Written on behalf of a MagSorc main with 330+ days playtime(Not written by @TheRealSniker)

Magicka Sorcerer Feedback - Update 20

I would just like to go in depth about the magicka sorcerer changes from the PTS Patch notes, and try to present constructive arguments as to why these changes are quite frankly terrible, and should undergo reworks before hitting Live. I shall endeavour to keep this respectful and constructive, despite all my personal hurt at seeing a class I have mained for 3+ years be treated like this.

First, let us start from a PVP perspective.

Sustain

Magicka Sorcerer sustain in PVP isn’t good. It hasn’t been good since Morrowind.
Sorcs are forced to rely on pure sustain sets like Lich or Amberplasm to get by as well as the Witchmother Brew / Clockwork Citrus Filet (resource food), when other ranged classes like magicka nightblades can easily equip two damage sets and run dual max stat food, and suffer no sustain issues.
To palliate this, most magsorcs use Dark Conversion to get their resources back. And even then, Dark Conversion isn’t exactly reliable in open world PVP since it’s interruptible. And good luck trying to get away behind a line of sight to safely cast it, what with all the snares and common streak bugs.

It is a fact that sorcerer sustain issues was a hot topic in the Sorcerer Representatives discord, and was communicated numerous times by the reps to the devs. It comes thus as a shock to see sorcerer sustain be nerfed with Dark Exchange and its morphed restoring half the resources over 20 seconds. An increase of 2% in the resources restored is insignificant, and in no way, shape, or form makes up for the discrepancy between the sorcerer sustain on Live and PTS that currently exists with those patch notes.
No sorcerer casts Dark Conversion just once and stops. Dark Conversion is usually cast by a sorc that’s low on magicka, several times, to get back to full. Giving it a 20 second resource return without changing the numbers of the instant cast thus seems absurd, because this is not how this skill is used to meant to be used.
And giving it a resource return akin to Channeled Focus on Templar doesn’t seem good enough given the amount of stamina it costs to begin with, and the sorcerer sustain issues, that came up with the Morrowind changes, and forced sorcs to rely on Dark Conversion in PVP in the first place.

Would it be possible to know why this change was necessary in the first place? What was the logic behind the sustain nerf when the community mentioned sorc sustain issues for months now?

Shields

Moving on to shields. While I’m given to understand that these changes were made because the devs didn’t like the fact that you could run PVE content with 3 magicka DDs and no healer, perhaps they haven’t thought through the PVP ramifications of these changes.

The way these Patch Notes are phrased makes it sounds like the devs want shields to be a proactive defense. To “be potent on tanks”, to quote just one of the lines. This is not the case, and will never be the case unless you rework the class completely.
Magicka sorcerers have no passives that increase their healing done, or reduce the damage taken, like others have.We have no major / minor mending, no passive that increases block mitigation, or reduces the snare potency...
Magicka sorcerers have shields. That’s their reactive defense. Just like on a templar, when you drop low health, you cast Breath of Life / Honor the Dead, so do sorcs cast shields when they drop low. That’s the way they mitigate damage in PVP. It’s the only way, really. The Power Surge heal is laughable, as is the passive heal from the Crystal Fragments proc (healing for a grand 600 tops in PVP), and pet heals are notoriously unreliable, easy to kill or get lost on the road of life, and nigh impossible to recast in combat.

Shields have stopped being a reactive defense since they got a 6 seconds duration, but more importantly, since the introduction of so many damage sets that just rip them apart in a second or so. With shields being uncritable and instant on Live, you already get hit by 8-9k Incapacitating Strikes, 6k Dizzying Swings, and 9k Scortches.
You cannot “precast shields” and hope for them to survive for longer than 1 - 2 seconds. This is simply not the case, and hasn’t been the case since all the buffs to damage that this game has known since Thieves Guild. Thus a sorc is forced to spam shields so to speak, and wait for an opening to burst his opponent down. This is the current gameplay, and really the only one.
Now I understand that you may want to change that gameplay, you may not like sorcs being defensive while waiting for an opportunity to burst. But then you have to think about giving us something in return. You can’t just gut an entire way (the only way) of playing a class, and just leave it at that. “Meh, I’m sure they will manage”. Well, manage with what, I ask of you?
Sorcerers have no passives to help them otherwise, and despite your best efforts to make Sorcerer Tanks viable, truth is, they will never be viable in PVP anyways. The sustain is horrendous, the heals are nonexistent, and Bound Armour having a 3 second window to “block” is not enough, especially compared to passives giving similar bonuses to Templars or DKs, or great defensive ultis like Corrosive.

Sorcerers have no defensive mechanics other than shields. This is a reactive defense, and one that is already pretty heavily countered in Cyrodiil. And duration was never the issue with shields. Increasing their duration won’t make them last longer. Shields simply do not last long enough to expire, not since all the damage buffs and damage sets introduced over the years.

Making shields critable is well and good. It is a nerf most sorcs can live with. But making them require a cast time on top of it is too much. You cannot use abilities requiring a cast time in PVP. This is exactly why Crystal Blast is still a garbage morph, despite your best efforts to buff it time and time again. And the reason why Dark Flare on Templar is used in rare high / damage gank builds, but not nearly as often as you wish it were.

Not to mention, and I’m not sure whether you were aware of it, but by giving shields the same cast animation as pet summoning, you have made them interruptible. See this clip for an example https://giant.gfycat.com/ScientificLonelyHalcyon.webm
Surely this couldn’t have been the intended effect? I mean Forward Momentum, Vigor, Breath of Life, and Enchanted Growth all work as defensive skills without being interrupted, so what was the logic behind this change?

Overload

When it comes to Overload, it was used for two purposes: the rare ganker, and more commonly, a third buff bar.
A couple of patches ago, ZOS_Wrobel asked, and I quote “is the lack of bar space because Sorcerers have too many good abilities?” to the class representatives. That leads me to believe that the devs are aware of the the fact sorcerers have trouble slotting all the necessary skills in their kit to damage, sustain, and survive. And yet, with this change, we lose the third overload bar we had in our kit, and that made sorc feel unique. Why?

In between offensive Skills - Crystal Fragments and Haunting Curse for the damage / burst, Force Pulse / Elemental Weapons for the spammable, Endless Fury as execute, and Reach / Rune Cage for the stun, and defensive Skills - Power Surge (Major Sorcery buff), three shields (Harness for sustain, Hardened for defense, and Healing ward for the heal), and Streak / Ball of Lightning. Add to that the need to fit mandatory Dark Deal for sustain, and Daedric Minefield / Inner Light / Boundless Storm and other useful buffs, surely you can see why a third Overload Bar was useful? Now, some sorcs play without it. But it was nice to have that option, and very frustrating to see it been taken away without explanation.

It is even more tragic for petsorcs who, with 4 out of 10 skills lost to double barring pets, were often using the third overload bar to slot different skills in order to have a well rounded build, and enjoy PVP.

Regarding the changes to the Overload skill itself, they seem way too punitive. Reducing the Overload light attack damage by 50% but keeping the cost the same doesn’t encourage anyone to actually use it. Not to mention the weaving is very clunky (as tested on PTS), and the removal of the ultimate regeneration while in Overload mode is once again a nerf that isn’t needed. As it stands, the ultimate is prohibitively expensive, and doesn’t add to the sorcerer damage, isn’t easy or smooth to weave, and doesn’t bring anything to the sorcerer toolkit.
Adding weapon abilities to the Overload bar doesn’t compensate at all for the removal of a third, unique bar Sorcerers had, and that gave their class a distinctive vibe. Not to mention, given the lack of damage said ulti has after the 50% nerf to light attacks, it isn’t worth front barring, which makes having “weapon abilities” on it quite useless. (I am given to understand that this change was made for sorcs to have a spammable available in Overload mode, in order to weave OV light attacks with Force Pulse. Only it is all rendered pointless by the lack of damage of said OV mode after the 50% nerf.)

Rune Cage
That skill is dead. It has been dead since the Wolfhunter nerfs. And I’m not sure why its corpse needed to be beat down some more.
Allow me to explain: making Rune Cage dodgeable effectively rendered it useless. Its damage is insignificant. The only purpose of that skill is to stun. And making it dodgeable completely removes its usefulness in Cyrodiil. I myself have wasted 20k+ magicka just trying to stun medium armour builds, who would just dodge every single one of them. (Note that Rune Cage has a one second casting animation already, making it very clunky to use in combat, and very easy to see and subsequently dodge).

If you want a skill that does damage and stuns, go for Destructive Reach. In Reach’s case, the dodgeable component makes sense. But for Rune Cage, what purpose does it have when it doesn’t land ¾ of the time in Cyrodiil? Since Wolfhunter, it has just been a magicka sink, and giving the stun a 1.2 second delay on top of the 1 second cast time is pointless, and quite frankly mind boggling.

If your aim is to make every stun telegraphable and give them counterplay, why not focus on Javelin, whose sheer projectile speed buffs only makes you able to dodge it with Major / Minor Evasion (which incidentally is going away too this patch). Or petrify?
Rune Cage being dodgeable would be fine if it weren’t so clunky or slow to cast and apply. As it stands however, it just guts a skill that quite frankly didn’t need any changing to begin with. (And by that I mean the initial changes, most everyone would agree that Rune Cage was overpowered in Summerset).
Alas the devs have their agenda of trying to buff Crystal Blast at the expense of everything else, not realising that the cast time on it is the thing that makes it a garbage skill both in PVP and PVE.

ESO is a dynamic game. You yourselves are aware of it, what with the constant emphasis on dynamic combat, about wanting to get away from static fights and long cooldowns. This is what makes the game fun. Nobody wants to wait 24 seconds to streak like the Blink ability in WOW. Nobody wants to wait to cast an offensive ability that has no purpose other than dealing damage (even Dark Flare has a Defile component). Beyond the sheer fact that it is simply not fun, because ultimately “fun is in the eye of the beholder”, it is just not feasible in the game as it is. You will get bashed, interrupted, staggered, and killed before launching any of these skills. The sheer amount of damage (once again that comes with continuous buffs to abilities and introduction of damage sets like Fury, Seventh Legion, Advancing Yokeda etc.) makes sorcs unable to just pause and cast, and stay alive while doing so.

Skills with cast times seem out of place in ESO unless we’re talking about defensive mechanics whose benefits outweigh said cast time, such as Dark Deal / Conversion as it is now on Live, not with those horrendous Patch Notes.


From a PVE standpoint, the same sustain issues that were mentioned again and again still hold. Sorc sustain is complete trash, especially compared to their magblade counterparts, who can run dual food and pull better DPS, have better single target damage and sustain more than sorcs do. The only thing sorc has is a unique synergy with Liquid Lightning, and it’s at least something you haven’t taken away from us with these Patch Notes.

When it comes to PVE, the shield change makes no sense either. Good luck getting through content like vMA without shields, unless you have a flawless rotation with Critical Surge and 600k+ scores. And what about World Bosses? You want new players to have an easier time navigating the world. Why make the defense mechanic of an entire class useless then?

Once again, I’d like to reiterate how mind boggling all these nerfs are. It’s as if we play a different game, the devs and the community. While I completely understand the desire to “change the meta” every once in awhile, you have to throw us a bone.
For patches now, ever since the grand Sorcerer Time of Homestead, it’s been mostly nerfs, and nerfs again (with the rare exception of rune cage, which has promptly been gutted again). And now this avalanche of nerfs that completely guts the entire class, because there’s simply no alternative.
Sorcs will never tank as well as Dragonknights, or heal as well as Templars. And if that’s the road you’re trying to go for, then you will just end up removing all feeling of uniqueness and enjoyable gameplay from every class.

These nerfs would’ve been fine if sorc had something it were good at, something it shined at. If you want to make it a glass cannon build without any active defense, then give us damage. If you want to make it a tank class, then give us passives for healing and mitigation.
As it stands, every single Sorcerer playstyle has been nerfed to hell. It started two years ago, back with the dual wield / Sword and board sorcerer playstyle (remember that? With Trapping webs and execute as spammables), then with Frost staves, and now even Destro - Restro sorcs are down for the count. And now there’s nothing left.

I sincerely hope that you will look at these changes in depth, listen to the community feedback (overwhelmingly negative so far), and reconsider / rework all these changes. Or at least, if you plan on going through with that, and if somehow these changes make sense to you, then please, I implore, throw us a bone. Give us something, anything - damage, passives that would align better with the shield nerfs, snare removal, major / minor mending etc. that would keep the class a competitive option for any new and returning player.