Ultimate damage type and penetration

Pdoherty4637_ESO

I firmly believe that ultimates should just use the higher of the two penetration values regardless of the ultimate's damage type. For those that don't know: physical ults scale off physical pen and magical ults scale off of spell pen. Meaning all else being equal, you dawnbeaker will hit harder on a stam sorc vs mag sorc, and your incap strike will hit harder on a stamNB vs a magNB. Having this be no longer be the case would really help classes that have lackluster options for burst ultimate and rely on an ultimate of the wong damage type. Really though, this issue would matter a lot less if every class had an effective low cost burst ultimate with the appropriate damage type on each mag/stam spec.

Stellarvorous

What about an ult like Onslaught something iv always been curious about Onslaught

"Strike an enemy with a vicious blow, dealing 8272 Physical Damage. This attack ignores the target's mitigation and grants you Physical and Spell Resistance equal to the amount ignored for 8 seconds. Killing an enemy with this ability immediately refunds the Ultimate cost." My question is would a skill that is supposed to ignore resistance benefit from penetration yes

Stellarvorous

Nvm that yes at the end was a random thought process that didn't get put in lol

Ajax_22

Meteor just needs to be changed to a cheap burst ultimate instead of an AoE DoT. Both Destro and Meteor currently serve the same function, Destro simply does it far better.

Pdoherty4637_ESO

While i agree with you about meteor, I think the issue is broader than just converting meteor to a cheaper burst version. stamina and magicka specs for each class need a cheap burst option to use in pvp. This means that each class would need 2 of its 6 ultimate choices to be dedicated to giving stam/mag each an effective low/medium cost burst damage option which doesn't leave much room for other ultimate choices. If they changed how penetration was calculated into ultimate damage we would only really need 1 of 6 ultimates to be cheap burst as the only difference would be a few percent damage if you were playing in CP pvp from elemental/physical damage CP stars.

As it is, one spec always loses and in some cases (sorcerer) there is no effective option in class for EITHER spec. The simple answer here is to just fit the final puzzle piece into place for ultimate damage calculation and allow it to pick the higher of the two penetration values, OR just make ultimate damage its own damage type to completely dissolve issue. However, I think that's rather unlikely so I wont spend much time on that idea.

In the game currently, the only two magicka classes that have effective low cost burst ultimates are magicka templar with crescent sweep (only recently changed to magic damage) and magicka dragonkight with ferocious leap. Sorcerer doesn't have one with overload being less than desirable currently, warden gets an honorable mention for the bear but it really needs work in pvp, and magicka nightblades usually opt for incap strike over soul harvest as incap is just so overloaded with utility.

Classes should not NEED to use weapon or guild ultimates for pvp, they should just have the option to do so if it fits their play-style better and these ultimates should augment class options rather than forcing that choice on players. I get it. we don't want every class to be the same, homogenization is bad for the game, but there are certain tools that every class should have access to, and a low cost burst ultimate that synergies with your build is, in my opinion, one of those tools.

ccmedaddy

I think it's a cool idea and would solve one of the biggest headaches of playing a mag toon in PvP--choosing an ult that doesn't completely suck.

But it probably requires careful consideration since it also buffs some really cancerous setups like permafrosting stamdens... but maybe this is more of an argument for nerfing permafrost than anything lol.

Pdoherty4637_ESO

Yup. I'd say so. Permafrost is and should be a good ultimate choice for stamden and magden in pvp, but it certainly is a bit over-tuned. Compared to eye of the storm, Permafrost/Northern strom's very effective stun mechanic/ huge passive max magicka buff combined with aoe major protection and an enormous snare totally outsines eye of the storm which just does a bit more damage, yet has a higher cost. So yeah, id say that's a more permafrost related issue than ultimate issue in general as there aren't too many builds that i'm aware of that my proposed change would give an unfair edge to.