Heavy attacks - weapon damage question

Oolou

I've been given conflicting answers to this from other players so ...

To boost the damage on heavy attacks from staffs - should I be looking to increase spell power or weapon damage?

And if you can also give a succinct explanation, that would be awesome, thanks!

Kego

WeaponDMG, cause the light Attacks, as well as ALL active Skills from Weapons scale with Weapon DMG.
If you want max. DMG with f.e. Crushing Shock and Impulse, you would even slot Weapon DMG in your jewelry enchants.

Yeah it don't make much sence but it is like it is:

Class Range Skills: Magicka, Spell Power, Spell Crit
Class Melee Skills: Magicka, Spell Power, Weapon Crit
Stamina Weapon Skills: Stamina, Weapon Power, Weapon Crit
Magicka Weapon Skills: Magicka, Weapon Power, Spell Crit

Oolou

Kego wrote: »

WeaponDMG, cause the light Attacks, as well as ALL active Skills from Weapons scale with Weapon DMG.
If you want max. DMG with f.e. Crushing Shock and Impulse, you would even slot Weapon DMG in your jewelry enchants.

Yeah it don't make much sence but it is like it is:

Class Range Skills: Magicka, Spell Power, Spell Crit
Class Melee Skills: Magicka, Spell Power, Weapon Crit
Stamina Weapon Skills: Stamina, Weapon Power, Weapon Crit
Magicka Weapon Skills: Magicka, Weapon Power, Spell Crit

Mmm okay, that is kinda confusing. Let's leave class skills out of this for now!

So to improve basic staff weapon attacks - light and heavy - I should be looking to increase my weapon power (jewellery glyphs etc).

Does that also mean points in stamina would also increase the damage of the basic staff heavy/light attacks? Or not ...

As for the staff weapon skills ... I find it really confusing that they are boosted by weapon power, given that they use magicka and cause magic damage. But if that is so, why are they then affected by spell crit rather than weapon crit. Hmm.

ThatHappyCat

All light and heavy attack damage, including staves, is calculated from weapon power and max stamina.

And yeah the way crit works is really annoying. On the other hand it means Resto staff healers benefit from Inner Light so I'm not complaining.

Oolou

So to get the best out of the staff (resto or destruction) I should be:

1) keeping up the weapon damage stat (glyphs and best staff for my level)
2) boosting the max stamina (food buffs probably), if my max magicka is already high
3) keeping up the spell critical stat (inner light etc)

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

Staff is weapon, damage is based off weapon damage. It uses magica, its spell crit. Its really not that hard to wrap your head around.

ThatHappyCat

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

It uses magica, its spell crit.

Except that's not always the case. Skills like Puncturing Strikes are magicka-based but use weapon crit.

On the other hand ZOS is apparently changing this.

Oolou

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

Staff is weapon, damage is based off weapon damage. It uses magica, its spell crit. Its really not that hard to wrap your head around.

Yeah, I'm probably just being dumb.

See, if something has spell crit, I tend to think that a spell is being used, and so spell power would affect it rather than weapon power.

And likewise is something is using weapon power, I'd assume that the crit would be weapon crit.

Having weapon power and spell crit together on the same sort of attack, such as a simple heavy hit with no class skill or weapon skills being used, isn't all that intuitive. But I shall try to keep it straight in my head.

Even now when I ask the question out of curiosity to see if other players know in a guild with lots of members (like the trade guild I'm in) I will get conflicting answers from those who are VR10+ players ^^