Comments and bugs with dark exchange and weapon passives

Zlater

Dark Exchange:
This is almost like thread necromancy from the last PTS, but I really wanted to bring it up again because its still a thing.

Just did a bit of comparison between Heavy attacking with an extra 16% to resource restore on heavy attack from champion points, the difference is a lot bigger than I expected.

I'm using a template character and I dont have my undaunted helm or jewelry on so my heavy attacks (light armor) arent hitting as hard as the really could be, but I am just trying to compare the restore in stamina or magicka.
So please not that if you are heavy attacking unlike using dark exchange you are still keeping your DPS up which means you are restoring health and other resources also through power surge, degeneration, elemental drain and or siphon spirit, not to mention various armor passives and some champion passives.

Using dark exchange to restore a resource puts you out of combat temporarily making your deeps 0, can be interrupted, costs precious stamina or magicka and has a nice long cast time that cant be animation clipped and doesn't scale to anything.

Just as an easy comparison here are some numbers that show the difference between just making a heavy attack and using this skill.





So just by briefly looking at this you can pretty confidently say a heavy attack is more powerful and has more use than something that takes an entire skill slot?
I don't even want to go into the self heal department of this skill -.-
I really think this ability is the ability that is capable of balancing the whole class, both for stamina and for magicka. If we can get this perfect it will really balance the class. And I really think that Heavy attacking restoring more than a dedicated skill is really stupid, I ask if its possible to get this looked at?

edit: I didnt try the bow and the other destro staves at first so ill add that a bow restores the most stamina with 2051 stam restore and the lightning staff restores the most of the destruction staves at 2451, these are at vr14 though.

Tri Focus:

Firstly the lightning effect of the tri-focus passive seems to behave a little differently than what I would have expected. When it says near-by it looks like there is actually an effect radius around you that it can proc in, so hitting a target far away doesn't proc the effect, only if both the target and the other enemies around are close to you. Guys what you you think about that?

Weapon passive clipping:

I noticed that when you are attacking with a destruction staff or bow heavy attack, if you weapon swap before the heavy attack lands, you can use the weapon passives from the new weapon while getting the damage of the original weapon. Here's a video to demonstrate:

https://youtu.be/w8ECjUvmQrs

Here you can see me using the tri-focus passive of an ice staff with a flame staff and the tri-focus passive with a bow. Then on the third video you can see me using the follow-up passive from the 2-hand line. To see the last one you have to watch CLS and record the numbers, nah just jokes, I'll do it for you

Normal flame staff heavy attack: 4558
Critical flame staff heavy attack: 6973
-
When I swapped to 2-hand during my heavy attack, my damage dropped to 4273, this indicated it landed while I was on my 2-hand bar, triggering the follow up passive.
-
With the follow-up passive I landed a crit flame staff heavy attack of 7596 which is about a difference of 8.2%, this could be maybe because of spell resistance or perhaps another one of those 'yeah but nah' tool tips on the follow-up passive xD

I couldn't get all of the passives to work, notably the resto staff and bow passives didn't work like this. I think this all might be a bug/oversight, any comment on this?

Dracane

Can you tell me, how big the difference in restored ressources is, after you have spent so many CP into this passive that increases the restores ressourced with heavy attacks ?

Because I consider this passive useless. I think a heavy attack restores something like 2400 Magicka for me. 16% more is nothing really.

Zlater

oh its only 16% lol, so if you take 16% from a lightning staff, thats a magicka restore of 2058, still more than the dark exchange restore I usually put a champion point or two into this passive because 1% is noteworthy.

I don't know what it is at vr16, it means I have to log out of the pts for that, I couldn't be bothered xD

Dracane

Zlater wrote: »

oh its only 16% lol, so if you take 16% from a lightning staff, thats a magicka restore of 2058, still more than the dark exchange restore I usually put a champion point or two into this passive because 1% is noteworthy.

Not arguing, Dark Exchange restore is poor. It used to be a lackluster ability, but it was fair. It restored a lot and really helped. It's just bad now.

I would not spend so many points into this passive however.

Zlater

Dracane wrote: »

Zlater wrote: »

oh its only 16% lol, so if you take 16% from a lightning staff, thats a magicka restore of 2058, still more than the dark exchange restore I usually put a champion point or two into this passive because 1% is noteworthy.

Not arguing, Dark Exchange restore is poor. It used to be a lackluster ability, but it was fair. It restored a lot and really helped. It's just bad now.

I would not spend so many points into this passive however.

I completely agree with you, I just put this in to point out that a heavy attack restores more magicka than a whole skill devoted to it. That seems really silly. Remember too that it would be a whole lot more if you included magicka restore enchants, elemental drain, and siphon spirit.

Dracane

Zlater wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Zlater wrote: »

oh its only 16% lol, so if you take 16% from a lightning staff, thats a magicka restore of 2058, still more than the dark exchange restore I usually put a champion point or two into this passive because 1% is noteworthy.

Not arguing, Dark Exchange restore is poor. It used to be a lackluster ability, but it was fair. It restored a lot and really helped. It's just bad now.

I would not spend so many points into this passive however.

I completely agree with you, I just put this in to point out that a heavy attack restores more magicka than a whole skill devoted to it. That seems really silly. Remember too that it would be a whole lot more if you included magicka restore enchants, elemental drain, and siphon spirit.

Who would even use this in combat ? In PvE, you kill your DPS or HPS.
And in pvp you make yourself vulnerable and sacrifise your (argueable) most important ressources. Because out of stamina= dead. I don't know, why someone would kill himself in order to restore a tiny amount of Magicka, that will instantly be burned again, because you will need to outheal all the damage you have just taken in this 1 second.

And it's not only the stam cost. You make yourself vulnerable to interrupts, which will cost you even more stamina to break free from. And there is no immunity against interrupts (Zenimax, please change that. Interrupts should never bypass CC immunity) So yea, it's a pure suicide spell. Equilibrium is a blessing compared to that and also seems to restore more Magicka.

Zlater

I really don't understand either.
Would I be asking too much to ask to make it into a instant cast group heal and restore?

Dracane

The problem is obvious. Dark Exchange scales with nothing anymore, it has a very low fix value, Equlibrium still scales with your ressource pool. AND it has a casttime, which is definately not justified. Why would this crap deserve a casttime ? So that it takes more time until I have burned all my stamina for nothing ?

I think, class abilities should always be better than their non-class copy.

Reflective Scales > Defensive stance
Templar Heal > Normal heals
Nightblade OPness > Non class OPness
Sorcerer Dark Exchange > Equilibrium
Equilibrium also triggers a powerfull effect, a huge cost reduction for your next Spell and Might of the guild.

Emma_Overload

Firstly, I think you guys are missing something. Dark Exchange/Conversion really shine when you use them to restore resources you CAN'T restore with your currently equipped weapon. For example, you can restore magicka while holding daggers or restore stamina while holding a Resto staff.

Secondly, I can't believe anyone wants to go back to the days when this spell had a 4 second channel time. Yeah, you could cancel it with good timing, but how is that superior to hitting just one button for a 1 second cast whenever you need it? You guys seem to have forgotten that the majority thought this spell was worthless because of the long channel, which is why they changed it to a 1 second cast in the first place!

Thirdly, the flat rate resource return is actually a bonus in many situations. The way the spell used to scale, there was only ONE morph that was any good for your stamina or magicka build. Now you can choose between BOTH morphs for any build and still get the same return.

Dracane

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Firstly, I think you guys are missing something. Dark Exchange/Conversion really shine when you use them to restore resources you CAN'T restore with your currently equipped weapon. For example, you can restore magicka while holding daggers or restore stamina while holding a Resto staff.

Secondly, I can't believe anyone wants to go back to the days when this spell had a 4 second channel time. Yeah, you could cancel it with good timing, but how is that superior to hitting just one button for a 1 second cast whenever you need it? You guys seem to have forgotten that the majority thought this spell was worthless because of the long channel, which is why they changed it to a 1 second cast in the first place!

Thirdly, the flat rate resource return is actually a bonus in many situations. The way the spell used to scale, there was only ONE morph that was any good for your stamina or magicka build. Now you can choose between BOTH morphs for any build and still get the same return.

It is not superior. The channel was soooo much better. 1 second channel restored more Magicka than this spell in 5 seconds.
Dark Exchange used to be so great actually. But now it's horrible

Teargrants

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Firstly, I think you guys are missing something. Dark Exchange/Conversion really shine when you use them to restore resources you CAN'T restore with your currently equipped weapon. For example, you can restore magicka while holding daggers or restore stamina while holding a Resto staff.

Secondly, I can't believe anyone wants to go back to the days when this spell had a 4 second channel time. Yeah, you could cancel it with good timing, but how is that superior to hitting just one button for a 1 second cast whenever you need it? You guys seem to have forgotten that the majority thought this spell was worthless because of the long channel, which is why they changed it to a 1 second cast in the first place!

Thirdly, the flat rate resource return is actually a bonus in many situations. The way the spell used to scale, there was only ONE morph that was any good for your stamina or magicka build. Now you can choose between BOTH morphs for any build and still get the same return.

The skill is trash in its current inception. If I'm wielding melee weapons I don't need to restore magicka, if I'm using staffs, I don't need to restore stamina - because those are my secondary resources. If I running melee weps on a magicka build, I just switch to resto bar and heavy attack with that for mag return. If I'm running out of them to the point I want to waste all my time spamming dark exchange for the tiny return, then my build is simply bad.

The old 4 second channel actually restored a huge amount of your primary stat and scaled by %. The channel was easily cancelable by block/wep swap, the current 1 sec cast time is actually uncancelable outside of a small window.

I can't believe you would even try and defend the flat resource return of the new version, there is nothing remotely good about that. Being able to choose both morphs for any build doesn't mean anything when both morphs are now performing subpar no matter what build you have. Returning your primary resource to full with the old version was a far more powerful and useful effect.

Zlater

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Firstly, I think you guys are missing something. Dark Exchange/Conversion really shine when you use them to restore resources you CAN'T restore with your currently equipped weapon. For example, you can restore magicka while holding daggers or restore stamina while holding a Resto staff.

Secondly, I can't believe anyone wants to go back to the days when this spell had a 4 second channel time. Yeah, you could cancel it with good timing, but how is that superior to hitting just one button for a 1 second cast whenever you need it? You guys seem to have forgotten that the majority thought this spell was worthless because of the long channel, which is why they changed it to a 1 second cast in the first place!

Thirdly, the flat rate resource return is actually a bonus in many situations. The way the spell used to scale, there was only ONE morph that was any good for your stamina or magicka build. Now you can choose between BOTH morphs for any build and still get the same return.

I'm trying to understand, if you have lets say 0 stamina because you've been block casting you can just use dark deal to restore stamina. But then I don't actually understand the application of this in practice, because I can't think of any place you would use it. You would never dare to use it while you're tanking, there is no place for this much stam in PvE let alone a DPS break in PvE, in PvP well jabjabjab and steel tornado is running strife, I've never heard of a stam sorc with magicka problems and why does a healer need extra stamina, sorc healers are using master staves usually regardless.

Masuimi

I stopped playing when this skill got nerfed. Its funny how it was called a 'buff' at first.

Jar_Ek

I understand what Emma is trying to get at, but although some builds can use it to support cross resource recovery (mostly ones that are behind a big shield or 3) - this is not the normal desired use (mostly good for soloing group content I guess where you need to recovery stamina on a Max magicka build I would guess).

Most players need it to help recover their primary resource or their health. Currently it does neither well, partially because it is balanced around doing both, partially because it doesn't scale , and partially because it has an unclippable cast time.

As a stamina sorcerer I never use it because of the cast time and the poor returns for that cast time. It maybe okay if you're hiding under a monster shield - it most certainly isn't for me.

Alcast

Dark Exchange actually would be fine IF you could permablock with it, but it does not so RIP that skill hard.

Zlater

Jar_Ek wrote: »

I understand what Emma is trying to get at, but although some builds can use it to support cross resource recovery (mostly ones that are behind a big shield or 3) - this is not the normal desired use (mostly good for soloing group content I guess where you need to recovery stamina on a Max magicka build I would guess).

Most players need it to help recover their primary resource or their health. Currently it does neither well, partially because it is balanced around doing both, partially because it doesn't scale , and partially because it has an unclippable cast time.

As a stamina sorcerer I never use it because of the cast time and the poor returns for that cast time. It maybe okay if you're hiding under a monster shield - it most certainly isn't for me.

Stam sorcs really can't use something that has such a cast time, and why would any magicka sorc waste a skill slot for it when you are probably using DW, 2-h or S&B anyway. There is no application for this skill, especially when you can consider that a skill like consuming trap lol has twice the effectiveness because it restores all stats and does a DoT. Which does scale.

Cathexis

Ive been using the stam morph and I love it. Alone its terrible, but its not meant to be used alone. You've gotta think combos.

Zlater

The stam morph is the best morph, but there still isn't any use for it when a heavy attack or soul trap even can restore more stamina reliably.

@Cathexis I'm sorry I really want to but I'm having a have a hard time believing you. Could you please elaborate a little more for us who aren't really as number and stam sorc savvy as you are?

Dracane

Why bother using a cast ability that restores a tiny amount of stamina, when Dragonknights can spam instant cast abilities to get 5% stamina each time. Or Templars only need to lift a finger and the entgire group is back at full stam.

Nothing wrong with that. But remove the cast time of dark exchange and its morphs already. There is no justified reason why it does have a cast time.

Scyantific

I would honestly advocate a complete change of Dark Exchange by removing the health restore completely and making it a pure exchange between magicka and stamina and vice versa. Make it so that you sacrifice X% amount of Stam/Mag and receive Y% Mag/Stam. And make it instant cast too, like Power Surge, so we can cancel the animation.

Cathexis

Scyantific wrote: »

I would honestly advocate a complete change of Dark Exchange by removing the health restore completely and making it a pure exchange between magicka and stamina and vice versa. Make it so that you sacrifice X% amount of Stam/Mag and receive Y% Mag/Stam. And make it instant cast too, like Power Surge, so we can cancel the animation.

That's a really bad idea. The same thing could be achieved by adjusting the restore values. Honestly if they increased by about 1000 for each it would be a great ability. Try it out in pve it's a great heal.

Zlater wrote: »

The stam morph is the best morph, but there still isn't any use for it when a heavy attack or soul trap even can restore more stamina reliably.

@Cathexis I'm sorry I really want to but I'm having a have a hard time believing you. Could you please elaborate a little more for us who aren't really as number and stam sorc savvy as you are?

It works amazingly well if you are heal stacking (skills, cp, etc). For stam return, it stacks really well with high regen.

This ability is really designed for tanking more than as a general utility in its current form.

Boost the base numbers by about 1k, allow it to crit, and/or to be affected by Stam or mag scaling for its respective morphs and it would be a great ability.

I'm curious to understand what you mean by a heavy attack returning stam.

Zlater

Cathexis wrote: »

Scyantific wrote: »

I would honestly advocate a complete change of Dark Exchange by removing the health restore completely and making it a pure exchange between magicka and stamina and vice versa. Make it so that you sacrifice X% amount of Stam/Mag and receive Y% Mag/Stam. And make it instant cast too, like Power Surge, so we can cancel the animation.

That's a really bad idea. The same thing could be achieved by adjusting the restore values. Honestly if they increased by about 1000 for each it would be a great ability. Try it out in pve it's a great heal.

Zlater wrote: »

The stam morph is the best morph, but there still isn't any use for it when a heavy attack or soul trap even can restore more stamina reliably.

@Cathexis I'm sorry I really want to but I'm having a have a hard time believing you. Could you please elaborate a little more for us who aren't really as number and stam sorc savvy as you are?

It works amazingly well if you are heal stacking (skills, cp, etc). For stam return, it stacks really well with high regen.

This ability is really designed for tanking more than as a general utility in its current form.

Boost the base numbers by about 1k, allow it to crit, and/or to be affected by Stam or mag scaling for its respective morphs and it would be a great ability.

I'm curious to understand what you mean by a heavy attack returning stam.

I see what you mean, you're kinda hunting the heal as much as the resource restore.

For reference the warded guardian build on the battle masters corner is one of my sorc builds, so not for ego's sake I can say really do understand sorc tanking. I also did a bunch of initial testing on the new dark exchange, the channel time is killer and not a good idea when you are tanking because it forces you to drop block although it does have good synergy with other abilities like guard, which is also broken -.- I however could imagine it is a staple part of a Stam tank, but I haven't seen one that is nearly as effective for endgame yet.

So about stam and magicka restore on heavy attacks. A mechanic in Eso is when you complete a heavy attack, fully charged, you regain a portion of the corresponding resource. If you are grabbing at straws for magicka for example, you can just swap to fully charged heavy attack weaving for a little bit. In the past this would only apply to resto staves. But I think it was 1.3 and 1.3 they fully implemented resource restore for all weapons.

Next time you are fighting, try completing a heavy attack and watch your stam/Magicka go up. You can restore stamina with a bow, s&b, 2-h and DW.

Oh and a resto staff will also heal you on a completed heavy attack too.

Scyantific wrote: »

I would honestly advocate a complete change of Dark Exchange by removing the health restore completely and making it a pure exchange between magicka and stamina and vice versa. Make it so that you sacrifice X% amount of Stam/Mag and receive Y% Mag/Stam. And make it instant cast too, like Power Surge, so we can cancel the animation.

I think the heal aspect of the skill is actually pretty important, if you can make it instant cast and give it a SERIOUS buff, and maybe consider giving it group utility, it would give ZOS a door to get their itching hands on hardened ward without driving a quarter of the player base away. It would be great because shard spamming won't be the only way to supply the group with stam anymore.

Zlater

I might throw out a thread on this too, but for now I'll just put it here and see if any of you might have some observations.

Lightning staff heavy attacks I did some testing on too, what I noticed is that the tri-focus passive that causes aoe damage is not working the way I thought it did. Put simply the aoe does not seem to be centred around the thing you are attacking, but it seems to be centred around the caster. So when you heavy attack something 28m away the surrounding creatures won't get hurt, but the ones around you will. It's an annoying but an interesting dynamic and I really don't know if that's intended or its just some bug. I think it could be a lot better tactically if the aoe damage would be around your target, a Destro Staff is a ranged weapon after all.

Jar_Ek

@Cathexis Surely if you heal stack then any heal is good and there are better ones than Dark Deal? The issue I still have is the cast time... it just kills the ability for me in combat. And out of combat, well I don't need a heal then!

Cathexis

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@Cathexis Surely if you heal stack then any heal is good and there are better ones than Dark Deal? The issue I still have is the cast time... it just kills the ability for me in combat. And out of combat, well I don't need a heal then!

You are right; any heal is good. As a stam sorc, it is the highest one button (relatively) instant heal you can get. All other viable heals are hots except mutagen -- which is still a hot unless you are low health.

Dark Deal is a weave ability. You pop it in combat when in between attacks as you are closing distance or when there is a break in combat.

Zlater

Cathexis wrote: »

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@Cathexis Surely if you heal stack then any heal is good and there are better ones than Dark Deal? The issue I still have is the cast time... it just kills the ability for me in combat. And out of combat, well I don't need a heal then!

You are right; any heal is good. As a stam sorc, it is the highest one button (relatively) instant heal you can get. All other viable heals are hots except mutagen -- which is still a hot unless you are low health.

Dark Deal is a weave ability. You pop it in combat when in between attacks as you are closing distance or when there is a break in combat.

Hmm I think you are stacking weapon damage for lots of burst with a lot of max stam to burn, this makes you a get in and get out sort of guy right? But then because all the enchants and set bonses are in with weapon damage and max stamina you dont have a lot of sustain for long fights. Then as soon as you get out of the fight, you spam dark deal to 'bounce back' and get stam and health back up so you are ready to go again asap. I'm guessing that's what you're doing, which must be actually pretty effective.

You must be farming the life out of the para bellum set right now.