Include specific details about your issue or situation

Consider all types of gameplay (pvp, pve, solo, group)

Back up your ideas with math and logical arguments

Flaminir wrote: » Sorcerers are the only class that doesn’t have a spammable class-based DPS skill. Why did you change Trapping Webs (the only spammable ability we had access to which isn't tied to a Destro Staff) to only Stamina, so we now have no choice but to run a Destro Staff in all aspects of the game? (This question is coming mainly from a PVP perspective as Trapping Webs was widely used in PVP with Dual Wield Magicka builds.)

Minalan wrote: » Shields: They took it very hard in this patch, and nothing was given in return. You have a PVE and a PVP morph of the shield, which is untenable because we need to be able to freely switch between them. Empowered Ward is THAT bad for PVP at 6K-8K. Hardened Ward is THAT bad for PVE at 6 seconds. This is not workable. We have to respec morphs based on what content we want to do, which could be multiple times in a day. I already pay enough money to the Shrine of Stendarr. Instead why not fix the stacking problem, or make the shields critable and full-length again?

Flaminir wrote: » Why did we receive so many defensive nerfs without a single usable buff to our defense / sustainability? (Shields and Surge.)

Flaminir wrote: » Surge nerf - all classes have skills which heal based on damage done. Why has ours been removed to give us a low flat value and all the other classes kept theirs? (If Overload was the reason as Wrobel mentioned on ESO live, then why not just cap the heal at say 6-8k to prevent the 20k Overload heals at its peak? There were no other issues with this skill to warrant such a nerf & goes against the stated policy of smaller tweaks rather than huge nerfs.)

Minalan wrote: » Surge: Please take a look at the design and functionality inside Cyrodiil. Players do not stand still inside of DOT AOE attacks like liquid lightning. A 900 heal is not helpful, even if it manages to crit. Under the old system, we could at least get a decent heal from a lucky crit if the opponent wasn't shielded.

Flaminir wrote: » Why did you make the recent changes to Dark Exchange without actually making it usable due to its cast time? It already has an interesting & unique mechanic, and the user has to sacrifice resources to use it, so why add a double penalty with a cast time for such a small return?

Minalan wrote: » Dark Deal: This morph should be an instant heal instead of a one-second cast. This would help decouple the class from the restoration staff. I know someone on your team will think it's too much. All I have to say is: Templar. Dark Deal isn't nearly as good as other class self-heals, if you will not improve shields for whatever reason, please consider this.

Flaminir wrote: » Why give a version of our signature defensive ability (Hardened Ward) to all classes but we get nothing in return from the other classes?

Minalan wrote: » As a skill, the exclusive and class-defining ability Hardened Ward is not much better than Nullify Magicka. Please consider a longer duration, as 8-10 seconds wouldn't be out of line for Hardened Ward and 12 for Empowered.

You can stack the Annulment shield with Conjured Ward

Conjured Ward has more distinct morph choices (increased duration vs increased power)

Conjured Ward is much cheaper than Annulment

Conjured Ward gets maximum effectiveness with all armor types, Annulment morphs require light armor

Expert Mage gives increased spell and weapon damage for slotting Conjured Ward

Flaminir wrote: » Given this was supposed to be the major Stamina pass on all abilities, why are Sorcerers the only class without a Stamina-based DPS skill? (I would also ask the same question of Magicka Sorcs... but the patch was never advertised as a Magicka-based one.)

Now deals physical damage so it scales with your physical damage stats

Deals increasing damage-over-time Damage per cast on this ability is now extremely high

Increases in size over time

Cool new FX!

Now grants the Minor Expedition buff

cpuScientist wrote: » How are pet Sorcerers supposed to defend our pets now that they simply cannot be shielded as often as before and will now just die in red? Or if we do choose to shield them our low DPS drops even lower. It's not like we are providing some major party boost by having them out.

Minalan wrote: » Poisons: These seem designed to affect Magicka users in an unbalanced way, when Stamina builds have already been made so much stronger already. Please look into balancing weapon enchants against this, or add a 'poison antidote' potion effect that grants a short time immunity to poisons. Please, we don't want to just get farmed all day, but that's almost inevitable in this patch.

Minalan wrote: » Magicka Costs Increasing: Can you please look into this? I understand that this is happening to every class across the board, but with the costs of everything going up, this change is adding insult to injury. And there is already plenty of injury here, and that's being as polite about this patch as I am realistically able.

Minalan wrote: » Skill and DPS Loss: We've lost some of our best damage abilities that we used in the DB patch (Trapping Webs, Dawnbreaker of smiting, Fighter's guild passives for werewolves, undead, and daedra). We're okay with this, stamina needed it more than we did. But please figure this into damage and defense calculation changes that you're making.

DDuke wrote: » Can we get a Stamina morph for at least one of the pets? A Clannfear would be awesome. (Or scale to the highest resource?)

There has been a large amount of feedback and questions from the Sorcerer section of the PTS forums. The answer to some of these questions affect all classes, so we're sharing them with everyone! We'd like to engage in this type of communication with all classes as time allows. When providing helpful feedback, taking the following guidelines into account:And here are our first round of questions and answers. Thanks everyone!Trapping Webs was never meant to be a spammable ability such as Lava Whip, Force Shock, Strife, etc. It costs more and is lower damage. The focus for Undaunted abilities is having powerful Synergies, so we redesigned it to feel less spammy. (Note that each Synergy has a 20-second cooldown before you can activate it again.)We understand that Sorcerers would like more freedom with choosing what weapon to use. As a Stamina character, even without a class damaging ability, you have a diverse set of options between Bow, 1h Shield, 2h, and Dual Wield. Magicka technically has 4 options as well – Restoration Staff and 3 flavors of Destruction Staff. However Restoration staff doesn’t support offensive abilities and there is not enough diversity between the three types of Destruction Staff. We don’t have any immediate plans to change this, but we would like to give Sorcerers more compelling decisions when selecting a weapon.Offering players interesting choices is one of our design goals. People have different playstyles and some of them will choose to have more sustainabilityin PVP. Some people will prefer Hardened Ward, some will use Empowered Ward, and some will use Hardened Ward with Dampen Magic. None of these decisions are right or wrong or better. They each suit different playstyles and different people have fun in different ways.As a hardcore gamer, it sounds like you want a duel spec system. This would allow you to quickly switch between 2 different playstyles. We don’t have immediate plans on adding this, but it is something we are interested in for the future.We based this decision on extensive playtesting, player feedback, and data from the Maelstrom Arena leaderboards. It was our intent to make Sorcerers increase investment in maintaining their current levels of survivability. We specifically didn’t nerf the values on damage shields because we wanted to maintain their powerful feel – when the shields are up, enemies aren’t going to take you down.We wanted to make the Surge ability a more universal tool in the Sorcerer kit. It wasn’t intended as a nerf, except in the case of Overload because we felt that Synergy was over-performing compared to others, such as Strife and Puncturing Strikes. We’re still working out the balance of the final numbers, so expect to see a sizable increase in Surge healing for Dark Brotherhood’s release.It’s been a longstanding issue that Surge doesn’t play well with DoT builds, thus limiting the number of options for Sorcerers. Abilities such as Crushing Shock deal damage in 3 separate attacks and Flurry never procced the heal. Surge is now more effective for tank characters since it no longer scales off of damage done. These changes make surge more desirable for a wider number of builds and reduced its power when combined with Overload.Surge now feels like a sustain ability instead of a spike heal ability. This design makes more sense for the ability because the procs are random. Big burst heals are something you want to be able to use with reliability when you need them. Getting a big Surge heal when you are at full health and getting no heal when you are low on health can lead to frustrating situations.Surge has a stronger synergy with damage shields now. The shields help stop big bursts of damage and Surge helps to top off your health bar and keep you sustained through long battles. The healing values on Surge will be balanced against other popular sustain abilities such as Strife and Puncturing Strikes.Cast time abilities add a risk/reward mechanic that makes combat more varied and interesting. They are harder to fire off, but the payoff should make the cast time worthwhile. Some examples of abilities we feel are worth the risk are Dark Flare and Radiant Destruction. These abilities have counter play, but feel extremely powerful when executed without interruption. Finding this balance point is challenging, but it’s something we’re pursuing in an effort to make the gameplay more varied and fun.We want firing off Dark Exchange in the middle of combat to feel awesome since it’s difficult to do. Our first cut at this was to double the healing it provided, a substantial improvement but not enough. For Dark Brotherhood launch we’re also significantly improving the number of resources returned. We aren’t 100% against making this ability instant cast, but we’d like to further investigate the cast time option first. We think different classes should have different mechanics for resource restoration.There are multiple advantages of being a Sorcerer when looking at damage shield options.We want every class to feel different; they all have unique pros and cons. For example DKs also don’t have a spammable Stamina-based ability. They instead have damage-over-time Stamina abilities from Venomous Claw and Noxious Breath. Hurricane is the Sorcerer class’ Stamina-based damage ability. We made significant updates to this ability for Dark Brotherhood:We’re adding a damage limit to pets so they can’t be 1-shot. This should give you more time to shield them reactively instead of proactively. Also keep in mind that pets take less damage from AoE attacks to make up for the fact that they can’t intelligently move out of red telegraphs.Enchantments and poisons both proc in the same manner—they require weapon attacks. Enchantments proc at a 100% chance every 4 seconds, while poisons proc at a 20% chance every 10 seconds. The key balance distinction between enchantments and poisons is that you’re getting an instant effect from enchantments and an over-time one from poisons.The total DPS increase from poisons or enchantments should be around 5%, so you aren’t going to get farmed if you don’t use poison. That said, we will certainly be monitoring feedback on poisons once Dark Brotherhood goes live and make balance adjustments or counters if they over perform.With the removal of Veteran Ranks we wanted ability costs to increase in a more reliable and understandable way. Veteran Ranks used a different calculation for ability cost increase from the level 1-50 experience. With this change, abilities now continue to increase their costs at the same linear pace. This also means cost reduction passives and gear should now return the values listed in the tooltips instead of using a more complex formula.There are quite a few builds that generate a large number of resources and we expect some players will end up changing their current setup. While costs are higher, note that you can now get increased resource returns from heavy attacks that now scale their return as you gain Champion Points. Additionally, enchantments are now more powerful and restore more resources than they used to. There are also poisons which give you additional options for getting more resources.It’s true that you’ll have lower ability damage when fighting enemies of the Fighters Guild, however we did increase the damage of enchantments and add the option for using poisons. Keep in mind we did not change the Banish the Wicked passive from Ffighters Guild, so you’ll still score 9 Ultimate for killing undead, Daedra, and werewolves. It was important to us that all players wanted to invest in the guild and be properly rewarded.We think this is a fun idea. However, there is much deliberation when considering if an ability should be converted to Magicka or Stamina. The Clannfear’s heal currently scale off the player’s max Health, meaning this is an ideal ability for a tank. Tanks generally spend the majority of their Stamina blocking, and then use their Magicka for utility abilities and heals. This change would put a further tax on the tank’s Stamina resource which is at odds with the new change to constitution where tanks now get back more Magicka each time they are hit. On the whole, converting an ability is exciting because new builds are created, however it can be frustrating as old builds are destroyed.