Sorcerer matriarch needs changes

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

Hello everyone,

I wanted to talk about something that has been bothering me for a while and I'm pretty sure it's not just me. I'm a PvP healer and have healed with every class and I like Sorcerer and Templar healing the most.

Like every class, sorcs have a burst heal and that is the twilight matriarch (I'm not talking about the unstable clannfear because that is a single target heal so it doesn't affect the group). But there's a big problem with it. Unlike the other classes, Sorcs need to keep their pets alive to use their burst healing, which is really hard since those pets only have 20k health and get killed all the time. From my PvP experiences, I can say that pretty much everyone targets Matriarchs, either because they are in their way or because they know that killing the Matriarch means its owner has no burst healing for a few seconds and has to re-cast their pet. The big problem with this is that people can interrupt someone while recalling their matriarch, which doesn't allow them to recast it for a few seconds, and that leads to death in most cases. I know we're getting a big shield buff in the next patch, but I'm pretty sure even a damage shield won't keep the matriarch alive. There is another problem with this skill that I want to mention. Unlike any other class, Sorcs have to put the Matriarch on both bars, which takes away an extra slot for another skill. I don't think this is "fair" to Sorcs because all other classes don't have to do this.

However, there is a solution to this problem. If ZOS made Matriarch a one-slot skill that can't be killed, and made Summon Winged Twilight a "healing only" skill (so that the Matriarch can't deal damage and can only be used to heal, so no one could make the "but their pets deal damage too" argument), that would solve this problem.
Like I said before, every class has burst healing and it's accessible to all of them without any issues, so why shouldn't Sorcs have it?

axi · February 2023

To be honest barely anyone cares about matriarch damage and personally I have never seen that argument being unironically used against making it one bar ability.

Healing wise matriarch is the strongest crossheal in the game. It have one of the highest tooltips scaling, heals 2 targets for 100% of that tooltip value and covers 28 meters 360 degree area. Basically no other class burstheal have all this things at once and this is why it's a two bar ability tied to a pet that can be killed. To become one slot, with immortal pet, healing itself would have to be nerfed in some way to be comparable with other class's crossheals but then there would be still a dilema of a sorc having shields and reliable burstheals at the same time.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

I agree with you on that about the strength of the healing ... they could easily nerf the healing output though that's not an issue but it's awful for all the sorc players especially for stamsorcs for not having a burst heal that will heal you on time.

Jaraal · February 2023

Matriarch saves a lot of sorc lives as a blocker against those who can’t be bothered to tab target. She also is good for tagging off targets to fill Kill 40 quotas. Also, running Hunt Leader set with Matriarch and Shadowrend pet is really good sustain for stamsorcs, especially if you run Pack Leader ultimate with passive stamina regen.

fizzylu · February 2023

I've always wanted them to add a morph for pets that got rid of the pet and replaced it with the ability the pets "use" that you can just cast on your own; that way people who don't like the pets don't have to use them, but won't miss out on huge parts of their class toolkit. WoW does something slightly similar to this with their warlock class. They can choose to get an ability that allows them to sacrifice their pet in exchange for more base health and a little damage boost. It's just a really nice option for players that can't stand having pets.

RaptorRodeoGod · February 2023

See the nice thing about Matriarch is, since they heavily nerfed Tormentor a patch or two ago, its not as much as a dps loss now in PvE. And personally I enjoy having a skill that deals damage and can function as my burst heal when needed.

And I'm not sure there's a good way to remove having to have it on both bars, like by adding a duration to it, without making it feel too Necromancery.

However, I agree that in general, it would be nice if the Sorc pets could cost less bar space.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

I don't know tbh if it's good to use the matriarch as blocker ... it's not the original intention of that skill/pet and it's awful to die because of the lack of a burst heal. They should really just make it invis or smth cause it's not fair either to use it as a shield

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

They could easily switch it to smth like the betty netch .... smth that flies around with you but is unkillable so it wouldn't bother anyone

AdamLAD · February 2023

The fact people across the board is complaining about sorcerer in all areas really does speak volumes at how truly pathetic the class is 🤣

BretonMage · February 2023

I like my Matriarch as it is.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

Actually what I also thought about earlier was what if the matriarch still takes away 2 slots but is unkillable .... I know it heals 2 friendly targets but that would compensate with the second slot right? They have a lot of alternatives for it ...

I personally like the idea of a matriarch in the size of the warden betty netch and it somehow has a bond between the sorc and itself.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

@ZOS_Kevin what do you think of the idea with the betty netch matriarch?

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

I love sorc healer for pvp.

I don't really have a problem with the Matriarch heal. It makes how this build heals unique. Yes, it can be taken down, but that's time spent attacking your Matriarch and not you, and you're not going to be standing around while someone bursts down your twilight. If they're doing that, you could be applying heavy dot pressure or setting up your deadly sorc burst.

Unless they've changed things drastically since I used to solo pvp, you can also heal your pet and shield them, and line of sight forever. I know that if your pet is taken down you can be in trouble due to the summoning time, but you can take advantage of sorc's great mobility to get away and recast it.

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I love sorc healer for pvp.

I don't really have a problem with the Matriarch heal. It makes how this build heals unique. Yes, it can be taken down, but that's time spent attacking your Matriarch and not you, and you're not going to be standing around while someone bursts down your twilight. If they're doing that, you could be applying heavy dot pressure or setting up your deadly sorc burst.

Unless they've changed things drastically since I used to solo pvp, you can also heal your pet and shield them, and line of sight forever. I know that if your pet is taken down you can be in trouble due to the summoning time, but you can take advantage of sorc's great mobility to get away and recast it.

Sorcs mobility is no longer anywhere near as strong as it used to be.
Everyone has super easy and cheap access to major expedition through:
Race against time
DK chains
Warden wings
NB refreshing path (and concealed weapon giving minor expedition as well)
Also everyone has access to CP such as celerity and the passive speed CP node and the out of combat CP nodes in the green tree, the swift trait on jewelry, wild hunt mythic ring, not to mention the rework proposed for mist form in U37 where that skill essentially becomes the old pre-nerfed ball of lightning but with more and better buffs and passives.

This makes kiting much harder for sorcs as everyone (even full heavy armor clad cros/plars/dks/wardens etc) are easily running around at the move speed cap making it almost impossible to reliably create the distance needed to re-summon the pet.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

@Turtle_Bot I agree on that completely.
Sorcs don't have another burst heal and if the pet is down you're gonna die soon too if you can't recast it on time or get away ... Just to make it clear again ... I'm talking about PvP not PvE .... Streak is a good way to get away from your enemy but it costs a lot which sometimes causes you to not have rss to recast your matriarch

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · February 2023

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I love sorc healer for pvp.

I don't really have a problem with the Matriarch heal. It makes how this build heals unique. Yes, it can be taken down, but that's time spent attacking your Matriarch and not you, and you're not going to be standing around while someone bursts down your twilight. If they're doing that, you could be applying heavy dot pressure or setting up your deadly sorc burst.

Unless they've changed things drastically since I used to solo pvp, you can also heal your pet and shield them, and line of sight forever. I know that if your pet is taken down you can be in trouble due to the summoning time, but you can take advantage of sorc's great mobility to get away and recast it.

No offense but this is wrong. This is probably accurate for most PvP except the high end. I kill the Matriarch pet in about 2 seconds and that's if I'm being lazy fairly quickly. At the very top of Battlegrounds, the Matriarch pet and Sorcs in general are kill on sight. The pet dies so fast that the Sorc has no opportunity to run away because by the time they realize their pet is dying and/or dead, I'm already attacking the Sorc and they're at half health. OP knows what I'm talking about.

I also sympathize and 100% agree with everything OP has said. I'm probably the only player on PC NA who really understands because I spent every day for 2 years doing nothing but healing battlegrounds with a Twilight Matriarch. I've literally played over 5000 battlegrounds with the Matriarch pet. There's only 2 builds that are able to keep the pet alive and those builds are very suboptimal:

10+ pieces of Druid's braid with Hardened Ward (you can't go only max magicka on a healer, you need health as well)
Ultimate regen build for Life Giver spam every 7 seconds

Neither of these builds have enough healing to keep your group alive in a serious Team Deathmatch. The good thing about Sorc healing in Team Deathmatch is that the Matriarch pet actually stays alive if your teammates have good situational awareness. They won't run off in all directions and they'll keep an eye on you and your pet. If the Sorc healer has good positioning then there's very little opportunity for the pet to die because your teammates are usually in between you and the enemy.

But yes I agree something needs to change.

Pet dies too fast
Pet only heals 2 players
Pet requires 2 action bar slots
Pet summon has an interruptable cast
Pet doesn't auto follow after a heavy attack
Pet is ugly with annoying flapping wings (subjective)

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

@SkaraMinoc that's exactly what I've gone through with my sorcheal .... people focus on the matriarch because they know if it dies the owner will die soon ... and as a sorcheal that's probably one of your biggest fears cause it takes away your main healing ability which means you can't provide healing for a few seconds .... I currently run my onebar crit healsorc and you've fought against me in a lot of BGs and you've also seen how fast I wipe if my pet dies... The pet really needs a change and I really hope it will get that soon

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

the interrupt on dark conversion and the summon matriarch are some of the worst designs for abilities. A burst heal should never be able to reach a point where you don't have access to it for up to 8 seconds.

Dark conversion
1 second cast time, if interrupted, it hard locks for 3 seconds and stuns you, then another 1 second cast time which when this ends is when you finally get the heal (that's 5 seconds total duration before that heal applies its heal to you)

Matriarch
1.5 second channel time (2 GCDs, so essentially 2 seconds), if interrupted, it hard locks for 3 seconds and stuns you, then another 1.5 second channel time (again 2 GCDs, so 2 more seconds) then 1 more second to be able to actually cast the heal (this gives a total 8 seconds before you are actually healed, there's no way to put enough distance between yourself and someone else to last that long without a heal in modern pvp).

It's this on top of being forced to use 2 bar slots to use matriarch is why almost all of the top sorcs that don't play in large groups don't go with matriarch and instead go with their preferred dark conversion morph even with its halved healing value of any other class heal.

Imagine the outcry if coag, offering, HtD, flesh and arctic all had these sorts of cast times and downsides such as requiring 2 bar slots to use them. There would be complete outrage from the entire community and yet everyone on the forums screams "sorc OP" whenever anyone wants to try and bring up the idea for sorc to get this same option that the other classes all have.

Ren_TheRedFox · February 2023

@Turtle_Bot some people say that we could use the upcoming better version of the shield to "keep" ourselves and the matriarch alive but I don't think it's "fair" towards all the healsorcs to use 3 slots just to be able to have a burst heal ... yes dark deal is a great skill but it doesn't even have space on my skill bars because of the other healing skills .... soo yeah

Auldwulfe · February 2023

axi wrote: »

To be honest barely anyone cares about matriarch damage and personally I have never seen that argument being unironically used against making it one bar ability.

Healing wise matriarch is the strongest crossheal in the game. It have one of the highest tooltips scaling, heals 2 targets for 100% of that tooltip value and covers 28 meters 360 degree area. Basically no other class burstheal have all this things at once and this is why it's a two bar ability tied to a pet that can be killed. To become one slot, with immortal pet, healing itself would have to be nerfed in some way to be comparable with other class's crossheals but then there would be still a dilema of a sorc having shields and reliable burstheals at the same time.

Except that it is a reliable heal for the Sorcerer, and depending on party size, the party as well --

Auldwulfe

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I love sorc healer for pvp.

I don't really have a problem with the Matriarch heal. It makes how this build heals unique. Yes, it can be taken down, but that's time spent attacking your Matriarch and not you, and you're not going to be standing around while someone bursts down your twilight. If they're doing that, you could be applying heavy dot pressure or setting up your deadly sorc burst.

Unless they've changed things drastically since I used to solo pvp, you can also heal your pet and shield them, and line of sight forever. I know that if your pet is taken down you can be in trouble due to the summoning time, but you can take advantage of sorc's great mobility to get away and recast it.

No offense but this is wrong. I kill the Matriarch pet in about 2 seconds and that's if I'm being lazy. At the very top of Battlegrounds, the Matriarch pet and Sorcs in general are kill on sight. The pet dies so fast that the Sorc has no opportunity to run away because by the time they realize their pet is dying and/or dead, I'm already attacking the Sorc and they're at half health. OP knows what I'm talking about.

Fair enough. It used to be that way, but I concede that its been long enough that my experience might no longer be relevant, and leave it for others to discuss.

Rowjoh · February 2023

A few people are saying that as soon as the Matriach goes down then the player dies - this is not true because there are a ton of sorcs who dont run pets who not only survive just fine, they are very difficult to kill!

And to those complaining about mobility, sorxs have access to the most mobile functionality in the game - streak.

olsborg · February 2023

The deadric summoning skill line needs a revamp imo, apart from conjured ward and curse. The pets are outdated and lackluster and bound aegis needs a redesign.

Brrrofski · February 2023

olsborg wrote: »

The deadric summoning skill line needs a revamp imo, apart from conjured ward and curse. The pets are outdated and lackluster and bound aegis needs a redesign.

The passives too. They're super niche.

Compare them to other classes.

Stam and health regen for skill slotted? NB just gets a little less regen across the board at all times.

Increase max health when you have a certain skill active? Warden gets it for healing. Necro just GETS it.

Resource back when a certain skill ends? Other classes get more and a lot easier

fizzylu · February 2023

Rowjoh wrote: »

A few people are saying that as soon as the Matriach goes down then the player dies - this is not true because there are a ton of sorcs who dont run pets who not only survive just fine, they are very difficult to kill!

Sorcerer's not running matriarch usually use restoration staff skills for healing. Most sorcerer's running matriarch are running it as their main, if not only, heal. It's very common that if it dies, so does the sorcerer. Especially since it has a channel to summon; I've died in that animation plenty of times.

Brrrofski · February 2023

Rowjoh wrote: »

A few people are saying that as soon as the Matriach goes down then the player dies - this is not true because there are a ton of sorcs who dont run pets who not only survive just fine, they are very difficult to kill!

And to those complaining about mobility, sorxs have access to the most mobile functionality in the game - streak.

Even if that's the primary heal they slot? And seeing as it takes up two, you probably don't have a selection of heals to use.

Don't really see your point.

Rowjoh · February 2023

fizzylu wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

A few people are saying that as soon as the Matriach goes down then the player dies - this is not true because there are a ton of sorcs who dont run pets who not only survive just fine, they are very difficult to kill!

Sorcerer's not running matriarch usually use restoration staff skills for healing. Most sorcerer's running matriarch are running it as their main, if not only, heal. It's very common that if it dies, so does the sorcerer. Especially since it has a channel to summon; I've died in that animation plenty of times.

So why run this pet when there are clear limitations and flaws and is clearly not BIS ? Thats the point.

Instead of clamouring for a re-work, maybe adjusting the build/skill combo to have a stronger set-up is the way to go.

I love it when I see a player running the Matriach as they're pretty easy to defeat tbh. Like I said, there are plenty of sorx running around Cyrodiil/IC/Battlegrounds either NOT running pets or just running the 'Familiar', with much better survivability

AdamLAD · February 2023

I'd make it so pets are 1 bard, lower the healing from them a bit. Make the recovery ward morph on sorc a new burst heal. Buff Hardened ward even more and all other wards the same and significantly lower the cost. Rework our terrible passives. This would allow so much more flexibility to the class. People would be able to use ALL types of playstyles. Wards ? Yes. Pets ? Yes. No Pets or Wards ? Yes. Not just that it would also help PvE Sorcerers.

fizzylu · February 2023

Rowjoh wrote: »

So why run this pet when there are clear limitations and flaws and is clearly not BIS ? Thats the point.

Instead of clamouring for a re-work, maybe adjusting the build/skill combo to have a stronger set-up is the way to go.

I love it when I see a player running the Matriach as they're pretty easy to defeat tbh. Like I said, there are plenty of sorx running around Cyrodiil/IC/Battlegrounds either NOT running pets or just running the 'Familiar', with much better survivability

You're oversimplifying the problem. Zenimax has been pushing pets to be the best way for sorcerer's to build their class for a while now, it's even the easiest way for them to get use out of all of their class passives, and their only actual self heal IS a pet (unless you count dark exchange, which ALSO has a long animation). That's without me even mentioning the fact that it takes two whole slots. Other classes 100% have viable heals, don't need to "adjust" to have some decent way to heal, nor have to sacrifice two slots to use one of their main class abilities. So why is it "clamoring" or unreasonable to ask for them to make it just as viable as these other classes self heals? Which, by the way, wouldn't even be hard to do. Or are you against this because then you couldn't get some easy kills by taking out matriarch's with 2-3 hits first?

Evilspock · February 2023

Winged Twilights are cancer, flapping in everyone's faces everywhere. They don't need a buff, they need a nerf.

BlueRaven · February 2023

Ren_TheRedFox wrote: »

Hello everyone,

I wanted to talk about something that has been bothering me for a while and I'm pretty sure it's not just me. I'm a PvP healer and have healed with every class and I like Sorcerer and Templar healing the most.

Like every class, sorcs have a burst heal and that is the twilight matriarch (I'm not talking about the unstable clannfear because that is a single target heal so it doesn't affect the group). But there's a big problem with it. Unlike the other classes, Sorcs need to keep their pets alive to use their burst healing, which is really hard since those pets only have 20k health and get killed all the time. From my PvP experiences, I can say that pretty much everyone targets Matriarchs, either because they are in their way or because they know that killing the Matriarch means its owner has no burst healing for a few seconds and has to re-cast their pet. The big problem with this is that people can interrupt someone while recalling their matriarch, which doesn't allow them to recast it for a few seconds, and that leads to death in most cases. I know we're getting a big shield buff in the next patch, but I'm pretty sure even a damage shield won't keep the matriarch alive. There is another problem with this skill that I want to mention. Unlike any other class, Sorcs have to put the Matriarch on both bars, which takes away an extra slot for another skill. I don't think this is "fair" to Sorcs because all other classes don't have to do this.

However, there is a solution to this problem. If ZOS made Matriarch a one-slot skill that can't be killed, and made Summon Winged Twilight a "healing only" skill (so that the Matriarch can't deal damage and can only be used to heal, so no one could make the "but their pets deal damage too" argument), that would solve this problem.
Like I said before, every class has burst healing and it's accessible to all of them without any issues, so why shouldn't Sorcs have it?

How would this be different than vigor?