Stamina/Magicka skill morphs (issues & suggestions)

C0pp3rhead

This thread is about class abilities (normally magicka-based) that can be morphed to rely on stamina.

Thank you ZOS for doing this. It wasn't what I have ever suggested, but I have seen many people advocating for these changes. Thanks for listening to them. After some consideration, I have found the idea behind the changes to be most agreeable, perhaps even for the better. In general, the changes I see for Templar coming in 1.6 look great. Thanks for giving us an execute. Thanks for fixing backlash. Thanks for making dark flare's damage bonus usable. These are all great changes.

What I do not like are the wildly different secondary effects of stamina morphs. I play a templar, and when I saw the patch notes, my heart soared with the hopes that I might be able to play a magicka-based dps class. Instead, I see this for several skills (backlash, biting jabs, critical surge, etc):
- the mana morph provides healing based on damage dealt or when effect ends
- the stamina morph provides additional crit chance/damage bonus.

This made me very sad because I felt like my Templar was once again being told, "No, you are not meant to do damage with magicka. You will be support if you use magicka." This flies in the face of ZOS' "play the way you want" goal. I am not averse to following certain builds if I want to be effective. There is a certain way to play a NB tank. There is a certain way to play a Sorc stamina-based dps. I am aware that I have to stick with what works, and I can't put abilities on my bar any way I want. What bothers me is that there is no effective method for laying down magicka-based dps as a templar.

My suggestion: choose a secondary effect and apply it to both morphs. Most Templar players will tell you to choose the additional damage; we have plenty to choose from with self-heals & AoE heals. A sorc will tell you to put the self heal on both the stamina and magicka morphs; they have almost no self-heals.

Any NB's or DK's care to share their experience with the morphs that change a magicka-based skill into a stamina-based skill?

bowmanz607

I am a Bow/DW NB stam build that plays mostly PVP. I love the changes to Ambush/Killers Blade to stamina. Although, now my stam pool is depleted much faster, but I will just put more champ points into reducing the cost of stam abilities and increase stam recovery so that should help counter the problem. Basically, I am able to use those abilities just as much as I was before b.c my magika was so low, but now I actually get some good damage from them making them much more effective. I actually prefer to use impale b/c of the range but I am very happy to have killers blade b/c of it scaling off of stam.

I know many NB builds are mad out there b/c it ruins their build. Well I have been running ambush as a stam build and have still been effective with it. So if I could do it then, you can do it now. After all, stam builds had to focus on weapon attacks for any kind of real dps now we can actually use our class abilities as a way of getting dps. Moreover, the NB class is an assassin/shadow type of class. That type of character usually runs with weapons that are based off of stam pools, so it doesnt make sense to have all the abilities magika based. Finally, for magika users who want to use these abilities it is as simple as putting champ points into stars that reduce the cost of stam abilities.

Anyway, I think ZOS has done a great job with the NB abilities and putting them on par with magika builds.