One-Hand Weapon Line Draft

Ffastyl

Damage is derived from 1787 Weapon Damage and 20232 Max Stamina.
All other numbers are derived from similar and similarly performing abilities already existent in-game.
Costs provided are without any cost reduction, including in-line cost reduction passive.

Active Abilities

Cut
Slash at your opponent with precision, dealing additional damage to wounded foes. Damage scales up to 100% against low health enemies.
Damage: 4512 (100%)
Range: 5m
Target: Single
Cast Time: Instant
Cost: 2700

Cut Morphs
Lacerating Cut
Deals additional bleed damage to target.
Slash at your opponent to cause lacerations, dealing 2030 (45%) / 2256 (50%) / 2481 (55%) / 2707 (60%) bleed damage over 6 seconds. Finish off wounded foes. Damage scales up to 100% against low health enemies.

Powerful Cut
Becomes a cone-based AoE. Deals increased damage.
Slash in front of you with all your might, sweeping the area and cutting down foes. Damage scales up to 100% against low health enemies.
Damage: 4963 (110%) / 5008 (111%) / 5053 (112%) / 5098 (113%)
Range: 7m
Target: Cone (120 degrees)


Thrust
Quickly lunge at your opponent, striking a weak spot. Inflicts target with Major Fracture and Major Breach, reducing Physical and Spell Resistance by (scales with level).
Damage: 4123 (100%)
Range: 7m
Target: Single
Cast Time: Instant
Cost: 2200

Thrust Morphs
Vengeful Thrust
Heals the user.
Take pleasure in skewering your enemy, healing for 1855 (45%) / 2062 (50%) / 2268 (55%) / 2474 (60%) health. Inflicts Major Fracture and Major Breach, reducing Physical and Spell Resistance by (scales with level).

Powerful Thrust
Reduces target's damage done.
Put immense strength into a swift thrust, knocking the wind out of your opponent. Inflicts Major Fracture, Major Breach, and Minor Maim, reducing Physical and Spell Resistance by (scales with level) and reducing target's damage done by 15%.
Damage: 4205 (102%) / 4288 (104%) / 4370 (106%) / 4453 (108%)


Parry
Anticipate your opponent's strike and redirect it back at the attacker. Reflects one melee attack.
Target: Self
Cast Time: Instant
Duration: 10 / 12 / 14 / 16 seconds
Cost: 1795

Parry Morphs
Playful Parry
Knocks down the attacker.
Deflect at just the right angle to lead your attacker into the ground. Reflects one melee attack with an added knock down effect for 2 / 2.6 / 3.3 / 4 seconds.

Efficient Parry
Increases damage of returned attack.
Turn your opponent's force against them, reflecting one melee attack with 15 / 20 / 25 / 30% increased damage.


Drawing Cut
Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, assaulting your opponent with unbeknownst speed. The grievous cut leaves them unable to flee, snaring 60% for 10 seconds.
Damage: 4466 (100%)
Range: 3.5 - 22m
Target: Single
Cast Time: Instant
Cost: 2700

Drawing Cut Morphs
Fluid Cut
Grants Empower upon hitting target.
Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, leaving your opponent vulnerable to a follow up strike. The grievous cut leaves them unable to flee, snaring 60% for 10 seconds. Grants Empower, increasing the damage of the next attack by 20%.

Drawing Wind
Deals damage to area of impact, snares all hit. Increased cost.
Draw and cut with the wind for a quick and devastating gust, blasting your opponent and the surrounding area with unreal force. The grievous cut leaves them unable to flee, snaring 60% for 10 seconds.
Area Damage: 2977 (66%)
Area Range: 6m
Cost: 3500


Charge
Lighten your movements to react and strike faster. Grants Minor Berserk, Major Evasion, and Minor Expedition for 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 seconds.
Minor Berserk increases damage dealt by 8%. Major Evasion increases dodge chance by 20%. Minor Expedition increases movement speed by 10%.
Target: Self
Cast Time: Instant
Duration: 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 seconds
Cost: 6050

Charge Morphs
Advance
Grants brief immunity to snares/roots.
Eliminate all excess movements in a forward charge, granting Minor Berserk, Major Evasion, and Minor Expedition, increasing damage done by 8%, dodge chance by 20%, and movement speed by 10%. Grants snare/root immunity for 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 / 4 seconds.

Bull Charge
Increases damage further. Increased cost.
Follow your bloodlust into the fray. Grants Major Berzerk, Major Evasion and Minor Expedition, increasing damage done by 25%, dodge chance by 20% and movement speed by 10%.
Cost: 6300


Passive Abilities

Fencer
With One One-Hand Weapon Equipped
Increases Weapon Damage by 10 / 20%.

Foot Soldier
While Using One-Hand Skills
One-hand weapon skills cost 10 / 20% less.

One-Hand Weapons Expertise
With One One-Hand Weapon Equipped
Swords deal 3 / 5% extra damage. Axes have a 8 / 15% chance to inflict (scales with level) bleed damage over 6 seconds. Hammers ignore 10 / 20% armor. Daggers increase critical hit rate by 3 / 5%.

Spellsword
With One One-Hand Weapon Equipped
Increases Spell Damage by 10 / 20%.

Lightly Armed
With One One-Hand Weapon Equipped
Increase all regeneration by 5 / 10%.


Any further balancing and adjustments are appreciated. The intent is a unique and versatile skill line with an emphasis on fast, singular hits.

Changelog:

Draft 2

• Added (%) next to damage numbers to indicate how additional damage and healing elements relate to the base damage.
• Increased the range of Thrust from 5m to 7m.
• Lightning Thrust reworked to Vengeful Thrust, replacing the chance to set enemies off-balance with a self-healing component.
• Increased the duration of Parry across all ranks by 2 seconds.
• Reduced the duration of Playful Parry's knockdown at Rank IV to 4 seconds from 5 and adjusted Ranks II and III accordingly, to be more in line with Defensive Stance's stun.
• Moved the increased range of Drawing Slash down to the base ability, Drawing Cut. Replaced the Disorient component with a 60% snare for the same duration.
• Reworked Drawing Slash to Drawing Wind, dealing damage to nearby enemies on impact instead of changing the ability into a charge.
• Fixed a typo in Charge's tooltip.
• Significantly increased the cost of Charge and its morphs, Advance and Bull Charge, as the abilities granted too many buffs for their previous costs.

Draft 2 Known Issues:

• There is currently no ultimate ability and corresponding morphs.

Replaced Draft 1 Tooltips:

• Lightning Thrust
  Chance to set target off-balance.
  Lunge faster than the eye can blink, slamming your foe with immense force before they can prepare. Inflicts Major Fracture and Major Breach, reducing Physical and Spell Resistance by (scales with level). 20 / 30 / 40 / 50% chance to set target off-balance.
• Drawing Cut
  Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, dazing your opponent in its wake. Inflicts Disorient on target for 10 seconds.
  Range: 7m
• Fluid Cut
  Grants Empower upon hitting target.
  Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, leaving your opponent vulnerable for a follow up strike. Inflicts Disorient for 10 seconds and grants Empower, increasing the damage of the next attack by 20%.
• Drawing Slash
  Increases range and charges to target.
  Draw, cut, and lunge in one fluid motion, assaulting your opponent with unbeknownst speed. Inflicts Disorient for 10 seconds.
  Range: 3.5 - 22m

Draft 3

• Reduced the bonus damage of Cut from 300% to 100% and increased cost to 2700 from 2400.
• Reduced the bonus damage of Powerful Cut from 200% to 100%.
• Increased the cost of Thrust from 2050 to 2200.
• Reduced the healing for all ranks of Vengeful Thrust by 5%.
• Reduced the damage of Drawing Cut by 30%.
• Increased the cost of Charge from 5800 to 6050.
• Advance no longer grants Major Expedition or increases duration, instead granting snare/root immunity for a brief duration.
• Bull Charge no longer grants snare/root immunity but now retains Major Evasion from the base ability.

Draft 3 Known Issues:

• There is currently no ultimate ability and corresponding morphs.
• Fencer and Spellsword need their numbers tweaked so the end result is base damage equivalent to a Two-Handed weapon.

kenneth.friisb16_ESO

Exactly what i would like for a one handen skill line.

The only thing i'm wondering, is whether parry should work for spells as well, maybe as a morph. Wielding only one weapon you are more vulnerable, so deflecting spells doesn't seem to owerpowered.

Jim_Pipp

Nice suggestion. I would love to see a one-handed line come in, but a new skill line is a huge undertaking. Thank you for undertaking it, I have some suggestions for feedback, but I'm sure these are not as thought through as your ideas so take them with a pinch of salt.

You nailed the passives - perfect, I love the buff to spell damage, it gives this skill line a really distinctive feel which it needs, it can't just be a reskin of another line

The active abilities need some rebalancing. e.g. Reflecting one melee attack is quite underpowered, but a 5 second knock down may be a bit overpowered for a spammable.

More broadly I didn't immediately see what the concept behind this is. Maybe its just me, but I think all the in-game weapon skill lines are a compromise between a concept and a fairly standard range of abilities.

e.g. sword and board - obviously defensive. Two-handed - high direct damage. Dual wield - aggressive dots and AoE. The others are obvious.

Almost every skill line has a strong buff (e.g. major brutality), a way to cope at range (e.g. charge/thrown dagger), a way to stay alive for a few seconds (rally, magnum shot, even bloodthirst), some kind of healing, a strong single target ability and plenty of AoE abilities. To be competitive one handed needs to do all this and something new.

Some under-utilised buffs include blind, minor lifesteal and ways to modify dodge-roll.

So almost enough of my thoughts. I would be happy if they implemented your ideas right now, but I'm enjoying imagining the skill line in my own way. The only thing I would really like to see is a move that lots of NPCS use;

Human NPC nightblades have a skill where they jump over you to end up behind you. Its a cool ability. If you made it have a high cost but a 100% dodge chance while in the air it would be a superior melee defence.

Ffastyl

The Drawing Cut skill is inspired from Nerien'eth's own charge ability, where he brings the sword under his left arm like our follow-up heavy attack and then does a iaito-esque dashing slash to someone. The charging aspect is locked behind a morph in this draft, but I could bring it down to the base ability, replacing the disorient. Then Drawing Slash can become Drawing Slice, adding a healing component to the attack.

At the time I drafted this, Dual Wield did not have in-line healing like it does now so I did not see it as a universal trait of weapon lines.

Parry was intended to be a melee equivalent for Defensive Posture of One Hand and Shield, with a hint of Reflective Scales in the Efficient Parry morph. It might be underpowered for PvE, where most enemies do not hit hard in a single blow, but will be effective in PvP, reflecting a hit from a burst combo, such as Dizzying Swing or Incapacitating Strike. Just like Defensive Posture, Parry will reflect the CC associated with the attack as well. The knockdown duration (effectively a stun) is similar to the duration on Defensive Stance, which stuns for 4 seconds.

With the addition of weapon ultimates, there is also that ability to consider.

Lightning Thrust could be reworked to incorporate a healing component, leaving Drawing Slash to have another offensive component. With Drawing Cut reworked as the line's charge, Thrust can also become the line's extended range attack (7m, like Power Bash, Uppercut and Flurry).

In regards to a defensive ability and self-buffing, Charge covers this. The base ability grants admittedly more than it should at the current cost, granting Major Evasion (defense), Minor Berserk (offense) and Minor Expedition (utility). The morphs focus the ability towards one side, defense or offense, at the expense of something else.

The overall feel of the line has early abilities focusing on single strikes and later abilities on battlefield mobility with Parry as an oddball.

Ffastyl

Changes have been made, bringing this to Draft 2. A changelog has been added to the original post. That same log has been posted below.

Changelog:
Draft 2

• Added (%) next to damage numbers to indicate how additional damage and healing elements relate to the base damage.
• Increased the range of Thrust from 5m to 7m.
• Lightning Thrust reworked to Vengeful Thrust, replacing the chance to set enemies off-balance with a self-healing component.
• Increased the duration of Parry across all ranks by 2 seconds.
• Reduced the duration of Playful Parry's knockdown at Rank IV to 4 seconds from 5 and adjusted Ranks II and III accordingly, to be more in line with Defensive Stance's stun.
• Moved the increased range of Drawing Slash down to the base ability, Drawing Cut. Replaced the Disorient component with a 60% snare for the same duration.
• Reworked Drawing Slash to Drawing Wind, dealing damage to nearby enemies on impact instead of changing the ability into a charge.
• Fixed a typo in Charge's tooltip.
• Significantly increased the cost of Charge and its morphs, Advance and Bull Charge, as the abilities granted too many buffs for their previous costs.

Draft 2 Known Issues:

• There is currently no ultimate ability and corresponding morphs.

Replaced Draft 1 Tooltips:

• Lightning Thrust
  Chance to set target off-balance.
  Lunge faster than the eye can blink, slamming your foe with immense force before they can prepare. Inflicts Major Fracture and Major Breach, reducing Physical and Spell Resistance by (scales with level). 20 / 30 / 40 / 50% chance to set target off-balance.
• Drawing Cut
  Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, dazing your opponent in its wake. Inflicts Disorient on target for 10 seconds.
  Range: 7m
• Fluid Cut
  Grants Empower upon hitting target.
  Draw and cut in the same motion for a quick and devastating slash, leaving your opponent vulnerable for a follow up strike. Inflicts Disorient for 10 seconds and grants Empower, increasing the damage of the next attack by 20%.
• Drawing Slash
  Increases range and charges to target.
  Draw, cut, and lunge in one fluid motion, assaulting your opponent with unbeknownst speed. Inflicts Disorient for 10 seconds.
  Range: 3.5 - 22m

Entegre

Yess please, one handed skill line for spell-swords, battle-mages and for rogues, swashbucklers alike! Having one hand free can also mean disarming the enemy, or faster spell casting. Like you don't have to put away your 2m long staff to cast that 1.1 second spell, instead you have your left hand free and maybe cast it in 1 second? Numbers are generic and subject to change

Ffastyl

Reducing cast time is not only outside the line's focus but not universally helpful enough to justify replacing the current passives. Cast time abilities are generally avoided by knowledgeable players as more damage can be dealt with less openings through animation cancelling. As a direct result many cast time abilities have been buffed and over-buffed, such that they must be interrupted lest they turn the tide of battle in some way. Some of these cast times, such as Dark Deal, are short enough already that there is less than a second to interrupt (due to network latency and human reaction times).

Having a hand free to cast spells is represented by the Spellsword passive, a callback to Oblivion's spell effectiveness rating.

Disarming the enemy is a realistic approach to using an empty hand, as is grappling. However, there is no game mechanic in place for disarmament, so that route can only be vaguely approximated with Minor Maim. Grapples, on the other hand, can be implemented with things like stuns, knockdown, roots and the already present Parry ability. The issue in pursuing grapples is each ability must take the place of a current one, since each line is limited to 5 active, 5 passive and 1 ultimate ability. I have mused the option of drafting more abilities and stating where they could be placed in the line, effectively creating variations should one pose too imbalanced.

The as yet to be drafted ultimate ability can be along the lines of a plunge attack, akin to those shown by certain Trinimac warriors and potentially overlap with Dragon Leap, or a palm strike, an area-wide CC reminiscent of mythical martial masters or a singular, devastating and debilitating strike upon an opponent. Both flavors can offer area of effect damage, which the line is currently a little lacking in.

STEVIL

Just once in my lifetime it would be nice to see a fandom submitted "new custom x" thst did not feel like cherry picking the best pieces of all the in game ones, shuffling them up a bit, removing wesknesses andbthen a little extra buff on the top.

Just looking at cut and comparing to an even higher dsmage pool of WD 1886 STA 29220

2H REVERSE SLASH does 2715 dam with same up to 300% vs your 4500. Stam cost similar.

Thats your first active skill.

Looking at your first passive it rsises wd by 10 to 20% across the board which is about fouble the usual unrestricted gains from single passives.

I suggest doubling all damage values and cut all costs by 75%.

Ffastyl

Noted. I'd like Cut to remain a decent single-target attack, so the execute will suffer accordingly. The base damage is slightly higher than that of Low Slash at the same stats. Cost as well.

One-Handed weapons have innately lower damage than Dual Wield or Two-Handed; Fencer is meant to bridge that gap, bringing a One-Handed weapon's base damage close to that of a Two-Handed. 20% was almost the exact value needed for the numbers I had, but finer tuning on that passive (and Spellsword) is needed that I cannot currently provide.

STEVIL

Ffastyl wrote: »

Noted. I'd like Cut to remain a decent single-target attack, so the execute will suffer accordingly. The base damage is slightly higher than that of Low Slash at the same stats. Cost as well.

One-Handed weapons have innately lower damage than Dual Wield or Two-Handed; Fencer is meant to bridge that gap, bringing a One-Handed weapon's base damage close to that of a Two-Handed. 20% was almost the exact value needed for the numbers I had, but finer tuning on that passive (and Spellsword) is needed that I cannot currently provide.

Re the bold - bull.

The base weapons damage which is what you seem to be referring to is included in your WD factor already applying into the skills you describe.

So you have already (over)compensated for the "innately lower damage" in your skills' base damage and are then adding a bigger WD passive to "bridge that gap" which you have already "bridged" and even helicoptered over.

As for low slash - take the damage from low slash where the add-ons arelike debuffs not more damage and tack onto it the damage boosts from executes as the base power... thats what i meant by cherry picking and mushing together to remove weaknesses.

See, here is some how things work - Most powers have an A and a B. if A is high damage then B is non-damage stuff liie maim or speed. If A is low to moderate damage then B is sometimes higher damage in circumstances like say executes. if you look at most executes they are mediocre damage until they hit execute then they go hog wild. (but then you knew this, right?)

So what do we do when picking cherries?

We take the A from a high damage plus speed kind of power and we replace that non-offensive B with the big execute damage multiplier - so now we have an A+ and a B+ ready to go.

All in the name of diversity or balance or not being overpowered at all not one bit nosirree bob.

BTW how many expeditious speed boosts last anywhere near the durations you provide?

Zinaroth

While I am all for variety and I can see the benefit of having more weapon skill lines in the game, this iterations will be insanely OP for PvP. The skills are simply doing too many things at once. The parry and charge skills alone would be enough to put this weapon skill tree over anything else for all builds. Consider giving Parry a 1 second duration and high base cost to promote skillful play/anticipation and toning down the amount of buffs the Charge gives, if you intend for them to function like they are now. In general the buff durations are also about 30-40% too long compared to the rest of the skills in the game.

Your concept do have merits and some cool unique ideas though. I like it. Just very OP in its current iteration I think.