Edit: Heck even nightblade has better tanking support passives in that dodge thing that adds damage taken.

Soarora wrote: »

Hey, I'm a fellow sorc tank main. To my joy, I am seeing people slot sorc tank in trial rosters. We already were doing pretty good on survivability but the class mastery makes it even better. There's also the unique 6% weapon and spell damage buff, so having a sorc somewhere seems ideal. I'm not a big brain theorycrafter so I'm not sure why sorc dps isn't the go-to on these new rosters (in my view, anyway, I'm not in a lot of guilds) but I'm not really seeing sorc dps, I'm seeing sorc tank.

Thats actually quite good to hear! I still dont know if that spell damage would compare to the brittle or having a subclass for some nice survivability passives such as the minor evasion from apocrypha or the major resistance buff from winters embrace.

Soarora wrote: »

I saw people discuss about it and briefly thought about doing nightblade MT but there's too much content where roll dodging enrages the boss or kills everyone. Not sure if anyone's tried to see if it counts as a dodge or not, though.

Ya so you see my point, nightblade has such a nice DPS kit and new passives, yet even the support passive they get looks amazing, i dont understand why sorc always gets pigeonholed into burst kind of dps / shield spammer

Soarora wrote: »

Hey, I'm a fellow sorc tank main. To my joy, I am seeing people slot sorc tank in trial rosters. We already were doing pretty good on survivability but the class mastery makes it even better. There's also the unique 6% weapon and spell damage buff, so having a sorc somewhere seems ideal. I'm not a big brain theorycrafter so I'm not sure why sorc dps isn't the go-to on these new rosters (in my view, anyway, I'm not in a lot of guilds) but I'm not really seeing sorc dps, I'm seeing sorc tank.

Sorc DPS isn't seen much because it's basically all single target damage (whereas PvE content is being designed for maximum cleave damage with multiple important targets that will wipe a group if not dealt with in time) and despite what the dummy parses show, Sorcs in-content builds that aren't cheesing sets/abilities that are designed entirely for the (near) infinite sustain and no mechanics or group buffs to worry about/obtain "content" that is dummy parsing, is not as high as what other classes can already do.

e.g. NB and Sorcerer can both parse 200k+ DPS on the trial dummy, but unlike Sorcerer, NB DPS goes up in content because it's not already using things like Banner, Travelling Knife, Sorc class mastery 6% weapon damage, etc. to buff it's DPS on the trial dummy, where Sorc is already using those so gains no additional benefit from those abilities in actual content like NB does.
NOTE: NB was chosen for this example because it is also a primarily single target DPS class, so the AoE component is not a factor for this comparison.

AoE heavy classes (DK, Arcanist, Necro and Plar) are parsing not that far behind Sorc and NB in single target, but because they have a lot higher cleave, they naturally perform better in modern content that is designed for that extra cleave to clear it.

Some simple math (that I'm trying to remember from my post on another thread) on the cleave issue, was:
- A Sorc parsing ~180k on a trial dummy with about 15% cleave, will have approximately 315k DPS across 6 targets (180k main target + (15% x 180k x 5 targets) = 315k total).
- An Arcanist using beam parsing 160k (12% less on single target), but will 100% cleave (beam has full cleave for 6 targets) is roughly 960k DPS across 6 targets (160k main + 160k x 5 targets = 960k total).

Roughly speaking, an Arcanist despite parsing 12% or more lower than Sorcerer on the single trial dummy, ends up parsing something like 205% higher than Sorcerer in actual content where there are 6 key targets and this simple math does not account for things that would buff Arcanist further in content from supports that aren't present in the dummy parse such as banner, Sorc masteries, etc. that would increase that gap in content significantly.

Soarora wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot I see, thank you!!!

Some additional info/math (in case the devs happen to read this thread):

Say for example, Arcanist has only 80% cleave (treatise is not AoE and neither are light attacks and some status effects, so let's be generous and say those make up 20% of total DPS).

With the 160k parse example above, that would still be roughly 800k DPS across the 6 targets (160k main target + (80% x 160k x 5 other targets) = 800k total) from a Beam Arcanist.

For a Sorc to match that total DPS across the 6 targets while only having the 15% cleave from the example above, Sorc would need to be parsing at approximately 460k DPS on the main target. (460k main target + (15% x 460k x 5 other targets) = 805k total DPS across 6 targets).
15% of 460 multiplied across 5 targets is 345k, then add the 460 of the main target to get the total 805k dps across 6 targets that matches Arcs 160k parse with 80% cleave.

This is why cleave is such a huge issue for Sorcerer and NB in PvE content and why these 2 classes are rarely chosen as the "parse DDs" in organized group content outside of groups specifically willing to allow these classes to fill that role, and as such these classes are often relegated to specific support DD roles/builds, tanks or healer roles for organized raid comps and only really to completely min-max the group that consists of 6-8 parse DDs from the cleave heavy classes (Arc/DK/Necro/Plar).

This is also why the common Sorc Parse builds that everyone makes such a fuss about every single PTS cycle are never seen in real content, because (pre-U50) Sorc was brought for the Atronach ultimate that gives Major berserk to the group (which DK now gives already thanks to the class masteries making daedric summoning a completely useless line), which is a +10% DPS increase across 12 total players, which completely outweighs any DPS gains Sorc can get for itself from using an overload parse build (this also completely ignores how inconvenient the overload parse builds are in real content with how the parse builds require 500 ultimate to be the most effective and in real content ultimates will be used on/not enough generated from, the trash packs between the boss fights, such that the overload parse build will rarely reach those same numbers they get from the dummy parses where players can completely refresh/refill their ultimates to 500 for max overloads before every single parse and also that supports will often generate ultimate for the group during those initial stages of an encounter where a sorc with overload toggled on cannot gain ultimate, as such loses out on that ultimate generation from the supports.