What I find most amusing about the rune cage nerf is the same people that asked for it to be dodgeable, since there was "no counterplay" (which are he ones now happy that they can return to be a tumbling machine again) are the same nb mains that rejoiced when sloads and oblivion damage sets like shield breaker destroyer sorcs only means of defense, with no counterplay at *** all, talk about being hypocrite

The class has been the same for YEARS. Same build, same skills. Just tweak a skill or two so you wont get bored of the game (we even lost that option with Frags nerf, forcing us to slot a skill for stun)

Give us different kind of defensive measures than just stacking shields. Ball of Lightning could absorb arrows too, Streak shouldnt apply the penalty if you damage an enemy, Encase could apply DOT for sustained pressure or Blood Magic could trigger off of damage dealt for a decent self-heal

More than half the class changes in recent patches were to pets which remained useless since game release.

Despite assembling a team of experienced Sorcerer players for counseling but the only thing they changed was reverting an obviously OP buff to Rune Cage

[Edited for bashing]

ccfeeling wrote: »

PVE perspective .

Sorc is very strong , especially pet sorc , the best cheese build in the game .

We do Vtrial usually , but we wont reject pet sorc , they know what to do at the right moment , what's the problem btw ?

Pets...... are... just . . .

Edit: . . . Terrible!

@Tasear thank you for asking! At least 1 class representative apparently takes their job seriously.

As for the current state of the sorc (I assume you are referring to magSorcs):
I cannot speak for PvE since I don't spent enough time there and certainly not in the end content.

However, I have a lot of PvP experience, especially in small scale pvp, since this is what I primarily do in ESO (and have been doing for years now). As such this is what ....

The current state of sorc in PvP is pretty sad. MagSorcs are currently completely helpless against stamina players.

The dodge-based stamina builds evade almost all of our damage. And what little gets through (mainly curse) is simply not enough to kill anybody. This is a major problem since magSorcs are designed to kill enemies with burst spikes and completely lack the ability to "wear" enemies down over time.

At the same time Forward Momentum makes those builds completely immune to roots and slows. In addition, all of your stuns are now dodgable. So, not only are we unable to hit these builds, but we are also unable to even briefly stop them from evading all of our damage so that we might have a chance to kill them.

This issue is even amplified by insane speed ZOS, in its infinite wisdom, gave stamina builds, enabling them to run circles around us, preventing DPS, and to use line of sight even more effectively and efficiently, preventing even more DPS - let alone an entire burst combo needed by sorcs to kill a player.

On the other side of the spectrum are we sorcs. We receive no immunity to either slows or roots (while stamina has multiple) and cannot evade their stuns. So the build which has less stamina has to spend more stamina on break free than those builds that have plenty of it. Streak is also way too clunky, slow, rigid, and expensive to either keep up with the stamina builds' speed or to escape from them. And that's on top of sprinting not requiring any skill slots and having its cost reduced in both the CP system and by armor traits.

For the block-based stamina builds the picture is very similar. While they don't dodge the majority of our damage, the mitigate it by simply holding block. The end result is pretty much the same. And even with rune cage, it is pretty much only possible to kill these perma-blockers with a full meteor combo. However, if they see the meteor coming they simply dodge the rune cage and almost no damage is being dealt. At the same time many of these builds can deal considerable damage to us sorcs. And without meteor available, these stamina builds are too tanky anyways to kill even when stunned by rune cage.

Since the issues also persist in the nonCP environment it goes beyond the CP system.

MagSorcs need something to deal with these two types of builds (which are pretty much used by every stamina user in PvP). Be it a form of CC that allows us to occassionally get our damage through or some form of DPS that wears them down over time.

It would also help if the blatant favoritism towards stamina defensive abilities would be abolished. Dodge, Block, and Sprint can all have their cost reduced in both the CP system and the armor trait system. There is nothing equivalent available to magicka builds in general! This is part of the issue. In addition, none of the mechanisms requires a skill slot, unlike magicka abilities with similar properties.

So, stamina mitigation abilities are not only cheaper (and too cheap compared to magicka abilities), but also don't require any slots. By eliminating these discriminating cost benefits for stamina builds the amount of dodge-, block-, and sprint-spamming could be reduced considerably, alleviating a lot of the problems mentioned above.

In addition, the gross imbalance regarding the susceptibility to all kinds of CC needs to be address. It is outrageous that stamina builds are literally immune to almost all crowd controll effects, while sorcs (and magicka builds in general) are immune to none. If anything, magicka builds need immunities since they cannot afford to break free as often stamina builds.

Also a magicka counter / equivalent to the new stamina speed meta is required.

And lastly, shields are way too weak in nonCP compared with the stamina mechanisms that mitigate a relative amount of damage (i.e. block 100%).

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

Daus wrote: »

I'm looking forward to playing my magsorc again now that it's not as OP. The hand held victories that came with RC were a complete turnoff to me.

Sun will raise in the west if this going to happen.

What? Me playing my magsorc? Used to do it a lot more frequently prior to Summerset.

Feanor wrote: »

@Taesar

Thanks for asking, but at this point I feel anything less than a class overhaul is a waste of resources, and certainly if the adjustments are done in the Rune Cage fashion.

You can tell Mr. Wrobel that it would have saved him all the hassle and the flak if he would have listened to the experienced Sorcs that told him in the Update 18 PTS that buffing RC like that isn’t a good idea and the buffs should be done elsewhere.

Now 3 months of outcry and a PTS with 4 nerfs later we’re at the point where RC is officially worse than it was in CWC.

You can tell him also that the problem most Sorcs feel is that every Sorc plays the same because it’s the most one dimensional class in the game that has very little room for building around different ideas, regardless of PvE or PvP.

One reason for this is the dependence on Staves, another reason the utter lack of buffs and debuffs, and a third reason is that everything revolves around the bursty nature of Sorc damage skills that have advantages in PvP but do not allow for sustained pressure (sustain of that damage is a “pain point” too).

Wolfhunter didn’t solve any of the Sorc topics for me. It just made it easier to play vs Sorc again.

They went about dealing with rune cage completely the wrong was and took the easy way like zos do.

The main problem with rune cage was the delayed cc it did when it was cast and the delayed and slow cc break it was. This was the main problem with rune cage and before any balancing was taken into account this needed fixing first and foremost.

Instead zos took the easy way out and instead of fixing something they likely don't have the ability to do without blowing the server up they completely gutted the skill, no thanks to the outcry of horde of bad players on this forum.

So all they really achieved it that nerfed the good smaller scale/ solo sorc's who needed the cc to actually have a chance to kill someone with there very telegraphed burst in the very small window they have inbetween shields as the shields are getting pounded.

The bad sorc's in the zergs who seem to think rune cage was a god mode and opened with it, nevermind putting on shields or setting up a burst. Nothing's really changed for them. Can't dodge rune cage forever.

Another patch, another nerf to small scale/ solo while zergs and ball groups don't change

I'll likely just go back to warden/ nb but honestly i think it's about time for me to quit again. Especially since the new monster set is gonna be abused by the zergs, another of zos's well balanced p2w dlc's.

[Edited for bashing]

I see a lot of posts about Rune Cage. But how does having Rune Cage become un-avoidable help to balance the class?

I'm not asking how it helps deal with roll dodgers, but how does Rune Cage fit into the sorc offensive? Because from my experience of using it PRIOR to SS, it was very clunky and only suitable for 1v1s. Open world I ran nothing but Streak as my CC because Cage was such a waste of a slot. The biggest benefit in SS was the 9k tooltip.

There is no need for the sorc class to have an unavoidable and un-blockable CC. What the class needs is something to support its final burst and ways to properly maintain its mobility so that it does not have to crutch on shield stacking, whether that mobility is solely in reference to the Sorc or relative to their opponents.

Cage was a crutch.
Shield stacking is a crutch.

Take away those crutches and maybe then there will be a way to balance the class.