Soarora wrote: »

Wasn’t the problem because people were getting 1-shot in PvP with no time to react? And ZOS never fixed the core problem?

One‑shot in PvP with a lightning staff heavy attack channel? Don’t think so. Sure, I vaguely remember a few noobs trying it in PvP, but they were quickly disillusioned about its actual viability. Anyway, what I’m talking about here is the first two pulses of the channel — which still hit single targets exactly the same as before, just no longer AoE. The single‑target damage hasn’t changed, so this clearly isn’t related to “one‑shotting players.”

No. The issue wasn’t the lightning heavy attacks themselves — those builds were letting more players step into vet and HM content, finally giving us a bigger pool of teammates that were (mostly) capable of pulling their weight. But then, right before the Arcanist expansion, a few forum voices decided that seeing “too many lightnings everywhere” was apparently intolerable, and that low‑APM players didn’t “deserve” that much power… and ZOS happily nerfed it. We lost quite a few players.

And what did those who paid for the expansion immediately get instead? The green beam. A straight‑up replacement. Same role, same purpose — only now it does more damage, easier, adds a shield, and runs at an even lower APM. Beams everywhere, bravo 😆

This isn’t really about damage anymore (no one’s giving up the beam, let’s be honest, much more powerful than those HA builds ever were).

It’s about fixing the absurdity: electric arcs phasing harmlessly through enemies looks ridiculous, breaks immersion, and makes the game feel sloppy. Time to clean it up.

Yet still 50% of the people at dolmens or world bosses use lightning staves. It was very ovbious during the writhing wall event at siege camps. One half beams, the other half channels lightning (and some weirdos use random other attacks). So, can't be that bad, right?

Are you annoyed that the Lightning HA beam doesn't also damage targets it passes through in addition to the targets it deals splash damage to?

Y'know, I wouldn't be too conflicted if the Lightning Staff HA only dealt damage to up to 3 additional enemies within a line connected to the target with a max of three, (ranged needing more coordination) with the 2H HA dealing damage to three enemies near the target (needing less coordination, range cost of melee, and such allowing 3 hit for LA's as well).

loveeso wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Wasn’t the problem because people were getting 1-shot in PvP with no time to react? And ZOS never fixed the core problem?

One‑shot in PvP with a lightning staff heavy attack channel? Don’t think so. Sure, I vaguely remember a few noobs trying it in PvP, but they were quickly disillusioned about its actual viability. Anyway, what I’m talking about here is the first two pulses of the channel — which still hit single targets exactly the same as before, just no longer AoE. The single‑target damage hasn’t changed, so this clearly isn’t related to “one‑shotting players.”

Yes, I know what you’re talking about. The problem is something like battle spirit not applying to NPCs in PvP zones. If you heavy attack an NPC and a player is in the splash range, they get 1-shot. If you attack the player themselves, they don’t. As far as I know, this is still true for the last hit of the attack. Since the first splash happened quickly, it was difficult to avoid the 1-shot.

loveeso wrote: »

No. The issue wasn’t the lightning heavy attacks themselves — those builds were letting more players step into vet and HM content, finally giving us a bigger pool of teammates that were (mostly) capable of pulling their weight. But then, right before the Arcanist expansion, a few forum voices decided that seeing “too many lightnings everywhere” was apparently intolerable, and that low‑APM players didn’t “deserve” that much power… and ZOS happily nerfed it. We lost quite a few players.

As one of the complainers, the problem was never the damage for me. It was the survivability. It became meta in the way that arcanist became meta pre-subclassing. AoE damage with self heals (group heals on a HA sorc!) and survivability (minor aegis on oakensorc, now shield on pragmatic). I had never seen people truly require a certain setup until the HA sorc sweep and it annoyed me that 1) the meta pigeonhole wasn’t even a similar playstyle to what everyone was used to and 2) the very same people pushing the meta pigeonhole complained about the build all the time.

Anyways, I’m not opposed to the lightning splashes coming back, it would make using a lightning staff more satisfying, but ZOS should also fix the problem in PvP. Probably by making battle spirit damage apply to the NPCs. Or make the AoE damage only apply to “monsters” if really necessary.

Orbital78 wrote: »

tomfant wrote: »

Yet still 50% of the people at dolmens or world bosses use lightning staves. It was very ovbious during the writhing wall event at siege camps. One half beams, the other half channels lightning (and some weirdos use random other attacks). So, can't be that bad, right?

For overland anything is "not bad". Just because people still try to enjoy the build play style doesn't mean it is competitive anymore. I'm sure there were people using resto staves too.

Exactly. I run around naked and punch overland to death when I’m (very) bored. Dolmens are such a weird thing to bring up in this conversation, right? 😁

loveeso wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

tomfant wrote: »

Yet still 50% of the people at dolmens or world bosses use lightning staves. It was very ovbious during the writhing wall event at siege camps. One half beams, the other half channels lightning (and some weirdos use random other attacks). So, can't be that bad, right?

For overland anything is "not bad". Just because people still try to enjoy the build play style doesn't mean it is competitive anymore. I'm sure there were people using resto staves too.

Exactly. I run around naked and punch overland to death when I’m (very) bored. Dolmens are such a weird thing to bring up in this conversation, right? 😁

I think this is also why overland difficulty stuff is happening so slowly.

Now all skills and sets are still viable in some way because overland is super easy and you could goof around. If they have hard overland that gives more rewards, I bet even the people who use non meta stuff will also pivot to a very meta builds.

And if they have hard overland, but without increased rewards, then almost nobody is probably going to play it.

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I don't think the lightning staff arc/beam ever dealt AoE. But each tick used to deal AoE damage around your target, and now it's only the last hit. I believe the stated reason for the change was for performance and balance reasons, as lightning heavies used to be strong and prominent (and they're still good, so pretty successful targeted nerf).

I preferred each tick dealing AoE. It doesn't matter against bosses, but against small groups of enemies, if an enemy dies before the final tick, you get no AoE damage. It overall just doesn't feel as good to play with only the last tick being AoE. Edit: Let alone if you get staggered, the heavy attack randomly stops, or something else prevents the last hit, which takes several seconds.

this is exactly right. they nerfed it right before releasing the arcanist class when oakensoul lightning staff attack builds were at their most popular.

From memory they said it was a PvP issue where people were attacking npc's and players were taking the full damage from monsters from the AoE which is how people were getting 1 shot from the cleave.
I think.

personally i think they wanted to nerf it so that the arcanist would be the king of cleave.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I don't think the lightning staff arc/beam ever dealt AoE. But each tick used to deal AoE damage around your target, and now it's only the last hit. I believe the stated reason for the change was for performance and balance reasons, as lightning heavies used to be strong and prominent (and they're still good, so pretty successful targeted nerf).

I preferred each tick dealing AoE. It doesn't matter against bosses, but against small groups of enemies, if an enemy dies before the final tick, you get no AoE damage. It overall just doesn't feel as good to play with only the last tick being AoE. Edit: Let alone if you get staggered, the heavy attack randomly stops, or something else prevents the last hit, which takes several seconds.

this is exactly right. they nerfed it right before releasing the arcanist class when oakensoul lightning staff attack builds were at their most popular.

From memory they said it was a PvP issue where people were attacking npc's and players were taking the full damage from monsters from the AoE which is how people were getting 1 shot from the cleave.
I think.

personally i think they wanted to nerf it so that the arcanist would be the king of cleave.

The nerf to splash damage from Tri Focus was done in U39 (so one patch after Arcanist released), and specifically called out the fact that lightning staff HAs were getting much more power than other staff types. They even included that as a dev comment.

Since this passive is meant to help reward fully charged Heavy Attacks, we've reigned in some of the effects with Lightning Staves to make them more in line with other weapons while retaining their unique gameplay with builds that go all in on them. In addition, we've tried to sweeten the rewards for the other two staff types that in general don't Heavy Attack as much.

The PvP effect wasn't the full reasoning for it, but lightning HAs in PvP zones did have an outsized effect. The splash damage done was based on the amount of damage the heavy attack did, but NPC mobs don't have the same resistances/crit resists as players do. If a player with a lightning staff targeted an NPC enemy in a PvP zone (like guards in Cyro or mobs in IC), then the splash done to nearby enemies (players) would give the full damage without considering resistances. It was fully an exploit, that could have been mitigated by making the Tri Focus respect resistances when calculating splash damage.

I understand there's a lot to be mad at the Combat team about right now, but it is best to stick to facts.

Sorry, you're quite right, it was the patch after the arcanist dropped, not before it. I'm pretty sure my conspiracy theory still holds
Either way the play style was heavily curtailed at a time they were encouraging everyone to shift over to a new play style which did same thing but better.

I'm not actually mad at the combat team about it, it just seemed like a petty nerf at the time. They took away something that people were enjoying for "reasons" that weren't exactly a problem apart from in PvP, which they themselves don't state. The usual fun police approach.

That aside, lightning staff is still the only viable heavy attack weapon, so I don't see how effective the stated aim was but whatever.