Mag DPS will never have true flexibility until Ancient Knowledge is removed or reworked.

TheGreatBlackBear

For all the talk of nerfing, sorry changing racial passives to give players more options the real culprit behind the homogenising of mag DPS in particular had gone unchecked and unchanged: the inferno staff.
The ancient knowledge passive makes it so that when you have a flame staff equipped with a destro ability slotted you get 8% more single target damage. That's too much damage to ignore. Even sorcs who specialise in lightning damage get more DPS from a maelstrom inferno than they would a maelstrom lightning staff. That's crazy.

It's literally inferno staff or bust for the most damage. That's why everyone had a dark elf because they got additional fire damage. Nerfing dark elf wasn't the solution. We'll still have 8 mag DPS all flexing the same infused inferno staff in a trial.

D0PAMINE

Ancient Knowledge I: (With Destruction Staff Equipped) While a Destruction Staff ability is slotted: Equipping a Flame Staff increases your damage done with single target abilities by 4%. Equipping a Lightning Staff increases your damage done with area of effect abilities by 4%. Equipping a Frost Staff reduces the cost of blocking by 18% and increases the amount of damage you block by 10%.

Ancient Knowledge II: (With Destruction Staff Equipped) While a Destruction Staff ability is slotted: Equipping a Flame Staff increases your damage done with single target abilities by 8%. Equipping a Lightning Staff increases your damage done with area of effect abilities by 8%. Equipping a Frost Staff reduces the cost of blocking by 36% and increases the amount of damage you block by 20%.

_Ahala_

They should remove the ability on bar requirement for diversity sake and then take a good hard look at frost staff and how badly it’s active abilities and in game lore references lend themselves to magicka tanking... it’s like they gave bow a block passive with a taunt on heavy attacks and called it a day all while ignoring everyone who wanted to play a dps archer... where’s our alteration staff with a tanking ult, five tanking actives, and five tanking passives?... ice staff is a fail and ancient knowledge is one of the reasons

SydneyGrey

Yeah, encourage them to kill off our flame-based magicka characters even more than they just did. Gee, thanks.

Ohhgrizyyy

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

For all the talk of nerfing, sorry changing racial passives to give players more options the real culprit behind the homogenising of mag DPS in particular had gone unchecked and unchanged: the inferno staff.
The ancient knowledge passive makes it so that when you have a flame staff equipped with a destro ability slotted you get 8% more single target damage. That's too much damage to ignore. Even sorcs who specialise in lightning damage get more DPS from a maelstrom inferno than they would a maelstrom lightning staff. That's crazy.

It's literally inferno staff or bust for the most damage. That's why everyone had a dark elf because they got additional fire damage. Nerfing dark elf wasn't the solution. We'll still have 8 mag DPS all flexing the same infused inferno staff in a trial.

Lets ignore the meta from about a year ago where High Elf was BiS dps and and lightning staff was also BiS for sorcs.

Ohhgrizyyy

_Ahala_ wrote: »

They should remove the ability on bar requirement for diversity sake and then take a good hard look at frost staff and how badly it’s active abilities and in game lore references lend themselves to magicka tanking... it’s like they gave bow a block passive with a taunt on heavy attacks and called it a day all while ignoring everyone who wanted to play a dps archer... where’s our alteration staff with a tanking ult, five tanking actives, and five tanking passives?... ice staff is a fail and ancient knowledge is one of the reasons

I personally would love frost staffs to be better and allow a true cryomancer build to work.

Ohhgrizyyy

Maybe where Ice staffs increase the damage of your DoT abilities or maybe you get a chance to apply an extra DoT everytime you light attack or heavy attack or at least a chance to

xStaticx

Just get rid of the cooldown on Off Balance to make Lightning viable again. Fire Blockade does 10% more damage to burning enemies with zero cooldown while Shock Blockade sets concussed enemies Off Balance with a 20 sec cooldown. Seems fair.

TheGreatBlackBear

This is a good start. Take the next step and free us from flame staves entirely.

TheInfernalRage

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

_Ahala_ wrote: »

They should remove the ability on bar requirement for diversity sake and then take a good hard look at frost staff and how badly it’s active abilities and in game lore references lend themselves to magicka tanking... it’s like they gave bow a block passive with a taunt on heavy attacks and called it a day all while ignoring everyone who wanted to play a dps archer... where’s our alteration staff with a tanking ult, five tanking actives, and five tanking passives?... ice staff is a fail and ancient knowledge is one of the reasons

I personally would love frost staffs to be better and allow a true cryomancer build to work.

I have been keeping my frost gear just in case these devs suddenly wake up thinking "time to make frost staff a REAL destruction staff"

Jameliel

Nerf Nerf,

Nerf Nerf Nerf. Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf. Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf.

Nerf Nerf,
Nerf