Frost Staff Taunt Request

WrathOfInnos

I've been thinking about the frost staff heavy attack having a taunt, and how this has been an unpopular idea since it was created. I would like to recommend removing the taunt from the heavy attack and putting it on Weakness to Elements/Elemental Drain (still only if holding frost, not inferno or lightning).

This would be fitting because:

1. You could easily prevent frost-based DPS from accidentally taunting, by having them unslot this skill (you can't unslot heavy attack, and removing the taunt passive makes other staves weak). I know ice DPS isn't effective right now, but this would be one step in the right direction.

2. This new taunt/debuff would mirror the sword and shield taunt. Instead of a stamina weapon providing taunt and physical armor reduction, it would be a Magicka weapon providing taunt and spell resistance reduction. The pierce armor morph of puncture could still apply both debuffs, but ransack + ele drain is just as effective.

3. If the tank ran elemental drain, it would free up healers to use 2 resto staves. This would allow more gear diversity, instead of every top healer using just a Master Resto. Maybe Maelstrom or Asylum resto will see some use.

4. This would make frost staff tanking more viable in difficult content, since you would not have to drop block to retaunt.

5. If there are concerns about a free cast taunt, remember that the current frost taunt actually restores Magicka. Also frost blocking is inherently more costly than shield blocking (less passives, one less sturdy gear piece, and no 5-5-2 gear sets), so a little resource help would go a long way.

6. It would allow more rapid ranged taunting than frost heavy attacks. This is important for things like vDSA, where quickly taunting dangerous adds is critical. Currently the undaunted taunt is used, and nobody bothers with using a frost staff, this would give frost tanking an edge since it could taunt and debuff with one skill from range. This is most crucial for non-DK tanks, since taunting at range is used with the swarm mother set.

The only downside to this suggestion is that the undaunted taunt will probably not see much use (maybe from tanks that don't use tank weapons). This could be a great place to add a new skill that would be available to all classes. I'm not going to recommend anything specific, but I've seen some good ideas from others.

Let me know if you agree, disagree or have a better suggestion. Thanks.


Edited to add point 6, and to clarify point 4.

Avran_Sylt

My stam tank would still use the magicka morph of the undaunted taunt, since it's nice to have a taunt that doesn't drain my blocking resource. And I'm assuming that a mag tank might also choose the stamina version for the same reason.

If this was added to elemental weakness, you'd also have to create a variation for both flame, and shock, for consistency.

Experimental Ideas:
Shock: Adds Minor Breech as well
Flame: Target takes 5% increased DoT damage.
Frost: (Your Suggestion) Taunts the target.

WrathOfInnos

@Avran_Sylt I wouldn't be opposed to your suggested options, but I think it could be handled just like the current taunt passive. Just instead of saying "fully charged heavy attack" it would say "while holding a frost staff, weakness to elements will taunt an enemy to attack you for XX seconds." The XX could be 15s to match the current option, but 24s would be nice to match the duration of ele drain.

Would it be OP if the other morph, elemental susceptibility, matched its duration? Self -refreshing "perma-taunt" at the loss of the Magicka steal? No min-maxer would use it, but some that don't like juggling buffs might like it.

Avran_Sylt

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

@Avran_Sylt I would be opposed to your suggested options, but I think it could be handled just like the current taunt passive. Just instead of saying "fully charged heavy attack" it would say "while holding a frost staff, weakness to elements will taunt an enemy to attack you for XX seconds." The XX could be 15s to match the current option, but 24s would be nice to match the duration of ele drain.

Would it be OP if the other morph, elemental susceptibility, matched its duration? Self -refreshing "perma-taunt" at the loss of the Magicka steal? No min-maxer would use it, but some that don't like juggling buffs might like it.

If mag tanks were more common, it might be more OP, however I think it might be an incentive to try mag tanking.

Larsay

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

@Avran_Sylt I would be opposed to your suggested options, but I think it could be handled just like the current taunt passive. Just instead of saying "fully charged heavy attack" it would say "while holding a frost staff, weakness to elements will taunt an enemy to attack you for XX seconds." The XX could be 15s to match the current option, but 24s would be nice to match the duration of ele drain.

Would it be OP if the other morph, elemental susceptibility, matched its duration? Self -refreshing "perma-taunt" at the loss of the Magicka steal? No min-maxer would use it, but some that don't like juggling buffs might like it.

If mag tanks were more common, it might be more OP, however I think it might be an incentive to try mag tanking.

Anything that becomes as powerful it becomes the meta. Just the mind set of players. If a taunt self-refreshed you would use it and have you healers use Siphon Spirit; a self-refreshing taunt would horribly trivialize the game.

Ice staff for tanking in its current rendition is fairly lack-luster. The only thing it genuinely offers to any trial experienced tank is a pool other than Stamina to block with. Ultimately this is why you see virtually no Frost-Staff tanks; especially in competitive end game content.

Not to mention with a frost-staff you still take more damage while blocking, lose a major armor slot enchant, and have to use Inner Rage to taunt with unless you go inner Beast would be you now have two stam taunts… There is no way you can heavy attack on a trial boss with a Frost staff… Do that on Rakkhat or Warrior and your face down for the count.

The only way you can make Frost staff tanking viable on anything other than normal trials and four mans is; Frost Staves have to have some competitive advantage over a shield. Or be put on par with a sword and shield (Double enchants and Frost gets Armor + Weapon Enchants while Fire and Lighting get double weapon enchants); remove the no resource regen while blocking from frost staff; AND offer some form of taunt without it being coupled to heavy attack. Any of these things start to make frost-staff viable.

Ele Drain does make the most sense as it mirrors half of what the sword and board taunt offers.

Essentially what I am trying to get at is, for frost tanking to work; frost staff has to completely mirror sword and board in function not just randomly slap the same abilities on crap like a heavy attack.

Zippy81

I actually like it the way it is. A frost staff can be used as backup when you're running out of stamina. Moreover, the fully charged attack helps you restore magicka, is ranged and gives you a damage shield. It's different than a face2face taunt. Why use 2 identical solutions? I personally like it when it's more diverse.

Of course, you can make it better. Why fully charged? A regular heavy attack should do the trick. Besides, a frost attack can slow the enemy down as well so it's more than the sword/shield option. Also, a combo of a staff attack plus inner rage makes it possible to taunt 2 enemies standing next to each other.

A frost staff doesn't have to be similar to fire/lightning staves the same way sword/shield isn't as dps effective as dual wield/twohanders.

Destruent

Just some things to add:

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I've been thinking about the frost staff heavy attack having a taunt, and how this has been an unpopular idea since it was created. I would like to recommend removing the taunt from the heavy attack and putting it on Weakness to Elements/Elemental Drain (still only if holding frost, not inferno or lightning).

This would be fitting because:

1. You could easily prevent frost-based DPS from accidentally taunting, by having them unslot this skill (you can't unslot heavy attack, and removing the taunt passive makes other staves weak). I know ice DPS isn't effective right now, but this would be one step in the right direction.

Sounds great to me, bc this would allow frots-based-DPS without the need to unskill some passives.

2. This new taunt/debuff would mirror the sword and shield taunt. Instead of a stamina weapon providing taunt and physical armor reduction, it would be a Magicka weapon providing taunt and spell resistance reduction. The pierce armor morph of puncture could still apply both debuffs, but ransack + ele drain is just as effective.

all fine imo

3. If the tank ran elemental drain, it would free up healers to use 2 resto staves. This would allow more gear diversity, instead of every top healer using just a Master Resto. Maybe Maelstrom or Asylum resto will see some use.

4. This would make frost staff tanking more viable in difficult content, since you would not have to retaunt.

You are wrong with your asumption restro/restro is good for healing hard content if tanks apply ele-drain. Lightning destro with wall of elements has so much gain for the group in terms of utility there's no reson to not use it as healer. Even tanks should use it, if possible (that's mainly the reason froststaff isn't viable in hard content, bc if destro you want lightning).
Lightning destro + wall of elements offers the following:
- increase in offbalance uptime
- increase in minor vulnerability uptime
- some extra DPS through wall of elements
- maximized uptime of your frontbar enchant
- better sustain bc you use ele-drain on cooldown

frost can only do the last 2 points and in a weaker form the 3rd, but the two most impactful (1 and 2) can't be done with froststaff.

6. It would allow more rapid ranged taunting than frost heavy attacks. This is important for things like vDSA, where quickly taunting dangerous adds is critical. Currently the undaunted taunt is used, and nobody bothers with using a frost staff, this would give frost tanking an edge since it could taunt and debuff with one skill from range. This is most crucial for non-DK tanks, since taunting at range is used with the swarm mother set.

see above regarding froststaff...lightning is just sooo much better especially in 4-men-content where you don't have lots of sorcs...

Kneighbors

I liked the concept of Ice tanking and the idea of ZoS. Too bad they abandoned it in current state and didn't develop it further. Think they are simply afraid because of any possible impact on PvP.
I like the ideas suggested here.

WrathOfInnos

@Destruent Thanks for the good points. My group usually has at least 3 mag sorcs, a mag DK, and a mag NB with lightning walls, and although our healer do use charged lightning staves I don't think it will significantly affect off-balance if one or both were to go dual resto. If we were to switch to fire walls in DPS or had more stamina DPS I would agree we would need all the lightning walls we could get.

I realized when reading your quotes that I had missed a few words. I intended for point 4 to say you do not have to drop block to retaunt, fixed in OP. This seems important for many vet trials (axes, welwas, warrior), and is holding back the potential of frost staff.

@Zippy81 Good point about medium attack. If the frost attack did not have to be fully charged to taunt it would already help tanks a lot. Even light attack taunt could be nice for tanking (less time dropping block). The downside to this is that it would completely destroy the possibility to frost staff DPS. This type of build needs some buffs to be viable, but I don't want to write it off entirely.

@Larsay thanks for the feedback and filling in some of the points I was trying to make.

Gan Xing

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

My stam tank would still use the magicka morph of the undaunted taunt, since it's nice to have a taunt that doesn't drain my blocking resource. And I'm assuming that a mag tank might also choose the stamina version for the same reason.

If this was added to elemental weakness, you'd also have to create a variation for both flame, and shock, for consistency.

Experimental Ideas:
Shock: Adds Minor Breech as well
Flame: Target takes 5% increased DoT damage.
Frost: (Your Suggestion) Taunts the target.

currently weakness to elements cost 0 magicka, so if they make it a taunt for frost staff users, +25% chance to apply burning with flame, or concussed with shock, I can imagine players utilizing it more.

edit: just noticed the second half of your statement... I like it more than my idea

Destruent

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

@Destruent Thanks for the good points. My group usually has at least 3 mag sorcs, a mag DK, and a mag NB with lightning walls, and although our healer do use charged lightning staves I don't think it will significantly affect off-balance if one or both were to go dual resto. If we were to switch to fire walls in DPS or had more stamina DPS I would agree we would need all the lightning walls we could get.

I realized when reading your quotes that I had missed a few words. I intended for point 4 to say you do not have to drop block to retaunt, fixed in OP. This seems important for many vet trials (axes, welwas, warrior), and is holding back the potential of frost staff.

@Zippy81 Good point about medium attack. If the frost attack did not have to be fully charged to taunt it would already help tanks a lot. Even light attack taunt could be nice for tanking (less time dropping block). The downside to this is that it would completely destroy the possibility to frost staff DPS. This type of build needs some buffs to be viable, but I don't want to write it off entirely.

@Larsay thanks for the feedback and filling in some of the points I was trying to make.

But what would be the benefit of 2 resto? i don't see any tbh

WrathOfInnos

@Destruent Benefit of double resto would depend a lot on the group and the content. I would say generally the benefits would fall into one of 2 categories:

1. Ability to use 2 different special staves. Master resto is widely considered mandatory for the stamina return. A VMA resto backbar with rapid regen or mutagen has the potential to restore 800 magicka every 4s (equivalent to 400 regen), so it is useful, but will never replace Master resto. Asylum resto could also be interesting with combat prayer on back bar, I have not tried it.

2. Ability to split resto skills between both bars. With a destro back bar, the front bar ends up filled with all these skills (springs, combat prayer, mutagen, sometimes healing ward). The ability to move these around could be nice for trying to fit things like breath of life, inner light, efficient purge, and possibly even structured entropy (for health boost and ability to use tripots instead of spell power). Non-Templars would benefit even more from flexible bar setups with skills like sap essence, funnel health, obsidian shard, igneous shield, etc.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far off topic, since this thread is more about making frost tanking more viable, and preventing frost DPS from accidentally taunting.