Need Help understand the traits for Weapons

FoxPT · February 2015

Hello ESO community, probably this is a noob question but i definitely don't understand some of the traits on weapons and what exactly they do, so i list below the ones i have question how exactly this work.

In my case i use 2 weapons with Monumental Epic Glyph
- Flame Staff with 48 Fire Damage from the Glyph Enchantment
- Restoration Staff with 36 Magic Damage and recovers 16 Magicka

WEAPON TRAITS

CHARGED - Increases enchantment charges by x
So what enchantment charges ?, what value to begin the enchantment charges have?
So that means that in the Flame Staff i increase 200% the 48 fire damage? and in the Restoration Staff i increase 200% the 36 Magic Damage and 16 Recovery Magika? Because in that case what INFUSED Trait increases with the 17% weapon enchantment?

POWERED - Reduces the cool down of Weapon Enchantments by x
There is no referral in the weapon stats about a cool down in the enchantments, what is the beginning cool down of the weapon enchantment?

WEIGHTED - Increase weapon Attack Speed by x
The weapon as a speed attack? Where we can see the initial attack speed of a weapon

So any help regarding this traits that help me enlight this questions i tk u in advance.

Fox
Wizard from Mages Guild

Aeratus · February 2015

Charged - increases the number of enchantment charges that you have each time the weapon is fully recharged. Enchantments have a limited number of charges before you have to recharge it with a soul gem.

Charged does not increase the damage magnitude of the 48 fire damage. Charged only increases the number of times that the 48 fire damage can hit before your weapon enchantment runs out of charges.

Powered - each weapon enchantment has a cooldown of 4 seconds, as far as I know (this is not stated anywhere in the game, however). So powered reduces that cooldown.

Weighted - I've heard two theories as to what this does:

1. the first theory is that weighted increases the speed of the light/heavy attack animation (similar to the NB haste skill in 1.5).

2. the second theory is that weighted reduces the cooldown period between successive light/heavy attack animation.

The practical difference between the two above theories is that (1) would help in animation cancelling, whereas (2) would be useless in animation cancelling. Personally, I believe that (1) is correct, but I'm not sure. Please note that the duration of animations, especially that of light/heavy attacks, is never given anywhere in the game. Some active skills have a "cast time" property, but cast time is not directly the same as animation length.

Nestor · February 2015

FoxPT wrote: »

So any help regarding this traits that help me enlight this questions i tk u in advance.

Precise and Sharpened are the ones you want to use on a Weapon, Training while leveling is good too. Precise increases your Critical Strike Chance, although not sure how 1.6 will affect that. Impenetrable is a foil to Precise and most people in PvP use some Impenetrable on their armor, so Precise is probably better in PvE.

Sharpened helps you penetrate armor resist, so that may be the one to use in PvP more so than others.

I have never bothered with Weighted (animation canceling and I never string together two Light or Heavy attacks) or Charged (soul gems are a dime a dozen, and you can use lower level gems to charge if you have any laying around). Powered is hit or miss in my mind as I never rely on the extra damage from an Enchantment, it does not proc that often in a short duration fight.

DeLindsay · February 2015

ICD of Weapon Enchants is 8 seconds not 4. It takes Powered at Legendary plus the Crafted set Torug's Pact 5pc in order to have the Weapon Enchant with a 100% uptime since the Glyph itself only lasts 5 seconds.

Weighted as far as I know is still not working properly even as recent as 1.6.3 PTS.

FoxPT · February 2015

Tk u @Aeratus, @Nestor and @DeLindsay your answers help me understand a little bit what that traits really do.

Regarding Charged Trait it makes sense, its the number of Charges that u can use in your weapon i never look for that part of the weapon like that i am used to charge it every time i see that she is empty or almost empty and never remember to count how much charges a weapon can make gone try to figure that out now during play time but if Charge does that then i agree with @Nestor soul gems is a better way then use the trait.

Powered i imagine that does that "reduce the cool down of the enchantment" but since the weapons or the enchantments in game don't state that, people cant know if using it it good or not. I don't understand the concept of a game when u have a "Trait" to improve something but you don't know what your are improving. @DeLindsay how you get that info of the 8 sec and Thorugs Pact Set?

Regarding Weighted if that only changes the animation speed without improving the number of hits you can make as mentioned by @DeLindsay is worth nothing really using it

I agree with you @Nestor regarding the Precise Trait i use it in my Flame Staff to improve Damage but i don't use Sharpened since i don't do PVP and i use in my Restoration Staff The Infuse so i can improve the stat in Magika return mainly.

This is my personal opinion off course but i think a good game as ESO is should have a more importance regarding Traits, players should have a difficult time choosing what they wanna put in armor and weapons. In ESO with this Traits that don't happen in matter of fact you have 3 maximum that makes some difference using it or not.

A side note exploration and training is good Traits for when people are leveling makes a better performance in leveling a char but in the other side since most of people don't craft gear during leveling and use the armor that drops during the leveling people don't take advantage of this traits really.

DeLindsay · February 2015

If Weighted was working properly I could see it being kind of useful but from a DPS standpoint losing out on 7% Crit (in PvE) would be harsh. In PvP Nirnhoned is another nice option as it boosts your own Spell Resistance as well as giving you SPen. ArPen/SPen were not working properly as of PTS 1.6.1, I don't know if that is fixed yet. Defending is another nice Trait for PvP and pretty much the only Trait for PvE Tanks.

Training and Exploration are king while Leveling either the Character or the Skill Tree.

For PvE Precise is vastly superior for Healing to Infused. The additional Magicka return is negligible compared to 7% more Crit. At one point early on Weighted was working with HoT's and some Healers were running that but I don't believe that to be the case anymore.

I cannot remember who did the testing early on (near Launch) and found the ICD of Weapon Glyphs to be 8 seconds but if you do the math, a Legendary Powered Weapon + the 1 second Torug's Pact set bonus brings you from 8 seconds to 4.9 seconds, thus allowing the 5 second Glyph to be kept up 100% so it seems logical that 8 seconds is still the ICD.