Altering the fighter's guild skill tree and adding the dawnguard

Lynx7386

This is a suggestion based on a rekindled topic that's been around since PC launch. Currently, the fighter's guild skill line abilities are focused against daedra, undead, vampires, and (with a passive perk) werewolves. I know that in ESO, the fighter's guild has been contracted to deal with the daedra, but historically they do a lot more than that - mostly mercenary work. The fighter's guild abilities available to us, however, are of very limited use against non-daedra. Being focused on the overall guild's job of dealing with daedra is fine, but taking it to the point where fighters guild members can no longer effectively combat normal opponents is absurd, IMO.

The basis of the suggestion is this:
1. Rework all fighter's guild passives and abilities into more generalized combat abilities, with some focus against daedra, but no perks against undead, vampires, or werewolves.
2. Add a dawnguard skill line, which can only be accessed by players who have not become werewolves or vampires. The dawnguard skill line will include passives and abilities focused towards taking out undead, vampires, and werewolves specificially, and will offer immunity to being afflicted by vampirism or lycanthropy.

Below are some suggestions on the new abilities.

Fighter's Guild
The fighter's guild is a martial organization of mercenaries and sellswords. Members are well trained in the use of their weapons and general combat tactics and equipment.

1. Backhand
A melee ranged ability that causes you to swipe your target with a swift backhand, stunning the target and dealing moderate damage.
Morphs could include "follow up" which allows you to activate the ability again on the same target, following the backhand with a punch for extra damage and stun duration. A second morph might be something like "spiked gauntlets", causing backhand to make the target bleed for additional damage.

2. Leg Sweep
A spinning attack that knocks down your target.
Morphs could include a radial sweep that knocks down all nearby targets, or a slam that does extra damage to your target.

3. Shoulder Charge
Rush your opponent and slam into them, setting them off balance.
This would serve as a universal gap closer for those classes/weapon types that dont have a charge-style ability.

4. Bear Trap
Set a bear trap that immobilizes the next target to walk into the area. Target takes bleeding damage over time.

5. Grappling Hook
Throw a hook and chain at your target, then pull them towards you. Targets that cannot be pulled will instead pull you to the target.
A generic version of fiery chains from the DK line, allowing other tanks the luxury of using a pull ability.

Ultimate: Companion
Summons a fighter's guild recruit to assist you in combat. The recruit wields two daggers and it's damage is based off of your weapon damage and weapon critical.
Ultimate is consumed as the companion attacks enemies, and the companion can be toggled on/off at will. This works in a similar manner to the sorceror's overload ultimate, where you can use the ability for a time without consuming all of your ultimate charge. The companion will last longer the more ultimate you build up before activating it.
Morphs could include a Guild Blade, who uses a two handed sword and deals more damage plus additional area damage; or a guild shield who uses a 1h sword/shield combo and taunts enemies, allowing for a mini-tank for ranged/dps characters.

Passives:
1. Parry: Increases the amount of damage absorbed when you block attacks with non-shield weapons (this applies to all weapon types -except- shields).
2. Riposte: Whenever you successfully block a melee attack, your next light attack deals additional damage and has a chance to offbalance the target.
3. Daedric Contract: You deal additional damage to daedra, and gain additional ultimate when killing daedra.
4. Mercenary: You find additional gold on defeated enemies.
5. Bounty Hunter: Allows you to accept fighter's guild missions in cyrodiil.



Dawnguard
The dawnguard is an organization dedicated to hunting the evil abominations of tamriel: werewolves, undead, and vampires. They utilize a number of specialized equipment and weapons to accomplish this daunting task, as well as blessings from the divines for protection from their prey.

1. Silver Bolts
Use a dawnguard hand crossbow to fire a silver bolt at your target. Does additional damage to undead, vampires, and werewolves, and knocks them down.
Morphs:
Silver Leash - activate again when used against undead, vampires, or werewolves to pull the target to you and deal additional damage.
Silver Shards - fires a spray of bolts in front of you (a la arrow spray from the bow line), dealing damage to all enemies at close range, with bonus damage against undead, vampires, and werewolves.

2. Bola Shot
Fire a silver bola from your crossbow, entangling an enemy. Does additional damage to undead, vampire, and werewolf targets.
Morphs:
Ball and Chain - further slows and damages undead, vampire, and daedra targets.
Silver Anchor - Anchor your target to the ground, preventing them from moving for a short time. Only effects undead, vampire, and daedra targets.

3. Circle of protection
Same as current. Same morphs as current. Effects apply vs werewolves, undead, and vampires instead of daedra.

4. Expert Hunter
Same as current. Same morphs as current. Effects apply vs werewolves, undead, and vampires instead of daedra.

5. Divine Judgement
Place a spell of divine judgement on your target. Werewolves, vampires, and undead are weakened, dealing less damage and moving more slowly. Player-character vampires and werewolves are unable to use any vampire or werewolf specific abilities for the duration.
Morphs could increase duration or add damage over time.

Ultimate: Dawnbreaker
Same as current. Morphs are flawless dawnbreaker and dawnbreaker of smiting. Effects werewolves, undead, and vampires instead of daedra.

Passives:
1. Aedric Protection: Renders you immune to vampirism and lycanthropy, and reduces the damage you take from poison and disease effects.
2. Witch Hunt: All of your attacks and abilities have a chance to deal additional damage against werewolves, vampires, and undead targets.
3. Blessed Blades: Increases your weapon damage and weapon critical against vampires, werewolves, and undead when using melee attacks.
4. Consecrated Arrows: Increases your weapon damage and weapon critical against vampires, werewolves, and undead when using bow attacks or dawnguard crossbow abilities.
5. Purifying Magic: Increases your spell power and spell critical against vampires, werewolves, and undead when using restoration or destruction staff attacks.

Kendaric

Yes, please... the fighter´s guild skills have bugged me since release.

dlepi24

Nice post. I can definitely see the "Divine Judgement" being overpowered in PvP, though. Especially against all the vamp DK's who just mist form constantly while building ult.

AngryNord

Problem is that'd clash too much with the Templar skill, IMO...
Also

1 - we don't really know if the Dawnguard even existed at this time
2 -it wouldn't be lore-friendly to give it to non-EP players

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

Nosense.

Leave FG as is. Removing it's ability to bashing Vampire players in Cyrodiil, will make this game even more Twilight Online than it is already today.

The_Sadist

While it sounds interesting in theory, the werewolf and vampire skill lines would in turn need to be adjusted to deal more damage / have passives that target players aligned with the Dawnguard. It seems going Dawnguard has no drawbacks, or at least I'm not reading one in your post, which in turn means it's pretty broken given both vampirism and lycanthropy do (with the latter being questionable really).

Nebthet78

I don't really think this is plausible from a lore stand point.

While the Dawnguard were formed in the 2nd Era in The Rift by the Jarl of Riften, they were not anything close to the Dawnguard we see from Skyrim. They were basically specialized Fighter's Guild Vampire Hunters/Mercenaries hired to keep the Jarl's son safe and locked away in Fort Dawnguard.

However, as the lore goes, the Dawnguard ended up killing the Jarl's son and they were disbanded very soon afterwards.

It wasn't until much later in Tamriel history, in the 4th Era when Isran decided to reform the Dawnguard and take over the Fort as base of operations.

Also, the Dawnguard was strictly a "Skryim" thing. They didn't exist in any other part of Tamriel, ever.

Therefore it isn't plausible to have it as a skill line in ESO.

I would suggest you just get your RP on and just call yourself a Dawnguard and use certain skills and what not and hunt vampires if you want to, but as a separate skill line, so no, we don't need a new skill line for that.

Lynx7386

Could always go with "vigilants of stendarr" instead, dawnguard was just a familiar name for skyrim players.

Lynx7386

The_Sadist wrote: »

While it sounds interesting in theory, the werewolf and vampire skill lines would in turn need to be adjusted to deal more damage / have passives that target players aligned with the Dawnguard. It seems going Dawnguard has no drawbacks, or at least I'm not reading one in your post, which in turn means it's pretty broken given both vampirism and lycanthropy do (with the latter being questionable really).

The drawback is that the dawnguard abilities are next to useless against non-vampires/werewolves.

The_Sadist

Lynx7386 wrote: »

The_Sadist wrote: »

While it sounds interesting in theory, the werewolf and vampire skill lines would in turn need to be adjusted to deal more damage / have passives that target players aligned with the Dawnguard. It seems going Dawnguard has no drawbacks, or at least I'm not reading one in your post, which in turn means it's pretty broken given both vampirism and lycanthropy do (with the latter being questionable really).

The drawback is that the dawnguard abilities are next to useless against non-vampires/werewolves.

Let's be honest, that is really not much of a drawback at all. The passives alone make going dawnguard a must have for PvE, because it's literally free damage against a a wide range of enemies with some added resistances. Likewise, in PvP you're buffed against people who already have some kind of negative drawback as a result of their condition.

Unless you add 'takes x more damage from daedra / undead / werewolves' or something your idea isn't really balanced.

Kendaric

The_Sadist wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

The_Sadist wrote: »

While it sounds interesting in theory, the werewolf and vampire skill lines would in turn need to be adjusted to deal more damage / have passives that target players aligned with the Dawnguard. It seems going Dawnguard has no drawbacks, or at least I'm not reading one in your post, which in turn means it's pretty broken given both vampirism and lycanthropy do (with the latter being questionable really).

The drawback is that the dawnguard abilities are next to useless against non-vampires/werewolves.

Let's be honest, that is really not much of a drawback at all. The passives alone make going dawnguard a must have for PvE, because free damage against a a wide range of enemies. Likewise, in PvP you're buffed against people who already have some kind of negative drawback as a result of their condition.

And this different from the way the fighter´s guild now?

The fighter´s guild should be about monsters in general, merchant escorts, etc. The OP´s proposal would do exactly that, it´s too specialized right now. They basically feel more Vigilants of Stendarr than a true fighter´s guild.

The_Sadist

Kendaric wrote: »

The_Sadist wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

The_Sadist wrote: »

While it sounds interesting in theory, the werewolf and vampire skill lines would in turn need to be adjusted to deal more damage / have passives that target players aligned with the Dawnguard. It seems going Dawnguard has no drawbacks, or at least I'm not reading one in your post, which in turn means it's pretty broken given both vampirism and lycanthropy do (with the latter being questionable really).

The drawback is that the dawnguard abilities are next to useless against non-vampires/werewolves.

Let's be honest, that is really not much of a drawback at all. The passives alone make going dawnguard a must have for PvE, because free damage against a a wide range of enemies. Likewise, in PvP you're buffed against people who already have some kind of negative drawback as a result of their condition.

And this different from the way the fighter´s guild now?

The fighter´s guild should be about monsters in general, merchant escorts, etc. The OP´s proposal would do exactly that, it´s too specialized right now. They basically feel more Vigilants of Stendarr than a true fighter´s guild.

You're sort of missing my point entirely.

I'm all for changing the fighters guild and adding a 'human' world skill line, but you can't just plop down a world skill line with no negative drawbacks. In both PvE and PvP everyone will be dawnguard as they literally have no negative drawbacks and provide a myriad of bonuses (particularly true for PvE). Both Lycanthropy and Vampirism have some sort of negative consequence for 'joining' them which in turn balance them somewhat (this is untrue for Lycanthropy as you get the passive stamina boost with no negative drawback and is the current meta.. for now). Vampires are weak to fire and suffer hp regeneration issues, werewolves take more from poison damage and both take more damage from fighters guild spells / passives, whereas the proposed dawnguard literally just makes you stronger for nothing.

My issue isn't the proposed change, it's needing some sort of countermeasure for the power provided by joining the dawnguard.

Lynx7386

Ok, so how about this:
Treat the dawnguard skill line like a weapon skill line. It's abilities can only be used when a particular weapon type is equipped - a crossbow. This creates it's own drawback, by preventing you from using other weapon skills (2h, staff, etc.) with the dawnguard abilities, and it also throws a new weapon type into the game that people have been asking for. Crossbow could potentially use the bow skill line's abilities as well, but that's up for debate.

The_Sadist

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Ok, so how about this:
Treat the dawnguard skill line like a weapon skill line. It's abilities can only be used when a particular weapon type is equipped - a crossbow. This creates it's own drawback, by preventing you from using other weapon skills (2h, staff, etc.) with the dawnguard abilities, and it also throws a new weapon type into the game that people have been asking for. Crossbow could potentially use the bow skill line's abilities as well, but that's up for debate.

So, in essence, you want them to add the crossbow, a standalone weapon, which when equipped only has access to the dawnguard spells and passives? Or, do you mean an entirely new weapon skill line which has its own passives and active spells PLUS when equipped you gain the benefits of the dawnguard skill line?

The former could work, the latter seems quite overpowered. I know this is simply a suggestion and while it may break lore it's an interesting concept. I'm not aggressively attacking you or your idea, I'm just trying to refine it a little and make it less broken.

Stories-Bones-Tell

Nebthet78 wrote: »

I don't really think this is plausible from a lore stand point.

While the Dawnguard were formed in the 2nd Era in The Rift by the Jarl of Riften, they were not anything close to the Dawnguard we see from Skyrim. They were basically specialized Fighter's Guild Vampire Hunters/Mercenaries hired to keep the Jarl's son safe and locked away in Fort Dawnguard.

However, as the lore goes, the Dawnguard ended up killing the Jarl's son and they were disbanded very soon afterwards.

It wasn't until much later in Tamriel history, in the 4th Era when Isran decided to reform the Dawnguard and take over the Fort as base of operations.

Also, the Dawnguard was strictly a "Skryim" thing. They didn't exist in any other part of Tamriel, ever.

Therefore it isn't plausible to have it as a skill line in ESO.

I would suggest you just get your RP on and just call yourself a Dawnguard and use certain skills and what not and hunt vampires if you want to, but as a separate skill line, so no, we don't need a new skill line for that.

Wouldn't be the first time Zenimax decided to ignore lore and just do whatever they wanted with it.