How I'd Fix: Cold Damage

Vercingetorix

Cold damage right now has little to no benefit for players and the shoddy attempt at tanking as a passive for cold damage is hurting the damage type the most. Magical tanking should be overhauled with a new skill line dedicated to supporting it, just like stamina has. The suggestions below remove the tanking concept of cold damage and instead create a competitive reason for cold damage to finally be used:

- The Chilled status now instead afflicts the enemy with Minor Breach for the duration of the status.

- Tri-Focus passive now instead does: "Fully-charged Frost Staff Heavy Attacks cause the enemy to take 10% additional damage from all cold damage for 5 seconds."

- The Ancient Knowledge passive for Ice Staves now instead does: "Equipping a Frost Staff increases your damage done to enemies affected by status effects by 8%."

Cold damage in the ES series is often associated with crippling enemies and providing some measure of defensive utility. These changes allow cold damage to inherit the idea of ice slowly wearing down an enemies defenses and worsening the damage they suffer as a result. Wall of Frost can now effectively hinder enemies with its existing snare and chilled immobilizations with the added benefit of stripping enemy defenses and supplying more outgoing damage.

This change is especially effective with Wardens since they have a penchant for higher Chilled status uptime and can take greater advantage of the Ancient Knowledge frost staff passive. The chilled status will strip defenses further against the enemy and allow the Warden to hit much harder as a result. The best part? Since the AK passive gives a 8% buff to ALL outgoing damage the frost staff user does, that player gets the benefit of 8% improved damage to BOTH AoE and single target damage - just as long as the Warden keeps the enemy under status effects.

While this cold damage change is by no means a fix to the Warden's dps potential, it is a strong step forward in improving them and allowing the Warden to bring a dps utility to the trial group. Since talking about Warden changes or an Alteration Staff skill line would be outside the scope of this post, I'll leave it for a another future discussion. I wanted to see how the community would feel about these cold damage changes first.

Chaos2088

I Like the sound of it, not gunna lie.

It does need changing back to a DPS weapon and with a rework, reason why they changed it in the 1st place as no one was using it as flame and lighting just did better dps, so I get why they changed it to make it useful. But think they should of kept it a damage weapon and created a whole new magical tanking staff skill line.

But then ice on warden is set up for tanking not dsp (apart from one morph and a couple other skills) So.....me don't know.

I would love to create a magicka warden that was an Ice mage and do a decent amount of damage, on par with other classes.

Maura_Neysa

In order for any of your suggestion to happen, Chilled has to be redone. With Frost CC capabilities, if it had the DPS potentional of Fire/Lighting than it would OP as holy hell in Cryodiil.

Roots and Damage can’t come from the same source.


By the way I do Frost Staff tank in all content, vTrials, HM, etc. so the proposed “new magicka tanking line better be damn good.

Vercingetorix

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Roots and Damage can’t come from the same source.

Sure they can. The extra damage capability is tied to afflicting the enemy with status effects first. If an enemy uses proper LoS and keeps debilitating effects from piling up, the windows for additional incoming damage from the enemy are reduced. A frost mage must continuously apply pressure and must be as relentless as winter itself in order to win the fight. I see no issue here.

Also, roots and damage already exist together on other abilities:
- NB's have Crippling Grasp ability and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Dragonknights have Talons and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Sorcerers have Shattering Prison and no one in Cyrodiil cares.

Each of these abilities can provide damage/root on the fly with no upfront requirements. My suggestion requires a status condition to first be applied for the extra damage to kick in, so if anything, it is MORE balanced.

josiahva

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Cold damage right now has little to no benefit for players and the shoddy attempt at tanking as a passive for cold damage is hurting the damage type the most. Magical tanking should be overhauled with a new skill line dedicated to supporting it, just like stamina has. The suggestions below remove the tanking concept of cold damage and instead create a competitive reason for cold damage to finally be used:

- The Chilled status now instead afflicts the enemy with Minor Breach for the duration of the status.

- Tri-Focus passive now instead does: "Fully-charged Frost Staff Heavy Attacks cause the enemy to take 10% additional damage from all cold damage for 5 seconds."

- The Ancient Knowledge passive for Ice Staves now instead does: "Equipping a Frost Staff increases your damage done to enemies affected by status effects by 8%."

Cold damage in the ES series is often associated with crippling enemies and providing some measure of defensive utility. These changes allow cold damage to inherit the idea of ice slowly wearing down an enemies defenses and worsening the damage they suffer as a result. Wall of Frost can now effectively hinder enemies with its existing snare and chilled immobilizations with the added benefit of stripping enemy defenses and supplying more outgoing damage.

This change is especially effective with Wardens since they have a penchant for higher Chilled status uptime and can take greater advantage of the Ancient Knowledge frost staff passive. The chilled status will strip defenses further against the enemy and allow the Warden to hit much harder as a result. The best part? Since the AK passive gives a 8% buff to ALL outgoing damage the frost staff user does, that player gets the benefit of 8% improved damage to BOTH AoE and single target damage - just as long as the Warden keeps the enemy under status effects.

While this cold damage change is by no means a fix to the Warden's dps potential, it is a strong step forward in improving them and allowing the Warden to bring a dps utility to the trial group. Since talking about Warden changes or an Alteration Staff skill line would be outside the scope of this post, I'll leave it for a another future discussion. I wanted to see how the community would feel about these cold damage changes first.

While I dont support taking away tools(2nd weapon) from the tanking toolbox to give magicka DPS a 3rd weapon choice, assuming you gave tanks an alteration staff or something to replace ice, I think your skill rework is definitely a step in the right direction and works well with cold damage(things hurt more when you are cold...really hurts to bang your hand if you do so right before it goes numb so the chilled status reflecting this in some way is great). That being said...people need to stop thinking of the Warden as an ice mage...they aren't any more an ice mage than a templar is a fire mage. The warden is nature-magic type skill line(think druid). They NEED to make a frostcaster class to really take advantage of a cold damage skill line...but until they do make a class with more than a few cold abilities, and ice mage will never be competitive, even with the changes suggested. Once they mage a frostcaster class and an alteration staff skill line to give tanks to replace the ice staff, I would support your changes, but not until both those qualifications are met.

Vercingetorix

josiahva wrote: »

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Cold damage right now has little to no benefit for players and the shoddy attempt at tanking as a passive for cold damage is hurting the damage type the most. Magical tanking should be overhauled with a new skill line dedicated to supporting it, just like stamina has. The suggestions below remove the tanking concept of cold damage and instead create a competitive reason for cold damage to finally be used:

- The Chilled status now instead afflicts the enemy with Minor Breach for the duration of the status.

- Tri-Focus passive now instead does: "Fully-charged Frost Staff Heavy Attacks cause the enemy to take 10% additional damage from all cold damage for 5 seconds."

- The Ancient Knowledge passive for Ice Staves now instead does: "Equipping a Frost Staff increases your damage done to enemies affected by status effects by 8%."

Cold damage in the ES series is often associated with crippling enemies and providing some measure of defensive utility. These changes allow cold damage to inherit the idea of ice slowly wearing down an enemies defenses and worsening the damage they suffer as a result. Wall of Frost can now effectively hinder enemies with its existing snare and chilled immobilizations with the added benefit of stripping enemy defenses and supplying more outgoing damage.

This change is especially effective with Wardens since they have a penchant for higher Chilled status uptime and can take greater advantage of the Ancient Knowledge frost staff passive. The chilled status will strip defenses further against the enemy and allow the Warden to hit much harder as a result. The best part? Since the AK passive gives a 8% buff to ALL outgoing damage the frost staff user does, that player gets the benefit of 8% improved damage to BOTH AoE and single target damage - just as long as the Warden keeps the enemy under status effects.

While this cold damage change is by no means a fix to the Warden's dps potential, it is a strong step forward in improving them and allowing the Warden to bring a dps utility to the trial group. Since talking about Warden changes or an Alteration Staff skill line would be outside the scope of this post, I'll leave it for a another future discussion. I wanted to see how the community would feel about these cold damage changes first.

While I dont support taking away tools(2nd weapon) from the tanking toolbox to give magicka DPS a 3rd weapon choice, assuming you gave tanks an alteration staff or something to replace ice, I think your skill rework is definitely a step in the right direction and works well with cold damage(things hurt more when you are cold...really hurts to bang your hand if you do so right before it goes numb so the chilled status reflecting this in some way is great). That being said...people need to stop thinking of the Warden as an ice mage...they aren't any more an ice mage than a templar is a fire mage. The warden is nature-magic type skill line(think druid). They NEED to make a frostcaster class to really take advantage of a cold damage skill line...but until they do make a class with more than a few cold abilities, and ice mage will never be competitive, even with the changes suggested. Once they mage a frostcaster class and an alteration staff skill line to give tanks to replace the ice staff, I would support your changes, but not until both those qualifications are met.

I mentioned somewhat in my post that I'd want a dedicated skill line (Alteration Staff) for magical tanking as I agree that it shouldn't be removed but rather re-tooled to be its own thing. In the interest of keeping my post focused on the Cold Damage change, I avoided the Alteration Staff topic here as it deserves its own post.

Maura_Neysa

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Roots and Damage can’t come from the same source.

Sure they can. The extra damage capability is tied to afflicting the enemy with status effects first. If an enemy uses proper LoS and keeps debilitating effects from piling up, the windows for additional incoming damage from the enemy are reduced. A frost mage must continuously apply pressure and must be as relentless as winter itself in order to win the fight. I see no issue here.

Also, roots and damage already exist together on other abilities:
- NB's have Crippling Grasp ability and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Dragonknights have Talons and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Sorcerers have Shattering Prison and no one in Cyrodiil cares.

Each of these abilities can provide damage/root on the fly with no upfront requirements. My suggestion requires a status condition to first be applied for the extra damage to kick in, so if anything, it is MORE balanced.

No roots and damage don’t exist together. By the way, the skills you listed do laughable amounts of damage. The skills that did do damage and CC though.....
Wrecking blow - nerfed
Teleport Strike - nerfed
Critical Charge - nerfed
Werewolf Pounce - nerfed
Cristal Frag - nerfed
Deep Fissure - nerfed
Soul Magic - nerfed
Off-Balance - nerfed
Tremor Scale - nerfed
Focused Charge - nerfed

I am sure there are more, just don’t remember them all. Even if you believe Chilled is different than any of those skills, what makes you think it’s different than Off-Balance? I much rather keep the 100% Chilled/Minor Maim uptime than gain a 4 second out of 24sec window (16% uptime) of increased damage like Off-Balance.

Vercingetorix

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Roots and Damage can’t come from the same source.

Sure they can. The extra damage capability is tied to afflicting the enemy with status effects first. If an enemy uses proper LoS and keeps debilitating effects from piling up, the windows for additional incoming damage from the enemy are reduced. A frost mage must continuously apply pressure and must be as relentless as winter itself in order to win the fight. I see no issue here.

Also, roots and damage already exist together on other abilities:
- NB's have Crippling Grasp ability and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Dragonknights have Talons and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Sorcerers have Shattering Prison and no one in Cyrodiil cares.

Each of these abilities can provide damage/root on the fly with no upfront requirements. My suggestion requires a status condition to first be applied for the extra damage to kick in, so if anything, it is MORE balanced.

No roots and damage don’t exist together. By the way, the skills you listed do laughable amounts of damage. The skills that did do damage and CC though.....
Wrecking blow - nerfed
Teleport Strike - nerfed
Critical Charge - nerfed
Werewolf Pounce - nerfed
Cristal Frag - nerfed
Deep Fissure - nerfed
Soul Magic - nerfed
Off-Balance - nerfed
Tremor Scale - nerfed
Focused Charge - nerfed

Everything you just listed is a stun-based ability, not a root. Your argument against "root and damage" is invalid as you've clearly veered off-track to something unrelated.

teladoy

Or they could actually change the passives of the Destruction Staff tree in the sense that if you want to tank you can put points in X passive or if you want to do damage you can put point in Y passive, leaving without points and unneffective the passives you don want or to prevent players to take everything, dissable them once you chose something.

Vercingetorix

teladoy wrote: »

Or they could actually change the passives of the Destruction Staff tree in the sense that if you want to tank you can put points in X passive or if you want to do damage you can put point in Y passive, leaving without points and unneffective the passives you don want or to prevent players to take everything, dissable them once you chose something.

You missed the point about how slapping on Ice Staff tanking mechanics haphazardly onto a skill line primarily for dps is detrimental to both magical tanking and dps. Magical tanking shouldn't be removed, but it needs its own skill line dedicated to it so that it can be viable, just like Shield and Sword is. Having an Alteration Staff skill line that has abilities and passives that synergize with magical tanks is what will allow it to work in endgame content. Destruction staves are dps and cold damage is no exception.

Maura_Neysa

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Roots and Damage can’t come from the same source.

Sure they can. The extra damage capability is tied to afflicting the enemy with status effects first. If an enemy uses proper LoS and keeps debilitating effects from piling up, the windows for additional incoming damage from the enemy are reduced. A frost mage must continuously apply pressure and must be as relentless as winter itself in order to win the fight. I see no issue here.

Also, roots and damage already exist together on other abilities:
- NB's have Crippling Grasp ability and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Dragonknights have Talons and no one in Cyrodiil cares.
- Sorcerers have Shattering Prison and no one in Cyrodiil cares.

Each of these abilities can provide damage/root on the fly with no upfront requirements. My suggestion requires a status condition to first be applied for the extra damage to kick in, so if anything, it is MORE balanced.

No roots and damage don’t exist together. By the way, the skills you listed do laughable amounts of damage. The skills that did do damage and CC though.....
Wrecking blow - nerfed
Teleport Strike - nerfed
Critical Charge - nerfed
Werewolf Pounce - nerfed
Cristal Frag - nerfed
Deep Fissure - nerfed
Soul Magic - nerfed
Off-Balance - nerfed
Tremor Scale - nerfed
Focused Charge - nerfed

Everything you just listed is a stun-based ability, not a root. Your argument against "root and damage" is invalid as you've clearly veered off-track to something unrelated.

Soul Magic, Crit Charge, Off-Balance are not stuns, they are snare. You know weak versions of roots. Most of the roots didn’t need nerfs because they are already weak or no damage, but still cost you resources and a space.
Encase, Gripping, Talons, Fossilize, Crippling are all realitIvely low damage skills. So a free root which doesn’t cost space or resources does not fit.

Thorstienn

I cannot imagine them making a new weapon line; they would have to do a new model for every drop in the game and add the new weapon to every loot table.
They "whacked" it onto Ice Staff because their metric showed "nobody" was using it. For that to change they would need to make it OP, as there just isn't enough frost damage abilities anyway; even in Warden as they mostly scale with health!
Meanwhile I think they implemented it incorrectly by tying it to the passives: they should/of tie/d it to the morphs of the destro abilities, 1 is for DPS the other for tanking.

Komma

They could still do all the things suggested in this and just add a separate passive for tanking. The problem with just being an ice staff (magicka) tank is you really still need sword/board for the debuffs. There are ways to fix magic tanks by just changing your skills to magicka based by equipping a mace and stamina if a sword is equipped with a shield. There are so many different ways to go with frost staff and magicka tanking and it feels like they took the lazy way instead of something fun. I dont see anything changing any time soon if ever although I do love to see all the ideas that players can come up with.

Vercingetorix

Komma wrote: »

They could still do all the things suggested in this and just add a separate passive for tanking. The problem with just being an ice staff (magicka) tank is you really still need sword/board for the debuffs. There are ways to fix magic tanks by just changing your skills to magicka based by equipping a mace and stamina if a sword is equipped with a shield. There are so many different ways to go with frost staff and magicka tanking and it feels like they took the lazy way instead of something fun. I dont see anything changing any time soon if ever although I do love to see all the ideas that players can come up with.

A separate skill line for magical tanking, such as the Alteration Staff, could support the magic tank role with abilities that debuff enemies, taunt, and enhance ally defenses. Alteration in the ES series is often characterized as the defensive school of magic and has many utility spells within it. It isn't out of the question to associate magical tanking with an Alteration Staff.