PTS Feedback Thread for Frost Staff Tanking

josh.lackey_ESO

Make 2 hand weapons count as two set pieces already.

Junipus

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Frost Staff tanking. Please let us know what you think of this new playstyle, if you ran into any bugs, and any other feedback you'd like to give.

[SNIp] this tanking is - stupid, annoying and no-one wanted it but you're determined to make it happen regardless.

Just do us a favour and revert it with the next update and chalk it up to "experience" [SNIp]

[Edited for Political convo]

Saint_Bud

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Frost Staff tanking. Please let us know what you think of this new playstyle, if you ran into any bugs, and any other feedback you'd like to give.

I play since release and once there were templar and nb tanks, sorc i never see at this time. There were also many healers that were not a templar. With the change to no stam regen while blocking you killed them all. Evry one wants a templar healar, because its hart tu make a build without having stamproblems in vtrials and you all will have it when you not take a shard. Also evry one wants a dk, because a dk gets ressurces back when useung an ultimate. Why not just bring back stamregen while blocking abd balance heavyarmour passives and blockcoast. Maybee then there will be other builds in vtrials than stamdk. And for this guys how crys for permaplocking in pvp, with a froststaff and desertrose it will be doable with damge output and blackrose dudes make this for month now.

austinwalter87ub17_ESO

Ancient Knowledge should have been like this:

Fire Staves get increased DOT damage.
Frost Staves get increased Single Target Direct damage.
Lightning Staves get increased AOE damage.

If you want a magic tank, you're better off adding an entirely new 1h/book skill line which is based in magicka. This is the only truly effective way to accomplish what the frost staff changes propose. Tanking with Magicka is an itemization issue first and a skill issue second.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

I like the changes so far, people are acting like you will have an ice staff on each bar. This is the wrong way to go about it, every tank ought to have one of each, S/B and ice staff, then depending on whether or not they are magic or stam, be spending the most time on that weapon. I for one cant wait to have a ranged weapon on my stam tank, one that doesn't need stam to use.

Lylith

removing the snare from ice staff?

no. it's one of the few useful things about it.

heavy attack taunt?

again, no.

best approach, leave it alone.

RavenSworn

I like this change. It adds viability to magicka tanking. However, a heavy attack taunt is close to being suicidal in fights against bosses and for taunting range targets there is inner fire for that. Imo, change frost shock to the taunt mechanic. This way, you can still have the block up for staff and still able to taunt range / melee targets.

To those who say permanently blocking is back.. Doesn't block stops stamina from recovering regardless? So even if you do block from frost staff, that stamina is not going to go up.

Honestly, a pull from the frost staff on mobs is easier than from a sword and shield. A good placement for blockade or impulse will pull the targets to you, much like how sap 'pulls' targets.

I applaud ZoS for taking this brave step. And it creates diversity in builds. It's now viable to tank with any weapons as your off bar while having the sword and shield as your main.

Waffennacht

Im really looking forward to the ice staff changes

Akimbro

josh.lackey_ESO wrote: »

Make 2 hand weapons count as two set pieces already.

Just no...

lucky_Sage

please don't keep frost staff tanking Its really a bad idea.

how it should be

FIRE STAFF- increases spell dmg

FROST STAFF-gives spell pen

LIGHTNING STAFF-increase crit change

make two handing weapons count as to set pieces

Izaki

lucky_Sage wrote: »

please don't keep frost staff tanking Its really a bad idea.

how it should be

FIRE STAFF- increases spell dmg

FROST STAFF-gives spell pen

LIGHTNING STAFF-increase crit change

make two handing weapons count as to set pieces

What if i tell you your ideas are worse?

imapogostick

Why can't I just dual wield staffs? Dw staffs plz!

Gnortranermara

1. Put the taunt on Destructive Touch instead of heavy attack.

2. Make the passive add the staff's spell power to your armor, like a shield. (Maybe only while blocking?)

3. Make 2-handers (staff, bow, 2h weps) count as two set pieces. Period. Do it. Fix this balance issue! Anyone with two spare neurons to rub together knows this is how it should be. Bar swapping should not cost us a set bonus! Magicka users should not be forced into dual wielding or sword and board to get an extra set bonus. Just stop it already and fix this garbage.

lucky_Sage

IzakiBrotherSs wrote: »

lucky_Sage wrote: »

please don't keep frost staff tanking Its really a bad idea.

how it should be

FIRE STAFF- increases spell dmg

FROST STAFF-gives spell pen

LIGHTNING STAFF-increase crit change

make two handing weapons count as to set pieces

What if i tell you your ideas are worse?

how could that be worst than frost staff tanking
then what to you thank it should be
@IzakiBrotherSs

NBrookus

uniq_faznrb18_ESO wrote: »

To those who say permanently blocking is back.. Doesn't block stops stamina from recovering regardless? So even if you do block from frost staff, that stamina is not going to go up.

@uniq_faznrb18_ESO ZOS specifically changed this for frost staves. When blocking with a frost staff, your stam will regen, but your magicka won't. So you can regen stamina on your staff bar, then swap to a S&B bar and block to regen magicka instead.

Tri Focus:

This passive ability now taunts the enemy after you use a fully-charged Frost Heavy Attack.
This passive ability now causes your block to drain Magicka (instead of Stamina) and stops your Magicka Recovery (instead of Stamina Recovery) while blocking when you have a Frost Destruction Staff equipped.

RavenSworn

NBrookus wrote: »

uniq_faznrb18_ESO wrote: »

To those who say permanently blocking is back.. Doesn't block stops stamina from recovering regardless? So even if you do block from frost staff, that stamina is not going to go up.

@uniq_faznrb18_ESO ZOS specifically changed this for frost staves. When blocking with a frost staff, your stam will regen, but your magicka won't. So you can regen stamina on your staff bar, then swap to a S&B bar and block to regen magicka instead.

Tri Focus:

This passive ability now taunts the enemy after you use a fully-charged Frost Heavy Attack.
This passive ability now causes your block to drain Magicka (instead of Stamina) and stops your Magicka Recovery (instead of Stamina Recovery) while blocking when you have a Frost Destruction Staff equipped.

Ah right didn't catch that piece of nugget. Thanks for the clear up.

capricorn152245ub17_ESO

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

After doing a lot of testing on block cost with a Frost staff, it looks like the Ancient Knowledge passives aren't applying block cost reduction while tanking with a Frost Staff.

Thanks!

LiQuid!

I'm not experienced enough to provide any valuable insight, but conceptually I love this idea. I mainly play a magicka based Templar tank and I feel like being able to tank with a frost staff will be the final step in making my battle mage/spellsword playstyle come to fruition.

One major thing I'll agree with tho is that using a 2 hand weapon is really disruptive to completing set bonuses over a sword and shield.

Great idea, I just hope it can be implemented in a way that makes it viable so I don't get laughed out of groups for playing like this.

STEVIL

LiQuid! wrote: »

I'm not experienced enough to provide any valuable insight, but conceptually I love this idea. I mainly play a magicka based Templar tank and I feel like being able to tank with a frost staff will be the final step in making my battle mage/spellsword playstyle come to fruition.

One major thing I'll agree with tho is that using a 2 hand weapon is really disruptive to completing set bonuses over a sword and shield.

Great idea, I just hope it can be implemented in a way that makes it viable so I don't get laughed out of groups for playing like this.

Really it just means you need to choose your sets differently. if one of your sets has a 15-20-30 or longer cooldown its great for these weapons. Take lich iirc, its like a massive magreg boost with a 1min cooldown. For many builds, swap over to lich to trigger the sustain boost then swap back for the 1m.

Clever alchemist another good one - swap over to drink pots, then swap off until potions again in 45s.

etc
etc
etc.

Silver_Strider

STEVIL wrote: »

LiQuid! wrote: »

I'm not experienced enough to provide any valuable insight, but conceptually I love this idea. I mainly play a magicka based Templar tank and I feel like being able to tank with a frost staff will be the final step in making my battle mage/spellsword playstyle come to fruition.

One major thing I'll agree with tho is that using a 2 hand weapon is really disruptive to completing set bonuses over a sword and shield.

Great idea, I just hope it can be implemented in a way that makes it viable so I don't get laughed out of groups for playing like this.

Really it just means you need to choose your sets differently. if one of your sets has a 15-20-30 or longer cooldown its great for these weapons. Take lich iirc, its like a massive magreg boost with a 1min cooldown. For many builds, swap over to lich to trigger the sustain boost then swap back for the 1m.

Clever alchemist another good one - swap over to drink pots, then swap off until potions again in 45s.

etc
etc
etc.

Wouldn't Warlock be better than Lich for Frost Staff tanking, considering that blocking stops your magic regen?

Woeler

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Battlefield Mobility

Sword and board has a passive that increases your movement speed while blocking by 60%. This is a crucial passive that allows for better mobility on the battlefield allthewhile staying behind the protection of your block. Frost staff has no such thing. A frost staff severely cripples the movement of a tank in combat. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. Equip a staff, block and walk and then do the same with a sword and shield. You will see the difference is massive.

Block cost reduction and mitigation

So, overall these passives are ok. There is one downside to them that makes them pretty much useless. In order to actually get the mitigation and cost reduction you need to slot a destruction staff ability. This would be no problem if not ALL destruction staff skills would be COMPLETELY useless for a tank. They bring zero advantage. Why are you making players slot useless abilities in order to get a passive they actually invested skillpoints in?

Secondly, there are passives for sword and board that reduce the incoming damage from projectiles even more. Staves have no such thing.

So here is it all in bullet points. While wearing a frost staff you have:

Negatives:
- No major fracture
- No major breach
- No reliable minor maim
- No minor heroism
- Less block cost reduction
- Crippled battlefield mobility
- No useful damage absorber
- A set-piece you will lose
- Less damage mitigation from projectiles

Positives:
- Blocking that costs magicka
Nobody in his right mind will give up all these utility aspects in order to use a frost staff. This entire change is pointless if you do not acknowledge “blocking and taunting” IS NOT tanking in this game.

Here is what I propose to at least make it a little more viable:

1. Make one of the destructive touch morphs apply minor maim.
2. Make Elemental susceptibility (other morph of elemental drain) apply taunt for 15 seconds while still keeping the spell resistance debuff on there. It’s not optimal, but at least it is something.
3. This whole “You need to slot a skill to get cost reduction and mitigation” needs to go, asap.
4. Some form of mobility increase needs to be added. Lacking the battlefield mobility passives is too much of a crippling effect. It just doesn’t make sense to be the one that needs to position everything on the field while being slower than a “stamplar buff” getting onto the live server.

You’re making people choose between a perfectly optimized set of skills or shooting yourself in the foot. What do you think people are going to choose?

As for now, this change means nothing and will change nothing. If this was truly meant for tanking it only proves one thing: The person that came up with it has no clue about tanking... at all... zero.

And that brings me to another point. Why no reaching out to the community? Now we are in the PTS phase again, and with or without feedback and changes, this is going live in February. Instead of first coming to community members you know have knowledge about these topics and asking them for opinions you just put this out on the PTS again. There it will be in the "six-weeks-test" phase and go live. Done, set. No more changes. Bad or good, whatever.

Instead of simply asking a few questions to dedicated community members (and this goes for more changes, ergo Stamplar and for instance @Alcast ) you simply put them out there on the PTS, which triggers this inevitable "go-live" deadline. so in these six weeks you have to get all the feedback, evaluate, redo stuff, ask for feedback again, re-evaluate and hope that now everything is good. And then... oh, launch day, well too bad, it's going in like this. Halfway done, and further improvements will end up in some old cardboard box in the basement, because now we need to work on new stuff. If only there was some way to get feedback before we throw ourselves into the deadline ultimatum...

And no, these feedback threads are not a good form of feedbacking. Do you see discussion here between developers and players? Well I sure don't. It's just like the "idea-box" every boss hangs in the office, but pretty much never opens. If you want feedback, talk, discuss, present your case, make us understand, because this is not working.

Who knows, maybe I get proven wrong this time.

Vaoh

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Battlefield Mobility

Sword and board has a passive that increases your movement speed while blocking by 60%. This is a crucial passive that allows for better mobility on the battlefield allthewhile staying behind the protection of your block. Frost staff has no such thing. A frost staff severely cripples the movement of a tank in combat. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. Equip a staff, block and walk and then do the same with a sword and shield. You will see the difference is massive.

Block cost reduction and mitigation

So, overall these passives are ok. There is one downside to them that makes them pretty much useless. In order to actually get the mitigation and cost reduction you need to slot a destruction staff ability. This would be no problem if not ALL destruction staff skills would be COMPLETELY useless for a tank. They bring zero advantage. Why are you making players slot useless abilities in order to get a passive they actually invested skillpoints in?

Secondly, there are passives for sword and board that reduce the incoming damage from projectiles even more. Staves have no such thing.

So here is it all in bullet points. While wearing a frost staff you have:

Negatives:
- No major fracture
- No major breach
- No reliable minor maim
- No minor heroism
- Less block cost reduction
- Crippled battlefield mobility
- No useful damage absorber
- A set-piece you will lose
- Less damage mitigation from projectiles

Positives:
- Blocking that costs magicka
Nobody in his right mind will give up all these utility aspects in order to use a frost staff. This entire change is pointless if you do not acknowledge “blocking and taunting” IS NOT tanking in this game.

Here is what I propose to at least make it a little more viable:

1. Make one of the destructive touch morphs apply minor maim.
2. Make Elemental susceptibility (other morph of elemental drain) apply taunt for 15 seconds while still keeping the spell resistance debuff on there. It’s not optimal, but at least it is something.
3. This whole “You need to slot a skill to get cost reduction and mitigation” needs to go, asap.
4. Some form of mobility increase needs to be added. Lacking the battlefield mobility passives is too much of a crippling effect. It just doesn’t make sense to be the one that needs to position everything on the field while being slower than a “stamplar buff” getting onto the live server.

You’re making people choose between a perfectly optimized set of skills or shooting yourself in the foot. What do you think people are going to choose?

As for now, this change means nothing and will change nothing. If this was truly meant for tanking it only proves one thing: The person that came up with it has no clue about tanking... at all... zero.

And that brings me to another point. Why no reaching out to the community? Now we are in the PTS phase again, and with or without feedback and changes, this is going live in February. Instead of first coming to community members you know have knowledge about these topics and asking them for opinions you just put this out on the PTS again. There it will be in the "six-weeks-test" phase and go live. Done, set. No more changes. Bad or good, whatever.

Instead of simply asking a few questions to dedicated community members (and this goes for more changes, ergo Stamplar and for instance @Alcast ) you simply put them out there on the PTS, which triggers this inevitable "go-live" deadline. so in these six weeks you have to get all the feedback, evaluate, redo stuff, ask for feedback again, re-evaluate and hope that now everything is good. And then... oh, launch day, well too bad, it's going in like this. Halfway done, and further improvements will end up in some old cardboard box in the basement, because now we need to work on new stuff. If only there was some way to get feedback before we throw ourselves into the deadline ultimatum...

And no, these feedback threads are not a good form of feedbacking. Do you see discussion here between developers and players? Well I sure don't. It's just like the "idea-box" every boss hangs in the office, but pretty much never opens. If you want feedback, talk, discuss, present your case, make us understand, because this is not working.

Who knows, maybe I get proven wrong this time.

I wish ZOS would acknoledge posts like this. You are 100% correct. About everything too.

Frost Staves bring only one thing to the table, which is a new breed of cancer for PvP via Desert Rose. (and a future wave of Group Finder group disbands/kicks especially of newer players).

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Vaoh wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Battlefield Mobility

Sword and board has a passive that increases your movement speed while blocking by 60%. This is a crucial passive that allows for better mobility on the battlefield allthewhile staying behind the protection of your block. Frost staff has no such thing. A frost staff severely cripples the movement of a tank in combat. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. Equip a staff, block and walk and then do the same with a sword and shield. You will see the difference is massive.

Block cost reduction and mitigation

So, overall these passives are ok. There is one downside to them that makes them pretty much useless. In order to actually get the mitigation and cost reduction you need to slot a destruction staff ability. This would be no problem if not ALL destruction staff skills would be COMPLETELY useless for a tank. They bring zero advantage. Why are you making players slot useless abilities in order to get a passive they actually invested skillpoints in?

Secondly, there are passives for sword and board that reduce the incoming damage from projectiles even more. Staves have no such thing.

So here is it all in bullet points. While wearing a frost staff you have:

Negatives:
- No major fracture
- No major breach
- No reliable minor maim
- No minor heroism
- Less block cost reduction
- Crippled battlefield mobility
- No useful damage absorber
- A set-piece you will lose
- Less damage mitigation from projectiles

Positives:
- Blocking that costs magicka
Nobody in his right mind will give up all these utility aspects in order to use a frost staff. This entire change is pointless if you do not acknowledge “blocking and taunting” IS NOT tanking in this game.

Here is what I propose to at least make it a little more viable:

1. Make one of the destructive touch morphs apply minor maim.
2. Make Elemental susceptibility (other morph of elemental drain) apply taunt for 15 seconds while still keeping the spell resistance debuff on there. It’s not optimal, but at least it is something.
3. This whole “You need to slot a skill to get cost reduction and mitigation” needs to go, asap.
4. Some form of mobility increase needs to be added. Lacking the battlefield mobility passives is too much of a crippling effect. It just doesn’t make sense to be the one that needs to position everything on the field while being slower than a “stamplar buff” getting onto the live server.

You’re making people choose between a perfectly optimized set of skills or shooting yourself in the foot. What do you think people are going to choose?

As for now, this change means nothing and will change nothing. If this was truly meant for tanking it only proves one thing: The person that came up with it has no clue about tanking... at all... zero.

And that brings me to another point. Why no reaching out to the community? Now we are in the PTS phase again, and with or without feedback and changes, this is going live in February. Instead of first coming to community members you know have knowledge about these topics and asking them for opinions you just put this out on the PTS again. There it will be in the "six-weeks-test" phase and go live. Done, set. No more changes. Bad or good, whatever.

Instead of simply asking a few questions to dedicated community members (and this goes for more changes, ergo Stamplar and for instance @Alcast ) you simply put them out there on the PTS, which triggers this inevitable "go-live" deadline. so in these six weeks you have to get all the feedback, evaluate, redo stuff, ask for feedback again, re-evaluate and hope that now everything is good. And then... oh, launch day, well too bad, it's going in like this. Halfway done, and further improvements will end up in some old cardboard box in the basement, because now we need to work on new stuff. If only there was some way to get feedback before we throw ourselves into the deadline ultimatum...

And no, these feedback threads are not a good form of feedbacking. Do you see discussion here between developers and players? Well I sure don't. It's just like the "idea-box" every boss hangs in the office, but pretty much never opens. If you want feedback, talk, discuss, present your case, make us understand, because this is not working.

Who knows, maybe I get proven wrong this time.

I wish ZOS would acknoledge posts like this. You are 100% correct. About everything too.

Frost Staves bring only one thing to the table, which is a new breed of cancer for PvP via Desert Rose. (and a future wave of Group Finder group disbands/kicks especially of newer players).

He is only right if you intend to use a frost staff 100% of the time. Which is not how a good tank would use it. I intend to use one on my back bar for magic regen and a free taunt. It is going to be nice to have option for your back bar instead of just another S/B.

Woeler

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Battlefield Mobility

Sword and board has a passive that increases your movement speed while blocking by 60%. This is a crucial passive that allows for better mobility on the battlefield allthewhile staying behind the protection of your block. Frost staff has no such thing. A frost staff severely cripples the movement of a tank in combat. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. Equip a staff, block and walk and then do the same with a sword and shield. You will see the difference is massive.

Block cost reduction and mitigation

So, overall these passives are ok. There is one downside to them that makes them pretty much useless. In order to actually get the mitigation and cost reduction you need to slot a destruction staff ability. This would be no problem if not ALL destruction staff skills would be COMPLETELY useless for a tank. They bring zero advantage. Why are you making players slot useless abilities in order to get a passive they actually invested skillpoints in?

Secondly, there are passives for sword and board that reduce the incoming damage from projectiles even more. Staves have no such thing.

So here is it all in bullet points. While wearing a frost staff you have:

Negatives:
- No major fracture
- No major breach
- No reliable minor maim
- No minor heroism
- Less block cost reduction
- Crippled battlefield mobility
- No useful damage absorber
- A set-piece you will lose
- Less damage mitigation from projectiles

Positives:
- Blocking that costs magicka
Nobody in his right mind will give up all these utility aspects in order to use a frost staff. This entire change is pointless if you do not acknowledge “blocking and taunting” IS NOT tanking in this game.

Here is what I propose to at least make it a little more viable:

1. Make one of the destructive touch morphs apply minor maim.
2. Make Elemental susceptibility (other morph of elemental drain) apply taunt for 15 seconds while still keeping the spell resistance debuff on there. It’s not optimal, but at least it is something.
3. This whole “You need to slot a skill to get cost reduction and mitigation” needs to go, asap.
4. Some form of mobility increase needs to be added. Lacking the battlefield mobility passives is too much of a crippling effect. It just doesn’t make sense to be the one that needs to position everything on the field while being slower than a “stamplar buff” getting onto the live server.

You’re making people choose between a perfectly optimized set of skills or shooting yourself in the foot. What do you think people are going to choose?

As for now, this change means nothing and will change nothing. If this was truly meant for tanking it only proves one thing: The person that came up with it has no clue about tanking... at all... zero.

And that brings me to another point. Why no reaching out to the community? Now we are in the PTS phase again, and with or without feedback and changes, this is going live in February. Instead of first coming to community members you know have knowledge about these topics and asking them for opinions you just put this out on the PTS again. There it will be in the "six-weeks-test" phase and go live. Done, set. No more changes. Bad or good, whatever.

Instead of simply asking a few questions to dedicated community members (and this goes for more changes, ergo Stamplar and for instance @Alcast ) you simply put them out there on the PTS, which triggers this inevitable "go-live" deadline. so in these six weeks you have to get all the feedback, evaluate, redo stuff, ask for feedback again, re-evaluate and hope that now everything is good. And then... oh, launch day, well too bad, it's going in like this. Halfway done, and further improvements will end up in some old cardboard box in the basement, because now we need to work on new stuff. If only there was some way to get feedback before we throw ourselves into the deadline ultimatum...

And no, these feedback threads are not a good form of feedbacking. Do you see discussion here between developers and players? Well I sure don't. It's just like the "idea-box" every boss hangs in the office, but pretty much never opens. If you want feedback, talk, discuss, present your case, make us understand, because this is not working.

Who knows, maybe I get proven wrong this time.

I wish ZOS would acknoledge posts like this. You are 100% correct. About everything too.

Frost Staves bring only one thing to the table, which is a new breed of cancer for PvP via Desert Rose. (and a future wave of Group Finder group disbands/kicks especially of newer players).

He is only right if you intend to use a frost staff 100% of the time. Which is not how a good tank would use it. I intend to use one on my back bar for magic regen and a free taunt. It is going to be nice to have option for your back bar instead of just another S/B.

That is completely besides the point of this change. Resource management is fine as it is. Frost staffs are not needed. There is no reason to use one, at least not if you can manage your resources well. The free taunt is really not an argument. Who honestly cares if I can taunt The Warrior or Rakkhat with one free heavy attack the the beginning of an 8 minute fight?

The whole change serves no purpose at all, and that is exactly the point.

You are right though, it is not how a good tank would use it, because as it is now, a good tank would not use nor need one at all. Which again is exactly the point, because this change should bring a reason for me to pick one up, or at least consider it. But it doesn't, it doesn't even try.

A change without incentive equals wasted resources.

Sharee

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Everyhing you wrote above applies even today to any magicka tank. It is not a frost staff tanking deficiency, it is the deficiency of magicka tanking in general when compared to stamina tanking.

Inner fire inferior to puncture? Yes, but that's inner fire's fault, not frost staff's fault. I tank today without a frost staff as a mDK and suffer from the same issue (well, i don't because im not tanking hard content but i digress).

Woeler

Sharee wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Everyhing you wrote above applies even today to any magicka tank. It is not a frost staff tanking deficiency, it is the deficiency of magicka tanking in general when compared to stamina tanking.

Inner fire inferior to puncture? Yes, but that's inner fire's fault, not frost staff's fault. I tank today without a frost staff as a mDK and suffer from the same issue (well, i don't because im not tanking hard content but i digress).

Which proves the changes I proposed make sense.

Sharee

Woeler wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

Alright, so, a change on my playing field. Or you would think? Right? Well after having tested almost every possible scenario I can say that this is not the case. The entire make-over frost staff has gotten on the PTS will not change anything at all when it comes to tanking meta in pve. It just makes an already pretty useless weapon useless in a different way. Let me elaborate on this:

The taunt issue

First of all, a taunt was implemented into the frost staff. Sounds good, right? You will taunt an enemy when you hit them with a fully charged heavy attack. A tank, whose main job is to absorb damage has to drop block for two and half seconds in order to use a heavy attack to taunt? Two and a half seconds of vulnerability in order to taunt. This makes absolutely no sense.
But I already gear you say “Then just use inner fire!”. And I will explain why this is bad. The job of a tank is not to just stand there, taunt and block. Anyone who believes this is the only thing a tank does (or should do) has no idea what he or she is talking about. A tank is besides a damage absorber and a combat organizer, a group-buff and boss-debuff machine. Reducing the resistances and increasing the vulnerability of the boss is a crucial aspect of tanking. The same goes for group buffing. A good tank plays 80% support and around 20% pure tank.

The taunt from sword and board applies both major fracture and major breach onto the enemy. These are the biggest armor debuffs in the game and are crucial in combat optimization. Without those DPS in the group is significantly reduced. Inner fire has no such debuff. The fact that a boss should always be taunted indirectly makes sure that a boss is (almost) always debuffed. With inner fire there is no debuffing at all. The same goes for the heavy attack. The tank has been stripped of one of his most crucial utilities, and that does not make sense at all.

Minor Maim

Minor maim is a debuff on an enemy that makes sure the enemy does 15% less damage on your allies. This debuff can be applied by the Heroic Slash skill in the sword and board tree. This is another debuff that is lacking with the frost staff. Yes, the chilled status effect that a frost staff can proc does apply minor maim, but the chance is 1% on dots and 5% on AOE abilities. Crucial debuffs like this should NEVER rely on a proc. When you encounter a pack of mobs in Veteran Maw, say like 5 mobs. They will be dead before you even get to proc minor main on all of them with a frost staff. With heroic slash I would have them all debuffed in under 10 seconds.

Everyhing you wrote above applies even today to any magicka tank. It is not a frost staff tanking deficiency, it is the deficiency of magicka tanking in general when compared to stamina tanking.

Inner fire inferior to puncture? Yes, but that's inner fire's fault, not frost staff's fault. I tank today without a frost staff as a mDK and suffer from the same issue (well, i don't because im not tanking hard content but i digress).

Which proves the changes I proposed make sense.

Of course. I am just pointing out that what's currently on the PTS is actually an improvement over the current situation. Because the general tone of the feedback in this thread seems to be "frost tanking is bad, scrap it" while the reasons given are showing it's actually magicka tanking, not frost tanking, that is bad.

Thraben

Waffennacht wrote: »

Im really looking forward to the ice staff changes

Only if they think of the most important thing: the visuals!

Physical blocking with a staff is like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TTB5t_4Nlc


while magical blocking should be like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZZNHekEQw

plus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMzgfAufsw

yake82

Question:

Is there plan to rework Maelstrom Ice staff enchantment?

fr33r4ng3r

Just read PTS patch notes for v2.7.2 and all I can say is "wow really, nothing...".

I really expected to see some changes and was hoping the whole idea would just be scrapped, mainly because it's broken and will never work for main tanking, but also because it breaks the long tradition of ice based destruction abilities in the Elder Scrolls series.

RIP Winterborn and Ysgramor, I doubt I could 'tank' in 6 light 1 heavy, even if I wanted to.

Time to rewrite my character's backstory I guess and go start farming fire or lightning sets...