Pelican wrote: »

Dear ZOS Combat Balance team… As mentioned earlier, this will be my only post. I will only respond if a staff member responds.

Thank you so much for your repeated input,



I can always count on you to talk about werewolf and only werewolf in a plethora of issues. I sure hope they would choose you for such a task as you mentioned, I’m sure you and Redacted have everyone’s best interest in mind.

Dracane wrote: »

You mentioned not understanding why Sorcerer is said to be weak, and mentioned that its DPS was so high the first week.
I am quite sure the main complain people have about Sorcerer is its lack of group utility and cleave damage. Its damage having been the highest against parse dummies never had any real value to it, as Sorcerer doesn't offer the dearly needed cleave damage nowadays and also nothing unique to groups in general.

All Sorcerer offered anymore was Major Berserk through the Atronach; which Dragonknight received as a class mastery and does better than the Atronach. And the 6% spell damage from Calculated Defense or the recovery from Sphere of Influence don't do much to solve this when other classes already have more group utility to begin with, and get it boosted tremendously by their class masteries.

This is why Sorcerer is said to be weak; not because of some single target dummy during week 1. People have explained this at length in all of the feedback threads, so there is no way anyone can say they do not understand why this is being said.

Adding on to this, it really just takes 5 minutes of looking at ESOlogs to look at raid composition from previous updates to find which classes are and are not used.

The reason people say Sorcerer DD sucks is because classes that are only good at single target damage do not translate well at all to a lot of the trial and dungeon content, especially the newer content and especially on HM.

Sorcerer, as well as Nightblade, have always parsed high on dummies and in some niche trial encounters like in Kyne's Aegis where cleave is not as important, but with every fight design in the last few years incentivizing/requiring high cleave damage (Bahsei HM, Reef Guardian HM, Ansuul HM, literally everything in Lucent Citadel HM, almost everything in Ossein Cage HM) it renders classes without strong cleave in those trials not viable, and thus almost never used.

Even before Subclassing, most progression groups never had more than one Sorc DPS player, and it was always shoehorned into the support DPS role by being the Storm Atronach Martial Knowledge slave.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Nightblades have seen commentary that their Class Mastery passives feel weaker to those of other classes, and it doesn’t help with burst-damage or resource sustainability. We do want to note we buffed the Nightblade crit cap to be higher than other classes and this also applies to healing. However, there may be some specific subclassing builds that are overperforming, and we’ll keep an eye on this.

From a damage perspective, the Crit Cap increase in PVP doesn't do anything because moving from subclassing, you're giving up -20% or more Crit Damage by not having access to Animal/Herald/Aedric/Earthen, and you only get a base 5% in return. Crit Resist directly counters Crit Damage and the effective cap.

The current meta will have every player with 30~60% Crit Resist, this is from base 20%, 10% from 5x Impen, 10% from CP, and 20% from Rallying Cry. So basically everyone can build beyond 125% crit damage to at least 155%~185%, when you add another 30% for the NB Mastery they gain nothing because it's not feasibly possible to reach the 185%~215% it would require. This is also considering that you don't have subclassing for the crit damage bonuses, only 5%.

Instead of 5% crit damage/healing and 30% cap.. why not..12.5% crit damage/healing and 15% cap.. go with the -50% route you have been doing.. otherwise this Mastery makes no sense to pick up under the current context of the game.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

In general, Nightblades gained a lot from the PTS changes because we understand there is moderate room for improvement with their core kit. While we recognize some of these problems still exist, this isn’t something we can comprehensively solve until we do the refresh work for the Nightblade class. What we were able to adjust on the PTS helps, but it is intended to be a stopgap until the class refresh.

Similar to Nightblade, we’ve seen some feedback that the Sorcerer Class Mastery kit feels underpowered and not competitive with other classes. We’d like to better understand why some of you are feeling this way. In PTS Week 1, Sorcerers were actually doing the most damage out of all classes by quite a large margin; we did reduce the strength to account for that and later reverted some of the nerfs. Now, it’s worth noting that there is a bug with Sphere of Influence where it’s only applying its damage shield to one player instead of two, and it also doesn’t currently work with Daedric Refuge (this should be fixed in the next PTS patch).

The problem with NB and Sorc is that you've built them up as singlet target DPS machines, but any time their DPS gets too high, the mob comes out with dummy parses, then you nerf them back down to the same level of other classes. This would be fine if there was any sort of compensation for cleave, but there isn't. NB, Sorc, and WW have by far the worst cleave in the game, so the only logical conclussion is they should have higher single target dummy DPS. You need to pick a side.

Frankly, I'm happy with the state of the Sorc Mastery's overall, especially for PVP, so I think that needs to be clarified. They have some very versatile Mastery's to pick from. I gather you're speaking about feedback regarding PVE, so on that subject you need to consider how that DPS is being produced and why people may have complaints about the initial nerfs:

• Signet + Overload = Sorc is abusing this combination to output an additional 10~13k DPS while staying above 170 ultimate. Warden's Bear was being abused, yet you nerfed it with -50% damage, so why is this not a consideration too? This Mythic is way too problematic and needs a complete rework, it's also being abused on WW now, and those mains fear you'll nerf them over the Mythic like you've done with Sorc the 1st week. Please.. please, change this set.
• Overload over Atro = Sorc in a group should be providing Major Berserk to their team, this is also a very clunky and unreliable skill no one wants to use in real content. I can parse 180k with Overload + Signet cheese, swapping to Atro I lose over 15k DPS and I'm back down to 165k without any of the cleave other classes bring.
• Monolith + Liquid Lightning = Set is very strong, but situtationally useful. Sometimes the damage won't do anything, 1 Monolith doesn't deal damage and only gives 100 w/s damage, 3 gives 300 w/s damage, but is nearly impossible to keep up with 100% uptime, so on average you'll bounce between 2~3 for an ongoing parse. It's stationary and requires Liquid Lightning, a skill that barely does 3% of a parse, while Monolith can do 6~7%. Borderline parse cheese.
• No Cleave = Sorc, NB, and WW are single target archetypes, they do not have strong cleave. I found an Arcanist parse that can do 155k with 120k as aoe, so 77%. Sorc can do 180k with 30k as aoe using the Overload + Signet cheese, so only 17% aoe. NB and WW is probably just as, if not worse, you need to be comfortable with these playstyles excelling on a dummy, you can't just nerf them down to the same level as other classes and expect it to be fair. There have been meta's where NB/Sorc were the highest DPS, but because they provided no cleave or additional support, they were never used in trial comps.
• Throwing Knife + Status Effect Chance = Too expensive to use in real content, you'll run out of resources in 20 seconds, people are parsing with it only becasue Signet is overpowered in conjunction with Overload, making unrealistic DPS via crazy status effect procs.
• Static Reverb + Pets = Doesn't feel good. Stop putting red tape on pet vs no pet, Sorc's don't like this, so I really... really.. hope you take this into consideration for the rework. We want a class set, flourish, and passives that work with 100% value 100% of the time regardless of a pet or not. This is coming from someone who doesn't like pets, but I don't want to be punished for engaging with them.

Thank you for the continued communication, can't wait to see what all the future refreshes bring.

Honestly id like to see what would happen if they made signets minor timidity into major timidity.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

As for the feedback about the lack of a ranged taunt, we totally hear you. At this time, we just haven’t found the right solution without reworking an existing morph and having that affect something else. Whatever solution we implement, we want to make sure it’s thematically appropriate as well (for example, Werewolves don’t use magic!)

Maybe a set to increase the range of the taunt can be made in the future.
For example:
Vengeful Gaze sets: Increases the range of all your taunt abilities below 22 meters to 22 meters and applies Minor Breach to the target during the taunt.

In this way, werewolves can gain better ranged taunts through similar sets, and other general skills, such as Pierce Armor and Vault+Taunt.etc, may also benefit from it.

We’ve seen some feedback that the SorcererClass Mastery kit feels underpowered and not competitive with other classes. We’d like to better understand why some of you are feeling this way.

Others, such as @MashmalloMan, @Dracane, @pluvioisaplanet, and @Rkindaleft, have provided excellent analyses. However, I would like to add that Sorc, due to its lack of critical damage and penetration, faces more limitations in gear selection compared to other classes.

For example, you can see many Sorc players using Monolith + Mora Scribe's Thesis in U50. This is because Mora Scribe's provides the critical damage and critical chance that Sorc needs, and because it's light armor, it can be worn on body parts rather than jewels to increase Sorc's penetration.

Because subclass builds offer sufficient critical damage and penetration, most teams no longer assign support sets like EC, Alkosh, or Crimson Oath's Rive to their teams. Therefore, while Sorc may appear to deal high damage on the Trial dummy, in actual gameplay, due to the lack of critical damage and penetration, and the absence of a reliable source of Major Sorcery (Critical Surge is not used in organized teams), Sorc's actual DPS will be lower than on the Trial dummy. Combined with other reasons mentioned, this is why you rarely see teams carrying more than one Sorc DPS at ESO-LOG.

Addendum: This isn't to say I want every class's mainstream sets to be the same. In fact, I'm very satisfied with the current state of Sorc and Mora Scribe's Thesis; finally seeing different sets appear in end-game is truly refreshing. However, I must point out that due to the limitations in equipment selection, Sorc lacks flexibility in choosing sets. In the future, the official team may need to release other equipment similar to Mora Scribe's Thesis to provide Sorc with new set options.

React wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hello everyone!

We’ve also seen some commentary that Werewolf continues to create some problem spaces with certain Class Mastery passives. What we can say is that some Class Masteries affect Werewolf in ways that we didn’t plan for, and this will be adjusted over time.

I am sorry, but if you're aware that there are some extremely problematic interactions going on between werewolf and class mastery passives, why are you allowing them to go live in this state? It's good to hear that more adjustments are planned "over time", but as ESO players we know that the very soonest we can expect to see any changes are with the next patch, which is roughly 4 months from now(?). That is a long time to deal with extreme unbalance in regards to PVP.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

It’s not realistic or fair to make an unkillable build where you do a ton of damage and also heal yourself indefinitely; there needs to be a balance.

I mean this with no disrepsect what so ever. I invite whatever internal PVP playtester to come fight the 40-50k HP WW builds we have been testing and providing data for this PTS cycle. They absolutely are unkillable, do the highest possible DPS you can achieve in PVP, and heal themselves indefinitely with infinite sustain and extremely strong health-scaling heals. It's good that you acknowledge this is unfair because it absolutely is, but at the same time it's being allowed to go live in this state. Just very frustrating to see.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We do want to note we buffed the Nightblade crit cap to be higher than other classes and this also applies to healing.

I just want to point out that in PVP, this effectively does nothing. Due to critical resistance existing, your average player will have somewhere in the realm of 40-60% critical damage mitigation. This means that in order to reach the critical damage "cap" of 125%, you would need to build for between 165-185% crit damage to achieve that cap. These are already absurd values that are difficult or impossible to achieve without additional players providing buffs to you. For 99% of players in PVP, the increased cap is not something they would ever interact with.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Similar to Nightblade, we’ve seen some feedback that the Sorcerer Class Mastery kit feels underpowered and not competitive with other classes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We’ve seen concerns about ongoing issues with resource sustainability for Sorcerer; Conservation of Energy should be helping to solve this.

From a PVP perspective, sorcerer has arguably the best class mastery passives out of any class. But conservation of energy in particular is healing for far too much. The blood magic scales on health, and with around 33k HP whilst casting every GCD, this passive is outhealing vigor by itself. When approaching 40k HP, it is dramatically outhealing vigor.

This is a bit problematic, and has been repetitively brought up by myself and many others across various threads, including the official feedback channels.

Would be great to see this at least addressed so we know why it is being left as is. In general, health scaling heals/shields in PVP are very problematic and always have been. I would urge the team to move towards reworking any health scaling heal to instead use the standard WD/max stat scaling forumla, as this would prevent many abusive scenarios where these heals drastically over perform.

Regarding CoE: that passive has to compete with Heart of Flame which now not only continues to provide INFINITE sustain for your both stats, but now will heal for 15% of MAX health.
CoE provides inferior sustain already and every HP increase has a diminishing effect on your other max stats - decreasing CoEs sustain potential and also affecting Font of Power.
That potential Blood Magic activation once per second is the only beneficial factor compared to HoF. If the healing component gets nerfed I see no point not to continue subclass the Ardent line.

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

You mentioned not understanding why Sorcerer is said to be weak, and mentioned that its DPS was so high the first week.
I am quite sure the main complain people have about Sorcerer is its lack of group utility and cleave damage. Its damage having been the highest against parse dummies never had any real value to it, as Sorcerer doesn't offer the dearly needed cleave damage nowadays and also nothing unique to groups in general.

All Sorcerer offered anymore was Major Berserk through the Atronach; which Dragonknight received as a class mastery and does better than the Atronach. And the 6% spell damage from Calculated Defense or the recovery from Sphere of Influence don't do much to solve this when other classes already have more group utility to begin with, and get it boosted tremendously by their class masteries.

This is why Sorcerer is said to be weak; not because of some single target dummy during week 1. People have explained this at length in all of the feedback threads, so there is no way anyone can say they do not understand why this is being said.

Adding on to this, it really just takes 5 minutes of looking at ESOlogs to look at raid composition from previous updates to find which classes are and are not used.

The reason people say Sorcerer DD sucks is because classes that are only good at single target damage do not translate well at all to a lot of the trial and dungeon content, especially the newer content and especially on HM.

Sorcerer, as well as Nightblade, have always parsed high on dummies and in some niche trial encounters like in Kyne's Aegis where cleave is not as important, but with every fight design in the last few years incentivizing/requiring high cleave damage (Bahsei HM, Reef Guardian HM, Ansuul HM, literally everything in Lucent Citadel HM, almost everything in Ossein Cage HM) it renders classes without strong cleave in those trials not viable, and thus almost never used.

Even before Subclassing, most progression groups never had more than one Sorc DPS player, and it was always shoehorned into the support DPS role by being the Storm Atronach Martial Knowledge slave.

I also want to add something along with what I said before.

I believe the disconnect here is because you're looking at Sorcerer power level in a vacuum. Honestly, the same thing could be said about pure Nightblade DPS, as they have the same glaring issue with lacking cleave damage.

It's these sort of situations when I really question spreadsheet like balancing, because when you're only looking at a number, without any other context, it would appear like Sorcerer is a very strong PvE class, but when you actually play the class in content and consider how the class actually functions in conditions outside of parsing, the problem sticks out like a sore thumb.

Cheesy parse numbers should not be the only metric for dictating if a class is too strong. Data should be taken and considered from people actually playing the classes in content (I.E logs from raid groups and comments here by actual PvE Sorcerers). If nobody is using Sorcerer DDs in raid (which they aren't at any serious level) then the next step is to determine why (which has been discussed numerous times in this thread already, including by me).

hoangdz wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

YOu CANNOT balance around what the above-average or top players can do.

Do people not remember U35? That whole debacle happened because ZOS attempted to raise the floor by lowering the ceiling. What happened, though? Who was it that was adversely affected by that? It was the average or below-average player hit the hardest.

The top players will ALWAYS, ALWAYS find what's the strongest. What works the best. What gives the highest numbers, what does the most damage or tanks the most damage or heals the most damage.

When was the last time lowering the ceiling actually stopped the power creep? When was the last time it actually raised DPS or tanking or healing for average players?

Power creep doesn't happen because of average players. It happens because of the top players finding new interactions with new Sets and old Skills/Passives.

No matter how much you nerf WW, ZOS, certain people will keep claiming it isn't enough, because THEY will continue to find ways of pumping out high damage and will just keep saying "Look how OP it still is!" while the rest of us who aren't absolute aces at the game will just watch as WW keeps getting gutted over and over before it even reaches Live.

You CANNOT balance around what the ceiling can do, because it never raises the floor, it only ever pushes it farther into the ground.

So the alternative is what? Raise the floor? That won’t lower the power creep either. In fact, it would make it worse.

Imagine a scenario where player X, who is average at the game, does 80k DPS on a dummy, while player Y, who is above average, does 110k DPS. Both are playing the same class. Instead of figuring out more optimized sets and perfecting their rotation, player X wants his class to be buffed. ZOS listens and rolls out several changes, allowing player X to increase his parse to 110k. Player X is happy that he can finally compete, but he doesn’t understand that player Y, who has a better setup and rotation, is now doing 140k DPS. Power creep worsens, and the average DPS requirement is now inflated.

This is literally the same thing in PvP, but more severe. Since you’re fighting players, knowledge of defensive rotations must also be accounted for. If player X always dies on his Sorc while player Y dies less, is it Sorc being bad at surviving, or is it player X? What do you think would happen to player Y if ZOS buffed Sorc to allow player X to survive better? I think we all know the result here.

Honestly the only way to fight power creep is probably something I saw someone else mention somewhere in the General section I think it was? Which was to hardcap damage.Either that or implement something so that DPS after a certain point starts to have diminishing returns somehow. I remember back when 50k-ish DPS was good enough for most every Vet Dungeon, but that hardly seems the case these days.

And who's to say that the person doing 80k DPS hasn't perfected their rotation and doesn't already have access to the best Gear they can realistically obtain? A lot of people don't do Trials and thus don't have Trial Gear. Heck a lot of people don't do Vet Dungeons and don't have Dungeon Sets. And this is where I'd say diminishing returns would kick in, so that having more optimized Gear and Skills and all DOES kick in at a certain point, but not before average players would be able to get some sort of boost. Maybe that 80k Sorc player can get buffed to 100k instead, while the person who has their optimized build could still hit that 140k if they REALLY worked at it. There would still be separation between more skilled people and those who aren't in that upper tier, but the people below average or average DO get some sort of buff. The floor gets raised without the ceiling also going up as well.

Nerfing things because of what the top can do will never help the average player, because those people using those things that get nerfed lose power and then have to struggle to get it back, whereas the people at the top will either barely feel it, or only be affected for a short time before they find the next busted or overtuned combo. There has to be SOME sort of compromise because otherwise people will always want more more more nerfs and the people lower on the totem pole have to deal with either watching their builds get made worse, or fear it's going to happen.

And the main point here is you will NEVER nerf what the top people can do because they'll always manage to find something else. It's s never-ending cycle. People look at what they can do and think it's too strong, call for nerfs, something gets nerfed but even when it is those people could probably still wring out a high output with it. More nerfs, more builds getting made worse. Over and over. I keep bringing up U35 because this is exactly what happened. ZOS tried to lower the ceiling to raise the floor and what actually happened was the floor got suplexed even lower than it had been before, while the ceiling was largely untouched.

The devs asked what we mean when we say sorc is too weak. Let me be very clear that sorc is only underpowered in pve because of mostly non-existent cleave. Like imagine taking a pure sorc to a NM skirmish and trying to focus the tens of adds one by one. Pure sorc is verging on unplayable in any hard pve content.

This is not something that can or should be solved by mastery or class sets, but we're all counting on the class refresh to fix that. About a third of sorc skills are memes that no one ever used, please burn them in coldfire and give us hard hitting aoe skills. Again the solution is NOT to fix everything with sets.

In pvp, sorc is not weak, even before the masteries pure sorc is very playable in pvp. In fact I'm worried that when the masteries hit live the calls for sorc nerfs might start immediately.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hello everyone!

Similar to Nightblade, we’ve seen some feedback that the Sorcerer Class Mastery kit feels underpowered and not competitive with other classes. We’d like to better understand why some of you are feeling this way. In PTS Week 1, Sorcerers were actually doing the most damage out of all classes by quite a large margin; we did reduce the strength to account for that and later reverted some of the nerfs. Now, it’s worth noting that there is a bug with Sphere of Influence where it’s only applying its damage shield to one player instead of two, and it also doesn’t currently work with Daedric Refuge (this should be fixed in the next PTS patch).

Hey Gina, first off, I want to say these summaries have been awesome, loving the ability to better understand where the team stands on things.

To start with, I want to try and give some simple (and spoilered in-depth) explanations that can hopefully help answer this bolded question the team has (and hopefully this can help with the teams refresh of Sorcerer which I'm assuming is already at the starting stages).

• The lack of cleave (or area) damage.
  As @MashmalloMan pointed out in their comment above:

  No Cleave = Sorc, NB, and WW are single target archetypes, they do not have strong cleave. I found an Arcanist parse that can do 155k with 120k as aoe, so 77%. Sorc can do 180k with 30k as aoe using the Overload + Signet cheese, so only 17% aoe. NB and WW is probably just as, if not worse, you need to be comfortable with these playstyles excelling on a dummy, you can't just nerf them down to the same level as other classes and expect it to be fair. There have been meta's where NB/Sorc were the highest DPS, but because they provided no cleave or additional support, they were never used in trial comps.

  
  Why would I bring a Sorcerer that can parse 180k DPS to the main target, but only 30k per additional target (for a total of 180 + 30*5 = 180 + 150 = 330k total DPS across 6 targets, when I can bring an Arcanist that does 155k on the main target, but 120k to additional targets for 155 + 120*5 = 155 + 600 = 755k total DPS across 6 targets.
  
  Note: that this math for 6 targets was chosen specifically because that is the target cap of fatecarver.
  
  That arcanist DPS despite having 25k (~14%) less DPS on the main target, deals 425k (130%) MORE DPS across the entire encounter. This is especially relevant with the dungeons team designing encounters that require focusing a lot of enemies at the same time to ensure the group can complete said content and even though not optimal, the very few instances where that area damage is not required, the damage difference is not large enough to warrant completely changing my build/class for more single target oriented content.
• The outdated design and function of many of Sorcerer class skills that leads to absurd numbers changes just to make them "competitive".
  As has been pointed out in other threads, Sorcerer skills for the most part have very equivalent numerical tooltips to those of other classes, but due to varying issues, the abilities don't perform as well as other class equivalents:
  
  The problem with this is that because Sorcerers lack a lot of buff/debuff/secondary effect access or unique ways to synergize/buff their own abilities, it creates a situation where Sorcerer players need to find unique ways/synergies to bring them up, many of which create for some amazing click bait youtube content (such as the now infamous 220k dummy parse from week 1 of this PTS cycle), but since many of these crazy dummy parses include buffs that other classes don't use on the trial dummies (but will get during real content) the other classes appear behind on the trial dummy, but in actual content they pull significantly ahead of sorcerer once they also get these unique buffs (such as banner), or sorcerer can no longer rely on costly, but very strong abilities that cannot be sustained in real content that requires spending magicka/stamina on doing mechanics (travelling knife with status effect chance + signet) or can no longer use selfish ultimates since the loss to group DPS severely outweighs the selfish gain (such as overload for parsing but atro being required in content).
  
  The trial dummies hide a lot of these aspects since the trial dummies over inflate Sorcerers DPS by providing all of these buffs/debuffs/sustain that other classes already have inherently in their kits, so Sorcerer disproportionally benefits from parsing on the trial dummy compared to the other classes as was pointed out by @pluvioisaplanet above.
  
  This renders using the trial dummy parses as an extremely biased and unreliable metric to balance the classes because the classes access to different buffs, debuff and secondary effects/bonuses are not equal and the trial dummy is disproportionally benefitting some classes more than others due to how strong all of the named buffs/debuffs add up to and the selected buffs/debuffs provided, thus over-inflating their numbers beyond what these classes can realistically achieve in actual content.
• The outdated design philosophy the team had regarding Sorcerer where "it needs to lean on other classes to provide support to realise it's potential" that is not applied to other classes.
  The rise of power recently (past few years) of status effects, secondary effects, bonus procs, bonus effects and other extra components as well as the variety of these that other classes get on their abilities for free yet for some reason sorc is barred from having or is limited to extremely over-redundant ones has gotten well beyond out of control and hides a lot of reasons many Sorcerer abilities seem to lack so much power despite having near equal tooltips.
  
  Examples:
  1.pre-DK refresh with engulfing flame (mag fire breath) had equivalent DPS values to lightning splash, but because DK had multiple unique percent bonuses to flame damage: in the passives, on the skill itself and from various sets, the tooltip in practice actually outperformed lightning flood by a significant amount.
  2. take Necromancers Boneyard that is much closer to Lightning Splash since it has a self-activatable synergy, but it comes with a debuff (minor vulnerability for +5% damage taken) and synergizes with the class corpse mechanic to increase its DPS by 30%, AND it's damage type (frost) has many more percent bonuses from other sources (winter's embrace, frostbite set, frost staff, etc.) that shock damage does not have.
  3. Wardens Winter's revenge, looks similar on paper, with it's 30% from using frost staff bringing it up to the stronger flood morph of splash, but winter's revenge also gets an additional 15% from the piercing cold passive (compared to Sorcerers +5% from energized) and it has a unique status effect passive Glacial Presence that ties in with the abilities increased chilled proc chance that currently doesn't exist for shock damage and the concussed status effect.
  
  This issue creates a very problematic situation for Sorcerer where the tooltips themselves need to be increased to insane values just to be viable, but then that causes builds that focus on buffing those inflated values even further to stack exponentially and "over-buff" the ability beyond what was intended (see hardened ward changes in U41 as a perfect example of this since because the ability lacked the mechanical aspects of block healing, it needed an insane shield value + an over the top heal value just to make it viable, that it caused a situation where building specifically for it over-inflated those numerical increased beyond what was intended).
• General clumsiness and inconsistencies of many of Sorcerers abilities.
  There are a lot of these following issues scattered across all of Sorcerers abilities (even the good ones).

  • Cast times - these just feel very slow and clunky to use, are overly punishing when interrupted and are extremely susceptible to positional desyncs and line of sight in PvP where the target moves behind line of sight on their screen during the cast time, as such the game just cancels the ability entirely, or worse, casts it (paying it's cost) but displays a "dodge" above the target, or even worse still, being on the receiving end of this where you run behind line of sight but the enemies ability still casts itself on you because you were not behind line of sight on their screen and the servers just randomly decides who's client to believe. Channeled abilities, while similarly frustrating, at the very least still do something even if interrupted, so don't feel as bad to use and channeled abilities seem to have much better target tracking than cast time abilities, especially in highly mobile encounters such as PvP.
  • Cast animations/delays - there's a lot of these on Sorcerer abilities, such as Mages Fury, Lightning Splash and Bolt Escape, where these abilities are listed as "Instant" on the tooltip, yet when casting them, it's possible to cancel the casts if you "animation cancel, which on other abilities just cancels the animation, but for these it seems to cancel the effect of the ability itself while still draining the cost (and applying any associated downsides such as ramping costs).
  • Anti-synergies within the kit - A prime example is Critical Surge, the Sorcerer class's "Heal over time" ability that requires dealing critical damage and is supposed to synergize with Sorcerers shields so that the shields act as a barrier for surge to heal back up under, yet it wasn't until U47 that Sorcerer received Major Prophecy/Savagery in it's class kit to make use of this ability and on top of this, outside of the bound armaments morph specifically (that also happens to be the source of crit chance) Sorcerer lacks a lot of the ways of dealing damage that is supposed to naturally synergize with this style of healing over time, since the pets (which are Sorcerers "sticky DoTs" cannot proc surge and only armaments has multiple hits per cast. This also ties in with the Static Reverb Class mastery, that wants Sorcerers to hit the target as many times as possible within each GCD to get the most out of it, yet the only way this happens is with bound armaments (which cannot be spammed every second) or non-class abilities such as the dual wield weapon line flurry ability as such, makes this class mastery completely counter-intuitive for a sorcerer that wants to use class abilities (let alone the pets that nerf it even further) or use a weapon that's not Dual Wield (i.e. wants to play a mage).
  • A special shout out to Sphere of influence, and while I appreciate the direct response here noting it was a bug and will (hopefully) be fixed before it goes live, the fact that this class mastery did not work with any class ability at all was mind boggling.
  • Another conflict is the focus on damage shields as Sorcerers "Healing", similar to Arcanist, yet the Sorcerer does not have any class passives that engage with this mechanic at all beyond the generic increases to maximum magicka (of which other classes have better/more consistent passives that do this). Another thing that needs addressing here is shields not scaling based on maximum stamina, thus forcing stamina based sorcerers to not engage with the classes defensive mechanics at all. The DK refresh with allowed Super heated ward to scale off the maximum attribute (be that health, mag or stam) showed it's possible for "stamina wards" even if they still cost mag to cast.
  • Redundant abilities/effects - there's far too many redundant morphs, secondary effects and passives within the Sorcerer class kit. Endless Fury, Energy Overload, Capacitor, Dark Exchange morphs, Unholy knowledge, Persistence, Rebate and Power Stone are all morphs/abilities who's sole effect (or secondary effect's) power budget is devoted entirely sustain. That's 4 active ability morphs and 5 passives devoted entirely towards sustain (this doesn't count the passives that increase max stats since those contribute to other aspects as well). 5 out of a total of 12 passives (or 42%) of passives devoted entirely to sustain only shows there's something amiss here. Not only is that far too much which shows that Sorcerer abilities clearly cost too much to use, but it also detracts from the ability to use those passives for other aspects a build requires such as DPS, group support, tanking, healing, etc. which also severely limits variety in design space that can be explored with the class.
  • Mages Fury is very clunky in PvP, it can be dodged, despite being an AoE sticky debuff proc, it has a hidden cast time within it's animation that, especially under high ping, can cause the ability to not cast if weaving, it has zero execute scaling and finally it has the single lowest threshold with which it becomes usable of any execute in the game. Anyone under 20% health in PvP is already dead, it's just a matter of picking which instance of damage lands the killing blow. What really killed off this ability though was the reduction of it's duration to 2 seconds down from 4 seconds. This completely killed any potential it had to combo with another ability to create the burst combo, which completely kills it as an ability because that combo potential was how it was supposed to execute targets by design. 4 seconds was fine, even if the ability itself was still weak, it was usable as part of a burst combo that cast the execute part upfront to backload the damage so it stacked with the rest of the burst so that it would burst a target down, with the downsides of this combo being that if the burst failed to reach that extremely low 20% threshold the proc never activated and on top of that, the initial cast was essentially a wasted GCD that gave the target a free GCD to prepare for the incoming burst that would try to proc the mages fury execute proc.
• Generic passives are leading the class to be the "non-class" class of ESO:
  The current design/state of the vast majority of Sorcerer's active abilities incentivize using as few Sorcerer abilities as possible while making the most out of specific interactions between systems, gear sets, and non-class abilities to min-max those generically accessible interactions as much as possible because the vast majority of sorcerer active abilities aren't worth the bar slot.
  
  It was mentioned on another thread, but it's entirely possible to remove 80-85% of Sorcerers active abilities/morphs from the game and there would be almost zero recourse, because that's how few active abilities are actually viable in their current design.

  Note: It would be closer to 95% of Sorcerers active abilities if pet sorc players weren't so attached to their pets and we looked exclusively at the power of abilities, not their themes/role play/playstyle aspects.

  This ties in with the anti-synergy point above, where the class passives want Sorcerers to use more Sorcerer abilities to gain better benefits from the passives.
  Example: (Expert mage 108 weapon/spell damage per Sorcerer ability slotted), yet it's more effective for players to simply ignore that passive and leave it as a passive that grants less weapon damage than a single 2-4 piece weapon damage line from a gear set and slot/use non-class or sub-classed abilities in those bar slots, than it would be to slot the extra Sorcerer active abilities to get more out of that passive.
  
  This issue is also why external systems such as Scribing, Sub-classing, non-class abilities and gear sets as well as secondary "classes" such as Werewolf gain a disproportionate benefit when used by the Sorcerer class (especially the stamina sorcerer playstyle that really only utilizes 3-4 of sorcerers active abilities (and only 1-2 of sorcerers active abilities in a post sub-classing world) compared to other classes that want to utilize much more of their classes abilities or only gain real benefit from their class passives when actually using their classes abilities.
• Pet vs Non-pet builds
  This has been a big complaint among Sorcerer players, since it is 2 completely different playstyles that each have their own requirements and gaps that need addressing.
  This used to be alleviated/tolerated way back when Overload had it's third bar, since that allowed the additional bar space required for pets taking up a slot on every bar, but also made up for the fact that Sorcerers non-pet abilities did not have many (if any) bonus or secondary effects, or buffs/debuffs since there was room on the build thanks to that third skill bar to slot non-class abilities to fill those gaps while still using mostly Sorcerer abilities (including the pets).
  
  This issue has never been addressed since the removal of Overloads 3rd bar, and has only served to compound the pet v non-pet friction, and also compound the issues above where Sorcerer abilities don't have secondary effects or access to as many buffs/debuffs as other classes have access to and as such require unbalanced numbers adjustments just to make them comparable to other classes.
  
  There are a lot of complaints about the pets themselves:
  - terrible AI.
  - clunky controls.
  - all of their DPS locked behind Daedric Prey that just isn't worth slotting (even on a sub-classed pet only build).
  - terribly outdated stats (20k health when the minimum health in PvP to not get 1 shot is now 35-40k (and probably 50k+ now with blocking thanks to the absurd power that the new signet mythic brought to the game).
  - requiring double barring (severely limiting bar space for flexibility in exploring build options).
  - the 2 global cooldown required to re-summon them when they inevitably get killed (and if that gets interrupted it's essentially an 8 second lock out from using that ability at all).
  - the worthless active component of twilight tormentor that's not even worth using at it's strongest point (the early stages of an encounter).
• Class sets being very clunky or downright conflicting with the lines themes they are supposed to represent.
  Monolith of Storms issues were not it's lack of damage. The issues with this set are how it tries to deliver that damage. The set itself was designed around being slotted on the front bar and the use of an ability that would be cast very frequently (i.e. a spammable like whip or a channeled ability like fatecarver), with the 5th DoT tick condition allowing for the tick of a DoT ability such as hurricane or lightning splash to maintain the monoliths if the spammable cannot be cast, yet of the active abilities within the Storm Calling skill line, nothing in that line is a spammable ability nor a channeled ability like fatecaver

  - fury is an execute and only below 20% (the lowest execute threshold in the entire game)
  - streak has a ramping cost that is unsustainable and is a teleport so spawns the monoliths in random spots
  - lightning splash and lightning form are damage over time abilities that are better suited to the back bar
  - surge doesn't deal any damage at all
  - overload is an ultimate that is not viable for actual content due to varying reasons.

  
  The set also wants the encounter to be as static as possible with as little movement as possible, to allow all the monoliths to be grouped up for maximum possible damage, yet the line itself wants the player to be highly mobile (with bolt escape being a teleport, lightning form giving movement speed, etc.).
  The set also does nothing while zero or 1 monolith are active, since it requires 2 or more monoliths being active to actually do anything (so it has a 4 second delay before it does anything).
  This is why Monolith of Storms feels weak despite looking fine or even too strong when using it to parse on a trial dummy such as in week 1 of the PTS (since the dummy is a stationary target with no mechanics that would cause the set to fall off).
  
  Beacon of Oblivion's issues are more in the design of the set. This set was supposed to represent the Summoning line, yet it actively punishes you for using that lines abilities. I get that at the time ZOS was trying to bring non-pet sorcerers up to par, but this was the 1 set that I (as a non-pet sorc main) was expecting to be for pet builds, yet it was not and on top of this, actively punishes using the pets. The bonuses of the set itself are fine, but they don't fit the theme of the line this set is supposed to represent and feel more like they would fit (with some adjustments) as a set for the dark magic line that would be used as an intermediary support set for all 3 lines no matter what playstyle the sorc is.
  
  Ironic that the lightning mage line class set summons things, yet the summoning line set punishes you for having summons active.

I know there's a lot to unpack here and I likely missed many other points as well. I'll be honest, I don't expect these to be addressed entirely by the class masteries alone, since the vast majority of these issues are inherent within the design of the class and it's abilities themselves and require the dedicated rework that only the class refresh brings.

I want to conclude, that the baseline tooltip numbers of Sorcerers abilities, class sets like monolith, etc. are already fine as they are and that is why we saw such a dramatic rise in week 1 of this PTS and such a fall in week 3 and a better middle ground in week 4.
The numbers of Sorcerers abilities are already "there" and don't need buffing (or nerfing). What needs addressing with the Sorcerer refresh is all the extras surrounding those abilities that other classes have been granted over the past 8+ years:
- the synergies between abilities, passives and across skill lines within the class itself
- removing all of the conflicts within the class (i.e. the crit surge and static reverb examples above)
- allowing Sorcerers to stand on their own as a class with usable, free flowing, and synergistic active class abilities
- reducing the extreme redundancy (such as over abundant sustain) within the class to allow better variety to be supported by actual passives and synergies
- the lack of cleave, such that Sorcerer can be more than just a single target dummy parse cheesing youtube click bait class


@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_NickG @ZOS_JessicaFolsom I also want to add in here (since I don't know where else to add it, even though it's not specifically about balance), but if the refresh team working on the VFX and SFX could look to implement the lightning theme to be much closer to the "Storm Projection" vision from the Infinite Archive, that would be amazing. That vision feels so much more like what a lightning mage is supposed to be instead of many of the current Lightning abilities Sorcerer has that just feels more like reskinned fireballs (overload, shock damage wield soul, lightning staff clench/reach, etc.). The VFX and SFX design of this particular IA vision is perfect for the lightning theme, fast paced and exciting and feels powerful (visually), but not being overbearingly flashy to the point it's distracting or disruptive.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to engage with our feedback, hopefully this long read helps the current issues behind the sorcerer class and why we saw such wild swings and vastly different feelings of "overpowered" vs "underpowered" when numbers are being adjusted for the class.

I mean sorc passives are in a very good spot for PvP. Any stronger will make it too strong.

About nightblade, i dont see how it will help increased Crit Damage cap in PvP. You dont have that high Crit Damage anyway. Because you already also account for the crit resistance of the other players, which is quite high as well. Would be a better solution to just increase its Crit Damage more instead. It should be somewhere between 10% - 15% to begin with and we can talk.

Touching on Necromancer first, we’ve seen folks looking for clarification on what the issue was with Malevolent Promise in PvP. The reason behind this change was specifically when it was paired with Corpseburster, it was doing insane damage in PvP – far higher than is fair, especially with multiple Necromancers. Additionally, there was no counterplay, and certain combinations with this set created some really overwhelming and oppressive gameplay experiences. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not. We exhausted a lot of solutions to try and improve the PvP experience, and this is where we landed for now. We will say it’s possible we may revisit this in the future – potentially when we start doing the Necromancer class refresh.

Then refresh this class this year!

For five years we have been nerfed again and again, and we have asked for a refresh multiple times.

We are going to endure the grave lord sacrifice failure (blastbone nerf) and the corpse limitation for one and half year more?

The class that brough me into this game is destroyed right now, and people who bought it are eventually forced to drop it because the class is too weak compared to others and is buggy. And that refresh order you chose will only make things worst.

I can tell you that I am watching at that cancel subscription button very closely and that if by the end of this month I do not see anything about fixing the class this year, I will press it.

Half of the necromancer players left two years ago when the stalking blastbone got removed, and more left when the corpse limitation got introduced.

Are the devs considering adjusting Shattered Path Signet for PvP? As is we are looking at a number of busted builds and miserable play patterns (generally involving LA spam).

If this really is its target power ceiling, then the drawback should be more severe than minor ult drain, which is too easily trivialized in PvP. The healing debuff on Draugrkin for example is a much better balance to high pressure (and more rewarding to successfully build).

Arunei wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

YOu CANNOT balance around what the above-average or top players can do.

Do people not remember U35? That whole debacle happened because ZOS attempted to raise the floor by lowering the ceiling. What happened, though? Who was it that was adversely affected by that? It was the average or below-average player hit the hardest.

The top players will ALWAYS, ALWAYS find what's the strongest. What works the best. What gives the highest numbers, what does the most damage or tanks the most damage or heals the most damage.

When was the last time lowering the ceiling actually stopped the power creep? When was the last time it actually raised DPS or tanking or healing for average players?

Power creep doesn't happen because of average players. It happens because of the top players finding new interactions with new Sets and old Skills/Passives.

No matter how much you nerf WW, ZOS, certain people will keep claiming it isn't enough, because THEY will continue to find ways of pumping out high damage and will just keep saying "Look how OP it still is!" while the rest of us who aren't absolute aces at the game will just watch as WW keeps getting gutted over and over before it even reaches Live.

You CANNOT balance around what the ceiling can do, because it never raises the floor, it only ever pushes it farther into the ground.

So the alternative is what? Raise the floor? That won’t lower the power creep either. In fact, it would make it worse.

Imagine a scenario where player X, who is average at the game, does 80k DPS on a dummy, while player Y, who is above average, does 110k DPS. Both are playing the same class. Instead of figuring out more optimized sets and perfecting their rotation, player X wants his class to be buffed. ZOS listens and rolls out several changes, allowing player X to increase his parse to 110k. Player X is happy that he can finally compete, but he doesn’t understand that player Y, who has a better setup and rotation, is now doing 140k DPS. Power creep worsens, and the average DPS requirement is now inflated.

This is literally the same thing in PvP, but more severe. Since you’re fighting players, knowledge of defensive rotations must also be accounted for. If player X always dies on his Sorc while player Y dies less, is it Sorc being bad at surviving, or is it player X? What do you think would happen to player Y if ZOS buffed Sorc to allow player X to survive better? I think we all know the result here.

Honestly the only way to fight power creep is probably something I saw someone else mention somewhere in the General section I think it was? Which was to hardcap damage.Either that or implement something so that DPS after a certain point starts to have diminishing returns somehow. I remember back when 50k-ish DPS was good enough for most every Vet Dungeon, but that hardly seems the case these days.

And who's to say that the person doing 80k DPS hasn't perfected their rotation and doesn't already have access to the best Gear they can realistically obtain? A lot of people don't do Trials and thus don't have Trial Gear. Heck a lot of people don't do Vet Dungeons and don't have Dungeon Sets. And this is where I'd say diminishing returns would kick in, so that having more optimized Gear and Skills and all DOES kick in at a certain point, but not before average players would be able to get some sort of boost. Maybe that 80k Sorc player can get buffed to 100k instead, while the person who has their optimized build could still hit that 140k if they REALLY worked at it. There would still be separation between more skilled people and those who aren't in that upper tier, but the people below average or average DO get some sort of buff. The floor gets raised without the ceiling also going up as well.

Nerfing things because of what the top can do will never help the average player, because those people using those things that get nerfed lose power and then have to struggle to get it back, whereas the people at the top will either barely feel it, or only be affected for a short time before they find the next busted or overtuned combo. There has to be SOME sort of compromise because otherwise people will always want more more more nerfs and the people lower on the totem pole have to deal with either watching their builds get made worse, or fear it's going to happen.

And the main point here is you will NEVER nerf what the top people can do because they'll always manage to find something else. It's s never-ending cycle. People look at what they can do and think it's too strong, call for nerfs, something gets nerfed but even when it is those people could probably still wring out a high output with it. More nerfs, more builds getting made worse. Over and over. I keep bringing up U35 because this is exactly what happened. ZOS tried to lower the ceiling to raise the floor and what actually happened was the floor got suplexed even lower than it had been before, while the ceiling was largely untouched.

if you aren't doing vet trials or even vet dungeons does it really matter whether you do 150k or 100k dps ?
why balance around what rpers can do ?