New Expert Mage Is Almost Worthless (Proof Inside)

XEVENEX · February 2015

EXPERT MAGE
Increases spell power by 2% for each Sorcerer ability slotted.

MAGICKA CONTROLLER (Mages Guild Passive)
Increases your max magicka and your magicka regeneration by 2% for each mages guild ability slotted.

With one Sorcerer Ability Slotted:

With one Mages Guild Ability Slotted:

Not only is our damage better when we choose a Mages Guild utility/ultimate over our own, but our magicka pool, magicka regen, and ANYTHING scaling off of magicka is better as well. Keep in mind it is always better (passive wise) to slot a Mages Guild ability no matter how many Sorcerer abilities you already have slotted.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Bashing & Slanderous Comments]

Voltos · February 2015

Just...wow.

indigoblades · February 2015

Not to mention any storm calling abilitys are 11% more expensive since we lost the 10% cost reduction. The change was supposed to help us but i like the old passive better & it just feels like a nerf to me.

Voltos · February 2015

I'm running a stamina build when 1.6 hits, no matter what, so this change really hurts. No question, I'll be slotting Mages Guild abilites on my ranged support bar over my own class skills.

Gyudan · February 2015

You need to have a Spell Damage / Max Magicka ratio higher than 10.46 for Expert Mage to be more effective than Magicka Controler.

Even with high spell damage (2200) and relatively low max magicka (25K), I'm still not there.

With the added Magicka Recovery, slotting Mages Guild abilities is always better than Sorcerer ones.

onlinegamer1 · February 2015

Rather than theorycraft, lets use real builds:

Destro: Crystal Shard, Endless Fury, Velocious Curse, Entropy, Streak (Atronach Ulti)
Resto: Healing Ward, Hardened Ward, Cleanse, Dark Exchange, Streak (Soul Assault Ulti)

Bar 1: 10% bonus which comes to a 5% real damage increase on all 6 skills on the bar. I pay 10% more cost on 2 of those skills.
Bar 2: 6% bonus which comes to a 3% real damage (and healing!) increase on 3 skills on the bar. I pay 10% more cost for 1 skill.

I also gain 5% or 3% more damage on light/heavy attacks.

Now for a Stamina Buid:

2H: Wrecking Blow, Critical Charge, Hardened Ward, Streak, Rally (Flawless Dawnbreaker Ult)
Bow: Venom Arrow, Snipe, Bombard, Streak, Critical Surge (Soul Assault Ult)

Bar 1: 4% bonus which means 2% real damage increase on 1 spell (Streak). I pay 10% more for that same spell.
Bar 2: 4% bonus which means 2% real damage increase on 2 spells, I pay 10% more on both spells.

No bonus on light/heavy attacks.

Voltos · February 2015

I would be happy if they just reduced the cost of Storm Calling abilities to compensate for the lost passive.

Tyr · February 2015

XEVENEX wrote: »

So instead of you know, actually making our abilities worthwhile, they "encourage" us to slot more of our craptastic skills by f***ing up a perfectly useful passive.

EXPERT MAGE
Increases spell power by 2% for each Sorcerer ability slotted.

MAGICKA CONTROLLER (Mages Guild Passive)
Increases your max magicka and your magicka regeneration by 2% for each mages guild ability slotted.

With one Sorcerer Ability Slotted:

With one Mages Guild Ability Slotted:

Not only is our damage better when we choose a Mages Guild utility/ultimate over our own, but our magicka pool, magicka regen, and ANYTHING scaling off of magicka is better as well. Keep in mind it is always better (passive wise) to slot a Mages Guild ability no matter how many Sorcerer abilities you already have slotted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ZO$:

I like your post except the last part. They know what they are doing.
They are making balance changes to the sorc skill lines and the mages guild is a world skill line. The problem lies with the fact that classess have archetypes that overlap with other non-class skill lines which will never be balanced perfectly all together. They decided pre-launch on having classes because they believed it would make balancing easier, but this is a good example of why that's not the case.
Imagine the following:

From 1.6 onward classes are gone and you now have access to all the class skill lines on any character. Does it matter anymore that Sorc passives aren't that great compared to mages guild. No, right? Because now if you want you don't have to be a Sorc, you can just be a mage/caster and maybe add in some Templar abilities. In subsequent patches ZOS wouldn't have to worry about balancing in at the class level and the individual skill line level, they would just balance every skill line against comparable skill lines...majicka based and stamina based. The next step would be to make nightblade skill lines and some of the other class skill lines stamina based and you're gold.
The last part is going to get you flagged due to ZOS's new forum moderation.

Kahrgan · February 2015

Guys, just re-roll, it's not worth the frustration.

sarttsarttsarttub17_ESO · February 2015

XEVENEX wrote: »

So instead of you know, actually making our abilities worthwhile, they "encourage" us to slot more of our craptastic skills by f***ing up a perfectly useful passive.

EXPERT MAGE
Increases spell power by 2% for each Sorcerer ability slotted.

MAGICKA CONTROLLER (Mages Guild Passive)
Increases your max magicka and your magicka regeneration by 2% for each mages guild ability slotted.

With one Sorcerer Ability Slotted:

With one Mages Guild Ability Slotted:

Not only is our damage better when we choose a Mages Guild utility/ultimate over our own, but our magicka pool, magicka regen, and ANYTHING scaling off of magicka is better as well. Keep in mind it is always better (passive wise) to slot a Mages Guild ability no matter how many Sorcerer abilities you already have slotted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ZO$:

No you people see why i make thread like " Zos you Guys are idiots " or " Zos Hates Sorcerers " Really this is starting to feel like they hired ghostcrawler as a dev... Who asked for this 2% crap, i wanna know. So i may tear out their souls and send them to Molag Bal.

XEVENEX · February 2015

People are pissed off, and rightly so. The post I had originally typed up was far more dramatic but I toned it down a bit.

They do know what they're doing:

This was a sneaky way to nerf our streak even more.

Voltos · February 2015

Kahrgan wrote: »

Guys, just re-roll, it's not worth the frustration.

It is for me. I can't really explain why, but the Sorcerer is my class. It just is. The others won't do.

Gyudan · February 2015

Kahrgan wrote: »

Guys, just re-roll, it's not worth the frustration.

A few young sorcerers meet with one of their own who has fallen to the Dark Side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnwkE4trA48

Holycannoli · February 2015

Tyr wrote: »

From 1.6 onward classes are gone and you now have access to all the class skill lines on any character.

Tyr wrote: »

From 1.6 onward classes are gone and you now have access to all the class skill lines on any character.

Tyr wrote: »

From 1.6 onward classes are gone and you now have access to all the class skill lines on any character.

manny254 · February 2015

You can't just take a template and compare things with this. These are % increases. So if you get a larger damage boost from magic relative to spell power of course it is better. On the flip side if your spell damage is higher your sorc abilities will be better.

If you actually stack spell damage with proper gear it is far superior with the exception of a pet that scales of max magicka only.

Vis · February 2015

manny254 wrote: »

You can't just take a template and compare things with this. These are % increases. So if you get a larger damage boost from magic relative to spell power of course it is better. On the flip side if your spell damage is higher your sorc abilities will be better.

If you actually stack spell damage with proper gear it is far superior with the exception of a pet that scales of max magicka only.

The math was already done earlier on how much spell damage would be necessary to match the cost nerf and justify having to use only sorc abilities.

Laerwen · February 2015

XEVENEX wrote: »

So instead of you know, actually making our abilities worthwhile, they "encourage" us to slot more of our craptastic skills by f***ing up a perfectly useful passive.

EXPERT MAGE
Increases spell power by 2% for each Sorcerer ability slotted.

MAGICKA CONTROLLER (Mages Guild Passive)
Increases your max magicka and your magicka regeneration by 2% for each mages guild ability slotted.

With one Sorcerer Ability Slotted:

With one Mages Guild Ability Slotted:

Not only is our damage better when we choose a Mages Guild utility/ultimate over our own, but our magicka pool, magicka regen, and ANYTHING scaling off of magicka is better as well. Keep in mind it is always better (passive wise) to slot a Mages Guild ability no matter how many Sorcerer abilities you already have slotted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ZO$:

Nothing surprises me anymore. When I started playing over 6 months ago the craptastic abilities weren't so crappy but more and more nerf crap is a whole lotta stink. Guess all that's left for my sorc to do is engaging rounds of horse riding simulator between mini games of flower picker online.

Dracane · February 2015

Also remember, that mage's guild passives get more and more effective, the higher your Magicka pool is.

I have done some duells now and it is worse than expected. Sorcerer has no chance anymore. All I can see is stamina melee fighters dominating everything, especially Nightblade is nasty.
Tomorrow should be more insightful, because there will be more people online.

But Sorc is the worst pvp and pve class, this is obvious now and nobody can deny that.

Ezareth · February 2015

To be honest guys this would have to be 2% DAMAGE per Sorc ability slotted to make it an *even* tradeoff for the loss of the old Expert Mage.

For one, it is just very difficult to justify filling your bar with sorc abilities. Even using both Sorc ults I can't see myself using more than 4 ults and many players will run less.

Also, note that even 2% damage wouldn't work out to an increase in 2% Damage as you already will have many + damage modifiers in place already so it would be something less than that to your total.

A bonus to spellpower is just not very good at all.

xaraan · February 2015

Vis wrote: »

manny254 wrote: »

You can't just take a template and compare things with this. These are % increases. So if you get a larger damage boost from magic relative to spell power of course it is better. On the flip side if your spell damage is higher your sorc abilities will be better.

If you actually stack spell damage with proper gear it is far superior with the exception of a pet that scales of max magicka only.

The math was already done earlier on how much spell damage would be necessary to match the cost nerf and justify having to use only sorc abilities.

That cost angle is only a nerf is you have a problem with resources. If not then why would you not want an increase in spell damage?

I think most of this is about pvp and the inability of players to do anything without being able to spam streak. So, keep the damage and ask for streak to come down in cost.

Snit · February 2015

xaraan wrote: »

I think most of this is about pvp and the inability of players to do anything without being able to spam streak. So, keep the damage and ask for streak to come down in cost.

That works.

It would also help if they fixed the (oft-reported) 1.6 bug, as Streak does not proc Crystal Fragments (Ball of Lightning, however, does).

TheLaw · February 2015

It seems that ZOS is literally just theorycrafting and implementing changes without their own testing.

kkampaseb17_ESO · February 2015

TheLaw wrote: »

It seems that ZOS is literally just theorycrafting and implementing changes without their own testing.

I don't want to believe this. These people are getting payed for this. They either see the forest while we only see the tree (as in we have no idea how metas will works with a certain amount of CPs and proper gear) or they are making small adjustments to get where they want and we are just in the middle of interval changes.

I could be wrong of course.

Jar_Ek · February 2015

The problem is that the new passive requires stacking of spell power to be effective, but the meta suggests that stacking magicka or stamina provides the best bang for your buck with no caps in place. In addition the passive is of no real benefit to a stamina build, which means the changes to the passive are a nerf for stamina builds which previously used critical surge and a lightning form morph.

asteldian · February 2015

I like the theory of the change but the numbers need an overhaul. Also, I would take the opportunity to give it synergy with resto staff - include resto staff skills so that sorc has a boost to healing. It would make sense to be all staves but that would defeat the purpose of a skill to boost non pet builds

Seraphyel · February 2015

They just have to change the effect.

It shouldn't increase our spell power, it should increase our damage. I think 12% increased damage with 6 Sorc abilities isn't that overpowered at all. But it would have a "real" effect, not this laughable 2-3%.