Title: Sorceress Succession Analysis

Family Name: Merlyn

Region: World

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Here is a skill-by-skill analysis of the current state of succession Sorc skills (InMyPersonalOpinion™). This is with taking into account the current tier of Succession sorceress in pvp and pve:

Movement - B Tier - Cant even chase a shai; Starved for stamina;

Protection - SSS Tier (PVE) / A Tier (PVP) - Has iframes that cost a lot of stamina. Too many frontal guards, and not enough super armor is what holds her back in pvp.

Damage - B Tier - Suffers from smol AoEs in pve. One mistake in skill rotation on a KD-ed (same gear character) results in a fail. Dmg-Wise Should probably be the measure of how to nerf all of the other classes’ damage instead of adding more damage to the game;

Accuracy - F Tier - Violation & Black Wave (Core DPS skills) have 0% accuracy; Minus Evasion and + Accuracy are tied to meh skills;

Evasion - SSS Tier - Just made for that bling;

DP - A Tier - Sure, it works too cus it stacks with the abhorrent free evasion

E Buff - D Tier - Some weird choices were made

CC - A Tier - The ranged catches are imba … but sorc awa has them too..

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Past this point, just follow the purple for what’s most important.

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Here is a damage breakdown of the main damage skills that sorc wields, as well as the new updates and where those skills will land in power. The list is arranged by DPS (not total damage).

So, what does this patch do for our damage?

1. It makes DOD, AF, and Calamary finally deal more damage than Dark Tendrils

2. It props up shadow eruption by ~25%, however, that is 25% of an (already) low-damage skill.

3. Ultimate:Eruption and Flame+Ultimate:Flame which are both mediocre skills (one unprotected, the other with a stuttery animation) that succ sorcs avoid using at end-game pve

What did we get in total in this patch?

We got 4 skill's damage buffed, 2 irrelevant cooldowns adjusted, 2 bug fixes, 2 irrelevant skill cancels. The irrelevant adjustments are definitely not in line with what the entire sorc community is asking. The damage buffs just bring some to "the default" because they dealt less dps than even our Magnus skill {also available for Sorc Awa} while other skills were just adjusted at random.

What are other classes getting?

1. 6-8 Damage Changes Depending on how lucky they are. Those that get 4 though (ie. Succ Hash) are getting many other things adjusted in a positive way, unlike succ sorc.

2. For many, 7-second cd skills have total damage of 20-25k damage (ours have 7-15k even after this "buff")

3. Some classes even got relevant flows and cancels

What do we do now?

Nothing, there are obviously not enough people lobbying for succession sorceress and she's falling further into irrelevancy with every update. If you somehow reached this part of the article, please do me a solid and upvote every single comment in this post so that it achieves more relevancy.

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#Original Text#

Succ Sorc has come a long and tedious way throughout many changes, from Abyssal Flame Spam Queen, to a kid’s wheel frontal guard monkey, to now become maybe the median for a mid-tier balanced class in BDO that can really flourish in the right hands. However, some skills and design decisions have quirks that don't make sense and I offer solutions to them below. Some of these solutions are pure quality of life, while others are {see:greedy} balance changes. I DONT believe that she should get all of the SA candidates, in fact, 1-2 would suffice. Obviously, none of this should trickle into Sorc Awa {as non-Prime skills} as they already have a plethora of survivability tools that succession doesn’t have (including more SAs).. The QoL changes would just make everyone happy and the class less clumsy. 

The TL:DR is that the class suffers from:

1. Having too many frontal guards (instead of Super Armors {with long telegraphed animations})
   
   
   
2. Having (de)buffs tied to the most senseless skills in the game
   
   
   
3. Having quirks that create gaps in rotations either tier to key input/movement/or problems from above
4. F Tier Chase/movement potential

I look forward to having these ideas dissected (by the 20 succ sorc players in the game), new ideas added and maybe some addressed. :)

Disclaimer:

• AoS has very accented the quirks that this class has in a gear-balanced environment. Apart from all of the sadge desyncs, Succ Sorcs usually get caught by reflexively derping many of the unprotected skills from above which hold our core buffs/debuffs.
  
  
  
• Not here to discuss balance vs other classes it’s a total mess that ill address in another thread (link coming soon), from class-vs-class % differences, to passives, to invisible iframes vs visible SA movement. I just want my class finished. If you’re getting hammered by Succ Sorcs, you just can’t read the animations to anyone qq-ing, try the class break your wrists and see how easy/smooth it is.
  
  
  
• I’m not addressing the class damage here whatsoever and the fact that other classes (even Sorc Awa) can do the same damage {that requires us 7 skills imputed in a row} with 1-2 insta-cast skills. That ties into the thread above about the complete class balance of BDO, which needs to be first more transparent and then reworked even at the level of per-class passives (more on that when link comes)
  
  
  
• I will add (good) ideas to the sheet above and remove bad ones
  
  
  
• My ideal change would be most QoL changes (the ones that don’t affect balance in any way) and one new SA + one FG changed to SA.
  
  
  
• Please keep the discussion civil and on the topic of sorceress succession only. No Sorc Awa trauma (That's a different S-Tier Class. Succ is B+-Tier in Pvp). No "My Class is Weak too" (Make a cohesive thread, ill support you). <3 and hugs pls.

Dear Pearl Abyss,

So, this is what PA had to say about Maegu and its design/balancing philosophy in the latest update. Succ Sorc doesn't have backstep defense too. Also has about 50% of the movement capability of maegu and other classes. I wont even start comparing the kit that Maegu has compared to every class in bdo (but especially the unfinished kit of Sorc Suc).

Patch Notes - February 1, 2023

Maegu

Maegu’s ability to confuse opponents with an illusory duplicate is a skill unique to her, and it opens up fresh new possibilities for attacking. Considering that this is a new playstyle that has no backstep defense (S-block), we've balanced the damage deal by each of her skills to counteract this heightened difficulty. 

Maegu has performed much better than intended in large-scale PvP, such as Node/Conquest Wars. As such, Maegu's PvP attack damage has been balanced following this patch (PvE damage remains the same). Though Maegu's attack damage has been reduced, as she has proven to be too powerful in Node/Conquest Wars due to her wide damage area, the damage distribution has been increased to still deal significant damage in smaller scale battles or 1v1 situations.

As Maegu is a class that can utilize duplicitous doubles and deal wide-range attacks, she really shines in large-scale PvP.

We are planning to gradually update Maegu's skill enhancement, two Prime skills, and Magnus' exclusive skill (Abyssal Legacy) in the coming weeks. Though Maegu's attack damage has been somewhat altered, we will develop her upcoming skills to add further appeal to her character. However, there may be future balances to her skills with the addition of these new ones..

So plz help. The changes needed are minor, fast and easy. Non would affect the damage balance of the game. Half are QoL. The other half would just reward skill.

edits:

Adding Prime: Violation, Sinister Energy, Prime: Dream of Doom, Storming Crow, and Shards of Darkness to the list.

"Maegu’s ability to confuse opponents with an illusory duplicate is a skill unique to her, and it opens up fresh new possibilities for attacking. Considering that this is a new playstyle that has no backstep defense (S-block), we've balanced the damage deal by each of her skills to counteract this heightened difficulty. "

LOL, they're actually trolling. I played the class for 10minutes and figured out how to go from Velia to Heidal fully protected, outrunning auto-pilot horses. It doesn't need an S block at all, that would literally slow the class down to use... Top-Kek statement by PA...

Another update, still forsaken.

Another Patch, another tumbleweed.

Another update, another dud.

After playing Woosa for a ton these past few days, I've decided to update the title. I thought we were fine, balanced, and fair, but it seems that succ sorc is just a meme punching bag for PA to dunk all of their bad and forgotten ideas upon.

Beyond what I initially wrote, in lieu of playing Fan Sorc (aka Woosa), this is what the class is severely missing:

1. Increasing AOE on core skills by 50-100%.

2. Increasing/Add Accuracy skills where it sucks. It sucks in a lot of places.

3. Core class gimmick (something like woosa space skill) that is spammable constantly.

4. (At least) Another T3 addon skill, or reducing the cooldown of bloody calamari to 7-9 seconds.

5. Revering back iframe + jump chain to the way it was, or adding a shift-space long movement skill alla Woosa/Maegu/Lahn/Drak etc.

6. Adding another dash skill, reducing cd on some.

7. Removing collision from dash skills.

8. Fixing weird animation stutters on Prime:Violation and Prime+Ultimate:Dark flame (I thought this was normal until I saw how Woo&Maegu skills simply flow like butter).

9. Better mana management skills (if you're not running an elixir for mana gain or spamming black wave or mobs die in 1 hit there is no way to manage mana beyond addons and potions - other classes rarely suffer from this).

10. Better shard management - either more shards generated / or less consumed by "Prime: Agent of abyss skills". Currently, cus skills in our main combos leech off all of the shards before the only viable cancel to 'Shard Explosion' comes in the order of a possible combo (namely, Imminent Doom, but it would be nice to have more cancels to this specific skill too).

11. Fix weird gaps in FG/SA (from insta-abyssal, beak kick, forward darkness released)

12. Move good {de}buffs (+/-evasion, accuracy, -dp) from the worst skills (which Sorc Awa shares for some reason) to Prime skills

13. Increase atsp buff from 5 to 10%

This is just 95% QoL stuff that should've been done in the rework. After all of this, rebalancing of her damage should be done to bring her up to speed, although I'd be happy with just this (even though i'd still be making 30% less silver than Woosa).

and do the same to awk sorc which is the (barely) worse spec in most situations

Would like to clarify a few things.

This was Shadow Riot that did the teleport not shadow kick

Shadow riot, when they changed it on global labs had a bug where if you hit with a skill from ranged (example abyssal blow) and did the shadow riot flow you would teleport in place  ( coud also be replicated with dream into shadow riot)

I can only assume pearl abyss did not want to fix the bug

They just left Succession Sorceress behind in the dirt. That's what happened. Only will happen more with other classes as times goes on.