I posted my thoughts on this in the founders server in a completely unrelated thread so I decided to make a thread here that others can read and comment on anyway here I go.

Currently the Sorc has a bolt pistol and SOC for ranged damage. The bolt pistol is ok but not a reliable ranged weapon and the SOC is just to laughable in it's application speed leaving the sorc in dire need of some kinda ranged damage. The poison application of SOC is in desperate need of a buff after the health normalization that came in patch 16 and was even in need one one pre patch. The poison stacking takes a total of 10 seconds and can be removed with any heal making it the SLOWEST killing weapon in game. The TTK in most cases for primary weapons is 2-3 seconds and I'm not saying to lower it that drastically but I am saying the application speed needs to be changed from 10 seconds down to 4-6 seconds the TTK is very very high while being poisoned and can easily be countered with a simple heal or health kit. Another small buff that could be done is to give a small damage per application that does hit the shield of the player so that if the player somehow purges the poison the shield would be gone and they would start taking the damage tick + poison the longer that the stream is attached.

TL;DR

SOC needs it's application changed from 10 to 4-6 seconds and a very small damage tick *that hits shields* applied to it.

*edit*

I posted this later on but I figured I could move it to the main post so people see it. These are changes that will put the sorc more on par with the apoth as far as offensive/supportive ability goes along with a few bug fixes.

-Put the force sword on the exact tier/damage of the power sword.
-Buff the application of SOC while giving it a tiny direct damage tick per application while reducing the range by around 15-20%
-Fix the dodge lunge problem with the melee for the force sword and dagger.
-Increase the aim area for ALL streams to be the size of the aiming reticle instead of the tiny pixel in the middle of it this will allow aiming with it much easier past 3 feet away.
-Allow the heal beam to be a toggle beam so you don't have to hold down the mouse button. *this is more of a quality of life thing for me and many others*


-This is a all class one normalize dodges to 3 across the board for everyone.


anyway 1-4 = what the sorc needs to put them at the same level as the apoth for now.

The Stream of Corruption will (supposedly) become an AoE one day in the far future.

I hope they will let the Stream of Corruption work against the people inside a vehicle, though it should take a while before it "penetrates" into the enclosed space and starts affecting the passengers, driver and gunners. It should probably deal slightly reduced damage depending on the amount of players inside.
The Debuff should also work on vehicles, but have an reduced effect so it wont be to strong. In this regard it would make the vehicle take a bit more damage (due to the shell hitting "weak points"). This would actually make it worthwhile to pick, especially since it seems like it has no effect on the Shieldbro what-so-ever (it affects the Space Marine but does not make the Stormshield fall faster, which makes the effect negligible IMO).

SoC becoming an AoE will not solve anything. It still would be very situation-dependent. How often do you encounter group of people far-far away with clean line of sight to them so you could channel stream for 10 seconds and hope that they will not spread up? It's very rare event.

SoC is just crap. It's good provocative taunt-related spell(enemies usually focus fire on you when you begin to channel a stream. Or they hide in cover), so its kinda working, but the situations good for it a ridiculously rare, compared to other events on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, that's intended state of affairs.

I do not disagree with you on that and IMO they should decrease the range and give it AoE and more Damage, possibly making it "spread" if someone gets to close to an affected enemy (MoN would be an exception), though I still hope they would give it a limited effect against people inside vehicles.

One of my proudest moment in Eternal Crusade were defeating a Shielbro solely with Stream of Corruption.
Hint, the damage ignores the shield which makes him just as weak as a Tactical Marine against it (a even weaker since he can't return fire), though this means you still need a lot of time to kill him.

Honestly the changes I suggested should be made for the base SOC while what @ArtemK suggested could easily be done as attachments for SOC.

Some examples of customization for SOC would be like this

1. Application increased from 4 to 10 seconds but gains a aoe on application.
2. Loses direct damage but can be applied to vehicles to affect all players inside vehicle with the dot.
3. 1/2 damage dot componet but increase the direct damage componet.
4. No longer channeled and changed to plague bolt doing a flat 3 seconds of poison application and dealing as much damage as a bolt pistol.
5. lose the direct damage of the beam but increase application rate by 25%


These are just some of the customization options that they could do with the beam I suggested.

"-Ailments can now be blocked by shields."
http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/patch-15-mar-24.53062/

I never noticed that was in effect... Just shows how gimp the stream is I guess. All the more reason to change it

Well... Does that mean the only useful thing the SoC had were removed?
Rly?
...

EDIT:

You are right on that, maybe they could add them as "modifications" for the SoC, or possibly as Skills in the Progression Tree?
The one which makes it into a Plague Bolt could be made into an independant psy-power, depending on how it is balanced.

It was already discussed and checked and this is Human making yet another semantical mistake in patch notes. It means heat, not poison. SoC was tested on 15 and worked against shield. Patch 16 may bug everything up(though its improbable), but i rarely play sorc these days so i dunno.

Also, @Dakiaris and @Noromiz , why are you speaking of AoE of SoC as of some hypothetical thing when its been intended by design and confirmed since the introduction of the spell? The absence of AoE is the only thing that gives designer team excuses to not touch SoC now, cause "it's pointless to look on it while core AoE mechanic is missing"

I mention it because honestly I don't think it should be a aoe by default. I don't think the devs really do either considering they hadn't disabled it on live and saying it doesn't have aoe now just means they added a incomplete weapon to the game.

Regardless something needs to be done to the ability as the sorc is in dire need of a reliable ranged weapon which currently they just don't have. The pistol is short range and the SOC is the only mid/long range they have and it's functioning horribly right now.