Class Identity Refresh for Sorc and Warden

Radiate77 · January 19

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

I don’t think they are going to keep the Vvardenfell theme, they would have to be crazy not to use this opportunity to fix the class.

This 100%. One of the largest pieces of feedback i always hear about warden is that people dont like the vvardenfell animals. Frankly i dont really care for them either.

If they ever change the appearance and animal types of the animal companions skills at a base level so as to not alienate players, itll be during the refresh. All theyve got to do to keep the vvardenfell animals is retain the current visuals as skill styles as a free unlock.

How cool would it be if our animal companions were Race specific by default?

ZhuJiuyin · January 19

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I think you’re right about them going for Poison, but the reason I bring up Fire as a possibility is that Fetcherflies in Vaardenfell deal fire damage. There is a huge volcano in that place, so it makes sense from a lore perspective. Unless of course they distance from Vaardenfell and make Warden a more generic class geographically.

I don't think it's necessary to completely separate Warden and Vaardenfell. After all, Warden's current style is more like the Skaal style of Solstheim, themed around animals and frost. While Morrowind's animals mainly arrived after the Fourth Age, the island was inhabited by Dunmer (primarily pirates or smugglers) and Hircine followers as early as the First Age. Furthermore, Morrowind and Skyrim have always been vying for control of Solstheim. Therefore, saying Warden and Vaardenfell are completely unrelated is a bit of a stretch.

I think the best approach is to give each of Warden's animal morph abilities two distinct appearances, like Sorc's Clannfear and Familiar, or Necro's Archer and Arcanist. Frankly, I think all summoning abilities should follow a similar approach. Storm Atronach should have one morph changed to Daedric Lord, and Winged Twilight should have one morph changed to Dremnaken.

As for Warden, one of the bear morphs can be changed to Nix-Ox, one of the Dive morphs can be changed to Raven, one of the Shalk morphs can be changed to Mudcrab or Ice Wraith, one of the Swarm morphs can be changed to Firemoth, and Netch can be changed to Torchbug. In this way, Warden will have both the old Vaardenfell style and the new and more general continental style. And as long as the damage attribute is limited to frost or poison, no matter which morph the player chooses, it will still be consistent with Warden's seasonal/druid style.

ZhuJiuyin · January 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

I just wish the Clannfear was better. Being 2-bar required, you should expect 2x the value of a normal skill.

The first skill is the pet, the second skill is the heal, why does the heal not provide anything else?

Agreed, Clannfear should be stronger. However, I think Clannfear's active ability should be changed to provide a shield instead of healing, since Twilight Matriarch already provides healing, making Clannfear's healing redundant.

Clannfear could perhaps be changed to: Each tail spike hit inflicts a Minor Breach on the attacked target. Upon activation, it provides a shield to both Clannfear and the player, the shield size scaling with the player's maximum resources.

Malyore · January 19

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

When you think of a dragon do you think of poison? I think of everything essentially but poison. Poison sounds like itd fit much better on NB

Today, poison damage is removed from DK for simplification; what about tomorrow? Will ...

Will the elves take your homes? Your... businesses? Your children?! Your very LIVEEEEEEES

YandereGirlfriend · January 19

I like and use the Clannfear Buddy on my Sorcerer tank but it's mainly for vibes because I know that it is not a smart use of my bar space.

Either making the pets one-bar to use or giving them deeper and more useful activation abilities is necessary.

For Clannfear Buddy, having it apply like Major Vitality would be a very nice perk for Sorcerer tanks. And it isn't like that's an insane demand given that you can already have that with a class-agnostic simple Scribing ability. It would also synergize with using Hardened Ward. Having its attacks apply Minor Breach would be the cherry on top.

MindOfTheSwarm · January 19

If Sorcerer is going full into Dark Magic, what does this mean? What is ‘dark’ in this context? Does it strictly mean ‘purple’ Magic Damage? Or does it mean ‘anything daedric’ in origin?

For Pets specifically I want to see this:

Clannfear/Frost Atronach (Physical or Frost)

Ogrim/Flame Atronach (Physical or Fire)

Ultimate: Watcher/Storm Atronach (Physical/Magic or Shock)

This way we can choose to go for a more deadric summoner or elemental Atronach style, or a combination.

Of course the Daedric Prey curse needs to stay or some variant.

I would also like more ‘curse’ style skills a player if they didn’t want pets or zappy playstyles. Although a new Occultist class added later might be better for such a role especially if it goes all Void Witch style.

ZhuJiuyin · January 20

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

If Sorcerer is going full into Dark Magic, what does this mean? What is ‘dark’ in this context? Does it strictly mean ‘purple’ Magic Damage? Or does it mean ‘anything daedric’ in origin?

I believe dark magic encompasses both daedric magic and magic of various attributes. Any magic that can damage, weaken, or drain energy from enemies, while simultaneously strengthening or healing oneself, can be considered dark magic.

For Pets specifically I want to see this:

Clannfear/Frost Atronach (Physical or Frost)

Ogrim/Flame Atronach (Physical or Fire)

Ultimate: Watcher/Storm Atronach (Physical/Magic or Shock)

This way we can choose to go for a more deadric summoner or elemental Atronach style, or a combination.

Agreed. It's a real shame that we can't summon the Atronach with all three elements, especially since there are already many complete models in the game.

Of course the Daedric Prey curse needs to stay or some variant.

I would prefer to see Daedric Prey's damage buff removed and moved directly to the pet itself or its passive ability, so it wouldn't have to be used every 6 seconds.

Tannus15 · January 20

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

If Sorcerer is going full into Dark Magic, what does this mean? What is ‘dark’ in this context? Does it strictly mean ‘purple’ Magic Damage? Or does it mean ‘anything daedric’ in origin?

I believe dark magic encompasses both daedric magic and magic of various attributes. Any magic that can damage, weaken, or drain energy from enemies, while simultaneously strengthening or healing oneself, can be considered dark magic.

For Pets specifically I want to see this:

Clannfear/Frost Atronach (Physical or Frost)

Ogrim/Flame Atronach (Physical or Fire)

Ultimate: Watcher/Storm Atronach (Physical/Magic or Shock)

This way we can choose to go for a more deadric summoner or elemental Atronach style, or a combination.

Agreed. It's a real shame that we can't summon the Atronach with all three elements, especially since there are already many complete models in the game.

Of course the Daedric Prey curse needs to stay or some variant.

I would prefer to see Daedric Prey's damage buff removed and moved directly to the pet itself or its passive ability, so it wouldn't have to be used every 6 seconds.

on prey I partially agree, I think it's buff should be lowered and the pet's passive attacks buffed, however i think the skill allows for some interesting, unique interactions like maw of the infernal, which i would like to see more of in the game, not less.

unfortunately, even in it's current state on a pet build you're better off replacing it with better skills. the damage component for curse in general needs to be brought up to match skills like scorch. it's probably worth pointing out that if mages fury did comparable damage to impale, then no one would run prey at all.

Honestly I can see curse being moved to the dark magic line and being buffed fairly significantly in the sorc rework, as it has no real place in the summoning line apart from the prey morph.

ZhuJiuyin · January 20

Tannus15 wrote: »

on prey I partially agree, I think it's buff should be lowered and the pet's passive attacks buffed, however i think the skill allows for some interesting, unique interactions like maw of the infernal, which i would like to see more of in the game, not less.

Ya, you're right. I forgot about the other set pets. Maybe it would be better to move Prey's damage buff to passive, and that way some pets would deal more area damage, since Prey can only use it on one target.

unfortunately, even in it's current state on a pet build you're better off replacing it with better skills. the damage component for curse in general needs to be brought up to match skills like scorch. it's probably worth pointing out that if mages fury did comparable damage to impale, then no one would run prey at all..

Yes, I think the most ironic thing is that most Sorc skills can be found in better versions in other classes. With the New-DK's Molten Weapons getting buffed, Overload will also become dwarfed.

Honestly I can see curse being moved to the dark magic line and being buffed fairly significantly in the sorc rework, as it has no real place in the summoning line apart from the prey morph.

I think Dark Magic is well-suited for burst or delayed abilities like Proc-Crystal, Curse, and Spines, but the damage of Curse and Spines needs to be increased, or they should be given other buffs. I believe Spines should have its immobiliz effect removed because it overlaps with Daedric Tomb. Furthermore, the damage should be made two-stage: dealing continuous damage over 10 seconds upon hit (which would compensate for Sorc's lack of sticky DoTs), and then dealing a high burst of damage at the end of the duration.
Daedric Tomb should have its quantity limit removed, becoming a large-area ground damage attack that immobilizes the target upon hit.

MincMincMinc · January 20

Overload concepts by themselves could be a thread. Part of me thinks it would be cool to use overload form to give a bonus buff to each skill. For instance while in overload hurricane stays at max value. Or streak only does damage in overload. Maybe critsurge has an increased tickrate like every 0.25s while overloaded.

Malyore · January 20

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Overload concepts by themselves could be a thread. Part of me thinks it would be cool to use overload form to give a bonus buff to each skill. For instance while in overload hurricane stays at max value. Or streak only does damage in overload. Maybe critsurge has an increased tickrate like every 0.25s while overloaded.

Balancing points aside, from a gameplay standpoint that actually sounds really fun. That sounds like an overload.

MincMincMinc · January 20

Malyore wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Overload concepts by themselves could be a thread. Part of me thinks it would be cool to use overload form to give a bonus buff to each skill. For instance while in overload hurricane stays at max value. Or streak only does damage in overload. Maybe critsurge has an increased tickrate like every 0.25s while overloaded.

Balancing points aside, from a gameplay standpoint that actually sounds really fun. That sounds like an overload.

not only balancing, but you can save alot of server performance by hiding the more strenuous points during the ult. Which we could probably do more of in general skill design, where we are seeing basic rotation skills getting so complicated they are competing with ultimates on minute+ cooldowns *COUGH* merciless resolve *COUGH*

katorga · January 20

I actually like leaning into an element for each class.

But I think in trying to undo all the balance damage they did with subclassing.....every class refresh will get:

A functional equal to fatecarver, beam with cleave and classified as direct damage
A skill hits as hard as merciless (the lucky classes like DK will get it as a spammable with cleave, not a delayed single target skill
A set of passives that amp up power based on using base class skills
A monster self heal
A damage shield roughly the size of Hardened Ward

then queue wailing and gnashing of teeth when it all gets neutered when they force vengeance mode on PVP.

MXVIIDREAM · January 21

Hopefully the reskin the pets a bit

ZhuJiuyin · 2:47AM

katorga wrote: »

I actually like leaning into an element for each class.

But I think in trying to undo all the balance damage they did with subclassing.....every class refresh will get:
A functional equal to fatecarver, beam with cleave and classified as direct damage

A skill hits as hard as merciless (the lucky classes like DK will get it as a spammable with cleave, not a delayed single target skill

A set of passives that amp up power based on using base class skills

A monster self heal

A damage shield roughly the size of Hardened Ward

then queue wailing and gnashing of teeth when it all gets neutered when they force vengeance mode on PVP.

I share this concern.

Each class has its own strengths vs. homogenization.
The former highlights a class's unique characteristics, while the latter simply turns a class into a different colored beam.

However, some people, including official staff, don't quite understand how to balance the former, so for fairness, the latter is the only option.

A class can have some weaknesses, such as poor sustain or weak area-of-effect damage. But these weaknesses must be remedied with reasonable solutions. For example, a class with low area-of-effect damage should be able to achieve sufficiently strong area-of-effect damage through other options, such as class sets, Mythic, Scribing, etc., and classes that are already strong in area-of-effect damage shouldn't receive further boosts. If we give a class like NB, which has strong single-target damage, a Mythic that "when you deal single-target damage to a target, it will deal an additional 80% of the original damage as frost damage to all targets within 8 meters of the target," it would largely compensate for NB's lack of area-of-effect damage and wouldn't be exploited by classes like Arc, which have strong area-of-effect damage.

I hope that future class reworks will not only make classes more distinctive in terms of special effects, but also make the class mechanism more diversified, rather than the other way around,because a beam of light with a different color is still a beam of light.

MashmalloMan · 5:03AM

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

I actually like leaning into an element for each class.

But I think in trying to undo all the balance damage they did with subclassing.....every class refresh will get:
A functional equal to fatecarver, beam with cleave and classified as direct damage

A skill hits as hard as merciless (the lucky classes like DK will get it as a spammable with cleave, not a delayed single target skill

A set of passives that amp up power based on using base class skills

A monster self heal

A damage shield roughly the size of Hardened Ward

then queue wailing and gnashing of teeth when it all gets neutered when they force vengeance mode on PVP.

Each class has its own strengths vs. homogenization.
The former highlights a class's unique characteristics, while the latter simply turns a class into a different colored beam.

There's so many cool ways they can go about distinguishing class strengths AND weaknesses. Compare 2 classes like Sorc and NB with similar archetypes and class fantasies. How can you distinguish them from one another? They can both share the crit fantasy, but accomplish it in different ways.

Nightblade is an assassin, they wait for the perfect moment to surprise their enemy and strike, they want as much damage in that moment as possible to kill them and get out, they have ways to guarantee critical strikes, so they prefer critical damage over chance.

Sorcerer is a spell weaver, they cast multiple spells consistently to deal as much direct, timed damage as possible, they rely on crit chance to get better healting through Critical Surge and heals like it that don't scale based offensive stats, but can still critically heal. They prefer multiple damage instances, death by a thousand cuts, rather than 1 shot burst damage which is why they weave multiple spells to land at the same time.

Assuming Nightblade kept the current passives, below are examples of how the Expert Mage Sorcerer passive could be reworked:

+3.5% crit chance, but -2% critical damage/healing per Sorcerer skill slotted
+1% critical chance and +2% max stam and magicka per Sorcerer skill slotted
+1% critical chance and -1% ability cost reduction per Sorcerer skill slotted
+4.4% critical chance while looking directly at your target
+6.6% critical chance for 7s after applying Concussed or Sundered
+6.6% critical chance for 4s after dealing direct damage
+5% critical chance while a shield or pet is active and for 10s after they expire

And this is just critical chance, you could give negatives in other forms like + pen, but -armor. There is nothing wrong with giving a minor penalty to a class because there are so many ways to overcome it with sets, abilities, food, mundus. The only thing it does is highlight what a class is good or bad at, gives it opportunities to excel in areas otherwise not possible due to passive or skill budgets.

Btw the whole 6.6% thing seems strong, but it's based on ZOS's class passive standardization where if it has a proc conidtion, they multiply a 2-4 piece set bonus by 2.2x. Eg. Arcanist's Aegis of the Unseen, Harnessed Quintessence, and Fated Fortune. It's on every class right now in some shape or form.

In case it wasn't obvious, every bonus or proc conidtion is based on how I think they'll setup Sorc's identity in the future. These are the concepts I believe will stick around.

Max Resource stacking for stronger shields, sustain, but also light damage dealing
Crit Chance stacking for non scaling heal effeciency like Surge, Dark Deal, and Blood Magic, but also damage dealing
Mobility/positioning instead of standing your ground
Delayed/direct damage instead of consistent/damage over time
"Spell weaver" playstyle, aka Crystal Frags, Crystal Weapon, Haunting Curse, Encase, Mages Fury, Bound Armaments, and Overload
Shock/Phys (Storm), no Magic damage anymore, possibly removing Phys too. I predict the Energized and Amplitude passives will move to Sunder/Concuss bonuses, more niche, more unique
Pets, love or hate them, hopefully they make the playstyle more interesting, powerful, with less restrictive passives

And these are the ones I believe will leave:

Reverse Execute via Tormentor and Amplitude, goes against Sorc's original identity from Implosion and Mage's Fury, not niche or fun to build around. Counter intutive.
W/S Damage, matches nothing in the class. Shields and flat heals don't scale from this.
Block bonuses like Persistence and Bound Aegis don't fit. Sorc avoids damage with mobility and positioning, shields don't mitigate extra damage with blocking.
Some of the sustain passives or morph effects like Rebate, Persistence, Endless Fury, Energy Overload, etc. Just too many wasted effects, not fun to build around, doesn't promote any sort of class fantasy.

evLRise · 2:40PM

Ashryn wrote: »

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.

On the flip side, I've been waiting for a Guar or Kagouti skill style for the bear ever since the release of skill styles.

It's weird that everything is Morrowind themed EXCEPT the ult.

It annoys me even more that my warden companion ACTUALLY has the ult I want, which is the kagouti one.

ZhuJiuyin · 4:07PM

MashmalloMan wrote: »

[*] Mobility/positioning instead of standing your ground

In Sanity's Edge, there's a set called Peace and Serenity, and I think its concept best fits the idea you're describing.

Peace and Serenity:

5 items: While standing still, you gain 10-465 Weapon and Spell Damage. While moving, you gain 4-203 Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery.

If the effects were reversed, stacking damage or crit while moving and increasing recovery while stationary, I think it would be a perfect fit for Sorc. If a passive skill in StormCalling were changed to this, it would not only highlight Sorc's mobility but also make certain trials less tedious than just standing still and spamming skills, while giving highly skilled players more room to maneuver.

Yudo · 9:24PM

Hey maybe the pork of oblivion set will get a rework at the same time

MashmalloMan · 9:35PM

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

[*] Mobility/positioning instead of standing your ground

In Sanity's Edge, there's a set called Peace and Serenity, and I think its concept best fits the idea you're describing.

Peace and Serenity:

5 items: While standing still, you gain 10-465 Weapon and Spell Damage. While moving, you gain 4-203 Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery.

If the effects were reversed, stacking damage or crit while moving and increasing recovery while stationary, I think it would be a perfect fit for Sorc. If a passive skill in StormCalling were changed to this, it would not only highlight Sorc's mobility but also make certain trials less tedious than just standing still and spamming skills, while giving highly skilled players more room to maneuver.

Exactly, this is the type of out of box thinking I hope they implement. You can tell Sorcerer's to be mobile, without directly giving them x% movement speed based on how the passives and effects of abilities function and reward the player.

DK clearly wants you to deal consistent damage, glued to your targets, a mobile brawler, damage over time, aoe, flame, burning, ult gen, ult spending, tanky, high costs, and high returns. A great deal passives and ability designs support this concept with the rework.

Hopefully Sorc moves in that direction vs frankly super boring passives like 1~10% damage done that any build can subclass and forget. God every time I look at that passive I'm just reminded of how cool Implosion was and instantly saddened by what it became. I'm not debating why it was removed back then for problematic reasons, but I wish they just rebalanced it. In my eyes, it's akin to removing Burning from DK, Chilled from Warden, or Burning Light from Templar.