Elemental Damage Problem

Goldie

Here is a question for @ZOS, why is it that I get 0 bonus damage for attacking say, a Fire Atronach with a Frost staff? Or a Frost Atronach with a Fire spell or staff?

This is a HUGE part of the game, lore, and mechanics in ALL previous Elder Scrolls Games and fantasy games in general, that has been overlooked, or ignored.

firstdecan

I always wondered why a fire staff can even damage a fire atronach.

Sharee

Some monsters do have a higher vulnerability to certain elements, but it is not handled as a straight damage increase. Instead there are special effects that only affect a vulnerable monster.

For example, if you attack a non-vulnerable mob with fire, sometimes the mob in addition to taking fire damage is also set on fire, this is a small fire DOT that keeps ticking on them for a while. If that monster however is fire-vulnerable (troll, zombie), it will get an effect called 'explosion' that will do large instant damage to the zombie/troll and knock them down.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Like several aspects of the battle system in this game ZOS has been .. idiosyncratic, shall we say .. in how they apply tried-and-tested mechanics and simple laws-of-physics .. and yes, I KNOW this is a 'fantasy' game but there has to be a basis in Universal laws to give credence to the 'fantastic' aspects.

TheShadowScout

Personally I would like to see fire atronarchs take only half damage from flame attacks, frost atronarchs half from ice attacks, etc. As long as they also take bonus damage from opposed elemental attacks... not like it'd be a hardship to carry different destro staves for those who play casters...

Of course, it would also be cool to find the old D&D blunt-piercing-slashing damage types... currently the axe/sword/dagger/mace are distinguished only in special effects, it would be nice if, say, skeletons got a chance of arrows to pass through their ribcade without damage, while maces and mauls do double damage due to lack of cushioning flesh... that sort of thing.

Well, maybe someday they'll code it, these days I expect there are aton of other things more important to be worked on...

newtinmpls

Looking at the title of this thread I was expecting someone to complain about an atronach dropping a staff as loot. I know that when my friend and I were battling giant bugs in Kenarthi's Roost, we kept a running commentary on the bizzare things they apparently ate .... swords ... shoes

Earlier this week I fought a wisp that dropped a sheild. Now where the heck was the little bugger carrying it?

TheShadowScout

Also true, that.

Would be much neater if equipment was only dropped by humanoid equipment-wearing mobs, and critters/monsters would have other things to drop instead... meat to cook from animals, enchantment glyphs from assorted monsters...

Of course, while we're at it, I always sigh whenever I find fresh provisioning ingredients in an supposedly ancient dwemer or ayleid ruin... shouldn't those long since have spoiled?

newtinmpls

TheShadowScout wrote: »

I always sigh whenever I find fresh provisioning ingredients in an supposedly ancient dwemer or ayleid ruin... shouldn't those long since have spoiled?

Yup... those can't be grapes ... they really have to be raisins by now

Goldie

For one, we are unable to specialize in a certain type of elemental damage as a sorcerer. This has got to be the most crap part about it. Regardless whether or not the elemental damage hurts the opposite elements more or less, when you only have lightning or fire spells to roll with, it is meaningless either way.

Hear that @ZOS? Why cant we specialize in a certain magicka type? When is Spellcrafting coming? Can we get some feedback?

TheShadowScout

Sorcerors have lightning, dragonknight pyromancers fire, destro staff users can have those and also ice with swapping staves.

Sorcerors also have some magica damage spells, and often have a resto staff as secondary anyways.

It -would- be neat to be able to specialize though... even when that'd make fights against mobs resistent to your specialization rather annoying, that would be a cheap price to pay for the flavor, for me anyways. Pyromancer, cryomancer, aeromancer, hydromancer, electromancer, geomancer... I'd love to see those running aroudn the game in a more meaningful way then just choice of destro staff...

Spiritreaver_ESO

Goldie wrote: »

For one, we are unable to specialize in a certain type of elemental damage as a sorcerer. This has got to be the most crap part about it. Regardless whether or not the elemental damage hurts the opposite elements more or less, when you only have lightning or fire spells to roll with, it is meaningless either way.

Hear that @ZOS? Why cant we specialize in a certain magicka type? When is Spellcrafting coming? Can we get some feedback?

I tried my hand at rolling a Sorcerer and that was one thing that just kept nagging me at the back of my mind. And the Destruction Staff skill line works has driven me up the wall since i first tried it in beta.

Too much generic catch-all mechanics with element magic all around imo.

Merlin13KAGL

Goldie wrote: »

Here is a question for @ZOS, why is it that I get 0 bonus damage for attacking say, a Fire Atronach with a Frost staff? Or a Frost Atronach with a Fire spell or staff?

This is a HUGE part of the game, lore, and mechanics in ALL previous Elder Scrolls Games and fantasy games in general, that has been overlooked, or ignored.

@Goldie , because Weakness to Elements (fill in with any applicable alternative including poison, disease, etc) is not handled as weakness to elements.

While it's intuitive to think it would work like Fire damage does to Vamps or Poison to WW's, that's not how they do it.

Instead, it has the same effect as lowered resistance to the particular element.

As a result, they do take more damage - it's just not as obvious. You hit for X damage, it would normally be partially mitigated by Y resistance, but with particular attacks, Y goes down.

So X is more than it would be with a non-weakness-to base, but not the full damage regardless.

Typically, all monsters would take some damage from any attack, but it would be so minor that it would hardly make a difference.

It's not that they forgot, they just flat out didn't code it that way.

As a side note: Resistance can never go negative (except in Vamp/Fire), so anything that has little to no resistance to begin with and is hit with a reduce resistance/weakness to by some percentage actually has less of an effect than something that has high resistance to start.

• Hit something with 50% weakness with 2000 initial resist, and it goes to 1000 resist, mitigating less damage.
• Hit something with 50% weakness with 20 initial resist, and it goes to 10 resist, virtually no difference.

It's Bass ackwards.

Goldie wrote: »

For one, we are unable to specialize in a certain type of elemental damage as a sorcerer. This has got to be the most crap part about it. Regardless whether or not the elemental damage hurts the opposite elements more or less, when you only have lightning or fire spells to roll with, it is meaningless either way.

Hear that @ZOS? Why cant we specialize in a certain magicka type? When is Spellcrafting coming? Can we get some feedback?

And Goldie, you can most certainly specialize in ESO, as long as you specialize in fire.