Ahzek wrote: »

Stamina sorcerer has been the worst race/resource combination since the release of 1.6 and has been promised improvements in the upcomming update of 2.1.

The purpose of this thread is to analyse the effectiveness of the measures taken by ZOS in the newest patch on the PTS to determine how much they actually help the stamina sorcerer and what could be done to make them better.

1st. the Thundering presence change. This is really only a sligth buff to PvE DPS for the stam sorc, since the main reason to use this ability was the movementspeed, thus making most (stam) sorcs stick with boundless Storm, which provides a little less damage ( around 400 per tick max), but gives the so needed movespeed.
Giving movementspeed to the main ability and making another completly new morph might help this issue.

2nd. The change for Dark Deal. Dark Deal is now a decently expensive magicka costing spell with a 1 second cast time, resoring 12% (6% in cyro) max health and 12% stamina.In theory this spell is pretty nice, however it lacks severly in the healing department ( ~1.6k for my 25k HP) and the cast time makes it very clunky to use, leaving you quite vulnerable.
Changing the cast time to instant and maybe giving it bumbing the heal could solve those issues.

3rd And in my opinion most important are the surge changes. Obviously buff duration increase and cost reduction, as well as the reduction of the heal cooldown are all very welcome changes that might help (crit)surge to actually be worth a slot on our bars.
However and this is a REALLY big however, the removal of DoT heals harms the ability more than helping it in my opinion. First of Rapid strikes is considered a DoT and wont heal on critical strikes anymore. This is a huge nerf for dual wield (stamina) sorcerers taking away the ability to heal from the highest damage ability in their arsenal. Similary this also affects other high damage DoTs that would actually be benefitial to get heals from, like soul assault, bat swarm or blood craze.
The only solution to this quite huge issue for me is to remove the DoT restricion from crit heals, because it quite clearly destroys certain setups.

Please share your opinions on these issues, as well as other changes i might have overlooked and possible solutions to the stam sorc issues in 2.1 below.

been a stam sorc for a long time and i can confirm all the above. we also lack a close range hard hitting stam ability, twin slashes+morphs is a terribly weak ability in itself, but we as a class lack our own built in stam nuke. i suggest altering crystal fragments to allow stam based procs that alter the spell to cost stamina (50% less cost ofc) that bases itself on weapon power+stam and is procced from stamina abilities+heavy attacks. this would give us a built in range stam nuke that works in close range that can stun.

streak is the next one for my target. streaking while stealthed needs to not break stealth giving a viable stealth initiate, especially for the DW using ones, make it alter the cost depending if you have more stamina or more magicka, so it's viable for both.

last one is the empowered ward. why is it still based on magicka? make it work on max health already, that healing intake was clearly aimed at survival, which is something stam sorcs have lacked, it still be viable for magicka as a sorc aiming for survival would boost their own health anyways.

passives that needs tweaked.

explotation needs to boost weapon crit as well, to make it fair.

Capaciter. why is this magicka regen only? pretty obvious we could use it for stam, even if it's only 50% of the value.

Disintigrate, allow it to work off of Surge at a 3% chance whenever using weapon attacks

Expert mage, rename it to something like inner spark and allow it to boost weapon damage as well.

i'm sorry for the wall of text but as someone that has been screwing around with stam sorc builds since beta, these are the things i feel like WE need.

@Ahzek I agree on your first point.

I am undecided on your second point. Not much has really changed considering you could just cancel the channel before, but it remains to be seen if this is an ability that you can bash interrupt with its one second cast time. Also the numbers seem a bit out of proportion or at least different proportions than they were before. Before the higher your pool was the more resources were given/taken. Using Dark Deal before in a magicka spec would cost me something like 4k magicka to restore 2k stam/hp per tick. Now using Dark Deal (which is the stamina morph) with a magicka spec costs me around 1.5k magicka to restore 2k stam/hp per use. It almost seems as if the morphs are switched and stamina builds should use the one that restores magicka while magicka builds should use the one that restores stamina.

Your third point I kind of disagree with too. It was infuriating for me in a magicka spec to have Surge be useless because all of my Liquid Lightning and Boundless Storm ticks would eat up my healing cooldown. Now, I do agree that Rapid Strikes should not be considered a DOT when it comes to this healing cooldown, but overall I think it is a change for the better where a crit build relying on Surge heals may actually be viable.

I am also going to copy/paste my overall manifesto for what I believe should be the direction taken with stamina sorcs from here just to get it in more places.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @zos_ericwrobel

Please please please listen to us and make changes this time. Last round of PTS we were promised improvements and I'm sorry to say that what has been offered (Dark Deal improvements and Thundering Presence morph) are not enough. I haven't had a chance to use Dark Deal in real game experiences yet, but the new animation and mechanics of it could be promising. That is great, but the Thundering Presence morph was a poor decision. Boundless Storm is arguably the most useful sorc ability for the stamina sorc and will still be the morph of choice for stamina users if this update goes through because of the speed buff and poor damage of Thundering Presence. I'm not sure why ZOS or Eric Wrobel in particular is against giving Sorc a stamina based attack, but it is the main thing we need to actually feel like a stamina sorc and not a generic class neutral stamina user. I don't care if it is a dot or a weak hitting ability that has buffs attached or an ability that you need to proc like crystal frag ..... just make it worth using and set it up so it is a vital part of our rotations and we will be happy.

Here are my two simple and concise suggestions that I guarantee you will really turn stamina sorc opinions around.

1. We need passives to help stamina sorcs. Expert Mage should have weapon dmg increases as well. I see no reason to pigeon hole sorcs into a magicka or gtfo mind set. In the same manner, Exploitation needs to increase weapon critical as well as spell critical. It isn't like there are practical builds out there that are utilizing both spell dmg/crit as well as weapon dmg/crit. You won't make magicka sorcs anymore powerful with these changes. They are very minor and very needed to feel like we are actually getting benefits out of our class.

2. We need an attack that scales on stamina that is also in the Dark Magic tree to give us access to the Blood Magic passive. My prefered suggestion is changing Crystal Blast into a melee range and stamina version of Crystal Frag. I believe Crystal Frag and its proc based mechanics define the magicka sorc. It is our hard hitter that we can not spam that gives us a mechanic that takes active participation to maximize our effectiveness. It would be great to translate this mechanic to the stam sorc. The alternative is to change Daedric Tomb into a stamina morph.

I know ZOS is busy now and inundated with suggestions, but I honestly think it would be a damn shame to let yet another round of PTS updates go through without addressing the above concerns. We aren't asking for a lot. Please make it happen.

I think changing Crystal Blast is a no brainer. Seriously ZOS, has anyone since the games creation EVER used it? When you tried to make each morph more appealing this poor skill was left out in the cold. Now is your chance to do something with it.

Ahzek wrote: »

Stamina sorcerer has been the worst race/resource combination since the release of 1.6

sorcerer isnt a race you muffin

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Because the people making changes for stam sorc havent ever played one, cared to talk to one who has, or even watched one. Thats not meant to be an insult - but the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the given changes.

I invite ZOS to come watch a stam sorc in action, youve got about a month left to do so. I dont know what Eric W @ name is, doesnt seem to have one that comes up - so its hard to open a discussion on the subject or get any feedback to get a constructive solution to it all.

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

he probably is. most still will. the thundering presence is junk atm

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

You can do that - but youre put into dual wield at that point and youre not getting major resolve/ward from it.

Better solution is to just stick to the magicka version as is. This issue barely hits the problems with stam sorc though - it just shows the change is a rather thoughtless effort.

A thoughtless effort that is the primary result of 6 months of ZOS developers telling us to just hang in there and changes are coming and they're listening to our feedback.

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

Most Stamina Sorcerers I know do not use dual wield. And as FENGRUSH pointed out, what really makes Boundless Storm beast is the buffs it gives. It makes no sense to give magicka Sorcs both Bolt Escape AND Boundless Storm. Stamina Sorcs would benefit farm more with Boundless Storm.

What do you use as your main attack on stam sorc? I am currently grinding up a Redguard Sorc and because Sorc(and DK) are screwed with no good damage class ability I would 100% choose Flying Blade as my Maindamage ability.

dsalter wrote: »

Ahzek wrote: »

Stamina sorcerer has been the worst race/resource combination since the release of 1.6 and has been promised improvements in the upcomming update of 2.1.

The purpose of this thread is to analyse the effectiveness of the measures taken by ZOS in the newest patch on the PTS to determine how much they actually help the stamina sorcerer and what could be done to make them better.

1st. the Thundering presence change. This is really only a sligth buff to PvE DPS for the stam sorc, since the main reason to use this ability was the movementspeed, thus making most (stam) sorcs stick with boundless Storm, which provides a little less damage ( around 400 per tick max), but gives the so needed movespeed.
Giving movementspeed to the main ability and making another completly new morph might help this issue.

2nd. The change for Dark Deal. Dark Deal is now a decently expensive magicka costing spell with a 1 second cast time, resoring 12% (6% in cyro) max health and 12% stamina.In theory this spell is pretty nice, however it lacks severly in the healing department ( ~1.6k for my 25k HP) and the cast time makes it very clunky to use, leaving you quite vulnerable.
Changing the cast time to instant and maybe giving it bumbing the heal could solve those issues.

3rd And in my opinion most important are the surge changes. Obviously buff duration increase and cost reduction, as well as the reduction of the heal cooldown are all very welcome changes that might help (crit)surge to actually be worth a slot on our bars.
However and this is a REALLY big however, the removal of DoT heals harms the ability more than helping it in my opinion. First of Rapid strikes is considered a DoT and wont heal on critical strikes anymore. This is a huge nerf for dual wield (stamina) sorcerers taking away the ability to heal from the highest damage ability in their arsenal. Similary this also affects other high damage DoTs that would actually be benefitial to get heals from, like soul assault, bat swarm or blood craze.
The only solution to this quite huge issue for me is to remove the DoT restricion from crit heals, because it quite clearly destroys certain setups.

Please share your opinions on these issues, as well as other changes i might have overlooked and possible solutions to the stam sorc issues in 2.1 below.

been a stam sorc for a long time and i can confirm all the above. we also lack a close range hard hitting stam ability, twin slashes+morphs is a terribly weak ability in itself, but we as a class lack our own built in stam nuke. i suggest altering crystal fragments to allow stam based procs that alter the spell to cost stamina (50% less cost ofc) that bases itself on weapon power+stam and is procced from stamina abilities+heavy attacks. this would give us a built in range stam nuke that works in close range that can stun.

streak is the next one for my target. streaking while stealthed needs to not break stealth giving a viable stealth initiate, especially for the DW using ones, make it alter the cost depending if you have more stamina or more magicka, so it's viable for both.

last one is the empowered ward. why is it still based on magicka? make it work on max health already, that healing intake was clearly aimed at survival, which is something stam sorcs have lacked, it still be viable for magicka as a sorc aiming for survival would boost their own health anyways.

passives that needs tweaked.

explotation needs to boost weapon crit as well, to make it fair.

Capaciter. why is this magicka regen only? pretty obvious we could use it for stam, even if it's only 50% of the value.

Disintigrate, allow it to work off of Surge at a 3% chance whenever using weapon attacks

Expert mage, rename it to something like inner spark and allow it to boost weapon damage as well.

i'm sorry for the wall of text but as someone that has been screwing around with stam sorc builds since beta, these are the things i feel like WE need.

@zos_ericwrobel

might wanna just read and maybe consider some, even if it doesnt make us fully viable atleast if tries to put us on par with other classes in the same sense.

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

Most Stamina Sorcerers I know do not use dual wield. And as FENGRUSH pointed out, what really makes Boundless Storm beast is the buffs it gives. It makes no sense to give magicka Sorcs both Bolt Escape AND Boundless Storm. Stamina Sorcs would benefit farm more with Boundless Storm.

What do you use as your main attack on stam sorc? I am currently grinding up a Redguard Sorc and because Sorc(and DK) are screwed with no good damage class ability I would 100% choose Flying Blade as my Maindamage ability.

Going to have to rely on weapon skills entirely for obvious reasons. If youre grinding youll probably be using dual weild/2hander. Honestly, mastering stam sorc is primarily about mastering animations and squeezing in damage inbetween(but I know that should be a given for you hodor!). For single target burst 2hander is the way to go hands down. Bow adds the advantage of mobility/single target dot damage boost on initiation.

In addition to all of that, dots. I use caltrops/hunter religiously for that reason. Youve gotta find as much damage to burst with as you can. The DPS I put out on sorc can literally be matched from any class because theres nothing in the sorc tree that helps with it at all. The only benefit we had in stam sorc was our mobility/utility - which is currently being stripped and indirectly kicking the class setup square between the legs.

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

It's amazing how much QQ there is about stamina sorcs. There are 4 melee skill lines plus fighter's guild plus alliance war to get stamina based attacks and abilities.

Alcast wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

Most Stamina Sorcerers I know do not use dual wield. And as FENGRUSH pointed out, what really makes Boundless Storm beast is the buffs it gives. It makes no sense to give magicka Sorcs both Bolt Escape AND Boundless Storm. Stamina Sorcs would benefit farm more with Boundless Storm.

What do you use as your main attack on stam sorc? I am currently grinding up a Redguard Sorc and because Sorc(and DK) are screwed with no good damage class ability I would 100% choose Flying Blade as my Maindamage ability.

Going to have to rely on weapon skills entirely for obvious reasons. If youre grinding youll probably be using dual weild/2hander. Honestly, mastering stam sorc is primarily about mastering animations and squeezing in damage inbetween(but I know that should be a given for you hodor!). For single target burst 2hander is the way to go hands down. Bow adds the advantage of mobility/single target dot damage boost on initiation.

In addition to all of that, dots. I use caltrops/hunter religiously for that reason. Youve gotta find as much damage to burst with as you can. The DPS I put out on sorc can literally be matched from any class because theres nothing in the sorc tree that helps with it at all. The only benefit we had in stam sorc was our mobility/utility - which is currently being stripped and indirectly kicking the class setup square between the legs.

For PvE I prefer Wblow for ST and SteelTornado for AoE.
PvP wise I prefer Flying blade because it deals quite a lot of damage actually and you can animation cancel it very nice. And monkey learned to dodgeroll Wblow so I do not like it in pvp yet. But first i have to finish grinding my sorc and then head into battle with it

Yes, I never really put in flying blade because if Im doing DW I just have tornado really and other utility like caltrop/vigor/streak/hunter on bar.

But flying blade is very strong - my partner in crime uses it.

People definately dodge Wblow - but actually it can be the very thing that kills them. When you learn the timing of Wblow you can que it up to hit them as they exit roll. Its the easiest kills I get. NBs that weave cloak with it is another story, but theres an answer for that too!

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

I still have no clue as to why they did not give Stamina Sorcerers Boundless Storm instead. Stamina Sorcerers cannot bolt like Magicka Sorcerers, that movement speed is so valuable to them. Why then give them Thundering Presence? Makes no sense to me.

Hang in there my Sorcerer comrades. :c

Just use quick cloak?

Most Stamina Sorcerers I know do not use dual wield. And as FENGRUSH pointed out, what really makes Boundless Storm beast is the buffs it gives. It makes no sense to give magicka Sorcs both Bolt Escape AND Boundless Storm. Stamina Sorcs would benefit farm more with Boundless Storm.

Boo. Hoo. Take away the magicka abilities that we have been using since beta because you have some selfish sense of entitlement. Nobody has ever used the other morph even magicka sorcs. It's different if you asked for them to be the same but to say screw all the magicka sorcs because we want it for ourselves is very selfish.

what is your problem with stamina sorcs anyways? every oppertunity that arises to consider aiding them you come in and stomp the topic.

if you cant say something constructive or nice, keep it to yourself. not everyone see's sorc as "sorc = magicka master race". i willingly signed up to play them mage like at first, but i find them being stamina based an interesting twist as a side setup.

not even a wiff of ZoS peeking at this thread, guess they hate the idea of making sorcerers anything but magicka *sigh*