Sorcerer Pass Discussion and Ideas

[Zeklijan]

Introduction
Welcome everyone to my sorcerer thread. Here you will find a place to discuss all sorts of issues the class faces and how we might address them.

I'm a player who's been playing since 2009 and I've played this class alot, my feedback will be based on my experiences. So here's my take on it, there are some things which need to change to make the class relevant in certain aspects of the game and some which need to remain unchanged. Otherwise the class may perform too well in that situation.


The current situation:
One of the underlying problem of the sorcerer is they lack options, and their current options are too limited. They have no inherent ability that enhances DC casting in their action points and their DPS trees are taking too much space in their total number of trees.

The next main issue the class faces is the lack of sustainable damage for longer periods of time.

As it stands elemental savants DPS is already adequate (except acid and fire could use some changes, more on that later), so all changes shouldn't aim at increasing damage directly, but rather make it more sustainable. The only problematic situations are epic raiding, and some quest boss fights.

Lastly, the game lacks options for magical DPS to bypass elemental resistances. This doesn't cause a problem (which is true for physical DPS as well) on lower difficulty settings but not being able to pierce through resistances really hurts the DPS on higher skull settings, sometimes making it irrelevant completely. I understand this affects a very small amount of people, but if the goal is to put all damage oriented characters on the same footing then it's fair to add more options to it, physical DPS have alot of different options to bypass DRs.


The solution, p1. Elemental savants

What I suggest with the savant trees is to turn them into a single tree that would support all the elements in a multiple choice option (kinda like arcane arrows) and merge air/cold together and fire/acid then simply call it elemental savant. This is mostly an aesthetics change but it would definitely reduce the clutter of having 6 different enhancement trees. Since most of the tree is identical from one another aside from a few abilities, it would simply streamline the experience of playing the class.

The reason I'm saying the air and cold, fire and acid should be merged is because it wouldn't increase directly the damage output because you don't need to be proficient in a second element unless the monster is very resistant or immune. In which case it adds versatility instead of raw damage. It creates less situations where the magical DPS cannot contribute due to high resistances, this is very apparent in high reaper when a 300 resistance ruins most of the sorcerer’s DPS. Most physical damage dealers have means of piercing through the DR with certain metal properties but the options to pierce elemental resistances are poor/non existent. Immunities are less of a problem after 20 but you still have to use 2 elements while leveling.

Considering existing gear, this synergizes well with seasons herald druids so no need to make different gear sets for the two classes. Druids get a single tree that boosts all their magical damage, depending on their season, and get access to both elemental forms. I don't see why sorcerers couldn't get two elements for the same investment of action points.

The air and cold savants already prevent the sorcerer from taking points on acid and fire and vice versa so making it into a choice selector wouldn't change class functionality.

While we're on the topic of elemental savants, the DC for tier 5 abilites should change to charisma and factor in evocation/conjuration bonuses. There are a few more changes I would make to it, based on my experience only.
Wind Dance is awesome, enough said here, no changes.
Heat death should be an insta kill like hurl (warlock fiend pact), the cooldown could be moved to 25s to be similar to hurl.
Earthgrab is good CC, with 15s cooldown, aside from DC changes nothing to change here.
Icy Prison is not essentialy a damage ability as much as it is a CC. Remove the damage and lower the CD to 15s.
As it stands now these abilities are unusable because the DC cannot reach high enough to be usable in endgame even on maxed out characters. I know elemental abilities in DnD were based on Con, but in a MMO it won't work unless it's CHA based.

On a side note, all epic destinies DC abilities (including the caster related ones, even energy burst) need to be revamped to factor in their means of increasing DC. Casters spell focus feats+ items. Melees tactical bonuses, etc. Anyways, this is probably best suited for another thread but it does factor in epic spell casting so.

The solution, p2: the new DC casting tree

Merging all the savant trees together into 1 single tree allows the creation of new trees without going over 5 (visual clutter, balance). This new tree should focus on a different role to allow sorcerers a different way of being played. The first thing that comes to mind with arcane casters is DC casting, control and necromancy among others. Having a tree that supports this role would be a step in the right direction. Not necessarily the same as archmage, but certainly DC casting oriented. Because sorcerers don't have an option like this at the moment, they aren't desirable in raids. They have no abilities to support a DC casting role and no sustainable damage that's comparable to current level endgame physical damage dealers.

Integrating all these changes would make the class more versatile, offer more play options and make it more enjoyable as a whole.


The solution, p3: sustainability issue and raid performance.

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 mainly because they are not sustainable enough. The main game changer will be sustainable, slowly building up DPS, that's cheap enough to cast for longer periods of time.

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 to lose all your stacks when your re-cast window is 6s and the mob teleports away for 10s or something (16 duration of the spell, 10 is cooldown) Having the cooldown lowered to the same as Arcane Pulse would be perfect. Something needs to be said about the stacks disapearing all at once as well, slow removal of 1 at a time would be much better, just for quality of life.

So about the elemental savant capstone, it doesn't make much sense with the current state of the game (maybe it did before but it doesn't anymore) that sorcerers in elemental forms have to spend 10% more sp for all their spells. Instead all evocation spells (conjuration for acid) should get a reduction in cost. And no change for the other schools.


The solution, p4: Acid and Fire spells

Acid sorcerers are vastly underperforming in DPS 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. This is on top of my suggestion to add an equivalent Fire and Acid Damage over Time spells mentionned above.

Electricity: Lightning Ball 15d6 + Chain lightning 20d6
Cold: Cone of cold 15d6 + Otiluke's Sphere 20d6
Fire: Delayed Blast Fireball 20d6 + Meteor Swarm**
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 dont like Meteor swarm because it doesn't scale with your caster level. It always deals 24d6 fire + 8d6 bludgeon (impulse), not only is it split between two different spellpowers, it's also way lower caster level than the other spells at cap. 1d6 per caster level makes the break point of caster 32, after which the other nukes are more effective. I'm casting Delayed fireballs at caster 41 when I'm capped, and swarm is slower too. This is why I think a second fire nuke of 15d6 should be added, it would put it in line with elec/cold.


End note:
How the devs may or may not change the class trees is one thing, but if they change the above I don't think any of the 4 elemental trees need further changes other than what I mentioned. I've never played Eldritch knight so I can't help you with that, the fact I never seen it at play at level 30 is probably a good indicator that it needs some love, but I lack the experience here to make good suggestions about it. Any experienced Eldritch knight feedback would be a really really nice addition though.

So what do you think? Post your opinions and feel free to share
Discussion open!

[Zeklijan]

So is there a way to merge threads? anybody knows?

I don't think there needs to be 2 threads going, but all the comments and discussion on the other thread would fit in nicely here.

[kain741]

I think with where they game has gone since the savant trees were introduced, a key first step would be to make the SLAs in the tree more relevant. To cap out at lvl 3 spells when every other tree has much higher is disparaging consider this is where DDO has moved to for blasters. I think you need a top tier ability with chain lightning, delayed blast, polar ray and black dragon bolt with 8-10 second cool downs to compensate for being a one trick pony.
Ideally the core capstones will grant the same ability as the druid abilities that let them bypass their elemental resistance and immunities.

[Dielzen]

While I do agree that merging elements together is a step in the right direction, that's not how I would do the merge.

There are 4 elements, 2 are completely evocation-based, 1 is mostly conjuration and the other is about 60/40 Conjuration (these #s aren't supported by raw counting of spells, just by memory)

It would make more sense to boost the trees along those lines and have it be Cold/Acid & Fire/Electricity, and then you could even have one tree be Conjuration-improving.

[Synthetic]

I don't agree with most of your post. You seem unaware of the sorcerer mechanics, and different aspects of how they play. That is to say you haven't played a sorcerer lately or you did and didn't pay attention to updates.

Specific issues I have with your argument

Fire currently has a 20d6 dot in the core, and burning blood plus can use eladars for a third.

Acid sorcerer is all about AOE dots and fire acid can build extremely tanky due to less need for DC in the damage spells - it's more a druid style of play then sorcerer style.

I don't see the point of a DC tree if you want more DC play water savant and use the debuff abilities in the core for more CC. Adding a DC tree would just make them better wizards, which they probably already are due to cast speed, and EA bonuses.

I do agree some of the T5 specific abilities are lackluster. Freezing ice doesn't gain damage from spell power and is on a minute cooldown, and save is con based, and they don't have the synergy acid savant has going for it. It woutbe nice to make T5 more unique across the lines and cheaper enhancement across the board. I disagree about impring SLA they should be good early game and forgotten late game for sorcerer IMO.

My biggest beef with caster stuff is lackluster ED and spell scaling feats missed the mark by focusing only on SLA. Sorcerer has plenty of SP, and great high level spells if they uncapped some level 5+ spells it would be much better then adding additional damage to level 1-3 spells. They could also add some +mcl to the cores for spell focused ED.

[Zeklijan]

While I do agree that merging elements together is a step in the right direction, that's not how I would do the merge.

There are 4 elements, 2 are completely evocation-based, 1 is mostly conjuration and the other is about 60/40 Conjuration (these #s aren't supported by raw counting of spells, just by memory)

It would make more sense to boost the trees along those lines and have it be Cold/Acid & Fire/Electricity, and then you could even have one tree be Conjuration-improving.

That's actually a really good idea. It didn't cross my mind before to mix it that way. Downside I think gear pairings probably won't be adjusted to match this type of change, I could be wrong though.

I think with where they game has gone since the savant trees were introduced, a key first step would be to make the SLAs in the tree more relevant. To cap out at lvl 3 spells when every other tree has much higher is disparaging consider this is where DDO has moved to for blasters. I think you need a top tier ability with chain lightning, delayed blast, polar ray and black dragon bolt with 8-10 second cool downs to compensate for being a one trick pony.
Ideally the core capstones will grant the same ability as the druid abilities that let them bypass their elemental resistance and immunities.

The SLAs are a good idea I think. Elemental form does grant immunity bypass as of now, but it's a debuff you need to hit the monster with a spell of your element first, get the immune message, then cast the big nuke. Which honestly gets annoying to do all the time, especially if you miss one or two with the debuff.

[Dielzen]

One thought that occurred to me while driving to work is that we could take this a step further.

Have the two trees called Conjurer and Invoker (yay, 2E specialists)

include Conjuration based DC spells in that tree. I can see a Conjuration-based version of PK called Conjured Assassin that can instakill

Then in Invoker tree we have Invoked Nightmare that works the same way.

[Zeklijan]

I don't agree with most of your post. You seem unaware of the sorcerer mechanics, and different aspects of how they play. That is to say you haven't played a sorcerer lately or you did and didn't pay attention to updates.

Specific issues I have with your argument

Fire currently has a 20d6 dot in the core, and burning blood plus can use eladars for a third.

Acid sorcerer is all about AOE dots and fire acid can build extremely tanky due to less need for DC in the damage spells - it's more a druid style of play then sorcerer style.

I don't see the point of a DC tree if you want more DC play water savant and use the debuff abilities in the core for more CC. Adding a DC tree would just make them better wizards, which they probably already are due to cast speed, and EA bonuses.

I do agree some of the T5 specific abilities are lackluster. Freezing ice doesn't gain damage from spell power and is on a minute cooldown, and save is con based, and they don't have the synergy acid savant has going for it. It woutbe nice to make T5 more unique across the lines and cheaper enhancement across the board. I disagree about impring SLA they should be good early game and forgotten late game for sorcerer IMO.

My biggest beef with caster stuff is lackluster ED and spell scaling feats missed the mark by focusing only on SLA. Sorcerer has plenty of SP, and great high level spells if they uncapped some level 5+ spells it would be much better then adding additional damage to level 1-3 spells. They could also add some +mcl to the cores for spell focused ED.

The fire DoT doesn't apply reliably(That's kinda another story or more a bug report though), and all 12th lv cores have something interesting so I think they're well balanced. Where Fire has slightly more damage on it wind has more vulnerability. Because I only bring up what I think is problematic I skipped those. Burning Blood has no stacking mechanic, and it doesn't work on alot of types of enemies. It might cut down on about half or 1/3rd the SP cost I would using spamming Fireball for the amount of damage it does which isn't near enough to achieve the goal mentionned above(The second element in use deals alot less damage). I also think every element needs to have burst damage capacities, that's my opinion. (Hence the suggestion)

While Cold and Acid may have a single target CC, it's nowhere near enough to be called a controller. My DPS has dire charge and he's not a CC focused character. Unless you can mass hold monster or charm, mobs will still smack your party in the face. I also think we can't balance a class, around an ED, even if the majority of CHA based casters use it. Instead the ED should be balanced.

When it comes to SLAs, I initially thought we couldn't change anything to heroic without breaking the class but realisticly having a 15s chain lightning SLA (or it's equivalent) wouldn't change the result because in heroics I don't run out of SP.

All in all, it's interesting to have a different point of view, thanks for your reply

[Synthetic]

The water savant core adds a debuff to your cold spells to saves and applies a slow. That's the CC I'm talking about. It makes you a debuff sorcerer while not making the class a wizard, which is what you seem to want for a new enhancement tree.

If you go fire acid burning blood doesn't have a weak elements and you can use black dragon bolt for another dot.

Think about the unique possibilities in the current enhancement lines mostly in the 12 cores but also in capstone. I'd rather the developers expand on those then add stuff that makes sorcerer and wizard similar. Earth sorcerer gets better stoneskin due to increased max caster level, and has fortification and armor class debuff making it a superior option for hybrid melee caster. Granted stoneskin could use some improvements in the current state of the game, but that's where I'd focus rather then trying to homogenize the current spell options, and add a sorcerer version of archmage.

If a new enhancement tree was to be made for casters I'd rather it be a universal tree. Preferably focused on an under served area like summons.

They also need to improve Single Target spells they are cheap, but cost to much when using metas reducing the cost of metas on them would be helpful. Alternate would be to scale spell power on them at 150% they seemed to play with that type of thing on warlock bringing it to other casters would be good. It's not good when single target spells are barely worth casting outside of MM and FM for proc spam - the dots and polar Ray being exceptions. Frost Lance costs to much if you're worried about the save so you're stuck using the SLA, which I still think should be a low level thing pure caster should be using their whole spell repertoire.

Any how that's enough rant, good luck getting some attention on the issue. Try to think about things that don't make them more like wizards IMO as I like wizards too and want to fell different not gimpy when I play them.