So I did a little bit of math about skills because I was just interested in looking into the numbers. On the UESP they have all damage values based on characters with the same stats, so skills can be compared to each other fairly directly. Normal single target 'spammables' do a consistent amount of damage around 5717, so I use that as the base value.

Fatecarver does 42% of that damage per tick, 3 times a second, giving it, unbuffed by crux, a damage of 126% per second, meaning that Fatecarver without crux does more damage than some of the single target spammables like Cutting Dive and Flame Skull. Snipe on its own without the status effect does 118% damage, meaning that if you have one character just hard casting Fatecarver without crux, and an archer spamming Snipe without Hawk Eye stacks, the Fatecarver would do better in single target. Once you introduce crux or additional targets, Fatecarver just wins, hands down. There is downtime between beams, but since Flail does 93% damage it isn't nearly that much of a loss.

AOE spammables, skills like Impulse and Carve do 83% damage per cast, well under what Fatecarver does, costing more resources, and not having nearly as much reach. Now, I love Elemental Explosion, it does a sizable amount of damage per cast, but it only does 169% damage, so you spend two seconds casting a skill to do a little under 2 spammables worth of damage to enemies in an area, though that damage is still decent, being what you'd expect of the up front damage of Meteor.

Another skill I looked at was Scorch, specifically the stamina morph that makes both hits do the same 'lower' damage, but doing it more rapidly, and each hit does only 124% damage, meaning that technically an unbuffed Fatecarver does more damage dry cast than the shalk explosion, and yes I know you'd be mixing other skills in to make up the damage, since Fatecarver prevents the use of other skills, but that being said. Sub-Assault is essentially 1s of crux empowered Fatecarver damage, at roughly the same cost (a little over), and spread out over 6s.

I say this because I run dungeons with friends on the weekend, it's the only way I still reliably engage with ESO, and every day I think to myself "I want to bring something other than my arcanist", but I don't want to waste my friends time by causing unnecessary friction. The defensive morph of Fatecarver so strongly outpaces so many other damage options that I'd be a fool not to run them outside of trying some sort of precise trial build, but just derping around with the beam makes everything else look, honestly, like a joke.

I'd love to bring my magicka sorc and zap my enemies, but Fatecarver out damages it so easily. I'd love to bring my stam sorc, using a bow with whatever fun skills I could mix in with storm calling, but even against single targets Fatecarver just wins. I'd love to bring my elementalist warden, but for all the extra skills I'm throwing out I would still be accomplishing less. I don't want to waste my friends time, so I settle with beaming, but it'd be nice if there were other options in the same zip code as Fatecarver.

Fun bit of extra trivia. Grim Focus and Relentless Focus do pretty much exactly 200% damage in this frame of reference.

Daoin wrote: »

just stop trying to ruin the game for new players and players that think the arcanist is great as-is. eso creators already listened too much to old players and since last update game is half dead again, it had nothing to do with arcanist. even better though just talk about something else between each other in your elite groups of organized raid compositions and stop threats to fatecarver. before the game risks becoming even more dead from half dead

Except that there is literally no skill like fatecarver in the game. There is NO skill with the same cleave, the same power, or the same (extremely, EXTREMELY low) skill level. I don't think anyone is seriously saying to delete it entirely; but out of all the skills in the game, the one that's consistently balanced to is fatecarver. It is the problem. And it's making the game worse for anyone who doesn't want to sit there and do nothing but beam.

IDK about removing it but my main issue with this skill is it replaces other spammables too well.
An AOE skill that outperforming ST skills in most pve scenarios, low effort with little weaving.
Despite the feedback, this skill ended up with a significant buff...so yeah.

You know what? I agree. If people are happy to throw all other classes under the bus for mitigating Fatecarver being OP, I'll happily throw Fatecarver under the bus instead.