This will be a long one, I have lots of questions. I apologize in advance.

So I finally got my main up to vr14, and I'm having ... problems.

Some info for context: This is the only toon I've put any real effort into. Rolled sorcerer in beta, loved it, leveled awhile, cancelled sub for real life reasons a while ago. Came back when Unlimited dropped. Picked the sorc back up, still loved it, slogged through the insane grind to VR14 (I'm a completionist, so it took forever).

I'm one of those people who spend hours of downtime researching builds, theorycrafting, analyzing live streams, things like that. I dig for info to answer questions before I need to ask for help. I now feel I've exhausted my research and want to ask some questions here to finally figure out what in the seven hells I'm doing wrong.

So, I feel like I suck at sorcerer pvp. I prefer Cyrodiil over just about everything else right now, but I'm having a heck of a time trying to do anything. I die far more often and far easier than I should, based on how I see other players doing. My damage is decent, but getting that damage off is an excersize in futility. I know everyone says sorcerers are overpowered. Perhaps they are in the right hands. I don't actually see all that many sorcs in the hours upon hours I've spent in Cyrodiil, compared to DKs and NBs. I die regularly to dk stomps, lethal arrow, and the random other hits for 10k+ that just happen out of nowhere. If I get sniped while mounted, I'm typically dead before I even hit the ground, much less able to fight back.

When I hit VR14, I bought gear from guild traders. Not amazing gear, and not the coveted sets I see people hunting for, but sets that I could have access to. I am almost exclusively a solo player, so I do not run group instances, therefore I don't have the means to farm those uber sets everyone wants.

So here's my breakdown:

-Fire destro/resto.
-My bars change regularly, but my destro bar is invariably some form of frags/fury, mixed with velocious curse, fire rune, daedric minefield and hardened ward.
-Resto bar is typically streak, healing ward, harness magicka, power surge, healing springs, mutagen, and/or hardened ward. This bar also changes often.
-Ultimates are either Meteor, Devouring Swarm or Absorption Field. But generally I run Overload for the third bar which gives me room for anti-zerg aoe spells.

My gear is currently a mix of magnus' gift and destruction mastery sets, all purple. Magicka cost reduction rings and neck. Night mother destro staff (no other peices to the set, it was a cheap buy) and magnus' resto staff. Everything is magicka enchants. Most are infused, some are reinforced, I'd prefer Divines, but I didn't have much control there.

I stared with all pts into magicka, but after the millionth time getting insta-vaporized, I dumped points into health. Which seemed to have little effect. I could take another tick of damage at the cost of a sizable hit to my damage output. I don't even bother worrying about regen at this point, because fights never seem to last long enough for regen to have any effect.

One major complaint is Vampirism. I truly love being a vampire, I love the stealth movement speed buffs, and the magicka and stam recovery boosts. Been vampire since forever, don't want to drop it. But in PvP, the negatives outweigh the positives severely. Everything does fire damage. I mean everything. As in, every time I open a recap window, one of the hits is always a big fire hit from somewhere. DKs are a big source of frustration in this area. I'm trying to work around it, but man, I really feel like I'm getting punished big time for those slight vamp perks.

As far as the playstyle, I understand how sorcs work and play. When I can freely cast, yeah, I can melt people. But that almost never happens. I'm constantly eating my own nukes because defensive posture is EVERYWHERE. When they aren't reflecting everything back in my face, they are dodge rolling to infinity and I can't land anything. But if they get on me, I struggle even more due to the excessive damage geared players are capable of. When I'm taking all this absurd damage, I'm spamming my shields to stay alive. But spamming shields means I'm not doing damage, so I'm unable to get pressure off of me. Death ensues. Sure, I can streak out most situations, but I don't like having to run away when things get hairy. Sometimes, you just want to stay and fight. And I feel like I'm unable to.

Getting cc'd at all means death for me. Period. I'm not exaggerating at all here. I have a tiny stam pool and can afford one break out or dodge roll before having to sit in a full cc. If I get stunned or knocked down, it's game over. I'm simply too squishy to be able to handle the incoming damage that occurs between the time my face hits the dirt to when I get back up on my feel. The damage flying around in PvP is astronomically ridiculous.

I'm sorry this is so long and wordy, but I'm basically just getting it all out there here and now. I feel like I really just need some general help. I'm sure some of this can be solved by playing better, but even the streams I've watched of sorcs roaming or small group pvp don't give me much hope, as most of them seem to have the same problems I'm having, just while wearing better gear.

Plz halp.

*Extra note: I spent much of my time leveling as a sorc sniper, almost exclusively until I got to about V7 or so. Full medium with bow/dw or bow/resto. It's fantastic for ganking and picking people off, but I hadn't had much success as sorc sniper in PvP early on, and I really don't just want to be one of those d-bags who just picks people off from stealth all the time. But if I can't make caster sorc work, would going back to sniper sorc be a viable option? Any other sorc snipers out there?*