TheMaury_Philosopher wrote: »

Hi,
I noticed that Hardened ward active time has been reduced from 20 to 6 sec...Come on, too few sec! It is no more worth using it!
Cannot be adjusted to 10 sec at least?
Thanks

This was discussed in pts. See writers q & a on sorcs. It won't happen.

bowmanz607 wrote: »

TheMaury_Philosopher wrote: »

Hi,
I noticed that Hardened ward active time has been reduced from 20 to 6 sec...Come on, too few sec! It is no more worth using it!
Cannot be adjusted to 10 sec at least?
Thanks

This was discussed in pts. See writers q & a on sorcs. It won't happen.

I think you mean Q and Non-A. All they said was "We heard your opinions and don't give a *** about them" for every question.

From a PvE point of view, Sorcerer only excelled at one thing: Maelstrom Arena. The reason for that was that it's a ranged DPS class, and because of Hardened Ward combined with Surge heals and Overload. The developers noticed that Sorcerers were always on top of the vet Maelstrom Arena leaderboards, and they decided to "balance" that by nerfing the class. They can't really nerf Overload, because it's the only real source of DPS for Sorcerers. So they nerfed Ward and Surge instead.

Farming Maelstrom Arena was the only thing high-end players used their Sorcerers for. The class is fundamentally unbalanced compared to the other ones at the moment, and I don't there is any sane person out there who would advice new players to roll a Sorcerer, no matter which role they wish to play in. Until that changes, if the developers ever decide to make some fundamental adjustments to the game, I am going to play a different class. Although it's a pity, I really liked my main character.

jnikolay wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

TheMaury_Philosopher wrote: »

Hi,
I noticed that Hardened ward active time has been reduced from 20 to 6 sec...Come on, too few sec! It is no more worth using it!
Cannot be adjusted to 10 sec at least?
Thanks

This was discussed in pts. See writers q & a on sorcs. It won't happen.

I think you mean Q and Non-A. All they said was "We heard your opinions and don't give a *** about them" for every question.

i agree with the direction hey went with shields. Myself and others do not share your opinion, so from my perspective they did care. shields dont even last 6 seconds in a fight in pvp anyway. ALso, you have another moph that has a higher duration.

holosoul wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

jnikolay wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

TheMaury_Philosopher wrote: »

Hi,
I noticed that Hardened ward active time has been reduced from 20 to 6 sec...Come on, too few sec! It is no more worth using it!
Cannot be adjusted to 10 sec at least?
Thanks

This was discussed in pts. See writers q & a on sorcs. It won't happen.

I think you mean Q and Non-A. All they said was "We heard your opinions and don't give a *** about them" for every question.

i agree with the direction hey went with shields. Myself and others do not share your opinion, so from my perspective they did care. shields dont even last 6 seconds in a fight in pvp anyway. ALso, you have another moph that has a higher duration.

You're not a sorc and don't understand how it's played or why/when/how it's vulnerable
I don't even like shields, but frankly I could call you names you might not like.
Sorcs were pigeonholed into using shields as their only possible defense, we can't block since blocking 2 or 3 attacks mean we can't CC break and we die. We only have enough stam to dodge roll and break free 2 - 4 times in a fight. Our health and mitigation is generally low so we die very easily when shield is inactive. By guaranteeing we have to start a fight without shields and also reducing our DPS significantly to keep our only mitigation active, we were egregiously nerfed.

I would like to either have a completely different defense mechanism, or no class defense mechanic whatsoever but insanely high damage instead.

You just go ahead and keep talking a bunch of ignorance though mr stam DK or NB, but you're not a sorc.

Bfish22090 wrote: »

TheMaury_Philosopher wrote: »

Hi,
I noticed that Hardened ward active time has been reduced from 20 to 6 sec...Come on, too few sec! It is no more worth using it!
Cannot be adjusted to 10 sec at least?
Thanks

lets take some devs to get them aware of this bug!

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel

never thought about that. when they nerf something simply make a bug report.

That post by Wrobel was one of the biggest "**** you, we don't care about you" posts I have ever seen. It was disgraceful.

newtinmpls wrote: »

ninti wrote: »

That post by Wrobel was one of the biggest "**** you, we don't care about you" posts I have ever seen. It was disgraceful.

Pics or it didn't happen

I mean pretty please post a link!

There has been a large amount of feedback and questions from the Sorcerer section of the PTS forums. The answer to some of these questions affect all classes, so we're sharing them with everyone! We'd like to engage in this type of communication with all classes as time allows. When providing helpful feedback, taking the following guidelines into account:
Include specific details about your issue or situation
Consider all types of gameplay (pvp, pve, solo, group)
Back up your ideas with math and logical arguments

And here are our first round of questions and answers. Thanks everyone!
Flaminir wrote: »
Sorcerers are the only class that doesn’t have a spammable class-based DPS skill. Why did you change Trapping Webs (the only spammable ability we had access to which isn't tied to a Destro Staff) to only Stamina, so we now have no choice but to run a Destro Staff in all aspects of the game? (This question is coming mainly from a PVP perspective as Trapping Webs was widely used in PVP with Dual Wield Magicka builds.)

Trapping Webs was never meant to be a spammable ability such as Lava Whip, Force Shock, Strife, etc. It costs more and is lower damage. The focus for Undaunted abilities is having powerful Synergies, so we redesigned it to feel less spammy. (Note that each Synergy has a 20-second cooldown before you can activate it again.)
We understand that Sorcerers would like more freedom with choosing what weapon to use. As a Stamina character, even without a class damaging ability, you have a diverse set of options between Bow, 1h Shield, 2h, and Dual Wield. Magicka technically has 4 options as well – Restoration Staff and 3 flavors of Destruction Staff. However Restoration staff doesn’t support offensive abilities and there is not enough diversity between the three types of Destruction Staff. We don’t have any immediate plans to change this, but we would like to give Sorcerers more compelling decisions when selecting a weapon.

Minalan wrote: »
Shields: They took it very hard in this patch, and nothing was given in return. You have a PVE and a PVP morph of the shield, which is untenable because we need to be able to freely switch between them. Empowered Ward is THAT bad for PVP at 6K-8K. Hardened Ward is THAT bad for PVE at 6 seconds. This is not workable. We have to respec morphs based on what content we want to do, which could be multiple times in a day. I already pay enough money to the Shrine of Stendarr. Instead why not fix the stacking problem, or make the shields critable and full-length again?

Offering players interesting choices is one of our design goals. People have different playstyles and some of them will choose to have more sustainabilityin PVP. Some people will prefer Hardened Ward, some will use Empowered Ward, and some will use Hardened Ward with Dampen Magic. None of these decisions are right or wrong or better. They each suit different playstyles and different people have fun in different ways.
As a hardcore gamer, it sounds like you want a duel spec system. This would allow you to quickly switch between 2 different playstyles. We don’t have immediate plans on adding this, but it is something we are interested in for the future.

Flaminir wrote: »
Why did we receive so many defensive nerfs without a single usable buff to our defense / sustainability? (Shields and Surge.)
We based this decision on extensive playtesting, player feedback, and data from the Maelstrom Arena leaderboards. It was our intent to make Sorcerers increase investment in maintaining their current levels of survivability. We specifically didn’t nerf the values on damage shields because we wanted to maintain their powerful feel – when the shields are up, enemies aren’t going to take you down.

Flaminir wrote: »
Surge nerf - all classes have skills which heal based on damage done. Why has ours been removed to give us a low flat value and all the other classes kept theirs? (If Overload was the reason as Wrobel mentioned on ESO live, then why not just cap the heal at say 6-8k to prevent the 20k Overload heals at its peak? There were no other issues with this skill to warrant such a nerf & goes against the stated policy of smaller tweaks rather than huge nerfs.)

We wanted to make the Surge ability a more universal tool in the Sorcerer kit. It wasn’t intended as a nerf, except in the case of Overload because we felt that Synergy was over-performing compared to others, such as Strife and Puncturing Strikes. We’re still working out the balance of the final numbers, so expect to see a sizable increase in Surge healing for Dark Brotherhood’s release.
It’s been a longstanding issue that Surge doesn’t play well with DoT builds, thus limiting the number of options for Sorcerers. Abilities such as Crushing Shock deal damage in 3 separate attacks and Flurry never procced the heal. Surge is now more effective for tank characters since it no longer scales off of damage done. These changes make surge more desirable for a wider number of builds and reduced its power when combined with Overload.

Minalan wrote: »
Surge: Please take a look at the design and functionality inside Cyrodiil. Players do not stand still inside of DOT AOE attacks like liquid lightning. A 900 heal is not helpful, even if it manages to crit. Under the old system, we could at least get a decent heal from a lucky crit if the opponent wasn't shielded.

Surge now feels like a sustain ability instead of a spike heal ability. This design makes more sense for the ability because the procs are random. Big burst heals are something you want to be able to use with reliability when you need them. Getting a big Surge heal when you are at full health and getting no heal when you are low on health can lead to frustrating situations.
Surge has a stronger synergy with damage shields now. The shields help stop big bursts of damage and Surge helps to top off your health bar and keep you sustained through long battles. The healing values on Surge will be balanced against other popular sustain abilities such as Strife and Puncturing Strikes.

Flaminir wrote: »
Why did you make the recent changes to Dark Exchange without actually making it usable due to its cast time? It already has an interesting & unique mechanic, and the user has to sacrifice resources to use it, so why add a double penalty with a cast time for such a small return?

Minalan wrote: »
Dark Deal: This morph should be an instant heal instead of a one-second cast. This would help decouple the class from the restoration staff. I know someone on your team will think it's too much. All I have to say is: Templar. Dark Deal isn't nearly as good as other class self-heals, if you will not improve shields for whatever reason, please consider this.

Cast time abilities add a risk/reward mechanic that makes combat more varied and interesting. They are harder to fire off, but the payoff should make the cast time worthwhile. Some examples of abilities we feel are worth the risk are Dark Flare and Radiant Destruction. These abilities have counter play, but feel extremely powerful when executed without interruption. Finding this balance point is challenging, but it’s something we’re pursuing in an effort to make the gameplay more varied and fun.
We want firing off Dark Exchange in the middle of combat to feel awesome since it’s difficult to do. Our first cut at this was to double the healing it provided, a substantial improvement but not enough. For Dark Brotherhood launch we’re also significantly improving the number of resources returned. We aren’t 100% against making this ability instant cast, but we’d like to further investigate the cast time option first. We think different classes should have different mechanics for resource restoration.

Flaminir wrote: »
Why give a version of our signature defensive ability (Hardened Ward) to all classes but we get nothing in return from the other classes?

Minalan wrote: »
As a skill, the exclusive and class-defining ability Hardened Ward is not much better than Nullify Magicka. Please consider a longer duration, as 8-10 seconds wouldn't be out of line for Hardened Ward and 12 for Empowered.

There are multiple advantages of being a Sorcerer when looking at damage shield options.
You can stack the Annulment shield with Conjured Ward
Conjured Ward has more distinct morph choices (increased duration vs increased power)
Conjured Ward is much cheaper than Annulment
Conjured Ward gets maximum effectiveness with all armor types, Annulment morphs require light armor
Expert Mage gives increased spell and weapon damage for slotting Conjured Ward

Flaminir wrote: »
Given this was supposed to be the major Stamina pass on all abilities, why are Sorcerers the only class without a Stamina-based DPS skill? (I would also ask the same question of Magicka Sorcs... but the patch was never advertised as a Magicka-based one.)

We want every class to feel different; they all have unique pros and cons. For example DKs also don’t have a spammable Stamina-based ability. They instead have damage-over-time Stamina abilities from Venomous Claw and Noxious Breath. Hurricane is the Sorcerer class’ Stamina-based damage ability. We made significant updates to this ability for Dark Brotherhood:
Now deals physical damage so it scales with your physical damage stats
Deals increasing damage-over-time
Damage per cast on this ability is now extremely high
Increases in size over time
Cool new FX!
Now grants the Minor Expedition buff

cpuScientist wrote: »
How are pet Sorcerers supposed to defend our pets now that they simply cannot be shielded as often as before and will now just die in red? Or if we do choose to shield them our low DPS drops even lower. It's not like we are providing some major party boost by having them out.

We’re adding a damage limit to pets so they can’t be 1-shot. This should give you more time to shield them reactively instead of proactively. Also keep in mind that pets take less damage from AoE attacks to make up for the fact that they can’t intelligently move out of red telegraphs.

Minalan wrote: »
Poisons: These seem designed to affect Magicka users in an unbalanced way, when Stamina builds have already been made so much stronger already. Please look into balancing weapon enchants against this, or add a 'poison antidote' potion effect that grants a short time immunity to poisons. Please, we don't want to just get farmed all day, but that's almost inevitable in this patch.
Enchantments and poisons both proc in the same manner—they require weapon attacks. Enchantments proc at a 100% chance every 4 seconds, while poisons proc at a 20% chance every 10 seconds. The key balance distinction between enchantments and poisons is that you’re getting an instant effect from enchantments and an over-time one from poisons.
The total DPS increase from poisons or enchantments should be around 5%, so you aren’t going to get farmed if you don’t use poison. That said, we will certainly be monitoring feedback on poisons once Dark Brotherhood goes live and make balance adjustments or counters if they over perform.

Minalan wrote: »
Magicka Costs Increasing: Can you please look into this? I understand that this is happening to every class across the board, but with the costs of everything going up, this change is adding insult to injury. And there is already plenty of injury here, and that's being as polite about this patch as I am realistically able.

With the removal of Veteran Ranks we wanted ability costs to increase in a more reliable and understandable way. Veteran Ranks used a different calculation for ability cost increase from the level 1-50 experience. With this change, abilities now continue to increase their costs at the same linear pace. This also means cost reduction passives and gear should now return the values listed in the tooltips instead of using a more complex formula.
There are quite a few builds that generate a large number of resources and we expect some players will end up changing their current setup. While costs are higher, note that you can now get increased resource returns from heavy attacks that now scale their return as you gain Champion Points. Additionally, enchantments are now more powerful and restore more resources than they used to. There are also poisons which give you additional options for getting more resources.

Minalan wrote: »
Skill and DPS Loss: We've lost some of our best damage abilities that we used in the DB patch (Trapping Webs, Dawnbreaker of smiting, Fighter's guild passives for werewolves, undead, and daedra). We're okay with this, stamina needed it more than we did. But please figure this into damage and defense calculation changes that you're making.

It’s true that you’ll have lower ability damage when fighting enemies of the Fighters Guild, however we did increase the damage of enchantments and add the option for using poisons. Keep in mind we did not change the Banish the Wicked passive from Ffighters Guild, so you’ll still score 9 Ultimate for killing undead, Daedra, and werewolves. It was important to us that all players wanted to invest in the guild and be properly rewarded.

DDuke wrote: »
Can we get a Stamina morph for at least one of the pets? A Clannfear would be awesome. (Or scale to the highest resource?)
We think this is a fun idea. However, there is much deliberation when considering if an ability should be converted to Magicka or Stamina. The Clannfear’s heal currently scale off the player’s max Health, meaning this is an ideal ability for a tank. Tanks generally spend the majority of their Stamina blocking, and then use their Magicka for utility abilities and heals. This change would put a further tax on the tank’s Stamina resource which is at odds with the new change to constitution where tanks now get back more Magicka each time they are hit. On the whole, converting an ability is exciting because new builds are created, however it can be frustrating as old builds are destroyed.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/267979/dark-brotherhood-sorcerer-q-a/p1

Why do Templars feel like a complete class for example best heals in game, both a ranged and melee spammable, a ranged knockback, a auto lock gap closer, ranged DPS a good AOE, better execute and better sustain its so versatile build wise that I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do cause all the builds Ive seen look great.

What do Sorcerers have that are better than any other class? Shields nope now that Harness Magicka absorbs both physical and spell damage now everyone has a shield that's almost as good as Hardened ward. No class spammable ability at all, the only thing Sorcs have going for them is better burst damage( but honestly NBs are better) and Overload is the only reason to play Sorc.

ZOS really needs to overhaul Sorcerers its sad to see them justify there changes when you look at all the other classes.

RebornV3x wrote: »

Why do Templars feel like a complete class for example best heals in game, both a ranged and melee spammable, a ranged knockback, a auto lock gap closer, ranged DPS a good AOE, better execute and better sustain its so versatile build wise that I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do cause all the builds Ive seen look great.

What do Sorcerers have that are better than any other class? Shields nope now that Harness Magicka absorbs both physical and spell damage now everyone has a shield that's almost as good as Hardened ward. No class spammable ability at all, the only thing Sorcs have going for them is better burst damage( but honestly NBs are better) and Overload is the only reason to play Sorc.

ZOS really needs to overhaul Sorcerers its sad to see them justify there changes when you look at all the other classes.

Wrobe stated that Sorcs are lacking in some regards but are looking to staff changes for some more options he also stated that some things may be changed after they get some numbers back from live.

Natas013 wrote: »

notimetocare wrote: »

Change to ward is fine. It should be used more intelligently, not placed on for 1/3 of a minute incase you take damage.

If you take damage as a sorc w/o a shield up your lucky if you're not dead. That being said all the change did is require sorcs to cast shields more, reducing our already pitiful sustain and dps in PvE

I love the argument that a sorc is dead without shields up. How do you think others do in robes? Others survive without shields. Just have to change your build up a bit. But alas, that is the problem.

That said, practically speaking a sorcs shields are getting refreshed inside of 6 seconds against a competent player. You want longer shields than go with the 10 sec morph.

No more sorcing for me. It's my new bank toon. She isn't even wearing armor anymore to much work to keep shields up.

Grao wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Grao wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Natas013 wrote: »

notimetocare wrote: »

Change to ward is fine. It should be used more intelligently, not placed on for 1/3 of a minute incase you take damage.

If you take damage as a sorc w/o a shield up your lucky if you're not dead. That being said all the change did is require sorcs to cast shields more, reducing our already pitiful sustain and dps in PvE

I love the argument that a sorc is dead without shields up. How do you think others do in robes? Others survive without shields. Just have to change your build up a bit. But alas, that is the problem.

That said, practically speaking a sorcs shields are getting refreshed inside of 6 seconds against a competent player. You want longer shields than go with the 10 sec morph.

Other classes have good heals or mitigation that are not reliant on pets or locked behind an interruptible, horrible skill that pretty much every sorcerer since Beta has been renaming it to Useless Exchange.

Good heals? Temp have bol sure. Dk and nb have hot. Typically needing to combine with healing ward. Sorc have critical heals and you can utilize abilities such as rapid regeneration or mutagen. Your failure to utilize skills to cover deficiencies is on you. Others go out of class for a shield. Why can't you for a hot? Sure some things need to be worked on with sorc. All classes.have things to work on. What is not an issue is the shield changes.

And yet sorcerers are the only class in the game that isn't dominant in any role.

Best Magicka DPS? Nope.
Best Stamina DPS? Definitely not.
Best Tank? LOL? @Wrobel wants us to be Crit Based Tanks... That is how bad our current state is.
Best Healers? Nope, still too reliant on pets, still too many toggles to actually slot all the skills a proper healer needs.
Best Utility? HAH, worse utility actually, Negate remains worse than any of the other classes Utility Ultimates and weaker than Barrier or War Horn.

And while it is true NBs and DKs only have HoTs, they also have different Mitigations, such as Veil, which is a must have for raids and DKs are the best tanks in the game, so their kit is filled to the brim with mitigations. Tell me again what makes sorcerers needed for any content in this game?

I'm not disagreeing that sorcs need work and I would expect them to get the next round of buffs. What I am stating is that shields are not the issue. Shields are fine. Look elsewhere in the sorcs skills to tweak and buff. Regardless if shields were at 20 seconds 15 seconds 10 seconds or 6 seconds, the change to shields does not effect the issues you state.

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Grao wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Grao wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Natas013 wrote: »

notimetocare wrote: »

Change to ward is fine. It should be used more intelligently, not placed on for 1/3 of a minute incase you take damage.

If you take damage as a sorc w/o a shield up your lucky if you're not dead. That being said all the change did is require sorcs to cast shields more, reducing our already pitiful sustain and dps in PvE

I love the argument that a sorc is dead without shields up. How do you think others do in robes? Others survive without shields. Just have to change your build up a bit. But alas, that is the problem.

That said, practically speaking a sorcs shields are getting refreshed inside of 6 seconds against a competent player. You want longer shields than go with the 10 sec morph.

Other classes have good heals or mitigation that are not reliant on pets or locked behind an interruptible, horrible skill that pretty much every sorcerer since Beta has been renaming it to Useless Exchange.

Good heals? Temp have bol sure. Dk and nb have hot. Typically needing to combine with healing ward. Sorc have critical heals and you can utilize abilities such as rapid regeneration or mutagen. Your failure to utilize skills to cover deficiencies is on you. Others go out of class for a shield. Why can't you for a hot? Sure some things need to be worked on with sorc. All classes.have things to work on. What is not an issue is the shield changes.

And yet sorcerers are the only class in the game that isn't dominant in any role.

Best Magicka DPS? Nope.
Best Stamina DPS? Definitely not.
Best Tank? LOL? @Wrobel wants us to be Crit Based Tanks... That is how bad our current state is.
Best Healers? Nope, still too reliant on pets, still too many toggles to actually slot all the skills a proper healer needs.
Best Utility? HAH, worse utility actually, Negate remains worse than any of the other classes Utility Ultimates and weaker than Barrier or War Horn.

And while it is true NBs and DKs only have HoTs, they also have different Mitigations, such as Veil, which is a must have for raids and DKs are the best tanks in the game, so their kit is filled to the brim with mitigations. Tell me again what makes sorcerers needed for any content in this game?

I'm not disagreeing that sorcs need work and I would expect them to get the next round of buffs. What I am stating is that shields are not the issue. Shields are fine. Look elsewhere in the sorcs skills to tweak and buff. Regardless if shields were at 20 seconds 15 seconds 10 seconds or 6 seconds, the change to shields does not effect the issues you state.

that's fair, it's more just a kick in the pants that they took away the one class distinguishing skill while not acknowledging or doing anything about all the other limitations for sorcs