Discussing/Suggestions : Momentum

Brasseurfb16_ESO · June 2014

Hi,

I'm currently building my 3th character and I decided to go with a 2-handed weapon setup for my DK. I realy like the skills in this weapon skillset but one realy bothers me, and this one is Momentum.

While the idea of having a buff increasing weapon damage on the course of a battle doesn't cause any issues, the morphs on the other hand are bit inadequate for its current effect.

Rally gives a rather small heal, when the buff ends, wich is never going to trigger in combats (unless you fight a boss).By time the buff ends, you will either already have killed the ennemies you were fighting or you will probably already be killed.

Forward Momentum is also a strange morph, the idea of removing snare effects is great but having to resset your dmg bonus in the process is counter productive with the synergy of the skill and its morph.

So here is a couple of suggestions :

A. Momentum :
- Decrease base duration from 20sec to 18sec.
- Increase duration gain per ranks from 1sec to 2sec.

Note : This change is important for my next idea.

B. Rally :
- Now heals the player for (2/3/4/5)% of his total health every 6sec. (Reusing the skill ressets the countdown.)

Note : The idea is to make the skill more flexible in every fights in the game, 20% health over 24sec is OK, and makes it scale better should the VR cap increases with time.

C. Forward Momentum :
Note : This skill is probably the one causing me the most trouble when it comes to balancing issues. I have a couple of ideas including snare immunity while the buff is active, running speed buffs, and even make a passive trigger on certain conditions. But I don't want to make it yet another free get out of jail card so here is the suggestion I think would be the most balanced out of all I was thinking about.

- When Forward Momentum is active, dealing damage to a foe grants you Freedom for (2,5/3,0/3,5/4,0)sec. Freedom increases your run speed by 15%, removes Snares and makes you immune to this effect for its duration.

So what do you people think about these suggestions?

Lynx7386 · June 2014

Personally I would change one of the morphs (probably the healing one) to either apply the damage bonus to nearby allies as well, or to increase critical chance and critical damage over the duration.

For the cc one, I would rather it give back stamina each second or with each melee attack

SirPuppingtonVonHat · June 2014

Momentum is a great idea for an ability, that just doesn't shine the way that its implemented.

I've been toying around with how I would revamp the entire 2H tree, and here are the changes that I would make to Momentum:

1. Change Momentum to increase damage dealt instead of weapon damage.
2H players will hit the weapon damage cap with the most minimal of buffs, and once you hit diminishing returns this ability loses its usefulness really fast. I would change the scaling to 5% initially plus another 0.5% every two seconds, which gives you a sizable damage boost without pushing into Flawless Dawnbreaker territory. Its a good power level for a capstone active ability.

2. Change Rally into a heal over time.
I really like your version of rally, and it happens to be very similar to mine. My version would have 50% chance of healing for half your weapon damage stat every two seconds (I have an RNG theme going in my build). The average healing might be a bit higher in my build, but now that I think about it this version kinda favors sorcs and DK's, so your version is probably better. Kudos!

3. Give Forward Momentum a chance of instantly breaking snares.
Like I said, RNG theme. This would let players break the snares (or other CC's if you broadened the scope of what the ability could do) without making snare abilities completely useless due to the time delay and lack of complete 100% reliability

Even if none of these changes are ever even glanced at, at least the 2H line gave us something to think about. :P

Brasseurfb16_ESO · June 2014

SirPuppingtonVonHat wrote: »

Momentum is a great idea for an ability, that just doesn't shine the way that its implemented.

I've been toying around with how I would revamp the entire 2H tree, and here are the changes that I would make to Momentum:

1. Change Momentum to increase damage dealt instead of weapon damage.
2H players will hit the weapon damage cap with the most minimal of buffs, and once you hit diminishing returns this ability loses its usefulness really fast. I would change the scaling to 5% initially plus another 0.5% every two seconds, which gives you a sizable damage boost without pushing into Flawless Dawnbreaker territory. Its a good power level for a capstone active ability.

I'm not a big fan of that change. While it is true you can easely soft cap weapon dmg, making it a multiplicative value is just going to reinforce further the DpS cap between Dragonknights/Sorcerers vs Nightblades/Templars because those two first professions are still going to hit the cap easier with their buffs but will get more out of Momentum and its multiplicative value while the two last classes will get similar results to the power like it is currently implemented in game but won't as easely reach the dmg cap Dragonknights/Sorcerers can already reach.

So, I believe, while Momentum indeed looses effectiveness when you reach the softcap, the buff can still offer a 5-11% net weapon dmg increase, wich doesn't seems negligeable to me.

SirPuppingtonVonHat wrote: »

3. Give Forward Momentum a chance of instantly breaking snares.
Like I said, RNG theme. This would let players break the snares (or other CC's if you broadened the scope of what the ability could do) without making snare abilities completely useless due to the time delay and lack of complete 100% reliability

Even if none of these changes are ever even glanced at, at least the 2H line gave us something to think about. :P

The RNG themed power also crossed my mind, but I usualy don't like RNG powers because it makes them very unreliable for PvE, when you realy need the effect to save yourself. It also becomes an issue in PvP when people are "lucky" as an escape power. It's maybe not on the lvl of Bolt Escape, but still, it is not recommended to add such a power, people do not like free out of jail cards.

That's why I didn't go for a passive or active immunity buff. But instead, I choose a refreshing buff when you are the one attacking the target.

For PvE, you keep the damage buff rolling when you attack and the 4sec of speed/snare immunity allows you to get out of AoEs during boss fight faster making your role as a melee dps a bit easier.

For PvP, the refreshing buff allows you to stay close to your target when you hit a target, unless you get rooted (in wich case you have to dodge roll), but the short duration of it prevents any players from using it as a "Retreating Momentum".