Fatecarver vs. Several Spammables: A Glaring Issue

WuffyCerulei · September 2025

I know I'm not the only person who's tired of the Beam meta for over two years. Necrom, with Arcanist class, was released in 2023. So the Beam meta has been the main thing for over 2 years. About time we make a major change for that, no?

Well, I gathered some data from the PC NA live server to compare Pragmatic Fatecarver, the most used morph of Fatecarver, to 8 other spammables.

The build I used for the test is in this image:

I have NO blue champion points on, as well only having the one spammable skill on the skill bar. I am on a sorcerer, but I overwrote the Stormcalling skill line that has the 5% extra shock damage with the Subclass line.

Here's the 9 skills, including Pragmatic Fatecarver, I used to compare. I know they're not all leveled to rank 4:

I've used 3 melee spammables, 4 ranged spammables, and the Wield Soul scribed skill, as it's technically made to work like a spammable but with less damage due to it, well, being a scribed skill, to compare to Pragmatic Fatecarver.

Pragmatic Fatecarver lasts 4 seconds, with a tick of damage every 0.3 seconds. That's 12 ticks of damage over 4 seconds. Therefore, I did each spammable at x4 to match the duration, with the Global Skill Cooldown being 1 second. I did NOT take light attack weaving as Pragmatic Fateweaver does not allow for weaving when casting it.

So the calculations are as follows, using the damage numbers from the skills I screen-shotted before:

Pragmatic Fatecarver: 2245x12=26,940 damage over 4 seconds WITHOUT 3 crux
With 3 crux consumed, it has an additional 99% damage done. 26,940+(26,940x0.99)=53,610 damage over 4 seconds

Melee Skills:
Concealed Weapon: 6526x4=26104 damage over 4 seconds
Wrecking Blow: 7074x4=28188 over 4 seconds
Bloodthirsty: (1741x4)x4=28176 damage over 4 seconds

Ranged Skills:
Writhing Runeblades: (1798x3)x4=21576 over 4 seconds
Focused Aim: 6139x4=24556 over 4 seconds
Crushing Shock: (1779x3)x4=21348 over 4 seconds
Elemental Weapon: 5514x4=22056 over 4 seconds

Scribed Skill:
Shocking Soul: 5338x4=21352 over 4 seconds

The melee spammable skills in general do more damage than the ranged skills, which is common with ESO spammable damage skills. More risk, more reward.

A huge glaring issue with Pragmatic Fatecarver, a ranged ability, has roughly the same damage as the melee skills. That makes using other ranged skills way less appealing. On top of that, the damage skyrockets to 53,610 damage over 4 seconds with 3 crux consumed, which is what pretty much all Beam users do with their builds to get the most out of it. Not to mention the very used Velothi Ur Mage's Amulet that increases damage done to monsters by another 15% but decreases Light and heavy attack damage by 99%, which they don't have to do while casting Fartcarver. Also the Champion Point slottable stars that increases damage done as well.

A ranged skill that does more than double the damage of 4 melee spammable skills with NO light attack weaving needed to possibly match the same damage, as well as having a free Damage Shield with interrupt immunity on top of it seems a bit too much, no?

The Arcanist Fatecarver beam is an important part of the Arcanist class, but with Subclassing out now, it's been outperforming every other DPS build out there, as well as not needing the same amount of skill that spammable+light attack weaving builds need. As well as the free survivability of Pragmatic Fatecarver's damage shield.

Heavy attack builds with Oakensoul a couple years ago were doing the same sort of thing, lacking the required skill for weaving builds, having amazing sustain, and great survivability were harshly nerfed to not match the skill-based DPS builds' damage.

However, Beam builds have essentially not been greatly nerfed enough to bring them down to not overperform skill-based builds, which NEEDS to happen.

I personally have a few suggestions for nerfs, especially based on the data I collected:

Reduce the damage bonus for each crux consumed on Fatecarver from 33% to somewhere around 20%, slightly more or less
To add to 1, reduce the base damage more
Not have Pragmatic Fatecarver have the damage shield WITH the same damage as Exhausting Fatecarver. Free survivability with great damage should not be a thing for only Beam builds, if no other class can have that
Have Fatecarver have damage falloff the farther away the player is from the enemy
Have each enemy in the beam reduce its effectiveness in damage, to combat the skill's strength as an AOE spammable as well

What I would very much personally prefer to happen: Raise the floor of DPS builds and raise the damage of all Spammable abilties to match the power of Fatecarver. Even with sublclassing, Beam builds still outperform other builds by a huge margin with little skill to play them.

It's been over TWO YEARS since this DPS meta took hold. Time to change it.

Treeshka · September 2025

Some of the skills are purely single target as well.

They need to buff others in terms of area of effect damage capability, not nerf what we have, for example Concealed Weapon can be an area damage skill with a hitbox of cone in front of you. Maximum six target or no cap as there is no Crux to buff this skill to deal %99 more damage.

Oblivion_Protocol · September 2025

The damage is out of control with these beam builds. I’ve run in group content where we literally ignored mechanics because beams could kill so fast. I’ve seen trial and dungeon groups with DPS so high, we’ve killed bosses before they could even trigger scripted mechanics. They would be in the middle of their voice line announcing the move and they’d just fall over in a sea of neon green lasers like they passed out drunk at a rave in the Matrix.

tomfant · September 2025

I get what you are saying. And I agree that most spammables are falling behind.

Yet if you look at the highest parses, you don't find Fatecarver. For single target fights there are better options than this skill.

The underlying issue is the design of the encounters. Vitually all encounters brought into the game in recent years have multiple targets, often tons of adds. This is the reason for the dominance of beam builds.

Avran_Sylt · September 2025

Ugh, that's the annoying thing about the design of fatecarver.

The reason it gets so high damage is it mandates the use of at least 2 casts of another direct damage ability (Thank god they removed the banner letting you reach 2 Crux), which in perfect parses could be replaced with an additional Spammable and an additional DoT ability into the rotation.

I agree that it's a bit too high given the range advantage, albeit that you can't actually aim the beam upward, but that's really only a problem in Cyrodiil.

But what absolutely infuriates me is that it's also up to a 6-Target cleave. Compare that to AoE spammables... It's night and day. Damage creep on AoE cleave AND It's slot efficient since you don't need to slot a cleave ability, so you can slot another DoT for the DoT lost in Crux Generation!

valenwood_vegan · September 2025

Well, there are no balance changes in the next update so you're looking at like Feb / March. By which time this post will be long buried - might be something for everyone who shares these concerns to tell them in the class survey that they have up. Will they listen? That I can't say.

Personally I'd prefer that fatecarver be adjusted sure, but not nerfed into oblivion - and that they instead focus more on all the skills that people aren't using, and look at making those more useful and fun.

ceruulean · September 2025

They should remove the shield from Pragmatic and keep the cost reduction. Then make exhausting the longer lasting morph. One morph for sustain, another for more damage and more risk. That way there's trade-offs in content, where a classic build can block-cast but a beam build is much more vulnerable. Make arcanist a true glass cannon.

This will make classes like magblade and magplar (with healing spammables) a little more interesting or competetive, and arcanists will learn to use skills like Vigor and Structured Entropy.

mdjessup4906 · September 2025

Did you light attack with the other spamnanles without velothi, or, wear velothi with those other spamnanles? Because velothi is used on everyone in multi target not just beamers. And for st, the la is part of the damage so not including it is a false reading.

Shield beam is already less damage than exhausting. Its also shorter so you do actually have to cast it more often.

: Raise the floor of DPS builds and raise the damage of all Spammable abilties to match the power of Fatecarver.

That i agree with. Im not the best weaver by any stretch of the imagination, but even if I was in the 170k runblades club, id use beam 99% of the time anyway because it doesn't feel like *** to play. Except AAhm *** that mage and her *** stuns lol.

Give other spammles actual usable aoe and make them not super janky and a pita to target in this game where aim is a bad joke and then they can mess with my beam.

thet1nman · February 22

I totally agree. I have been a player for over ten years and seen all the various new skills come and go but fatecarver is now ruining the game for me.

I like doing group dungeons as a melee dps but I may as well not be there because any fatecarver player is going to massively out do my dps

What's the point of being a melee character.

Elendildur · February 23

thet1nman wrote: »

What's the point of being a melee character.

This is especially true, when you can't reach the enemies, cause the beam has killed them already. Fatecarver is overtuned to hell and back

Jestir · February 24

The point of being a melee locked character is to significantly out damage a beamer in single target or in tight stacks with the proper build........ using a rune blades build

Which shows a bigger real issue being an absolutely loaded skill line with loaded skills while completely ignoring beam

Does beam need the shield turned down even further than it has? Yeah, it definitetly shouldnt be the best cleave AND the safest way to play at the fame time

Could the cleave be reigned in? Yeah, they kinda already capped it at 6 but I do like going with the former design of Jabs to solve this issue with the closest enemy getting the full damage and past that it is reduced

But I think what they are doing know with spreading damage passives throughout the classes skill lines should bring HotT in line a bit...... As long as they also do something about tentacles and scholarship as well

aLi3nZ · February 26

If you don’t like it why not just not use it and leave it at that?

It’s mostly a pve thing and I am not entirely sure why all the hate. Sure it’s OP but that’s fine newbies can have a crutch and some enjoy it.

Besides that, I would really like to see results with light attack weaving on your result list and I also wanted to see Templar jabs compared to beam.

Personally I don’t like using beam but I recognize it’s excellent damage while also getting a free sheild. So it’s pretty OP for PVE but so is jabs tbh.

SugaComa · February 26

I'm not understanding the issue

Firstly why would you want to have something do less damage against monsters ... Surly this skill allows for a t least one mag build to feel powerful.

If you mean PvP, the skill is interruptible, can be moved away from quickly, and with current high armour burst damage most players using fatecarver are dead unless protected by other players. You may have a shield but once your cc'd it's gone and often you can't see the incoming attack cos of the beam.

Now if you truly want to look at something that's op in both pve and PvP the healing version on the other skil line is like a mobile hospital with lighting fast surgeons

Renato90085 · February 26

aLi3nZ wrote: »

If you don’t like it why not just not use it and leave it at that?

It’s mostly a pve thing and I am not entirely sure why all the hate. Sure it’s OP but that’s fine newbies can have a crutch and some enjoy it.

Besides that, I would really like to see results with light attack weaving on your result list and I also wanted to see Templar jabs compared to beam.

Personally I don’t like using beam but I recognize it’s excellent damage while also getting a free sheild. So it’s pretty OP for PVE but so is jabs tbh.

main problem is, you can't give up this line in real hard part(vet/hm/tris trial...etc) or you are in sup jail role,the best st spam/ult/dps passive in this line too,and now meta is this,sup role can't give non meta build player buff,because meta auto have them
and if you running this ,no reason to give up this and use other aoe choose and weaker than beam 30%dmg

it like op will more op,weak more weak part,so player feel they not have choose

rockDokRock · 1:27PM

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

I know I'm not the only person who's tired of the Beam meta for over two years. Necrom, with Arcanist class, was released in 2023. So the Beam meta has been the main thing for over 2 years. About time we make a major change for that, no?

Well, I gathered some data from the PC NA live server to compare Pragmatic Fatecarver, the most used morph of Fatecarver, to 8 other spammables.

The build I used for the test is in this image:

I have NO blue champion points on, as well only having the one spammable skill on the skill bar. I am on a sorcerer, but I overwrote the Stormcalling skill line that has the 5% extra shock damage with the Subclass line.

Here's the 9 skills, including Pragmatic Fatecarver, I used to compare. I know they're not all leveled to rank 4:

I've used 3 melee spammables, 4 ranged spammables, and the Wield Soul scribed skill, as it's technically made to work like a spammable but with less damage due to it, well, being a scribed skill, to compare to Pragmatic Fatecarver.

Pragmatic Fatecarver lasts 4 seconds, with a tick of damage every 0.3 seconds. That's 12 ticks of damage over 4 seconds. Therefore, I did each spammable at x4 to match the duration, with the Global Skill Cooldown being 1 second. I did NOT take light attack weaving as Pragmatic Fateweaver does not allow for weaving when casting it.

So the calculations are as follows, using the damage numbers from the skills I screen-shotted before:

Pragmatic Fatecarver: 2245x12=26,940 damage over 4 seconds WITHOUT 3 crux
With 3 crux consumed, it has an additional 99% damage done. 26,940+(26,940x0.99)=53,610 damage over 4 seconds

Melee Skills:
Concealed Weapon: 6526x4=26104 damage over 4 seconds
Wrecking Blow: 7074x4=28188 over 4 seconds
Bloodthirsty: (1741x4)x4=28176 damage over 4 seconds

Ranged Skills:
Writhing Runeblades: (1798x3)x4=21576 over 4 seconds
Focused Aim: 6139x4=24556 over 4 seconds
Crushing Shock: (1779x3)x4=21348 over 4 seconds
Elemental Weapon: 5514x4=22056 over 4 seconds

Scribed Skill:
Shocking Soul: 5338x4=21352 over 4 seconds

The melee spammable skills in general do more damage than the ranged skills, which is common with ESO spammable damage skills. More risk, more reward.

A huge glaring issue with Pragmatic Fatecarver, a ranged ability, has roughly the same damage as the melee skills. That makes using other ranged skills way less appealing. On top of that, the damage skyrockets to 53,610 damage over 4 seconds with 3 crux consumed, which is what pretty much all Beam users do with their builds to get the most out of it. Not to mention the very used Velothi Ur Mage's Amulet that increases damage done to monsters by another 15% but decreases Light and heavy attack damage by 99%, which they don't have to do while casting Fartcarver. Also the Champion Point slottable stars that increases damage done as well.

A ranged skill that does more than double the damage of 4 melee spammable skills with NO light attack weaving needed to possibly match the same damage, as well as having a free Damage Shield with interrupt immunity on top of it seems a bit too much, no?

The Arcanist Fatecarver beam is an important part of the Arcanist class, but with Subclassing out now, it's been outperforming every other DPS build out there, as well as not needing the same amount of skill that spammable+light attack weaving builds need. As well as the free survivability of Pragmatic Fatecarver's damage shield.

Heavy attack builds with Oakensoul a couple years ago were doing the same sort of thing, lacking the required skill for weaving builds, having amazing sustain, and great survivability were harshly nerfed to not match the skill-based DPS builds' damage.

However, Beam builds have essentially not been greatly nerfed enough to bring them down to not overperform skill-based builds, which NEEDS to happen.

I personally have a few suggestions for nerfs, especially based on the data I collected:
Reduce the damage bonus for each crux consumed on Fatecarver from 33% to somewhere around 20%, slightly more or less

To add to 1, reduce the base damage more

Not have Pragmatic Fatecarver have the damage shield WITH the same damage as Exhausting Fatecarver. Free survivability with great damage should not be a thing for only Beam builds, if no other class can have that

Have Fatecarver have damage falloff the farther away the player is from the enemy

Have each enemy in the beam reduce its effectiveness in damage, to combat the skill's strength as an AOE spammable as well

What I would very much personally prefer to happen: Raise the floor of DPS builds and raise the damage of all Spammable abilties to match the power of Fatecarver. Even with sublclassing, Beam builds still outperform other builds by a huge margin with little skill to play them.

It's been over TWO YEARS since this DPS meta took hold. Time to change it.

Rather than *nerf nerf nerf* why not raise the bar for others?

I've never understood "I don't like this, punish it" rather than "let's raise the bar elsewhere".

Yes, I know you are saying this at the end of your post but so many people seem hellbent on destroying things they don't like.

This has been a successful approach in other games. I play Apex Legends too and they used to nerf characters regularly but in recent seasons they have taken the approach to try to buff more to make things more balanced which, to me, is much more positive. Rather than getting screwed when *your* guy gets nerfed others are raised up to try to even out the competitive bar. Much more positive.

Freelancer_ESO · 3:06PM

rockDokRock wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

I know I'm not the only person who's tired of the Beam meta for over two years. Necrom, with Arcanist class, was released in 2023. So the Beam meta has been the main thing for over 2 years. About time we make a major change for that, no?

Well, I gathered some data from the PC NA live server to compare Pragmatic Fatecarver, the most used morph of Fatecarver, to 8 other spammables.

The build I used for the test is in this image:

I have NO blue champion points on, as well only having the one spammable skill on the skill bar. I am on a sorcerer, but I overwrote the Stormcalling skill line that has the 5% extra shock damage with the Subclass line.

Here's the 9 skills, including Pragmatic Fatecarver, I used to compare. I know they're not all leveled to rank 4:

I've used 3 melee spammables, 4 ranged spammables, and the Wield Soul scribed skill, as it's technically made to work like a spammable but with less damage due to it, well, being a scribed skill, to compare to Pragmatic Fatecarver.

Pragmatic Fatecarver lasts 4 seconds, with a tick of damage every 0.3 seconds. That's 12 ticks of damage over 4 seconds. Therefore, I did each spammable at x4 to match the duration, with the Global Skill Cooldown being 1 second. I did NOT take light attack weaving as Pragmatic Fateweaver does not allow for weaving when casting it.

So the calculations are as follows, using the damage numbers from the skills I screen-shotted before:

Pragmatic Fatecarver: 2245x12=26,940 damage over 4 seconds WITHOUT 3 crux
With 3 crux consumed, it has an additional 99% damage done. 26,940+(26,940x0.99)=53,610 damage over 4 seconds

Melee Skills:
Concealed Weapon: 6526x4=26104 damage over 4 seconds
Wrecking Blow: 7074x4=28188 over 4 seconds
Bloodthirsty: (1741x4)x4=28176 damage over 4 seconds

Ranged Skills:
Writhing Runeblades: (1798x3)x4=21576 over 4 seconds
Focused Aim: 6139x4=24556 over 4 seconds
Crushing Shock: (1779x3)x4=21348 over 4 seconds
Elemental Weapon: 5514x4=22056 over 4 seconds

Scribed Skill:
Shocking Soul: 5338x4=21352 over 4 seconds

The melee spammable skills in general do more damage than the ranged skills, which is common with ESO spammable damage skills. More risk, more reward.

A huge glaring issue with Pragmatic Fatecarver, a ranged ability, has roughly the same damage as the melee skills. That makes using other ranged skills way less appealing. On top of that, the damage skyrockets to 53,610 damage over 4 seconds with 3 crux consumed, which is what pretty much all Beam users do with their builds to get the most out of it. Not to mention the very used Velothi Ur Mage's Amulet that increases damage done to monsters by another 15% but decreases Light and heavy attack damage by 99%, which they don't have to do while casting Fartcarver. Also the Champion Point slottable stars that increases damage done as well.

A ranged skill that does more than double the damage of 4 melee spammable skills with NO light attack weaving needed to possibly match the same damage, as well as having a free Damage Shield with interrupt immunity on top of it seems a bit too much, no?

The Arcanist Fatecarver beam is an important part of the Arcanist class, but with Subclassing out now, it's been outperforming every other DPS build out there, as well as not needing the same amount of skill that spammable+light attack weaving builds need. As well as the free survivability of Pragmatic Fatecarver's damage shield.

Heavy attack builds with Oakensoul a couple years ago were doing the same sort of thing, lacking the required skill for weaving builds, having amazing sustain, and great survivability were harshly nerfed to not match the skill-based DPS builds' damage.

However, Beam builds have essentially not been greatly nerfed enough to bring them down to not overperform skill-based builds, which NEEDS to happen.

I personally have a few suggestions for nerfs, especially based on the data I collected:
Reduce the damage bonus for each crux consumed on Fatecarver from 33% to somewhere around 20%, slightly more or less

To add to 1, reduce the base damage more

Not have Pragmatic Fatecarver have the damage shield WITH the same damage as Exhausting Fatecarver. Free survivability with great damage should not be a thing for only Beam builds, if no other class can have that

Have Fatecarver have damage falloff the farther away the player is from the enemy

Have each enemy in the beam reduce its effectiveness in damage, to combat the skill's strength as an AOE spammable as well

What I would very much personally prefer to happen: Raise the floor of DPS builds and raise the damage of all Spammable abilties to match the power of Fatecarver. Even with sublclassing, Beam builds still outperform other builds by a huge margin with little skill to play them.

It's been over TWO YEARS since this DPS meta took hold. Time to change it.

Rather than *nerf nerf nerf* why not raise the bar for others?

I've never understood "I don't like this, punish it" rather than "let's raise the bar elsewhere".

Yes, I know you are saying this at the end of your post but so many people seem hellbent on destroying things they don't like.

This has been a successful approach in other games. I play Apex Legends too and they used to nerf characters regularly but in recent seasons they have taken the approach to try to buff more to make things more balanced which, to me, is much more positive. Rather than getting screwed when *your* guy gets nerfed others are raised up to try to even out the competitive bar. Much more positive.

Developers are human and as humans will make mistakes occasionally.

If you need to buff twenty things to catch up to one thing, odds are good you are going to mess up in at least one case which will again leave you in the same position or worse than when you started when it comes to balance.

Content is also generally designed to have a specific difficulty level to try to maximize enjoyment.

As you increase the power that characters have you run into the issue that much of the older content can end up being too easy and you also end up with a pressure to raise the difficulty on newer content.

All of these changes take effort which can take away from other things.

For what it is worth, ZOS is kinda taking the approach you want at the moment.

They are redoing all of the classes over the next few years in part to make pure classing more even with subclassing.

The power that they are adding to the classes in the process is likely going to leave many of the non-class abilities far behind the class ones which in turn is likely going to mean that ZOS will at some point need to then redo the non-class abilities.

For example, compare Drain Vigor from the Vampire's kit to DK's new Heart of Flame.