I do find it troublesome that some of the known bugs with shields were not fixed this patch. (The 3.3% overage, and the 0 strength shields if you had too much magicka.) Since this is the last week of testing, there will be no verification that those are working properly.


On a different note, has anyone been doing any real testing of Dark Exchange? Since the over-time portion of the recovery lasts 20 seconds, that puts it on the same cycle time as Boundless Storm and Elemental Drain — something to activate every couple rotations.

Dark Conversion morph on live: 8059 health and 4696 magicka in change for 2053 stamina. They seem fixed, not changing with different magicka or spell damage. So, according to the patch notes, it should be giving 6044 health and 3522 magicka immediately, and then 201 health and 117 magicka per second.

Not as good as being able to spam it several times in a row, but it fits easily within a rotation. Conveniently, it also procs Minor Prophecy via passive, which itself has a 20 second duration. Given the shift of crit rates from the CP passive to Minor Prophecy, being able to have a steady means of keeping that up full time is nice. Though I tend to have a 90%-95% uptime from Crystal Frags anyway, this would also work if I'm in healer mode, and don't have slots for offensive abilities.

I tried incorporating Dark Conversion into my rotation on live, and, while it's still a bit clumsy, I did manage to kill a test dummy without needing to use heavy attacks (though I'd still want to use them on groups of mobs), and keeping nearly the same total DPS. A modest improvement on the total magicka return, plus the fact that half of it is an over-time effect (and thus won't risk as much overfilling the resource bar) seems like it would help a fair bit with sustain.

The gap it creates between light attacks is about 1.5 seconds, which is barely more than a good weave rate. The tradeoff of sustain for damage seems better than doing the same with, say, jewelry, since this substitutes only a single action period, whereas the the potential spell damage on the jewelry applies to all the ongoing DOTs.

phileunderx2 wrote: »

Pet sorcs are really going to be bad when Murkmire drops. They still die in dungeons. My scamp died to the second boss of Crypt of Hearts and in overland pve content they are very difficult to keep alive when fighting against any substantual monster. I went in Sunhold public dungeon and the Turtle boss on the dock his poison aoe one shots the scamp. The shield does nothing to protect him.
Many casual players have pet sorcs and they are going to be wondering what is going on and why their pets are dieing all the time. So yeah zos this isn't a good thing you guys are doing. Lol

bug the CoH. they shouldn't be dying in dungeons.

overland is a different matter.

Hutch679 wrote: »

Great changes tbh. The shield stacking has gotten out of control.....

LOL. Shield stacking is still there.

lucky_dutch wrote: »

Magsorc are absolutely fine on PTS now. Arguably stronger with the improved LA passives.

You can’t face-tank unlimited amounts of damage anymore but forgive me for my limited sympathy on that front.

The fact that a glass cannon Stamblade or Stamden could wail on you non-stop for over a minute without breaking through the shields was a little bit ridiculous.

Hmm, it doesn't quite qualify to call them "Glass Canon" if they could keep pressure over a sorc for one minute.
It doesn't look like you seek balance... Looks like your true desire is to kill every player within 1 minute.. ok sorcs are nerfed... Now what?... Will you cry for a 30s kill window now?

Actually pet are supposed to be immortal only in group PvE area. That mean not in vMA, delve, world boss and other open area.

Pets won't die anyway when even diehard Petsorcs like me are not able to equip them any longer in Cyro.

We have been thrown back to pre-Orsinium times when every grouped petsorc was either a fool or a roleplayer.

Cronopoly wrote: »

I have not given up hope yet. In fact I'm rolling a new High Elf Sorc on NA PC. Bam. He's naked and while CP 897 has not allocated any points, skills, armors or learned any weapons. Hand to hand combat baby. Dies often lol.

If only you hadn´t chose the now worst possible race for your sorcy.

Aldul wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cronopoly wrote: »

I have not given up hope yet. In fact I'm rolling a new High Elf Sorc on NA PC. Bam. He's naked and while CP 897 has not allocated any points, skills, armors or learned any weapons. Hand to hand combat baby. Dies often lol.

If only you hadn´t chose the now worst possible race for your sorcy.

Explain, pls. High Elf worst class for magsorc?

I can only guess that the lack of health and mitigation makes shields weaker than on other races.

Biro123 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cronopoly wrote: »

I have not given up hope yet. In fact I'm rolling a new High Elf Sorc on NA PC. Bam. He's naked and while CP 897 has not allocated any points, skills, armors or learned any weapons. Hand to hand combat baby. Dies often lol.

If only you hadn´t chose the now worst possible race for your sorcy.

Nah, not the worst, surely..

Just looking at those passives for the contenders (PVP perspective)..:

High Elf
9% mag recov
10% max mag
4% flame/frost/shock dmg.

Breton
10% Max Mag
3960 Spell Resists
3% mag cost reduction

Argonian
3% max mag + pot recov (4620 health/mag/stam)
9% max health + poison/disease resist
5% healing done and received

Dark Elf
6% Max mag/stam
3% max mag, flame resists
7% flame dmg, 2% frost/shock dmg

My gut feel is that max mag will still be very useful for all builds.
Mag Recov will be useful on almost all builds.
Flame damage - very minor benefit to flame staff abilities only.
Frost damage - very minor benefit if frost staff taken for blocking
shock damage - benefit to builds using overload
Max Health.. Only really useful, if you're shields are above cap. I've struggled to hit this so far with murkmire builds.
Mag Cost Reduction - great for all builds
Spell Resists - much more beneficial than before.. (would rather have physical though)
Healing done/received.. welcome, but not too great on a class with poor healing.
Argonian pots - can be great in certain setups - not sure if they go well with magsorc though..
Max Stam - nice to have, but poor actual buff for off-stat.

So overall, I think Altmer and Breton are pretty comparable, with Breton now edging it only slightly.
Dark Elf falls behind with (slightly) lower max mag, nothing to help sustain, and sorcs benefitting very little from flame dmg

Argonian is difficult to quantify. I've used the pot cooldown build on other classes, and it could be strong for frost-staff blocking, but leaves the main stat (notably magica) very low for shields.. I don't think sorc can be a very effective blocker without access to either stronger dots or the ability to cast heals while on the frost bar.. So it would have to be part of a mixed defence of blocks/dodges/shields... which will need plenty of magica. No, I'm not sure sorc synergises as well with Argonian as other classes do..

I´ve played all 4 races and for the next patch in a CP environment i´d rate:

Breton >= Argonian > Dunmer > Altmer

Healing being useless basically strawman argument at this point - sorc needs healing and the need for healing will increase instead of decrease this patch with the change to enchantments (oblivion enchant).

Breton is probably best for things resembling pre murkmire setups - but if you´re pushing shields argonian will get better results due to their health passive which is more likely to cap shields than maxmagica is from my testing.
Furthermore in CP breton resis now allow you to shift CP towards physical mitigation resulting in overall better survivability than any other race on sorc.

Dunmer is a bit of mixed bag - sorc is a very stat dependant class and dunmer gets 15% stats total. Then dunmer is also the choice to run vamp builds because of the flame resis and complete burning immunity (remember you can actually apply statuseffects on shields now).
It also has the greatest synergy with masterstaff builds.

Altmer just offers nothing special. The elemental dmg increase is neglible and actually weaker than dunmers for most builds.
It pales in comparison to the defensive benefits of dunmer or breton.
The sustain passive is roughly comparable to what argonian or breton get.

Altmer just has nothing really going for them at this point because the offensive advantages are so minimal compared to the defensive perks other races get they´re vastly outclassed.

Derra wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cronopoly wrote: »

I have not given up hope yet. In fact I'm rolling a new High Elf Sorc on NA PC. Bam. He's naked and while CP 897 has not allocated any points, skills, armors or learned any weapons. Hand to hand combat baby. Dies often lol.

If only you hadn´t chose the now worst possible race for your sorcy.

Nah, not the worst, surely..

Just looking at those passives for the contenders (PVP perspective)..:

High Elf
9% mag recov
10% max mag
4% flame/frost/shock dmg.

Breton
10% Max Mag
3960 Spell Resists
3% mag cost reduction

Argonian
3% max mag + pot recov (4620 health/mag/stam)
9% max health + poison/disease resist
5% healing done and received

Dark Elf
6% Max mag/stam
3% max mag, flame resists
7% flame dmg, 2% frost/shock dmg

My gut feel is that max mag will still be very useful for all builds.
Mag Recov will be useful on almost all builds.
Flame damage - very minor benefit to flame staff abilities only.
Frost damage - very minor benefit if frost staff taken for blocking
shock damage - benefit to builds using overload
Max Health.. Only really useful, if you're shields are above cap. I've struggled to hit this so far with murkmire builds.
Mag Cost Reduction - great for all builds
Spell Resists - much more beneficial than before.. (would rather have physical though)
Healing done/received.. welcome, but not too great on a class with poor healing.
Argonian pots - can be great in certain setups - not sure if they go well with magsorc though..
Max Stam - nice to have, but poor actual buff for off-stat.

So overall, I think Altmer and Breton are pretty comparable, with Breton now edging it only slightly.
Dark Elf falls behind with (slightly) lower max mag, nothing to help sustain, and sorcs benefitting very little from flame dmg

Argonian is difficult to quantify. I've used the pot cooldown build on other classes, and it could be strong for frost-staff blocking, but leaves the main stat (notably magica) very low for shields.. I don't think sorc can be a very effective blocker without access to either stronger dots or the ability to cast heals while on the frost bar.. So it would have to be part of a mixed defence of blocks/dodges/shields... which will need plenty of magica. No, I'm not sure sorc synergises as well with Argonian as other classes do..

I´ve played all 4 races and for the next patch in a CP environment i´d rate:

Breton >= Argonian > Dunmer > Altmer

Healing being useless basically strawman argument at this point - sorc needs healing and the need for healing will increase instead of decrease this patch with the change to enchantments (oblivion enchant).

Breton is probably best for things resembling pre murkmire setups - but if you´re pushing shields argonian will get better results due to their health passive which is more likely to cap shields than maxmagica is from my testing.
Furthermore in CP breton resis now allow you to shift CP towards physical mitigation resulting in overall better survivability than any other race on sorc.

Dunmer is a bit of mixed bag - sorc is a very stat dependant class and dunmer gets 15% stats total. Then dunmer is also the choice to run vamp builds because of the flame resis and complete burning immunity (remember you can actually apply statuseffects on shields now).
It also has the greatest synergy with masterstaff builds.

Altmer just offers nothing special. The elemental dmg increase is neglible and actually weaker than dunmers for most builds.
It pales in comparison to the defensive benefits of dunmer or breton.
The sustain passive is roughly comparable to what argonian or breton get.

Altmer just has nothing really going for them at this point because the offensive advantages are so minimal compared to the defensive perks other races get they´re vastly outclassed.

I'm not sure I entirely agree - and honestly I think the differences will be minimal.

Anyways, I have a lot of experimenting to do, and currently have an altmer and an Argonian sorc on live, so will do a bit of experimenting with very different ideas for them.. I kind of think Argonian may be better for some of the build ideas I have - but I honestly don't know how viable those ideas will be. Altmer/Breton better for more traditional setups.
Fair point on Dunmer though.. I never really run Vamp - so didn't take that into account.

Just noticed the patch notes are already up... nothing to help with bar-space, I see - and looks like DW enchants haven't been touched... :-(

karpok wrote: »

Actually pet are supposed to be immortal only in group PvE area. That mean not in vMA, delve, world boss and other open area.

I can live with them not being immortal in vMA. I can't live with them being dead at all times. I aborted a run in stage 4 because I'm constantly in that stupid 2s channel of resummoning them when I should just be activating their ability. They used to only die during the scream and ice island cleave. Now they are dead about as much as they are alive.

I'm not pushing the tops of the lists or anything, but I make the cut most weeks and do have a flawless run.