Sorcerers in the endgame scene, what needs to change to make them relevant in raids.

[Zeklijan]

***Made a bigger and more inclusive thread - please look at https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...91#post6144091 instead **


I've played this class alot, and my story with sorcerers goes way back. But recently I wanted to pick it up again and try it in the endgame scene, especially the reaper questing/raiding.

Here's my experience:
Endgame raiding for sorcerers is, right now, alot like it was before Eladar's lightning surge and Niac's biting cold were added to the game. For those less familiar with the spells and the history of the class, those are the two lv 5 spells that deal damage overtime by 1d6+caster level, caps at 20, for cold and lightning. When those two spells came out arcanes had a reason to exist in raiding other than CC'ing adds, their damage became relevant. Before then, all arcane casters were really useful for is their spell DCs to take care of adds, not DPS.

And that is how it is right now for raids, arcane casters cannot do comparable damage to melee/ranged DPS, and are not sustainable enough if they do try.

I've played alot in the reaper questing in lv 30s, and in quests sorcerers face really no problem. I wouldn't change a thing. They are fine just as they are and very powerful if played right. It's just in raids that they underperform, they lack single target sustainable DPS. (And probably stacking, to avoid being broken.)

So what now? How does SGS think sorcerers should be played?
Well taking a look at the 4 elemental trees for the sorcerer and how literally everything in this tree screams DPS I assume that's how they want sorcerers to be played, not a bigger spellbar with lower DC wizards. There are no supporting abilities for this role in its current state trees.

So how do you fix this?
I think it's actually simple. There needs to be an equivalent spell for Niac's biting cold and Eladar's Electric surge for Fire and acid element. It's just silly to me that those two elements lack this option that is critical for raids. So add an equivalent to these two for Fire and Acid to the spell list.

Next is the damage scaling of these spells, 1d6+20 is fine in heroics. But in lv 30 content it's very weak. There needs to be a way to increase it's damage in some way, or simply change it's spell damage all together. I think 3 or 5d6+caster level, cap 20, stacks 5 times, would be the sweet spot. Also the cooldown should be lowered a bit it's really annoying(and really bad for your DPS) to lose all your stacks when your re-cast window is 6s and the mob teleports away for 10s or something. Having the cooldown lowered to the same as Arcane Pulse would be perfect.


So where are the Acid sorcerers?
While I'm here I might as well say it now, Acid sorcerers are vastly underperforming to the other 3 elements. To have effective results with damage you need to be able to cycle 2 AoE spells of the same element with at least 15d6 or more to nuke effectively. The other elements have this (Fire kind of does), acid does not.

Electricity: Lightning Ball + Chain lightning
Cold: Cone of cold + Otiluke's Sphere
Fire: Delayed Blast Fireball + Meteor Swarm (I dont like swarm it doesn't scale with your caster level, I guess that's my preference but it does less damage than the other two and it is slower to cast)
Acid: Has no AoE spells suited for nuking, the current acid spells are weak and offer no instant damage like the others do. And no, I don't think acid rain is a suited nuke. 15d4 doesn't cut it.

Adding 2 AoE conjuration acid spells, one that hits 15d6 and the other 20d6 to cycle DPS would fix this element and make it relevant. I also think Fire could use a second nuke because of the reasons mentioned above. A 15d6 nuke would be put in line with the Electricity and Cold.

[Cetus]

The main thing that needs to change is the spellpoint consumption rate. In my view, sorcerers are supposed to be the gods of offensive spellcasting. On higher reaper difficulties, sorcerers can easily blow through a significant chunk of their resources on relatively few encounters.

The main problem is spellpoint potions. If people have thousands of them, then it turns a spellpoint-limited caster into a character that becomes overpowered - which has largely been the case for most of this games life.

Solution: significantly reduce the cost of evocation spells (for sorcerers at least). And really, although this will likely be unpopular - we must add a universal 1 minute cooldown to spellpoint potions (at least). Chain drinking potions removes the entire need to manage a spellpoint bar, a skill that is central to playing a caster.

[slarden]

Sorcs are in the same spot as all casters. If you want to specialize in high skull reaper you focus on dc - cc, instakill, etc. Sorcs aren't really disadvantaged because they have a higher spell point pool and +4 DC from exalted angel which is effectively a wash compared to festival augment, extra feats and tree dc. The wider spell selection and archmage slas are a bigger benefit to wizard than anything else, but not a game breaking difference.

For low skull - blasting is still effective with dc part of the picture as well.

The tough thing about the game now is that there isn't enough high skull activity for me to justify dumping dps entirely. There isn't enough players to spec for always being on a team. So my casters end up with sort of a compromise build usually sacrificing a few DC / spell pen for things that make me more effective solo. Still I haven't noticed these small comprises impacting me negatively in high skull reaper.

[Hipparan]

Solution: significantly reduce the cost of evocation spells (for sorcerers at least).

And Conjuration for Earth Savants too.

As a side note, my Sorc had a fun time as an Earth Savant, but only thanks to Dragon breath, Dragonborn breath, and Energy Burst. However, I can't think if I ran any reaper quests at all, let alone any raids.

Also, I've brought it up in other threads, but Sorcerers have some single-target enhancements which have DCs that scale with Constitution instead of Charisma. Earthgrab is one of those abilities, and I'd love to see that usable in endgame content. However, I think Heat Death and Icy Prison need to scale the damage as well to be more usable. Icy Prison is outmatched in epic levels by Burst of Glacial Wrath, and Heat Death only does 2k fire damage for a whopping 50 SP.

The elemental form's bypassing elemental immunities is very nice though and I'm glad to see it. In terms of the elemental forms though, I'd like to see Veiled Elements given to Sorcerers like what Druids have. I'm not sure if it's currently coded to work for Earth and Air elemental forms though. Oh, and I think the increase to SP cost is lame too, but I understand why that's there.

[Cetus]

I actually don't understand why the increased SP cost is there. It's a capstone. Why does it have a penalty? If anything, spells of that element should have a reduced cost - not an increased one.

[Hipparan]

I actually don't understand why the increased SP cost is there. It's a capstone. Why does it have a penalty? If anything, spells of that element should have a reduced cost - not an increased one.

I guess I mean I can understand why that was there. Sorcerers used to be much better, so granting one 100% fortification, immunity to all the things elementals are immune to, and extra spellpower was considered a little OP (considering the stereotypical squishiness of sorcs).

[Iaga]

I actually don't understand why the increased SP cost is there. It's a capstone. Why does it have a penalty? If anything, spells of that element should have a reduced cost - not an increased one.

I really think they need to reverse this. A big part of the problem with Sorc is that the ratio of mana spent to damage done is poor. Lower the cost of evoc/conj spells based on how many sorcs levels you have. Scale it at 5/10/15/20 and then through epic levels as well.

As for mana pots ... one of the dupapaloozas resulted in millions of the damnn things making their way into the game. Spell points became meaningless and i think that probably tied the dev's hands to a degree. There's an argument to be made to buff epic sorc DPS - BUT - a big part of that argument should hinge on a fixed mana pool. With so many mana pots, you can't buff damage when so many people have a limitless mana pool.

I'd be all for putting a 5 minute timer on their use. I miss my sorc

[mr420247]

Its not just sorc its all casters sorc is just the best of the worst of us all

1 step behind ranger maybe

[Jetrule]

Sorcs are in the same spot as all casters. If you want to specialize in high skull reaper you focus on dc - cc, instakill, etc. Sorcs aren't really disadvantaged because they have a higher spell point pool and +4 DC from exalted angel which is effectively a wash compared to festival augment, extra feats and tree dc. The wider spell selection and archmage slas are a bigger benefit to wizard than anything else, but not a game breaking difference.

For low skull - blasting is still effective with dc part of the picture as well.

The tough thing about the game now is that there isn't enough high skull activity for me to justify dumping dps entirely. There isn't enough players to spec for always being on a team. So my casters end up with sort of a compromise build usually sacrificing a few DC / spell pen for things that make me more effective solo. Still I haven't noticed these small comprises impacting me negatively in high skull reaper.

Well put. I have the same experience leveling a favored soul caster right now. The good thing is you can make a good dps caster/ cc caster with the current available gear. The main problemwith sorcerer for me is its class trees are weak and epic damage relies heavily on energy burst and ruins. I would like to see each elemental t-5 have something like heat death from fire savant but let it scale with spell power and fix the save to be cha based. Each tree needs more max caster level and effective caster level in the trees like Angel of Vengeance just got for a list of spells.

[HuneyMunster]

I wouldn't mind seeing something similar to 5th edition with the inclusion of Sorcerous Origin. This would mostly probably only include Dragon Ancestor where you choose at level one Brass, Bronze, Copper or Silver to determine your main element. This would lock you to the corresponding Savant tree that you have available, but would give various bonus features as you level. Alternatives would be Pyromancer, Sea Sorcery, Stone Sorcery or Storm Sorcery.

This would require the addition of Sorcerers 3rd prestige class to compensate for the lack of versatility that this currently to be able to switch to different Savant pairing we currently have. At level 1 to 5 cold and acid is better due to cold getting only decent range spell with Niac's Cold Ray and acid getting Acid Spray for oozes and other monsters immune to cold. Level 6-11 I tend to go Fire and Acid for Acid Blast and Fireball, then switch to Fire and Lightning at level 12. Epics I tend to go Air Savant with a few cold spells and rest are buffs, cc and death spells.

My preference would be Wild Mage as the 3rd prestige for Sorcerer to compensate for the lost of extra versitlity of SLA's from not having access to 2 Savant trees.

[JOTMON]

I actually don't understand why the increased SP cost is there. It's a capstone. Why does it have a penalty? If anything, spells of that element should have a reduced cost - not an increased one.

Indeed..

[Enoach]

I will echo the sentiment that this is an "All Casters" issue.

One thing I do think needs to be part of the solution is more spells.

I say this because what I have noticed is that many casters generally stick with the same spells and will find themselves "forcing" that spell to work in the given situation even if there is a better one (which is not always the case)

Another thing I think needs to be added to the game is the Meta Magic Rods - The short duration that those metas are applied for free. We have a few items that have this but their durations are about 1/2 as long as they should be, so maybe double the duration.

Add spells to Random Quarter Staffs. Right now there are a few Epic level Quarter staves that have a small selection of spells, with some heroic ones having summon monster or acid arrow, but adding a to random staffs one or two spells say a high/low level spell with charges (high using 2 and low using 1) would add additional depth to casters. This would also go a ways in having the Quarter Staff be competitive with the orb/caster stick or duel caster stick gear sets.

Add more feats the enhance spell casting.

---
On the player side we should always examine are we casting efficiently - are we using 100 sp when 10 would be enough? Are we using Metas when they are not needed - IE getting 50 minutes on a buff when the next shrine is 10 minutes away.

[Zeklijan]

I wasn't aware of a potion duplicating bug from the past, but that is concerning. I'm all for a cooldown on sp pots, so that they can't be chained back to back.

Honestly, the sp consumption decrease rate is a great idea. I think it would certainly help, but more options for single target sustained DPS is what's really lacking. The AoE damage at the moment is good enough IMO.

If it had to be summarized the magical blasters aren't sustainable enough to compete with melee and ranged DPS in higher difficulty raid settings.

[Kaboom2112]

I have no idea how to make nukers relevant in high-skulls without making them beyond OP in low-skull/non-reaper.

Good luck with this one SSG!

[JOTMON]

~snip~
The main problem is spellpoint potions. If people have thousands of them, then it turns a spellpoint-limited caster into a character that becomes overpowered - which has largely been the case for most of this games life.

Solution: significantly reduce the cost of evocation spells (for sorcerers at least). And really, although this will likely be unpopular - we must add a universal 1 minute cooldown to spellpoint potions (at least). Chain drinking potions removes the entire need to manage a spellpoint bar, a skill that is central to playing a caster.

I don't buy into this mentality.
Those that managed to stock up on stacks of pots wont have them forever.. its finite and will eventually run out..
Why punish the entire player base with poor caster mana mechanics.

Pot timers meh whatever.. as long as it cant be interrupted and consume the pot while screwing over players by not applying the mana...
but whats the determining factor for timers.. 1 min , 10 min, 1/quest.. the whole point of pots is for those oh sh.. moments..

If SP pots are a problem then remove them from the DDO store... yeah don't think that will happen.. $$ stream....

and really epic levels should be adding SP cost reductions not tacking on SP costs...

Would prefer to see some options where casters can regen mana over time. not just the insignificant Echo's of power where players are sucking fumes out of the bottom of the tank..
add enhancements/feats/gear to regen mana faster.
set bonuses that add x% mana pool.. mechanics are in play for x% HP, AC, PRR... why no perks for casters, monk ki bars...

[JOTMON]

I have no idea how to make nukers relevant in high-skulls without making them beyond OP in low-skull/non-reaper.

Good luck with this one SSG!

Reaper points to reduce the impact of melee / spell power damage reductions in the melee Reaper tree.
Encourage players to spread points out in all 3 trees.. or even add another reaper enhancement tree...

[Kaboom2112]

Reaper points to reduce the impact of melee / spell power damage reductions in the melee Reaper tree.
Encourage players to spread points out in all 3 trees.. or even add another reaper enhancement tree...

I don't think that's a good idea, it's stupid to have the debuff when you can just grind your way past it.

It's the same as having the self-healing debuff and having all nonsense added lately to get past it (Healing hands on Wisdom toons is broken AF).

[Zeklijan]

I have no idea how to make nukers relevant in high-skulls without making them beyond OP in low-skull/non-reaper.

Good luck with this one SSG!

Remove SP pots, and increase only single target DPS.

From my experience AoE damage is already good enough.

You can't balance a class if somehow can get past it's core limitations by drinking a pots. If SP pots are a thing I want action boost restoring pots. They don't exist for a reason

[Kaboom2112]

From my experience AoE damage is already good enough.

Do you run above R3?

[Zeklijan]

Do you run above R3?

Yeah, I've run r10s and still felt relevant next to our melee/ranged counter parts. The main reason is the abundance of shrines in quests that we don't have in raids.

The only slightly more difficult part is r10 bossfights but it's manageable.