Please Buff Melee Weapons

zazamalek

All the posts with bug fixes just made my day, this most of all @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌, thanks for all the hard work from your side!

Khivas_Carrick

I was going to say something to Kego but frankly that helps. That helps a lot. Just, please realize that stamina abilities pale in comparison to magicka ones by a mile.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks, we don't have granular details to share yet as a lot of this is active work in progress, but we are looking at giving you more ways to generate stamina as well as reviewing the overall balance of the stamina abilities.

I hope one of those stamina ability balance changes is reduction to cast time of uppercut. Snipe's cast time just got closer to it, and it can do the same if not more damage from range for the same stamina cost. It makes uppercut an even less attractive ability because of the melee risks.

BloodStorm

Spellcrafting will solve a lot of that. Making skills recover/increase stamina instead of magicka.I am sure when brotherhood , thieves guild content is released some melee buffs will also come from gear / set pieces.

eliisra

2-Hander and DW both needs some crazy buffing.

But even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference as far as PvP goes. You still can't play mele in Cyrodiil, unless you're a DK with pocket healers. The PBAoE puffing trains, aren't mele friendly. Until they fix that rubbish, no one will be able to play mele in group PvP and that sucks so much.

Bow needs better sustained dps in PvE, to be on par with staffs. But you can do that without buffing the burst.

I've been 1 shot by Focused Aim or Lethal Arrow on my level 30 DK multiple times lol. Yes, it's a non VR character, but hitting that high with a normal skill shouldn't be possible. No one should be 1 shot in PvP, this is ESO, not some trashy instagib F2P. Bow sneak rotation with macro, is already so FoTm it's getting silly. People forget that bow it's a ranged weapon, they get all tangled up in the stamina v.s. magicka debate. But ranged (regardless of weapon) doesn't need more burst in PvP.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Current 2h abilities are just plain lackluster. Every single one of the abilities needs to be improved or altered.

-Cleave, tho its getting a silly ability altering enchanted weapon to increase its damage, needs base damage increase or far more bleed damage, with bleed duration reducing to 8 seconds for larger tics of bleed damage.
-Brawler morph just seems silly that it gives a damage shield. It would be better as increase damage dealt by a percentage, increasing per target hit. Even the name applies more to a hand-to-hand fighter skill...
-Carve is decent, but its ultimate gain doesn't increase as the skill ranks up. Extending the additional ultimate gain to the bleed tics would improve it, and remove the need to spam.

-Critical charge is the only really good 2h ability.
-Stampede however I think should be changed to not stop at the target, but instead barrel through the target for the max range of the attack that will also hit other enemies that you pass through, and remove the immobilize from it.
-Consequently Critical rush should have more bonus damage based on range traveled to the single target.

-Uppercuts Cast time is too long. For a melee range ability, 0.5 seconds would be long enough wait. For 1 second, the skill would be better as a conal attack rather than a single target attack. A charging wide swing animation would be pretty cool too.
-Dizzying swing target damage reduction should take place after the target recovers from the stun. In PvE, its duration on the damage reduction is actually 4 seconds, because the target is stunned 3.5 seconds of the 7.5 second damage reduction duration. It should also affect targets whether they get stunned or not.
-Wrecking blow I have come to notice is not giving a very noticeable boost to the damage of the next attack that is not wrecking blow. It is supposed to add 50 power, but its hardly adding that much. Its also no longer affecting "the next attack" but only the next attack with a 2h ability, which you are limited to only 3 and only the target will receive the extra damage. It should change to being the opposite of Dizzying swing, making the target take 20% more damage for 7.5 seconds instead, and also apply whether the target becomes stunned or not.

-Reverse Slash is still a pain to use. Its real effectiveness is in boss fights, in PvE, but when it comes to PvP it doesn't get much use. Targets are usually killed by other attacks by the time they get low enough for reverse slash to show its full potential. I think it should reach its max damage when the target is at 40-50% health instead of 25%.
-Reverse slice doesn't deal enough damage to the 2 extra targets. If anything it should deal 80% of that damage to those 2 extra targets, if not 100%.
-Executioner's damage increase to 2h attacks should start at 30% target health up from 25%.

-Momentum is a nice buff, but with the weapon damage cap it never sees its full potential. Anyone using a 2h weapon will also have some set bonus that adds weapon damage. Even without any weapon damage bonuses, the ability will eventually make you hit the softcap wall thus losing effectiveness. It also only affects 2h attacks so if any of your 2nd weapons is not a 2h weapon it immediately loses any effect.
-Forward Momentum and rally both should produce their morph effect every 2 seconds. Rally should heal a portion of what it would heal at the end on activation and every 2 seconds instead of having to wait til the effect wears off to be healed, and Forward Momentum should remove 1 snare AND 1 immobility effect every 2 seconds. Even better, Forward Momentum should just make you immune to snare and immobility effects instead of removing them.

Traits:

Forceful is just lol. Instead 25% splash damage to 1 target, the trait as it is named would be better as a block damage penetrator. Ignore 25%/50% blocking mitigation.

Heavy Weapons particularly when it comes to maces and axes is just weak. 80 armor is nothing, no one is going to use a 2h mace with that, and the bleed damage is just plain laughable for axes. 2h swords are always the best choice with 5% extra damage. 2h mace should penetrate 25% target armor while 2h axe bleeds 150% of weapon damage over 8 seconds on hit.

Arcane fighter recently stopped working, but I never liked the passive anyways. Just more magic knight nonsense. 2h should focus on physical damage.

Battle rush (including the last trait of every melee weapon) should add that heavy attacks will return stamina on hit. Not a destro staff thread, but destro staff should do the same with magicka. This will make every weapon function the same as resto staff, less the magicka gain on heavy attack just be removed from resto staff.


I don't know what possibly simple things ZoS has in mind, but this is what I would like to see done to the 2h line.



Bleeds: Please stop making enemies immune to bleeds. This is pointless and only harms melee weapons ability to compete. Nothing is ever immune to magical dots, so do the same for bleeds.



Then there's the lack of ultimates in the weapon lines. All weapons should have ultimates tied to them. They should be buffs ultimates instead of attacks, so they only apply buffing to the weapons they derive from.

2h Ultimate: Increase damage dealt with 2h attacks by 30% With Greatsword. Attacks bleed for 250% of weapon damage over 5 seconds on hit with Greataxe. Attacks Ignore 80% of armor with Maul.
Morph 1: Make attacks unblockable. Passive equip 5% chance for attack to be unblockable
Morph 2: 2h abilities cost no stamina to use. Passive equip to further lower cost of 2h abilities by 20%

DW Ultimate: Increase crit chance with DW attacks by 25% per dagger equipped. Increase Damage dealt by 15% per sword equipped. Bleed 150% of weapon damage over 5 seconds on hit per axe equipped. Ignore 30% armor per mace equipped.
Morphs: thinking of some complex morphs for this, morph 1 increasing the per weapon type, and morph 2, giving bonuses for mix matching weapon types.

1h/sh ultimate: Blocking Mitigates 100% of incoming damage
morph 1: 45% of the damage that would be dealt by attacks are returned to the attacker. Passive equip reflect 5% damage dealt to you.
morph 2: 45% of the damage that would be dealt by attacks are restored as health. Passive equip restore 5% of damage dealt as health.

Bow ultimate: Mega version of volley with longer duration and wider radius.
Morph 1: halves the radius but increases damage by 100%. Passive equip increase bow damage by 5%
morph 2: snares targets in the area of effect with 10% chance to immobilize on every hit. Passive equip 5% chance to snare target with bow attack

Destro staff ultimate: Impulse lol

Resto staff ultimate: Radiate healing to surrounding allies.
Morph 1: Decrease damage dealt to surrounding allies by 20%. Passive equip decrease damage taken by allies by 5%
Morph 2: Increase healing done by 50%. Passive equip increases healing done by 10%

All cost 250 ultimate with 15s duration (increasing 1s per rank).

Khivas_Carrick

As someone once said on another thread to one of my posts....

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Also, about the Heavy Weapons thing, the main issue there that makes swords the best is that it's a 5% increase to damage. Note the Percentage Sign there, indicating that it scales. Scaling is key to maintaining effectiveness over periods of time. As to why somebody at Zenimax thought that static effects would be a good idea for Armor Ignoring and Bleed Damage and why another human being with cognitive capabilities wrote off on it is completely beyond me, but yea, Bleed Effect needs to scale OR instead, make it so Axes passively increase Crit Chance by like 6% or something, that'd be smart too.

I still like you suggestions though, minus one thing, which is arcane fighter. I actually like that, but tbh I wish Weapon Enchants worked differently, and if you REALLY wanted to make Melee just that much more viable, make it so Weapon Enchants while using a 2H proced on every hit, not just a guarenteed proc with a cd attached. I mean literally, every, single, hit.

AshySamurai

I mean literally, every, single, hit.

So you can stack shields and become unkillable? And you will need to recharge weapon really often.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

As someone once said on another thread to one of my posts....

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Also, about the Heavy Weapons thing, the main issue there that makes swords the best is that it's a 5% increase to damage. Note the Percentage Sign there, indicating that it scales. Scaling is key to maintaining effectiveness over periods of time. As to why somebody at Zenimax thought that static effects would be a good idea for Armor Ignoring and Bleed Damage and why another human being with cognitive capabilities wrote off on it is completely beyond me, but yea, Bleed Effect needs to scale OR instead, make it so Axes passively increase Crit Chance by like 6% or something, that'd be smart too.

I still like you suggestions though, minus one thing, which is arcane fighter. I actually like that, but tbh I wish Weapon Enchants worked differently, and if you REALLY wanted to make Melee just that much more viable, make it so Weapon Enchants while using a 2H proced on every hit, not just a guarenteed proc with a cd attached. I mean literally, every, single, hit.

True about heavy weapons bleed. If its static then as the game goes on, it will become as ineffective as it currently is. So Bleed damage should = 150% of weapon damage, for heavy weapons in particular.

Khivas_Carrick

AshySamurai wrote: »

I mean literally, every, single, hit.

So you can stack shields and become unkillable? And you will need to recharge weapon really often.

The mechanics would change slightly with this of course, so that shields don't stack and that a weapon doesn't exhaust itself so quickly. If anything you could make it now so that the weapon enchants proc for all weapons but with Arcane Fighter you see:

1) Reduced price for enchant, thus lasting way longer than all others

2) Increased Enchantment effect.

The idea here is that there's like a million things that could make the skill better that aren't there because ZoS has a hard-on for staffs. I"m also being slightly unfair to ZoS in this regard as I'm sure they didn't intend for the weapons to be this badly off, I just want to know who does balance in these games because literally every MMO i've ever played has had this issue where Melee is way underpowered, especially the single sword swinging, holy light bestowing variety.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

I mean literally, every, single, hit.

So you can stack shields and become unkillable? And you will need to recharge weapon really often.

The mechanics would change slightly with this of course, so that shields don't stack and that a weapon doesn't exhaust itself so quickly. If anything you could make it now so that the weapon enchants proc for all weapons but with Arcane Fighter you see:

1) Reduced price for enchant, thus lasting way longer than all others

2) Increased Enchantment effect.

The idea here is that there's like a million things that could make the skill better that aren't there because ZoS has a hard-on for staffs. I"m also being slightly unfair to ZoS in this regard as I'm sure they didn't intend for the weapons to be this badly off, I just want to know who does balance in these games because literally every MMO i've ever played has had this issue where Melee is way underpowered, especially the single sword swinging, holy light bestowing variety.

Heh like WoW Ret Paladin. Took them forever to bring them up to par. BC days were rough...

Khivas_Carrick

Don't remind me

quetzatli

then the dev must debuf the haste of NB???

khele23eb17_ESO

DagothMacellarius wrote: »

Spellcrafting will solve a lot of that. Making skills recover/increase stamina instead of magicka.I am sure when brotherhood , thieves guild content is released some melee buffs will also come from gear / set pieces.

Sure... in 3 to 6 months...

Tamanous

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks, we don't have granular details to share yet as a lot of this is active work in progress, but we are looking at giving you more ways to generate stamina as well as reviewing the overall balance of the stamina abilities.

Please review the overall balance of magicka builds too please. It is flawed to simply assume stamina builds are weak when magicka builds may be performing too good as well.

Most top single target dps builds are using PBAOE attacks. People simply stand in one spot and spam 3-4 ability rotations (2 key offensive abilities per bar). Is this the game you wanted?

Most combat including end game bosses and pvp is little more than players standing on top of each other because pbaoe has the biggest radius (your thinking that ranged aoe should be smaller is flawed by the way) and most healing comes from pbaoe as well. Most damage, most support, most mitigation, most crowd control and most other benefits come from having targets right in your face. There is no reason why pbaoe should have all the benefits when in actual practice you are not more at risk than being at range.

Simpy making stamina builds competitive in damage and resource management does not solve the greater issue of zerg balls domination strategy in this game.

P.S. Still nothing from you about the vast majority of players using a Resto Staff because of DPS min/maxing instead of, you know, actual support reasons?

Tamanous

Kego wrote: »

You mean like Medium Armor toss on and BAM

• 21% Crit Chance
• 28% Dogde roll cost reduce
• 14% Skillcost reduce
• 21% faster Sprint
• 42% Sneak cost reduction

The only useless trait at Medium Armor is Agility. Cause Attack Speed is meaningless in this Game.
Maybe change it to 1/2% Stamina Gain with Weapon Attacks.

Attack speed may play more a role because of the addition of stamina return on heavy attacks. Still not quite enough imo but a good addition to be sure.

Thejollygreenone

Tamanous wrote: »

Kego wrote: »

You mean like Medium Armor toss on and BAM

• 21% Crit Chance
• 28% Dogde roll cost reduce
• 14% Skillcost reduce
• 21% faster Sprint
• 42% Sneak cost reduction

The only useless trait at Medium Armor is Agility. Cause Attack Speed is meaningless in this Game.
Maybe change it to 1/2% Stamina Gain with Weapon Attacks.

Attack speed may play more a role because of the addition of stamina return on heavy attacks. Still not quite enough imo but a good addition to be sure.

Stamina return on heavy attacks? Whatchu talkin 'bout willis?

quetzatli

then the dev must debuf the haste of NB???

Khivas_Carrick

No, NB haste should stay, it's a catch of the NB class a very attractive one at that. DK's would still be tanky as *** with a 2H and Sorcs all Magicky, and Templars would get their Paladin archetype in full.

But enough of that crap.

More of the Stamina Restored Upon Successful Heavy Attack As An Effect Of Battle Rush stuffs people have been talking about please.

thewisguyub17_ESO

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks, we don't have granular details to share yet as a lot of this is active work in progress, but we are looking at giving you more ways to generate stamina as well as reviewing the overall balance of the stamina abilities.

Thank you for posting that! One of the most frustrating thing throughout has been not knowing if we were all just yelling into an echo-chamber, or if things were actually being looked into/done on your end.
That being said, could you give any indication on what the internal take on stamina build balance, and the overall effectiveness of melee skills are? Do you think there is room/need for improvement, or do you think overall the abilities/builds are closer to "working as intended?"

I understand that being a "work in progress" means that details will be thin on the ground, but it also implies you have a general sense/opinion on the matter... which I would dearly love to be clued in on.

seanvwolf

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

DW Ultimate: Increase crit chance with DW attacks by 25% per dagger equipped. Increase Damage dealt by 15% per sword equipped. Bleed 150% of weapon damage over 5 seconds on hit per axe equipped. Ignore 30% armor per mace equipped.
Morphs: thinking of some complex morphs for this, morph 1 increasing the per weapon type, and morph 2, giving bonuses for mix matching weapon types.

As a dw sorc, I can already get my crit chance to close to 75% or more. Your suggestion on crit chance increases is a bit off base considering that. What would be much more useful is a chance to reduce physical resistance when using any DW weapon skill. Should be toggled with a movement debuff when active.

AshySamurai

seanvwolf wrote: »

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

DW Ultimate: Increase crit chance with DW attacks by 25% per dagger equipped. Increase Damage dealt by 15% per sword equipped. Bleed 150% of weapon damage over 5 seconds on hit per axe equipped. Ignore 30% armor per mace equipped.
Morphs: thinking of some complex morphs for this, morph 1 increasing the per weapon type, and morph 2, giving bonuses for mix matching weapon types.

As a dw sorc, I can already get my crit chance to close to 75% or more. Your suggestion on crit chance increases is a bit off base considering that. What would be much more useful is a chance to reduce physical resistance when using any DW weapon skill. Should be toggled with a movement debuff when active.

Stop right there, filthy necromancer!

Mandragora

I have similar experience with my templar - it does so big dmg with Sun Fire it makes no sense to use skills of Fighter guild/Weapon skill. Also I fight a lot of undeads or bosses mostly and they are imune to bash or any kind of stun.
It doesnt fit to me really - I wanted it to be more like a fighter then a caster and it leads to giving points to higher mana rather then to anything else - because all the tactics narrowed to - kill faster with Sun Fire then be killed.

Maybe the weapon skills could be used to the traditional tank/healer/DPS fellowship builds while class skills could be build more for solo=universal play?

Khivas_Carrick

What? I have no idea what you just said or meant. If you're using sunfire as a constant spam attack, you are doing it very wrong.

Mandragora

yes, you dont have - it is not what the topic is about...

xMovingTarget

The topic is old and melee weapons are fine now. I leave this thread now with a quote

AshySamurai wrote: »

Stop right there, filthy necromancer!

Mightylink

I think they need to buff melee heavy attacks more specifically they seem to be doing less dps overall then just spamming light attacks. I keep switching between light and heavy and wile heavy does have bigger hits its too slow and seems to do less damage then light attacks over time.

Mandragora

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

What? I have no idea what you just said or meant. If you're using sunfire as a constant spam attack, you are doing it very wrong.

My post was about this:
I was a templar around lvl 22 with 2 skill sets: 1. was based on class skills - consuming magic, 2nd was based on weapon skills consuming stamina except Sun Flare.
And I was saying that while my 1st set based on class skills was OK, my 2nd set based on weapon skills wasnt that useful. That all the roots, stuns, bash skills was nice, but in the end it was the huge difference between amount of damage I inflicted what did matter in solo play, but what I didnt use in solo play may be more useful in a fellowship.


I hope its ok now

Khivas_Carrick

English isn't your first language is it? Also stamina builds on Templars do way more damage than a magicka one, but you have to gear and spec properly for it, so I think you might have had a gear and attribute problem more than a skill one.

But yea, melee skills are mostly fine now, mostly (buff uppercut just a tad more XD)

Mandragora

Whatever. Enjoy your nice builds and english.