Class Identity Refresh for Sorc and Warden

ZhuJiuyin · January 13

Dear @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom
Although the opposition was relatively small, most players did not expect that the DK's poison damage would be removed., and not something they had previously requested, could ZOS inform us whether other classes, such as Warden and Sorc, which previously combined multiple playstyles, will also have elements added or removed?

According to the Class Identity Refresh description, Warden seems to no longer emphasize frost and animals, but rather the so-called seasons; similarly, Sorc no longer emphasizes shock, but rather Dark Magic and Daedric.

However, from forums, it seems that most Sorc players want an emphasis on shock and Dark Magic gameplay, rather than Daedric, and Warden player seems to prefer emphasizing frost damage.
This time players can (barely) acceptable removal of poison damage from the New DK doesn't mean that removing frost from Warden or forcing Sorc back into a zoo-like playstyle will be acceptable.

It would be great if we could understand the development direction in advance and propose changes before it's too late.

AzuraFan · January 13

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

However, from forums, it seems that most Sorc players want an emphasis on shock and Dark Magic gameplay, rather than Daedric, and Warden player seems to prefer emphasizing frost damage.

This warden player prefers animal companions.

I'd also like to know what the focus will be for the warden. Will it be frost, animal companions, or something else?

ZhuJiuyin · January 13

AzuraFan wrote: »

This warden player prefers animal companions.

I'd also like to know what the focus will be for the warden. Will it be frost, animal companions, or something else?

This is what I meant when I said that removing or binding specific styles because of Class Identity Refresh will definitely cause dissatisfaction, especially for classes like Warden and Sorc, whose skill lines have vastly different styles. We really should know the development direction early on to avoid being caught off guard.

flizomica · January 13

A martial and a magical element type for each class is my strong preference. I think that's a good balance between diversity and not having damage types be totally all over the place. For Warden, I hope they consolidate damage types into Frost/Bleed, or Frost/Poison would also make sense (especially poison on damage morphs of Green Balance skills). More options for engaging with the class power fantasy in slightly different ways is always nice.

tohopka_eso · January 13

AzuraFan wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

However, from forums, it seems that most Sorc players want an emphasis on shock and Dark Magic gameplay, rather than Daedric, and Warden player seems to prefer emphasizing frost damage.

This warden player prefers animal companions.

I'd also like to know what the focus will be for the warden. Will it be frost, animal companions, or something else?

Same, I'd be lost without my bear. Think I only use one frost skill and that's artic blast. I use animal and green balance the most.

ZhuJiuyin · January 13

I also think the Warden should emphasize Frost but retain the animal line playstyle. However, the New DK only has Fire damage, so I think the developers might be having each class specialize in only one attribute. The only thing worth looking forward to right now is that the Warden's description of Seasonal Power might give it multiple damage attributes.

For Sorcerers, I personally hope to significantly reduce the importance of pets and emphasize shock and dark magic. However, according to the new description, it seems there's a high chance that shock will be removed from Sorcerers...

ZOS really should let us know in advance whether they are prepared to remove (or enhance) specific damage attributes or gameplay of a class, and allow players to vote on whether to keep or change the plan before it becomes impossible to modify.

tomofhyrule · January 13

I am interested to see what they do with the next one.

Warden is pretty split with damage types between their lines of Frost, Bleed (and some poison), and [ERROR: DAMAGE NOT FOUND]. It does make me wonder if it'll hard-focus Frost/Bleed, or if it'll just make all of the animals cold and stick to a single damage type.

Sorc can be considered the same way, as the have a whole Shock line and most of the pets do shock as well, but then you come in with Physical for some skills. Will the physical get dropped and all dark magic goes to shock damage?

The main thing that I'm intrigued by is Warden does have pretty strictly delineated lines, and I'm excited to see those walls broken down. I know there are a lot of people excited to see Winter's Embrace pick up more damage, but I'm also interested to see what kinds of support we'll see from the animals and the damage from the plants.

Yudo · January 13

I personally would want the sorc to lean more into magic damage. Lightning is fun but class = element seems too shallow to me. I'm all for lightning sorc, but would like to see lightning form's ghostly transparent visuals to go away. We should be able to see and enjoy our character in full glory.

YandereGirlfriend · January 13

I would not be too worried about Wardens losing Frost based upon the precedent set by DK streamlining to Flame simply because Wardens already enjoy a dedicated Frost skill line, which is not the situation that the DK had with Poison. DK only had random one-off morphs that were not Flame (recall that they patched the generic Magic Damage skills to become Flame a few years ago as well) and that were easy to "correct" to match the rest of the class theme.

OTOH, it is doubtful that Warden would become Frost-exclusive for that very same reason. Some sort of split with Bleed, at the very least, seems inevitable. But that is also very on-brand for the class and is a situation where having both a Martial and a Magic element truly makes sense. I would also much prefer to see the Animals line divided-up similarly between Bleed and Frost and to eliminate the random and isolated instances of Poison and Magic Damage, which do not match the theme or synergize at all with the rest of the class kit.

Whizzinglane · January 13

THE WARDEN:

I think the Warden class should have skills that emphasize nature, for example: Air, Water and the Earth. Frost should be a morph to water. Also the Warden class needs other animal companions such as the Wolf, Eagle and the Bear, of course.

THE SORCERER:

I also believe the Sorcerer should have the "shock" fire and ice spells, as well as dark magic and the ability to summon familiars. The current familiars need major overhaul or refresh, and at least adding two new ones.

The Fire spell visual effects (VFX) or animations should be similar to the current "Shock" spell: mage's Fury VFX, fire falling down like rain upon the heads of the enemy(ies). The Fire Staff can be used instead of adding an extra skill line.

Also the Ice Staff can be used for the Ice spells instead of adding an additional skill line.

Dark Conversion and Daedric Tomb should be under the Daedric skill line.

Bound Aegis and Hardened Ward should fall under "Dark Magic skill line."

ALL Shields should be at least 10 seconds for the Sorcerer.

Ingel_Riday · January 13

Whizzinglane wrote: »

THE WARDEN:

I think the Warden class should have skills that emphasize nature, for example: Air, Water and the Earth. Frost should be a morph to water. Also the Warden class needs other animal companions such as the Wolf, Eagle and the Bear, of course.

See... I would hate this.

As is, many of the classes currently have variety to their identities. My magicka dragonknight is a pyromancer with dots. A stamina dragonknight is a font of poison. A tank dragonknight is a mix of dragon abilities and stone. Now... we're all going to be volcano stone-dragon attrition warriors. Very homogenous sounding.

I'd hate to see wardens fall down the same rabbit hole. Part of the fun of wardens is that they can veer into very different specs with very different themes. A healing warden is all sorts of vines and flowers. Nature-magic fun. A stamina warden is a mixture of weapons and pet animals, like a ranger on steroids. A magicka warden is a straight-up CRYOMANCER. I have three frost AOE dots, bonuses to frost damage, and a class bonus to the chilled effect that makes using destructive reach as a spammable with a charged frost staff an actually viable option! This is the only class that can really get away with using a frost staff as an offensive weapon. It's great. Feels genuinely novel.

I'd be wretchedly mournful to find out that my cryomancer was now an animal herding water wizard with vines... just like every other warden of every single spec. All the trees and abilities re-worked, jumbled up, and mixed up so that we all wind up the same core theme regardless.

Be a darned shame.

Edit addition: I wouldn't mind if, as others mentioned, things got tweaked to help emphasize one or the other. None of my animal companion abilities do frost damage, so the fetcher flies and shalks and bear don't synergize at all with the rest of me. Similarly, a martial warden has no real synergy with any of the frost bonuses. Some kind of adjusting of the trees / abilities that helped people better focus on one or the other would be nice.

Though I imagine that I'll be kissing cyromancy goodbye in one form or the other in the next two years. *sob*

Desiato · January 14

IMO, there are two main reasons DK lost poison:

- they needed to convert some abilities to facilitate the new engulfing dragonfire play style while still allowing for other play styles
- limited time/budget to include a poison version of the new animations

So I think it will vary on a case by case basis.

My main concern is that every class is going to lose something to facilitate beam-like gameplay. I sure hope they don't ruin sweep/jabs by making one of the morphs a 5s 10m channel.

I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the PTS we see some DK abilities have conditional resource costs based on the primary resource, like we see on Arcanist. The static cost of Engulfing Dragonfire makes me think it's not finished yet.

Morvan · January 14

Poison on DK wasn't really a major theme of their class, they didn't have a whole Poison skill line, it's something way easier to remove without really affecting the thematics.

Meanwhile removing Frost from Warden and Shock from Sorc would mean pretty much deleting a whole skill line for something new, I'd be baffled if they did something like that.

With that being said though, I always felt like Warden's thematic is a bit weird, they have animals and plants that do go well together, but frost just feels... out of place? They could have made a whole ice class instead, but Warden now has that as part of their identity, removing it after all these years would just be criminal, same for Sorc.

AzuraFan · January 14

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

A stamina warden is a mixture of weapons and pet animals, like a ranger on steroids.

That's how I see my warden, so I'd hate to see them go full on with frost. That doesn't mean I want to see frost go. As you said, right now wardens have a choice. Hopefully that choice won't go away. If they want to make it frost/bleed, with bleed going to animal companions, that would be fine. I just don't want to see one choice obliterated.

MincMincMinc · January 14

I just want a melee version of crystal frags to be like older dizzy swing. Bring back oldschool stamsorc.

Instead of a 33% chance make it so the third cast of crystal weapon does a 1s cast knockup hit. The proc and cast time fit in well with the base skill concept compared to the psijic imbue clone it is now.

Turtle_Bot · January 14

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Dear @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

According to the Class Identity Refresh description, Warden seems to no longer emphasize frost and animals, but rather the so-called seasons; similarly, Sorc no longer emphasizes shock, but rather Dark Magic and Daedric.

This has been one of my biggest concerns regarding the upcoming Sorcerer rework later this year as well. I still plan to make a more detailed thread on the sub-details of this issue in the future, but this thread summarizes the overarching concerns I have over the current (lack of) details we have for the proposed refresh to Sorcerer and 1 of the main questions I have for ZOS regarding this.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_NickG @ZOS_JessicaFolsom I want to repeat the question asked by OP as well:

It would be great if we could understand the development direction in advance and propose changes before it's too late.

Are we Sorcerers who want to wield Lightning as our spells going to be cast aside just to fit Sorcerer into the little descriptive blurb regarding classes that came with the end-of-year letter last year that described Sorcerers as "Magic users who focus on daedric pacts and dark magic"?

Nemesis7884 · January 14

Warden lce
Sorc lightning
Nb poison
Templar physical
Necro Disease
Arcanist Magic

There u go

Radiate77 · January 14

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Warden lce
Sorc lightning
Nb poison
Templar physical
Necro Disease
Arcanist Magic

There u go

What if Arcanist became Frost, Warden got Poison, Templar kept Magic and Nightblade landed Bleed?

ESO_Nightingale · January 14

AzuraFan wrote: »

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

A stamina warden is a mixture of weapons and pet animals, like a ranger on steroids.

That's how I see my warden, so I'd hate to see them go full on with frost. That doesn't mean I want to see frost go. As you said, right now wardens have a choice. Hopefully that choice won't go away. If they want to make it frost/bleed, with bleed going to animal companions, that would be fine. I just don't want to see one choice obliterated.

i really hope they double down on the 2 sided nature of warden. for a long time on the forums now there's been 2 seperate crowds of warden players. the side im on which is all about frost, and the other side which doesn't want to use frost at all.

ZOS really should lean into that since they're writing all of this fluff about "changing with the seasons"

Nemesis7884 · January 14

Radiate77 wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Warden lce
Sorc lightning
Nb poison
Templar physical
Necro Disease
Arcanist Magic

There u go

What if Arcanist became Frost, Warden got Poison, Templar kept Magic and Nightblade landed Bleed?

I would also much rather have warden work like the druids with earth (phys/bleed/poi) and sky (lightning) but you need to look at the existing skill line identities that will not change....and warden has a specific frost line

Cerbolt · January 14

I've played a stamsorc for a long time, and its main defining skill is hurricane which is in the lightning skill tree. If we loose hurricane I am done with sorcerer.

MincMincMinc · January 14

Cerbolt wrote: »

I've played a stamsorc for a long time, and its main defining skill is hurricane which is in the lightning skill tree. If we loose hurricane I am done with sorcerer.

Youd think, but they already tried once. It is hard because for 10 years zos kept stamsorc off to the side. Really stamsorc players have been playing the game with only stormcalling all along. Touching any of the staples is not going to go over well.

Personally I dropped darkdeal and dark magic without a second thought, and daedric was really only used for the 20% regen passive. Id hope they dont do any major changes to streak, critsurge, and hurricane. If anything they need to redistribute the damage passives off of stormcalling so it isnt a one stop shop kinda subclass.

For hurricane I could see going back to shock damage, but no real reason to with lighting form already existing. Minor expedition also used to be the staple of "stamsorc was the fastest" with quick engagement builds like dizzy stamsorc all the way back to the IC days. Maybe they are better off making a kiss/curse with hurricane where it gets 20% movement speed at the start, but slows down as the damage ramps up. Kinda like how real hurricanes work. This way it forces players to make a choice in combat instead of constantly having the speed...........Otherwise I could see boundless getting something like a snare removal added on to it.

Streak I can only imagine the uproar if they touch it. My suggestion is to make streak the engagement morph only stun and do damage at the end location. Then have ball be the escape morph do a stun at the start location with the absorb at the end. This probably cuts out so many calcs, remember that current streak is technically doing an aoe circle at the start, an aoe rectangle while moving, and then an aoe circle at the end. TONS of aoe checks and distributing procs and effects on the server......when most of the time you are running away or disengaging with no intent to fight anyways. If we see them do the vengeance skill cooldown, that is just setting a terrible precedent which other classes should be worried about. Once we open that door how long till they start tacking on cooldowns in the name of performance. Sorry you can only roll dodge once every 5s or block for 5s at a time. Whoops your gap closer got wasted going to a random target you werent aiming at, sorry gotta wait 5s.

Crit surge - honestly I would rather see it heal for less but have a higher tickrate, server performance wise I doubt this is possible though. Concepts like this reward people building off meta stats or builds. Instead of just usual stamsorc pumping pen you could now pump crit chance in pvp which is typically a terrible bang for your buck.

ZhuJiuyin · January 14

Personally, I'd prefer to emphasize Sorc's unique characteristics as a mage and free Sorc from the constraints of pets. I initially chose Sorc for its Destruction magic, such as lightning and dark magic, not to become a zookeeper wielding a dagger.

Yudo · January 14

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Personally, I'd prefer to emphasize Sorc's unique characteristics as a mage and free Sorc from the constraints of pets. I initially chose Sorc for its Destruction magic, such as lightning and dark magic, not to become a zookeeper wielding a dagger.

Would actually be happy if they just deleted pets during rework

MincMincMinc · January 14

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Personally, I'd prefer to emphasize Sorc's unique characteristics as a mage and free Sorc from the constraints of pets. I initially chose Sorc for its Destruction magic, such as lightning and dark magic, not to become a zookeeper wielding a dagger.

Kinda why I think pets and daedric should be its own standalone niche skill line. Then just move traditional magsorc kit items like curse, ward, and mages wrath to dark magic. This way dark magic on its own is a standalone functional skill line.

Something like daedric mines belongs on the daedric summoning skill line. Which makes more sense because pet builds are all about zone of control and peeling for yourself while your pets do the damage.

CaptainVenom · January 14

as a main mag/hybrid sorc, I personally prefer Darkness Magic over Lightning and Thunder (even though Darkness is NB's domain) but I really believe Dark and Thunder can coexist on Sorc's kit, and IMHO Poison didn't link to Fire on DK's kit, as a Dragon breathes Fire and as far as I'm concerned, Ice and Lightning, and not poison because they aren't lizard/snakes/basilisks/whatever.

I'm really more concerned about Daedric Summoning servitors. Being really honest, I don't use them because scamps, clannfears and winged twilights always felt ugly and off-place. We now have storm atronach animals, which fits the between dark-shock and the storm atronach ult. We have wolves, guars, senches, camels, horses, bears and even humanoids. To me, it makes sense to have those minor storm atronach animals instead of scamps, for instance.

Ashryn · January 14

As a Warden since it came to be...I choose it for the Nature themes of controlling animals and plants. The animals are the most important part of it and I wish they were not the animals of Vvardenfell! To me this is a class perfect for wood elves and if any animals where to be chosen, they should have been the animals of the wood elf lands! If our main power is the bear, give us a choice to choose wolves or cats as well, so we can form our own identity.

Nemesis7884 · January 14

Cerbolt wrote: »

I've played a stamsorc for a long time, and its main defining skill is hurricane which is in the lightning skill tree. If we loose hurricane I am done with sorcerer.

maybe they will play into this an have lightning and "wind".... I could even see them turn one of the storm atro morphs into an air atronach...

But i think they will want to limit the amount of work so sticking very much to the existing themes and skill lines and just adapt the values, functionality and visuals somewhat

LtClungeX · January 14

I have a good idea for deadric summoning, change the scamp to a banekin that works like blastbones and afflicts major vulnerability

YandereGirlfriend · January 14

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Personally, I'd prefer to emphasize Sorc's unique characteristics as a mage and free Sorc from the constraints of pets. I initially chose Sorc for its Destruction magic, such as lightning and dark magic, not to become a zookeeper wielding a dagger.

Hopefully one day we will get Conjuration Staves as a standalone skill line and all of the pets can be shuffled over there.

robpr · January 14

Desiato wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the PTS we see some DK abilities have conditional resource costs based on the primary resource, like we see on Arcanist. The static cost of Engulfing Dragonfire makes me think it's not finished yet.

I think they expect everyone to use Soul of the Flame and it restores both resources. With SotF, Combustion and Take Flight you can sustain on both max stam and max mag specs.