StamDK - stone giant cast time

Valagash

Can someone enlighten me why stone giant has a cast time?

I screw up everytime I get out of orbs because of the cast time. It feels so weird for me, because the orbs are instant and the fist has a cast time. Sometimes I see the ground aoe but no orbs so I have to cast it several times. I don´t know, this feels very user unfriendly.

Do you have an advice how to use this now? Or is it even reasonable to use stone giant? Go back to crushing weapon or noxious breath spam again?

Thanks for your input

Onefrkncrzypope

Because. Also it's not a spammable, you lose damage using it as one. It's an annoying weak buff that you take an execute off you bar for...

Davadin

i like it for PvP thanks to it being a projectile BEFORE the patch today.

still at work. will test later tonight.

satanio

During PTS, they've touched the skill once or twice and at least added the stagger proc on the first AoE cast. But I don't really know if they've ever explained this cast time on this skill.

Onefrkncrzypope

satanio wrote: »

During PTS, they've touched the skill once or twice and at least added the stagger proc on the first AoE cast. But I don't really know if they've ever explained this cast time on this skill.

It still only stacks 3 times. They moved the empty cast to the last orb.

Stx

I thought they reduced the cost by quite a bit.. it's still not good enough to use as a spammable? I was looking forward to making a build with this.

Valagash

it s a cheap ability but it feels bad with this cast time. The projectile flys fast and does decent damage + the damage taken. The only thing which bother me is the cast time

I tried it in pvp now too. But there it is bad as the old morph was. Good players dodge all 3 orbs. If you don´t cc your opponent you will never hit them

Edwin

The first stomp part of the ability that has a cast time is literally useless, and you have to do that every time to get 3 new stones. It was better last patch, now it's just clunky and a waste of time imo.

KageNin

Ah cast times always a wonderful idea.
Welcome to NB domain.

NBrookus

Adding cast times is part of the performance improvement program. Players cast fewer skills and then can't tell if they accidentally cancelled something or it was lag.

ecru

Stx wrote: »

I thought they reduced the cost by quite a bit.. it's still not good enough to use as a spammable? I was looking forward to making a build with this.

I believe the effective cost is the same, it just no longer benefits from the helping hands passive.

Thevampirenight

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

Davadin

dude.


DUDES.


its *** 41 meter range now.


holy *** this skill is a RIOT!! loving it.

who cares about short cast times when you're throwing burning rocks at the people that try to shower you with hot oils?

41 meter range max.

and cheaper too now.

juhislihis19

Apparently it is not cheaper, but approximately the same cost because Helping Hands won't give stamina back?

Well at least NMA won't increase the cost now that much. How is Leap?

Valagash

thank you @Thevampirenight

I just saw this on reddit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=467&v=OqVRCFWhpTQ&feature=emb_logo

He has a parse and a parse describtion inside, so my thinking was wrong, because I thought StamDK got a spammable now but it isn´t. It s just for those stagger stacks. I´ll try this this evening again on the dummy und try to not cancel my skill xD

But tbh I wished they listened to the community and gave StamDK a normal spammable not a fancy looking support tool

thanks all for your inputs!

Hotdog_23

On console so have not tested myself but yeah the cast time sucks on any skill. Don't think they ever give a reason for the added cast time other than because we wanted to. I wish they would have just kept the new animation and forget the first part of the new skill and made it like stone fist was before of just throwing rocks with fire but with the range.

Thevampirenight

Valagash wrote: »

thank you @Thevampirenight

I just saw this on reddit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=467&v=OqVRCFWhpTQ&feature=emb_logo

He has a parse and a parse describtion inside, so my thinking was wrong, because I thought StamDK got a spammable now but it isn´t. It s just for those stagger stacks. I´ll try this this evening again on the dummy und try to not cancel my skill xD

But tbh I wished they listened to the community and gave StamDK a normal spammable not a fancy looking support tool

thanks all for your inputs!

Your welcome.

Kolzki

Thevampirenight wrote: »

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

It’s an interesting video but he doesn’t seem to say anything about animation cancelling in general, just block cancelling. It’s specifically about how block was being handled on client and server leading to client-server desyncs when block cancelling.

The cast times on ultimates were added so that block didn’t complete hide their animation. Block now defers to the server’s timing and plays more of the previous skill’s animation without affective the damage timing in a way that causing desyncs. If it works then it could be an argument for removing those ultimate cast times.

Thevampirenight

Kolzki wrote: »

Thevampirenight wrote: »

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

It’s an interesting video but he doesn’t seem to say anything about animation cancelling in general, just block cancelling. It’s specifically about how block was being handled on client and server leading to client-server desyncs when block cancelling.

The cast times on ultimates were added so that block didn’t complete hide their animation. Block now defers to the server’s timing and plays more of the previous skill’s animation without affective the damage timing in a way that causing desyncs. If it works then it could be an argument for removing those ultimate cast times.

Well I don't know why the cast time were added so they couldn't be animation canceled but it could have been put in for any number of reasons. I don't know if block is the main reason for that. Counterplay could be another possibility so a mix of factors. Its been several days since I watched the video or more then that. But what was said on there give me the impression they have known about the animation canceling desync thing for some time and I think these changes didn't happen over night. So I think it would be if not the main reason for the cast times the main reason why more abilties will be given these cast times. So I doubt they are going to remove those, when clearly they seem to be adding the cast times to base game abilities.

For performance I think they are going to put them on the most problematic of abilties that might hurt performance. Plus overhaul way aoe works with the server something they mentioned they were going to do during the greymoor live stream.
So I doubt those cast times are going anywhere anytime soon. We are likely going to see more then actually see them being removed.

NeillMcAttack

juhislihis19 wrote: »

Apparently it is not cheaper, but approximately the same cost because Helping Hands won't give stamina back?

Well at least NMA won't increase the cost now that much. How is Leap?

Leap is fine IMO, I was really worried about this change myself. Feels fine honestly, still the most satisfying skill in the game, thank Jebus!!
Your mileage may vary though...

Onefrkncrzypope

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Kolzki wrote: »

Thevampirenight wrote: »

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

It’s an interesting video but he doesn’t seem to say anything about animation cancelling in general, just block cancelling. It’s specifically about how block was being handled on client and server leading to client-server desyncs when block cancelling.

The cast times on ultimates were added so that block didn’t complete hide their animation. Block now defers to the server’s timing and plays more of the previous skill’s animation without affective the damage timing in a way that causing desyncs. If it works then it could be an argument for removing those ultimate cast times.

Well I don't know why the cast time were added to stone giant, so they couldn't be animation canceled but it could have been put in for any number of reasons. I don't know if block is the main reason for that. Counterplay could be another possibility so a mix of factors. Its been several days since I watched the video or more then that. But what was said on there give me the impression they have known about the animation canceling desync thing for some time and I think these changes didn't happen over night. So I think it would be if not the main reason for the cast times the main reason why more abilties will be given these cast times. So I doubt they are going to remove those, when clearly they seem to be adding the cast times to base game abilities.

For performance I think they are going to put them on the most problematic of abilties that might hurt performance. Plus overhaul way aoe works with the server something they mentioned they were going to do during the greymoor live stream.
So I doubt those cast times are going anywhere anytime soon. We are likely going to see more then actually see them being removed.

Snipe desynchronization is a major tell that channels are not in place to stop lag. They insisted that the channels on the two ultimates were to add reaction time as a counterplay to those ultimates.

They never explained the channel but many suspect that it was to deter a dk tank from using the skill. This "legitimize" the need for a sdk dps. This was also the reason for the scaling change for fiery breath.

The true problem with these measures are pretty obvious. With the available debuff of minor vulnerability that the warden tank and nbtank, the buff of minor brutality now brought by a now meta mdk removes reasons to bring either a dk tank or SDK. This leaves only the stonefist debuff for them to fight over.

Looking at a SDK dps which is lower and heavily reliant on an standstill ulti having to sacrifice even more just lowers the output and satisfaction of a SDK. Using it as a spammable is a loss because of the lack of damage when comparing secondary effects and passives of both dw and 2h lines.

Keep in that it falls even more behind now that the axe bleed is much more likely with these spammables than using stonefist which is not melee damage. This also causes issues with cp(aoe component) and even monster helms

Even having a cast time the is not present throughout (no one will ever ever want this) makes for a skill that is clunky and confusing at best and when in lag a down right mistake.

As a buff, it still is very far behind debuffs from potl, necro stacking or even minor brutality. Having to use this skill again as just a debuff between spammables removes the much needed execute off of the bar. Sets the dps up for clunky frustrating barswaps and annoyance at even trying to keep the buff up because once every 4 casts is a melee aoe and the others are ranged.

They kept the inane empty cast that helps neither the DK tank who now has a channel on their bar or the dps who desperately needs a boost after being stripped in the nerf all dots because they are all the same patch.

The SDK has always suffered in damage passives but now their dots and even ultimates are being wiped clean.

The Stam side of this class is an empty shell with no potential this patch other than the same old pvp setup that has been almost constant for years now.

The DK tank will slowly be shelved for higher performing tanks as the end game players push for higher damage. This pushing that meta down towards the floor and the DK tank SDK dps and dps wardens will be just fine to play around with when you get bored of the better classes.

robpr

My guess is just to reduce the accesibility of this skill to tanks. Even if it's just 0.5s, you need to drop the block for it reducing the uptime when you can't drop the block.

MartiniDaniels

Davadin wrote: »

dude.


DUDES.


its *** 41 meter range now.


holy *** this skill is a RIOT!! loving it.

who cares about short cast times when you're throwing burning rocks at the people that try to shower you with hot oils?

41 meter range max.

and cheaper too now.

It will be cheaper in heavy armor+nma but roughly the same in medium-non-nma. Anyway it's better then before and ridiculous 15m range gone. Overall I don't think it can be used as main spammable because of shimmering shield, roll-dodge monkeys and so on. Probably you need to use both dizzy and stonefist, mixing them in combat. But that initial stomp won't be easy to manage especially in 1v1.

ecru

robpr wrote: »

My guess is just to reduce the accesibility of this skill to tanks. Even if it's just 0.5s, you need to drop the block for it reducing the uptime when you can't drop the block.

I honestly don't think this is the reason, it's not like you're blocking 100% of the time as a tank. Any semi-competent tank can drop block for 0.5s and knows when they can and can't drop block.

MashmalloMan

ecru wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

I thought they reduced the cost by quite a bit.. it's still not good enough to use as a spammable? I was looking forward to making a build with this.

I believe the effective cost is the same, it just no longer benefits from the helping hands passive.

juhislihis19 wrote: »

Apparently it is not cheaper, but approximately the same cost because Helping Hands won't give stamina back?

Well at least NMA won't increase the cost now that much. How is Leap?

In 7 Medium with -14% cost and 990 stamina return from the passive it met the 1970 stamina cost spammable standard of other spammables that start at 2700 cost, but get -15% + the -14%.

This skill was only expensive for anyone using Heavy because they lacked Medium Armors cost reduction that reduced the high original cost of 3k +. What they've done by removing the passive and lowering the base cost to 2700, is allowed it be usuable in any armor weight like other spammables without polarizing costs. So it should still hit 1970 or so in 7 Medium, but 7 Heavy should see around 150-200 reduced cost.

So, if you ran 6 or less Medium pieces, the cost is in fact LESS.

Edit: It's more like, if you ran with -12% cost reduction or LESS Stone Giant was more expensive vs other spammables.

If you had -14% it was the same.

If you had -16% or higher, the cost of Stone Giant was cheaper vs other spammables. Of course, people never really noticed this because you would have to be using 7 Medium with a set like Acrobat or Vicious Ophidian which aren't very popular in the current pvp meta or even pve for that matter.

NMA is meta for +5% cost making this ability cost much more vs every other spammable in the game, even if you had 7 Medium. The change they made was smart and causes less polarizing issues with the cost.

The only time people use 7 Medium was pve and that is exactly why they made the cost 3443 from it's inception. Someone at ZOS did the math to come up with that magic number, but only considered 7 Medium as their starting point which is obviously very narrow minded and shows how spreadsheets are a flawed way to balancing all abilities in the game. It took them more than 3 months to figure this out when some people called it out day 1.

MashmalloMan

Kolzki wrote: »

Thevampirenight wrote: »

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

It’s an interesting video but he doesn’t seem to say anything about animation cancelling in general, just block cancelling. It’s specifically about how block was being handled on client and server leading to client-server desyncs when block cancelling.

The cast times on ultimates were added so that block didn’t complete hide their animation. Block now defers to the server’s timing and plays more of the previous skill’s animation without affective the damage timing in a way that causing desyncs. If it works then it could be an argument for removing those ultimate cast times.

Thats not the only reason they added cast time to ultimates. It has to do with being able to load a lot of damage in an instant, people were using ultimates into bash canceling without any proper counter play.

Do I fully agree with it, no, but they made it clear they believed ultimates should sometimes have cast times to provide an opportunity for the opponenet to counter or prepare. It's not just about technical issues.

Ragnarock41

StamDK suffers from dot standart being too low a lot more than stone giant being a meme. Now back to topic, I'm not really opposed to having a cast time AoE but the overall structure of this spammable is still a big convoluded mess. Also earthen heart passives offer little to nothing for an ability that is meant to be spammed in short time window. Since they didn't let it enjoy the benefit of helping hands and the ult gen passive has a big cooldown, this was pretty much a waste and everyone asking for a stonefist spammable pretty much contributed into creating this class identity meme situation.

GeorgeBlack

How much detailed discussion do you need to figure out that:
This ability is a bad joke?

Valagash

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

How much detailed discussion do you need to figure out that:
This ability is a bad joke?

I already said a few post atop that my thinking was wrong. I thought ZOS finally heard after 6 years and give StamDKs a stamina spammable, but I was wrong.

Instead we got this. Only good thing on this spell now, if you are not the only StamDK in your trial group, you can gamble with others who will gets screwed to put this skill on his bar and have to use it for the trial.

My learning: Top trial player use it not as spammable just one player with this skill per trial for the stagger stack

My bad, sorry

**edit: btw. with costs and so. I use 5 medium 2 heavy and NMA in PvP and my cost for this skill is 2097 stam. So it s real cheap now (thats was the first which brought me to the clue "wohooo cheap spammable with decent damage for StamDK")

exeeter702

Thevampirenight wrote: »

What they are trying to do is stop players from overloading the server with lag by the way of animation canceling. When players do it they are desyncing their clients from the server and desyncing lagging other players and causing all kinds of issues. Its possibly one of the biggest factors for how bad game performance is right now. Expect to see a lot more cast times on abilities or reworkings like the shield changes.

For a long time they have ignored the animation canceling which seemed to be purposely but not knowingly lagging oneself and others out for faster combat and to deal more damage. Possibly duping damage by the animation canceling making that being another side effect possibly to this. It wasn't until Gilliam explained it to us that we got to see the some of the extent of what Animation canceling does to the game. Because before they didn't give us this information which I think they should have. But yes I think they trying to fix animation canceling or reduce it.

Its likely the biggest reason why they put the cast times on most of the ultimate abilities. Because many of those abilities do a lot of aoe damage or healing or damage in general. Another big factor in performance since they are reworking how Aoe works. Plus also animation canceling with huge aoe effects could have been downgrading performance even more then the typical ability. So Cast times are a stop fix for this issue.



He explains it and what animation canceling actually does. He even says its something they trying to fix.
Cast times makes it harder to animation cancel so this is the likely the reason for the cast time on the ability. So they are likely targeting the animation canceling directly to fix a lot of performance issues with the game.

You are bit confused here. All Gilliam said and demonstrated is that cancelling superfluous animations during the GCD with block did nothing server side and only served to desync your client with what is happening on the server, making things like block appear as if they should have blocked when in reality on the server, it wasnt active for a given moment. Likewise he explained that this caused your client to sometimes inaccurately display hp values compared to what the server knew the true hp value of a target is supposed to be.

None of these changes have anything whatsoever to do with YOUR actions on the client side causing performance issues for the target, in fact Gilliam iirc says in that very stream more than once that you are never going to fool the server, what the server knows is always absolute and what the person sees on there screen client side is often not what you are seeing on your side when you block cancel recovery animations for no reason and that you are mainly causing issues for yourself only.

His stream has nothing do with cast items being added to reduce ability use frequency as a means to control server performance. This technically makes sense but it is an entirety different conversion. And server loads due to player input queries is why mmos historicaly have a GCD in the first place.

Davadin

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

dude.


DUDES.


its *** 41 meter range now.


holy *** this skill is a RIOT!! loving it.

who cares about short cast times when you're throwing burning rocks at the people that try to shower you with hot oils?

41 meter range max.

and cheaper too now.

It will be cheaper in heavy armor+nma but roughly the same in medium-non-nma. Anyway it's better then before and ridiculous 15m range gone. Overall I don't think it can be used as main spammable because of shimmering shield, roll-dodge monkeys and so on. Probably you need to use both dizzy and stonefist, mixing them in combat. But that initial stomp won't be easy to manage especially in 1v1.

yes, its cheaper. im on 7 med and its <2k stam. NMA + Plague Slinger.

its not quite spammable, but can be spammable for long range engagements. the 1st stomp is an issue when you're engaging range, yes.

on 1v1 and melee fights, the first stomp isnt an issue but you best use both, yes, Dizzying and Stone. that stomp hits just as hard as the rest, and its AoE.

my combo now Nox breath for fracture, stonefist 3x (not 1-stomp+3), then spam Dizzying unless they make distance and i spam stonefist.