A few changes after wolf Hunter, so how has that impacted your gameplay?
I find that not having so much cage spam lets me survive a lot more - especially now its dodgeable!.. I can just keep rolling, rolling, rolling… And sloads? I can cloak again - yay!! Not to mention that I can see if I'm gonna be detected too! Haven't died yet since wolf-hunter hit.!!! (To be fair though, I've only played for about half an hour )
Oh wait.. I'm not a sorc main anymore...
I say if you want to play a caster - go magNB. Or magDK. Sorc is a just weak version of magblade right now, ant it’s very sad.
I say if you want to play a caster - go magNB. Or magDK. Sorc is a just weak version of magblade right now, ant it’s very sad.
Pretty much this.
Although on the bright side, it seems like people will be hopping off the sorc bandwagon. The previous PTS, most of the sorc feedback was insightful and constructive whether it was asking for nerfs or buffs. That cannot be said for this PTS.
Right now, there is far to much false information regarding sorcs for any balance changes to be made. At most, giving magicka sorcs a stun, whether it be by making Crystal Blast proc or just adding it back onto Frag will suffice. Besides that, I don't believe they should touch sorc unless they do a complete overhaul of the classes defensive mechanics.
All the below is from a PvP perspective.
**I forget the base morph of Streak, so whenever I say Streak, please read as BoL+Streak
The mag variant currently has access to a lot of mechanics that go from overbearing to useless depending on the situation.
- Shields are the top offender. Personally, I think giving some form of visual indication of shield strength would go a long way. Removing Shield stacking would work, but I feel it would be the poor choice.Reducing it's effectiveness would be the better route as it would allow sorcs to choose between shield stacking or Harden+Lightning Armor. Reducing Harness returns and changing shield scaling should be tested before removing shield stacking.
- Lightning Armor needs to be meaningful. The Major Expedition is nice, but useless. It does not provide mobility in a meaningful way. The skills is meant to punish melee opponents by damaging them but the damage is irrelevant. It needs to provide meaningful mobility against melee opponents, such as a chance to proc Major Expedition for 2 seconds whenever it deals damage instead of the 7.5 seconds on cast and snare removal (not immunity) either on cast or proc. Obviously, chance to proc would have a cooldown of say 5 seconds, so the sorc gets the proc max 3 times. Highly suggest not touching the radius of this skill as it is the preferred morph for PvE tanks
- Streak needs to be less clunky, and if the fatigue cost is to stay, the skill should be directed in the direction the character is moving not looking. This would make Streaking in combat more fluid, especially for console. Ideally, remove the cost entirely, although if the other PoP I've highlighted are addressed, it wont be necessary for magsorcs. Stam requires different considerations. I don't think tying a snare removal into Streak is the way to go as it makes mobility far to high. As noted above, snare removal is really only necessary to stay mobile vs melee opponents who have a plethora of snares and gap-closers in their arsenal. Snare removal on Streak would simply be overpowered.
- Daedric Mines--Right now the 2 morphs are either useless or niche. They are intended as an area denial skill, but similar to why Templar Rune was changed, this skill has not been updated for the current meta. Minefield encourages camping 1 spot, which is the direct opposite of the intended defensive nature of a magsorc. Tomb is hardly used. Ideally, tomb could be changed to create a mobile area denial, similar to Eternal Hunt where a mine is dropped every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
- Encase-not to sure about this skill and how it fits into the magsorc kit. It's a nice niche root but it competes with Mines. Honestly makes no sense why this skill exists since it's high magicka cost gates it from being a useful utility skill for stam classes, which would receive a greater benefit from it
- Rune Cage should never have been allowed to exist in the first place. While I am happy it got nerfed to the ground, it sucks that Defensive Rune was collateral and no buffs were given to compensate for the string of nerfs to sorc. Oh wait, they buffed Curse to explode twice resulting in lower dps if you didn't recast a few patches back...
Damage would need to be adjusted as well. Frags is honestly the best choice to dump it into as it fits the sorc offensive mechanics the best. I know ZoS has a desire to homogenize the classes and avoid overloaded skills, but the sorc class is so unique in the way it is played, they may as well just delete it.
Daedric Summoning Skill Line:
***A lot of these passives go unused. It's fine that a whole skill line is useless to majority of sorcs I guess, but the passives should still provide some minor benefit that are increased (significantly so) when a pet is summoned/active. This has the biggest impact on stam sorcs atm.
As for stam sorc, a lot of people will say the class is doing well.personally I disagree. Unless the class is relying on over-performing mechanics (Troll King, bleeds, Defile, Dark Deal, Implosion abuse) the class does not perform well. I've tested a lot of variants, even tried backbarring Wyrd Tree with Hulking at one point. The class is mediocre at best. The only benefit of running a stamsorc is Dark Deal, but this really only shines in BGs where cheese is king. In openworld and duels, anything a stam sorc can do, another class can do better. they really lack class identity outside of Dark Deal and ruining a nightblades day.
Stam PoP:
- Lost one of their only utility skills after Rune Cage change from last patch. Even then,this skill was very niche.
- Lack of Class synergy in terms of skills and passives
- Over reliance on Dark Deal-Dark Deal is literally the only reason why stam sorc is viable anywhere in PvP. It allows the class to ignore resource sustain and build purely into damage.However, it creates an over reliance on Dark Deal because without sacrificing all sustain,damage isn't competitive. That or the class runs cheese. If Dark Deal is relied upon, it severely limits what stamsorcs can use utility-wise. The skill has also become the classes primary heal. If ZoS is looking for overloaded skills---look right here
- To obtain enough damage, either the class is far to squishy, is over reliant on Dark Deal or relies purely on sets/passive mechanics (cheese). This fact is readily overlooked due to the strength of Dark Deal and the current cheese meta. Sets are performing well,stam sorc is not.
- suffers due to the imbalance of their mag counter parts. Streak was a great utility skill that was effectively removed from the stam sorc kit due to the increased cost. This greatly ate into magicka pools which interfered with Dark Deal sustain. refer to above.
- lack of reliable spammable. Personally,I don't believe this is a PoP, but I will include it for the sake of others. Right now the class is overly reliant on weapon abilities. I'd rather see a utility skill in place of a spammable. A contender could be Rune Cage.The Rune places a Hurricane effect on an opponent. The marked target only takes 50% of the damage dealt (since it is in the eye of the storm) but the hurricane stuns after x seconds in an AoE. Be a great way to force zergs to spread out. I don't believe changing the BA HA buffs to LA was better in the long run. It gave stam sorcs identity as being very strong heavy attackers, which took the place of a spammable. If homogenizing classes is the way to go, than sure, give stam sorcs a class spammable. If not, delete the class or recognize that homogenizing all classes is a poor decision.
- Encase--the Major Vitality buffs make Encase seem like they are meant to favor stam sorcs, primarily tanks but they would need a slight cost decrease to be effective. Leave Restraining Prison as is for PvE tanks but possibly change Shattering Shards to also grant Major Vitality for a flat 2.5 seconds but change the skill into a small AoE based around the character,similar to talons.
Streak is a tough point, similar to Cleansing Ritual. With a low cost, mag becomes to spammable but the current fatigue cost removes it from a stam sorcs offensive kit. Maybe having the first 2 Streaks not be subject to a fatigue cost would help.
As some have pointed out, BOTH our CC options have been gutted by this point (frags and cage) and thus Magsorc is getting shoehorned into using Master's destro for reach-spam again.
This build wasn't particularly powerful back in the day (Sorc was considered mid-tier in CWC/DBones) but it is even worse in the current state of the game.
This is because the Master's destro—just like all other ability-altering Arena weapons (vMA, vDSA, etc.) occupy 2 slots, but only give 1 set bonus. This has been an issue since Summerset went live.
They are still good on the backbar (eg. vMA bow & destro) but are a substantial DPS loss when run on the frontbar, due to the lack of a 1pc stat bonus.
As Sorc is now the only class that is heavily obligated to run an Arena weapon on their frontbar, this issue affects the class disproportionately.
I go into greater detail (with actual data) in this thread which I've maintained since the Summerset PTS.
Would greatly appreciate if you could give it a look, @Tasear. Alternatively... reverting the frags nerf would make a lot of sorcs happy.
rafaelcsmaia wrote: »I feel left behind in the pve aspect. PVP sorc will go back to reach and thats it, will still work, boring or not.
PVE is the real issue here, sorc is heavily dependant to asylum destro to even being considered in a group, it has an almost useless skill line (pets) that as much as people try to sell em, nobody will trade their nb opness for a walking zoo and their resource management is overall a pain.
Lets not get started on stamsorc, basically a walking weapon skill line.
IMO zos should enhance those class specific group buffs so theyre more needed, something like the exploitation and hemorrage passives, make them a flat % bonus to something, in a way group composition is forced to be more diverse.
Also, unless master architect and war machine gets a lovely nerf, NBs will keep facerooling dps charts, why can they abuse their low cost ulti for massive major slayer uptime while overload was simply disabled for the sake of OPness?