Maximizing Magicka Detonation Damage

Lava_Croft

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

ZOS has acknowledged it's not working as intended, so that's the end of that. Keep at it with the acrobatics though.

I'll bite. Point to a source for ZoS saying it's not working as intended.

Once again...

If it's more effective than intended, it's clearly not working as intended. Have fun with your page-long acrobatics exercise.

s1gm4xb14_ESO

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

ZOS has acknowledged it's not working as intended, so that's the end of that. Keep at it with the acrobatics though.

I'll bite. Point to a source for ZoS saying it's not working as intended.

Once again...

If it's more effective than intended, it's clearly not working as intended. Have fun with your page-long acrobatics exercise.

In the same quote they state that it's going to be adjusted....not fixed...aka its working, they just didn't realize it was gonna be this strong.

If you look at a lot of their other posts on actual bugs, they are pretty deliberate on saying "its broken".

In this case it's just imbalanced.

Alcast

It is almost impossible to not use some broken stuff, because literally E V E R Y T H I N G is broken.

Septimus_Magna

Alcast wrote: »

It is almost impossible to not use some broken stuff, because literally E V E R Y T H I N G is broken.

Maybe nothing is broken if everything is broken?

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

It's harder to reach the cap with reinforced. However, that's clearly because there are more sources of spell penetration than physical penetration. There is no armor passive to match concentration, and no mundus buff to match apprentice.

Did you know DW maces give 33k armor penetration? Even a hard-capped heavy armor build has basically no mitigation if he isnt blocking the attacks.

As for the magicka vs phyical damage, when they nerf nirnhoned they should further reduce the damage in the Cryodiil Battle buff to increase the TTK. If they dont reduce the damage the Prox Detonations will insta-wipe entire groups if 15-20 people cast it at the same time.

kaithuzar

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

ZOS has acknowledged it's not working as intended, so that's the end of that. Keep at it with the acrobatics though.

I'll bite. Point to a source for ZoS saying it's not working as intended.

If ZoS meant 'not working as intended' they would have said 'not working as intended.' Instead they said 'more effective than intended' and that they will be changing the way nirnhoned works. They chose their words carefully.

The takeaway is that nirnhoned is working exactly as intended to permit players to increase spell resist by up to 24% per piece of crafted armor. This is supported not only by the tooltip matching the in-game effect, but because you can't mitigate 50% without nirnhoned, and it takes 3+ pieces to do it. You can reach 50% physical damage mitigation with reinforced, why wouldn't you be able to do the same with nirnhoned? It's harder to reach the cap with reinforced. However, that's clearly because there are more sources of spell penetration than physical penetration. There is no armor passive to match concentration, and no mundus buff to match apprentice.

When ZoS says Nirnhoned is more effective than intended, they clearly mean with respect to overall balance.

Here is the problem. Players are posting screenshots and anecdotal experiences that are caused by stacking mitigation not solely due to nirnhoned. People hit for 2k with a 10k tooltip and blame nirnhoned, even though the max reduction from spell resist is 50%... However, setting aside active mitigation such as blocking and health shields, magic damage is mitigated by: damage debuffs --> spell resistance --> damage reduction shields, and in that order. The API only reports active mitigation separately. So, not understanding the various ways damage can be mitigated over the cap, some people automatically assume the rest of the reduction is due to spell resists and blame nirnhoned. They blame nirnhoned because that is the most prominent, relatively recent change in the meta.

The latest changes in the meta are all magicka based. Over the last month, DK, Templar and Sorc magicka builds have seen a huge resurgence. I even see a few magicka NBs. They rely on soaking up damage while dishing 5-12k crits even on capped nirnhoned, which beats the standard high weapon damage specs easily. Granted, ZoS has also said that they are going to make it so that abilities like whip don't go through roll dodge. However, right now, if you PvP, you know that magicka builds are doing pretty well. The biggest problem I see is lack of diversity.

Some magicka players posting here probably think that ZoS is going to change the way nirnhoned works so that they suddenly hit everyone for 10k minimum across the board. I don't put it past ZoS to make that mistake, but I really doubt it's going to happen. Likely ZoS will change the way Nirnhoned increases resists so that it has diminishing returns, but people will still be able to hit the 50% mitigation cap by using sets like Nkulas. They will have to give up a little more to reach the cap, similarly to armor. A damage increase will come from spell penetration having a greater impact. However, you will still see low damage on mitigation stackers.

I play both ends. I play a VR14, geared NB and a VR14 geared Sorc. I hit less hard on the sorc, but outside of 1V1's, my time on target is much higher and I can backload a ton of damage. In 1v1's, shielding is enough to compete. Sorcs really stand in the way of the viability of other classes using magicka. So, I wasn't surprised to hear that ZoS is implementing a way to deal with shield stacking. I think it's much more likely that this change will get botched, leaving most of the sorcs posting here to regret complaining about resists...

"You can reach 50% physical damage mitigation with reinforced", has this been verified/tested????
I would really like to know.

Also, the thing with maces, or whatever the weapon is called, is that "armor pen" or "spell pen", because as a magic user I have no need for armor pen. #magicnb

Wreuntzylla

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

It is almost impossible to not use some broken stuff, because literally E V E R Y T H I N G is broken.

Maybe nothing is broken if everything is broken?

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

It's harder to reach the cap with reinforced. However, that's clearly because there are more sources of spell penetration than physical penetration. There is no armor passive to match concentration, and no mundus buff to match apprentice.

Did you know DW maces give 33k armor penetration? Even a hard-capped heavy armor build has basically no mitigation if he isnt blocking the attacks.

As for the magicka vs phyical damage, when they nerf nirnhoned they should further reduce the damage in the Cryodiil Battle buff to increase the TTK. If they dont reduce the damage the Prox Detonations will insta-wipe entire groups if 15-20 people cast it at the same time.

Yes, I'm aware of the twin blade and blunt passive providing 100% penetration. It has been known for quite a while. It's actually worse than that, you can equip a single mace and use a different weapon type in the other slot and still penetrate 100% of armor.

It really has only been a problem with tornado spam zergs, or players who have vigor (because 2h provides the only other decent stamina based heal). Also, the most popular DPS builds use the 15% extra damage to low health players from executioner and the huge DoT ticks you can get on low health players from poison injection (kind of like stacking executes). So, alot of players don't find the tradeoff a good one. Though, I expect that when they move vigor to a lower alliance rank this will spin out of control.

Dual wield has all sorts of weirdness going on. For example, it currently boosts spell power by about 300. I kind of like that weirdness, though, because you get to see dual wielding magicka users in PvP. Pretty lore friendly, and perhaps they should leave it alone.

Wreuntzylla

kaithuzar wrote: »

"You can reach 50% physical damage mitigation with reinforced", has this been verified/tested????
I would really like to know.

Also, the thing with maces, or whatever the weapon is called, is that "armor pen" or "spell pen", because as a magic user I have no need for armor pen. #magicnb

Yes, you can go over the physical resist cap. There are posts about it, either here or in another forum.

I put together a build while testing different things out. High armor doesn't provide enough sustain or damage to make it worthwhile for small group PvP.

I still use the werewolf rings from the build in specific situations. The two piece bonus, plus physical resist enchants on the rings, makes a noticeable difference. I swap them out now and again for the two shadow walker rings I use for weapon damage on my NB. When using the werewolf rings, the weapon damage loss is not terribly noticeable, although the stamina cost reduction loss hurts.

With respect to the mace question, it bypasses armor. Interesting question as to whether it also sets aside the spell resistance provided by the armor.

EDIT: Realize that ZoS has incorrect tooltips with respect to some physical resistance related abilities and buffs. Armor raises both physical resistance and spell resistance, while physical resistance is just physical resistance. So, last I checked, although my enchants are armor enchants for jewelry, they don't raise spell resistance at all, which means they are physical resistance enchants, not armor enchants.

Makkir

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Septimus_Magna

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Dual wield has all sorts of weirdness going on. For example, it currently boosts spell power by about 300. I kind of like that weirdness, though, because you get to see dual wielding magicka users in PvP. Pretty lore friendly, and perhaps they should leave it alone.

Yeah, quite a lot of sorcs in my guild are running DW to get near 3k spell damage buffed. Personally I really like the Crushing Shock and the normal attacks of the destro staff but I think its cool that multiple weapons are viable. DW has many drawbacks for magicka builds so its not an obvious choice.

barbarian340

is it good for pve? magicka detonation

Zormac

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Inevitable detonation is very easy to block, as you see it 4 sec before you actually have to block. Shadowy disguise + proximity detonation will probably lead to much higher damage numbers as your enemies don't see it comming.

70% crit chance makes shadowy disguise somewhat obsolete.
PvP practically demands Dark Cloak.