As someone who plays neither class but is very familiar with fighting either, how the heck did Sorcerer's Ward get a gentle almost cautious tweak, but Arcanist's got completely steamrolled by the standard and familiar ZOS sledgehammer nerf?

If anything, the other way around would have made more sense.

No consistency in approach makes it truly feel like there are chosen classes for long stretches, while others are supposed to wallow in mediocrity or worse. It seems very intentional in this case.

BasP wrote: »

I realize that this feedback is far too late for U44, but I just noticed that Spear Shards is underpowered at the moment in comparison to the Necromancer's Boneyard. It would be great if Shards, and by extension its morphs, would be buffed in a future patch.

From a mechanical standpoint Spear Shards is pretty similar to Boneyard: both skills cost 2970 Magicka, deal the same DPS in an area over 10 seconds and have a synergy. On top of that, however, Boneyard's damage is increased by 30% when a corpse is consumed (which happens most of the time) and the skill applies Minor Vulnerability.

Hence, I believe that a debuff could be added to Spear Shards as well. It could be a unique debuff similar to Engulfing Flames that makes affected enemies take up to 6% more Magic Damage, for example, or perhaps something like Breach. A decent unique effect would be more fun though.

Blazing Shards has built in immobilise, and helps with burning light procs, so its loaded up pretty decently, and Luminous shards synergie grants both stamina and magicka, which is pretty mych double of any other simmilar synergie (blazing and necrotic orb). So yeah I dont see it getting updated since its in really good place already.

Uniqe magic damage debuff would be nice on Dark Flare (5%), since nobody really use that after empower rework, and defile on it is pretty trash so magick damage debuff could replace it and everyone would be happy about it, while more powerful unique magic damage selfbuff (10%) could be placed on solar barage instead of class damage buff.

This way Dark Flare could find some use for pve support, and solar barrage would be nice to buff up magical soul/ele blade/puncturing sweep/radiant destruction (which may require some nerfs if said changes would be implemented)/ purifing light/ cresent sweep - pretty much whole magplars arsenal.

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

I realize that this feedback is far too late for U44, but I just noticed that Spear Shards is underpowered at the moment in comparison to the Necromancer's Boneyard. It would be great if Shards, and by extension its morphs, would be buffed in a future patch.

From a mechanical standpoint Spear Shards is pretty similar to Boneyard: both skills cost 2970 Magicka, deal the same DPS in an area over 10 seconds and have a synergy. On top of that, however, Boneyard's damage is increased by 30% when a corpse is consumed (which happens most of the time) and the skill applies Minor Vulnerability.

Hence, I believe that a debuff could be added to Spear Shards as well. It could be a unique debuff similar to Engulfing Flames that makes affected enemies take up to 6% more Magic Damage, for example, or perhaps something like Breach. A decent unique effect would be more fun though.

Blazing Shards has built in immobilise, and helps with burning light procs, so its loaded up pretty decently, and Luminous shards synergie grants both stamina and magicka, which is pretty mych double of any other simmilar synergie (blazing and necrotic orb). So yeah I dont see it getting updated since its in really good place already.

Uniqe magic damage debuff would be nice on Dark Flare (5%), since nobody really use that after empower rework, and defile on it is pretty trash so magick damage debuff could replace it and everyone would be happy about it, while more powerful unique magic damage selfbuff (10%) could be placed on solar barage instead of class damage buff.

This way Dark Flare could find some use for pve support, and solar barrage would be nice to buff up magical soul/ele blade/puncturing sweep/radiant destruction (which may require some nerfs if said changes would be implemented)/ purifing light/ cresent sweep - pretty much whole magplars arsenal.

I did think about Blazing Spear as well, but if things are balanced by spreadsheets, Blazing Spear is still lacking compared to both morphs of Boneyard considering it only has two secondary effects instead of three (if we consider Avid Boneyard's ability to self-activate the synergy a tertiary effect). Both abilities activate passives, so that doesn't really count imho.



I mean, if the skill was amazing already, why do Templars stop using it as soon as a target is below 40% health? A nice (de)buff might make it worthwhile to use it for longer, similar to Solar Barrage.

That said, your idea about giving the unique Magic Damage Taken debuff to Dark Flare is nice too... I have to admit that I only suggested adding it to Spear Shards (and by extension Blazing Spear) so that I could kill trash mobs in vVH even faster on my Magplar considering that it would then buff subsequent casts of the ability, as well as Sweeps.

BasP wrote: »

I did think about Blazing Spear as well, but if things are balanced by spreadsheets, Blazing Spear is still lacking compared to both morphs of Boneyard considering it only has two secondary effects instead of three (if we consider Avid Boneyard's ability to self-activate the synergy a tertiary effect). Both abilities activate passives, so that doesn't really count imho.



I mean, if the skill was amazing already, why do Templars stop using it as soon as a target is below 40% health? A nice (de)buff might make it worthwhile to use it for longer, similar to Solar Barrage.

That said, your idea about giving the unique Magic Damage Taken debuff to Dark Flare is nice too... I have to admit that I only suggested adding it to Spear Shards (and by extension Blazing Spear) so that I could kill trash mobs in vVH even faster on my Magplar considering that it would then buff subsequent casts of the ability, as well as Sweeps.

Templars would still drop everything on 40% health targets, because beam is that crazy, and not catsing every gcd will lose you dps. Spears also have their damage frontloaded which adds an ability to spam them for AoE bursts, which you cant do with boneyard.

On the other hand, it would be nice if it would deal 30% aditional damage on some condition, like to targets thats affected by yours purifing light/PoTL or procing burning light on targets inside its AoE would increse its damage done by 30%, that would be cool.

Edit: After thinking for a second...
Procing burning light could aply a stack of holy light to a templar. Each stack of holy light increase your next aedric spear ability damage by 30%. That would buff all of aedric spears abilities, without buffing overtuned beam. And since burning light procs on everything, this change would breathe some class identity back into it without taking away from it.

Also it could have a pretty sick visuals like:
1 stacks: your arms starts to burn with holy light;
2 stacks: your forearms starts to burn;
3 stack: your whole arms burn up to a shoulders.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Spear Shards should have the bi-sustain mechanic present in all morphs and then Luminous should provide the bi-sustain synergy as something that can be repeatedly hit, a la Undaunted Orbs.

It remains actually bewildering that Undaunted Orbs, a generic skill, is like a straight-up upgrade over a core class ability.

I also favor a named debuff being given to the damage morph... but unless every other class is getting a unique debuff at some point (which, to be clear, would be a good move, because it's absurd that only DKs currently feature this), then it probably shouldn't be off of the Major/Minor system.

Yeah also was thinking about that, but with the way they done banners, thereis now less options for class uniqe debuffs.

DKs have 6% fire damage.
Sorcs should have 6% lightning damage obviously on a lightning flood.
NBs mark target could have 4% martial (desease/bleed/phys/poison) damage.
Necros should have 1% damage increase per 10% missing health debuff on a targets hit with the sythe
Templars - 6% magic damage on dark flare/barrage.
Wardens - 6% ice damage on impaling shards.
Arcs - 8% status damage increase avaliable for whole group on abyssal ink.

Please, please, please take the taunt off at least one of the morphs for the Templar's charge. Tanks in this forum have said they don't like the ability because it takes them away from the rest of their players. As a non-tank, with three (three!) separate templar characters (what can I say, I love them, especially for their (old) charge), this change totally eviscerates my play style. All my damage dealing templars use it to always be in the thick of the action. Now they are constrained to run after the boss as opposed to charging over.

I'd just like to say that Quality of life Downgrades" are not a good way to nerf skills. I'm talking of course about turning Cloak into a toggle. Toggles should not be used for rapid changes of state in situations where lag is at play at all, but especially not if the unreliability is compounded by the lethal consequences of remaining in the wrong state for mere seconds. I can appreciate the toggle may have seemed like a neat idea for a bit but I hope the time and effort that was invested won't get in the way of seeing it doesn't survive contact with reality.

Even though U44 has gone live, I couldn't resist leaving some more feedback about Wardens... I remembered that the U42 Patch Notes stated that "We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, Animal Companions, so we can slowly look at shifting passive damage, such as Piercing Cold and the density of Glacial Presence, out of their tanking focused skill line."

It occurred to me that numerous changes have been made to the Winter's Embrace skill line since that update, while I believe that the only change that has been made to the AC skill line was U44's Feral Guardian bug fix. When it comes to PvE, I believe the Warden's single target damage is okay (though it's lower than before due to the Maelstrom 2H nerf), but the class is lacking AOE damage a bit. Therefore, perhaps any future changes to the AC skills could improve the AOE damage of the class? I don't have any well thought out ideas myself, but came up with these in a couple of minutes (so I'm sure the developers could do better).

Feral Guardian (and both morphs)

• At the moment the bear "sometimes swipes all enemies in front of it". I think that it might be better if all of its attacks, including the Ultimate, dealt damage to multiple enemies though. At least the bear would then deal at least a bit of AOE damage consistently.

Swarm

• Base skill: Perhaps it would be nice if Growing Swarm's AOE damage would be added to the base skill, the radius would be increased to 6 meters, and it afflicted all enemies in its radius with Minor Vulnerability instead of only the original target.
• Fetcher Infection: It could inherit the aforementioned changes and add the 50% increased damage every second cast.
• Growing Swarm: It could inherit Swarm's changes, but the radius could then be increased to 9 meters and the skill could have a higher chance to apply the Hemorrhaging status effect or something.

Advanced Species

• Though this doesn't necessarily help the Warden's AOE damage specifically, you could add a small, maybe 1% or 2%, "increased damage done to monsters for each Animal Companion ability slotted" to the passive, seeing as the increase to Critical Damage is relatively useless in end-game content. It could even be "damage done with class skills..." to make the revised passive less strong.

Of course skills outside of the AC skill line could still be altered too.

• Arctic Blast: The range could be increased to 8m. And seeing as the heal is pretty useless now, in my opinion it could just as well be replaced with an effect that deals additional damage. I believe I remember someone suggesting adding Execute scaling to the skill a while ago? That seems nice.
• Winter's Revenge: Maybe the "Destruction Staff" requirement for the additional 30% damage could be dropped? Though that would increase the DPS difference between the 'meta' Wardens and Staff/Staff enjoyers even more, so I'm not actually sure if this change would be good.
• Bursting Vines: Okay, this idea is pretty weird, but maybe it would make the skill a bit more useful... "Launch a vine to swing yourself to an enemy, instantly dealing 1603 Poison Damage to them and enemies within 6 meters. Enemies hit take an additional 2050 Poison Damage over 5 seconds. An ally near the vines can activate the Burst synergy, dealing 2812 Poison Damage to all effected enemies."