PTS Update 47 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities Changes

YandereGirlfriend · July 11

lostineternity wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?

This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

Both skills were created for pure classes in mind, and comparing them 1 to 1 without any context is stupid (I would say was stupid 3 months ago but now with this brainless implementation of subclassing we don't have any context anymore, everything everywhere all at once and classes that were designed skill synergy between each other in mind remain unchanged with subclassing system that led to terrible outcome)

Nobody was using BA even before subclassing because, even taken holistically, it was such dogwater compared to Bowproc.

BA has always been the Poor Man's Bowproc.

ssewallb14_ESO · July 11

TLDR; Storm Calling is bad without Major Resolve.

Before it was a tradeoff damage skill line that let you have your armor buff without as big of a damage hit from one of the various "tank" skill lines, which gave it a unique and useful place in the subclassing system.

Now, the most efficient way to get resolve on any DPS or solo spec is Wield Soul, meaning it's best for me to just take the most damage stacked skill lines like a standard DPS.

In this context on my Stamplar I'm actually outparsing Storm Calling with 500 ult overload by swapping it out for Herald of the Tome without beam, which is really silly.

Best solution would be to simply revert this. It was one of the best working things in the subclassing era, it really should be left alone.

edit: Also Gravelord and HotT actually beat Storm Calling on an HA Sorc, leaving my Sorc with Assassination, Gravelord, and Daedric Summoning, and with Storm Atro and Bound Aegis the only Sorc skills on my bar. If I wanted pure DPS I would be better off just changing class and using HotT or possibly something else over Daedric Summoning.

Savagejack · July 11

Any chance we could change bound armaments to aoe 8m around its target? It would distinguish it more from bowproc, and add to sorc's cyclonic appeal

MincMincMinc · July 11

Savagejack wrote: »

Any chance we could change bound armaments to aoe 8m around its target? It would distinguish it more from bowproc, and add to sorc's cyclonic appeal

Bound armaments is probably better off moving to a different skill line and overhauled. I never understood why it was thrown lazily on Daedric summoning there. I guess we can roleplay that your light attacks summon the non daedric daggers lol. It would be more thematic to have the bound blades spin around you which could be built up like hurricane like a wind atro or whatever.

Same goes for crystal weapon, such a strange choice to just copy and paste the psijic spammable instead of something more unique. The base skill was a cast time high burst skill. The closest thing to that was dizzy swing (which is a shell of its former self.) Making crystal weapon similar to old dizzy with the longer cast time and high tooltip would have made more sense. Especially with todays coding which would have eliminated the old dizzy aiming problems. Dizzy stamsorc was always a staple since people started playing stamsorc. You could go even further and bring back the knockup every 3rd swing or 33% chance proc like frags.

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning? Which one becomes the tank and which one the healing line? Sorc and its skills were never meant to be split up like this. It would help these more diverse classes if the rest of the game's basic systems were more balanced like mundus, food, enchants, traits, etc such that I could run a line like dark magic or daedric summoning which mostly offers sustain and support skills.

Radiate77 · July 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning?

Stormcalling is not just a Damage skill line, it’s a Lightning (Destruction) skill line with a focus on Mobility. Just look at Streak and Lightning Form, the main variable for Form is the changing between Minor or Major Expedition and how long you have it.

Just as (Conjured) Daggers make sense on a skill line that focuses on Conjuration, or TES’ version of Daedric Summoning in other games. Even the name of the skill Bound Armaments is a nod at prior Elder Scrolls games that had “Bound” Conjuration spells within them.

Zyaneth_Bal · July 11

Bound aegis change absolutely must be reversed. Ward and all shields in general already can’t compete with other sources of healing and defense on live. This is compounded by the fact that ward already lost it’s healing, a change that came far too late when ward was no longer as strong compared to new subclassing options. Then daedric summoning lost 5% max magicka too, nerfing shields even further, and now another 8% max magicka is being taken away. Now shields are so bad that even with all desire to severely handicap oneself just to use them they will no longer even reach the floor of healing to even allow one to play at all. Of course I am talking about pvp because these changes are really irrelevant for pve. Not to mention that max resource is not a desired stat to say the least, for any sort of content or gameplay. Daedric summoning’s max stats’ contribution to damage is extremely minor (but if anything damage here needs solid buffs instead of nerfs), so the only purpose these changes serve are to nerf a group of skills that is dead already. Additionally this bonus is unique and cannot be substituted through other means and if bound armaments is slotted than the class is left without a source of major resolve which is unthinkable!
Attention should be directed at other skills and passives of daedric summoning instead

Lightning form should retain major resolve too, because this change is far too impactful to be implemented as is because removal of such an essential buff hits a huge number of builds. For instance, in pvp sorcerer will be impossible to subclass because dark magic and daedric summoning are so bad they aren’t even worth considering while storm calling is neither a self sufficient offensive nor defensive line. If sorcerer skill trees were rearranged to fit the staple of tank/heal/damage it would have to be done as a whole package of changes, because otherwise skill trees are left in complete disarray for an unknown period of time. Do not create more problems for yourselves to fix in the future. But personally I am against skill trees being separated by roles because, while it is easier to balance that way, it only serves to promote homogenization which has been long draining diversity bit by bit to a noticeable result.

As for grim focus, being the hardest hitting skill in the game it has no reason to simultaneously grant a large amount of unconditional passive damage. In my opinion merciless resolve already having a healing effect should give no buffs at all, while relentless focus can retain the passive bonus but the damage if the skill itself should be significantly lowered in exchange. This could tone down a clearly overperforming skill while retaining all of it’s uses.

MincMincMinc · July 11

Radiate77 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning?

Stormcalling is not just a Damage skill line, it’s a Lightning (Destruction) skill line with a focus on Mobility. Just look at Streak and Lightning Form, the main variable for Form is the changing between Minor or Major Expedition and how long you have it.

Just as (Conjured) Daggers make sense on a skill line that focuses on Conjuration, or TES’ version of Daedric Summoning in other games. Even the name of the skill Bound Armaments is a nod at prior Elder Scrolls games that had “Bound” Conjuration spells within them.

The lore can sound all well and good, that aspect makes sense already. In terms of how zos wants the skill line system to proceed having a main spammable on a skill line that will never be used in any capacity on any damage build is pointless. Unless they balance out all skill lines to play into tank, damage, and heals equally on their own, its pointless.

YandereGirlfriend · July 11

Radiate77 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning?

Stormcalling is not just a Damage skill line, it’s a Lightning (Destruction) skill line with a focus on Mobility. Just look at Streak and Lightning Form, the main variable for Form is the changing between Minor or Major Expedition and how long you have it.

Just as (Conjured) Daggers make sense on a skill line that focuses on Conjuration, or TES’ version of Daedric Summoning in other games. Even the name of the skill Bound Armaments is a nod at prior Elder Scrolls games that had “Bound” Conjuration spells within them.

Obligatory, "Also Boundless Storm having an unusably small 5m radius that doesn't work as a damage skill" addendum.

Hey hey, hoo hoo, all 5m skills have GOT TO GO!

Hymzir · July 11

So what happened to the official stance of being comfortable with the increased power that sub-classing was going to introduce?

Whatever, I just don't care anymore. The endless beta continues with wild swings every three months, wrecking builds left and right.

See, the thing is... Nonsense like this update is why I cling to my Oakensorc build. It's not even close to META, but with it, I don't have to worry about sourcing any of the must-have buffs and relearn the game with each update, as what skills actually do changes from patch to patch. I get all the crucial buffs from the ring and can just focus on roleplaying the lightning-based mage I want to play.

Granted, some of the wild changes still hurt. Like the nerf to Mages Wrath that cut the execute window to 2 seconds. That really sucked, by the way. And it was considered fine for a decade before suddenly becoming a problem. But whatev...

Running an Oakensorc means that, for the most part, I simply load my limited bar space with an emergency heal and a couple of lightning-type dots or such, from Storm Calling, Destro Staff, or Scribing and round up my bar with a utility or two depending on the type of content I am doing. I ditched Summoning for Aedric Spear for the passives and slot Radiant Ward as my shield (which also doubles as a decent AOE) and gives me an extra crit dam buff due to the passives. For ult I switch between Dawnbringer or Meteor, depending once again on the type of content I am doing.

A couple of heavy attack gear sets round up my build, and while I am far from the bleeding edge of DPS parses, I am more than viable for pretty much all content the game has to offer. It's simple and easy and thematically appropriate to my vision of a lightning-based mage. And best of all, I can ignore almost all of the dumb and wild changes the game suffers from with each update.

Now I was going to leave it at that, but for the sake of being constructive, let me offer one last piece of advice. And this will 'prolly be the last time I will bother trying to offer any to you. You never listen to anything we tell you and always go ahead with even the most dumbest move with the most predictable results, and then are shocked when things play out exactly like we warned they would.

But anyway, the thing is, now that subclassing is a thing, you need to rework all the skill lines from scratch. In fact, you need to ditch the classes completely. When you introduced subclassing to the game, you changed the game completely. All the old skill lines were designed with a different base set of assumptions. They are built to work as self-contained sets. That is not how the game works anymore, and that is why you should've reworked them before implementing subclassing to the game.

But that damage has been inflicted already, so no point crying over it. What you need to do now is to rework all the base class skill lines into self-contained units. Assign each skill line a primary focus - Damage, Defense, Support - and a secondary flair or theme. Like one damage line could be more dot-heavy while another has more burst, or maybe inflict more debuffs on targets or increase mobility. They should all be roughly equal in power and provide access to the crucial tools like Major Brutality/Sorcery and Prophecy/Savagery. (By the way.. when are you going to finish hybridisation and consolidate those into single stats?)

In fact, I would go even further with the restructuring and strip those buffs from the game completely. Things have evolved from the early days of the game, when buffs were far more rare and item sets often just had two buff lines. One at 2 items and another at 5 items. The default assumption is for every player to have all those key Buffs running 24/7 anyway, so you might as well just bake them into the base stats of each character and let active skills have active effects instead of several ad-hoc passive components requiring constant micro managing from the player or slotting skills solely for the passives they provide. You can retain the rarer buffs like Force and Berserk and sprinkle them between the different skill lines. Or maybe give more buffing skills to the support lines that give said buffs to all members of the group.

That would make the game a lot less tiresome to play and open up more thematic build options instead of forcing players to shop around for slotable sources for all the must-have buffs and have the one true META mindset dominate end game play.

I'd round up the rework by going over all the former class skill line passives and reworking them into modest, unnamed buffs that suit the theme and style of the associated skill line. No crazy blanket buffs of +X to all Y-type effects or stuff equivalent to 5 item bonuses. Just some modest but noticeable buffs that make you better at the supposed purpose of the skill line. The idea being that there is a marked but not overbearing difference between someone who picked 3 skill lines from the same category over someone who went with one from each for a more balanced all-rounder build.

I know this would upset a lot of people, and there would be some rage quitting involved. But overall, it would still be preferable to the endless stream of ad-hoc band-aid fixes the current state of the game induces. Band-aid fixes that still end up wrecking years and years of established builds and play-styles. Like the sledgehammer fixes introduced by this update.

But yeah, I know you won't do that, and the wild swing of random nerfs and weird changes will continue. And while we live in that garbage state, I will stick with my Oakensorc 'cause I do not have the energy or patience to deal with this sort of nonsense every three months.

randconfig · July 11

FoJul wrote: »

Arcanist Beam is still strong.

Lightning form is useless.

Spectral bow not giving me 300 spell dmg nerfed my non beam pve build. I already have my crit buff.

Removing my 30 ultimate instant button also really hurts the performance of my PvE and PvP build. Major heroism is nice but id rather have 10 ult per sec for 3 seconds. Or just the instant 30. (Also having to be in combat for this is mega annoying).

Also if I didnt mention already, Arcanist Beam is overtuned and makes other playstyles obsolete.

Exactly. The problem is the beam, not the class's entire ability to use non-class, scribed, or subclassed abilities without losing the benefits of all their passives that require crux generation and consumption.

The obvious solution, that I said we needed even during the U46 PTS, is to disable crux generation during the beam channel. The thing I said would absolutely not solve the problem and ruin the class during the U46 PTS would be if they removed the crux generation from the class mastery script.

It's like they don't actually listen or think about the implications of the changes they make, and it breaks my mind that some other members in the community waste my time by replying to my arguments with "no you're wrong", instead of actually providing some kind of counter argument.

U46 killed necromancers with pet bugs, and now U47 is set to kill Arcanists's ability to play anything other than the beam, while doing nothing to address the subclassing beam meta.

YandereGirlfriend · July 11

Lost in the sauce with the Hurricane nerf is that Boundless Storm remains a dogwater and un-slottable skill.

Please consider giving it a greatly increased Status Effect chance like Warden receives with Arctic Blast. Also increase the radius to at least 6m (again, like Arctic Blast), but preferably to 8m.

Honestly, drop Major Expo if needed to pay for it.

CaptainRele · July 11

The floodgates were opened and there is no stopping the damage that subclassing is causing the game. We warned you that power creep would go up and were told it was fine. We said the catalyst buff was insane and were told it was fine. We knew that PvP would make insane combos to make playing there so much more difficult and unfun and silence. Now after only a month of everything going live, as predicted, it's nerfing time.

But not even nerfs of the actual problems. No, it's absurd changes that cause even more homogenization, punish oaken casuals enough that even they get mad (an impressive feat), and decide that 11 years into the game, certain skills can't have certain effects because subclassing went live without nearly enough thought.

Minor heroism on class ulti gen buffs that can't get 100% uptime on? Awful. One of the worst changes I've ever read. Removing major resolve from lightning form after eleven years? Terrible. Changing relentless focus to not give w/sd at all and further nerfing pure blade? Sigh. Taking minor protection and max mag off bound aegis? DEEP SIGH. Changing class mastery on banner for arcanist to be identical to inspired scholarship? Was there a time limit on how long they had to figure out a fix for arcs gaining crux without a generator skill?

And again: how is ulti gen this much of an issue? I do not feel this supposed "too high ulti gen" in any of my trifecta progs - not with pillagers and pearls getting nuked and many support dps switching OUT of their ulti gen skill lines. Just because one guy made a video showing a barrier every 12 seconds doesn't mean that's usable in any real content to gain an advantage. Spreadsheets don't play the game, people do. Even then, a build made for ulti gen is a viable play style and it feels extremely limiting to say "no not like that" when people were smart enough to figure out it was possible. Just... (Sigh) I expect nothing and I am still disappointed.

argonian37 · July 12

Zos. Could you please give pure class players a passive that rewards their choice? Don’t know… a flat % dmg buff, an increase in regen, something that evens the field a little and make pure class builds viable too. I know that subclassing is the fancy new thing and is ok, but every build looks similar… everyone uses the same 5 skill lines

WreckfulAbandon · July 12

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Literally don't understand how any time balance is addressed Sorcerer is always first on the chopping block. First to be disfigured. Always the first to receive any kind of nerf while NB and Warden make popcorn.

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

But hey, Grim Focus has Savagery now and can triple tap. Which is cool because I use it now instead of whatever stupid Sorcerer skill I would have previously (not) used instead

SaintJohnHM · July 12

Can we just get some clarity on what ZoS's goals are with skill balance and multiclassing?

First they say it's ok that there's going to be a huge power surge, it will just be a fact of multiclassing, enjoy! And then in U47 they screw everyone over by saying they need to take it back and try to "balance" things by just nerfing overperformers and not buffing underperforming skill lines. Homogenizing ult build support is super unfun.

Many player warned ZoS they'd be trivializing/skipping fun mechs with this power surge, but they went ahead with it anyway. If they go ahead with these nerfs and turning skill lines to garbage even more, what really is their goal?

Radiate77 · July 12

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning?

Stormcalling is not just a Damage skill line, it’s a Lightning (Destruction) skill line with a focus on Mobility. Just look at Streak and Lightning Form, the main variable for Form is the changing between Minor or Major Expedition and how long you have it.

Just as (Conjured) Daggers make sense on a skill line that focuses on Conjuration, or TES’ version of Daedric Summoning in other games. Even the name of the skill Bound Armaments is a nod at prior Elder Scrolls games that had “Bound” Conjuration spells within them.

Obligatory, "Also Boundless Storm having an unusably small 5m radius that doesn't work as a damage skill" addendum.

Hey hey, hoo hoo, all 5m skills have GOT TO GO!

Still agree, and if it has to remain 5 meters, it should be outright dangerous to be that close to you!

Melee is 2 meters further, so even with a damage spike, it wouldn’t break anything.

Radiate77 · July 12

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

What’s with the negative cross-out? If you don’t care, why would you state your opinion like it’s a fact? Seems like you do care, perhaps more than the average person. It’s okay if you don’t know how to use either of those skill lines, or even Stormcalling for that matter.

Everything has a place, you just need to build for it, and while you might not like Summons, I love when my Scamp eats an Incap or a Spec Bow and I proceed to Jab down whatever fool shot my monkey. And Dark Magic bad? Dark Deal is still top 3 for sustain, and the Dark Magic passives are some of the best sustain ones in the game… and Frags hit pretty hard when you have crit passives from other skill lines.

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Try looking at the other skills, with Lightning Flood you can proc your own synergy now and it doesn’t take a GCD so you can effectively burst people down when they come in to Incap you, by synergizing with a Dawnbreaker. Crit Surge is extremely strong on a DoT build or when running Jabs. I’ve been using both skills and seeing great results all Update.

Major_Mangle · July 12

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Literally don't understand how any time balance is addressed Sorcerer is always first on the chopping block. First to be disfigured. Always the first to receive any kind of nerf while NB and Warden make popcorn.

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

But hey, Grim Focus has Savagery now and can triple tap. Which is cool because I use it now instead of whatever stupid Sorcerer skill I would have previously (not) used instead

While I agree that daedric summoning is a bit underwhelming for PvP, dark magic is far from. It´s actually one of the stronger skillines you can use for PvP depending on how you want to setup your build. Negate is probably the strongest utility ultimate in the game, dark deal while getting some strange changes on PTS is a very strong skill on live. Crystal Weapon and Crystal Fragments are both incredibly strong damage skills as well. The passives are also quite alright for most part (nothing fantastic but by no means bad).

Zyaneth_Bal · July 12

Major_Mangle wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Literally don't understand how any time balance is addressed Sorcerer is always first on the chopping block. First to be disfigured. Always the first to receive any kind of nerf while NB and Warden make popcorn.

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

But hey, Grim Focus has Savagery now and can triple tap. Which is cool because I use it now instead of whatever stupid Sorcerer skill I would have previously (not) used instead

While I agree that daedric summoning is a bit underwhelming for PvP, dark magic is far from. It´s actually one of the stronger skillines you can use for PvP depending on how you want to setup your build. Negate is probably the strongest utility ultimate in the game, dark deal while getting some strange changes on PTS is a very strong skill on live. Crystal Weapon and Crystal Fragments are both incredibly strong damage skills as well. The passives are also quite alright for most part (nothing fantastic but by no means bad).

The fact that dark magic can barely be seen used should at least tell you something.
Now, there’s a lot I would suggest but jt won’t be looked at anyway, so I’m just going to comment on the post and won’t go in-depth.

Crystal weapon and fragments are ok, although fragments could use it’s damage type changed to shock, possibly apply concussed on hit too because a slight buff would not be out of place. With frags crystal weaver has zero value, compared to other burst skills’ secondary effects, grim focus provides a large amount of passive damage on live and major prophecy/savagery on pts, molten whip also gives a chunk of passive damage. Additionally, frags doesn’t actually proc that much more often than grim focus to justify such a big tooltip damage difference and the proc is still random while grim focus is easily tracked and can even store up to 2 charges now.

Dark exchange is bad and there are a few reasons why:

First one being cast time. There should be no need to explain how big of a disadvantage it is especially in pvp.
The skill is immensely outdated, basically an artifact. Cast time remained since release when sorc had much more mobility compared to other classes and could gain distance to cast it safely, this hasn’t been the case for many years already. Same idea was fulfilled by exchange instantly restoring a large amount of resources. Now however a portion is restored over time making it lose a lot of value if spammed. Mobility is extremely common nowadays, not to mention that bash has a range of about 10m when streak’s is only 15m. These facts put together mean that to use exchange safely you have to cast streak several times already burning through much more resources than exchange restores. And I don’t have to tell how strong and important blocking is and casting exchange leaves you completely vulnerable.

Second reason is that it’s simply weaker and provides less benefits than other sustain skills:
Netch is extremely loaded, other than restoring resources it’s free to cast, provides major sorcery/brutality, provides a unique 5% damage buff or cleanse and it benefits from all of it’s line’s passives.
Rune focus provides major resolve, heals and also benefits from it’s line’s passives.
Siphoning strikes restore both resources on demand instantly, additionally restore some resources and health passively. Health cost is easily covered by hots making it another advantage. Also benefits from line’s passives.
While dark exchange is the only skill here with a cast time and a long one. It only provides a measly minor berserk that is extremely easy to gain from other sources (everyone has it from monomyth passively now anyway). It heals a bit if you finish casting it, which will only serve to cover part of the damage you take while casting. Not to mention that healing only reaches a sufficient value due to blood magic, without it exchange’s own healing value is pretty underwhelming.

Lastly, dark magic passives are quite bad.
Unholy knowledge is fine and basically act like a cost reduction glyph.
Blood magic is only ok with crystal weapon but otherwise barely procs at all.
Persistence might only be good for tanks in pve. For all other purposes it’s just too weak and not fitting. Also already loses some value paired with unholy knowledge.
Exploitation is plain inferior to similar passives like hemmorage, blessing of the mountain.

And negate while strong in it’s niche has extremely limited use. It is situational in group pvp only and has no possible use in pve at all.

And let’s no forget that there are 3 more active skills in this line that have stayed dead for most of the games history.

BasP · July 12

A lot of comparisons between Bound Armaments and Relentless Focus have been made in this thread, rightfully so. But isn't Crystal Fragments worse than Merciless Resolve and Relentless Focus as well?

I briefly did a couple of parses on an unbuffed dummy myself using both Merciless Resolve and Crystal Fragments on the same build, and the former did more damage each time. Coincidentally I used both skills the same number of times in the following parse, but even though Frags had one more crit it's damage was still slightly lower. Besides the damage being lower, it also doesn't have other effects such as Merciless Resolve's healing nor its Major Buff.

I also did a handful of parses with Relentless Focus and even though it's max. hit was sometimes lower than that of Crystal Fragments, it still dealt more damage every parse since it can be used more often (unless one has a lot of Frag procs I guess, but I wasn't so lucky).

Hence, could Crystal Fragments maybe get some kind of buff too? The Dark Magic skill line could use at least one skill that's outstanding.

GloatingSwine · July 12

MincMincMinc wrote: »

GloatingSwine wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Zos:
Either skill lines should be balanced and reworked to have all three damage/tank/heal aspects within.

OR skill lines will have to be purely towards one damage or tank or heals. This enables drastic power creep where before a class only had 1 damage line......Now they will just run 3 damage lines.

There is a third option of moving towards the pure skill line concept, but putting the subclass restriction where only a damage line can be swapped for a damage line.

It's almost certainly easier to rework the old skill lines to the new model than the other way around. I'm pretty sure any attempt to shuffle Arcanist especially just leaves it with the identity crisis Sorcerer has in U47.

Well the corpse and crux system was just a terrible idea if subclassing was on the table. Both of those concepts are not going to last the next few years without alot of changing.

Yes it is far easier, but healthier for the game and future balance is the main issue. My main point was that before people had 3 skill lines giving equal 3x damage 3x tank 3x heals. However now with subclassing meta lets look at pvp for example. Assassin is probably 3x damage with stormcalling for 3x damage and Animal which is 2x damage 1x tank(utility) So 8x damage compared to 3x from before.

This example even fails to mention how some lines are not even in the running. Now you can just avoid those lines. Like how stamsorc has always just used stormcalling as 90% of its kit. Now you can pick up two useful skill lines.

It's not just corpses and crux, once again it's that old nemesis of balance Fatecarver making the Herald of the Tome line really hard to unpick.

Fatecarver has the unfortunate combination of being a main damage skill, so you want to do it most of the time, and a four second channel. That means all of the rest of the line has to be designed around these big 4 second gaps between any other action than beaming. You can't spread power around the other skills in the line in the expectation that they get used together because the beam is a channel that stops them being used at all. So the power budget is in crux and the passives instead.

The reason this doesn't happen with Radiant Oppression is that Jesus beam is an execute, you don't want to do it all the time you only want to do it when the enemy hits about 20% health. So it inherently doesn't take over the whole skill line.

WreckfulAbandon · July 12

Radiate77 wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

What’s with the negative cross-out? If you don’t care, why would you state your opinion like it’s a fact? Seems like you do care, perhaps more than the average person. It’s okay if you don’t know how to use either of those skill lines, or even Stormcalling for that matter.

Everything has a place, you just need to build for it, and while you might not like Summons, I love when my Scamp eats an Incap or a Spec Bow and I proceed to Jab down whatever fool shot my monkey. And Dark Magic bad? Dark Deal is still top 3 for sustain, and the Dark Magic passives are some of the best sustain ones in the game… and Frags hit pretty hard when you have crit passives from other skill lines.

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Try looking at the other skills, with Lightning Flood you can proc your own synergy now and it doesn’t take a GCD so you can effectively burst people down when they come in to Incap you, by synergizing with a Dawnbreaker. Crit Surge is extremely strong on a DoT build or when running Jabs. I’ve been using both skills and seeing great results all Update.

Dark Deal is far from necessary these days with subclassing. Negate Magic is a good ult for coordinated play but that's about all I can say. In my 3-4 man group we rarely use it (this was back when we played actually; jury is out on whether we are sticking around this time after 2 weeks back). Passives are all bad, the sustain from Dark Deal is easy to replace these days, and Negate is situational. I see you are still going on about this philosophy of skill lines that ZOS seems to be trying to adhere to. Well for PvP Storm Calling is not a Damage line outside of Overload builds, aka the majority of the time. It's a utility line that is about to get hit hard with the nerf bat. I crossed out that line just to not be overly rude but it's absolutely how I feel btw.

With subclassing, picking a skill line is very competitive and Dark Magic does not make the cut.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Literally don't understand how any time balance is addressed Sorcerer is always first on the chopping block. First to be disfigured. Always the first to receive any kind of nerf while NB and Warden make popcorn.

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

But hey, Grim Focus has Savagery now and can triple tap. Which is cool because I use it now instead of whatever stupid Sorcerer skill I would have previously (not) used instead

While I agree that daedric summoning is a bit underwhelming for PvP, dark magic is far from. It´s actually one of the stronger skillines you can use for PvP depending on how you want to setup your build. Negate is probably the strongest utility ultimate in the game, dark deal while getting some strange changes on PTS is a very strong skill on live. Crystal Weapon and Crystal Fragments are both incredibly strong damage skills as well. The passives are also quite alright for most part (nothing fantastic but by no means bad).

That's a hard disagree on the efficacy of Dark Magic. Bad passives, and for me personally only Negate holds any value. Crystal Weapon still makes me angry to this day because for a short time it was reworked to be a beautiful skill, only to be given a bizarre overbuff (that some of us BEGGED to not get so it wouldn't be nerfed

) so it could be nerfed into the ground the next patch. Crystal Fragments seems so clunky now (it was a much stronger skill years ago, harder hitting and able to be 100% animation cancelled for smooth comboing). The damage was also nerfed. I can't enjoy that skill any more because of the nerf bat, and especially the GIANT SLAP IN THE FACE that the state of Crystal Weapon represents to the Sorcerer class.

I don't want a spammable skill that sacrifices even 1% of the damage from the base hit to deliver a second much weaker hit and raise the base cost considerably, and they removed way more than 1%. It was a stupid change and Crystal Weapon still sucks and has sucked ever since they did that. Daedric Summoning is laughably unviable for anyone unconcerned with pets, which has historically been the majority of PvP Sorcs. I would even say that a lot of us were (and are) outright disdainful of pets.

Keep in mind also that Hurricane in its current form has been heavily nerfed in both damage and utility and this one seemingly small change is the straw that broke the camel's back. At least for me, but reading around the forums it doesn't seem I'm the only one

Tonturri · July 12

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

What’s with the negative cross-out? If you don’t care, why would you state your opinion like it’s a fact? Seems like you do care, perhaps more than the average person. It’s okay if you don’t know how to use either of those skill lines, or even Stormcalling for that matter.

Everything has a place, you just need to build for it, and while you might not like Summons, I love when my Scamp eats an Incap or a Spec Bow and I proceed to Jab down whatever fool shot my monkey. And Dark Magic bad? Dark Deal is still top 3 for sustain, and the Dark Magic passives are some of the best sustain ones in the game… and Frags hit pretty hard when you have crit passives from other skill lines.

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Try looking at the other skills, with Lightning Flood you can proc your own synergy now and it doesn’t take a GCD so you can effectively burst people down when they come in to Incap you, by synergizing with a Dawnbreaker. Crit Surge is extremely strong on a DoT build or when running Jabs. I’ve been using both skills and seeing great results all Update.

Dark Deal is far from necessary these days with subclassing. Negate Magic is a good ult for coordinated play but that's about all I can say. In my 3-4 man group we rarely use it (this was back when we played actually; jury is out on whether we are sticking around this time after 2 weeks back). Passives are all bad, the sustain from Dark Deal is easy to replace these days, and Negate is situational. I see you are still going on about this philosophy of skill lines that ZOS seems to be trying to adhere to. Well for PvP Storm Calling is not a Damage line outside of Overload builds, aka the majority of the time. It's a utility line that is about to get hit hard with the nerf bat. I crossed out that line just to not be overly rude but it's absolutely how I feel btw.

With subclassing, picking a skill line is very competitive and Dark Magic does not make the cut.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Literally don't understand how any time balance is addressed Sorcerer is always first on the chopping block. First to be disfigured. Always the first to receive any kind of nerf while NB and Warden make popcorn.

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

But hey, Grim Focus has Savagery now and can triple tap. Which is cool because I use it now instead of whatever stupid Sorcerer skill I would have previously (not) used instead

While I agree that daedric summoning is a bit underwhelming for PvP, dark magic is far from. It´s actually one of the stronger skillines you can use for PvP depending on how you want to setup your build. Negate is probably the strongest utility ultimate in the game, dark deal while getting some strange changes on PTS is a very strong skill on live. Crystal Weapon and Crystal Fragments are both incredibly strong damage skills as well. The passives are also quite alright for most part (nothing fantastic but by no means bad).

That's a hard disagree on the efficacy of Dark Magic. Bad passives, and for me personally only Negate holds any value. Crystal Weapon still makes me angry to this day because for a short time it was reworked to be a beautiful skill, only to be given a bizarre overbuff (that some of us BEGGED to not get so it wouldn't be nerfed ) so it could be nerfed into the ground the next patch. Crystal Fragments seems so clunky now (it was a much stronger skill years ago, harder hitting and able to be 100% animation cancelled for smooth comboing). The damage was also nerfed. I can't enjoy that skill any more because of the nerf bat, and especially the GIANT SLAP IN THE FACE that the state of Crystal Weapon represents to the Sorcerer class.

I don't want a spammable skill that sacrifices even 1% of the damage from the base hit to deliver a second much weaker hit and raise the base cost considerably, and they removed way more than 1%. It was a stupid change and Crystal Weapon still sucks and has sucked ever since they did that. Daedric Summoning is laughably unviable for anyone unconcerned with pets, which has historically been the majority of PvP Sorcs. I would even say that a lot of us were (and are) outright disdainful of pets.

Keep in mind also that Hurricane in its current form has been heavily nerfed in both damage and utility and this one seemingly small change is the straw that broke the camel's back. At least for me, but reading around the forums it doesn't seem I'm the only one

I can appreciate the attempted uniqueness of crystal weapon - I use it on a RP build that has two spammables and I rotate between them to get the second hit of damage from crystal weapon, but it really just doesn't work well in a game with such limited bar space. I have seen it used as a spammable sometimes on a bow build though.

Anyway, back to complaining. ZOS, any chance we could get some explanation of what you're going for with Dark Cloak? It was a weak HoT already with an effectively useless boost. In the 40-45k HP range it healed, base, about as much as a typical burst heal but over time, making it just worse overall. It's barely a moderately decent heal even with the change to require blocking instead of being stationary. Other heals that don't have this requirement are just better and more flexible. I like the attempt to make it more interesting instead of just a generic press button, get health, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

We only have slots for 10 skills on our bars, making such heavy nerfs to individual skills much more impactful than if this were a game like WoW where nerfing something by 40% could still very easily only be a 5-10% decrease in effectiveness overall, but in ESO this is a huge hit

madmufffin · July 12

Radiate77 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Problem is that if stormcalling is the "damage" line does that mean we should delete the damage skills off of dark magic and daedric summoning?

Stormcalling is not just a Damage skill line, it’s a Lightning (Destruction) skill line with a focus on Mobility. Just look at Streak and Lightning Form, the main variable for Form is the changing between Minor or Major Expedition and how long you have it.

Just as (Conjured) Daggers make sense on a skill line that focuses on Conjuration, or TES’ version of Daedric Summoning in other games. Even the name of the skill Bound Armaments is a nod at prior Elder Scrolls games that had “Bound” Conjuration spells within them.

I don't know how you can say it's not the dps line when it's the only line with dps passives. They just did a horrible job with the active components of the line.

madmufffin · July 12

Making crystal frags do shock damage and swapping it with surge and then making mage's fury not absolutely worthless would do so much in increasing Sorc's dps viability and having an actual point in existing in the game outside of atro (in PVE). Having free major resolve from lightning form was always nice as a dps since force is extremely easy to come by with Velothi being king, trap being pretty easy to fit if needed, and scribing existing (in PVE). I just don't see any reason for the nerf aside from pissing off the few remaining Sorc mains in PVP. Major resolve being on Bound Aegis in lieu of the much more valuable minor protection and 8% mag is also just a huge nerf to the skill.

Also shameless plug: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/680409/its-time-to-reshuffle-the-other-three-base-game-classes#oldest

universal_wrath · July 12

Radiate77 wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

What’s with the negative cross-out? If you don’t care, why would you state your opinion like it’s a fact? Seems like you do care, perhaps more than the average person. It’s okay if you don’t know how to use either of those skill lines, or even Stormcalling for that matter.

Everything has a place, you just need to build for it, and while you might not like Summons, I love when my Scamp eats an Incap or a Spec Bow and I proceed to Jab down whatever fool shot my monkey. And Dark Magic bad? Dark Deal is still top 3 for sustain, and the Dark Magic passives are some of the best sustain ones in the game… and Frags hit pretty hard when you have crit passives from other skill lines.

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Try looking at the other skills, with Lightning Flood you can proc your own synergy now and it doesn’t take a GCD so you can effectively burst people down when they come in to Incap you, by synergizing with a Dawnbreaker. Crit Surge is extremely strong on a DoT build or when running Jabs. I’ve been using both skills and seeing great results all Update.

I hate to say this, but lighting flood subpar to other AOE skills even with the new buff to synrgy. Necromancer' Avid boneyard is almost identical to lighting flood, it deals AOE DOT, and has a synrgy you can use as caster. There are 3 significat problems that make lighting flood subpar to Avid boneyard:

1- Avid bone yard is supported by 3 passives and 1 skill from the same skill line in total of 25% increase DOT, ~3200 increased Pen, and 20% critical chance to targets under 33% HP, all of them are unique buffs.
2- Avid has an inhert buff that consume corpes for 30% more damage.
3- Avid Boneyard has minor vulnerability.

VS.
1- lightning flood is supported by 3 passives: 5% shock damage, 10% down to 1% increase damage dependig on remaining HP, 108 spell damage.

As it can be seen, while Lightning Flood identical to Avid Boneyard, there is no actual comparison because Avid is much stronger than Lightning Flood in every aspect.

Radiate77 · July 12

universal_wrath wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Daedric Summoning is not a good skill line for PvP. Neither is Dark Magic. All you are doing is hurting the last remaining viable skill line Sorcerer has for PvP. Please, don't anyone waste a comment defending either of those two skill lines, because I literally don't care and also didn't ask.

What’s with the negative cross-out? If you don’t care, why would you state your opinion like it’s a fact? Seems like you do care, perhaps more than the average person. It’s okay if you don’t know how to use either of those skill lines, or even Stormcalling for that matter.

Everything has a place, you just need to build for it, and while you might not like Summons, I love when my Scamp eats an Incap or a Spec Bow and I proceed to Jab down whatever fool shot my monkey. And Dark Magic bad? Dark Deal is still top 3 for sustain, and the Dark Magic passives are some of the best sustain ones in the game… and Frags hit pretty hard when you have crit passives from other skill lines.

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

If the Lightning Form change goes live the only Sorcerer skill I will still be using is Streak.

Try looking at the other skills, with Lightning Flood you can proc your own synergy now and it doesn’t take a GCD so you can effectively burst people down when they come in to Incap you, by synergizing with a Dawnbreaker. Crit Surge is extremely strong on a DoT build or when running Jabs. I’ve been using both skills and seeing great results all Update.

I hate to say this, but lighting flood subpar to other AOE skills even with the new buff to synrgy. Necromancer' Avid boneyard is almost identical to lighting flood, it deals AOE DOT, and has a synrgy you can use as caster. There are 3 significat problems that make lighting flood subpar to Avid boneyard:

1- Avid bone yard is supported by 3 passives and 1 skill from the same skill line in total of 25% increase DOT, ~3200 increased Pen, and 20% critical chance to targets under 33% HP, all of them are unique buffs.
2- Avid has an inhert buff that consume corpes for 30% more damage.
3- Avid Boneyard has minor vulnerability.

VS.
1- lightning flood is supported by 3 passives: 5% shock damage, 10% down to 1% increase damage dependig on remaining HP, 108 spell damage.

As it can be seen, while Lightning Flood identical to Avid Boneyard, there is no actual comparison because Avid is much stronger than Lightning Flood in every aspect.

Was Lightning Flood not just the recipient of a massive status effect chance increase? I certainly feel it as Concussion is procc’ing constantly.

Lightning Flood and Winter’s equivalent received those changes, not quite sure about Boneyard.

Cerbolt · July 12

Why does hurricane get nerfed, but arc beam remains untouched? The beam is the problem so they nerf everything else. It just doesn't make sense to me.

randconfig · July 13

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Still waiting.

"player choice remains at the forefront of ESO's design philosophy" . . .

Unless you're an Arcanist, as now ZOS has gutted the class mastery script, so you cannot generate crux to have access to the class passives or to use crux consumption abilities when you want to use nonclass abilities, scribed abilities, or subclassed abilities. You will use runeblades and beam and you will like it.

ZhuJiuyin · July 13

Radiate77 wrote: »

Was Lightning Flood not just the recipient of a massive status effect chance increase?

I don't think this change has been made.

In the past, the only thing that happened was that the Volatile Familiar active ability had a 5% chance to trigger, but somehow the patch notes at the time said it was a 5% chance to Overcharge, not a 5% chance to Concuss. Also, the Volatile Familiar change was not updated in the skill description at the time. (It still hasn't been updated yet)
This reflects another problem with Sorc's skills, many of which have not had their descriptions updated, or have misleading descriptions, such as Blood Magic in the past.

From all the past, it seems that the developers either don't care about Sorc so much, or they hate Sorc so much that Sorc is treated discriminatory.
For example, we all know "If you don't like pets, you can blah blah", or this time Relentless Focus V.S Bound Armaments, or Lightning Splash self-synergy, in the initial patch, Luminous Shards gained self-synergy to increase its appeal, but Lightning Splash was not mentioned at all until the players protested loudly, and then Lightning Splash self-synergy was provided in a later patch. At the same time, they also tried to nerf Bound Armaments' damage by 10%, but finally restored it as a reward after players loudly protested.