Herald of the Tome - Remove Fatecarver

Tannus15

@Zyaneth_Bal banner appears twice in the logs due to being double barred, and it'll be drastically reduced down to 2 per group with this update.

There are 2 major problems with fatecarver imo:

1 - it's single target damage is way too high. it shouldn't be in the same ballpark as elemental weapon or force pulse with good light attack weaving, never mind cliff racer.

2 - you either run dread for spammables, or flail for beam. because of this you can't use beam for trash / cleave and runeblades for single target. arcanist is locked into a build due to the morph of flail that they take.

Simply put, arcanist doesn't have enough crux builder or spender damage options. the class mechanic is a nice idea, but it fell woefully short on options. It needs to be able to use non class spammables as crux generators and non class dots as crux spenders to make the whole thing more dynamic and interesting, instead of locking you into only 3 skills.

NoSoup

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

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.

Well the issue here is Light Attack weaving. I think its always been inferred that the damage from fatecarver sits above the "base damage" of other skills due to it being a channel and the "missed" dps from missing 4 LAs over the duration. A fairer assessment when comparing the damage to other skills would be to include the LA attack damage in the equation for the skills that allow to fire off a LA every second.

It's still super gross damage and far above any other options.

And that framing creates like an implicit penalty to anyone who isn't at the level of 100% weaving efficiency, which describes like 99.9% of ESO players.

Which I think was the very reason we saw fatecarver and Velothi fidn their way into the game, to give the big chunk of players that can't effectively weave a means to compete with the players that can. And now, of course we're seeing the over the top calls for them to be heavily nerfed or removed from the game.

Prior to subclassing, this would have pushed eveyone back to "well I guess I just have to try to get better at weaving" because of a lack of alternatives. However, with subclassing here now, what will happen will just be a movement to the next closest abilities because it no longer matters if the class is lacking in other areas. Thus what I said above, nerf fatecarver too much or remove it and everyone will move to Jabs and we'll have the same agruments appear about Jabs. Then the same treatment will happen and everyone will move to the next option, Firey Breath.... Because with subclassing those abilities can all be made now to put out equal or better DPS than force pulse with near perfect weaving and the average player does not want to have to master LA weaving just to be "good enough".

GloatingSwine

NoSoup wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

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.

Well the issue here is Light Attack weaving. I think its always been inferred that the damage from fatecarver sits above the "base damage" of other skills due to it being a channel and the "missed" dps from missing 4 LAs over the duration. A fairer assessment when comparing the damage to other skills would be to include the LA attack damage in the equation for the skills that allow to fire off a LA every second.

It's still super gross damage and far above any other options.

And that framing creates like an implicit penalty to anyone who isn't at the level of 100% weaving efficiency, which describes like 99.9% of ESO players.

Which I think was the very reason we saw fatecarver and Velothi fidn their way into the game, to give the big chunk of players that can't effectively weave a means to compete with the players that can. And now, of course we're seeing the over the top calls for them to be heavily nerfed or removed from the game.

Prior to subclassing, this would have pushed eveyone back to "well I guess I just have to try to get better at weaving" because of a lack of alternatives. However, with subclassing here now, what will happen will just be a movement to the next closest abilities because it no longer matters if the class is lacking in other areas. Thus what I said above, nerf fatecarver too much or remove it and everyone will move to Jabs and we'll have the same agruments appear about Jabs. Then the same treatment will happen and everyone will move to the next option, Firey Breath.... Because with subclassing those abilities can all be made now to put out equal or better DPS than force pulse with near perfect weaving and the average player does not want to have to master LA weaving just to be "good enough".

The other side to that though is that even players who can weave perfectly 100% of the time in their sleep don't get to do that to a 22m area. Weaving is almost always single target, almost always at melee range, and doesn't give you a free damage shield.

Fatecarver is a skill for if you don't want to weave, sure, but almost every other comparable skill with weaving will have either no AoE or much smaller AoE, expose you to more danger because you can't keep doing it whilst you move freely out of red circles, not protect you just for doing it, not be charged up by a skill that also heals you and inflicts a unique extra damage debuff just for you (not Minor Vuln that any other class would get), and not be on a skill line where basically every passive is "have free damage and sustain for just pressing your same two buttons".

(Also basically Velothi-ur makes good weaving obsolete for everyone, requiring only an LA tap every now and again to keep ult ticking).

Daoin

drip_fromtheinkwell wrote: »

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.

if you can call making a game 'getting worse' due to fatecarver with the lowest ever 2 month period of daily players in 7 years which had nothing to do with fatecarver, that then it just shows how desperate you are to get blames placed elswhere. i guess you found your place and theres no point in anyone else ever telling you there are other causes even if almost all regular gameplay becomes much better when you find an arcanist in your group even now (what you suggest is the continuation and another start to a complete annihilation to access some elements of the game for some players or for some to even want to continue to play arcanist on the whole), Arcanists are far from invincible and to play the role requires skill too. before subclassing its not even like the other classes where not fun to play alongside the arcanist, truth is for alot of people arcanist was just more fun, but if players still judge there own gameplay level from a class they do not enjoy just do the right thing and rather than try to hurt it just leave it alone. even the term subclassing agrees with me there due to fact all it does is make maxing up a character harder for new players. thank goodness the arcanist is still alive ! i was in a grooup the other day with 2 HA players in a vet dungeoon but thier damage was pretty low still and instead of just plodding along (myself having been thier a million times) the tank all of a sudden went into a wild rage about it telling then to stop playing and delete game too because they were over 2k cp. i think the postion you are coming from is not directly related to this single event but likely indirectly is, ofcourse later after a chat we befriended each other he sent apologies and now is welcome to ask for arcanist dd support instead of raging when in a vet dungeon if theres room in the party (not arcanist because its a great damage dealer but just because it's more fun to play than other characters most of the time) its not hard to make such a judgement once all classes are maxed with enough skill points to subclass them all in a few days now anyway after release but it was the truth before subcassing too, but fatecarver ? man it was just meant to be a doozy of a skill ...after all scrorepushing and combat metrics add on, was never meant to me the be-all and end-all in eso gameplay anyway and ofcouse there should always be ways available of access to content for players at all skill levels, one big difference between now and 7 years ago is theres nearly nobody left around in-game to say it. i even truly and honestly believe had some players been able to loook past other blazing issues in game while also going forward into subclassing they could have enjoyed what subclassing is eventually but subclassing became a last excuse (or straw) to leave

randconfig

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How about making it an instant cast burst skill instead of a channeled skill.

Tentacular Dread?

CP5

NoSoup wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

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.

Well the issue here is Light Attack weaving. I think its always been inferred that the damage from fatecarver sits above the "base damage" of other skills due to it being a channel and the "missed" dps from missing 4 LAs over the duration. A fairer assessment when comparing the damage to other skills would be to include the LA attack damage in the equation for the skills that allow to fire off a LA every second.

Light attacks are awkward. On the UESP for the base values for the default template characters, a light attack is 48% damage on that scale, so still, empowered fatecarver pulling up 250% damage, other abilities need to pull the bulk of the rest of that damage to close the gap. And, light attacks are single target, and capped so they can't pull higher numbers as you make for a better build, meaning that the stronger the build, the more skills will outshine light attacks.

For more information, Focused Aim, the morph of snipe I use on my sorc, always applies sundered, which is 8% damage per proc. Meaning that at maximum hawk eye stats, giving bow light attacks and snipe a buff of 25% damage, we have:

Focused Aim: 118% buffed to 147.5 by hawk eye
Light attack: 48% buffed to 60% by hawk eye
Sundered: 8%

For a total of 215.5% single target. Fatecarver is pulling 252% against upwards of 6 targets with the slight downtime of generating 2 crux with flail, which is an above average aoe spammable, and at a much more managable cost. If ZOS hadn't nerfed banner to prevent full crux regeneration during the beam, this would be even more out of line, and is where my issue is. If a fairly strong single target skill can't out damage an aoe beast, why bother using it?

Lebensf0rm

I don't think Fatecarver needs to be removed or even tweaked extensively. If people want to see less of Fatecarver in PvE (which is totally fair), ZOS needs to provide higher APM options that can roughly keep up with Fatecarver in prolonged multi-target encounters and far exceed it in single-target scenarios. Storm Calling, Ardent Flame, and even Animal Companions could easily be tweaked to make higher sustained AoE and single target damage possible.

Navaac223

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

I don't think Fatecarver needs to be removed or even tweaked extensively. If people want to see less of Fatecarver in PvE (which is totally fair), ZOS needs to provide higher APM options that can roughly keep up with Fatecarver in prolonged multi-target encounters and far exceed it in single-target scenarios. Storm Calling, Ardent Flame, and even Animal Companions could easily be tweaked to make higher sustained AoE and single target damage possible.

I still think nerfing fatecarver is by far the best option : go ahead, try to buff other classes' AoE damage without it backfiring into making beam builds even more op.

You managed to do it ? Nice ! Now look at every patch note since u35 and think about the probability that zos will actually manage to do it too (or, crazier idea, listen to your suggestions)

I can't understand how people still defend this : fatecarver allows people to burn through adds while pulling more (or, in the best case, very slightly less) single target damage than builds that require button pressing. Arcs are single-handedly making end game trials a joke. Just delete fatecarver already !

softyoung

Before Arcanist, if a new player asked for a class recommendation, I'd recommend sorc/nb more, and necro less, but just pick the one you like.
After Arcanist, I just recommended Arcanist.
After subclassing, it became difficult to recommend the game, as it forced players to level up multiple characters as their ultimate goal.

Daoin

Navaac223 wrote: »

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

I don't think Fatecarver needs to be removed or even tweaked extensively. If people want to see less of Fatecarver in PvE (which is totally fair), ZOS needs to provide higher APM options that can roughly keep up with Fatecarver in prolonged multi-target encounters and far exceed it in single-target scenarios. Storm Calling, Ardent Flame, and even Animal Companions could easily be tweaked to make higher sustained AoE and single target damage possible.

I still think nerfing fatecarver is by far the best option : go ahead, try to buff other classes' AoE damage without it backfiring into making beam builds even more op.

You managed to do it ? Nice ! Now look at every patch note since u35 and think about the probability that zos will actually manage to do it too (or, crazier idea, listen to your suggestions)

I can't understand how people still defend this : fatecarver allows people to burn through adds while pulling more (or, in the best case, very slightly less) single target damage than builds that require button pressing. Arcs are single-handedly making end game trials a joke. Just delete fatecarver already !

but just think, 12 new players may actually make it to end game content in the next few years with fatecarver left alone otherwise best case scenerio is a few more light attack weaving jedi running around tamriel, because somehow a few decide to put up with more of the constant tweaks and changes to accomodate old players, and while theres not really any competition to end game players already then removing fatecarver is certainly one way to be sure there never will be again simply because one of the last remaining sources of fun playing would have vanished again, even now eso only survives because not every gamer loves FPS games and there not many other mmorpg games to play with no signs things will improve in the genre anytime soon. even subclassing deserves credit now with eso's current playerbase

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

It would actually be funny to move the beam into the curative runeform tree and merge it with the healing beam. One morph damages, one morph heals.

Actually though I think in general if ZOS added some sort of 'class based' one button dps thing similar to wow this would actually help the low end playerbase way more than any of the recent heavy attack build / arc builds and would allow for skills to be tuned around the top % for gameplay. (as the low end would have a reliable alternative)

MJallday

another nerf beam thread. yay!

honestly. please leave the beam alone. its fun, a signficant amount of people love it and have adapted to it

remove the beam, you remove joy from the game. and this game is not in a place where it can afford to remove joy from the game right now IMO

you would be better off buffing other skills to compensate, not killing fun.

Operativ

MJallday wrote: »

another nerf beam thread. yay!

honestly. please leave the beam alone. its fun, a signficant amount of people love it and have adapted to it

remove the beam, you remove joy from the game. and this game is not in a place where it can afford to remove joy from the game right now IMO

you would be better off buffing other skills to compensate, not killing fun.

No offense, but to each their own definition of fun. Beam just doesn't fit the MMORPG title, that's all we're saying.

If you want an overpowered fantasy with entire room clears, go for a Horde Shooter (e.g. Warframe). They intentionally don't care about balance over there as part of the game design.

In ESO, however? Balance must be in place. And choosing between balancing all of the game ("buffing"), or taking care of one troublemaker ("beam") is an obvious choice - Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is often the answer.

Daoin

Operativ wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

another nerf beam thread. yay!

honestly. please leave the beam alone. its fun, a signficant amount of people love it and have adapted to it

remove the beam, you remove joy from the game. and this game is not in a place where it can afford to remove joy from the game right now IMO

you would be better off buffing other skills to compensate, not killing fun.

No offense, but to each their own definition of fun. Beam just doesn't fit the MMORPG title, that's all we're saying.

If you want an overpowered fantasy with entire room clears, go for a Horde Shooter (e.g. Warframe). They intentionally don't care about balance over there as part of the game design.

In ESO, however? Balance must be in place. And choosing between balancing all of the game ("buffing"), or taking care of one troublemaker ("beam") is an obvious choice - Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is often the answer.

yay to the developers then for selling us the update to subclassing as a satisfaction to players power fantasies, beam did not make them think that was a good idea, obviously players did

MJallday

Absolutely - defintion of fun is subjective.

i don't understand your statement "Beam just doesn't fit the MMORPG title, that's all we're saying."
so you'll need to explain that one. it makes no sense to me .

By the way, you can do entire room clears with other skills - its just that the beam is easy. And i think thats where people have the problem. its easy.

I agree with your point that balance is key - but destroying one thing because it works and is easy - is a foolhardy approach.

All im saying is make other skills easy too.

Operativ

MJallday wrote: »

All im saying is make other skills easy too.

Perhaps "easy" is not the best idea. An ideal game is "easy to understand, yet hard to master". What the beam achieves, is that it's easy to reach the master-level of damage dealing & room clearing with very little effort.

By effort, I mean the time spent on playing & learning the game and its mechanics (intricate or otherwise), as well as fine-tuning your builds (and even trying out handmade, obscure builds), etc.

If everything resolves to simply being "easy", rather than "approachable", then ESO will get boring really quickly, and lose out on a ton of variety. I hope you understand what I mean with this, for the MMORPG longevity.

Renato90085

main problem is zos use beam meta design content
and other skill bad too much
looked Siphoning
this line have heal and dmg too ,but it single dmg and a healer line ,zos still say:you cant good in heal and dmg same time
so Siphoning skill bad than other spam 30%
i hope beam do this like this or swap line go arc healer line,it not hunt there player who think this skill is funny

Veinblood1965

Personally I think it all should just be left alone. Many of us are sick and tired of taking time to build a build learn to play it and then BAM here comes a significant change. Just leave things alone for a while.

BananaBender

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Personally I think it all should just be left alone. Many of us are sick and tired of taking time to build a build learn to play it and then BAM here comes a significant change. Just leave things alone for a while.

Things have been alone for far too long already. Arcanist has been the best class since its release and it's high time we get something else into the game.

BretonMage

Bring other skill lines up to the level of the Herald line. Players who like Fatecarver can continue using it, and those who don't can switch to something they prefer without the DPS loss.

Lumenn

Woah, deja Vu! You could sub every "arcanist" and "beam" with oakensoul and lightning HA and this discussion looks familiar. NERF SORCS!

Sure, let's nerf beam. But restore oak to it's original stats and lightning tics back to their prenerfed state.

I will never understand calling for nerfs because a playstyle seems too easy for a particular set of players. I can weave just fine most days despite my age. Doesn't mean it should be the only way forward.

Whatever anyone wants to call it, "Gatekeeping" "King of the Hill" "Crabs in a Bucket" mentality, we keep grinding at everything thats on top until it's gone, then on to the next thing. Eventually we're gonna have nothing.

preevious

MJallday wrote: »

another nerf beam thread. yay!

honestly. please leave the beam alone. its fun, a signficant amount of people love it and have adapted to it

remove the beam, you remove joy from the game. and this game is not in a place where it can afford to remove joy from the game right now IMO

you would be better off buffing other skills to compensate, not killing fun.

people don't use it because it's fun. You included.
People use it because it is overpowered.

If it is nerfed, it'll still be equally as fun to use, but magically, people will stop using it.
So, let's not remove fatecraver, that's too much. Let's nerf it to put it on par with everything else.

And no, we can't really buff everything else, because damn .. power creep is already an issue.

Daoin

ignore it mate, that usually makes things go away (along with these posts) depends on whos hands its in how powerful it can be but is obviously too much for some of the community so...just ignore it ! besides HA builds need the attention right now and the forum could score alot of credit back with players if that justly gets some well deserved attention right now. i am not going crazy and surely some players realize all the finger pointing at fatecarver becomes a bit of a joke in the end, besides stop wasting brain power on the fine numbers at the top and buff back up the HA build, just do it ! because one more sentence like 'your heavy attack build is **** and does nothing' or anti HA sign in the group maker is going to make me pull my own hair out, buff it for all of the mentally right reasons

Lebensf0rm

Navaac223 wrote: »

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

I don't think Fatecarver needs to be removed or even tweaked extensively. If people want to see less of Fatecarver in PvE (which is totally fair), ZOS needs to provide higher APM options that can roughly keep up with Fatecarver in prolonged multi-target encounters and far exceed it in single-target scenarios. Storm Calling, Ardent Flame, and even Animal Companions could easily be tweaked to make higher sustained AoE and single target damage possible.

I still think nerfing fatecarver is by far the best option : go ahead, try to buff other classes' AoE damage without it backfiring into making beam builds even more op.

You managed to do it ? Nice ! Now look at every patch note since u35 and think about the probability that zos will actually manage to do it too (or, crazier idea, listen to your suggestions)

I can't understand how people still defend this : fatecarver allows people to burn through adds while pulling more (or, in the best case, very slightly less) single target damage than builds that require button pressing. Arcs are single-handedly making end game trials a joke. Just delete fatecarver already !

Fatecarver's interaction with Arc's crux mechanic is what makes it so good. An easily accessible 99% damage increase would make any skill incredibly strong. Fatecarver feels so overtuned in the current meta because Arcs are able to chain 3 crux beams faster than ever due to passive crux generation from banner, which is being addressed. I get that having such a low APM option be optimal for damage is frustrating for high-end raiders (including myself), but Fatecarver has cemented itself in the game: dialing it back would put off a lot of players. I hope that ZOS sees how real Fatecarver fatigue is, and responds with a solution that acknowledges that "play the way you want" and "you belong" include players who want and can execute more demanding rotations.

Buffing AoE damage from other classes is actually pretty easy to do via class sets from IA (most of which are terrible at this point and could use buffs) and damage bonuses from passives that Fatecarver can't activate. For instance, Ardent Flame's Searing Heat passive could be reworked to increase cleave by making burning enemies near each other take more flame damage and/or do their burning damage to each other. Storm Calling could be tweaked by giving it a Burning Light analogue that creates sparks of chain lightning after building stacks with physical or shock damage. I won't go into specifics for IA sets, but I think it's fair to say that Aerie's Cry, Monolith of Storms, Aetheric Lancer, and Wrathsun are all essentially useless, unlike Corpseburster, which is excellent depending on the encounter (and does not play nicely with Fatecarver).

YandereGirlfriend

I think that two things can both be true: 1) Fatecarver (and Heavy Attacks before it) has been good for onboarding new raiders into what would likely be an incredibly stagnant and declining raiding scene, and, 2) an essentially accessibility option being the best-in-slot playstyle is demoralizing for more proficient players and creates little incentives for players to improve at the game.

Some form of mild nerf to Fatecarver is inevitable. It's only a debate as to the form and the magnitude. I personally think that target caps are reprehensible design and should be lifted for both Fatecarver and Jabs. But in exchange, Fatecarver damage needs to be reigned-in, especially in single-target scenarios. Nerfing passive Crux-gen is a good start. Reverting the previous +8% damage buff would also be good. But that only gets us back to launch-day Beam power, which was still too strong. Meaning that one more mild nerf is still required.

Do that plus greatly buffing other class cleave options (and single-target spammables) and you have found balance that everyone can enjoy.

preevious

Yes. Indeed.
We could buff jabs, for instance, or reverting the change of tri-focus and make it so that all HA ticks are multi-target.
We could also buff most AOE and increase their ranges.

Howerver, I do fear that it would trivialise most encounters..to much cleave everywhere means having trash packs or boss adds is no longer a mechanic.
I think a nerf of beam woud be the best option. Game should stay a bit challenging.

MincMincMinc

Coming from PvP I hardly see the skill. Nor have I ever used it.

You could make the skill only hit the first enemy aimed at. Then instead of consuming the cruxes for damage, cruxes would increase the enemies hit per crux by X amount. Maybe also increase the width of the beam.

So the cruxes essentially let the skill turn into more and more of a cleave instead of making it 2x the damage of any other skill.

Lebensf0rm

preevious wrote: »

Yes. Indeed.
We could buff jabs, for instance, or reverting the change of tri-focus and make it so that all HA ticks are multi-target.
We could also buff most AOE and increase their ranges.

Howerver, I do fear that it would trivialise most encounters..to much cleave everywhere means having trash packs or boss adds is no longer a mechanic.
I think a nerf of beam woud be the best option. Game should stay a bit challenging.

I think that the trivialization of content is an inevitability, even with healthy, incremental power creep. I don't think that's a bad thing, though, given that ESO is a game in which the most proficient players distinguish themselves with scores rather than titles: what's challenging in ESO isn't clearing hard modes or even clearing them without dying, but rather doing so quickly. The challenge of going faster is going to be present for a long time, even with the game's oldest and easiest trials like the Crags.

Moreover, there are ways to adjust newer content to damage creep that aren't just giving bosses more health and/or adding immunity phases (which are deservedly almost universally reviled). The Jynorah and Skorkhif fight's debuffs and portal mechs are an excellent example. And even old content can be spiced up in ways that account for the new damage without nerfs to players or buffs to the original content. I'm sure lots of endgame raiders would find a new system that introduces adjusted and augmented versions of old trials and dungeons extremely fun. Even something comparatively low effort like introducing an analogue of WoW's mythic dungeons for old trials/dungeons as a new wing of IA could be an engaging way for old content to still provide a challenge without nerfing players.

YandereGirlfriend

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Yes. Indeed.
We could buff jabs, for instance, or reverting the change of tri-focus and make it so that all HA ticks are multi-target.
We could also buff most AOE and increase their ranges.

Howerver, I do fear that it would trivialise most encounters..to much cleave everywhere means having trash packs or boss adds is no longer a mechanic.
I think a nerf of beam woud be the best option. Game should stay a bit challenging.

I think that the trivialization of content is an inevitability, even with healthy, incremental power creep. I don't think that's a bad thing, though, given that ESO is a game in which the most proficient players distinguish themselves with scores rather than titles: what's challenging in ESO isn't clearing hard modes or even clearing them without dying, but rather doing so quickly. The challenge of going faster is going to be present for a long time, even with the game's oldest and easiest trials like the Crags.

Moreover, there are ways to adjust newer content to damage creep that aren't just giving bosses more health and/or adding immunity phases (which are deservedly almost universally reviled). The Jynorah and Skorkhif fight's debuffs and portal mechs are an excellent example. And even old content can be spiced up in ways that account for the new damage without nerfs to players or buffs to the original content. I'm sure lots of endgame raiders would find a new system that introduces adjusted and augmented versions of old trials and dungeons extremely fun. Even something comparatively low effort like introducing an analogue of WoW's mythic dungeons for old trials/dungeons as a new wing of IA could be an engaging way for old content to still provide a challenge without nerfing players.

Re-vamping older raids would be a great time to add the missing Perfected versions of those sets as well.

Rkindaleft

I don't agree with removing the skill completely, but I don't know why they don't just make it comparable to other spammables, that should've happened a long time ago. When you compare it to Jabs, or Whip, Fatecarver fundamentally ignores the design set for other spammable skills.

1) It's the easiest spammable to use in the whole game and compared to other classes/subclassed builds is much lower APM (outside of HA)
2) One morph gives you a 10k+ shield, meaning you can be lazy and eat things that would typically kill a DPS who isn't using it
3) Skill is fully ranged
4) 100% cleave damage to SIX targets
5) Extremely high ST damage for a spammable skill

This isn't going to go down well in these forums, but while I think accessibility options should be viable and even powerful, they should never be meta because it makes "skill based" gameplay redundant. Every time we talk about Fatecarver we're basically having the same arguments people made 2.5 years ago when Oakensoul Sorc was like 80% of the DPS you saw in trials (if you paid attention to logs this was true).

Fatecarver has been nerfed like 3 times and it's still overpowered, that should tell you plenty about how overtuned it was/is (although this has to do in part to Subclassing).

Fatecarver at minimum needs the Jabs treatment, you can keep it's ST damage potential if you must but it shouldn't provide 100% cleave damage to all targets (like other spammables) or you can keep it's 100% cleave damage potential but adjust the damage down to make it a bit closer to other AoE spammables.