Making "The Master's" Weapons Great Again

Vaoh

Master weapons are awesome. Some of them are in need of buffs though to be worth using, especially when placed next to The Maelstrom's weapons. Were looking at how to improve the unique enchants themselves (innate stat bonuses are fine).



Bows
Master: Targets affected by Poison Arrow take more damage from your attacks scaling off of weapon damage.
Maelstrom: Increase the damage of Volley every time it ticks.
Summary: Both are strong. The values are good. Perfect!

Swords
Master: Puncture heals you.
Maelstrom: Low Slash deals more damage. Heavy Attacking soon after provides more Stamina Return.
[iSummary[/i]: No problems here. Both are good. If anything, Maelstrom could use a slight buff!

Daggers
Master - Increase the damage of Twin Slashes ticks.
Maelstrom - Allows your next single target DoT to deal significantly more damage after using Flurry.
Summary: Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems Master Daggers are highly outclassed by Maelstrom Daggers. The "Cruel Flurry" Maelstrom enchant buffs Twin Slashes more than the Master weapon does. To buff the Master Dagger, we should make the enchant mimick Thunderous Volley (on the Maelstrom Bow), so that the DoT of Twin Slashes increases per tick. It should also heal you based on a percentage (perhaps 40%) of the damage done per tick. This would give it a purpose, versus the pure DPS of Maelstrom Daggers.

Destruction Staff
Master: Increase damage of Destructive Touch. Reduce the cost by 12%.
Maelstrom: Enemies in your Wall of Elements take increased damage from your light attacks.
[iSummary[/i]: Maelstrom provides a nice DPS boost. It is a powerful staff. The Master Staff is great in concept, but needs its values buffed a lot or it will be useless. The cost reduction should place it on par cost-wise to that of Force Shock, and the initial hit damage should also get buffed to nearly match Force Pulse as well. The DoT should also increase in damage, or provide magicka back if the enemy afflicted with it dies within 4 seconds of the DoT applying. Would probably help this ability and weapon see use over the Maelstrom staff. Keep in mind, the morph Crushing Shock would provide an interrupt and Force Pulse would be much better DPS-wise than a Master enchanted Destructive Touch. It would now be viable to use though.

Restoration Staff
Master: Allies standing in the radius of your Grand Healing are also restored a little bit of Stamina per cast.
Maelstrom: Regeneration restores Magicka to those whom it crits on (includes the HoT).
[iSummary[/i]: Both are awesome. No changes needed.

Greatsword
Master: Cleave deals more damage.
Maelstrom: Critical Charge applies a DoT to enemies it connects with.
[iSummary[/i]: Both are equal. Master Greatsword might need a buff to the damage it deals, but that is it.


These are my thoughts. What do you all think they should do to balance The Master's and The Maelstrom's weapons to both be competitive with each other. I like my own suggestions, which is why I suggested them

DPShiro

Looks good, i really hope they fix them before release so people actually run VDSA again, as it looks now, poeiple wont bother sadly.

Vaoh

DPShiro wrote: »

Looks good, i really hope they fix them before release so people actually run VDSA again, as it looks now, poeiple wont bother sadly.

People will run vDSA, but only for the Bow, and some people for the Sword and Restoration Staff.

Destruction Staff, Daggers, and Greatsword will have few if any people wanting to use them.

The Destruction Staff and Daggers really need buffs.

DannyLV702

Bow is definitely better than maelstrom bow for pvp. I want it nao

PrinceFabious

I want the staff...

Refuse2GrowUp

First, I highly recommend you create a similar thread in the PTS section of these forums if you are hopeful the devs might see this and do a balance pass-over prior to these going live. Just link this thread in the new one so that these comments can be captured in the new one.

Regarding the weapons, I think generally speaking it is very difficult for 'special' damage enchantments to compare to 345 increased wpn and spell dmg glyphs. The Masters Sword and Resto Staff are great as is...love them and look fwd to V16 drops. The Masters Bow is good, primarily due to duration, i.e. a guaranteed 301 wpn dmg boost for 10 seconds vice a chance proc or 345 wpn dmg for 5 seconds. The Greatsword is meh. The Destro Staffs and Daggers really need a dmg buff and either resource and/or health return to be useful as neither offer more utility or dmg than standard wpn/spell dmg enchants or crushing enchants.

laksikus

Master sword will be BIS for snb Builds in pvp

Vaoh

Refuse2GrowUp wrote: »

First, I highly recommend you create a similar thread in the PTS section of these forums if you are hopeful the devs might see this and do a balance pass-over prior to these going live. Just link this thread in the new one so that these comments can be captured in the new one.

Regarding the weapons, I think generally speaking it is very difficult for 'special' damage enchantments to compare to 345 increased wpn and spell dmg glyphs. The Masters Sword and Resto Staff are great as is...love them and look fwd to V16 drops. The Masters Bow is good, primarily due to duration, i.e. a guaranteed 301 wpn dmg boost for 10 seconds vice a chance proc or 345 wpn dmg for 5 seconds. The Greatsword is meh. The Destro Staffs and Daggers really need a dmg buff and either resource and/or health return to be useful as neither offer more utility or dmg than standard wpn/spell dmg enchants or crushing enchants.

Good idea..... tbh I thought I did post this in the PTS section. LOL! I'll just tag a forum mod to move it.

@ZOS_CoriJ Could you move this thread to the PTS section? Thank you.

Woeler

As far as I know the maelstrom healing staff only gives regen to the caster, that should change.

Jaronking

The master 2hand is worthless they should really change it.No one in PVP or PVE USE CLEAVE its needs to be completely reworked to be useful.

Saturn

I still use the vr14 Master Sword, because the Maelstrom one has a garbage ability for tanking, having to do a full heavy attack for a little bit of stamina, when resource management isn't even a big issue anymore. Also fun fact, the Master Sword scales incredibly well with healing buff passives, and I often get a 8k heal out of it with my tank, even though the tooltip says 2k.

Foxic

For a pve sorcerer maelstrom staff front bar and master staff back bar will be bis. Though it would be nice to see the master staff buffed to help magical builds compete with stamina

Vaoh

@TotallyNotVos
And how exactly would the Master Staff contribute? Why would that be BiS?

Qbiken

If ZOS could fix the grouping tool to work for DSA and vDSA that would be great

Foxic

Doncellius wrote: »

@TotallyNotVos
And how exactly would the Master Staff contribute? Why would that be BiS?

Well for sorcerers, their pve build is extremely strict. You need to run force pulse, elemental blockade, frags, liquid lightning, mages wrath and both of your toggles. That leaves one flex slot, currently in that flex slot dw/staff sorcs run boundless storm and staff/staff sorcs run curse. With the new master staff flame clench beats out both of those skills in terms of dps though i guess i would still run boundless for trash pulls. I would like to test it a bit more, but i believe this will be the highest dps magicka sorc setup

Personofsecrets

>Maelstrom could use a slight buff...

Ishammael

You know what would be great....?

A Master's shield. Maybe +Armor or something

zerosingularity

My thoughts:

Maelstrom Sword. This could use a "Slight" buff, and by slight I mean massive. The bonus damage is not to Low Slash, but to the Fully Charged heavy that follows. I say drop this damage component and change it to restore ~600 Magicka and Stamina, or anything really. I don't mind it from being from a Fully-Charged heavy, but would prefer it to be on cast once per 4 seconds. Note: This item has been proven to be worthless (theory+testing) in it's current iteration.

Master Daggers. These need a massive buff. They are way outclassed by Maelstrom Daggers. Treating it like a Maelstrom Bow might not be a bad idea.

Master Destruction Staff. This used to buff the initial hit AND each tick on the DoT by ~500. I say it should remain like that, it would allow it to be a strong DoT worth slotting.

Master 2-hander. This should buff the initial hit by no less than 1200 damage, making this skill a decent spammable AoE in PvE, so you can run 2H/Bow builds. Optionally keep the damage as is but buff the affected radius. The DoT component is useless (just like Elemental Ring), so that should not factor in at all for this. Unless this skill is intended to be used as a DoT and not an AoE, though the initial hit damage seems to say otherwise.

Master Resto Staff. Good as is, but I would still suggest a 50% or more increase on the stam return. With the size of your average stam pool, this is chump change compared to how the resource pool was when the weapon first came out.

potirondb16_ESO

Small issue though a lot of weapon are giving more ressource, which mean a user should get a desync each time he switch bar..

Bow/Destro and resto, it should probably be adjust.

zuto40

i think the cleave damage increase isnt good at all really, cleave is a skill no one uses, perhaps a buff to uppercut or momentum of some sort, maybe like an extra 200 each tic for momentum or an extra 2k damage to uppercut

code65536

Well, keep in mind that they are still better than crafted weapons.

The passive component is better than any 1p set bonus. And the active component, if you use the skill that is buffed, is better than any crafted enchantment. And if you don't use the active component, you can override it with a poison and still retain the passive component that is superior to any set bonus.

The overall design goal is that the Master weapons buff the first skill of the weapon line, and Maelstrom weapons buff the second skill. So you won't see any changes in which skill gets buffed. If you want the third skill to be buffed, you'll have to wait for the next type of special weapon.

As for Master-vs-Maelstrom, some Master weapons are very underwhelming compared to Maelstrom (e.g., 2H), and some Maelstrom weapons are very underwhelming compared to Master (e.g., resto and 1HS). And some are situational: Master bow and destros are better in PvP, and Maelstrom bows and destros are better in PvE.

For the most part, the status quo is just fine.

juhasman

Jaronking wrote: »

The master 2hand is worthless they should really change it.No one in PVP or PVE USE CLEAVE its needs to be completely reworked to be useful.

Yeah but that's the idea od Master weapons to buff 1st skill from weapon skill line same like malestorms buff 2nd skill. WHo knows maybe in future we'll get new weapons with buffs to 3rd skills from new content.

TheHsN

im totaly with the guy...he has all good points...exactly what was in my minds..
And if i wanna make and addition maybe they can add restoration staff to give stamina with magicka too...same amount...

Personofsecrets

No master tanking weapon will ever be better for a group than the crushing enchantment on a regular old one-hander.

susmitds

Personofsecrets wrote: »

No master tanking weapon will ever be better for a group than the crushing enchantment on a regular old one-hander.

Usually a DD has it covered.

WillhelmBlack

I liked it when my Masters Greatsword increased my Spell damage. People in dungeons were like wtf why you gotta 2H noob? Then I'd post my DPS to chat. This was back when Martial Knowledge, Torugs, Cyrodiils Light rings and Adroitness was believed to be best in slot and actually it wasn't.

Even in PvP this sword was great as Stampede was a far better gap closer than buggy Toppling Charge.

ZOS nerfed the hidden spell damage bonus in Orsinium update I think, long after people had stopped using it.

DocFrost72

Jaronking wrote: »

The master 2hand is worthless they should really change it.No one in PVP or PVE USE CLEAVE its needs to be completely reworked to be useful.

Well, since you said no one...

Brawler is a coal AoE that can give you a 17k dmg shield (zero points into bastion) for 8 Seconds, has a bleed component on ALL enemies hit, a with a master's sword is a pseudo viable AoE. Not quite steel potato, but then what is?

Also, if you want to be unkillable as a stam dps (or stam tank) brawler plus vigor plus rally equals profit in trash packs.

Savos_Saren

Ishammael wrote: »

You know what would be great....?

A Master's shield. Maybe +Armor or something

+1

Come on! You can stack a Master's Dagger with a Maelstrom Dagger, Axe, or Mace... but you can't even have a Master's Sword/Shield combo?!?! Anyone can make a Prismatic Shield. Let's get some creativity here, ZoS.

Strider_Roshin

The additional cleave damage done by the master GS is terrible. It needs to be doubled IMO.

ManDraKE

The problem with the master weapons are the *** traits.

OdinForge

The master 1H sword on stamina builds in 1.6 PvP was such cancer, thank god barely any stamina builds tried it back then.