RIP SURGE - THANK YOU ZOS

Birdovic · May 2016

Just a Small Info:

Yes, Stam Sorc will still be worse.
You make The Changes to Physical Ultimates, Flurry, stronger enchantments And The new poisons Sound like they're exklusive to sorc.

Everyone can use that stuff, and Comparing classes based on The Changes from DB, Stam Sorc falls behind Even more (weaker, others buffed). What Is needed, Is class exclusive buffs to sorc, just like every other class received (instead of nerfs like Surge).

Jar_Ek · May 2016

@STEVIL The overall changes are certainly interesting and support stamina builds of all flavours. In addition many of the stamina sorcerer changes are extremely good (passives especially). And if we played in a pve vacuum you might well be right about the changes to the healing from weapon skill lines... But we don't.

The thing about being competitive is that it is against others - in this case against 7 other class resource combinations.

Previously on live stamina sorcerers were generally considered to be the least competitive with few viable builds and comparatively poor dps. Their survivability was directly tied to crit surge and mobility in most cases, although many run with additional healing in PVP.

On the pts, the Surge healing is weaker than previously in the majority of builds which may be supplemented by various weapon based heals. But then the same weapon based heals can also be used by other classes and so this does not significantly change the competitive dynamic between stamina users.. apart from these weapon heals actually work better for some of the other classes - Stamina NBs now have better in combat heals and DKs can apply major mending to weapon heals for example. AND other stamina classes have been buffed as well - it's not a vacuum.

The other thing to note is testing. In my tests Surge heals are fine for standard content (ie 2 to 3 mobs hanging around waiting to die), but begin to fall down the harder the content becomes (ie vet maelstrom) and fall fairly flat in pvp I expect (haven't managed to do PvP testing yet). The main reason being our lack of any secondary mitigation - sure you can slap on heavy armour but so can anyone else. Sustained healing rather than burst requires a secondary form of mitigation to take advantage of which stamina sorcerers lack. This is far less true with a form of burst heal you can both build for and control (ie high crit build, and guaranteed critical skills). You really can't build for the new Surge other than to load up with DoTs.

STEVIL · May 2016

"You really can't build for the new Surge other than to load up with DoTs."

Afaik, you won't need many dot, one maybe two at most and normally any good dps rotation includes those anyway. You don't get to high dps w/o dot excepting for aoe vs stupid crowds.

And YES all the classes can use wespons... but I'MX it varies by class and att how much of your offense comes from weapons traits vs class skills.

Mag blade doesn't get as much from weapons as my stamblade. Magplar gets less from weapons than stamplar.

If you are spamming the all powerful sweeps, not that much benefit from dw bloodthirsty hesling, right, but it makes a diff to stamblade.

Never been one to buy into the class skills vs weapon skills religion. When you have surge directly improving all weapons skill attacks it just seemed wrong to differentiate.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO · May 2016

STEVIL wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

If you guys wsnt to exclude yourself from being included as capable of rational discussion, go right ahead.

Judging from your history of posts on this topic in which you blatantly ignore rebuttals and continue to repeat nonsensical arguments and demonstrate no indication that you actually play a sorc... all I can say is, look in the mirror when you say that.

FACT: The healing from the new Surge is less than that of the old Surge. This is what we call a "nerf". Don't come back until you can refute that convincingly.

Why do I have to refute that?

I have no reason to.

Is your argument based on "sorcs used to get more and sorcs can never have abilities reduced"?

If so, that's just incorrect.

The question is for balance purposes what SHOULD they have, not what they had.

That is why I kept asking for how much healing was wanted.
That's why I compared it to other existing tack-on-heal effects.
That's why I did not get obsessed with what it was over what it needs to be.

I did not and do not start with "sorcs survive with surge as only heal" or "surge gimme jabs level but at range and with aoe or dot or stun" as fundamental truths.

So, sorry, I don't see any reason to need to refute your nerfed designation.

I don't even necessarily disagree with it, as far as it goes (only addressing then vs now and some arbitrary total healing in generic circumstances)

Not sure why some seem more focused on what to call it than what it does now and should be.

Cool, so sorcs shouldn't have anything viable to use then, that's what they should have according to you, lol.

Jar_Ek · May 2016

@STEVIL Well in order to ensure you get your surge heal ticks regularly you'll either load up multiple DoTs or stack crit with fewer, either way you cannot really afford to miss with the Surge heals.. and it's not worth forcing them for a 3k heal (ie crit rush).

Wrt weapon vs class, I think you might have misunderstood my point. I wasn't suggesting magicka builds use stamina based weapons, just that the impact of the new weapon heals is potentially greater for other stamina classes (maybe not so much for Templars).

Ultimately my point is that stamina sorcerers will, I believe, have lower survivability in difficult pve content that the current situation on live. When I get time, I will try to demonstrate with a live vs pts comparison - but I suspect that it will be demonstrated on a massive scale when db goes live unless there are some survivability changes in the pipeline.

Indeed mathematically it's not hard to work out that a 9k heal from the live surge will take 3s on pts to occur. Even with 50% crit, you would do better on average on live.

STEVIL · May 2016

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

If you guys wsnt to exclude yourself from being included as capable of rational discussion, go right ahead.

Judging from your history of posts on this topic in which you blatantly ignore rebuttals and continue to repeat nonsensical arguments and demonstrate no indication that you actually play a sorc... all I can say is, look in the mirror when you say that.

FACT: The healing from the new Surge is less than that of the old Surge. This is what we call a "nerf". Don't come back until you can refute that convincingly.

Why do I have to refute that?

I have no reason to.

Is your argument based on "sorcs used to get more and sorcs can never have abilities reduced"?

If so, that's just incorrect.

The question is for balance purposes what SHOULD they have, not what they had.

That is why I kept asking for how much healing was wanted.
That's why I compared it to other existing tack-on-heal effects.
That's why I did not get obsessed with what it was over what it needs to be.

I did not and do not start with "sorcs survive with surge as only heal" or "surge gimme jabs level but at range and with aoe or dot or stun" as fundamental truths.

So, sorry, I don't see any reason to need to refute your nerfed designation.

I don't even necessarily disagree with it, as far as it goes (only addressing then vs now and some arbitrary total healing in generic circumstances)

Not sure why some seem more focused on what to call it than what it does now and should be.

Cool, so sorcs shouldn't have anything viable to use then, that's what they should have according to you, lol.

Huh?

Said nothing of the dort.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO · May 2016

STEVIL wrote: »

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

If you guys wsnt to exclude yourself from being included as capable of rational discussion, go right ahead.

Judging from your history of posts on this topic in which you blatantly ignore rebuttals and continue to repeat nonsensical arguments and demonstrate no indication that you actually play a sorc... all I can say is, look in the mirror when you say that.

FACT: The healing from the new Surge is less than that of the old Surge. This is what we call a "nerf". Don't come back until you can refute that convincingly.

Why do I have to refute that?

I have no reason to.

Is your argument based on "sorcs used to get more and sorcs can never have abilities reduced"?

If so, that's just incorrect.

The question is for balance purposes what SHOULD they have, not what they had.

That is why I kept asking for how much healing was wanted.
That's why I compared it to other existing tack-on-heal effects.
That's why I did not get obsessed with what it was over what it needs to be.

I did not and do not start with "sorcs survive with surge as only heal" or "surge gimme jabs level but at range and with aoe or dot or stun" as fundamental truths.

So, sorry, I don't see any reason to need to refute your nerfed designation.

I don't even necessarily disagree with it, as far as it goes (only addressing then vs now and some arbitrary total healing in generic circumstances)

Not sure why some seem more focused on what to call it than what it does now and should be.

Cool, so sorcs shouldn't have anything viable to use then, that's what they should have according to you, lol.

Huh?

Said nothing of the dort.

You see all of the nerfs we keep getting as good things, so basically you do, lol. Surge got destroyed, shields got next to useless, so that's another two of the very few sorcs skills actually used anymore. Now we just need to take down the rest and we can be perfectly balanced, can get killed by everything and kill nothing.

STEVIL · May 2016

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@STEVIL Well in order to ensure you get your surge heal ticks regularly you'll either load up multiple DoTs or stack crit with fewer, either way you cannot really afford to miss with the Surge heals.. and it's not worth forcing them for a 3k heal (ie crit rush).

Wrt weapon vs class, I think you might have misunderstood my point. I wasn't suggesting magicka builds use stamina based weapons, just that the impact of the new weapon heals is potentially greater for other stamina classes (maybe not so much for Templars).

Ultimately my point is that stamina sorcerers will, I believe, have lower survivability in difficult pve content that the current situation on live. When I get time, I will try to demonstrate with a live vs pts comparison - but I suspect that it will be demonstrated on a massive scale when db goes live unless there are some survivability changes in the pipeline.

Indeed mathematically it's not hard to work out that a 9k heal from the live surge will take 3s on pts to occur. Even with 50% crit, you would do better on average on live.

My plan before the first patch notevdropoed was stamina khajit sorc with very high crits. Didnt expect shields to be the same. Didnt worry bout surge.
Now plan has tweaked and likely wull again but i know this cat woill crit more than my mag sorc and i know my magsorc crits constabtly with latered offense. I wont ;r forcing crits just surging when they occur.

But so much changing, lotsa changes still left, much to see yet.

Jar_Ek · May 2016

I think my preference might be something like this:

Surge heals that provides an initial burst on critical hit (say 25% of damage done, 0.1s cd - maybe with a threshold to limit DoT burst heals, such as attacks under 2k don't trigger the burst heal) and a 4s 3k hot. The initial burst heal occurs / is calculated every critical and the hot is refreshed. That way you gain more from wrecking blow/high damage attacks, but still trigger from any critical (ie DoTs)

This allows you to build some controllable burst heal into your build (such as overload, frags, wrecking blow, critical rush, etc).