Remove Minor Force from Dark Deal, reduce resources restored, and make it instant cast

StaticWave · July 2023

Stamsorc mains never asked for Minor Force on Dark Deal. What we asked for is a usable burst heal that isn't tied to a pet, 2 handed weapons, a resto staff, or an ability with a cast time. While every class can use DW for maximum damage, I have to slot a 2h if I want a burst heal and miss out on damage, or wear Dragon's Appetite and run master DW just to have a "burst heal" with a lame proc condition. Even the shield scaling with HP pales in comparison to Impervious Runeward. At 30k HP without bastion, Impervious Runeward has a 9.3k shield upon activation and another 5.7k shield. You need to stack 40k HP and lose damage just to get a 9k shield on sorc lol...

There have been countless threads asking for buffs at areas that Sorc needs the most, which is survivability. Why does ZoS continue to ignore the player base's suggestion and make changes that NOBODY asked for that doesn't even solve the problems of the class?

Let me repeat again, stamsorc damage is FINE. All it needs is more survivability. Make Crit Surge a more reliable HoT by reducing the tooltip, but also removing the condition on crit damage. Make Dark Deal instant cast, but remove Minor Force and reduce the amount of stamina restored. That's all you have to do. There's no need to introduce all these unwanted changes that don't even address the issue of the class.

I know there will be people coming here to say that stamsorc is doing great. No, it isn't. The class is carried by procs and only appears to do well because procs are masking the issue. Don't bring a proc build into the equation and say X class is fine, when it's only that specific build that's overperforming and the vast majority of builds on the class are underperforming because of the class's inherent weakness.

emilyhyoyeon · July 2023

I'd like this because I'm desperate to get rid of the cast time. Cast time skills feel horrible.

I know you're talking from a PVP perspective but this would also be nice in PVE for tank. It doesn't really feel like skill expression there either, just feels like a clunky frustration.

OBJnoob · July 2023

Well. This is a fine idea. But. I'm going to propose something else. Not to argue but just to discuss. Because let's be honest it's just us discussing anyway-- nobody important is gonna come along and implement this.

I like Dark Deal restoring resources I think it's unique and I wouldn't mind if it just became that. In other words remove the heal completely, remove the cast time, but keep the resource return minor berserk and minor force. Make both morphs last 20 seconds. Lower the cost maybe? Either way, I think that is an interesting skill all by itself.

And okay, this second part is really going to be far out, so hold onto your hair. Pets are pets. Love'm, hate'm, but c'mon every MMO needs a pet build. Sorcs have pets. They are even somewhat reliant on them. It is what it is.

BUT. Why does every pet need two morphs? What if Twilight Tormenter stayed the same but Twilight Matriarch gets changed to Mother's Twilight. It would function kinda like warden's animal companions in that, while instant cast and not being a permanent pet, the animation would be of a flappy bird appearing, dying, and granting you a burst heal. Cuz all mothers want what's best for their children of course. Don't read too much into it-- it's dark-- but I think it's a neat idea.

Jamie_Aubrey · July 2023

I for one agree to get rid of the cast time on this, it's a bad skill, so many time I use this and try to swap bars only to cast this again because I expect my bar to swap instantly so I can use the skill on the same slot but I cast dark deal again

I don't want to wait another second to swap bars if I'm in a rush, instant cast would be great

ealdgast · July 2023

[Edit - this was a stupid comment please ignore it]
I get the sentiment but I'm not sure this would be the best way to solve the issue. Dark deal is, imo, meant to be a resource restoring skill first. It's a flat heal & doesn't scale at all, so would be a pretty poor burst heal for a lot of people. And the cast time on a resource restoring skill is kind of necessary, since it forces you to drop block- otherwise we might get cheesy perma-block builds. I suppose they could change the skill to be an instant heal scaling on hp or offensive stats and reduce the resource return significantly, but at that point you'd have a completely different skill and everyone who uses it primarily for the resources wouldn't have a decent replacement. As a pve sorc tank the stamina restore of dark deal is a pretty important part of my build; the heal is incidental and the cast time is easily worked around. Obviously I get that this is primarily coming from a pvp perspective, and it's really frustrating how much trouble zos seem to have balancing pve vs pvp, but drastically reducing the stamina returned would be a huge and undeserved nerf for many players. (Though, on the cast time, I'd probably prefer if it were something like 0.8s instead, 1s cast times are pretty clunky.)
I think instead it would be better to focus on other skills as a proper non-pet burst heal, as we certainly have some morphs that are barely used that could be reworked. Alternatively, one probably ridiculous idea I had, kind of similar to the pet suggestion a bit above, would be to have the pet skills behave differently if single-barred instead of double-barred. So if you single-barred the clannfear or twilight matriarch, it would be an instant burst heal, but would have its magnitude (or maybe targets, in the case of the matriarch) reduced compared to the double-barred version. You could probably reduce the magnitude by 25-50% and still have a decent heal. But frankly I have no idea if that could even be implemented, so who knows.

merpins · July 2023

I mean sure. But I want crystal fragments to scale with your higher resource. It kind of gimps my 2h build if that happened, but with that shadow change to recking blow last patch that lowered the major berserk from 5 seconds to 3, it's not really worth using anymore. I'd love to spam crystal frags more than spamming crystal weapons. Hate CW, it and elemental weapon/other morph have always felt terrible to use with non-ranged weapons. I could just switch to jester coin food for mag recovery and max stam and go with crystal frags, but it's so unintuitive.

And make Haunting Curse good enough to slot over pets.

StaticWave · July 2023

ealdgast wrote: »

I get the sentiment but I'm not sure this would be the best way to solve the issue. Dark deal is, imo, meant to be a resource restoring skill first. It's a flat heal & doesn't scale at all, so would be a pretty poor burst heal for a lot of people. And the cast time on a resource restoring skill is kind of necessary, since it forces you to drop block- otherwise we might get cheesy perma-block builds. I suppose they could change the skill to be an instant heal scaling on hp or offensive stats and reduce the resource return significantly, but at that point you'd have a completely different skill and everyone who uses it primarily for the resources wouldn't have a decent replacement. As a pve sorc tank the stamina restore of dark deal is a pretty important part of my build; the heal is incidental and the cast time is easily worked around. Obviously I get that this is primarily coming from a pvp perspective, and it's really frustrating how much trouble zos seem to have balancing pve vs pvp, but drastically reducing the stamina returned would be a huge and undeserved nerf for many players. (Though, on the cast time, I'd probably prefer if it were something like 0.8s instead, 1s cast times are pretty clunky.)
I think instead it would be better to focus on other skills as a proper non-pet burst heal, as we certainly have some morphs that are barely used that could be reworked. Alternatively, one probably ridiculous idea I had, kind of similar to the pet suggestion a bit above, would be to have the pet skills behave differently if single-barred instead of double-barred. So if you single-barred the clannfear or twilight matriarch, it would be an instant burst heal, but would have its magnitude (or maybe targets, in the case of the matriarch) reduced compared to the double-barred version. You could probably reduce the magnitude by 25-50% and still have a decent heal. But frankly I have no idea if that could even be implemented, so who knows.

They can just as easily make the other morph restore resources and tweak it so that it costs both stam and mag, and restore stam & mag. Something like this:

Dark Conversion: Consume 1300 stam and 1300 magicka to restore 3000 stam and 3000 magicka, and additional 2000 stamina and magicka over 20s. This ability also grants Minor Berserk for 20s.

This would update the class to hybridization standard better, imo. One morph is an instant cast heal without scaling, and the other is a sustain morph.

Weckless · July 2023

merpins wrote: »

I mean sure. But I want crystal fragments to scale with your higher resource. It kind of gimps my 2h build if that happened, but with that shadow change to recking blow last patch that lowered the major berserk from 5 seconds to 3, it's not really worth using anymore. I'd love to spam crystal frags more than spamming crystal weapons. Hate CW, it and elemental weapon/other morph have always felt terrible to use with non-ranged weapons. I could just switch to jester coin food for mag recovery and max stam and go with crystal frags, but it's so unintuitive.

And make Haunting Curse good enough to slot over pets.

Frags does scale with your higher resource

Weckless · July 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

ealdgast wrote: »

I get the sentiment but I'm not sure this would be the best way to solve the issue. Dark deal is, imo, meant to be a resource restoring skill first. It's a flat heal & doesn't scale at all, so would be a pretty poor burst heal for a lot of people. And the cast time on a resource restoring skill is kind of necessary, since it forces you to drop block- otherwise we might get cheesy perma-block builds. I suppose they could change the skill to be an instant heal scaling on hp or offensive stats and reduce the resource return significantly, but at that point you'd have a completely different skill and everyone who uses it primarily for the resources wouldn't have a decent replacement. As a pve sorc tank the stamina restore of dark deal is a pretty important part of my build; the heal is incidental and the cast time is easily worked around. Obviously I get that this is primarily coming from a pvp perspective, and it's really frustrating how much trouble zos seem to have balancing pve vs pvp, but drastically reducing the stamina returned would be a huge and undeserved nerf for many players. (Though, on the cast time, I'd probably prefer if it were something like 0.8s instead, 1s cast times are pretty clunky.)
I think instead it would be better to focus on other skills as a proper non-pet burst heal, as we certainly have some morphs that are barely used that could be reworked. Alternatively, one probably ridiculous idea I had, kind of similar to the pet suggestion a bit above, would be to have the pet skills behave differently if single-barred instead of double-barred. So if you single-barred the clannfear or twilight matriarch, it would be an instant burst heal, but would have its magnitude (or maybe targets, in the case of the matriarch) reduced compared to the double-barred version. You could probably reduce the magnitude by 25-50% and still have a decent heal. But frankly I have no idea if that could even be implemented, so who knows.

They can just as easily make the other morph restore resources and tweak it so that it costs both stam and mag, and restore stam & mag. Something like this:

Dark Conversion: Consume 1300 stam and 1300 magicka to restore 3000 stam and 3000 magicka, and additional 2000 stamina and magicka over 20s. This ability also grants Minor Berserk for 20s.

This would update the class to hybridization standard better, imo. One morph is an instant cast heal without scaling, and the other is a sustain morph.

Or just make one morph cost health and restore both resources and the other be a burst heal
One morph trades health for resources the other trades resources for health

ealdgast · July 2023

Edit - didn't see the post above mine before posting, that is probably a better solution than my stupid long winded stuff. please ignore.

StaticWave · July 2023

Weckless wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

ealdgast wrote: »

I get the sentiment but I'm not sure this would be the best way to solve the issue. Dark deal is, imo, meant to be a resource restoring skill first. It's a flat heal & doesn't scale at all, so would be a pretty poor burst heal for a lot of people. And the cast time on a resource restoring skill is kind of necessary, since it forces you to drop block- otherwise we might get cheesy perma-block builds. I suppose they could change the skill to be an instant heal scaling on hp or offensive stats and reduce the resource return significantly, but at that point you'd have a completely different skill and everyone who uses it primarily for the resources wouldn't have a decent replacement. As a pve sorc tank the stamina restore of dark deal is a pretty important part of my build; the heal is incidental and the cast time is easily worked around. Obviously I get that this is primarily coming from a pvp perspective, and it's really frustrating how much trouble zos seem to have balancing pve vs pvp, but drastically reducing the stamina returned would be a huge and undeserved nerf for many players. (Though, on the cast time, I'd probably prefer if it were something like 0.8s instead, 1s cast times are pretty clunky.)
I think instead it would be better to focus on other skills as a proper non-pet burst heal, as we certainly have some morphs that are barely used that could be reworked. Alternatively, one probably ridiculous idea I had, kind of similar to the pet suggestion a bit above, would be to have the pet skills behave differently if single-barred instead of double-barred. So if you single-barred the clannfear or twilight matriarch, it would be an instant burst heal, but would have its magnitude (or maybe targets, in the case of the matriarch) reduced compared to the double-barred version. You could probably reduce the magnitude by 25-50% and still have a decent heal. But frankly I have no idea if that could even be implemented, so who knows.

They can just as easily make the other morph restore resources and tweak it so that it costs both stam and mag, and restore stam & mag. Something like this:

Dark Conversion: Consume 1300 stam and 1300 magicka to restore 3000 stam and 3000 magicka, and additional 2000 stamina and magicka over 20s. This ability also grants Minor Berserk for 20s.

This would update the class to hybridization standard better, imo. One morph is an instant cast heal without scaling, and the other is a sustain morph.

Or just make one morph cost health and restore both resources and the other be a burst heal
One morph trades health for resources the other trades resources for health

Yea that would do. 1 morph costs health and restores mag + stam, while the other is instant cast, cost mag and restores HP

Zabagad · July 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

Yea that would do. 1 morph costs health and restores mag + stam, while the other is instant cast, cost mag and restores HP

Oh please don't - it's getting worse and worse here.

At the beginning of this thread I wasn't sure if I should say anything about it, because I could live with the original version - even if I wouldn't like it (depending on how much they would reduce the resources).
Ofc I would like to get rid of the cast time and ofc it should come with some cons.
So in sum the inital version was okish.

But this version now would be very bad for me and pretty sure for many others too.
I currently use both morphs of Dark Exchange to get both - most of the time for resources, but in some situations I also need to get the health.
With the latest version, both morphs would no longer fulfill that.
So in short - don't ruin Dark Exchange which is now a much used and good skill for many sorcs that are not in the top 2% of PvP.

There are other skills which are much less used - best example in my opinion is "Rune Prison".
I'm not sure if more than 1% of Sorcs use it and I haven't seen a Sorc with "Rune Cage" in the last 2 years.
So they can use that morph - or maybe the whole skill (not sure how many sorcs are using def Rune) to give us an instant heal.

acastanza_ESO · July 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

ealdgast wrote: »

I get the sentiment but I'm not sure this would be the best way to solve the issue. Dark deal is, imo, meant to be a resource restoring skill first. It's a flat heal & doesn't scale at all, so would be a pretty poor burst heal for a lot of people. And the cast time on a resource restoring skill is kind of necessary, since it forces you to drop block- otherwise we might get cheesy perma-block builds. I suppose they could change the skill to be an instant heal scaling on hp or offensive stats and reduce the resource return significantly, but at that point you'd have a completely different skill and everyone who uses it primarily for the resources wouldn't have a decent replacement. As a pve sorc tank the stamina restore of dark deal is a pretty important part of my build; the heal is incidental and the cast time is easily worked around. Obviously I get that this is primarily coming from a pvp perspective, and it's really frustrating how much trouble zos seem to have balancing pve vs pvp, but drastically reducing the stamina returned would be a huge and undeserved nerf for many players. (Though, on the cast time, I'd probably prefer if it were something like 0.8s instead, 1s cast times are pretty clunky.)
I think instead it would be better to focus on other skills as a proper non-pet burst heal, as we certainly have some morphs that are barely used that could be reworked. Alternatively, one probably ridiculous idea I had, kind of similar to the pet suggestion a bit above, would be to have the pet skills behave differently if single-barred instead of double-barred. So if you single-barred the clannfear or twilight matriarch, it would be an instant burst heal, but would have its magnitude (or maybe targets, in the case of the matriarch) reduced compared to the double-barred version. You could probably reduce the magnitude by 25-50% and still have a decent heal. But frankly I have no idea if that could even be implemented, so who knows.

They can just as easily make the other morph restore resources and tweak it so that it costs both stam and mag, and restore stam & mag. Something like this:

Dark Conversion: Consume 1300 stam and 1300 magicka to restore 3000 stam and 3000 magicka, and additional 2000 stamina and magicka over 20s. This ability also grants Minor Berserk for 20s.

This would update the class to hybridization standard better, imo. One morph is an instant cast heal without scaling, and the other is a sustain morph.

Rather than consuming both resources and making the skill painful to cast when desperately needed, I'd prefer want dynamic cost like - Consumes [current highest resource poo], and restores [current lowest resource pool] depending on which is higher or lower when you cast it. And if this morph was to stay a channel it should absolutely also grant major berserk not minor to be fair with what DK got. Then I'd like to see the other morph be an instant cast self heal with smaller lowest-resource return that also instead granted some significant defensive buff (major protection maybe for a brief period? Templar recently got access to that). That way both morphs would be distinct, but also good.

SkaraMinoc · July 2023

StaticWave wrote: »

Stamsorc mains never asked for Minor Force on Dark Deal.

Minor Force on Dark Deal is a huge win for any Sorcs running Hurricane + Quick Cloak because adding Race Against Time is a waste of bar space. Do NOT remove Minor Force from Dark Deal and please don't suggest this nerf ever again.

JerBearESO · July 2023

Jamie_Aubrey wrote: »

I for one agree to get rid of the cast time on this, it's a bad skill, so many time I use this and try to swap bars only to cast this again because I expect my bar to swap instantly so I can use the skill on the same slot but I cast dark deal again

I don't want to wait another second to swap bars if I'm in a rush, instant cast would be great

That's actually a good point to mention about accidentally recasting it after an attempted barswap. I do this too haha. But it is an issue with the combat controller design which should be addressed to queue barswap if used during a cast time. Also ground targeted abilities shouldn't queue to recast so easily when the setting is for instant casting, as this results in accidentally double casting the ability very often

OBJnoob · July 2023

JerBearESO wrote: »

Jamie_Aubrey wrote: »

I for one agree to get rid of the cast time on this, it's a bad skill, so many time I use this and try to swap bars only to cast this again because I expect my bar to swap instantly so I can use the skill on the same slot but I cast dark deal again

I don't want to wait another second to swap bars if I'm in a rush, instant cast would be great

That's actually a good point to mention about accidentally recasting it after an attempted barswap. I do this too haha. But it is an issue with the combat controller design which should be addressed to queue barswap if used during a cast time. Also ground targeted abilities shouldn't queue to recast so easily when the setting is for instant casting, as this results in accidentally double casting the ability very often

I've definitely suffered from this too. But I disagree that it's a mechanical problem. It's a player problem. Barswapping is one method of animation canceling. If you start queing up barswaps you're going to mess with a good thing. Just gotta wait for the dang thing to finish folks.

StaticWave · July 2023

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Stamsorc mains never asked for Minor Force on Dark Deal.

Minor Force on Dark Deal is a huge win for any Sorcs running Hurricane + Quick Cloak because adding Race Against Time is a waste of bar space. Do NOT remove Minor Force from Dark Deal and please don't suggest this nerf ever again.

Stamsorc never needed it. It’s not a huge win when the spec still has healing issue lol

Twig_Garlicshine · July 2023

Personal opinion:

Every class should have a spam burst heal that restores HP and resources of your choice (morph).
No buffs attached to -any- of them. (Do that elsewhere).
No pet requirement.
Then, and only then, ramping costs could be attached that affect everyone, to prevent block/heal tank bs.

My sorcs are, and will always remain, petless because flappyflappyflappy is beyond irritating.

Arunei · July 2023

I'd love if Dark Deal didn't have a cast time and was just a heal. I've had the same issue with accidentally recasting it (sometimes numerous times) because I would try to barswap after using it and think I'm on my other bar, but nope.