Turtle_Bot wrote: »

For sorc, it needs a lot as a class to bring it up to par, especially to not force it even further into pets or heavy attack builds which seems to be all the devs will ever buff (that sticks around for more than 1 patch) for sorc.

What sorc needs to move away from pets and heavy attacks and function more on its own as a class would be:

Rune Cage

- Change rune cage into a sticky DoT. It can still keep the 3s delay on the stun attempt, but by making it a sticky DoT that deals consistent damage over its duration it gives sorc a more reliable way to proc the blood magic passive and crit surge proc heal a bit more often.

Frags/fury

- Change frags or 1 morph of fury into a proper class spammable. Sorcs entire burst window is completely back ended with curse and bound armaments for delayed burst, it doesn't need both morphs of frags/weapon and fury to also fall under this condition as well. If need be, make it a shorter range spammable (22m instead of 28m, or even melee if they can do some sort of cool lightning blade type of ability), but it needs to have some sort of cleave (or chaining) component to it as the class just doesn't have that cleave option in its kit at the moment.

Lightning Form

- Buff lightning form (mag morph) to be more inline with hurricane. Lightning form is still only a 5m radius even after all the melee attacks got buffed to 7m meaning melee opponents can simply outrange lightning form to avoid lightning form from proccing crit surge.... This would also be a targeted buff to magsorc in particular since stamsorc would still run hurricane anyway.

Major prophecy/savagery

- Add an easy to obtain reliable source of major prophecy/savagery to the class kit. Sorcs "HoT" in crit surge requires dealing critical damage to proc it, yet sorc struggles to gain any meaningful crit chance in PvP without investing into it and that requires giving up bar space that is too valuable.

Lightning Splash

- Lightning splash needs a rework, if need be, remove the synergy from 1 morph and increase its damage, but most importantly remove or drastically shorten the cast delay on the skill (you can keep the animation, but have it cast the skill at the start of the animation instead of waiting for the animation to finish before casting it similar to how wall of elements is animated), it effectively has a 0.5 to 1 second hidden cast time that is not shown anywhere in the tooltip because of this cast animation (similar to most of sorcs abilities...) that while it looks nice to use when not trying to weave, it makes the skill clunky to use and very jarring to weave properly.

Passives

- The passives need a lot of work. Capacitor is 10% mag recovery, daedric protection is 20% health and stam while a daedric summoning ability is active, meanwhile NB gets a flat 15% to everything for just existing. Combine capacitor with daedric protection and give sorc a new passive for crit chance and/or shields.
- Persistence should work off either blocking or dodging an attack. Sorc is not supposed to sit there face tanking damage since it doesn't have the reliable healing capabilities to do this effectively, sorc is however good at dodging incoming damage.
- Expert mage needs to be increased to 3% per sorcerer ability slotted, why a global passive is stronger than a class passive is boggling....

Lastly, and this is more around helping to address other issues in the PvP meta at the moment, make negate dampen non-permanent buffs on top of preventing casting while enemies are inside its AoE. This means that things like radiating regen, echoing vigor, and other sticky buffs that were applied before entering don't apply their effects while inside the negate, but will resume their effects (assuming they are still active) once the enemy leaves the negate AoE.

This serves multiple purposes:
- It affects stamina builds who right now can easily walk through a negate with no fear of repercussion like it's not even there.
- It gives ball groups a reason to actively avoid those negate areas (including the NPC negates) as their 50k/sec HoT stacking won't tick while they're inside the AoE leaving them vulnerable to getting burst/sieged down if they sit there for too long or try to force their way through it too many times, which provides some actual counter play to that playstyle that has completely taken over PvP lately.
- It forces troll tanks to actually move around (dropping their block while they attempt to get out of it quickly) or avoid certain areas for a period of time instead of standing there blocking everything since if they decide to remain in the negate AoE, their buffs won't be applied making them much weaker and more susceptible to incoming damage should they choose to remain in its AoE.
- This already has inherent counter play. There's no direct CC attached to the negate so its as easy as simply walking (or rolling/sprinting) out of its AoE so it no longer applies, yes it can be used by ball groups, but they are already doing this anyway, so making it actually threatening to those organised groups means they might actually fight each other more often instead of zerging down and dumping 12 ultimates on every solo player they pass while leaving other ball groups alone.
- It has a less drastic effect on the unorganised groups since most of those players barely have many buffs or stacked heals applied to them already anyway so at most they lose major resolve/sorcery/brutality that was already down 50% of them time while they stand in the AoE (might also help them to learn how to kite better too improving their PvP skills).

El_Borracho wrote: »

@Zabagad Sorcerers, as a class, were underperforming before the Oakensoul ring. With the ring, the Oakensorc went from underperforming to a viable endgame PVE DD, to the point that a one-bar build can make the scoreboard, and even be an option in PVP.

You asked which skill would be affected? All of them. The primary ask is to increase the overall crit damage from passives. The secondary ask is to increase the passives to allow for more HP and resource regen. And since its class passives, that means all of them, including non-class skills, just as Exploitation does now but on a much larger scale. The OP used Crit Surge as an example of how the increased passives would work. Wonder how this list would further impact those changes:

Empower
Major Brutality
Major Prophecy
Major Resolve
Major Savagery
Major Sorcery
Minor Aegis
Minor Berserk
Minor Courage
Minor Endurance
Minor Force
Minor Fortitude
Minor Heroism
Minor Intellect
Minor Mending
Minor Protection
Minor Slayer

Since you asked for specifics, the one skill that really popped was making Boundless Storm stick on the target. I love it, but it will never happen because that would be so OP, I can't even process it. That skill is on a lot of Oakensorcs right now. 30 seconds of damage, increased by class passives, increased resource recovery from the skill after increasing resource recovery passives, all guaranteed by being glued onto the target, on top of the constant damage, crit damage, and resource recovery from the primary damage of the lightning heavy attack. I don't know if you even need another skill, but you have 4 more slots to choose from, all benefitting from the passives changes. But Major Resolve is duplicated, so its not that big a change. LOL.

To use another mythic that is class-specific, the Velothi amulet, if you buffed the Arcanist class passives to increase base crit damage and resource recovery, as asked for in this thread, you would buff the entire class twice for those wearing the amulet. Without question.

Am I against Oakensorcs? Nope. Am I against Sorcs in general? Nope. Would I absolutely LOVE these changes? Every single one of them. But when you have a mythic that has been proven to work really, really well on one specific class, buffing that class will result in much larger gains than anticipated, which will lead to either the class getting nerfed, the ring getting nerfed, or both. Believing otherwise is naive, given the history of this game. Especially since we already saw this happen with the Oakensoul ring when it first came out.

Maybe try out an Oakensorc and see how easy it is right now before arguing buffing the class as a whole will not have a major impact on the game because of that mythic.

L33T_BEANS wrote: »

Sorcerers are not even bad. They are very strong single-target damage, even to this day. They have a place in meta groups, and if it weren't for how stupid-level-busted Arcanist stacking was, they'd be even more in demand. They are still easily parsing over 120k on the Iron Atronach. Stamina sorcers now perform a bit better than the magicka counterparts because they can spam silver-shards and sustain pretty well since the only magicka skill they need to cast is Daedric Prey and Crystal Frags (yup they don't use crystal weapon).

I could get pretty wordy and explain the nuance of why they aren't popular but I think I'll just simplify it to Arcanist being OP, people stacking weapon damage / weapon crit instead of spell damage / spell crit, and fights being cleave-focused instead of single-target focused.

Honestly, every class that isn't DK or Arcanist right now has been getting shafted hard but I guess some harder than others.

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

Stam-Sorcs are best without the pets. When I use pets instead of other abilities, I end up losing a lot of my damage.
Using the Exchange ability grants a big heal and some other resource.
I want to try the bound armor morph, since it has 33% more block mitigation. Though you'd have to spam that every 3 seconds... Bound Weapons also seems fun. I don't have the level for that yet.