Stats Revamp 1.3: Sorcery

Please use this thread for feedback specific to Sorcery powers.

For general combat feedback (not specific to Sorcery), please use this updated overview thread instead.



Here are some of the non-power cost changes related to Sorcery this update:

• Pet damage, healing, and health have been reduced across the board
• Fury
  • High powered attacks now do additional damage to Bad Karma afflicted targets, rather than applying Bad Karma
  • Now prioritizes its non-projectile attack when powered in DPS Role – so it will miss its target less often
  • Reduced the damage of Fury's high powered attacks in Healer Role
• Transmutation
  • In Healer Role, Transmutation now has increased healing and heal range, and decreased damage
  • Fixed an issue where Transmutation in Healer Role was healing enemies instead of allies
• Invocation of Renewal
  • Increased base healing and increased the bonus healing threshold to 50% health, up from 35% health
  • Should now hit group members at max healing distance
  • Adjusted the visual effects and audio to reduce spam
• Ritualistic Word – Increased range to max healing distance

No changes have been made to Circle or Soul Well . Still very weak abilities.

The change to transmutation is nice, the range is like shard but the strength of the healing still feels really weak. I don't know if restoration is bugged but every healing ability heals very weak now. More so in electrics healing abilities than Sorcery.

I still think that the HoTs need to be increased on Circle / Soul Well. You stop receiving the healing if you leave circle of protection which I think is unnecessary as it's already difficult to get the circle to heal everyone you want it to since you either place it on the tank or at your feet.

I didn't see if you could stack more than 2 Soul Wells without bird form. But either the base value or the number of soul wells you can put down need to be increased. I didn't check Soul Wells range yet so can't comment.

Haven't tested Invocation as I'm going to test Electric first since it's received quite a bit of help.

Please revert the shields to the live versions, 6s is not enough time for anyone to realize they have a shield and pick people up and hope they don't get interrupted from that process

I found some inconsistencies in the Levelling Tree List.

Circle of Protection is only listed at Level 23. I remember from an early build that Circle of Destruction was also listed there (its nowhere else listed).

Transmutation is completely missing in the tree. Assuming it was meant for Level 22 as there isnt anything there yet and comparing with other (not all yet) powerset levelling trees the structure seems from 1 to 15 all odd numbers and from 15 to 30 each number with a power to unlock.

Some key pointers I found while healing with the power set. I think priority heals in general should recieve in a buff in the game especially if you are hoping to encourage 5111. There were plenty of times where I had to clip multiple heals just to get someone from low health to 90% HP. On Live, usually one critical priority heal was enough to get a person back up to full HP. And priority heals are single target, so it doesn't hurt for its value to be increased while keeping the same cooldown.

Transmutation I was only getting healing ticks of 1000 at best, might be because I'm using it wrong? Circle of protection could use a slight buff to justify it's 300 power cost in my opinion.

Other than that, the healing was pretty straight forward. Sad to see Watchers Remedy heals be nerfed but the majority have spoken against it. Shields being strong again is also a nice change to implement. Arbiter is still fun to use

Dps Feedback:
- Soul Storm. Channels for 3 ticks but damage stops if I jump. This is channeled and not a casting bar ability so we should be able to jump without losing the damage.
- Transmutation. I feel like 2 projectile abilities(Soul Storm and Soul Barrage) were more than enough already, so changing Transmutation to another projectile was pointless and Id rather have the old effect and animation back.
- Karmic Suspension. I dont like the animation nor the effect. Replace it with Shard of Life as a SC generator.

Healer Feedback:
- Offering should have some small healing effect in Healer role. Its awkward to have it just to feed Watcher.
- We need at least 1 healing ability that apply Bad Karma. Better move healing effect of Transmutation to Soul Siphon.
- Circle of Protection and Soul Well are as useless as ever. These 2 powers cant heal anything, tank and group will die 70 times before they get any of these small healing ticks.

And I love DCUO so, attach Red Soul Aura and Golden Soul Aura respectively to Fury and Watcher. We need these cool visual effects back!

Hopefully I get more time to get a proper feel of Stats Revamp 1.3, compared to getting in from the 2nd last day of Revamp 1.1 and last day of Revamp 1.2

Notes from 1.2 and suggestions:
1) I never liked Fury pet doing that much damage. So my focus for the revamp is finding non-pet loadouts. Felt I achieved that in Revamp 1.2 but I tried it out only in Solos. Since 1.3 only has Pet and healing changes, my loadouts should be performing as good or better than Pet loadouts.

2) Iirc, when using Wod, there is no buff icon. The buff icon should be there since Wod is now a percentage Precision buff.

3) Request that Transmutation animation be changed to what is on Live.

4) Request that Karmic Backlash animation be changed to the old animation.

5) Request that Golden Soul aura visual animation be retained without the healing % buff. Never really liked Red Soul aura but some ppl do, so I guess both aura animations be retained, just without the buff. The animations should have never been removed as they are integral to the look and feel of a powerset.

6) Can Invocation of Renewal be changed so that you can jump cancel at zero power cost (like in the old days)? Even though that might necessitate a change back to the old one, where you get the big heal at the end of animation, versus the current multiple hots with one bigger heal at the end.

Character name: Mini Test
Power: Sorcery
CR: 173
Content ran: Underworld Trials Alert and Typhon's Monster Invasion adds
My play style : Hybrid player. A combination of weapon combos/mastery and powers
My usual DPS load out : Offering, weapon of destiny, circle, transmutation, fury, grand summoning.
My usual rotation on live; that I tried on test: Offering, WOD, weapon combo/WM,Circle, weapon combo/WM,transmutation, weapon combo/WM, transmutation, weapon combo/WM, transmutation..... repeat. GS
Skill point allocation: After filling out Critical Attack Chance 20/20 and Critical Attack Damage 40/40 i put 30/175 in precision, 20/175 into might, and 30/175 into Power
Mods: None

Findings:
This test was very playable for my load out and style of play. Power was not an issue when I ran my play style correctly, and popped a soder here and there when needed. Power dropped fast but also recovered quickly. I ran UT with no troller - 3 dps, 1 healer. I had no major issues with power, and i noticed the healer did not either as we never got KO'd. When I was running solo adds at Typhon's I had the same good results.

Notes:
The alert took longer than normal, but I was only 173 (I am used to being 187). Also the 3rd dps got disconnected at the 2nd boss. I did not feel like I was doing tons of damage, only to find out at the end that I did almost triple the damage of the 166 ice dps I was running with (i have no idea what powers or play style he was using)

I am not a damage numbers person (I don't watch the numbers fly off the screen during fights), so I don't know which powers were better than others, although it felt "even" to me.

My only confusion was where to allocate my skill points for my load out and play style. Less or more might, precision, power; others?

~Sunny

Soul Well sits at 12-16 12.5m range (range increase needed)
Circle at the same 12-16
Note: players need to retain hot when out of the sigil.
Invocation of Renewal being 24-32 at 50% and receiving a 40% buff when teammates are 35% health.
Transmutation is 24-32
Rejuvenate 48-59
Ritualistic Word 48-59
Watcher Remedy 48-59
Boom of Souls: much higher damage threshold. Still reflects damage. Really would like to see shields in general have a 12 second duration.
Transcendence: 103-120
Polymorph: 24-32
Baleful Transmorgrification: 24-32

I fully agree. Having almost all of sorcs powers be projectile "to-hit" powers is gonna make this a less desired dps class as the projectiles often miss. Compare this to elec where there are many good non-projectile choices. Right away you can see where Sorc will fall behind in actual live game play dps as most of its powers can and will miss. You need to standardize this across the powersets or you will have these less desired power sets due to the projectile mechanic.

For healing, I echo everyones' comments and you can see mine in the elec thread re increase base heal, healing bonus, recharges and adding a dmg component consistently across healing sets.

Sorcery 1.3 Healing footage


Here's some footage of the 1.3 healing. I switch loadouts around in the video so that way users can see a couple different powers. Again just like I said last night, my only issues came up when my priority heal wouldn't be able to heal someone as effectively as it did on Live and Circle of Protection could use a slight buff as well.

I also don't see the usefulness of something like Innvocation of Renewal. The cast time and the long amount of time that you have to wait for a heal is just not viable in something like a raid where a tank or low HP player, for example, would need immediate burst heals at once.

Watcher's Remedy still remains to be the top burst heal. Rejuvante crit heal and Ritualistic Word crit heal equal a normal Watcher Remedy heal.

Decided to do 8th Precinct with a new, CR32 that had not much in the way of SP spent. I can't tell you how much or what loadout because after blasing through 8th like it was a noob zone, I went to see the Anti-M event. Now all I get is MMET101_ALT_ANTI_01 not found and it crashes. Can't do anything.

I made the toon loadout very, well, haphazard. Did not really focus on a clear set of power or on order I would do things for Pi. Did not use a pet. Wanted to see how this ended up working for a noob that was just jabbing buttons/keys. The small mobs went poof in 1 shot. Bosses: I did dip into the soda once and on the Raven fight I used time after one downed raven to self heal before the next. Generally, things went down exceptionally fast like I was some master of DPS, and this was not planned that way.

I remember having a much harder time with my first toon to hit 8th precinct soon after turning 30 and figuring out how to use the On Duty menu. I do not know if this is a side effect of the update or if the zone has not been fully balanced.

My power regen was very rapid. More than kept up for all small mobs. Boss/SubBoss fights, I could finally chew into it.

I still really miss Shard of Life.

The sound FX for I.o.R is better.

The removal of Transmutation's knockdown effect is quite noticeable.

At entry Cr with no CC going on, adds jump at you and obliterate you in a matter of 2-3 secs. Sorcery and all healer power sets have always been poor at CC effects but now is just unbearable.

At least Transmutation and Soul Barrage should have some CC available to keep groups for KOing you right away.

CR33 Sorcery Villain
SP in weapon crits, Precision, Might, and the first (big) step in Health and Defense to be more survivable.

I was doing the Valentines quest to see stuff. Ran into some cultists and decided to see how quick I died without the CR Differential... but I won. So I took out the Fullhouse Bounty and gave it a spin. First try, I died soon after pet. 2nd, I soloed it.

Loadout:
Circ Dest, Offering, Transmute, Grand S, Karmic S, Fury, Soder, Supply Drop 3, Heartbreak trinket

Used the Circle to get the Bad Karma going. Offering and Pet do a lot of the work, me adding in Transmute for some damage. When pet got low HP, I did GS to have overlapping pets. GWatcher healed my basic Fury... so when Fury was about to go after GS was gone, I got the Heartbreak pet going. It generated a little aggro then smacked down, but still was around when I needed to get new Fury up. With Karmic S going as often as I could I was able to repeat this by refueling Supercharge for GS. I dropped supplies right after 4th Fury summoning because I took 1 hit for 1/2 my health. Never used Soder. So with a 2 trinket belt, I feel that I can do this reliably, but it is work. I could have done it without the belt and used Soder instead of the drop.

I have not tried any of the upper content and did not get any gear boxes. Just the basics and some drops from one T1 challenge. If it had not worked, I was going to get a better Utility Belt to see what happened if I added Orbital Strike... but it never got that far.

How do you do that spin move with Staff after 2 tap range?

Tested 166 cr
Sp spent
20 crit
40 crit
40 precision
40 power
No mods / tac mods

Seeing Shades Again Solo

I tested this exact set up on 1.2 revamp

The 1.2 version was not good because Fury gained power to slow and used the entire power bar to attack. My primary power bar also ran out of power very fast. I was able to get through the solo and the difficulty of the Solo felt appropriate for that level CR.

The 1.3 version did not improve anything except addressing the pi issue.
Nerfing Fury damage.. power regeneration.. health was not necessary.
Decreasing my primary power regeneration while fury is out was not necessary.
The cool downs are to long.
I barely got through this content and died a few times. The difficulty of this solo at the CR is now not appropriate.

The changes made to SP has greatly impacted this power and might even be broken. Let me explain this.

I changed this character to mental after this test and spent the SP exactly the same except for the 40 sp in precision I used 40 for the might.

My weapon attacks hit the same Dual wield into bow .. tri hold hold combo ... 1800 to 2100 non crit and 4500 to 5300 crit.

My 40sp for precision did nothing...my 40sp for might may not have even done anything.. I haven't tested if the might mattered yet but if this is intended what happened to making Sp matter more.

IMO this tweak was way off in the wrong direction.

That is what you call a mouse that has programmable macros. Look at the animation times. It is the same every time.

It's a new ranged staff combo. Pretty nifty and clippable; check it out. I wish they'd do the same with 1H and DW

On Test? I see. Well, looks nice.

Just wanted to point out that I agree that the projectiles for Sorcery (Soul Storm, Soul Barrage, Transmutation) are just not cutting it. Either a physics update has to be done to projectiles in game or these should be subverted to different animations. I would say I prefer Transmutation's Live animation.

Besides that, I'm actually enjoying DPSing with Sorcery. I appreciate the fast 0.5s cooldowns for the low power cost powers, really speeds up the gameplay. The mix of single target and AoE damage burst/DoT abilities really gives Sorcery situational perks according to the given scenario. Some abilities like Karmic Backlash, aside from the CC, I don't understand their usefulness across multiple powersets. The supercharges are working fine, Baleful could use a slight buff IMO relative to it's single target cousin in Polymorph. Polymorph works great as a single target SC and Grand Summoning definitely fits the description of a 100% SC. Good job there with the supercharges.

It seems like I can play well without Fury and with Fury. Seems like both methods are viable. Could use further testing to determine the balance between each but on first impression, it seems good.