Bugs and Ninja Nerfing: lightning staff, Fighter's guild, speed, and pets... What else?

RoyJade

As I just say on an another thread :

After a lot of reflection, I think the best solution should be to keep the "bug" fix but to apply the 100% splatch damage with the cumulated channeled attack. If you deal 2000 damage x3 then 2000 final damage, you should do 8000 splatch damage.

After all, the passive says "fully charged heavy shock attack damage nearby enemies for 100% of the damage done". Nothing say specifically "the last tick's damage", the HA shock is a channel and the "heavy attack" damage is the cumulated damage, not the last tick. ZOS already stated that when they applied molten armament's buff to all tick after a lot of threads.

At a conclusion : bug fixed, aoe damage still here, shock staff still relevant in endgame build and a new burst channeled aoe for magicka players.

Lava_Croft

RoyJade wrote: »

As I just say on an another thread :

After a lot of reflection, I think the best solution should be to keep the "bug" fix but to apply the 100% splatch damage with the cumulated channeled attack. If you deal 2000 damage x3 then 2000 final damage, you should do 8000 splatch damage.

After all, the passive says "fully charged heavy shock attack damage nearby enemies for 100% of the damage done". Nothing say specifically "the last tick's damage", the HA shock is a channel and the "heavy attack" damage is the cumulated damage, not the last tick. ZOS already stated that when they applied molten armament's buff to all tick after a lot of threads.

At a conclusion : bug fixed, aoe damage still here, shock staff still relevant in endgame build and a new burst channeled aoe for magicka players.

This is the right angle! Fix bug while also thinking about improvement!

hrothbern

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

When you think of game imbalance and power disparity, you immediately think of lightning staff, dont you?

If it is a bug, its a bug that helped enable some build diversity. "Not working as intended" might actually be better for the game than what was intended.

Perhaps that the power of the AOE of Lightning Staff to proc for example the Ilambris Monster set, will have had influence on the decision to give more prio to fix it.
Together with for example Scalding Rune you get a high uptime of both meteors.

Ilambris

Zaldan

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We certainly never intend to purposely not include information in the patch notes. We'll follow up early next week and figure out what the deal here is.

then there needs to be someone proof reading patch notes as this happens regularly

hrothbern

Zaldan wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We certainly never intend to purposely not include information in the patch notes. We'll follow up early next week and figure out what the deal here is.

then there needs to be someone proof reading patch notes as this happens regularly

in a perfect world where proof reading and back checking would not delay the release of the patch notes.....

I rather have the current fast patch notes and the occasional glitch we have now

Berenhir

One good thing though: Lightning staff heavy attack wont break cloak anymore then?

sebban

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, thanks for your patience. We can confirm that the change to the Lightning Staff AoE proc was intended.

Why not just remove frost and lightning staffs then and be done with it? People finally found a use for something other than fire staffs and you nerf it. Why?

Shadesofkin

With all due respect to the development teams and bug trackers and the like.

Your dev team couldn't beat Vet Ruins of Mazzatun with an hour and gold gear. Why would you fix a "feature" of lightning without consulting your player base on how it works in game?

Hows that unintended animation canceling working out for you? Seems no one has a problem with that being left in the game, but splash damage...oh no we can't have that!

I'm losing my ability to sympathize with the ZoS team, and I don't want to. I'm a huge fan, I'm a fanboi, I totes support plenty of what others call bad choices and I'm usually optimistic about the upcoming content.

But this...this with the Destruction Ult, the way Stamina is going, Bracing/Sturdy changes, all of it...it's starting to wear even me down.

Mush55

I find it simply amazing the amount of these so called bugs that add some thing to game play that Zos has discovered recently, whilst other bugs that actually impact on game play negatively that have been ingame as long are left alone ..

Go figure it out...

asneakybanana

RoyJade wrote: »

It's so easy to give frost and thunder a niche :
- give the 20% added damage to fire wall to the base skill, give fire a non damage particularity (heal debuff or something else which is good but not efficient in pve comparing to ice/thunder morph).
- make ice medium attack more reliable. At this point, fire and ice should be equal, and only sets can give some advantage to one of them (sun/DK passive for fire, winterborn for ice…).
- give back a nice aoe bonus to shock, in order to have fire/ice for single target and thunder for aoe.
- boost impulse in order to make it competitive over thunder HA, and give to each elemental morph a nice (and equal for DPS) effect.

And of course, boost magicka pve dps to be on par with stamina one (I don't speak about pvp now, too much to say).

The problem is, lightning and ice dont need to be on par with fire they need to be better than fire. Fire gets damage boosts from so many different sources and a ton of sets are based on fire so swapping to anything else is silly especially due to the fact that Dark Elf is now BiS. Fire blockade currently gets a 20% dmg boost over the other 2, DKs using engulfing flames further boost that by 10%, Dark Elf further boosts that 5%, and then next patch with burning spellweave becoming BiS for most mag builds other than NBs who will still use scathing it will be even more important to have fire staff to proc spellweave faster. I would say that using a fire staff is about a 10% overall dps increase on a sorc compared to using a lightning staff if the base damage is equal.

Drummerx04

This isn't like the BoL or Sorc shield or cloak nerfs, or even streak nerfs.

• BoL is still the premiere insta cast burst heal
• Sorc shields are still quite powerful and add a massive amount of survivability, you just need to see the damage coming
• Cloak still makes you invisible and you can still cloak my crystal frag, execute, inferno heavy, and crushing shock damage (curse you nbs)
• Streak still gets a sorc around very quickly... just not across cyrodiil in 3 minutes... or out of the range of gap closers... and it kills your magicka to do it, I feel like at one point it also stunned through block, but doesn't anymore... but it is still worth slotting.

But the lightning staff nerf actually makes it worse than something else, ie fire staves/impulse.

Please revert this, or place a much larger AOE burst at the end of the channel comparable to the current damage output of the full channel on live, perhaps even a bit of a damage nerf, but not a damn 75% reduction in damage.

RoyJade

asneakybanana wrote: »

RoyJade wrote: »

It's so easy to give frost and thunder a niche :
- give the 20% added damage to fire wall to the base skill, give fire a non damage particularity (heal debuff or something else which is good but not efficient in pve comparing to ice/thunder morph).
- make ice medium attack more reliable. At this point, fire and ice should be equal, and only sets can give some advantage to one of them (sun/DK passive for fire, winterborn for ice…).
- give back a nice aoe bonus to shock, in order to have fire/ice for single target and thunder for aoe.
- boost impulse in order to make it competitive over thunder HA, and give to each elemental morph a nice (and equal for DPS) effect.

And of course, boost magicka pve dps to be on par with stamina one (I don't speak about pvp now, too much to say).

The problem is, lightning and ice dont need to be on par with fire they need to be better than fire. Fire gets damage boosts from so many different sources and a ton of sets are based on fire so swapping to anything else is silly especially due to the fact that Dark Elf is now BiS. Fire blockade currently gets a 20% dmg boost over the other 2, DKs using engulfing flames further boost that by 10%, Dark Elf further boosts that 5%, and then next patch with burning spellweave becoming BiS for most mag builds other than NBs who will still use scathing it will be even more important to have fire staff to proc spellweave faster. I would say that using a fire staff is about a 10% overall dps increase on a sorc compared to using a lightning staff if the base damage is equal.

You're right, but I still think that a single staff shouldn't be more powerful than an another by itself. My conclusion on this point is : give frost and shock some good set/passive synergy in order to be competitive with fire.
DK will still be better with fire, they are fire-based mage. Sorc should have some good boost to thunder staff (better than energized/implosion), like a "thunder cumulation" who slightly boost all thunder damage for each source of thunder damage the enemy take (for example, a liquid lightning's effect who interact with all thunder sources). And for frost, we need more set like winterborn, in order to give frost a niche.
An another idea would be a "frost" skill line (with both magicka and stamina skill), or give NB or templar (or sorc, why not?) a frost affinity.

Toast_STS

RoyJade wrote: »

As I just say on an another thread :

After a lot of reflection, I think the best solution should be to keep the "bug" fix but to apply the 100% splatch damage with the cumulated channeled attack. If you deal 2000 damage x3 then 2000 final damage, you should do 8000 splatch damage.

After all, the passive says "fully charged heavy shock attack damage nearby enemies for 100% of the damage done". Nothing say specifically "the last tick's damage", the HA shock is a channel and the "heavy attack" damage is the cumulated damage, not the last tick. ZOS already stated that when they applied molten armament's buff to all tick after a lot of threads.

At a conclusion : bug fixed, aoe damage still here, shock staff still relevant in endgame build and a new burst channeled aoe for magicka players.

Yes. They shouldn't nerf both the amount of AoE ticks and AoE damage. It's 140% on live but 104% on PTS. It was 170% the patch before too, maybe bring it back to this level?

asneakybanana

RoyJade wrote: »

asneakybanana wrote: »

RoyJade wrote: »

It's so easy to give frost and thunder a niche :
- give the 20% added damage to fire wall to the base skill, give fire a non damage particularity (heal debuff or something else which is good but not efficient in pve comparing to ice/thunder morph).
- make ice medium attack more reliable. At this point, fire and ice should be equal, and only sets can give some advantage to one of them (sun/DK passive for fire, winterborn for ice…).
- give back a nice aoe bonus to shock, in order to have fire/ice for single target and thunder for aoe.
- boost impulse in order to make it competitive over thunder HA, and give to each elemental morph a nice (and equal for DPS) effect.

And of course, boost magicka pve dps to be on par with stamina one (I don't speak about pvp now, too much to say).

The problem is, lightning and ice dont need to be on par with fire they need to be better than fire. Fire gets damage boosts from so many different sources and a ton of sets are based on fire so swapping to anything else is silly especially due to the fact that Dark Elf is now BiS. Fire blockade currently gets a 20% dmg boost over the other 2, DKs using engulfing flames further boost that by 10%, Dark Elf further boosts that 5%, and then next patch with burning spellweave becoming BiS for most mag builds other than NBs who will still use scathing it will be even more important to have fire staff to proc spellweave faster. I would say that using a fire staff is about a 10% overall dps increase on a sorc compared to using a lightning staff if the base damage is equal.

You're right, but I still think that a single staff shouldn't be more powerful than an another by itself. My conclusion on this point is : give frost and shock some good set/passive synergy in order to be competitive with fire.
DK will still be better with fire, they are fire-based mage. Sorc should have some good boost to thunder staff (better than energized/implosion), like a "thunder cumulation" who slightly boost all thunder damage for each source of thunder damage the enemy take (for example, a liquid lightning's effect who interact with all thunder sources). And for frost, we need more set like winterborn, in order to give frost a niche.
An another idea would be a "frost" skill line (with both magicka and stamina skill), or give NB or templar (or sorc, why not?) a frost affinity.

I'm not talking about just DK im talking about every class. Dark elf is BiS for every class with the 2% shock and frost dmg and the 10% fire dmg buff from engulfing flames is a debuff on the boss that allows everyone to deal 10% more fire dmg to that target. And if you went with lightning staff High Elf would be better than dark elf on sorc so you would lose 5% dmg on your meteor, 7% on your blockade, 5% on the fire portion of force pulse, 7% on the basic attack even if everything else was equal. Thats even factoring in the 6% extra shock dmg that sorcs get. It will be even worse next patch when illambris comes out and the only fire dmg sorcs will get is from light attack, blockade, and force pulse making inferno staff a requirement for any sorc build since illambris is going to be 5k+ dps. But back on topic, @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert please reconsider this "fix" and leave lightning staff heavy attacks the way they are on live its the only thing making magic competitive w/ stam in AoE.

RoyJade

asneakybanana wrote: »

I'm not talking about just DK im talking about every class. Dark elf is BiS for every class with the 2% shock and frost dmg and the 10% fire dmg buff from engulfing flames is a debuff on the boss that allows everyone to deal 10% more fire dmg to that target. And if you went with lightning staff High Elf would be better than dark elf on sorc so you would lose 5% dmg on your meteor, 7% on your blockade, 5% on the fire portion of force pulse, 7% on the basic attack even if everything else was equal. Thats even factoring in the 6% extra shock dmg that sorcs get. It will be even worse next patch when illambris comes out and the only fire dmg sorcs will get is from light attack, blockade, and force pulse making inferno staff a requirement for any sorc build since illambris is going to be 5k+ dps. But back on topic, @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert please reconsider this "fix" and leave lightning staff heavy attacks the way they are on live its the only thing making magic competitive w/ stam in AoE.

Yes, I know, that's why I'm currently thinking about solutions who can make thunder and frost staff based build competitive. Something like engulfing flame but different, for example a new mechanism on liquid lightning who does an additional tick when the sorc hit with a thunder skill. And in addition with an un-nerfed (or changed with the same dps) shock staff.

Toast_STS

smacx250 wrote: »

Toast_STS wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Toast_STS wrote: »

I have been using lightning staff for a while. They have changed the AoE damage the last couple patches and as far as I know they were never in the patch notes.

There was also a patch a while ago where the patch notes said lightning and resto were fixed to proc the Mephala's set. For this they changed all ticks of a heavy attack to count as a heavy attack so other sets that also did extra damage to heavy attacks became usable with the lightning staff. I think this also caused all ticks of lightning staff to do AoE damage.

then there were the ninja adjustments that I did not see in any patch notes:
Update 10 lightning staff AoE damage was buffed from 15% to 170%
Update 11 lightning staff AoE damage was nerfed from 170% to 140%
Now on PTS the AoE damage is 104% and only procs off the last hit.

I tested it on PTS and the AoE damage is the only nerf. vMA lightning staff was still boosting all the ticks on a lightning staff so I am hoping aether and the other sets are unaffected too.

The issue is that the whole point of the staff was to be effective in AoE...

I mean that's not what the OP was asking. But it's a little overtuned on live. I don't usually call for nerfs on my own builds but I can accept this.

Here is a clip, at 10 seconds in I do 3 ticks of a single heavy attack and it does 200K aoe damage. Fully charged with 4 ticks on 6 closely grouped mobs and it's more like 300k-400k damage from one heavy attack.

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Toast STS/video/21346584

@Toast_STS , what kind of build do you have to get that kind of heavy attack damage?

@smacx250 That was 5 aether + 5 elegant and vMA lightning staff. I'm always playing around with my build. It's hard to tell what's best on console.

Right now I prefer 5 aether + 5 Seargent's mail+ vMA lightning staff front bar, charged lighting staff back bar for PvE stuff. 5 heavy 2 light armor right now. IDK if sergeants mail drops in rings( i have a couple amulets though) but i would love to try this with 5 light/2 heavy. With the charged lightning staff on the back bar with a shock enchant you can set an enemy off balance very easily. Still playing around with skills. My weapon damage is very low with this set up ~2.5k buffed but the damage I get from the staff is pretty nice.

here is a little showcase of the damage numbers. It's all single target in the clip but you can imagine the AoE damage is really nasty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRk1uZoL1Io

Sorry to everyone that is bemoaning this nerf. I feel my build may have been partly responsible.

Joy_Division

Lava_Croft wrote: »

And that's the discussion to have. How to improve staves without relying on bugs.

The "bug" was a interesting way to distinguish the lightning staff from the others and improve its performance. It doesn't matter if it was a "bug." There is no reason why a "bug" cannot be the inspiration for a improvement to game.

smacx250

Toast_STS wrote: »

@smacx250 That was 5 aether + 5 elegant and vMA lightning staff. I'm always playing around with my build. It's hard to tell what's best on console.

Thanks for the explanation, it was very enlightening for me!

Shadesofkin

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

And that's the discussion to have. How to improve staves without relying on bugs.

The "bug" was a interesting way to distinguish the lightning staff from the others and improve its performance. It doesn't matter if it was a "bug." There is no reason why a "bug" cannot be the inspiration for a improvement to game.

Considering that's how Animation Cancelling came into existence, really it seems like it should have been the same sort of thinking.

Derra

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

While in essence a nerf, let's not make the mistake of trying to hold on to a bug just because Magicka builds are underpowered.

While it may be a bug or maybe not bc fully channeled means the first tick of the attack for every other mechanic aswell - it´s current live mechanic does not impact people negatively. They can just keep it as a feature that brings variety to the game.

A bug that does need fixing is cloak making projectiles miss even though i popped a detection potion. That is something that needs to be fixed.

A fixed bug is a fixed bug. If the fixed bug exposes something that requires a buff or nerf, then do so. But crying because a bug that happened to benefit you got fixed, I really would just give up and try to look for valid (ie: non-bugged) ways to buff Magicka specs.

This discussion isn't that much different from Stamina players crying that a bug fix to Drinks meant they lost their broken Stamina regeneration while sneaking.

Where is it a bug. The tooltip for the destro staff passive states that fully channeled heavy attacks deal aoe damage. As it stands every fully charge mechanic works from the first tick of the lightning heavy and restoration staff heavy.

There is no evidence to support your claim that it´s classified as a bug. As far as we know it´s a mechanic that got changed.

So as it stands this mechanic now behaves inconsistently to every other fully charged mechanic in the game for channeled attacks.
You can´t provide any evidence for this being classified as a bug (if it should indeed be a bug why did they not change every other fully charged mechanic aswell).

This is supported further by the fact that resource return on heavy attacks (which does require the last tick of the channel) is worded differently: Resources get returned on completed heavy attacks - contrary to fully channeled.
Also the official response on the matter is intended change - not fix.

To conclude the matter players are rightfully angered over a mechanical change that results in a direct nerf to magica dps that is hardly competetive to begin with at the moment.


But we both know you´re only doing this in the attempt to trigger people on the forums - so try a little harder atleast.

Toast_STS

The removal of the AoE every tick might be good for anyone using a lightning staff in PvP. Does swarm mother pull people in when they block any damage? Like even AoE dots? Because that would be really annoying.

It is also good for unfriendly nightblades because the AoE is fairly large and will pull them out of stealth. I think its a little cheap and I do not play a nightblade.

However, the nerf to the actual damage done (from 140% to 104%) seems unnecessary and should be reconsidered. The good things that I see to come out of this nerf are PvP oriented but it is a significant nerf to PvE users.

Also, should I feel guilty about using lightning staff on live now that i know it's going to get nerfed?

FearlessOne_2014

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

When channeling a heavy attack deals more damage than spamming impulse, you know something is wrong. Lightning heavy also allows you to do that ae damage at range, so that's another advantage.

Does magicka in general need help? Yes. I destro in need of improvements? Yes. But allowing the lightning staff heavy to ignore the"fully charged rule" isn't the way to do it.

So with this thought pattern of your's Animation cancelling should be ninja nerfed as well.

All skills in the game now has a .33 second GLOBAL CD. Since ani cancelling is a much bigger cancer then this.

Dracane

Apherius wrote: »

SleepyTroll wrote: »

SirMewser wrote: »

Just letting those on PTS know lightning staff heavy attack AoE effect was reduced to only procs on the final hit.
Can someone point to me where it says this in the patch notes?
If anyone else comes across excluded changes please post on the forums, I am looking for more.

This was a bug, it was always only supposed to do the aoe at the end of the heavy attack. the tooltip even said that.

3 years of bug on this staff ? thank Z.O.S

Please , now sorcerer stay behind all class magicka/stamina , for AOE ... ( don't talk be about the DK magicka plz ... he have more fire damage ... so ... his destruction staff aoe do more damage .)

Ah honey. Some of the people here are the reason, why propaganda is so efficient.
They truly believe, that this is a bug fix. Just like they believed the regen change was a bug fix.

These things exist in game since 3 years. Basically since the game exists.
How can anyone believe, that they just accidentally came across this after 3 years ?
It was a nerf, an evil one. Not a fix

And @RoyJade Had a great idea. Listen to this man

hrothbern

Toast_STS wrote: »

The removal of the AoE every tick might be good for anyone using a lightning staff in PvP. Does swarm mother pull people in when they block any damage? Like even AoE dots? Because that would be really annoying.

It is also good for unfriendly nightblades because the AoE is fairly large and will pull them out of stealth. I think its a little cheap and I do not play a nightblade.

However, the nerf to the actual damage done (from 140% to 104%) seems unnecessary and should be reconsidered. The good things that I see to come out of this nerf are PvP oriented but it is a significant nerf to PvE users.

Also, should I feel guilty about using lightning staff on live now that i know it's going to get nerfed?

You say: "The removal of the AoE every tick might be good for anyone using a lightning staff in PvP. Does swarm mother pull people in when they block any damage? Like even AoE dots? Because that would be really annoying".

Jep, there is a trade-off
There are a lot of defensive set bonusses triggered by any damage dealt.
Swarm Mother we will see fast enough, but there are many more existing at your risk or just helping the defense of your enemy when the tick is too low to cause real DPS pressure but high enough to help your enemy.

The AOE is great to burst DPS pressure when you are close to the kill (alone or with fellow players presuring the same enemies) and ofc great in PVE where you always have that situation.

And because of that trade-off, the negatives of that AOE in many situations, the total damage of the Lightning cannot and should not be calculated as the equivalent of the single target damage increase of the Fire Staf: it must be more.

andreasranasen

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

hedna123b14_ESO

andreasranasen wrote: »

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

Seems the funny part is that he probably thinks:"Oh it doesn't matter what they say, everyone will always find something to hate in a combat developer." Then ZOS replaces him with someone else and we all see how much more common sense an individual can have and maybe then he will realize :" Maybe it's not them...it's me..."

andreasranasen

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

andreasranasen wrote: »

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

Seems the funny part is that he probably thinks:"Oh it doesn't matter what they say, everyone will always find something to hate in a combat developer." Then ZOS replaces him with someone else and we all see how much more common sense an individual can have and maybe then he will realize :" Maybe it's not them...it's me..."

Exactly. I love my lightning staff! I should not feel forced to equip an inferno staff to be like the rest of these cookie cutter players. I suggest to buff ice and lightning!

hedna123b14_ESO

andreasranasen wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

andreasranasen wrote: »

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

Seems the funny part is that he probably thinks:"Oh it doesn't matter what they say, everyone will always find something to hate in a combat developer." Then ZOS replaces him with someone else and we all see how much more common sense an individual can have and maybe then he will realize :" Maybe it's not them...it's me..."

Exactly. I love my lightning staff! I should not feel forced to equip an inferno staff to be like the rest of these cookie cutter players. I suggest to buff ice and lightning!

It's not even to be cookie cutter...there is literally ZERO reason to use a lightning staff if this change goes live. Why have other staves at all if you actively discourage their use...just take them out of itemization...

Apherius

andreasranasen wrote: »

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

+1 . you should do a pool on that .

andreasranasen

Apherius wrote: »

andreasranasen wrote: »

@Wrobel just go work for a different company. You are ruining the fun ingame and killing magicka classes.

+1 . you should do a pool on that .

I did! They closed it quick lol