frost staff feedback

Lynx7386

So there are some readily apparent issues with frost staff tanking that I'm sure have been brought up, but now that the patch is live and devs are keeping an eye on it I think everything should be put into a single thread for feedback.

Here's the issues I've noticed most:

1. Heavy taunt
Having a free taunt is nice, and a ranged one at that, but the inherent problem here is that while this will work for low level content, at endgame a tank will not want to let his block down for the amount of time it takes to charge a full staff heavy. This is exacerbated by the loss of the increased heavy attack charge speed in the destruction line.

Solutions:
If the reasoning was to allow players to start tanking with frost staves right off the bat, why not just move inner fire to the first position in undaunted? That gives a readily available taunt that is ranged, uses magicka, and can be accessed even from the start of the game.

If nothing else, the taunt should also be applied by the frost version of destructive reach / clench.


2. Item slot imbalance
A lot of tanks have brought this up too - the frost staff does not offer enough incentive to give up the extra item slot, set bonus, trait, and Enchantment that having an offhand shield provides.

Solutions:
Two options here, both suggested on the forums numerous times:
1. Give two handed weapons (staff, 2h, and bow) the ability to count as two items for set bonuses.
2. Add a new set of offhand items that can be combined specifically with these weapons tob make up the difference. For staves, a focus. For 2handers, a buckler. For bows, a quiver.


3. Lack of armor
A shield by nature is always going to provide more defense than a staff because it offers additional armor, and in no small amount. A stamina tank, because of this, will always have more physical and spell resistance.

Solution:
Give frost staves, specifically, an inherent armor benefit just like shields, and alter the shield expert perk in the lady constellation to increase the armor of shields and frost staves by 75%


If anyone has other issues they'd like to suggest solutions for, please post them here.

heyjrey

Yeah, I personally found it difficult to tank using an ice staff.

Now for the record, I was on my magicka nightblade dps when I decided to take up ice staff tanking the last boss when we lost our tank in the beginning of the dungeon.

I found that if I needed to regain aggro by heavy attacking with the ice staff, sometimes I'd have to cancel mid heavy attack to block a potential one-shot. Now if in that moment I lost aggro on the boss and they aggro'd on someone else, that would basically be seen as my fault because I couldn't keep aggro.

It would be a lot easier though if one of the morphs for the destro staff line skill destructive touch/reach specifically taunted with an ice staff equipped so that way you could block-cast if need be.

And I mean c'mon, how many people in this game actually played with an ice staff before ice staff tanking came out? Adjusting one morph for the ice staff version of that skill wouldn't be such a bad thing.

psychotic13

Could be useful for a healer I think, just don't heavy attack cause you don't want the aggro lol.

My thought is that a lot of healers will run a destro for ele drain, and don't get much else use from the destro itself. Maybe if it provided some decent debuffs it could work, I believe chilled applies minor maim now.

They just need to adapt one or two of the skills to benefit ice staff, I mean which tank would use any of the skills? None

PS4_ZeColmeia

Personally I think that

1) you comment of taunt being on clench is spot on

2) Frost should have more defense, fire more spell power, lightning more magicka

3) 2H, bows, and staves should all have 2 item slots. This is especially true with the changes to 2H to make the difference between the 2 from the damage standpoint equal. DW S&S will always have the advantage of being able to mix sets to make it easier to get the 5/1/1 armor set up (especially optimized in the right slots for min/max armor), but the item slot difference is still stupid.

I agree with your comment that if the issue is item cost differences then adding an off hand item that is more or less just focus around cost does balance that issue. This would also have the added effect of giving my #2 suggestion without it being inherent to the items and would allow for their uses to be limited to the element type (ie a frost focus stone only works with a frost staff equipped).

The benefit to arrows would being able to equip quivers that change the damage to other elements would would effectively give a stamina equivalent to staves, but not the inherent bonuses that staves would get in my #2 suggestion. Stamina would still have the option of going S&S to tank up close, or go DW for higher damage up close, but stamina would have a reliable method to use elemental damage.

This would also pretty much balance out bows and make the differences between magicka and stamina very minimal.

Lynx7386

I'm not sure how well elemental damage on bows would work unless it was specially designed to scale with weapon damage and stamina instead of magicka and spell damage. We also would wind up with the inevitable complaints that all the champion perks for elemental damage are in non stamina constellations.

It'd probably be better if quivers just gave extra range or attack speed or something, or maybe they could reduce the cost of bow abilities?

Olupajmibanan

Why there isn't Battlefield Mobility-like passive for a Frost Staff?
I would love to try Frost Staff magicka tank but moving while blocking is impossible. That is a really limiting factor making me not to use Frost Staff and stick with S&B stamina tank.

Lynx7386

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

Why there isn't Battlefield Mobility-like passive for a Frost Staff?
I would love to try Frost Staff magicka tank but moving while blocking is impossible. That is a really limiting factor making me not to use Frost Staff and stick with S&B stamina tank.

Good observation, I completely missed the lack of a mobility booster while blocking with the staff

VinyParsley2016

The key point is ZOS never said the frost staff is designed for tanking in this patch. You want to play frost staff fake tank? Fine! But you want to make frost staff = shield? Ridiculous!

LMar

You know you can use inner fire for magicka taunting as well keep in mind

Joshuagm1991

What about people who loved frost staff dps?
I have one character. I spent hours getting winterborn in divines.

I was very sad.

Lynx7386

Joshuagm1991 wrote: »

What about people who loved frost staff dps?
I have one character. I spent hours getting winterborn in divines.

I was very sad.

Just don't put points in the passive that taunts.

SFDB

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Joshuagm1991 wrote: »

What about people who loved frost staff dps?
I have one character. I spent hours getting winterborn in divines.

I was very sad.

Just don't put points in the passive that taunts.

Another reason why you should be able to do pinpoint skill removal when they mess around with abilities, or get a free skill reset when they do.

Wolfchild07

New players are stealing taunt from actual sword n board tanks. They have no idea. If they blame me for not holding taunt, sure I'll let them know. But I just let it go now, re-taunting doesn't work. I thought Pierce was supposed to be prioritised first when it comes to taunting mechanics.

LtCrunch

VinyParsley2016 wrote: »

The key point is ZOS never said the frost staff is designed for tanking in this patch. You want to play frost staff fake tank? Fine! But you want to make frost staff = shield? Ridiculous!

I mean they had a feedback thread up in the Pts forums literally titled "Frost staff tanking feedback". So it's pretty safe to say they want people to be able to tank within some capacity with frost staves.

Lynx7386

SFDB wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Joshuagm1991 wrote: »

What about people who loved frost staff dps?
I have one character. I spent hours getting winterborn in divines.

I was very sad.

Just don't put points in the passive that taunts.

Another reason why you should be able to do pinpoint skill removal when they mess around with abilities, or get a free skill reset when they do.

Agreed, but it's not likely to happen

Draconerus

I have another forum thread saying this, but 2h weapons should count towards 2 piece set bonuses.

psychotic13

Draconerus wrote: »

I have another forum thread saying this, but 2h weapons should count towards 2 piece set bonuses.

2h weapons should not count towards to 2pc set bonuses. That would make staffs and 2h OP in pvp.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Joshuagm1991 wrote: »

What about people who loved frost staff dps?
I have one character. I spent hours getting winterborn in divines.

I was very sad.

Just don't put points in the passive that taunts.

I just doesn't seem worth it though, knowing it's a straight up 8% DPS loss compared to the other 2 staves. It is annoying though ice DPS is wanted by a large amount of the community

Sharee

Lynx7386 wrote: »

So there are some readily apparent issues with frost staff tanking that I'm sure have been brought up, but now that the patch is live and devs are keeping an eye on it I think everything should be put into a single thread for feedback.

Here's the issues I've noticed most:

1. Heavy taunt
Having a free taunt is nice, and a ranged one at that, but the inherent problem here is that while this will work for low level content, at endgame a tank will not want to let his block down for the amount of time it takes to charge a full staff heavy. This is exacerbated by the loss of the increased heavy attack charge speed in the destruction line.

Solutions:
If the reasoning was to allow players to start tanking with frost staves right off the bat, why not just move inner fire to the first position in undaunted? That gives a readily available taunt that is ranged, uses magicka, and can be accessed even from the start of the game.

That does not make sense to me.

If tanking in endgame content is the problem, how does moving inner fire to first undaunted position help with that? In endgame, everyone will have the whole undaunted line unlocked anyway, so where the taunt skill is located makes no difference.

Moving the taunt to first undaunted skill only affects low level gameplay, but as you said yourself, the heavy taunt works there just fine, so... why?

Lynx7386

psychotic13 wrote: »

Draconerus wrote: »

I have another forum thread saying this, but 2h weapons should count towards 2 piece set bonuses.

2h weapons should not count towards to 2pc set bonuses. That would make staffs and 2h op in pvp

I disagree. Dual wield has a distinct advantage of higher weapon damage and spell power than other weapon types, and shields provide significantly more defense. On top of those inherent advantages, they also provide an extra trait, enchant, and set bonus.

Right now it could be argued that dw/shield lines are much more powerful because of those advantages. They certainly are in pve. In a pvp scenario, having 2handed Weapon types count for two set bonuses is hardly going to make a difference, and from recent morrowind interviews it looks like something along those lines is already planned.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

Lynx7386

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

That's my plan for my warden tank - 1h/shield plus frost staff

psychotic13

Lynx7386 wrote: »

psychotic13 wrote: »

Draconerus wrote: »

I have another forum thread saying this, but 2h weapons should count towards 2 piece set bonuses.

2h weapons should not count towards to 2pc set bonuses. That would make staffs and 2h op in pvp

I disagree. Dual wield has a distinct advantage of higher weapon damage and spell power than other weapon types, and shields provide significantly more defense. On top of those inherent advantages, they also provide an extra trait, enchant, and set bonus.

Right now it could be argued that dw/shield lines are much more powerful because of those advantages. They certainly are in pve. In a pvp scenario, having 2handed Weapon types count for two set bonuses is hardly going to make a difference, and from recent morrowind interviews it looks like something along those lines is already planned.

DW now gives the same damage as a 2h with homestead, not more. Extra trait is irrelevant unless you wanted to use different ones as 2h weapons gives twice as much to compensate for that

DW is for PvE and 2H is for PvP, you can use either in each obviously but that's were there strengths lie. 2H gives everything you need in PvP if you can run an extra 5pc bonus on top of that it would be overpowered man, like really.

TheForseti

Lynx7386 wrote: »

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

That's my plan for my warden tank - 1h/shield plus frost staff

Hybrid mag/stam builds viable?!

Loves_guars

Wolfchild07 wrote: »

New players are stealing taunt from actual sword n board tanks. They have no idea.

THIS.

I don't blame the new player, but as a tank this is a nightmare.

idk

@Lynx7386

Zos has already addressed your second point this week and are considering options for 2H weapons.

For your third point, frost staves are also DPS weapons and if a passive grants extra damage reduction then it may become the weapon of choice for magika DD in PvP. There may be something with the new class to balance it out since it seems that the frost tanking will best synergize with the Warden, though we have to wait to actually see.

There is an inherent issue converting a weapon to be used for different purposes vs designing a new weapon for a specific use.

KochDerDamonen

TheForseti wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

That's my plan for my warden tank - 1h/shield plus frost staff

Hybrid mag/stam builds viable?!

Tanks are already hybrids

///

IMO they should have made the frost bonus on destructive clench apply a taunt, and made the frost staff passive do something like give you a fat shield while charging a heavy attack or passive defenses or something.

Lynx7386

TheForseti wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

That's my plan for my warden tank - 1h/shield plus frost staff

Hybrid mag/stam builds viable?!

Hybrid has (almost) always been viable as long as you weren't interested in dealing damage or healing... so it's only really going to work for tanky characters. Still, should be fine for soloing and most pve tanking.

idk

KochDerDamonen wrote: »

TheForseti wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

I can say that my DK tank frost is a beast.
I tank most bosses and still go up to 20k dps on single target. The heal of embers is mindblowing
If you run out of magika just flip to back bar use 1h and shield consume some stam gain magika and flip again

That's my plan for my warden tank - 1h/shield plus frost staff

Hybrid mag/stam builds viable?!

Tanks are already hybrids

///

IMO they should have made the frost bonus on destructive clench apply a taunt, and made the frost staff passive do something like give you a fat shield while charging a heavy attack or passive defenses or something.

Yes, tanks have been hybrids with mag tanks using a stam taunt often and stam tanks using buffs, chains and such. However, I do not see how a staff tank will be a hybrid other than having S&B on back bar which could lead them to be a weaker tank.

Given that Zos has stated the Warden will make a good off tank and off healer it may be that the staff tanking design is not intended to be as strong. Maybe.

techprince

From my suggestions thread :

Elemental Susceptibility : Applies Major Fracture to the target.
Trifocus : Blocking with Frost Staff creates a shield absorbing x damage. This shield scales with number of heavy armor pieces equipped. This effect can occur every n seconds.
Inner Fire : Move this ability first in the order of undaunted skills.

xboxNA corin6

In here to say, BUFF FROST PVP. Seriously, it wasn't even that good last patch and you slaughtered any reason to run it at all in pvp this patch. It's bad for dps, it's bad for tanking, it's bad for pvp. Frost is 100% garbage now. If you want frost tanking so bad, give it some buffs that benefit pve and pvp.

Tommy_The_Gun

Tanking with ice staff on one bar and One-Handed & Shield on the other is really good. With a correct "hybrid" build you can technically peram-block. Run out of magicka ? Just swap weapons and block with regular shield. Run out of stamina ? just swap weapons and block with ice staff... xD