This is a post about showing succession sorceress's current position in the meta and some suggestions to fix the problems. For clarification, I've posted a comparison with awakening version which is in a good spot in both pvp and pve. The comparison shows the differences between both variants functional capabilities, number of usable and unusable/bad skills as well as mentioning the protections and the ability to CC, the number of skills that costs shards, problems of succession. And finally, the ideas of improving the kit to help solve the main issues as well as some tuneups.

Succession Mechanics:                                                         Awakening Mechanics:

1. No S Block                                             1. Has S Block
2. No Q/RMB Block                                   2. Has RMB Block
3. No Grab                                                 3. No Grab
4. No invisibility                                         4. Has invisibility
5. Has iFrame Spam                                   5. Has iFrame+block Spam
6. Has 11 CCs                                             6. Has 19 CCs(Without Core)
7. Has 6 FGs                                               7. Has 4 FGs (Without Core)
8. Has 4 SAs                                               8. Has 8 SAs (Without Core)
9. Has 1 iFrame skill                                   9. Has 3 iFrame Skills
10. Has 2 protected CCs                            10. Has 4 protected CCs(Including Core)
11. No nuke skills                                      11. Has 2 nuke skills
12. Has 2 dash skills                                  12. Has 4 dash skills

 (1 half protected, 1 no protection)            (2 full protected, 2 non protected)

[Succession] Usable Skills:                                             [Awakening] Usable Skills(No Core):
1. Black Wave[FG]                                     1. Black Wave[CC]
2. Darkness Released[CC]>DarkBS[FG]     2. Darkness Released[CC]>DarkBS[FG]
3. Rushing Crow[Dash][Half SA][CC]         3. Bloody Calamity[Heal]
4. Bloody Calamity[SA][Heal]                    4. Dark Flame[FG]
5. Claws of Darkness[FG]                          5. Crow Flare[CC] > Beak Kick[CC]
6. Dark Flame[FG]                                     6. Shadow Eruption[SA][CC]
7. Crow Flare[FG]                                      7. Dream of Doom[CC]
8. Shadow Eruption[SA][CC]                     8. Night Crow[iF] > Storming Crow[SA][CC]
9. Abyssal Flame[CC][Heal]                       9. Shard Explosion
10. Dream of Doom[CC]                         10. Dark Trade(Self Buff)
11. Abyssal Vanguard(Self Buff)[SA]       11. Grim Reaper(Self Buff)[SA]
12. Turn-back Slash[CC]                          12. Shadow Leap[Dash][iF]
13. Violation[FG]                                     13. Cartian's Protection[FG][RMB Block]
14. Night Crow[iF]>SCrow[SA][CC]         14. Dead Hunt[CC][Heal]
15. Shard Explosion                                15. Violation[CC]
16. Dark Trade(Self Buff)                         16. Soul Reaper[SA]
                                                               17. Grim Reaper's Judgement[Half SA][CC][Nuke][Heal]
                                                               18. Turn-back Slash[CC]
                                                               19. Cartian's Nightmare[SA][Nuke]
                                                               20. Swirling Darkness[SA]

                                                               21. Awakening Night Crow[iF]>[FG]
                                                               22. Nightmare[SA][iF][Invisible][CC]>Requiem[SA][iF][Invisible][CC]
                                                               23. Wings of the Crow[FG]
                                                               24. Soul Harvest[CC]
                                                               25. Blade of Darkness>Cry of Darkness[CC]

                                                               26. Rushing Crow[Dash][CC]

                                                               27. Midnight Stinger[Dash][CC]

[Succession] Unused/Bad Skills:                  [Awakening] Unused/Bad Skills:
1. Absolute Darkness                             1. Absolute Darkness
2. Midnight Stinger[Dash][CC]               2. Mark of the Shadow
3. Mark of the Shadow                           3. Claws of Darkness
4. Signs of Agony[CC]                             4. Abyssal Flame[Heal]
5. Bloody Contract                                  5. Signs of Agony[CC]
6. Sinister Omen                                     6. Sinister Omen
7. Shadow Kick[CC]

8. Beak Kick[CC]

Skills that costs shards:

Succession:                                                                                                       Awakening:

1. Midnight Stinger                                           1. Crow Food

2. Rushing Crow                                                2. Shard Explosion

3. Succession Ultimate: Dark Flame

4. Succession Beak Kick

5. Succession Ultimate: Shadow Eruption

6. Crow Food

7. Shard Explosion

Succession Problems & Fixes:                                          

Problem 1.

Stamina and shard management is difficult because the skills are shard-heavy.

Fix:

Remove the shard cost from Succession: Beak Kick and Succession: Ultimate: Shadow Eruption. These skills don't deliver the output according to the shard costs but bottlenecks the more important skills that needs shards.

Problem 2.

2. PVP damage is low and has no high burst abilities. Forget awakening skills, some succession skills do less PVP damage than even the absolutes. For Example: Prime Shadow Eruption with -60% PVP damage does 2712 damage where Absolute Eruption with -25% PVP damage does 3303 damage. Some skills take a lot of time to execute for a fast squishy class like this and are very susceptible to grabs and block jumps.

Fix:

A) Lower the PVP damage reduction of the prime skills.

B) Combine Dark Flame and Ultimate: Dark Flame into a 1 hop skill and combine both skills damage.

C) Remove the melee part of Prime: Bloody Calamity and only do the projectile attack with the combined damage of both parts of the skill.

Problem 3.

3. Neither have Block nor any type of disengage utility when out of stamina and shard.

Fix:

Sustain FG of Prime: Claws of Darkness even when on CD. The skill doesn't deal much damage anyway.
Problem 4.

Cannot SA trade because barely has any SA to trade with.

Fix:

A) Add SA to Prime: Turn-back Slash and remove the CC.

B) Make Prime: Dream of Doom's charging part to be SA similar to Grim Reaper's Judgement while charging and similarly able to iFrame more than one time after charged.

C) Reduce cooldown of Crow Nightmare.

Problem 5.

Need to rotate high number of skills to kill, most of the time it's not enough to finish off.

Fix:

A) Add a new prime skill which was needed for succession sorc but did not get any in the class reboot.

B) Add More Abyssal Flame cancels with other skills like Crow Flare, Claws of Darkness, Black Wave etc.

Problem 6.

Cannot chase mobile classes, serious mobility issue for both PVP and PVE. Dash skills are unprotected.

A) Add Succession: Storming Crow - No CC Super Armor dash with better range and lower stamina cost than Night Crow.

B) Skill Rework: Mark of the Shadow: Throws a projectile that marks the target for 10sec. Also, character can teleport behind the marked target during this time similar to hashashins tornado teleport.

Gameplay problems fixes.

A) Fix the issue where Character goes to non-combat stance when casting Shard Explosion while having below 10 shards. This is a big issue during fights.

B) Fix the issue where Ultimate: Shadow Eruption after Crow Flare which is (E > LMB) overrides Claws of Darkness after Crow Flare which is (E > W+LMB). These are two seperate inputs but when pressing (E > W+LMB) Ultimate Eruption triggers.

C) Fix the jumping iFrame problem which sometime make the character do the fall animation after the iframe. 

D) Rework Sinister Omen to be a fast casting skill that makes the skill effect stick to a target and deal moderate AoE damage per second to the target and it's nearby allies for maybe 3seconds.

E) Speed up the casting speed and AoE radius of Shard Explosion. The skill barely explodes only does a small poof.

Not saying succession needs to be as same as awakening but the idea is to improve succession to such a point that players can be happy with either choices when choosing one variant over the other without sacrificing too much. Not many players talked or talk about succ sorcs before and after class reboot. Those who played succ and now plays awakening or other classes knows well that succ sorc is very fun to play. But the overtuned abilities of other classes makes this class a lower tier in PVPer. 

Maybe they can start small.  Bring back Abyssal Flame spam, at least.  Make Succ Sorc the "ranged" version.  Abyssal is unprotected, not that far a range compared to Meteor or Ranger/Archer, is only one skill, and has an easy to catch out animation.  Could start with that and see how it goes.

But the biggest thing I'd like to see are the unused skills actually be useful or usable for Succ.  Sinister Omen and Shard Explosion, namely.  Sinister Omen has been jank AF since day 1.  And a shame because it seems like a cool concept.  Shard Explosion too, conceptually speaking.  Sorcs know how valuable shards can be.  Shard Explosion sacrificing all your shards for a nuke seems like a cool trade-off, but the ability has been nerfed and has long been pretty useless.  Just cast DoD.

For Sinister Omen, it's a super long unprotected cast-time that sets up a trap.  This would add a dynamic approach to this class, allowing players to think about where and when to place it.  Seems so cool to use for node wars and siege!  Even Valencia RBF.  Tactically place it in a choke point, kind of deal.  IMO, they should make Sinister deal relatively low damage (but not negative damage, like now lol), but inflict a massive movespeed slow and attack/cast speed slow in an AoE around the inflicted enemy.  It is able to be played around since the Servant will attach to an enemy and give an easy to see animation around the inflicted, signaling enemies to steer clear of them to avoid the slow.

Current:  Movespeed and Attack Speed 30% slow for 10 seconds.

The wish:  Movespeed and Attack/Cast Speed 70% slow for 5 seconds.

This would give the spec some highly valued utility.  Coupled with the range, this would be so cool and fun to play.

For Shard Explosion, it already has a slow projectile.  They can keep that.  Just up the damage, currently, DoD does way more.  Abyssal Flame does more, it seems like, and both are faster projectiles which renders this ability useless.  Keep the slow projectile speed, up the shard cost to 40 shards needed to cast it, give it worthy damage.  Maybe not GRJ level of damage, but something to write home about.

yes, awaken sorc could use some tuning down ;) 

The post is about succession, not awakening.  Also, Wizard is just an easy kill for Sorc, Ninja, Kuno, pretty much anything that can easily manuver around your long, animation locked, frontal guard abilities. 

Not even sure why you whine so much about Sorc, your class is just, naturally, an easy kill based on class-role / kit setup.  But put your class behind a frontline, where you're able to heal, buff teammates, cast Protected Area, and cast successive nukes from range, you have the all-time most sought after classes for organzied group PvP.

u r describing succession casters

Yes, please, succ sorc is pretty much one of the bottom tier classes in PVP at the moment (in PVE we still do fine in my opinion). What we are missing most in my opinion is some protected movability. Some classes like succ zerker don´t even need to put in much effort be be protected 24/7 but as a succ sorc, you have to rotate 5 skills to stay at least somewhat protected during normal movement if you don´t want to run out of stamina. 

And since sinister omen was mentioned: Can someone please explain to me how that skill is suppposed to work? I never saw it do anything, no matter where I casted it. 

You use it on an afk player to slow him/her. Otherwise you die.

Oh, yes....Cool....I can kill a weasel with it......

Why exactly is this still in the game?

How I believe it's supposed to work:

Place this thing called a "Servant" on an area by doing a long, unprotected, cast. It triggers when an enemy walks into the area of effect. When triggered, the Servant attaches to said enemy, and after a delay, explodes and inflicts a move speed slow debuff.

Conceptually, it seems cool and would make a fine addition to Succ Sorc, IMO, if it were actually usable. It currently seems like it isn't functional. No noticable slow.

They should shorten the current debuff timer, but make the slow have some sort of impact, at least for Succession. Attack/Cast speed slow + Move speed slow by 70% for 5 seconds, or something like that.  I'd also like to see them make Shard Explosion impactful as well. Up the shard cost to the full 40 (only usable at 40 shards) and up the damage to around GRJ level.

Easy / safe implementations that don't alter anything else, but have potential to raise the viability of this underperforming spec in PvP.  Now, we patiently await the unproductive downvote clown trolling this thread :)

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Seems to be completely useless at the moment.