Sorcery: A Data-Driven Review

Bump☺

Post revamp I tried everything to get sorcery viable. The only solution I could find was using the free power respec and switch to electric. Now I'm happy

Real sad we haven't seen a Dev response.

Daily bump.

New Live stream + Weekend + Holiday, may play a part in perceived lack of Dev response. After Tuesday though, then you can cry foul. Keep fighting the good fight though. Balance or Bust!

uote="planetkiller500, post: 4024907, member: 360147"]The iconic loadout would yield more due to the powers not missing and hitting harder giving it the edge over sorcery in a raid setting. Of course this varies on how the player uses them.[/quote]

General Notes:

The below data represents extensive testing of the Sorcery Power Set. The character stats are 963 might, base crit values, and no gear except a level 1 weapon. The character also has might VII expert base mods, which are a part of the 963 might calculation. Stats point allocation on the player character were otherwise left unspent on any additional stat points. The reason behind this setup is that I did not know the exact setup of the tester player characters during the revamp testing period. Please verify, duplicate, or disprove my results if you feel so compelled.

The parse duration was 30-seconds. I fiddle with each rotation until I felt I had a good handle on it and then parsed it five times. The damage output score indicates the average damage of a 30-second duration, rounded to the hundreds.

The Data:

The first chart represents various load-outs on a single target and the second table lists multi target variants. The tables contain the load-out, the rotation of the load-out, and the performance of the load-out over a 30-second duration. The charts include titles on the load-out to provide some intent behind the powers in the load-out.

Single Target:



Commentary:

I subbed Heat Vision for Vengeance x N in most cases because this makes it more playable and less spammy. Previous data indicate that this is a fair substitution. Purists may disagree that Sorcery should have to make such a replacement. Certainly, there is an argument to be made that there should be some sequence of powers or power interaction combo within the power set that performs in such a way.

Personally, I found the rotation "Without Fury" the most fun to play. It performs a bit better in content because the Final Ruin will get plenty of the < 35% procs, and it hunts pretty hard on single target.

Interestingly, forgoing the Bad Karma interaction did not penalize the rotation that much where Soul Well replaced a Bad Karma applicator.

As mentioned previously, the projectiles are incredibly lackluster. They're slow, and they don't hit hard. They give the illusion that they produce a lot of damage because of all the numbers that fly off the target on impact, but the math doesn't lie. A player is literally better off spamming Vengeance without Bad Karma than using them.

The Iconic / Movement load-outs may cause some outrage. Yes, the Iconic melee load-out produced the best results. However, in-content it's probably a real danger to use. It has a power that can be blocked and several that can be interrupted, and at melee range that becomes a legitimate risk. It also relies on the Robot SideKick to deal melee damage. Sometimes the RSK glitches out and throws melee attacks just out of range and doesn't do any damage. Still, on dummies, the Iconic melee may illustrate some weakness in the Sorcery power set. The Range Iconic benefits from some channel powers, but the real secret is the RSK. The Sorcery power set is actually on par, or a little better, with this through the use of a Pet without offering.

Multi Target:



Commentary:

There is not a ton of new takeaways moving to multi target from single target. Multi Target Sorcery load-outs are super spammy with Soul Bolt, which also suffers from projectile interception risk. That means these results may vary a great deal in live content. Besides that though, they aren't too fun to play and sort of underscores part of the issue with the power set. The power set appears to lack one additional layer of power interaction, mechanic, or even a simple buff to certain powers.

Fury and Offering are still the way to go for Sorcery. Also, as mentioned above, Guardian / Fury alone can be pretty solid and outperforms the RSK in Range style play. This is shown through the Guardian vs. Iconic Range results.

The projectiles load-out is still woefully poor. Testing appears to indicate that they don't perform well regardless of the sequence or even in convoluted rotations. They're markedly worse than the Iconics, though, they do outperform the Soul Bolt bench mark.

Iconic Melee tops the dummies charts again. Still, it has the same risks that may encumber these results in live content.

Thoughts:

It appears that this data validates the sentiments of the community and buttresses the initial post of the thread. As with the recommendations made in the op, some areas probably merit an intense review. One may notice that Karmic Backlash was not used in any of the load-outs. There is no melee style play with Sorcery to pair with Karmic Backlash, but also, the performance of that power also falls pretty flat. It has moderate damage and no PI. The projectiles do not live up to the billing that they take "skill" to use and that there is some reward for using them. The data shows that this not true. For Sorcery to perform well, it requires the use of Fury and Offering and a dip into the Iconics. Thankfully, Heat Vision plays like a Vengeance spam, so it spares the user some redundancy associated with just spamming Vengeance.

::applause:: Wow that is a lot of effort. You are a godsend to Sorcery. Please Please read this and fix some of this at least devs.
I miss my Fury loadout so much. I really didn't like how Offering appears to no longer give a weapons buff when used and only seemed to exist to provide power to Fury. (If i'm wrong in that line of thinking please feel free to tell me exactly what offering is currently doing) I hate having a tray loadout for Sorcery and and Fury gave me time to use my weapon beneficially. For now I am using tray as there is no other relevant option.

As far as the projectile issue. It's really deceptive to test them out on the sparring dummies as they don't perform at all similarly in content. You will never get the same damage in a raid or alert boss. The boss is always blocked by the: Tank, sidekick, backup, pets, friendly NPC's and stray players on your team. If they want to make these abilities more functional to use, then make friendly blocking not a thing. Allow the terrain and adds to block the damage from hitting the target to make up for higher dmg output or lower cooldown, but not your own forces. There is no skill involved in projectiles in this game. It is not possible to aim so it is not a skill it's a fluke. One that has next to no chance of being repeated in group content.

The only issue I don't see discussed here is the supercharged generator factor. I would consider this another reason dmg is failing lately because of how little Karmic suspension seems to be generating enough supercharge to be able to use grand summoning more than once a alert and even then it's not always guaranteed.

With the death of the AMs in the revamp, I had high hopes that a no-pet loadout would be possible (and competitive) again but your charts crushed those hopes. They need to bring up the base damage of our abilities and add a damage penalty for having a pet out to compensate. You should not be forced to use a passive ability to compete.

Thanks for asking about the supercharge generator Karmic Suspension. Testing indicates that if a player casts Karmic Suspension every time it is off cooldown for the purpose of generating supercharge (2x per 12 seconds), and not applying Bad Karma, a player should reach their supercharge 25% - 33% faster than from non-supercharge generating powers alone. For example, it typically takes 12-13 rotations (a rotation defined as a 12-second interval) to reach 50% superchage without Karmic Suspension. It took between 8-10 to do it with Karmic Suspension, assuming that the player cast Karmic Suspension every time it was off of cooldown.

Good question on the Fury / Offering question. Testing confirmed, through both the review of "current effects" and the "Stats" tab in the character menu, that Offering no longer provides a buff to the player.

I am not sure your thoughts on this, but in an effort to make the Summons more interesting, what if both Offering and Ritualistic Word worked with all of the Summons? Each power would have a specific effect with each Summons. That might be a lot of work for the Devs, but it may go over well with the community. Who knows.

Excellent work. Devs should be doing this work themsleves instead of putting stuff out and telling us its balanced. Players believe them and can tell its not. Its almost like Devs work for the government, take our money, tell us its fine knowing its not. Then after they are shown to be failures, do nothing to fix it until the whole game suffers. Thanks again for your time and work. I tested stuff on Sorcery, but not against iconics because i choose a power so i can use the abilities that come with the class.

Applause for the overwhelming effort this must have been, if nothing else.

How about the following loadouts:
Single Target
Circle of Destruction, Soul Well, Heat Vision, Vengeance/Final Ruin, Shard of Life, SC of Choice (NVB or Polymorph).

For Heat Vision, use jump cancel HV into Vengeance/Final Ruin then Shards then HV full channel then other powers until COD and Soul Well are off cooldown.

For weapons, use Rifle range tap clipping.

Multi Target Melee
RSK, Whirlwind Attack, Low Pressure, High Pressure, Boon of Souls/Soul Well, SC of Choice (Baleful or NVB)

For Whirlwind Attack, cancel animation by jumping or lunging upon the 3rd dot. 4th dot will still tick. Thus, one can cancel out of animation to lunge to other targets or jump and then dodge or block.

Soul Well for extra dot, or use Boon of Souls to clip Low Pressure for extra survivability. High Pressure cannot be clipped.

While Whirlwind attack is off cooldown, spam LP and HP.

For weapons, use Rifle range tap clipping or 1H Spin Chop clipping.

Note I have not tested the above in PvE, but in Pvp I have fully tested the Whirlwind Attack, Low Pressure, High Pressure combo. A lot of people are using either Whirlwind or Whirling Dervish in pvp for the CC. So far though, seems I am the only one using the LP + HP combo in pvp.

Falling too far, bumped back up

Bump. Wonder how long these bumps will keep going before the thread is just deleted.

First of all, I wanted to let you know we have seen this and appreciate the work put into it. We've heard the complaints about underperforming powers including Sorcery and will be looking into ways we can make adjustments.

With that said, we need to clear up some confusion about how to compare abilities. When comparing only DPS, you need to compare <Total Damage Dealt> / <Total Cast Time>. This will tell you which abilities are the best bang for your buck in terms of raw cast time (assuming no cooldowns, inifinite power, and no other "handicapped" properties, you would only use these abilities). The cast times you've measure are pretty far off - keep in mind for a DPS comparison, even 0.1s can mean 10% or more (against a 1s cast time). For instance, no Sorcery Ability has a cast time below 0.8s (Soul Bolt is 0.8333s).

I've broken down a mix Sorcery AoE DPS abilities (assuming PI) vs. some Iconic abilities. Here is the order from highest DPS to lowest:

DPS

1. Circle of Destruction
2. Soul Well
3. Sonic Shout (drops to 5th place without PI, below Soul Barrage)
4. Shard of Life
5. Soul Barrage
6. Freezing Breath
7. Soul Storm
8. Karmic Backlash
9. Cyclonic Burst
10. Soul Bolt
11. Soul Siphon

As you would expect, abilities with higher cost and other downsides (such as long application time or channel time) yield higher raw DPS than abilities without those costs. By contrast, low cost abilities are more power efficient for their output (for instance, Soul Bolt has low DPS but high Damage per Power cost). Abilities with utility bonuses like CC also deal lower DPS to compensate. I'm not including pets in this at all because it's way too contextual . On average in actual content, this should all even out, but certain types of abilities may need their bonuses raised or lowered to ensure that that's the case.
One massive downside for Sorcery in particular is that your projectiles can be blocked by allies. We are working on a fix for that internally, but no ETA.
Again, thanks for the feedback. If you have any suggestions for specific abilities you'd like to see adjusted, feel free to share them. Most likely, Soul Storm or Soul Barrage could have some tweaks to boost their desirability.

Your missing the other VERY IMPORTANT BUG THST HAS BEEN IGNORED.

Sorcerys PI does not keep it's visual for the entire time. While this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is. Depending on the power used it will stay out for 6 or 9s. A new player or inexperienced player will keep refreshing this to compensate. I really hope this is resolved sooner than later.

And no, the small damage that all the powers sorcery can do, do not balance out in content. It's just the opposite. That stupid dummy will not give you all the facts. SMH.

Pretty sure Karmic suspension cast time is like 2 seconds. Your list of powers prove Sorcery dps is terrible. Where is the 300 dps power condemn? Why is our only 300 power(beside our CoD) a single target and is so weak you didn't rank it? That is a major flaw imo.
Fyi soul bolt miss too

You should add Sonic Cry, Back/Frontflip if I remember right, and Boxing Glove to that list for AoE. You added the *lackluster* iconic powers that are channels and can't be compared directly to everything else when they don't factor in weapon combos that can be clipped which affect the actual dps inside of rotations. A direct comparison of dps in the way you listed only works for PftT. This falls under the same problem that weapons have comparing weapon mastery to hybrid when dealing with 300 power cost burst clipping. Along with individual clipping timings for say a weapon buff that may be clipped by various powers. There's also the exact timing of when rotations come up such as finishing a rotation after 11.7-11.9 seconds compared to 12.5 for having to wait to reapply soul well or circle possibly which are the highest damage moves.

I would seriously question that method of comparing abilities. We can't assume no cooldowns or infinite power. Because those things don't exist for us to test with. Therefore they will always factor into player testing. But whatever dismiss the data provided because they can't test the way you do in god mode, and the fact that in live cooldowns will always factor in the creation of an effective loadout.

Seriously, thank you for acknowledging that projectile blocking by allies requires a fix.

Specific abilities that should get adjustment are:
Karmic Suspension needs some help. Various ways it could be adjusted: charge SC quicker, do a bit more dmg, affect a wider range of targets. General bug fix wise its graphics need to last as long as the effect does.

Really I just don't like the ability at all and wished we had a 2nd option for an alternate SC generator. Perhaps weapon of destiny for non tray players.

Offering- I'm not a Controller, in game play I don't want an ability taking up space in my loadout solely to provide power to my pet. That should be a function of the Controllers PoT just like my CoP can heal allies pets and backup to keep them going a bit longer. Controllers in exchange should be able to boost my pets power so it is more effective for the groups dmg out. Either way offering should be given back a passive ability to make it worth the spot on a loadout rather than just functioning as a reason not to use pets. Or you know you could just return the interactions between pets and offering to what they used to be as it was not an illogical setup before.