Why is magsorc getting so much hate in pvp right now?

Nyseto · January 2023

Everyone says it sucks, I thought everything is well balanced in eso. Is it the tanky meta or what?

Casul · January 2023

Nyseto wrote: »

Everyone says it sucks, I thought everything is well balanced in eso. Is it the tanky meta or what?

Where did you hear that everything is well balanced?

I cannot recall a single patch in my 7-8 years where people didn't consider at least one thing over performing.

WuffyCerulei · January 2023

Sorcs have been suffering for awhile in both pvp and pve, but yeah, it's the tanky meta. We don't have the same burst damage in the past, wards get eaten away fast, pets die easily, etc.

fred4 · January 2023

The lack of a reliable / useable burst heal for the most part. Dark Deal / Conversion has a cast time, meaning you can't animation cancel it (into a dodge roll) or block cast it. Timing-wise there is also simply a delay while pets, which can also be used for healing, take up two slots and can be killed.

In the (distant) past, magsorcs used to make up for this by shielding while stamsorcs would dodge roll. Shields have a long history of nerfs and changes. The two death nails that made shields no longer viable were probably CP 2.0 and hybridisation. In order to build for shields you need to spec hard into magicka. To reach 45K+ magicka, you don't have room in the build for much else, e.g. you need to wear purely Alfiq, Ancient Grace, Necropotence, Death Dealer's Fete etc., those kind of sets. The old CP system gave players +20% stats. The new system exchanged that for some puny flat buffs while weapon and spell damage still get buffed by Major Brutality / Sorcery for +20%. Mag-stacking lost that buff. The old CP system was fairer on magicka-stacking builds. You can still match the +20% on a nightblade with Inner Light, a Siphoning skill and Undaunted passives. To achieve the same on a sorc, you'd have to slot a dead / useless skill, Bound Aegis. You can't really afford that. There is no room for a dead skill on the skill bar in addition to Inner Light, not to mention that Inner Light on the back bar, where you likely have your shields, doesn't make much sense either.

Hybridisation, then, gives you new options building for weapon / spell damage instead. You can wear some medium armor. You get a much higher multiplier. Sorc also has a passive (Expert Mage) that buffs that as well and might get Minor Brutality / Sorcery from a group. Hybrid builds are the competition. A high magicka build can't compete with the damage you get out of a weapon / spell damage-stacking build. It's all about the percentage buffs. High mag food and Death Dealer's are flat buffs. They help a weapon / spell damage build as much as a high mag build.

All that said, I don't think sorc is in that bad of a place once you accept that it has become a hybrid class. I'm not sure how good a pure stamsorc is either. A "stamsorc" that uses Curse and the sorc execute however...

Finally I think people bemoan what they have lost. If a high-end player is complaining about magsorc, they may be complaining about the fact they can't 1vX on the class anymore, nor participate in brawls as easily as, well, the brawler classes. I do not necessarily see that as a valid complaint (because I do not subscribe to ZOS' "play as you want on every class" philosophy). As far as I can see sorc can still be very strong 1v1.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

Nyseto wrote: »

Everyone says it sucks, I thought everything is well balanced in eso. Is it the tanky meta or what?

The class is in a very bad spot at the moment. It's a combination of lots of factors and changes that have been implemented over the years.

1. Every buff to the class that has stuck around for longer than 1 patch has been to niche builds such as pets and heavy attacks.
2. healing/defense is horribly underpowered compared to other classes (for pvp) and tied to horrible and punishing mechanics
- cast times which prevents block casting and ani-cancelling heals with dodge rolls which every other class can do
- interruptible which hard locks the skills for 3 seconds
- don't scale with stats (dark deal/conversion)
- tied to pets which are easy to 1 shot with horrible AI and take up multiple bar slots leaving heavily limited bar space for other utility
- in class HoT tied to dealing critical damage meaning it does nothing when you're on the defensive and trying to survive with your defensive rotation.
3. The rework of damage/healing to heavily favor scaling with weapon/spell damage instead of max stats meaning if you build for the classes defensive options (shield), you lose out on damage and healing power.
4. Everything it does is unreliable outside of curse due to many of its counters being made much more accessible/cheaper (dodge roll, block) or just flat out affected by bugs (gap closer bugs) or lag (which makes abilities just completely fail to register.
5. The classes that do well against it are currently top tier
- NB with cloak, high mobility and huge burst damage
- warden with insane healing, mitigation, cleanse, damage reflection and strong burst
- DK who are naturally tanky and can generally shrug off anything a sorc tries to do with their full heal and can easily lock down sorcerers with their large array of CC options.
6. the class has received plenty of nerfs over the years because it had the ability to "abuse" sets that were broken/overtuned which was not the fault of the class but the fault of the broken/overtuned sets that were never balanced properly in the first place (see oakensoul and savage werewolf).

Lastly, there has always been a rivalry between NB and sorc, but many players and commenters tend to take this rivalry too far and just straight up hate on the class due to their bias, even when it's not in a good spot.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

As far as I can see sorc can still be very strong 1v1.

The main issue with this argument is that in its current state it requires a master of the class to perform at that level, while the top 3 classes (DK, den and NB) perform at that level for even the weakest of players and even plar and cro can do decent enough on average to decent players thanks to their better/more reliable defensive kit.

Templar and necro definitely need some help for offense, but they at least have the survivability of the top classes to help partially carry them while players learn how to get better on those 2 classes.

fred4 · January 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

As far as I can see sorc can still be very strong 1v1.

The main issue with this argument is that in its current state it requires a master of the class to perform at that level.

No. I got to disagree hard on that, because of the sheer damage that I've been hit with. Talking CP open world here. My NB has an Incap tooltip of 15K with only Major Sorcery. More, if I have other buffs up (Merciless, Concealed, Continuous Attack etc.). About 9K pen. I hit a sorc with a 4.5K crit incap. They hit me back in the same second, with a crit Crystal Weapon for 9K. Both unblocked. Both crits. I'm talking FTC combat log here, not some ZOS death recap.

Crystal Weapon has the damage of an AOE skill on the first hit now. It is not very good, except to construct burst. However I'm not comparing burst here. I'm comparing individual skills. If I compare Incap Strike to my AOE skills on the NB, Incap is about 2.2 times stronger. Now my physical resistance is very low. Let's say my effective resistance was zero in this particular exchange. I accept that I may be hit for 9K by a crit AOE grade skill at the high end. What doesn't tally is that the attacker has so much crit resist and/or physical resist, they mitigate my crit Incap down to 4.5K at the same time. They weren't running Rallying Cry as far as I could see, and they definitely weren't wearing Imperial Physique. Also this was in IC, so they weren't emp. They had no issue sustaining either, judging by the amount of streaking going on.

This is not the only sorc I've noticed hits that hard. I've seen another take apart a tanky warden, forcing them totally into defense and eventually killing them with pure damage. Also in IC. I had fought the sorc earlier and had a brief tussle with the warden. They seemed decent.

I am sorry, hitting people for 9K with what is effectively an AOE grade skill, while only taking 4.5K damage from the opponent's crit ultimate, is not skill. That's being OP in the given situation. A minimum 15K tooltip on my part isn't super high, but when it crits, it hits squishy people for 10K+. That sorc was not squishy, yet they were doing close to the damage of an all out ganker NB, considering what Crystal Weapon is nowadays. So either that person was a cheater or there are sorc builds or exploits going around that are perhaps not widely known.

To be clear. The player who did indeed kill me shortly afterwards was a good player. He knew how to chase nightblades with Streak. He attacked into my Incap and blocked my subsequent attacks shortly afterwards, like only a good dueller would. I am not complaining about that. I am not complaining about their skill, but it's easy to be confident when you know a crit ulti will only hit you for 4.5K. That is what I take issue with. If you are a sorc and your sorc doesn't work, I suggest you figure out how that is done instead of looking for buffs.

Seraphayel · January 2023

MagSorc never sucked in PvP. In the years since launch MagSorc ist the most consistent spec and basically always in the upper tier. It was never "weak" or "sucked", [snip]

[edited for baiting]

Idinuse · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

As far as I can see sorc can still be very strong 1v1.

The main issue with this argument is that in its current state it requires a master of the class to perform at that level.

No. I got to disagree hard on that, because of the sheer damage that I've been hit with. Talking CP open world here. My NB has an Incap tooltip of 15K with only Major Sorcery. More, if I have other buffs up (Merciless, Concealed, Continuous Attack etc.). About 9K pen. I hit a sorc with a 4.5K crit incap. They hit me back in the same second, with a crit Crystal Weapon for 9K. Both unblocked. Both crits. I'm talking FTC combat log here, not some ZOS death recap.

Crystal Weapon has the damage of an AOE skill on the first hit now. It is not very good, except to construct burst. However I'm not comparing burst here. I'm comparing individual skills. If I compare Incap Strike to my AOE skills on the NB, Incap is about 2.2 times stronger. Now my physical resistance is very low. Let's say my effective resistance was zero in this particular exchange. I accept that I may be hit for 9K by a crit AOE grade skill at the high end. What doesn't tally is that the attacker has so much crit resist and/or physical resist, they mitigate my crit Incap down to 4.5K at the same time. They weren't running Rallying Cry as far as I could see, and they definitely weren't wearing Imperial Physique. Also this was in IC, so they weren't emp. They had no issue sustaining either, judging by the amount of streaking going on.

This is not the only sorc I've noticed hits that hard. I've seen another take apart a tanky warden, forcing them totally into defense and eventually killing them with pure damage. Also in IC. I had fought the sorc earlier and had a brief tussle with the warden. They seemed decent.

I am sorry, hitting people for 9K with what is effectively an AOE grade skill, while only taking 4.5K damage from the opponent's crit ultimate, is not skill. That's being OP in the given situation. A minimum 15K tooltip on my part isn't super high, but when it crits, it hits squishy people for 10K+. That sorc was not squishy, yet they were doing close to the damage of an all out ganker NB, considering what Crystal Weapon is nowadays. So either that person was a cheater or there are sorc builds or exploits going around that are perhaps not widely known.

To be clear. The player who did indeed kill me shortly afterwards was a good player. He knew how to chase nightblades with Streak. He attacked into my Incap and blocked my subsequent attacks shortly afterwards, like only a good dueller would. I am not complaining about that. I am not complaining about their skill, but it's easy to be confident when you know a crit ulti will only hit you for 4.5K. That is what I take issue with. If you are a sorc and your sorc doesn't work, I suggest you figure out how that is done instead of looking for buffs.

I would really like to know that Sorc's build. especially dishing out that damage/mitigation and still having Max Resource to streak around.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

As far as I can see sorc can still be very strong 1v1.

The main issue with this argument is that in its current state it requires a master of the class to perform at that level.

No. I got to disagree hard on that, because of the sheer damage that I've been hit with. Talking CP open world here. My NB has an Incap tooltip of 15K with only Major Sorcery. More, if I have other buffs up (Merciless, Concealed, Continuous Attack etc.). About 9K pen. I hit a sorc with a 4.5K crit incap. They hit me back in the same second, with a crit Crystal Weapon for 9K. Both unblocked. Both crits. I'm talking FTC combat log here, not some ZOS death recap.

Crystal Weapon has the damage of an AOE skill on the first hit now. It is not very good, except to construct burst. However I'm not comparing burst here. I'm comparing individual skills. If I compare Incap Strike to my AOE skills on the NB, Incap is about 2.2 times stronger. Now my physical resistance is very low. Let's say my effective resistance was zero in this particular exchange. I accept that I may be hit for 9K by a crit AOE grade skill at the high end. What doesn't tally is that the attacker has so much crit resist and/or physical resist, they mitigate my crit Incap down to 4.5K at the same time. They weren't running Rallying Cry as far as I could see, and they definitely weren't wearing Imperial Physique. Also this was in IC, so they weren't emp. They had no issue sustaining either, judging by the amount of streaking going on.

This is not the only sorc I've noticed hits that hard. I've seen another take apart a tanky warden, forcing them totally into defense and eventually killing them with pure damage. Also in IC. I had fought the sorc earlier and had a brief tussle with the warden. They seemed decent.

I am sorry, hitting people for 9K with what is effectively an AOE grade skill, while only taking 4.5K damage from the opponent's crit ultimate, is not skill. That's being OP in the given situation. A minimum 15K tooltip on my part isn't super high, but when it crits, it hits squishy people for 10K+. That sorc was not squishy, yet they were doing close to the damage of an all out ganker NB, considering what Crystal Weapon is nowadays. So either that person was a cheater or there are sorc builds or exploits going around that are perhaps not widely known.

To be clear. The player who did indeed kill me shortly afterwards was a good player. He knew how to chase nightblades with Streak. He attacked into my Incap and blocked my subsequent attacks shortly afterwards, like only a good dueller would. I am not complaining about that. I am not complaining about their skill, but it's easy to be confident when you know a crit ulti will only hit you for 4.5K. That is what I take issue with. If you are a sorc and your sorc doesn't work, I suggest you figure out how that is done instead of looking for buffs.

This sounds like a typical sea serpents build. That unique 40% reduction on the first hit when at full health + the major courage + berserk when that procs sounds exactly like what you have described and is the reason that sea-serpent is BiS for PvP. 40% reduction on incap would put your crit at about 8-9k without that damage reduction (which lines up correctly with your stated 10k crits against squishys) and major courage + berserk is 10% +430 damage increase which is a lot.

You also mentioned you are on a squishy build, I never said that sorc damage is bad, I said it is unreliable (I said it's healing is bad and defense which gets carried by maras/seaserpent/CP), if you do get hit by its damage, especially if it crits, it will hurt, but getting the damage to land is the main issue for the classes offense. Crystal weapon also has the 1k pen, this stacked with high pen (maul/double maces) will hit hard on anyone. 9K on a crit against a squishy build with low/no armor also sounds about right, most spammables will hit (even concealed) for much harder under the same circumstances.

9k pen is also very low if not backed up by breech, most pen builds that don't use breech aim for 12-15k pen min. With basic armor values on all competent pvp builds will be 27k (before sea serpent) with some building up to/past cap, so even if you crit, the base damage has likely been reduce by a lot before accounting for crit boost.

Lastly, that incap sounds kinda low tbh. I've seen easy 20k tooltips and hit squishy folk with my hybrid blade incap for near 15k fairly frequently. There's also spec bow which hits as hard as the entire sorc burst combo on its own (which you can see on just about any thread here on the forums where it hits tanks for near 30k).

There are a couple of hybrid sorc builds running around, but nothing as broken as dk/warden/nb and most use DW masters bleed dot, which is common on a lot of pvp builds currently since it's the strongest sticky dot in the game after the nerf to every dot. The only sorc main that I know of that could pull off what you have described is a guildie of mine that runs a stam focused hybrid sorc and he's an insanely good sorc main that is very strong on the class.

Don't get me wrong, I know you're a good player and definitely well above average, but if they were the one I'm thinking of, they are right up there at the top, to the point that most (even other top players) don't bother trying to mess with them most of the time. That sorc has also likely optimised for IC and accounted for nbs in general with appropriate CP slotted to pair with sea-serpents damage reduction.

A follow up, what you described for that warden sounds similar to a build I run on my hybrid sorc, which is a good build, but definitely carried by the build and players skill and not by the class itself. It is also very squishy if it gets locked down by hard CC (stun/knockback) for any meaningful length of time (especially in lag such as GH cyro), so against a warden that is mostly soft CC (immobilize), it's not a surprise that it can beat out a warden in the hands of a good player.

TL//DR, it sounds like you hit a sea-serpent hybrid build and your incap landed first (and got reduced by 40%) which gave them major berserk (+10%) + major courage (+430) to hit you back hard with their crystal weapon on your squishy build.

fred4 · January 2023

Idinuse wrote: »

I would really like to know that Sorc's build. especially dishing out that damage/mitigation and still having Max Resource to streak around.

Well. I kept a combat log screenshot from the encounter. It is actually rather strange.

He had hit me with Burning a few seconds earlier for 400 non-crit. This ticked every 2 seconds, then ran out.
A crit Haunting Curse for 2886, not very high at all.
Two seconds later he then hits me with an Inferno light attack, which procs a slew of things that I cannot fully explain: Concussion, Chill, Burning for 600 non crit (50% higher), Crystal Weapon for 8941, as well as - get this - Ravage Health and Creeping Ravage Health, e.g. double DOT poison, all at the exact same time. How does he get to proc all those status effects AND a poison via a light attack? We're not talking Force Shock / Asylum staff here.
He is hit by my Incap at the same time. FTC combat log registers this before his light attack and shows it as not blocked. However he blocks my Concealed in the next second, which still hits him for 2897. It is impossible to tell whether that was a crit, or not.

I wonder whether FTC is always correct. A flame light attack has a brief travel time. I guess it is possible that, server side, he was blocking when my Incap hit and that FTC is not showing this correctly. That would explain the low Incap in relation to the Concealed. If both were in fact blocked, it would solve that mystery. I have new questions, though:

How do you proc a poison and 3 unrelated status effects at the same time from one light attack?
How do you up your damage by 50% from one second (Burning / Haunting Curse) to the next? Would bar swap and Clever Alchemist be enough? Plus Concussion and Chill? It's not Balorgh. No ult was being used.

fred4 · January 2023

@Turtle_Bot, Sea Serpent sounds plausible. I got to start recording my sessions, so I can analyze this stuff properly. I should be able to see a blue flame above his head, right?

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot, Sea Serpent sounds plausible. I got to start recording my sessions, so I can analyze this stuff properly. I should be able to see a blue flame above his head, right?

yes, there should be a blue flame above their head if sea serpent has proc'd

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

Idinuse wrote: »

I would really like to know that Sorc's build. especially dishing out that damage/mitigation and still having Max Resource to streak around.

Well. I kept a combat log screenshot from the encounter. It is actually rather strange.
He had hit me with Burning a few seconds earlier for 400 non-crit. This ticked every 2 seconds, then ran out.

A crit Haunting Curse for 2886, not very high at all.

Two seconds later he then hits me with an Inferno light attack, which procs a slew of things that I cannot fully explain: Concussion, Chill, Burning for 600 non crit (50% higher), Crystal Weapon for 8941, as well as - get this - Ravage Health and Creeping Ravage Health, e.g. double DOT poison, all at the exact same time. How does he get to proc all those status effects AND a poison via a light attack? We're not talking Force Shock / Asylum staff here.

He is hit by my Incap at the same time. FTC combat log registers this before his light attack and shows it as not blocked. However he blocks my Concealed in the next second, which still hits him for 2897. It is impossible to tell whether that was a crit, or not.

I wonder whether FTC is always correct. A flame light attack has a brief travel time. I guess it is possible that, server side, he was blocking when my Incap hit and that FTC is not showing this correctly. That would explain the low Incap in relation to the Concealed. If both were in fact blocked, it would solve that mystery. I have new questions, though:
How do you proc a poison and 3 unrelated status effects at the same time from one light attack?

How do you up your damage by 50% from one second (Burning / Haunting Curse) to the next? Would bar swap and Clever Alchemist be enough? Plus Concussion and Chill? It's not Balorgh. No ult was being used.

this just sounds like they got lucky and had everything proc at once for this hit (double dot poison from equipped poison, burning because the light attack is flame damage and crystal weapon).

As far as I know, the only "procs" that cannot proc at the same time are from proc sets, not status and poisons which have their own cooldowns.

50% increase in damage on burning is likely from sea serpents if that is the case, 10% from berserk + 430 base which gets boosted a lot after percentages are calculated.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

hmm, inferno staff could be an older build that focuses on stacking status and crystal weapon to line up all at once for a nice burst. Good damage, but again can be avoided like all of sorcs damage by rolling, blocking, cloak, reflected, etc.

But at melee range it's harder to avoid same as most damage due to the travel distance being super short.

Also, never discount server performance as a factor. Even when things seem to be working fine, there could be issues on either players end or even at the servers end and as a result the server has to calculate based on conflicting data, so it's also likely he was blocking but it doesn't show it on your end due to delay between them, the server and you.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot, Sea Serpent sounds plausible. I got to start recording my sessions, so I can analyze this stuff properly. I should be able to see a blue flame above his head, right?

yes, there should be a blue flame above their head if sea serpent has proc'd

note here that it should appear above their head. It might not always be super obvious, but it should be there.

Sometimes it might not appear as obvious due to a mechanic called "shading" (good DK's hide their corrosive and mech acuity proc this way with coag) which is where a skill that changes the players colours/transparency can be used to hide specific proc body visuals. It might be possible to mostly hide some visual effects with sorc lightning form and NB blur similar to the DK coag explained above.

It could also just as easily be the server failing to display the visual (very common bug, affects all aspects of the game, especially siege fire and AoEs). So just because it's not visible doesn't mean it's definitely not there. In a properly working game with no bugs/lag though it would appear every time, even if barely noticeable due to attempting to shade the visual.

KilianDermoth · January 2023

fred4 wrote: »

Concussion, Chill, Burning for 600 non crit (50% higher)

All 3 status effects sounds exactly like Elemental Susceptibility has procced, maybe at the exact same moment a light attack (with poisoned weapons) has hit you, maybe both was even woven at the same GCD (not sure if the initial hit also applies the status effects, if not then it was cast exactly 6 seconds or a multiple of 6 seconds before). And its very likely that he was running this skill, because its one of the 3 non class skills that provides Major Breach and Sorcs have to rely on a non class skill to get Major Breach because they dont have a class major breach like almost any other class (they barely have any buffs / debuffs at all in their toolkit). Also major breach might increase the damage noticeably, especially if other stuff like Sea Serpents Coil also proc.

If you dont know this skill you can look it up here: https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php?id=41556

fred4 wrote: »

I am not complaining about that. I am not complaining about their skill, but it's easy to be confident when you know a crit ulti will only hit you for 4.5K. That is what I take issue with. If you are a sorc and your sorc doesn't work, I suggest you figure out how that is done instead of looking for buffs.

Just that this isnt a Sorc thing for sure, because Sorcs dont have such defensive tools and you could probably do the same on any other class, too, which btw. even had further defensive tools on top of that.

And such descriptions / complaints about the class are the reason why the class gets nerft more and more and is absolute bottom end at the moment (especially the Mag version). While the power you have seen wasnt the class but more the overall build (gear / non class stuff) and player skill...

I also wonder out of all Sorcs you have seen how many did perform this well? Only this single one? How did all the others perform, especially compared to other classes?

Would the class be finally "balanced" if every Sorc player wouldnt be able to fight against another class and would loose 100% of the time no matter what?

Thormar · January 2023

Why is magsorc getting so much hate right now?

Because they're the only ones who can spell their class name correctly...
I'll see myself out.

fred4 · January 2023

KilianDermoth wrote: »

All 3 status effects sounds exactly like Elemental Susceptibility has procced

OK, I agree. Also makes sense from log timing.

fred4 wrote: »

I am not complaining about that. I am not complaining about their skill, but it's easy to be confident when you know a crit ulti will only hit you for 4.5K. That is what I take issue with. If you are a sorc and your sorc doesn't work, I suggest you figure out how that is done instead of looking for buffs.

And such descriptions / complaints about the class are the reason why the class gets nerft more and more and is absolute bottom end at the moment (especially the Mag version) ...

I feel these are things that need to be brought up. I play stamsorc myself from time to time - more like hybrid sorc nowadays. For me, as a solo player and mostly magblade, it is still the second best option to play and a lot of fun. I am not at the level described here, but neither am I on my nightblade. For me the classes are a lot closer. Cloak and mobility, e.g. Streak, are very powerful in PvP. These are assets that IMO rightfully carry a price. I therefore actually feel it is not fair that either of these classes should be quite as 1vX capable as the others, in other words that it's correct sorc, and (stam)blade for that matter, are or be taken down a peg from historical highs in that capacity. When you say "sorc is bottom of the barrel", what are you referring to? Is it 1vX potential? Because what I see is that a prominent YouTuber, Malcolm, has branched out to other classes, because he can't do that easily anymore on magsorc. I actually think that's fair. I am not advocating for nerfs. I even agree that sorc could use a burst heal, although I'm not sure. I think Dark Deal forcing you to create distance or LoS to use as a heal, possibly using Streak, is a sorc design feature, deliberately implemented by ZOS that way. At any rate, if you think I'm hyperbolic, so is calling the class bottom of the barrel. At least I gave a concrete example and this thread, you and others, have cleared up a bunch of things for me that I needed to work through. Thank you. This is where my reservations are coming from. Can't really not discuss them.

I also wonder out of all Sorcs you have seen how many did perform this well? Only this single one? How did all the others perform, especially compared to other classes?

This month in IC: 3 (PC EU CP).

Would the class be finally "balanced" if every Sorc player wouldnt be able to fight against another class and would loose 100% of the time no matter what?

That is not what I am asking and clearly not where we're at now.

KilianDermoth · January 2023

Crystal Weapon can be Cast before it Procs (it Procs on the next light Attack).
And with Light Attack Weaving you also can cast a Skill on top of the light attack (and the crystal Frag Proc).
All 3 Status Effects (+ Major Breach) at once can be easily caused by Elemental Sussceptibility.
Poisons Proc from Light Attacks.

So Everything can hit you at the exact same time, even more could, for example Hunting Curse could also Proc at this moment one or even multiple Proc Sets could. Crystal Weapon could for example also Proc the physical status effect which would also apply Minor Breach.

Using Imbue Weapon (Psijic) Skill Line, you could even reproduce this on literally any class (except Hunting Curse, but most classes have other Tools like Shalks or Blastbones for example).

Btw. Major Breach (6k) + Minor Breach (3k) + Crystal Weapon (1k) + Force of Nature (if CP) would even reduce your Armor by 10k-13k, probably other Procs that boost the damage further which will cause anything hitting you afterwards hit you much harder than before.

Quackery · January 2023

Magicka sorcerers nowadays are a pale imitation of what it used to be. What ZOS needs to do is go back on the changes it made and restore the class.

* Restore stun on crystal fragments.
* Restore burst damage on Daedric Tomb so all mines can be triggered at once. This helps a lot when fighting against
Dragonknights in tight areas like at flags in keeps where we are at a severe disadvantage.
* Restore the 3'rd bar.
* Let the magicka morphs be based on max magicka insted of spell damage. Our shields need to be restored to what they
were.
* Enough with the hybridization! Create new classes instead of destroying the current ones or implement a third morph!
* Pets need to be 1 bar instead of 2 bars.

Holycannoli · January 2023

Nyseto wrote: »

I thought everything is well balanced in eso

From what I'm hearing it's tanky DKs that are getting the hate in this new U35 meta, and "hate" may not be the correct term because if they were so hated then why are so many playing tanky DKs lol.

Magsorcs don't get hate, stamsorcs get laughed at, templars are cried over. Only nightblades seem to be more or less "balanced" right now. They needed a buff and they got a buff but not so much that they're overpowered and breaking PvP like the tanky DK meta.

AdamLAD · January 2023

It gets hate because people hate fighting players who abuse Streak and when they use wards can't see health go down so it gives them the false sence they are doing no damage. It's annoying for some players. However in reality Wards are Trash. The only saving grace is Streak for a mag sorc in this current eso state. I propose

Allow shields to scale from spell/weapon damage as well as max stats on top, just like healing. Lower the cost of Shields significantly. Give frags stun back and increase projectile speed vastly. Rework and buff our passives significantly. Increase the cost of streak/BoL ramping from 33% to 66%. Boom Magicka Sorcerer fixed. (Cloak on nb surly needs ramping cost also ?)

Stam Sorcerer is in a better spot however still not great. Its burst potential is good however it lacks healing. I'd Allow critical surge to have a passive overtime heal aswell as it's current crit damage healing. I'd also make darkdeal scale from wep/spell damage. Boom Stamina Sorcerer fixed

Anyone who plays stamina sorcerer let me know if this would be good enough. Because do not play it, however with better passives, extra HoT and Darkdeal/morphs scaling I genuinely think it would be in a good place.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · January 2023

Hate as in sorcs are too strong right now? That is laughable. Hate as in sorcs are trash tier in PVP right now? That seems about right.

Its all been said, but shields are the lowest form of defense in ESO, a dodge roll negates their entire burst combo, sorc self heals are laughably out of touch with how PVP functions, they have the most cramped bars of any class, and they objectively have the worst access to major/minor buffs.

Sorcs are basically good at three things. Nuking unsuspecting Pugs from range, Running from a fight, catching gankers (assuming they survive the gank).

AdamLAD · January 2023

Thecompton73 · January 2023

Lastly, that incap sounds kinda low tbh. I've seen easy 20k tooltips and hit squishy folk with my hybrid blade incap for near 15k fairly frequently. There's also spec bow which hits as hard as the entire sorc burst combo on its own (which you can see on just about any thread here on the forums where it hits tanks for near 30k).[/quote]

Sorry but I really feel the need to point out that is an exaggeration to say it's hitting tanks that hard. My NB has maybe 11K phys/spell resist unbuffed and only 1100 crit resist and the hardest the skill has ever hit me for was 31K. Which is still kinda crazy but a tank with 30K phys/spell and 3500 crit resist is gonna take half that.

fizzylu · January 2023

I feel like they've been chipping away at magsorc since Greymoor and the direction they've taken combat just doesn't work with it nearly as well as it does other classes. In my opinion, at this point it's a high skill cap/low reward class; it always feels like I'm doing way more on a sorcerer than any other class, but getting way less out of it. I still play one since my main is one, but it hasn't been fun for a while now.

olsborg · January 2023

Balance has never been perfect over these 7-8 years its true, but the last 2 or 3 years has been the worst by far, there was the magplar meta and then the magdk meta and now the warden meta. Something these last 2 years has been grossly overpowered and the worst thing is...it stays like that for 3-6 months, terrible.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Lastly, that incap sounds kinda low tbh. I've seen easy 20k tooltips and hit squishy folk with my hybrid blade incap for near 15k fairly frequently. There's also spec bow which hits as hard as the entire sorc burst combo on its own (which you can see on just about any thread here on the forums where it hits tanks for near 30k).

Sorry but I really feel the need to point out that is an exaggeration to say it's hitting tanks that hard. My NB has maybe 11K phys/spell resist unbuffed and only 1100 crit resist and the hardest the skill has ever hit me for was 31K. Which is still kinda crazy but a tank with 30K phys/spell and 3500 crit resist is gonna take half that.

Sorry, but I really need to point out here that applying your own limited biases to try and claim something as "false" is just nonsense. Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't or cannot happen.

There was an entire thread about this from a player not that long ago (late december iirc) who claimed to be a tanky player (33k+ resist, 2400+ crit resist) who got hit for near 30k spec bow.

Granted most NB spec bows won't hit for that much, since most players cannot/will not build for it, but, again, that doesn't mean that it cannot or does not happen.

Turtle_Bot · January 2023

fizzylu wrote: »

I feel like they've been chipping away at magsorc since Greymoor and the direction they've taken combat just doesn't work with it nearly as well as it does other classes. In my opinion, at this point it's a high skill cap/low reward class; it always feels like I'm doing way more on a sorcerer than any other class, but getting way less out of it. I still play one since my main is one, but it hasn't been fun for a while now.

they definitely have been doing this. It got so bad on week 1 of U35 PTS cycle that they had to buff 2 skills by roughly a 100% increase in damage during the last weeks of U35 PTS because they overnerfed the class so hard that, according to their spreadsheets, it was completely unplayable, even in pve.

For those who are not aware, after the extremely heavy handed nerfs to atro, mines, crystal weapon, dark deal/conversion and just about everything else in the class kit during week 1 of U35 PTS, there were 2 absurd buffs that were given to the class in final weeks of the PTS.

During week 1 of that PTS cycle they nerfed bound armaments damage by 50% and removed the 10% buff to light attack damage, this nerf was so over the top that they reverted the damage nerf in week 4/5 of that same pts cycle.

They also buffed the debuff from daedric prey that increases the damage pets deal to the target up from 20% (or was it 25%) to 45% in that same week they reverted the changes to bound armaments.

They also slightly increased the heal of dark conversion, but also increased its cost significantly (roughly 20%) at the same time, so this wasn't a buff that helped the class in any way.

They were forced to do this because they went so overboard with their nerfing of sorc in week 1 U35 PTS, that the only way to make it playable, even by their spreadsheet standards, in such a short timeframe without breaking the class was to essentially revert the nerf to BA and buff the pve focused prey morph by roughly 100% just to keep the class at a playable level.

It's why I find the whole "sorc OP" nonsense from many on the forums completely absurd and outdated. How can a class that had to have 2 skills essentially buffed by 100% just to make it playable by zos standards, could be considered OP by anyone is beyond me.

Especially when we were promised buffs to the class to help it in all areas of the game in those final weeks and here we are over half way through the following update (U36) and still got no long term buffs or changes (or even any ideas put forward by the devs to this effect) to the class kit that fixes their over zealous gutting of the class back in U35.

Everything that is making sorc look strong currently is purely from non class abilities and item sets, the only class ability that has kept any semblance of power is streak and even that has many issues with the current state of performance in the game.

fred4 · January 2023

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Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Lastly, that incap sounds kinda low tbh. I've seen easy 20k tooltips and hit squishy folk with my hybrid blade incap for near 15k fairly frequently. There's also spec bow which hits as hard as the entire sorc burst combo on its own (which you can see on just about any thread here on the forums where it hits tanks for near 30k).

Sorry but I really feel the need to point out that is an exaggeration to say it's hitting tanks that hard. My NB has maybe 11K phys/spell resist unbuffed and only 1100 crit resist and the hardest the skill has ever hit me for was 31K. Which is still kinda crazy but a tank with 30K phys/spell and 3500 crit resist is gonna take half that.

Sorry, but I really need to point out here that applying your own limited biases to try and claim something as "false" is just nonsense. Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't or cannot happen.

There was an entire thread about this from a player not that long ago (late december iirc) who claimed to be a tanky player (33k+ resist, 2400+ crit resist) who got hit for near 30k spec bow.

Granted most NB spec bows won't hit for that much, since most players cannot/will not build for it, but, again, that doesn't mean that it cannot or does not happen.

Yes, but by the same token I have been hit hard by 3 sorcs lately and have seen one decimate an apparently tanky warden. Your argument basically falls prey to the same problems as mine when you cherry pick a particular incident. I think those are worth analyzing, but possibilities for someone hitting really hard include the target being debuffed, just as I was debuffed with Concussion and Chilled. They include the attacker being in an organised group and systematically buffed as trial players would do in PvE. I ran into a sorc that I suspected of this once and man did they hit hard. I've also been DK leaped for damage numbers I found hard to explain. Finally I heard someone mention a Cyro (defensive? home keep?) buff that is apparently really strong (30%). This is something I had never heard of, mentioned in passing (I'm not sure it's real), but I've certainly heard of being emp or being in a buff campaign, where your faction holds all the scrolls.

Merciless is not stacked burst in the same sense as other delayed burst skills are. (Mag)sorc is the orginal poster child for having two delayed, stackable burst skills (Curse, Wrath/Fury) as well as a damage proc (Crystal Frags). They also have 3 damage passives, Energized, Amplitude and Expert Mage as well as Minor Prophecy. That is probably why sorc synergises well with weapon skills. It gets more out of them than other classes. Nightblade also has good damage buffs, but not all classes do. My Brawler PvE tank sorc does significantly more damage on a trial dummy than my DK Brawler tank with a similar build and skills. It's 27K versus 21K.

Could you state what changes you think sorc really needs? What would you settle for that you think is fair? We may well be in agreement on that. Clearly, though, all of Quackery's above list is never going to happen.

If sorc is the class that enables easy Oakensoul PvE beginner builds with pets and those aren't used in PvP, I personally would have no problem with that. If skills are niche, but are genuinely useful in their niche, I don't see a problem. If sorc fills only half their skill bar with sorc skills, I personally don't see that as a problem either. I don't see that as sorc lacking identity, because Streak, Dark Deal and, to a lesser extent, Crit Surge, Hurricane, Frags and Curse are iconic skills that are strong in either PvP or PvE. The former two really have an impact on how you play, while Crit Surge is extremely strong in PvE solo play.

With that said, let's look at what I'd consider the less useful PvP skills:

The shield. That playstyle has just gone the way of the dodo. I don't think ZOS ever knew how to balance shields (neither do I). In the end they took the easy way out by making them obsolete.
Mines used to be a staple that, I'm guessing, went with the shielding playstyle?
The two CC skills (Encase, Rune Prison), which I actually have no perspective on. Again, I think dedicated CC skills have kind of gone the way of the dodo too. Many DKs prefer Shattering Rocks over Fossilize, e.g. they're looking for a heal. Mass Hysteria is rare. Arctic Blast is also a heal. Perhaps there is a theme here. Vigor is a must have in many builds. There's no bar space. People would rather slot heals than a CC that doesn't heal?
Bound Armor (either morph), I agree, is kind of a crap skill. Depending on your build it can be hard not to slot it for the skill and skill line passives. As an active skill it's kind of miserable, even if I do feel the pressure (not burst) when attacked with it. Statistically it probably gets slotted a good bit (the stamina morph) and ZOS is happy.

So what are the priorities? Changes to Dark Deal for more healing? I'd personally hate if Dark Deal lost it's flavor as a sustain skill and, I hate to say it, as a channeled skill. Not just for PvP, but for solo PvE and tanking. If you just removed the cast time, I think it would be completely OP in some situations. It would be obscenely OP as a tank, for example. If you prioritsed the healing component over the stamina, then I think that makes the skill much more generic.