Would you favor splitting destruction staff into three skill lines? Passive variation by max stat?

tinythinker

We already research and craft flame, lightning, and frost staves separately, and trying to make Ice Staff work for tanking is hindered by its passives being largely the same as the other destruction types. Splitting up destro would give four magicka weapon skill lines to match four stamina weapon skill lines. And it would make it easier/more justifiable for more stamina or magicka weapons in the future.

There would be draw backs, of course. I'm not totally sold on the idea.

And for those who want to be frost mages, something that could work in the existing system but might work better for staff-tanks in the separated system would be to have the passives work different depending on your max stat. If it's magicka (or stamina I guess even though it's a waste), you would get the dps passives. If it's health you would get different set of tanking passives that would allow a true magicka-competitor to S&B.

As for dps, staves could have some unique abilities and some “variations on a theme” abilities retained like they do now. It would add variety to playing a magicka-build and offer new avenues for theory-crafting.

Thanks your time and your thoughts

Mojmir

ice staff should be a DD wep. give us a different tanking wep instead (spear,polearm,etc)

f047ys3v3n

I suspect that the three different staff types were originally intended to be 3 different skill lines. The game got very long in the development tooth and was truly massively reworked and essentially launched in beta.

At this point I don't really think that it is worth the time and effort to rework everything. The exception to this is the ice heavy taunt which should be replaced with something else. The best thing ZOS could do for balance would be addressing the widespread cheat use in the game. That would also be the 2nd best, 3rd best, and 4th best thing. At least 80% of their problems with toxic builds in PVP are cheats and probably 70% of their problems scaling PVE are also cheat related.

tinythinker

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

I suspect that the three different staff types were originally intended to be 3 different skill lines. The game got very long in the development tooth and was truly massively reworked and essentially launched in beta.

At this point I don't really think that it is worth the time and effort to rework everything.

Not everything, just an existing skill line. They already give new skill lines for things like NPC guilds and new classes. Revamping an existing thing to give more options to magicka players doesn't sound like more work than they already do. I'm asking though, if ZOS was going to spend the time on some kind of changes to weapons, would this be something you'd want?

Mojmir wrote: »

ice staff should be a DD wep. give us a different tanking wep instead (spear,polearm,etc)

I would like to see more of that type as well, but right now it's 4 stamina weapon skill lines and 2 magicka weapon skill lines. The moaning and groaning over it being unfair for adding yet another stamina weapon without evening things out a bit first would be deafening

ESO_Nightingale

We need a proper magicka tank weapon but the frost staff isn't it. For now it is a temporary stand in. Most people who answered my survey want it to be for DPS. It's a destruction staff. Destruction. It has never done defence in the elder scrolls ever. It screws with lore. This would futher cement it as some screwy weapon that was never meant to be. No. There should be a new tanking weapon released in (maybe next year's) chapter. This would allow for a full weapons update patch.

Wandering_Immigrant

I would like to see skill lines for each individual weapon type. Even if they're just abridged skill lines, say 2 new skills and passives for each, that you'd use in conjunction with the existing weapon skill lines. Just to give the weapon types more distinction and add to customization.

AcadianPaladin

It is a complex and cobbled together system. Currently mag fighters have less weapon skill choices and more class skill choices. If you increase the mag weapon choices, the predictable next demand would be for more class skill choices for stam fighters. Kind of like a knit sweater - if you pull on a thread it begins unraveling. Lol.

Sorry I can't really suggest a solution because it would be well beyond the focus of this thread (beginning with dumping classes and disassociating mag/stam with damage. . . ).

EpicRekkoning

The biggest problem with tanking with a ice staff is taunting. It takes too long to heavy attack and there's no skill that is as effective and costs as little as pierce armor. If the destroy staff had a better taunt option that was comparable to pierce armor, than I think you would see more ice staff tanks.

RavenSworn

Just need to change Elemental susceptibility to include a "this ability will taunt when equipped with a frost staff."

That way you have an on demand taunt, you don't eff up with the heavy attack of frost dps players and you have a debuff of breach.

tinythinker

EpicRekkoning wrote: »

The biggest problem with tanking with a ice staff is taunting. It takes too long to heavy attack and there's no skill that is as effective and costs as little as pierce armor. If the destroy staff had a better taunt option that was comparable to pierce armor, than I think you would see more ice staff tanks.

Which would be simple to add with separate elemental skill lines

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

If you increase the mag weapon choices, the predictable next demand would be for more class skill choices for stam fighters.

That demand has been around from the the start of the game. Won't be going anywhere anytime soon

RavenSworn wrote: »

Just need to change Elemental susceptibility to include a "this ability will taunt when equipped with a frost staff."
That way you have an on demand taunt, you don't eff up with the heavy attack of frost dps players and you have a debuff of breach.

Would still be a problem for people who want to use that ability as a non-tank. Which is where having changes to the passives when max stat=health option comes in. They could keep the current single destro skill line but would be free to make changes that won't impact those using frost primarily for dps. For example, they could tack your suggestion on at the end of a current existing passive ("if max attribute is health X ability will do Y")

Wandering_Immigrant wrote: »

I would like to see skill lines for each individual weapon type. Even if they're just abridged skill lines, say 2 new skills and passives for each, that you'd use in conjunction with the existing weapon skill lines. Just to give the weapon types more distinction and add to customization.

Yeah, they could do something like that with the existing single skill line but add even more distinction of "with X type of destroy staff equipped" to different ability descriptions and make the tooltips longer. Or separate them into different skill lines.

Here is a thing from a few years ago. It works as either:

• an example of an extended set of tool-tips based on current skill line/what some things could look like with health rather than magicka or stamina as max attribute for frost staff

*or*

• to show how a "similar yet different" skill line could get started with some common-to-all skills mixed in with unique flavors...

Frost Clench: Frost Clench applies taunts the target and nearby enemies and applies a 30% snare to all affected. At last, an AoE-like taunt. Technically it's a "splash" taunt, but, it would be unique to this type of tanking. No accidental taunting from heavy attacks or dying while trying to get the taunt off.

Wall of Frost: Create an ice barrier (same visual effect you see NPCs with a frost staff make in delves) in front of you that absorbs X amount of incoming damage while immobilizing and doing damage over time to enemies in the area of effect. The amount of damage absorbed is based on your total magicka (so someone with 40K magicka gets a bigger barrier than someone with 20K magicka). This wall isn't 360 degrees so in PvP someone could still flank you. But for holding a breach in PvP or tanking in PvE it would work well. Coupled with Hardened Ward or other class-based magicka-cost mitigation and Dampen Magic it could give a decent amount of mitigation at key times without adding anything to let ice staff users get an unbalanced blocking buff. Could add some extra feature to Wall of Flames and Wall of Lightning to compensate.

Tri-Focus (passive): Fully charged heavy attacks grant an [X] second ice-themed damage shield to the nearest 3 allies that reduces damage over time effects by [Y]%. This is a spin on the current Tri-Focus passive that gives a generic damage shield to the caster. In this case three of your nearest allies get serious DoT protection, such as the melee DPS in your party.

Ancient Knowledge (passive): Weakness to Elements also causes Major Fracture, reducing the target's physical resistance.



I left the AoE-like thing in to annoy Finn, but hey, it's limited/directional so that's OK right?

Kittytravel

I'd prefer seeing the Destruction Line removed and having Ice Fire and Lightning lines added instead.

The only problem is I'd rather see this happen at the same time a CP Rework happens so that if they added these dedicated lines they would also be adding a more dedicated CP setup for a variety of builds.

The Lightning Staff is currently favored for its minor DPS increase a magicka regen; they would have to address this I think. I also think they would have to split the staves focuses (maybe fire becomes more single target DoT oriented and lightning becomes more AoE oriented or vice versa, etc) with frost staff finally having a real skill set to make frost staff tanking realistic.

Overall it'd be a good experiment for the community and it wouldn't be good to split them at first but it'd eventually be a better system than it has now while adding more flavor and variety to the current magicka builds out there.

zvavi

anything that requires me to go skyshard hunting and leveling more weapon skill lines is a big no.
also what if i want to tank with ice staff and more mag than health? therefore no to second suggestion.

dazee

Mojmir wrote: »

ice staff should be a DD wep. give us a different tanking wep instead (spear,polearm,etc)

No, every weapon should be a tanking weapon if you want to build a tank with it. the fact sword and shield can only be used for tanking is dumb.

idk

The idea presented is a bad idea and would artificially make it look like magicka has more weapon lines than it does.

Zos should have designed a magicka tanking line from the start instead of going the lazy route they did and give us a bad tanking weapon. I really think they realize how stupid that turned out.

But to divide them into separate lines is not needed by any stretch. What we have left for damage dealing in that line works well as it is.

BTW all the choices in the poll are just bad. As poorly thought out as the frost staff as a tanking weapon leading to just as poor of a design.

tinythinker

idk wrote: »

The idea presented would artificially make it look like magicka has more weapon lines than it does.

The ideas on the table I've mentioned so far (prior to your comment) in the thread are:

• new and different skill lines for each destruction type
• keep one skill line but expand passives to differentiate the types (possibly including health variable passives for frost tanking)
• mix of new and modified prior abilities in differentiated skill lines

The first one would give four truly unique skill lines but requires the most work and is least likely to be implemented. As for the second versus the third, well, it depends on how big the differences would be.

idk wrote: »

But to divide them into separate lines is not needed by any stretch. Zos should have designed a magicka tanking line from the start instead of going the lazy route they did and give us a bad tanking weapon.

Nothing is "needed". The game can go on with the same six weapon skill lines until the servers close. It's about preferences. Some want to see the current elemental types separated. Some don't. Some want to see destruction passives reworked. Some don't. But no option is really necessary.

Some event want to keep destro as it is but add other staff types (as mentioned by them in other threads), or to add other non-staff magicka weapons. All of the above options sound interesting to me. At the moment I'm focusing on at options for the existing magicka weapons, but if you have specific ideas for another type of magicka weapon describe it. The more ideas for ZOS to see the better.

tinythinker

Kittytravel wrote: »

I'd prefer seeing the Destruction Line removed and having Ice Fire and Lightning lines added instead.

The only problem is I'd rather see this happen at the same time a CP Rework happens so that if they added these dedicated lines they would also be adding a more dedicated CP setup for a variety of builds.

The Lightning Staff is currently favored for its minor DPS increase a magicka regen; they would have to address this I think. I also think they would have to split the staves focuses (maybe fire becomes more single target DoT oriented and lightning becomes more AoE oriented or vice versa, etc) with frost staff finally having a real skill set to make frost staff tanking realistic.

Overall it'd be a good experiment for the community and it wouldn't be good to split them at first but it'd eventually be a better system than it has now while adding more flavor and variety to the current magicka builds out there.

We have no timeline for a Champion System rework, just a notice that they are going to look at the system to see if and how it needs to be altered. What kind of CS system rework are you hoping for in terms of effects on how weapons work?