How to decide between a Sorc and a Necro

TheBigBadDoom · November 2019

Good morning all.

I am tied between a Sorc and a Necro. I've tried all classed but these two stand out followed by the Warden. DK, NB and Templar don't really interest me.
I have both a Sorc and Necro at 50 and I keep jumping between the two. Effectively wasting time because I cannot make up my damn mind.
So, I want to put across a couple of opinions about the both classes and would like your input, advice and knowledge.
I only want to play one character, I've always jumped between Alts and never really got much done. Eso, will be different (I Hope)
I also want to be able to do all roles if I so choose so. I played when ESO first released but quit and came back many times over the years but never accomplished anything or played for long. WoW took over my life but that is another story.

Just a note, below is my opinion and I welcome all feedback to help me become a better player.

So, let us begin.

Tank

Necro - They have a specific class line for tanking which provides some amazing skills. They can self heal, provide a boost to their resistances, reduce their incoming damage with major protection, fear enemies and apply vulnerability. Their passives also increase your health, provide healing received, reduced DOT damage and provides resource return. Overall, I think they have a pretty damn good kit. You could even jump into other skill lines from the class to provide further healing and damage reduction. Passives also increase healing, provides ultimate and further increases resource recovery.

Sorc - They don't have a class line for tanking, just have to take a skill or two from their entire kit. I preferred the original bound armor to what we have now. Each to their own I guess but it one of the skills you would use to help tank. Hurricane would be another for resistances and AoE. Some people in game mentioned we could use Critical surge but I don't see the point with such low crit as a tank. Passives include increased damage, resource recovery, reduced ultimate cost, increased HP if you have a summoning pet active (Does bound armor count?) Blood magic would be grat for self healing but there are no dark magic skills that a tank could use. Unless you spec into Rune prison or encase.

Healer

Necro - Again, they have a class line for healing that have some truly amazing healing. Render flesh are both its morphs are really powerful. Their ultimate truly helps out while you are learning to heal and make mistakes. They can remove negative effects while restoring resources and reducing the cost of your abilities (Ties in well with a Breton) Another skill that can remove negative effects if specced while also healing. Reduced damage taken and several AOE heals. Like the tank, several passive across all skill lines help massively.

Sorc - Doesn't have a class line for healing but you can take a skill or two from their kit. Critical surge could be good if you spec into high crit healing. (Unless I am wrong and doesn't trigger off heals) They can spec into a pet to help out with heals/damage. A shield that only protects them and not their allies. A sorc healer would need to rely on skills from non class skill lines.

As you can see, I don't have a high opinion of Sorc when it comes to healing and tanking. Am I wrong? Prove it!

Stam DD

Necro - Necro has a nice mix of ST & AOE skills that can be morphed into Stam. Not a huge fan of Blastbones, the delay in it exploding feels off. Detonating Siphon is an amazing DOT AOE though it would be nice if the duration was shown.The passives in gravelord help reduce the resource cost, provides penetration, has an amazing execute phase and provides DOT damage increase. Using skills from the other skill lines you can be both tanky and self self healing. Rotation will seem clunky if blastbones spazzes out and just stands infront of the enemy. Build for DOT would be great.

Sorc - Again, not many skills that have a stamina morph. Hurricane and Bound Armaments are the two main ones. Passives in the Storm calling tree help out with DPS but overall would have to rely on skills from other non class skill lines. Can achieve amazing self healing if you spec into crit with Critical Surge. I thoroughly enjoy a 2H build crit build while questing. I blase through mobs easily with the amazing AOE provided with Hurricane, reverse strike and forceful. But Sorc doesn't have any main attack skills useful for Stam DD. Am I missing something? Despite this, I love a 2h Stam sorc set up.

Mag DD

Necro - Like a Stam Necro, blastbones throws it off but has amazing ST & AoE Skills. Execute phase is damn good. Shares many skills with the Stam version. Can focus on healing itself and being tanky a bit more due to Magicka use.

Sorc - This is where I feel Sorc are the best at. Their entire kit is set up for Mag sorc. Has great ST & AOE skills. Can self shield and using non skill lines can self heal. Can either be pet oriented or be without. Can stun/immobilize, resource trade and has an escape skill. A bit disappointed at the loss of the third ability bar.

Overall, I am leaning more towards Necro but Sorc keeps pulling me in. I guess this is because I picked Sorc when the game first came out (Didn't get far or do anything worthwhile) because tanking as a mage look amazing. Which in turn resulted in me playing Stam Sorc as well while levelling. I felt Sorc was better at release then it is now but that is my opinion and lack of experience.

Can you pick apart my post? Tell me where I am right and wrong? Pros and cons of each playing style?

Thank you.

Juhasow · November 2019

Flip a coin.

starkerealm · November 2019

TheBigBadDoom wrote: »

Sorc - They don't have a class line for tanking, just have to take a skill or two from their entire kit. I preferred the original bound armor to what we have now. Each to their own I guess but it one of the skills you would use to help tank. Hurricane would be another for resistances and AoE. Some people in game mentioned we could use Critical surge but I don't see the point with such low crit as a tank. Passives include increased damage, resource recovery, reduced ultimate cost, increased HP if you have a summoning pet active (Does bound armor count?) Blood magic would be grat for self healing but there are no dark magic skills that a tank could use. Unless you spec into Rune prison or encase.

Encase is huge for a Sorc Tank. It's actually one of the best tanking CCs in the game.

Okay, so part of the job for a tank in ESO is add management. You move enemies around with Chains (DK), or Silver Leash (Fighter's Guild morph of Silver Bolts), but then you need a way to hold them in place. For the Warden and DK, that's Talons and Gripping Shards, but both of those are point black AoEs. Sorcs and Necros both have conal immobalizations (Encase and Grave Grasp), so you can root the adds and then pull them in.

In this context, Encase is really good, and really slick. And it heals you via blood magic, because it wasn't convenient enough.

But, you don't need Blood Magic to heal you, you already have an amazing heal: The Clanfear.

Okay, so this one's a bit weird, every tank benefits from having a health scaling self heal. The clanfear does that, and it's a strong heal on a tank. The only downside is, it needs to be double barred, and needs to be recast after you die (which isn't something that should be happening, but, it will.)

Finally, you've got one of the weirder tank abilities in the game: Bolt Escape.

So, being able to move your tank around in a fight is pretty important. Having the ability to gap close is useful. But, having the ability to gap close to empty space is shockingly useful in some fights. This is a really weird ability to highlight for a tank, and has a very high skill floor to use, but it's a shockingly useful skill, under the right circumstances, once you get the hang of it.

TheBigBadDoom · November 2019

@starkerealm Thank you for your input.

I haven't had that much experience when it comes to tanking so you have opened my eyes to those skills. Encase does sound like it would be helpful and like you said it triggers Blood Magic. Like Clanfear, I've never seen other Sorc tanks use them while I'm a DPS or healer.

Doesn't the Cleanfear being double barred gimp you out of a skill though? One that could be more beneficial? The 10% HP increase would be great and I believe it would prove more health than the Necromancer's passive that provides a flat 2k increase?

If you may answer another question, when the game first came out there were resistance hard caps which meant that a Sorc could wear light armor while using Bound armor & boundless storm. I imagne that has changed?

And does any tank benefit from using a ice staff?

starkerealm · November 2019

Tanks benefit from the ice staff, but it's not ideal. Wall of Ice does fill a similar role to Grave Grasp and Encase. So if you already have that, it's not that useful.

The heavy attack taunt simply takes too long in endgame content. So you're better off with inner fire or pierce armor. (S&B)

Honestly, for taunting, you're going to want Pierce Armor anyway, because it debuffs the target with Major Fracture and Breach. There are other ways to apply those debuffs, but putting them on your taunt is just efficient. Usually you'll follow that with Inner Fire for ranged taunting, because it's just a fire and forget ability. If you need to taunt an add (or the boss) off the DPS, you need that now, not a couple seconds from now.

The necro gets 1250 from Last Gasp. A sorc tank will get a minimum of 3k health, and an increase to health and stam recovery, off of their Clanfear. It will also swing with a serious self-heal. (Though, fair warning, I haven't double checked that the self heal was unaltered in the latest patch, and the game is down for maintenance right now.)

As for why you don't see it? I don't know. Used to be, pets were non-ideal for sorc tanks, because they'd take a dirtnap mid fight, and then you'd have nothing except the recovery buffs. Now, they're immune to damage in dungeons and trials, so they have some real utility.

Also, as a tank, it doesn't really gimp your build, because tanks tend to be a lot more flexible than DPS. You're not going to be using the same skills in every encounter, so having a pet that has to be slotted on both bars is less significant than it would be on DPS where you'll need all 10 skill slots.

I kinda suspect the reason you're not seeing the Clanfear is just, sorc tank isn't a popular spec. It works really well, but it's pretty rare among the content creators, so if you're looking for a sorc tank build that's up to date, you might not find one.

starkerealm · November 2019

Oh, I missed the T-Shirt and Shields question. Yeah, back at launch, light armor had much higher resists, closer to heavy armor. So you did see players who pushed their resists to hardcap in light armor. It was a little more complicated than that, and there have been a lot of changes that invalidated those builds.

Fact of the matter is, we're not even on the same stat scaling as those builds. Current characters do build towards the resit cap, which is around 32k.