Could EC be better on sorc?

Araneae6537 · April 2

I am wondering why Elemental Catalyst is still usually worn by necro rather than sorc. Yes, technically necro has access to all three elements, by shocking siphon requires a corpse in just the right place so doesn’t seem to me like it would be terribly reliable. And the sorc atro ultimate seems more useful than necro colossus since there being multiple sources of vulnerability.

ZhuJiuyin · April 3

Shock damage caused by pets does not porc EC, and Sorc has no other practical source of shock.

Araneae6537 · April 3

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Shock damage caused by pets does not porc EC, and Sorc has no other practical source of shock.

What do you mean? Multiple skills in the Storm Caller skill line do shock damage.

WrathOfInnos · April 3

I tried to make a build like this work. You end up needing to use either Boundless Storm (DPS loss from Hurricane, and short range) or Liquid Lightning/Flood (DPS loss from anything). Frost Damage is difficult to obtain, and you’re forced to do Ice Staff back bar with Frost Blockade, this is one of the worst back bar weapon and DoT choices. Alternatively you can use Force Pulse for all 3 elements, but that only debuffs a single enemy and you won’t reliably cast it every 4s with frag procs and bound armaments. Even if you don’t use Force Pulse you’ll need a source of Fire damage, necessitating an Inferno Staff front bar or Scalding Rune (small area, mediocre DoT). Good luck fitting all these skills with pets, and no-pet Sorc is still far behind in damage.

Necro has it easy, with 3 long duration elemental AoE DoTs that all deal good damage (Boneyard, Siphon, Flame Blockade). They can still use daggers on front bar, and their average crit chance ends up decent with the execute passive. Sorc struggles for crit on an EC build.

Dagoth_Rac · April 3

Araneae6537 wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Shock damage caused by pets does not porc EC, and Sorc has no other practical source of shock.

What do you mean? Multiple skills in the Storm Caller skill line do shock damage.

Boundless Storm has a tiny radius and is a pain to make it reliably hit enemies. Liquid Lightning is one of the worst ground AoE in game. Mages Fury and Streak are also lousy skills in Trials and not DoTs, so you'd have to spam a lousy skill to keep up the 3 second Shock Weakness debuff.

So Sorcs have sources of shock damage, but they are lousy in Trials. Necro can supply elemental effects with a more effective rotation.

Turtle_Bot · April 3

Araneae6537 wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Shock damage caused by pets does not porc EC, and Sorc has no other practical source of shock.

What do you mean? Multiple skills in the Storm Caller skill line do shock damage.

Majority of skills in that line are either flat out bad (Boundless Storm (shock damage morph), Lightning Splash (worst AoE DoT in the game, both morphs), Fury (both morphs)) or they are utility skills that don't proc the set (Surge) or they have a ramping cost making them impossible to sustain the 3 second refresh timer (Streak).

The remaining skill (overload) is a toggle, so to run that you would spend half you GCDs toggling it on and off (so you can gain back some ultimate while keeping the EC debuff applied), but this also means that you are not using Atro (major berserk for the entire group) which is a huge group wide DPS loss.

Depending on what is done with Scribing and if ZOS actually makes Lightning Splash into an actually good ability, I could see sorc running it with flame wall + a frost DoT (from scribing) + a good version of Lightning Splash, but until that's done, it's just too much of a DPS drop for sorc to run that set.

Also, pets (including atro) won't proc the set since they don't proc armor set proc effects.

Araneae6537 · April 3

Thank you for the insights! I do wish the Storm Calling line was better — it is how I wanted to play sorc since I started playing, alas…

Is there a way that I can check the uptime of EC at all? Maybe siphon isn’t as bad as it feels to me and it hits a larger radius. I couldn’t find any indication in Combat Metrics. 🤔

erdbeerheld · April 3

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Is there a way that I can check the uptime of EC at all? Maybe siphon isn’t as bad as it feels to me and it hits a larger radius. I couldn’t find any indication in Combat Metrics. 🤔

It is in the "(De-)Buffs out" section of CMX. Look for Shock Weakness (resp. Flame/Frost Weakness for the other two). Or if you have an esolog, it is in the Debuffs section with the same names.

Malyore · April 4

Doesn't the destro staff spammable do all 3 elements? Since it was a spammable I used to run this set on my no pet sorc back when I first began getting into trials and wanted to bring a buff to the group.

Sockermannen · April 5

I’ve had someone try the same, as a sorc you’ll have to try and fit in a frost staff somewhere unless you want to use force pulse (which will make maintaining EC harder). Running a frost staff for anything DPS is a loss unless it’s on a warden so he ended up scrapping the ECsorc build completely.

You can however run it on a sorc tank pretty effectively, you’ll already have frost staves anyway, you can also slot liquid lightning and scalding rune and there you go.

BXR_Lonestar · April 8

Sorc doesn't have any built-in sources of ice damage in their class kit, and so you end up needing to use an ice staff for at least one of your bars. Because of this, you are likely to lose a significant amount of DPS in group content.

YandereGirlfriend · April 8

One of the things that this highlights is how backwards and arbitrary it is that "pets" don't proc the set.

There's nothing OP about allowing it, it seems more like a temporary technical limitation that was then back-ported into a justification.

Turtle_Bot · April 9

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

One of the things that this highlights is how backwards and arbitrary it is that "pets" don't proc the set.

There's nothing OP about allowing it, it seems more like a temporary technical limitation that was then back-ported into a justification.

It never has been a technical limitation as pets proccing sets used to be a thing in ESO. It got removed a very long time ago due to the very early days of Viper's Sting, where pets could proc that set for a lot of free sustained burst damage in PvP.

Ever since then, pets have not been allowed to proc any set worn by a player and their stats have never been properly updated to keep up with the power creep that would make them worth running even with their significant downsides. As such, pets subsequently became borderline useless in PvP (or in some patches they were a complete detriment) outside of specific zoo builds used to cheese line of sight in duels or used to frustrate less skilled players in low MMR BGs by blocking incoming attacks.

In PvE, pets are good, but they are honestly being hard carried right now by 2 things:
1. the "+45% increased damage taken from pets" debuff that Daedric Prey provides.
2. the ZOS granted immunity to boss mechanics / 99% mitigation for AoE damage in PvE content.
If either of those 2 things didn't exist, pets would be just as bad in PvE as they are in PvP and would not be used anywhere outside of atro for the group major berserk.

Araneae6537 · April 9

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

One of the things that this highlights is how backwards and arbitrary it is that "pets" don't proc the set.

There's nothing OP about allowing it, it seems more like a temporary technical limitation that was then back-ported into a justification.

It never has been a technical limitation as pets proccing sets used to be a thing in ESO. It got removed a very long time ago due to the very early days of Viper's Sting, where pets could proc that set for a lot of free sustained burst damage in PvP.

Ever since then, pets have not been allowed to proc any set worn by a player and their stats have never been properly updated to keep up with the power creep that would make them worth running even with their significant downsides. As such, pets subsequently became borderline useless in PvP (or in some patches they were a complete detriment) outside of specific zoo builds used to cheese line of sight in duels or used to frustrate less skilled players in low MMR BGs by blocking incoming attacks.

In PvE, pets are good, but they are honestly being hard carried right now by 2 things:
1. the "+45% increased damage taken from pets" debuff that Daedric Prey provides.
2. the ZOS granted immunity to boss mechanics / 99% mitigation for AoE damage in PvE content.
If either of those 2 things didn't exist, pets would be just as bad in PvE as they are in PvP and would not be used anywhere outside of atro for the group major berserk.

That makes sense. I’m fine with pets not proccing sets and it’s cool that pet builds are quite viable in PvE, but not cool that they are the ONLY viable class dps for sorc. The changes to some passives this last patch were a good start, but I want to be able to actually use the Storm Calling abilities! As it is now, sorc should really be called summoner and Storm Calling no more than Static Electricity.

Thank you all for the explanations of why necro still makes the most sense for this role! I think I’m starting to get the hang of it, and have slotted crushing shock for when there’s not yet a convenient corpse (and of course the interrupt can be handy too).

Turtle_Bot · April 9

Yeah, I understand why they had to do it, the pets were definitely too strong being able to proc sets like that.

Agreed that I wish pets weren't the only way to play sorc and the changes to passives were definitely a good start.

The main issue with storm calling line (and non-pet build in general, which was pointed out a lot back when the class sets were released) are the active abilities are just super far behind the pets for PvE content.

- Lightning splash needs a complete overhaul such as increased concussed chance and damage and bonus shock damage taken by enemies affected by it
- Haunting curse should provide major breach
- Bound armaments should be hybridized (preferably by swapping the max stats to major prophecy/savagery)
- Fury needs 1 morph to be a more traditional scaling execute
- Non-pet builds need an ultimate that can compete with atro (negate is too PvP focused, overload is just wonky and has no group synergy)

Also, pet builds need deadric prey to be reduced to a more balanced value (closer to 20-25% instead of its current 45%) and some of that damage given back to the pets themselves (which would make them somewhat ok as DoTs/pressure in PvP while not making them super OP, also tones them down in PvE since they could be used alongside the improved non-pet options proposed above).

As others have mentioned above, sorcs main issue is reliable long duration frost damage over time. Flame wall (with fire staff back bar) covers fire damage over time, but running a frost staff hurts DPS on non-warden classes, so sorc struggles to get that frost damage (maybe with scribing it could be possible, but not sure until we can test scribing properly on the PTS, even then, DK might just be better with shock staff wall + scribing frost staff ability and their inherent flame DoTs/AoEs).

I hope necro gets some nice buffs in U42, the class needs it, especially with it's last niche potentially vanishing to DK or sorc with scribing skills.

Stafford197 · April 11

I’ve tried EC Sorc but ultimately EC Necro is the better choice for trial group comps.

However I think we can maybe expect other classes to be able to conveniently make use of EC when Scribing comes out!

Trejgon · April 14

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

overload is just wonky and has no group synergy

Can we petition zos to bring back the third ability bar for overload?

Soarora · April 15

Malyore wrote: »

Doesn't the destro staff spammable do all 3 elements? Since it was a spammable I used to run this set on my no pet sorc back when I first began getting into trials and wanted to bring a buff to the group.

Yes, so any class can do EC single target. The debate between necro, sorc, warden, and DK comes from what class can do all 3 as AoE damage.

YandereGirlfriend · April 16

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

One of the things that this highlights is how backwards and arbitrary it is that "pets" don't proc the set.

There's nothing OP about allowing it, it seems more like a temporary technical limitation that was then back-ported into a justification.

It never has been a technical limitation as pets proccing sets used to be a thing in ESO. It got removed a very long time ago due to the very early days of Viper's Sting, where pets could proc that set for a lot of free sustained burst damage in PvP.

Ever since then, pets have not been allowed to proc any set worn by a player and their stats have never been properly updated to keep up with the power creep that would make them worth running even with their significant downsides. As such, pets subsequently became borderline useless in PvP (or in some patches they were a complete detriment) outside of specific zoo builds used to cheese line of sight in duels or used to frustrate less skilled players in low MMR BGs by blocking incoming attacks.

In PvE, pets are good, but they are honestly being hard carried right now by 2 things:
1. the "+45% increased damage taken from pets" debuff that Daedric Prey provides.
2. the ZOS granted immunity to boss mechanics / 99% mitigation for AoE damage in PvE content.
If either of those 2 things didn't exist, pets would be just as bad in PvE as they are in PvP and would not be used anywhere outside of atro for the group major berserk.

I appreciate the lore but the actual game balancing logic still doesn't make sense.

Sets have internal cooldowns so it really should not matter if they are activated by a pet or not. Like, oh no, Tarnished Nightmare can proc off of a weak Matriarch or Scamp zap attack, whatever will I do?? (Nevermind the dozens of low-tier gankers DOT'ing you up with Poison Arrow and using that one button press to proc the set three times per cast....)

Further, the definition of "pet" in ESO is fairly arbitrary, with something like a Blastbones counting as a pet for the purposes of being banned from proccing a set, while Shalks is fair game to proc everything. Yes, there is a technical reason for this being the way that it is but if you're a casual Necro player you should rightfully be looking at ZOS being like, "Nice, so my skill is randomly nerfed simply... because... got it, thanks."

There are even more bizarre and arbitrary interactions, like how the initial hit of a Storm Atro WILL count as player damage and proc sets but any follow-up zaps by the actual Atro will not. Yes, clear as mud this standard is.