Sorceress, power underwhelming?

Now that I’ve had my hands on the sorceress class for a while I thought it might be time to address some of the concerns I have with it. Some of these are bugs and some are balance. It is too soon for me to break out all the tools for scientific analysis so most of this will be anecdotal and based on my experiences.

The bug list is relatively short and when corrected should make for a less frustrating game play session. I touched on this in my shopping list but it deserves another mention. Spells still give the “interrupted” message when they complete but you move immediately after. The spells go off (again, almost 100% of the time) but the message pops up. This might confuse new players and it is a bit of an annoyance in RvR. I see the message frequently because I try not to sit in one place.

One other bug that I see frequently is tied to “Pit of Shades.” Often when casting the spell the pit will open up at your feet and at your target. When this occurs the graphic at your feet remains permanently attached to you. This obscures your vision, especially when you’re attempting to fight down hill. It also lights you up with a big sign that says “kill me.”

Either “Grip of Fear” or “Fire Cage” is working incorrectly. “Grip of Fear” in PvE is frustrating due to a graphical error. When you root a mob they will still chase you and, due to graphical lag or server delay, get several additional melee rounds on you. In RvR “Grip” breaks greater than 50% of the time on damage and around 50% on air passing roughly by you (yes, I’m aware people have root breaks). On the flip side, “Fire Cage” says 50% but I’ve seen on more than ten occasions where players are rooted the full ten seconds while being savagely beat on. Either “Grip of Fear” doesn’t work well enough or “Fire Cage” works too well.

Last on the bug list is “Echo of Power.” The biggest issue with this spell is the availability confusion. Your target must disrupt one of your spells for it to light up. No problem there. The time you have to click it, however, is too short. If you’ve already started a three second spell you’re not getting to use Echo of Power. What is frustrating about that (and I consider a bug) is the fact that the icon remains lit. So you click a lit icon and then get the message “your target has to disrupt a spell for you to use this.” A little more accuracy here would be great. The spell also reads “it cannot be defended against.” Anyone who has used the spell can tell you otherwise.

On the balance side of things it is safe to conclude that in PvE the sorceress doesn’t really need a lot of attention. They are welcome members of any group and don’t have any trouble soloing (if you don’t try to tank). I’m sure there are minor tweaks here or there that could be made but truthfully the power curve and progression is pretty spot on. RvR, on the other hand, is not as well done.

I could go into a long ability by ability comparison of the sorceress against the bright wizard here. I’d probably get a lot of emails about how you can’t do one on one and you need to compare all of order against all of destruction. I’m going to avoid that and simply sum up by saying this. Having played both classes, ignoring the faction balance, the bright wizard is simply a better done class and does end up being superior because of it. Now, specifically, what do I see wrong with the sorceress?

Let me once more say this is anecdotal but I have, in the past, been pretty good at judging things in this manner. The damage output of the class across the board is slightly too low. This is easily missed due to our great capacity to PvE succesfully. The true issue here is that what we output compared to the cost is not currently even. For a sorceress to put out any serious damage we must be near full of dark magic (roughly 80 or more). If we’re not critically hitting then we’re doing outrageously inferior damage. Therefore the damage we take must be factored in as a cost. In my summation, on virtually all spells, the health and action cost does not yield the correct damage output. For a class that is designed to be fragile spending your health should be considered more dangerous than average. The numbers don’t work out. A few levels ago, at max black magic, I might occasionally pull off a 1000 point “Doom Bolt.” That meant standing in one place for three seconds, spending action, and generally taking 400 points of damage. I was, at the time, fully invested in the agony line. 800 or 900 were more frequent. That means the total cost for my action was almost half as detrimental to me as it was to my target. That needs some revision.

I’m also certain that I’ll get emails telling me to “get a healer noob.” To that, I simply say, no. It is inappropriate to balance my class around having a healer attached to me. That is poor design. Every sorceress will not have a healer at all times. If we’re completely dependent on another class to achieve our primary purpose we will lose people due to frustration (I’ve already seen this on Monolith. There aren’t a ton of other sorceress out there). All other classes are augmented by healers. They allow them to fight longer which extends their primary role. They are not, however, dependent on them just to function. A witch elf will never burn their dark magic or wait for a heal just to continue doing their primary role. When a sorceress does dumps dark magic the damage output drops by greater than 50% and probably falls below the level that all other damage focused classes can put out all the time. Simply put, sorceress damage needs to improve slightly. I’d advocate changing back lash but that would inadvertently upgrade bright wizards and they don’t need that.

The sorceress also suffers in the utility department pretty heavily. Our sister class, the bright wizard, gets an armor buff and the ability to remove curses (sorceress dots), hexes and ailments from themselves. We lack similar skills and are thus less survivable. In the realm of MMOs the less survivable you are the more damage you should output. I’m not sure I’ve even seen Bright Wizards complaining that we out damage them.

I truly feel that a slight across the board damage increase would largely deal with most of these issues. I’d like to see a bit more survival utility but I prefer Mythic avoids the “Warcraft Caster Syndrome” completely. It got annoying in Warcraft when the cloth classes became more survivable than certain classes with superior armor types (leather, chain). If the sorceress is going to be a glass cannon, however, make them a true one. We don’t survive long solo and we shouldn’t be expected to have a healer 100% of the time. Let us be what we appear to be designed to do: destruction made manifest.