Blast Bones and Siphon - Potential Fix Ideas

wills43b14_ESO

Currently (even on the current iteration of the PTS), stalking blastbones can still bug out and sit next to a target w/o detonating and will do so until its timer runs out. The core issue is still there even w/ the longer launch distance. Furthermore, with the additional launch distance, stalking bb's functionality is probably severely reduced. The problem w/ blastbones sitting there and pondering its life choices seems most exaggerated on small hitboxes or humanoids (minis in vCR+3), but less prominent on large hitboxes (the larger the better - bb works the best on olms and dragons in sunspire, works well on zmaja/AG, but falls apart on small humanoids).

Siphon still has problems targeting corpses and will also turn the character to siphon a corpse, causing LAs to miss and other issues.

Potential fix Ideas:

Blastbones
When cast, let it summon a targetable corpse out of the ground for 1.5s. Upon full assembly at the end of 1.5s (or when stun duration/cc ends if cc'ed) if it has not been killed it will immediately turn into a projectile and launch itself at a target (no longer targetable). This projectile will have a projectile time of 0.5s at <= 5m or 1s if greater than 5m (play w/ the values). Stalkings functionality will be based on the distance the projectile travels (the base skill cannot be cast if out of range or you are Line of Sighted). This should alleviate quite a few problems. To ensure rotations remain fluid, another blastbones can be cast after the assembly phase (so after 1.5s). This ensures it will weave smoothly into existing rotations without having to guess based on distances.

Siphon
Credits to Marteene. Let siphon behave like repentance. If drawing a line in front of where your character is facing let siphon automatically pick the closest corpse and tether it within 90 degrees of either direction of the direct line of sight (180 degrees total). DO still do an animation for siphoning, but DO NOT let the siphon turn your character. Repentance does not turn your character, so go off that model. Characters turning causes severe issues with LAs and skills firing correctly from a static position (namely LAs).

I honestly appreciate the effort in making siphon and blast bones behave uniquely, but I'd rather have blast bones behave like shalks if nothing else at this point since the class just needs to be complete and bug free. It seems pretty clear the root issue causing blast bones to sit there and "ponder its existence" hasn't been ferreted out yet and the players deserve something that functions. In this case a complete rework based on existing skills that fully function seems reasonable.

ecru

Your suggestion for Blastbones sounds great and I agree 100% about siphon, the turning of the character has always been annoying, but it's more prevalent now on PTS after they made the targeting more liberal. It's quite annoying because as your character turns, you can actually drop your attack and lose a GCD of damage because you aren't facing your target even though your camera is still directed at them and you have them tab targeted. I can only imagine what's going to happen in Trials or dungeons with corpses everywhere and the seemingly weird priority system siphon has. For example, I've seen my character turn to a corpse left by my skeletal mage instead of the corpse from blastbones right in front of me.

I also reported a handful of necro bugs but I have little hope they'll be addressed. Major prophecy from any source no longer works for Blastbones or Skeletal Arcanist, and the boneyard cast bug still exists, which is easy to replicate by casting boneyard repeatedly until the ability breaks/your character's animation freezes, and you can't use boneyard for about a second.

I only parsed right on top of my target atro so I didn't come across any issues with blastbones timing out again, so it sucks to hear that's still the case. On Live it seems especially bad when there are more targets nearby the target you use blastbones on. In your house you can replicate this if you have a lot of dummies by placing 5-6 dummies next to each other, moving around, and casting blastbones from different directions. About 50% of the time it will bug out and last the full duration until it explodes.

wills43b14_ESO

Exactly @ecru - one of my biggest problems in vSS while progging Godslayer was my character constantly turning to attack the dragons head or body. It would completely annihilate my LAs. Same w/ corpse siphoning. Now that I've changed to wing stack my LA dmg increased by 8k it's absurd. I'm now hitting 70-75k single target on yolna on mag... but was 62k or even in the 50ks previously due to the targeting. It's actually a serious issue that few people realize occurs (I certainly didn't for 3-4 very frustrating months before I figured it out and corrected it for an instant 10k dps boost).

Regarding boneyard, the same thing happens with spear shards and lightning flood (and resto staff grand rejuv when you could spam it back in the day). It's a problem in general w/ aoe placeable skills.

As far as blastbones that's the same problem I had. ONLY on stalking blastbones and not the stam version too oddly enough (stam just gets bugged out by synergies)... the smaller the hitbox the more likely it is the blastbones will stand there for the full duration before falling apart. Sometimes it will explode after 3-4s, but usually it just waits 8s before disassembling (it doesn't do dmg if it goes the full duration without leaping).

But like I said, in trials mine seems to have the most issues whenever it's used on humanoids rather than dragons like SS, Olms in AS, or z'maja (even on her it'll take an extra second now and then). On the trial dummy it will have an issue every 3-4 parses on live for me and fail to explode... especially on the first cast.

Anhedonie

Tbh I'd rework Blast Bones and Siphon altogether. Have you seen the way Caluurion set works? Yeah, to something like that.
And Siphon...it's too clunky. Basically a sorcerer's liquid lightning, but you need a corpse as a target. Just make it consume a corpse to 180 degrees in front of you and drop this AOE where your crosshair is, creating a tether between that place and you.

wills43b14_ESO

That's almost exactly what I said in my post... lol. I said a rework for both and the siphon description is just a bit more detailed than yours to be slightly more targeted. Boneyard is already the corpse consuming version of LL.

Anhedonie

i don't see the reason for blast bones to have targetable body though. Just turn it into lich crystal or something. Your character starts glowing and you shoot a projectile after a delay. That's it. No need for complicated mechanics that can break and cause even more issues.
Also, there isn't much else you can do with these skills.


I'd prefer a complete class redesign, but that's unrealistic.

wills43b14_ESO

Yeah that's why I said to keep it a non-projectile. Ideally it would imitate shalks or just chuck a corpse at the target, but realistically they want to keep the theme probably.

Or rather, give it a physical body THEN become a projectile.

Neloth

- I like current blasbones. Of course you are right and it needs some polishing, but being a summon, and thus killable, CCable, and providing LoS is unique. If someone dislikes it, he can always play sorc/warden/NB/templar, since all these classes have a variety of burst/delayed burst options.

- About blastbones running around the target and not exploding - I was under impression that forcing it to jump no matter what can fix the issue. If it jumps - it explodes. If it starts chasing - yes, it can stuck, but just force it to spawn -> wait -> jump.

- One more reminder to ZoS - magicka version also needs a new secondary effect.

- Your QOL siphon changes are very nice.

- Also, magnecro desperately needs a class instant stun - on skeletal mage, as someone here proposed, or on one of the fear totem morphs.

wills43b14_ESO

Totem technically already fears. As far as the mage, that's a bad idea since it's hard to control effectively. Beyond that, I don't mind the current blastbones, but it's clear they have no idea what causes the issues. It's been nearly a year, so at this point it's better to just make something functional than the current broken, frustrating experience that is bb in PvE.

wills43b14_ESO

Not sure what could stun though without changing some current skills completely.

Neloth

wills43b14_ESO wrote: »

Totem technically already fears. As far as the mage, that's a bad idea since it's hard to control effectively. Beyond that, I don't mind the current blastbones, but it's clear they have no idea what causes the issues. It's been nearly a year, so at this point it's better to just make something functional than the current broken, frustrating experience that is bb in PvE.

The idea with mage (again, not mine) was that the stun required second activation of mage after the summon - then the mage attempts to stun you current target, and focuses it after with its dot. This way you can control both the stun and the mage damage, what is really cool about it.

Totem stuns, yes, and it's very useful as an area of denial skill. However, it's completely useless against ranged opponents and as a part of larger burst combo.

Anhedonie

Neloth wrote: »

wills43b14_ESO wrote: »

Totem technically already fears. As far as the mage, that's a bad idea since it's hard to control effectively. Beyond that, I don't mind the current blastbones, but it's clear they have no idea what causes the issues. It's been nearly a year, so at this point it's better to just make something functional than the current broken, frustrating experience that is bb in PvE.

The idea with mage (again, not mine) was that the stun required second activation of mage after the summon - then the mage attempts to stun you current target, and focuses it after with its dot. This way you can control both the stun and the mage damage, what is really cool about it.

Totem stuns, yes, and it's very useful as an area of denial skill. However, it's completely useless against ranged opponents and as a part of larger burst combo.

Isn't there a morph that allows to place totem up to 28m away?

Neloth

Anhedonie wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

wills43b14_ESO wrote: »

Totem technically already fears. As far as the mage, that's a bad idea since it's hard to control effectively. Beyond that, I don't mind the current blastbones, but it's clear they have no idea what causes the issues. It's been nearly a year, so at this point it's better to just make something functional than the current broken, frustrating experience that is bb in PvE.

The idea with mage (again, not mine) was that the stun required second activation of mage after the summon - then the mage attempts to stun you current target, and focuses it after with its dot. This way you can control both the stun and the mage damage, what is really cool about it.

Totem stuns, yes, and it's very useful as an area of denial skill. However, it's completely useless against ranged opponents and as a part of larger burst combo.

Isn't there a morph that allows to place totem up to 28m away?

Yes, but it still has the same 2 second delay, making it not very useful in many situations.

Revokus

wills43b14_ESO wrote: »

Totem technically already fears. As far as the mage, that's a bad idea since it's hard to control effectively. Beyond that, I don't mind the current blastbones, but it's clear they have no idea what causes the issues. It's been nearly a year, so at this point it's better to just make something functional than the current broken, frustrating experience that is bb in PvE.

I've made this suggestion on another post :

Revokus wrote: »

In order to help MagNecro in the ranged stun department. Wouldn't it be great if Mystic Siphon would do the following :

Violently drain the last spark of life from a corpse, dealing 2232 Shock Damage over 12 seconds to all enemies around the corpse and between you and the corpse. If an enemy stands at the corpse location while you activate this ability the enemy is instantly stunned for 3 sec. Could synergize well with Blastbones.

You also restore 2736 Magicka over 12 seconds while siphoning the corpse.

While slotted, your damage done is increased by 3%.

I dunno it would help add a bit of shock damage from Necromancer kit in PvP and add a needed ranged stun. Necromancer would have a reason to use this skill in PvP otherwise it's a PVE skill.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_RobGarrett

I also agree about adding some sort of stun to Skeletal Arcanist. Otherwise I don't see any other skills aside those 2 that they could add a ranged stun aside maybe Hungry Scythe..

wills43b14_ESO

I don’t think putting it on archer is still a good idea. You’d basically be unable to time it well and it’s targeting is still wonky. I don’t think you’d even have bar space (at least on stamcro) unless you dropped bb

Also bump and let’s return the thread topic to bb and siphon qol improvement discussion plz!

SeaUnicorn

Siphon issue is not the fact that it can't find a corpse. Issue is 2 fold:

1. All skill generated corpses hit boxes are considered
2. Only skill-generated corpses created by your toon may be siphoned

Simply saying siphon sees all skill-generated corpses, can only target sub-set and fails to identify which one it the one to siphon.

I sure hell don't want to siphon corpses in 180 degree area, because I want my siphon to hit the boss, not be casted from my archer and yield no damage

Increasing the area of siphon is definitely not the answer. It's the algorithm of siphon searching and applying to the right corpse that was generated by your toon. Corpse hitboxes generated by other toons should not be considered in the 1st place and should not mess up with my targeting.

wills43b14_ESO

assuming that isn’t going to happen maybe a 45 degree or 90 degree area then? That value is very adjustable to be more targeted.

wills43b14_ESO

It’s been nearly a year so my confidence level is low that it will be truly fixed in a timely manner at this point.

ESO_Nightingale

I'd literally just have the siphon go on the target you're aiming at.

Brandathorbel

they should remove the useless stamina and magika return from siphon. Its practically useless and add a buff like major sorc/brutality or savagery when it is active.

robpr

Anhedonie wrote: »

And Siphon...it's too clunky. Basically a sorcerer's liquid lightning, but you need a corpse as a target. Just make it consume a corpse to 180 degrees in front of you and drop this AOE where your crosshair is, creating a tether between that place and you.

Or just make it exactly like graveyard, drop AoE to apply really weak ground dot in the place, but if there was a corpse there, consume it and make a tether automatically.
Same with healing siphon, just aoe will heal instead of damaging.