects bomb groups. Guess we'll see in the days to come.

The Bloodspawn set still provides 25 ulti on proc, and Combat Frenzy also provides 25 ulti on kill. WW no longer provides passive ulti gen, but I'm told by some DKs that they're still able to keep Bats up with little down time.

ToRelax · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

Sanct16 wrote: »

Does the Volatile Familiar work now? Like does it crit and count as your damage?

I have no interest in testing pets, *** pets and *** ZOS for trying to push them on sorcs. Maybe if you gave me a sweet roll. Also the other thing is I can't reliably test anything in regards to crits. On PTS my crit values are like 410% spell crit 220% wep crit, I am most certainly not landing crits that much so this must be a display error in regards to how they multiplied all the numbers by around 10ish. So that might be 41%/22% but I can't be certain.

That attitude won't help really, but okay, gonna test myself then once EU database is on PTS.

Cinnamon_Spider · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

-Bolt Escape tool tip no longer lists 50% magicka regen penalty, need more testing to see if it's actually gone.

Having that line removed from the tootip is promising. I couldn't really tell either if it was actually changed or if they just edited that out by mistake.

Teargrants · January 2015

ToRelax wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Sanct16 wrote: »

Does the Volatile Familiar work now? Like does it crit and count as your damage?

I have no interest in testing pets, *** pets and *** ZOS for trying to push them on sorcs. Maybe if you gave me a sweet roll. Also the other thing is I can't reliably test anything in regards to crits. On PTS my crit values are like 410% spell crit 220% wep crit, I am most certainly not landing crits that much so this must be a display error in regards to how they multiplied all the numbers by around 10ish. So that might be 41%/22% but I can't be certain.

That attitude won't help really, but okay, gonna test myself then once EU database is on PTS.

There's also the fact that I never leveled pets, so I don't have access to the morphs.

NotSo · January 2015

Either way, morphs should be quickly available in pts. Weird that they are not.
With regards to our regeneration, I wonder if that will turn out higher than our 1.5 regen after capping the stam and mag regen stars. If not, we may be relying on passive unlocks aswell.

Teargrants · January 2015

Update:

- After playing around, Degeneration is insanely useful for the spell dmg/HoT/max health boost/procing might of the guild that it provides, which is pretty much what I expected after seeing the patch notes. Crit Surge is garbage in comparison.

- Shield stacking is more important than ever, because of faster TTK as I laid out in another thread.

cozmon3c_ESO · January 2015

I tried the pets for 30 minutes, couldn't get it to work right and they were running around like ***. Why is it still a thing where pets take up two slots, they stuck so much balls from what I can tell.

Teargrants · January 2015

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

I tried the pets for 30 minutes, couldn't get it to work right and they were running around like ***. Why is it still a thing where pets take up two slots, they stuck so much balls from what I can tell.

Dat "Highest dps sorc build"

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · January 2015

The general feeling I get from your observations is that the champion system will become a real power gap between newly VR players and veterans with multiple alts.

I guess this is good for the long term appeal of individual players, but do you think that it will have enough of an impact to frustrate newer players in PvP?

Would they get stomped more in 1.6 than now ?

Teargrants · January 2015

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The general feeling I get from your observations is that the champion system will become a real power gap between newly VR players and veterans with multiple alts.

I guess this is good for the long term appeal of individual players, but do you think that it will have enough of an impact to frustrate newer players in PvP?

Would they get stomped more in 1.6 than now ?

Just putting 20 points into spell cost reduction for 6.4% made my magicka a lot more manageable and you definitely feel the difference. I can't speak for the long term, because of the diminishing returns in the point bonuses. But when you look at some of the unlockable passives (after putting X points in each tree), those can be pretty game changing. Specifically the one that decreases the cost of stamina abilities by 80% after CC breaking.

DisgracefulMind · January 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

saintmurray wrote: »

Its pretty annoying im being forced to light attack...

I'm interested to see how this affects bomb groups. Guess we'll see in the days to come.

The Bloodspawn set still provides 25 ulti on proc, and Combat Frenzy also provides 25 ulti on kill. WW no longer provides passive ulti gen, but I'm told by some DKs that they're still able to keep Bats up with little down time.

I can confirm this. They don't pop as fast, of course, but they're still steady.

Joy_Division · January 2015

One note to add: the "instant" cast on Crystal shards is now actually instant.

Entropy was actually a useful skill pre 1.6 to use, the OP is right it is pretty much a requirement now. Won't change my build at all, but it will be odd everyone now using it.

Jahosefat · January 2015

IMO the arena set is going to be the LA sorcs new best friend (and learning to dogeroll a lot less until you get the passives filled out

). If you stack mag/mag cost reduction/mag regen elsewhere and go with 5/5 arena the stam management doesn't feel too bad (I'm going to have to break my roll-dodging habits though

).

cozmon3c_ESO · January 2015

Joy_Division wrote: »

One note to add: the "instant" cast on Crystal shards is now actually instant.

there is still that annoying global cooldown after an instant cast frag. i was hoping it would be gone for 1.6, but its not. this is the main reason people dont use it for pve as well, get rid of that global cooldown and people may stop feeling like they are forced to use destro staff.

Jahosefat · January 2015

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

One note to add: the "instant" cast on Crystal shards is now actually instant.

there is still that annoying global cooldown after an instant cast frag. i was hoping it would be gone for 1.6, but its not. this is the main reason people dont use it for pve as well, get rid of that global cooldown and people may stop feeling like they are forced to use destro staff.

They also added a delay to encase (stealth nerf!). Now encase casts that purple haze on the ground, and ~1 second later people in the purple haze get snared. So you can't run around and snatch people with it like you used to be able to (it's very hard to hit running people with it now).

pjwb16_ESO · January 2015

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Yes, block too - don't forget, there's a chanpion passive to decrease block cost. Have fun grinding!

Yeah, I stuck a bunch of points in it to see if it made a difference. Not too much, but slightly. Guess we'll see how this all forms out with everything.

Hope for an exploit or grind til your 80 years old...

Valnas · January 2015

Jahosefat wrote: »

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

One note to add: the "instant" cast on Crystal

shards is now actually instant.

there is still that annoying global cooldown after an instant cast frag. i was hoping it would be gone for 1.6, but its not. this is the main reason people dont use it for pve as well, get rid of that global cooldown and people may stop feeling like they are forced to use destro staff.

They also added a delay to encase (stealth nerf!). Now encase casts that purple haze on the ground, and ~1 second later people in the purple haze get snared. So you can't run around and snatch people with it like you used to be able to (it's very hard to hit running people with it now).

agreed. i was casting it at a nb who was w/i 5 meters of me, i'd streak right behind and fire it, no encase, over and over as he jsut ran out of it right on top of it.