Instead of asking for a magicka Dawnbreaker, let's...

TheYKcid

...make ultimates scale-off your highest penetration.

Hear me out.

Implementing a magicka Dawnbreaker takes options away from some players:
Both morphs of DB already have widespread and well-defined uses. Flawless is used for the passive weapon damage boost by PvE stam toons, while Smiting is a staple for the majority of PvP stam classes - some of which entirely lack a burst ultimate in their class toolkit (stam Sorc & Warden). Replacing one of these morphs with a magicka version will adversely affect one of these groups.

We have pre-existing systems to integrate this change:
At the present, ultimates already scale-off your max stats... to a limited extent. If magicka is your highest max resource, for instance, the ultimate will derive its tooltip from your spell damage and max magicka, and will crit according to your spell critical chance. And vice-versa for stam. This is why magblades can run incap—and magsorcs, dawnbreaker—with a good level of success. All it would take to implement my suggested change would be to add a check for penetration into this process.

It benefits classes that need it the most:
Currently, 3/5 of the magicka classes don't have good native options for a burst ultimate. Sorc & Warden don't have anything whatsoever, while Magplars only have Sweep (which is weak and lacks a CC). Meteor is NOT the solution—it's expensive, delayed, and easy to counter. Running Dawnbreaker addresses this deficiency somewhat, but still feels gimped as it receives no benefit from several major sources of damage—spell penetration (especially that from light armor), and several of the magicka CP stars (ele expert, elfborn, spell erosion). The suggested change will increase the viability of Dawnbreaker for these classes.

External balance will be mostly unaffected:
The stam classes will still predominantly use DB (or Take Flight in the case of some DKs, and incap on NBs), and won't be affected. MagDKs will still use Ferocious Leap.
The one drawback I can forsee is that magblades—who are already among the strongest PvP specs—will get an indirect buff to the damage of their incap from this change.
...

So, would this be a justified and/or balanced change? Discuss!

Feanor

One other drawback is also that Dawnbreaker forces you into melee range, and that’s not preferable if you are a ranged build. I’m not asking for a ranged burst ultimate on the power level of Dawnbreaker, as it would be overpowered. I agree though that Meteor is lackluster compared to Dawnbreaker (although the wonky nature of Rune Cage makes it much easier to land the meteor these days).

KingYogi415

DBOS works fine on magic classes.

No change needed!

Enslaved

All these ultimates and few kids start crying about magicka dawnbreaker. Its same as stamina kids crying over stamina eye of the storm, stamina shields and similar bs.

Lets be real.

When you decide a class and type of resource you have already limited your choices a lot. Some ultimates are limited to only that weapon type, some are limited to only that class. Among few ultimates that are not related to weapon or class we have 2 supportive ones, like horn or barrier, and 3 damaging ones - 2 AoE like meteor and dawnbreaker and one single target, from soul magic school.

Out of all 3 damaging ultimates, in large scale battles that are complete lagfest, the most dangerous one is meteor. It can be blocked, but with all rubberbanding and similar bs we have in zerg vs zerg combat, many times you are hit by it and then 10 seconds later you get teleported 75 meters behind and most of the times, dead. It has stun component, DoT component and also snare or ulti gain, depending on morph u choose. One other thing is that this ulti is ranged and it locks on target, so no need to aim or anything. It has potential for huge damage if not blocked.

Second one is the choice of so many players that play stamina builds, and some magicka users as well - Dawnbreaker. For PvP players almost exclusively go with CC morph, and that is understandable knowing that CC is king of PvP. It cost less than meteor, but you need to be pretty close to your target to use it. Also, it requires some aiming and unlike meteor there is some skill involved into making DB your sharpest tool in the shed.

Third damaging ulti any class can use is cheesiest of them all. Soul strike can be blocked but will take away a lot of your stamina, user is not interruptable but on the other hand it is channeling ultimate. Its cost is very cheap to compensate single target usage. Mostly used by templars because they dont know what to do with their life, anyways. Requires a bit more skill compared to meteor, but still a reliable tool of Xv1 players that kill us smallscallers on the resources we invade.

As any can see from this, all 3 ultimates have pros and cons, but kings of PvP are still destro ulti, permafrost and heal ulti from templar. Whoever doubt this, go face any ball zerg in Cyrodiil and get facerolled by bs.

TheYKcid

^ In very large scale Cyrodiil combat, perhaps. But in smallscale and especially duels, where there's less chaos and more attention on the individual player, DB is still an important tool to drop instant burst within as few GCDs as possible to catch your target offguard. And the only such tool that some mag classes have.

Armatesz

Who in their right mind would ask a magic build to use dawnbreaker? That is a stamina based sort of ultimate from fighter's guild... it doesn't boost magic abilities.

TheYKcid

@Armatesz many magicka builds utilise DB in PvP. Read the 2nd paragraph of the opening post if you're curious why.

Akinos

TheYKcid wrote: »

@Armatesz many magicka builds utilise DB in PvP. Read the 2nd paragraph of the opening post if you're curious why.

Yeah because those builds/classes don't really have another decent choice for a magicka ult. Which is a problem in itself.

Kartalin

Armatesz wrote: »

Who in their right mind would ask a magic build to use dawnbreaker? That is a stamina based sort of ultimate from fighter's guild... it doesn't boost magic abilities.

Remember that regardless of whether the ultimate does physical or magical damage, it scales off of your highest stat. So if you are a magicka character and you use dawnbreaker, that's where it scales. The problem is how certain sets and CP affect the damage of the dawnbreaker. Wearing something that boosts your damage with magicka abilities (war maiden) won't affect an ultimate that does physical damage. And if you are a magicka character with champion points stacked into Elemental Expert instead of Mighty, you're not going to get any additional benefit from dawnbreaker. So with CP, stamina characters with points into Mighty are boosting their dawnbreaker damage beyond what magicka can reach.

In no CP however, including battlegrounds, there's effectively no difference between what damage you can get from dawnbreaker as a magicka or stamina character. I guess a stam player with automaton will be able to boost it from that point of view, but the scaling from max stats has the same effect regardless of spec.

TheYKcid

@Kartalin

It's a problem even in no-CP, which is what I primarily play. A big chunk of a light armor user's damage come from the 4884 penetration that the armor passives provide, and this doesn't translate into their DB whatsoever.

Sixty5

Scaling ultimates off of highest penetration just sounds needlessly complicated.

Plus while I agree that Sorc, Warden and Templar still lack a burst damage ultimate in the vein of Dawnbreaker, they do have access to Meteor and Soul Assault, alongside Eye of the Storm for damage.

Adding the penetration for Dawnbreaker would turn it from a melee range utility ult for magicka builds to something that is the top choice offensively for classes that were never balanced around it.

gabriebe

I would rather have the existing ultimates reworked to encourage diversity of play. Every class could get a third morph of their existing ultimates, for example. Just with sorcs, a stamina-based Atronach, a melee-based overload or a single target but more powerful negate could be viable alternatives to the omnipresent dawnbreaker. Everyone and their mother running dawnbreaker in PvP doesn't make it very exciting.

pzschrek

I just want a stamina negate.

Maulkin

pzschrek wrote: »

I just want a stamina negate.

It doesn't work on stam sorc or sth?

Domander

It used to be magic damage, one morph should at least still be magic damage imo.

IZZEFlameLash

Enslaved wrote: »

All these ultimates and few kids start crying about magicka dawnbreaker. Its same as stamina kids crying over stamina eye of the storm, stamina shields and similar bs.

Lets be real.

When you decide a class and type of resource you have already limited your choices a lot. Some ultimates are limited to only that weapon type, some are limited to only that class. Among few ultimates that are not related to weapon or class we have 2 supportive ones, like horn or barrier, and 3 damaging ones - 2 AoE like meteor and dawnbreaker and one single target, from soul magic school.

Out of all 3 damaging ultimates, in large scale battles that are complete lagfest, the most dangerous one is meteor. It can be blocked, but with all rubberbanding and similar bs we have in zerg vs zerg combat, many times you are hit by it and then 10 seconds later you get teleported 75 meters behind and most of the times, dead. It has stun component, DoT component and also snare or ulti gain, depending on morph u choose. One other thing is that this ulti is ranged and it locks on target, so no need to aim or anything. It has potential for huge damage if not blocked.

Second one is the choice of so many players that play stamina builds, and some magicka users as well - Dawnbreaker. For PvP players almost exclusively go with CC morph, and that is understandable knowing that CC is king of PvP. It cost less than meteor, but you need to be pretty close to your target to use it. Also, it requires some aiming and unlike meteor there is some skill involved into making DB your sharpest tool in the shed.

Third damaging ulti any class can use is cheesiest of them all. Soul strike can be blocked but will take away a lot of your stamina, user is not interruptable but on the other hand it is channeling ultimate. Its cost is very cheap to compensate single target usage. Mostly used by templars because they dont know what to do with their life, anyways. Requires a bit more skill compared to meteor, but still a reliable tool of Xv1 players that kill us smallscallers on the resources we invade.

As any can see from this, all 3 ultimates have pros and cons, but kings of PvP are still destro ulti, permafrost and heal ulti from templar. Whoever doubt this, go face any ball zerg in Cyrodiil and get facerolled by bs.

It is like people forgot that Stamina people wanted Dawnbreaker to changed to stamina ult back when it dealt magic damage. Lol.