A Nightblade Main's Few Complaints about the Sorcerer Class

Avran_Sylt · August 2018

I play Nightblade. I love it. I made a Sorc today. It's annoying. This is what I have so far:

My Current Pain Points:

Overload:
-Cannot access the bar if you have less than the minimum ultimate
-Casting an ability while on the Overload bar locks you out of the 'barswap', due to the nature of the 'barswap' being a GCD.
-The 'barswap' animation into the OL bar is too long.

Crystal Fragments:
-Cannot proc while casting on another bar (given the Sorcs need for multiple bars, this really hampers the ability) (should be more like the NB merciless in that it doesn't matter what bar you're on, you just need to be on the bar to cast the empower)
-No audio cue to better give the player an indication that the ability proc is ready. (the glowing hands is barely anything, especially when your char is filled with VFX already)

Bergzorn · August 2018

A simple workaround for your problems: Don't use Overload, don't slot Crystal Fragments.

Damn, I tried not to sound bitter and failed hard.

But really, using Overload and the third bar in combat is so clunky, it often gets you killed. Access to a third bar sounds extremely powerful, but once you know how it works in practice its not a hard decision to just slot another ulti.

Regarding Frags, I loved that skill. It was totally destroyed with the stun removal. The changes to empower didn't help either.

IAVITNI · August 2018

Great thread. This is definitely the kind of mentality people on these forums need to strive for.

As you play more on sorc, you'll come to realize their potential does not scale as well as other classes. High end they fit somewhere in mid tier relative to other classes, but you'll find that once you have enough playtime to call yourself an experienced sorc the difference between fighting 1v1 against bad, average, good and better players is extremely different than on any other class. (ratings are relative you your skill, so a good player is at the same level as you)

You will melt potatoes
You won't feel any pressure fighting the average players (you can fight them while having a conversation for example) but you won't be able to kill them as easily as you would with other classes.
You will find that, unless you are built specifically for 1v1, fights against good players (players of equal skill) will have you mostly on the defensive since every class but stamsorc can negate 1/3 of your burst using standard class skills (wings, crystalize, purify, cloak) and you are unable to pressure them the way they can pressure you, even if both of you are running open world builds because your burst is simply not strong enough.
you will lose to better players unless there is a fluke

While the first and last points are true for all classes. the middle 2 levels behave very differently. The average player can be pressured to death by other classes, whereas a magsorc more often than not needs those players to make a noticeable error to pressure them.

Magsorc v x class where players are of equal level are the most boring to watch. Even if the sorc goes full offensive, most good players know how to counter sorc burst, which means they feel virtually no pressure. So either the sorc turtles up and becomes unkillable 1v1 or they die taking a risk setting up the burst for the most part.

And since you shared your Pain Points as a nightblade main playing sorc, I'll do the same as a Magsorc main playing nightblade

Cloak

A LOT of issues with Cloak. Useless if the opponent has a hard counter. Detect pots and mark should not exist.
As a magblade, slotting Cloak greatly impacts the classes utility to the point where you NEED to rely on Cloak spam because the skill is such a huge crutch that the classes defensive issues cannot be addressed. On console, the best nightblades do not slot Cloak, and it greatly hampers open world survivability on what should be the hardest class to lockdown.
As a stamblade, the difference is not as noticeable since stam has other defensive mechanisms. However, there is such a big drop off in survivability.
A Magsorc that relies on shield stacking does not need to shield stack as much as a nightblade that relies on Cloak needs to Cloak.

Crippling Grasp

the nerf to the movement speed duration was incredibly unnecessary, snare uptime nerf was enough

Medium Armor

the difference in survivability between medium and heavy is too drastic. The skill difference is way to big, especially relative to other classes--except magsorc ironically, which can ONLY run light. Any bad player can slot medium and CLoak+Dodge roll for days, but heavy requires significantly greater skill, which should not be the case.

Healing

Healing sucks. without Cloak to allow you to benefit from the majority of heals, stamblades can only reliably use Vigor and Rally while other classes have additional means of defensive healing or ways to greatly amplify it, except maybe stamplar but they still have decent healing buffs. A stamplar without Cleanse still has healing buffs, can still repent in enough situations and is naturally Tankier. A stamblade without Cloak is screwed.

Health Desync

Personally, I don't like having different health pools on bars, but the way the passive is set up, it is far more damaging to keep health bars synched.

Biro123 · August 2018

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

Aedaryl · August 2018

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

Galarthor · August 2018

IAVITNI wrote: »

You will find that, unless you are built specifically for 1v1, fights against good players (players of equal skill) will have you mostly on the defensive since every class but stamsorc can negate 1/3 of your burst using standard class skills (wings, crystalize, purify, cloak) and you are unable to pressure them the way they can pressure you, even if both of you are running open world builds because your burst is simply not strong enough.

Great post. But you forgot to mention the situation against stamina players where 1/3 turns into 3/4 or or 9/10 due to perma-dodging and perma-blocking.

Biro123 · August 2018

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

I'm sure it is - I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty noobish with it. What would you weave with it on Bow, though? I mean, there's poison injection (which I haven't unlocked yet - lol) but as a dot, you don't wanna weave it more than once - or snipe. I don't really want to sit back and snipe. So I always end up trying to proc it via melee instead (running dw/2-h at the mo anyways - may switch to 2-h/bow when I get some more mats/cash).

Aedaryl · August 2018

Biro123 wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

I'm sure it is - I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty noobish with it. What would you weave with it on Bow, though? I mean, there's poison injection (which I haven't unlocked yet - lol) but as a dot, you don't wanna weave it more than once - or snipe. I don't really want to sit back and snipe. So I always end up trying to proc it via melee instead (running dw/2-h at the mo anyways - may switch to 2-h/bow when I get some more mats/cash).

Weaving is not only between offensive skills.

You need to light attack bewteen everything. Buffs, heal, when you dodge, when you damage, when you cc,when you swap weapon.

The only thing you can't weave is blocking and skills when you are cloacked.

When you cast your buff back bar, weave between it. When you dodge, be sure to cut anim a LA + skill + dodge, when you are front bar, weave too !

If you weave between everything, you can have a bow every 5s. In practice you can land the bow every 10s.

When weaving is 25% of the NB dps, you can understand it's extremely important to do it. For Assassin't will, for shiponing heal and ressource back and for the huge pressure it does.

usmguy1234 · August 2018

I'm surprised you're not getting 50+ kills and no deaths in bgs. According to a lot of people on here all it takes is switching to sorc and you immediately become a god.

Strider__Roshin · August 2018

I agree with the OP.

Strider__Roshin · August 2018

usmguy1234 wrote: »

I'm surprise you're not getting 50+ kills and no deaths in bgs. According to a lot of people on here all it takes is switching to sorc and you immediately become a god.

It's a positive thread and yet you guys are still acting salty. Chill out my friend. No need to be angry all the time.

usmguy1234 · August 2018

Daus wrote: »

usmguy1234 wrote: »

I'm surprise you're not getting 50+ kills and no deaths in bgs. According to a lot of people on here all it takes is switching to sorc and you immediately become a god.

It's a positive thread and yet you guys are still acting salty. Chill out my friend. No need to be angry all the time.

More sarcasm than anger. It just doesn't translate well over text.

Strider__Roshin · August 2018

usmguy1234 wrote: »

Daus wrote: »

usmguy1234 wrote: »

I'm surprise you're not getting 50+ kills and no deaths in bgs. According to a lot of people on here all it takes is switching to sorc and you immediately become a god.

It's a positive thread and yet you guys are still acting salty. Chill out my friend. No need to be angry all the time.

More sarcasm than anger. It just doesn't translate well over text.

Fair enough.

Juhasow · August 2018

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

I'm sure it is - I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty noobish with it. What would you weave with it on Bow, though? I mean, there's poison injection (which I haven't unlocked yet - lol) but as a dot, you don't wanna weave it more than once - or snipe. I don't really want to sit back and snipe. So I always end up trying to proc it via melee instead (running dw/2-h at the mo anyways - may switch to 2-h/bow when I get some more mats/cash).

Weaving is not only between offensive skills.

You need to light attack bewteen everything. Buffs, heal, when you dodge, when you damage, when you cc,when you swap weapon.

The only thing you can't weave is blocking and skills when you are cloacked.

When you cast your buff back bar, weave between it. When you dodge, be sure to cut anim a LA + skill + dodge, when you are front bar, weave too !

If you weave between everything, you can have a bow every 5s. In practice you can land the bow every 10s.

When weaving is 25% of the NB dps, you can understand it's extremely important to do it. For Assassin't will, for shiponing heal and ressource back and for the huge pressure it does.

Naah it's not that extremly requiring of weaving. You need bow procs only to combine them with other abilites to create burst. Just shooting randomly bow proc on target is many times waste of the proc and waste of the burst. Sometimes even having bow proc already charged is lowering Your effectiveness because if You lets say are 4-5 seconds away from mecriless to expire and You already have bow proc charged You cannot recharge ability so You'll either have to wait that 5 seconds without fighting enemy , fight him but delay Your burst until You'll recast merciless or shoot mecriless at opening which instantly will push enemy in defense mode. From PvP perspective ofc.

Biro123 · August 2018

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

I'm sure it is - I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty noobish with it. What would you weave with it on Bow, though? I mean, there's poison injection (which I haven't unlocked yet - lol) but as a dot, you don't wanna weave it more than once - or snipe. I don't really want to sit back and snipe. So I always end up trying to proc it via melee instead (running dw/2-h at the mo anyways - may switch to 2-h/bow when I get some more mats/cash).

Weaving is not only between offensive skills.

You need to light attack bewteen everything. Buffs, heal, when you dodge, when you damage, when you cc,when you swap weapon.

The only thing you can't weave is blocking and skills when you are cloacked.

When you cast your buff back bar, weave between it. When you dodge, be sure to cut anim a LA + skill + dodge, when you are front bar, weave too !

If you weave between everything, you can have a bow every 5s. In practice you can land the bow every 10s.

When weaving is 25% of the NB dps, you can understand it's extremely important to do it. For Assassin't will, for shiponing heal and ressource back and for the huge pressure it does.

I get ya. Weaving is a bit of a weakness of mine after playing DW magsorc for so long.. Doing ok with it offensively, not so much on Def.

IAVITNI · August 2018

Biro123 wrote: »

Aedaryl wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

oo - I'll throw some in too.

I still find assassin's will clunky.. If I don't slot a bow, getting 5 light-attacks off during its duration can be unreliable (especially with lag screwing up weaving). With a bow, I find I end up just spamming light attacks to try to get it to proc - lol..
And when it does proc, I'm so unused to seeing it, I miss it. Seems it isn't obviousl enough that its ready (I see frags procs much more easily - but I guess I'm just more used to them)
Usually end up deciding its a wasted skill for me and unslotting it(again).

Mark has too long a duration for the detect part of it imho.

For assassin's will this is a l2p issue, that's normal since you are new to stamblade.

Every single competitive build weave light attacks between skills, so the bow can be up very often.

With the multiple buff assassin's will got, it's not hard anymore to have a bow up. You can't really miss a bow actually, if you stay in fight, you can juss press merciless resolve and get your proc back.

I'm sure it is - I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty noobish with it. What would you weave with it on Bow, though? I mean, there's poison injection (which I haven't unlocked yet - lol) but as a dot, you don't wanna weave it more than once - or snipe. I don't really want to sit back and snipe. So I always end up trying to proc it via melee instead (running dw/2-h at the mo anyways - may switch to 2-h/bow when I get some more mats/cash).

Weaving PI isn't that bad of an option, especially against a magsorc btw. As a nightblade, you can deal decent damage from a far and stay relatively safe thanks to Cloak and Shade. The next tier of burst actually involves PI weaving, where you stay back and passively spam PI. This builds stacks, lowers your opponents guard and waits out their buffs/heals/shields.

So for example, you see a magsorc cast a shield, PI weave twice, and now that's half of their shield strength gone. But unless they know what you're doing, they ACT as if they've only been light attacked a few times so they don't recast their shields, some may not have even stacked their shields due to not feeling pressure so now you can a PI+LA+Ambush+Incap+Merciless burst against 1.5 shields or ideally less than 1.

NB requires more sneaky sneaky than a magsorc.

Finviuswe · August 2018

You dont have the right to complain about mag sorc if u play a stamblade.

Mag sorcs are ineffectual and easily dealt with, especially in the current meta. Stamblades are killing machines in PVP. Hit mouse click once = kill all enemies in the immediate area if ur a stamblade.

MashmalloMan · August 2018

Wish more people shared OP's point of view, the most opinionated players screaming for nerfs are usually for another class they haven't touched. When you play a class and realize their drawbacks and strong points, it becomes a much more constructive conversation.

To touch on your points:

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Overload:
-Cannot access the bar if you have less than the minimum ultimate -

The skill would be a bit overpowered if you could access it 24/7 just for a 3rd bar without having to sacrifice gaining the minimum ult to use it. It would be a pretty cool change though effectivly giving the class with the least amount of bar space in most scenarios a way to get more bar space at a price of switching to a 3rd bar. It's the way it works now I guess, but for me.. it isn't worth the slot, especially because of the reasons below.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

-Casting an ability while on the Overload bar locks you out of the 'barswap', due to the nature of the 'barswap' being a GCD.
-The 'barswap' animation into the OL bar is too long.

These 2 are just plain annoying, I suppose it has to do with balancing, but ultimately was a design decision overlooked, going to this bar wastes 2 GCDs coming in and out. It makes it unusable in pve. Maybe it would be a bit too strong to have the same type of animation as a "bar swap", but I disagree. It would feel so smooth to switch to making it easier to cast 1 or 2 skills and switch off the bar in a regular rotation, maybe it would see use in competitive pve too because of this change. Maybe have it's own GCD like synergy's do.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Crystal Fragments:
-Cannot proc while casting on another bar (given the Sorcs need for multiple bars, this really hampers the ability) (should be more like the NB merciless in that it doesn't matter what bar you're on, you just need to be on the bar to cast the empower)

This is a great point, I'd say the 33% is a bit too strong for that working on both bars but if you lower the chance, than it becomes less of a spam-able on front bar where you're actually using it. Changes like your proposition while nice, would make it very similar to Nightblade, I'd prefer something without RNG, but that's pretty much a discounted merciless resolve at that point. There is enough jokes already about Sorcs being lesser Nightblades because pets are the worst.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

-No audio cue to better give the player an indication that the ability proc is ready. (the glowing hands is barely anything, especially when your char is filled with VFX already)

Yes please, sticking with an add-on for this just like Merciless resolve, feel bad for console players.

hakan · August 2018

ESO_GOD wrote: »

You dont have the right to complain about mag sorc if u play a stamblade.

Mag sorcs are ineffectual and easily dealt with, especially in the current meta. Stamblades are killing machines in PVP. Hit mouse click once = kill all enemies in the immediate area if ur a stamblade.

didnt even read the OP. i love the salt.