Sorcerer/sage dps changes for 1.4

[Xanatharia]

I've been playing a dps sorcerer since day 1, I have played both lightning and madness specs in both pvp and pve. I have posted many times on here about some of the problems I have seen compared to other classes. Now I have made a small list on some fixes that may help everyone that plays this class feel more inline with other classes without making them OP and hopefully the devs may take some of these into consideration for 1.4. Please feel free to comment or add to the list and maybe just maybe we can get some love.

 

-DoT for affliction and creeping terror on shorter timer but equal to the damage they do now. Talented in madness tree only.

 

-Bubble to not only absorb but reflect damage equal to amount absorbed,

may cause some to think twice about blowing damage CD's when attacking us.

 

-Cannot be stunned, rooted, snared while force speed is active, force speed breaks snares,

talented for sorcerer/sage only as to not affect assassin/shadow since they can vanish.

 

-Thundering blast instant, slightly more damage, increase GCD.

 

-Polarity shift talent change to add force lighting has 30% chance to proc instant lightning strike.

[FrankyMcShanky]

I've been playing a dps sorcerer since day 1, I have played both lightning and madness specs in both pvp and pve. I have posted many times on here about some of the problems I have seen compared to other classes. Now I have made a small list on some fixes that may help everyone that plays this class feel more inline with other classes without making them OP and hopefully the devs may take some of these into consideration for 1.4. Please feel free to comment or add to the list and maybe just maybe we can get some love.

 

-DoT for affliction and creeping terror on shorter timer but equal to the damage they do now. Talented in madness tree only.

 

-Bubble to not only absorb but reflect damage equal to amount absorbed,

may cause some to think twice about blowing damage CD's when attacking us.

 

-Cannot be stunned, rooted, snared while force speed is active, force speed breaks snares,

talented for sorcerer/sage only as to not affect assassin/shadow since they can vanish.

 

-Thundering blast instant, slightly more damage, increase GCD.

 

-Polarity shift talent change to add force lighting has 30% chance to proc instant lightning strike.

 

Hi! I agree that sages absolutely need some buffs and mostly in the survivability department but two of the suggested changes are completely unreasonable.

 

Force speed granting immunity the roots/snares is obscene. As it is snares/roots are a counter to Force speed and that's how it should be. It requires accurately predicting when the Sage/Sorc will sprint to use effectively so I see no problem there.

 

The suggestion that the bubble should reflect damage made me lol. That would be a stupidly over powered mechanic. I could maybe see reflecting 5-10% damage but reflecting back a 2.5-3k hit is totally absurd and the very idea instantly disqualifies you from the right to offer any more suggestions on balance.

 

Thank you and have a nice day.

[Somokon]

I think speed should break roots/snares, but not grant immunity. Also they should give sorcerers this skill: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=79206/spiritwalkers-grace

[Xanatharia]

I can agree with reflecting a % of amount absorbed but also a 3-5k crit reflected back also removes the shield and would make them think twice about attacking us constantly. And like I said these are only some suggestions and can be tweaked no reason to be rude.

[KantaUO]

1. I would agree sprint should break a root snare only of talented in the madness tree high up. Not grant immunity.

 

2. As the above poster said reflection is an op idea. At most talented to reflect a small amount of damage like marauders defensive cool down does.

 

3. I love the 31 lightening talent change.

[FrankyMcShanky]

1. I would agree sprint should break a root snare only of talented in the madness tree high up. Not grant immunity.

 

2. As the above poster said reflection is an op idea. At most talented to reflect a small amount of damage like marauders defensive cool down does.

 

3. I love the 31 lightening talent change.

 

I could agree to the snare/root break.

[Xanatharia]

My reasoning behind force speed immunity is it only lasts 3 seconds with a 30 second GCD and most other classes can pull you right back to them or leap to you. Once force speed is activated then a stun cannot be applied, but does not break a stun and only breaks snares/roots.

[SinnedWill]

I think speed should break roots/snares, but not grant immunity. Also they should give sorcerers this skill: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=79206/spiritwalkers-grace

 

Actually, I agree with this - but I don't think it should be restricted to sorc/sage. I think it should apply to all classes that have activated abilities, but only their spec's primary activated should be capable of being talented into for this affect. It should ONLY apply to the specific activation time required abilities (specific ones, not ALL, and they must be talented into -i.e. lightning would get it for their lightning strike, arsenal merc would get it for tracer missile) but doesn't apply to any channeled abilities (i.e. force lightning, death from above, unload, etc... all still require temporary turret-mode). This would work, so long as the caster must MAINTAIN facing their target with clear LoS the entire time they activate the ability (back-peddling would be the only guaranteed method to have their ability fully activate, strafing might cause issues if the angle isn't perfect - this way you can't just begin the activation + turn around and begin running full speed if you want the ability to land).

 

This will also be a nice bonus for healers without potentially overpowering them if you restrict it to their most basic activated heal (which usually requires significant resources for a moderate heal value) and it will certainly help the less mobile (turret-mode) healers with keeping at least some heals coming as teammates are on the move - instead of continuing to favor ops/scound healers in this situation.

 

Albeit, damage still needs some fine-tuning - sorc. DoT's are GIMPED. Yes, as the OP suggested: maintaining the current damage while decreasing the duration will SIGNIFICANTLY help madness sorcerers, but survivability is also a HUGE issue (though I am ok with having 0 defensive cooldowns if we have maybe a LITTLE something extra to keep enemies off of us - it's easy enough for us to kite 1, sometimes 2 enemies, but issues arise with multiple enemies and we don't have any possible method to prevent that).

My suggestion would be to give us something like a "Black Hole/Implosion" ability - which would be a ground-targeted AoE pull (immediate) that can affect up to 3 enemies within 10m of its location - and after 2-3 seconds (enemies being rooted for that time), it will "explode" so as to cause moderate damage - roughly 1.5-2k. That would be a very cool ability (without being overpowered due to its range limitation and maximum number of enemies affected being 3 - it would also be capable of being "purge/cleansed" as a force power) - it should also fill enemy resolve by ~500. Sage equivalent should be called "Gravity Well" - since they like their rocks.

 

Lastly, they need to fix madness sorcerer's self-healing from DoT crits and Death Field - Death Field is only give one heal value regardless of how many targets it strikes (should be giving 3 if it strikes 3, and shouldn't give any if it strikes 0 - currently always gives 1 heal value) - all heal values are far less than 2% max HP heals - I have 19.7k HP on my madness sorc. and the heal values are between 62 and 216. No idea why they fluctuate (and yes, I'm aware of pvp trauma debuff AND the possible presence of healing debuffs from marauders/sentinels/snipers/gunslingers). The values are too low even if you factor in the healing debuffs.

Edited July 17, 2012 by SinnedWill

[Rogoo]

-DoT for affliction and creeping terror on shorter timer but equal to the damage they do now. Talented in madness tree only.

 

You can't be serious.

 

I have 16k HP in BM, and this DoT hits me for HALF OF MY HP.

 

It's way OP as it is now. If anything it needs a nerf, not a boost.

[veyl]

You can't be serious.

 

I have 16k HP in BM, and this DoT hits me for HALF OF MY HP.

 

It's way OP as it is now. If anything it needs a nerf, not a boost.

 

Sorc/sages have -never- had a spell that can hit for 8k. The highest we can hit for against pvp geared opponents is 4.5k with deathfield.

 

And if you're complaining about it taking half your life away through the full duration of the ticks, I suggest telling your sorc/sages on your team to *********** cleanse you.

[Ybini]

Never played a sage or sorc but it would seem like force speed to break a root would make sense, but not immunity. The rest I have no idea about. Edited July 17, 2012 by Ybini

[CarverX]

Just give us one saber skill that actually does something otherwise not sure why we even have one at this point. Raise dmg on TB is a must as it isn't nearly as good as DF at this point. Some type of survivability would be nice too.

[xoaxie]

If they fix sorc/sage then who will the op dps have to rack up theire numbers on? It's just not acceptable for a sorc or sage to have any chance of survival.

[SinnedWill]

You can't be serious.

 

I have 16k HP in BM, and this DoT hits me for HALF OF MY HP.

 

It's way OP as it is now. If anything it needs a nerf, not a boost.

 

Both Affliction and Creeping terror do ~ 2k damage each total (i.e. if let run full duration) from a fully WH geared Sorcerer against an opponent that has 0% I/E mitigation (at the very least, you have no talent for mitigation and you don't have a consular or inquisitor buff) - please explain to me how ~4k damage over 18s (in which time you would regenerate SOME HP) - or less than 4k if you have ANY I/E mitigation, talents to reduce DoT damage (15% if talented), or if you happen to have a consular/inquisitor buff, you'll tack on an extra 10% I/E mitigation, or ANYTHING to keep yourself alive.

 

How is it possible that these two DoT's cause you to lose half of your HP over 18s? Oh, that's right, you're confusing our DoT's with that of others - either Pyro PT/Assault VG, Annihilation Marauder/Watchman Sentinel, and even Concealment Ops/Scounds all have equally powerful (or in some cases, more powerful) total damage DoT's that last 6 seconds (meaning their damage is delivered much more quickly). The fact that our DoT's last so long makes their removal a non-issue compared to other DoT's - in fact, only one of our DoT's is really worth the effort to remove (crushing darkness) unless a lightning specced sorcerer has thrown affliction on you to make his 31-pt ability auto-crit.

[SinnedWill]

Other things to help improve Sorc/Sage is to cause STR to increase our force powers - as it stands, we're the only class to gain NO benefit from our secondary damaging attribute - believe this was done in beta, since sorcerers were actually decimating people with melee as well as ranged, but hey they went and nerfed pretty much all of our abilities' damage values now, so maybe the small amount of STR we do have might actually help us, somewhat.

 

For those that don't understand what I'm talking about: Assassins - Melee Damage Bonus/Crit chance is increased by STR + WILL; all Warriors - Force Damage Bonus/Crit chance is increased by STR + WILL; etc...

 

Sorcerer is the ONLY class that cannot benefit from their secondary attribute.

 

After the 1.2 nerf, perhaps this is one of the possible reasons (though the difference even if we had STR bonuses wouldn't be significant).

[SinnedWill]

If they fix sorc/sage then who will the op dps have to rack up theire numbers on? It's just not acceptable for a sorc or sage to have any chance of survival.

 

Uh... DPS ops don't need light armor wearing targets to dish out big numbers since they can bypass a good bit of armor and cause DoT's that ignore armor resits. In fact, Sorc/Sages (with a bubble up) are usually more difficult for an Ops/Scound DPS to kill - then again, if you catch a sorc/sage without a bubble up, any class/spec can drop them, heh.

[Darth_Philar]

I like the damage reflection idea for the bubble, but I'd change it so that only the attack that breaks it gets reflected (i.e. don't be a dummy and fire off your big burst on a bubbled target unless you like getting it thrown right back at you).

 

If we force people to throttle themselves until we are vulnerable we will actually have a fair fighting chance. As it is right now, there is no reason to not burst every sorc you see, whereas every other class in the game has some means of mitigating or deincentivizing burst against them.

[tekhiun]

I agree with the first suggestion. TTK is too fast for sorcs dot sorcs to have full pontential in pvp. I dont think implementing the others would be a good a idea as it would overpower us. TB could be insta but dmg should remain the same imo.

[Benets]

I think speed should break roots/snares, but not grant immunity. Also they should give sorcerers this skill: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=79206/spiritwalkers-grace

 

I dont understand why people think this immunity is a big deal, a lot of classes have a lot of immunities. Knights can be immune after leap, smugglers immune to charge and interrupt when on cover (this is extremly over). Some classes have immunity to some interrupts on certain skills.

 

Sage = Glass

[dcgregorya]

What exactly is your basis for saying "compared to other classes"? Do you play those classes? Or is this just a lot of grass greener on the other side syndrome?

[dcgregorya]

I dont understand why people think this immunity is a big deal, a lot of classes have a lot of immunities. Knights can be immune after leap, smugglers immune to charge and interrupt when on cover (this is extremly over). Some classes have immunity to some interrupts on certain skills.

 

Sage = Glass

 

A good sage is not glass.

[SlimsPicken]

Sorc/sages have -never- had a spell that can hit for 8k. The highest we can hit for against pvp geared opponents is 4.5k with deathfield.

 

And if you're complaining about it taking half your life away through the full duration of the ticks, I suggest telling your sorc/sages on your team to *********** cleanse you.

 

But that was the longest 21 seconds of his life to have half his health go away!

 

lol to take half a geared opponents health takes a deathfield crit, affliction, crushing, and creeping terror... and letting them tick for 18+ seconds...

 

death by a thousand cuts.

[KBSIP]

just an FYI, GCD is the global cooldown between all ability activations. I mean, if you WANT the increase to all your abilities access after using T-Blast, by all means.

 

if, however, you mean to extend its SPECIFIC cooldown you simply say "increase cooldown on ability X"

[Alkiii]

Here's an idea:

 

Seeing as though Shadow's Telekinetic Throw and Project hit much harder than that of Sages, I say we get (2) Melee abilities that hit harder than theirs.

 

I'm still scratching my head as to why a melee class's ranged attacks hit harder than a ranged class's same attacks.

 

Makes no damn sense whatsoever.

 

 

Anyways ...

 

What would really be nice is if they reverted the nerfs we got in 1.2 for Balance. These nerfs came about because of the level 1-49 bracket. Lets take us back please ... thanks.

[Xanatharia]

Yes I meant to say CD on Thundering Blast not GCD. sorry typo. And to answer someone else's statement as "comparable" yes I have played several other classes that hit was harder than a sorcerer or their DoTs hit harder but do not last as long. Sorcerer/Sage have no burst compared to other classes and far less survivability. Just trying to give devs some ideas for possible balance of classes is all.