Opinion: Separate skill lines for Fire, Ice, & Lightning Staves

Jthomas56

Just my opinion but in order to encourage Ice Staff tanking and varieties of mage DD styles there should be different skill lines for each staff type.

Fire and lightning staves are both viable in game right now so much of this opinion will focus on the Ice staff, but adding separate skill lines would be nice to add variety to the mage DD.

Right now there is no viable destruction staff skill that encourages Ice staff tanking. The sword and board skill line was designed with tanking in mind. The ice staffs heavy attack mechanic makes it impractical in group play as a DD. Please make the Ice staff viable for someone.

If they were to add skills that encourage Ice staff tanking, removing and cramming new skills into the existing skill line is not the answer. They would need to make separate skill lines in order to not make the destruction staff skill line cluttered and ultimately less effective for mage DPS.

Just my opinion let me know your thoughts.

Arobain

imo ice staff tanking is fine, i have an ice staff tank and it does great, only issue, is ice tanking is much different than shield tanking, and it has to be played differently, i feel people just dont understand that quite yet

ccfeeling

Agree . Stave independent skills are required .

Ice tanking idea is fine , but use to heavy attack to taunt a mob is crazy idea .
We need some new skills from ice staves , such as an effective taunt skill , no Inner Rage , 4051 magicka ...WTH

In stam view , just like to use 3400 stam to land a Pierce Armor , terrible .

Ice staff has already give up a 2 slot bonus , it needs some buffs , think about it ZOS .

Lynx7386

ccfeeling wrote: »

Agree . Stave independent skills are required .

Ice tanking idea is fine , but use to heavy attack to taunt a mob is crazy idea .
We need some new skills from ice staves , such as an effective taunt skill , no Inner Rage , 4051 magicka ...WTH

In stam view , just like to use 3400 stam to land a Pierce Armor , terrible .

Ice staff has already give up a 2 slot bonus , it needs some buffs , think about it ZOS .

I dont feel a 100% ice staff based tank is effective in ESO - as you said, inner rage is far too expensive and heavy attack taunting is unreliable and dangerous.

However, ice staff is awesome right now as a back-bar for a 1h/shield hybrid stat tank, especially for wardens. Combining ice shards / polar wind from the warden with elemental blockade from ice staff gives you exceptional area control on group pulls, and you can throw in subterranean assault for an aoe major fracture&breach. You get all of that without losing a huge amount of defense.

It's also ideal in that you can block with the 1h/shield until your stamina runs low, then swap to the frost staff and use magicka as a backup resource until your stamina recovers, which should be fairly quickly with bull netch and constitution going.

Ice staff was made for warden tanks, it seems.

RavenSworn

Lynx7386 wrote: »

ccfeeling wrote: »

Agree . Stave independent skills are required .

Ice tanking idea is fine , but use to heavy attack to taunt a mob is crazy idea .
We need some new skills from ice staves , such as an effective taunt skill , no Inner Rage , 4051 magicka ...WTH

In stam view , just like to use 3400 stam to land a Pierce Armor , terrible .

Ice staff has already give up a 2 slot bonus , it needs some buffs , think about it ZOS .

I dont feel a 100% ice staff based tank is effective in ESO - as you said, inner rage is far too expensive and heavy attack taunting is unreliable and dangerous.

However, ice staff is awesome right now as a back-bar for a 1h/shield hybrid stat tank, especially for wardens. Combining ice shards / polar wind from the warden with elemental blockade from ice staff gives you exceptional area control on group pulls, and you can throw in subterranean assault for an aoe major fracture&breach. You get all of that without losing a huge amount of defense.

It's also ideal in that you can block with the 1h/shield until your stamina runs low, then swap to the frost staff and use magicka as a backup resource until your stamina recovers, which should be fairly quickly with bull netch and constitution going.

Ice staff was made for warden tanks, it seems.

This. It really is made for warden tanking. But that loss of a gear slot weakens it imo.

Silver_Strider

I support separating them.

All Ice Staff really needs is a solid taunt skill, not tied into heavy attacking and it would be so much better than it currently is but there is just so much potential with Ice Tanking that it really needs to be expanded upon in a way that the current conjoining of the D-Staves cannot hope to accomplish thru passives alone.

SydneyGrey

No thanks. Characters have enough skill lines to build up without adding more just for the sake of adding more.

Why do you feel the need to encourage ice tanking, anyway?

ccfeeling

Lynx7386 wrote: »

ccfeeling wrote: »

Agree . Stave independent skills are required .

Ice tanking idea is fine , but use to heavy attack to taunt a mob is crazy idea .
We need some new skills from ice staves , such as an effective taunt skill , no Inner Rage , 4051 magicka ...WTH

In stam view , just like to use 3400 stam to land a Pierce Armor , terrible .

Ice staff has already give up a 2 slot bonus , it needs some buffs , think about it ZOS .

I dont feel a 100% ice staff based tank is effective in ESO - as you said, inner rage is far too expensive and heavy attack taunting is unreliable and dangerous.

However, ice staff is awesome right now as a back-bar for a 1h/shield hybrid stat tank, especially for wardens. Combining ice shards / polar wind from the warden with elemental blockade from ice staff gives you exceptional area control on group pulls, and you can throw in subterranean assault for an aoe major fracture&breach. You get all of that without losing a huge amount of defense.

It's also ideal in that you can block with the 1h/shield until your stamina runs low, then swap to the frost staff and use magicka as a backup resource until your stamina recovers, which should be fairly quickly with bull netch and constitution going.

Ice staff was made for warden tanks, it seems.

Agree and correct

Not both bars , I just use one stave bar but this is my main tanking bar . Around 70% up time .
1H1S will be my magicka charging time , retaunt , rebuffs time .
Because I am not a meta DK / Warden tank , stam sustain is a really big problem to NB tank when we face hard contents .
TBH , I won't expect ZOS will rework Siphoning Strikes .

So I've already changed to light armor tank with ICE staff major defense to continue my NB tank life . Magicka recovery is much easier because there are few choices in the game .

Yes , I won't join Hard contents like VSO , VMOL , VHOF , VAS , VBF HM as tank role . I know I will have a limitation and time is money lol . It's alright.

But I still have fun with my toon , that's what I enjoy .

NyassaV

My only complaint is skill points. Otherwise I like it

ToRelax

So which skills stay on which element, then? I don't imagine it being fun for many people to have the skills removed they currently use or being unable to use them together in the name of "diversity". It could make sense if everyone used the same destruction skills, but as far as PvP goes, they are all being used on all elements, aside from Impulse mabye.

I think a redesign of the Trifocus and Ancient Knowledge passives could go a long way if done right.

Also, Fire Clench could easily get it's stun back and Frost Clench some other comparable effect, but that's a minor issue.

Jthomas56

ToRelax wrote: »

So which skills stay on which element, then? I don't imagine it being fun for many people to have the skills removed they currently use or being unable to use them together in the name of "diversity". It could make sense if everyone used the same destruction skills, but as far as PvP goes, they are all being used on all elements, aside from Impulse mabye.

I think a redesign of the Trifocus and Ancient Knowledge passives could go a long way if done right.

Also, Fire Clench could easily get it's stun back and Frost Clench some other comparable effect, but that's a minor issue.

A good point, maybe they could alter the existing skills that vary based on what staff you have equipped to have dramatically different effects. On an Ice staff Wall of elements could be some sort of damage shield and destructive touch could be a taunting ability. And the passives tri-focous and anchient knowledge would provide buffs that make Ice tanking more desirable.

Runefang

I think its just too big a change at this point in the games life cycle.

MerlinPendragon

Leave as is.