Crystal Weapon is fine and does not need a rework

StaticWave

When I read the patch notes i had a feeling that this spammable was going to behave exactly like Crushing Weapons, and it did. I was very skeptical of this change, and for the first few hours on PTS I hated it for the same reasons everyone does. It's a Psijic rip off, it's clunky, it's not easy to use. However, once i started testing it with other setups, I have completely changed my mind. I think Crystal Weapon does not need to be reworked because of the most important reason: It behaves as both a spammable and a delayed burst. The proc condition gives you 4 seconds, which is long enough to combo with TWO other skills. For example, one of the burstiest combo right now for PTS stamsorc with Crystal Weapon is to combine it with the Psijic spammable and an ultimate, such as Dawnbreaker or Onslaught. If done correctly, it can deal ~15k burst damage in 1 second. If you don't want to use it as a delayed burst, then you can simply weave it like you would with Psijic spammable.

Reworking it to a spammable that's similar to Surprise Attack would not actually make the class better in terms of damage output. This is because stamsorc does not have an ultimate like Incap that significantly boosts damage, or have passives like burning light that make a spammable like Jabs to be strong. What it needs is a delayed burst, and the current PTS crystal weapon is as close as we can get to an actual delayed burst. Sure you could argue that Bound Armaments is the extra burst skill, but the way it functions right now does not justify using it over simply spamming Dizzying swing. I urge you all to test various combos with this spammable, and hope you will come to the same conclusion as I did.

Elwendryll

This is 100% a PvP perspective. Nothing wrong with that.

While I agree this opens up interesting combos for PvP, for PvE it's lacking.

Even if used only to keep the debuff up, it's a noticeable damage loss. The debuff itself will probably be superfluous anyway since penetration got buffed across the board, it is easier to reach penetration cap now.

While the ability isn't 100% useless, it's hard to justify slotting it for PvE.

Mayrael

...and this is Ladies and Gentlemen thinking out of the box. Instead of whining, testing. Darn this can be really nasty combo!

Elwendryll

Mayrael wrote: »

...and this is Ladies and Gentlemen thinking out of the box. Instead of whining, testing. Darn this can be really nasty combo!

Well. Out of the box... It's fairly obvious to try and stack it with crushing weapons.

Some testing I did on first day on a 3M dummy...


It's interesting for PvP yes, even if I expect them to prevent us from stacking it with Crushing Weapons.

It still doesn't make it more appealing for PvE.

Lughlongarm

People saying it is like "Crushing Weapons", probably have not tried this skill.

Crushing Weapons- 2 sec time window, can work with LA only(NO heavy, no mid heavy), bad associated effect.

Crystal Weapon- 4 sec window, works with LA/HA/mid heavy, good associated effect and better damage, 20% cheaper, Dark magic passive will heal you as well.

The amount of combos you can do with this skill is probably higher compared to any other spammable in the game.

zvavi

I think it is still very appealing for PvE perspective for a stamina group for the 1k armor reduction. And it lets you proc the prophecy bonus for your healers.

Elwendryll

zvavi wrote: »

I think it is still very appealing for PvE perspective for a stamina group for the 1k armor reduction. And it lets you proc the prophecy bonus for your healers.

If you run with a stamina group (and that's less common), you'd want to slot Tremorscale anyway.

Unless you're the only sorc, and you're not already using dark deal, yes. It can be useful to give minor prophecy to the group. But that's a very specific scenario.

Elwendryll

Lughlongarm wrote: »

People saying it is like "Crushing Weapons", probably have not tried this skill.

Crushing Weapons- 2 sec time window, can work with LA only(NO heavy, no mid heavy), bad associated effect.

Crystal Weapon- 4 sec window, works with LA/HA/mid heavy, good associated effect and better damage, 20% cheaper, Dark magic passive will heal you as well.

The amount of combos you can do with this skill is probably higher compared to any other spammable in the game.

This is indeed very interesting for PvP.

The Dark Magic passive is worth 10% of your max health. 4% with battle spirit. While it's nice that we finally have a way to benefit from it on a stam spec, it's a bit low unless you stack some health.

Chilly-McFreeze

Lughlongarm wrote: »

People saying it is like "Crushing Weapons", probably have not tried this skill.

Crushing Weapons- 2 sec time window, can work with LA only(NO heavy, no mid heavy), bad associated effect.

Crystal Weapon- 4 sec window, works with LA/HA/mid heavy, good associated effect and better damage, 20% cheaper, Dark magic passive will heal you as well.

The amount of combos you can do with this skill is probably higher compared to any other spammable in the game.

So they both cheap skills that add burst to your light attack, have a failsafe resource passive and some kind of healing?
Sounds like they are much alike.

Mortiis13

For pvp it's nice on paper but in reality it sucks.
That are 3 gcd where u do zero dmg to charge ur burst, guess what every decent player can do in those 3 seconds? Heal to full and block/dodge or stun you.
It's an option for overload gank build, but thats it.
And it's horrible to weave in melee, the range version "works" , u can "load" the second skill while the projectile travel, in melee it's trash.
Or did I miss the crushing weapon stamsorc meta the last years?

It should simply copy frags instead of crushing. We want a sorc and not a Psijicer ^^

Something like a bound bow animation
0.6 or 0.8 casttime, 35% proc chance on stamina based skills to make it instant, doing more dmg and decrease physical armor by 1000 or so, instead of cost reduction.
It's not unique but atleast exclusive to stamsorc not like crushing weapon 2.

And the work is lol, rip off nightblade bow animation, take frag code, scale it with stam/weap dmg, make it purple/crystal. Done

Or make it like morkuldin, a flying bound weapon, rip off necromancer summon for it. 35% chance to activate a special attack that deals more dmg blah blah. Done

Rly their are so many better options to do it.

No offense, but I begin to belive zos is Hating his player base cause we criticize them for their work or why they don't listen and give us things nobody ever asked for.

(c stone giant, vampire( atleast ww is well done) , bound armor, now frags)

Lughlongarm

Elwendryll wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

I think it is still very appealing for PvE perspective for a stamina group for the 1k armor reduction. And it lets you proc the prophecy bonus for your healers.

If you run with a stamina group (and that's less common), you'd want to slot Tremorscale anyway.

Unless you're the only sorc, and you're not already using dark deal, yes. It can be useful to give minor prophecy to the group. But that's a very specific scenario.

Well coordinated PVE groups with cap penetration is probably the "very specific scenario". Crystal Weapon is well catered to 95%+ of the content

Lughlongarm

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Lughlongarm wrote: »

People saying it is like "Crushing Weapons", probably have not tried this skill.

Crushing Weapons- 2 sec time window, can work with LA only(NO heavy, no mid heavy), bad associated effect.

Crystal Weapon- 4 sec window, works with LA/HA/mid heavy, good associated effect and better damage, 20% cheaper, Dark magic passive will heal you as well.

The amount of combos you can do with this skill is probably higher compared to any other spammable in the game.

So they both cheap skills that add burst to your light attack, have a failsafe resource passive and some kind of healing?
Sounds like they are much alike.

Crystal Weapon is what people wanted Crushing Weapons to be since it was introduced to game. This is the difference.

Elwendryll

Lughlongarm wrote: »

Well coordinated PVE groups with cap penetration is probably the "very specific scenario". Crystal Weapon is well catered to 95%+ of the content

Most trial compositions are magicka these days. 4884 from light armor passives, Alkosh got buffed and can give 5k+ pen now on a Tank, Major and Minor fracture/breach give 5280 and 1320, 2h crushing enchant gives 1622 +30% with infused, + an other 45% with Torug's, and New sharpened trait is 3276.

Stam comps don't have light armor passive, but they have Tremorscale, for an other 2395

And then, you have CPs.

So reaching the cap looks really easy with the PTS changes. Even if on live not all groups run at pen cap, with these changes we can expect at least mag DDs to take out their pen CPs...

Celestro

Lughlongarm wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Lughlongarm wrote: »

People saying it is like "Crushing Weapons", probably have not tried this skill.

Crushing Weapons- 2 sec time window, can work with LA only(NO heavy, no mid heavy), bad associated effect.

Crystal Weapon- 4 sec window, works with LA/HA/mid heavy, good associated effect and better damage, 20% cheaper, Dark magic passive will heal you as well.

The amount of combos you can do with this skill is probably higher compared to any other spammable in the game.

So they both cheap skills that add burst to your light attack, have a failsafe resource passive and some kind of healing?
Sounds like they are much alike.

Crystal Weapon is what people wanted Crushing Weapons to be since it was introduced to game. This is the difference.

That statement doesn't enforce a difference at all. It justifies them being alike all the more by saying one is a better version of the other, which is ultimately accurate.

And yeah, for PvP its not too bad. For PvE it does nudge ahead of Crushing Weapons but not by a huge amount. Crystal Weapon does do more damage upfront but the Psijic Guild's Spell Orb passives helps to make them about equal. Not exactly 20% cheaper but the built in cost reduction does help it as far as sustain goes if that's an issue. The heals are almost comparable with Crushing Weapons being a majority of the time. So heavy attacks, Armor reduction and cost reduction on its own, with Exploitation passive being the secondary use.

It does indeed bring more into groups but honestly, hitting pen cap is easy enough even without the skill for both stam and mag groups, so that isn't too significant on its own with just 1000 Armor being reduced. Still doesn't remotely measure up to Wrecking Blow or Flurry.

Maulkin

Elwendryll wrote: »

This is 100% a PvP perspective. Nothing wrong with that.

While I agree this opens up interesting combos for PvP, for PvE it's lacking.

Even if used only to keep the debuff up, it's a noticeable damage loss. The debuff itself will probably be superfluous anyway since penetration got buffed across the board, it is easier to reach penetration cap now.

While the ability isn't 100% useless, it's hard to justify slotting it for PvE.

Firstly, PvE isn't just perfectly compositioned trial progression groups. In fact, those are the tiny, tiny minority of PvErs. The armor shred is very useful in situations with low or non-existent Alkosh uptimes.

Secondly, the fact it's a Dark Magic ability that procs Exploitation passive is huge. It could likely result in MagSorcs being replaced by StamSorcs in progression raids, especially if the StamSorcs can now parse higher which is almost a given based on buffs/nerfs observed. Such as:
1) Nerf to Crystal Frags
2) Nerf to B4B
3) Alkosh buff along with Crystal Weapon that frees up 61 CPs from Piercing to invest elsewhere
4) Major Slayer uptimes from WM, MA wearing Necros free you from using Lokkestiiz and can use the newly buffed AY

Overall, if these changes persist Crystal Weapon will be the StamSorc ticket to progression raids. On top of being a great burst tool for PvP.

JinMori

Elwendryll wrote: »

This is 100% a PvP perspective. Nothing wrong with that.

While I agree this opens up interesting combos for PvP, for PvE it's lacking.

Even if used only to keep the debuff up, it's a noticeable damage loss. The debuff itself will probably be superfluous anyway since penetration got buffed across the board, it is easier to reach penetration cap now.

While the ability isn't 100% useless, it's hard to justify slotting it for PvE.

It's a skill that gives 1k pen with decent damage, it's pretty good.

StaticWave

Mortiis13 wrote: »

For pvp it's nice on paper but in reality it sucks.
That are 3 gcd where u do zero dmg to charge ur burst, guess what every decent player can do in those 3 seconds? Heal to full and block/dodge or stun you.
It's an option for overload gank build, but thats it.
And it's horrible to weave in melee, the range version "works" , u can "load" the second skill while the projectile travel, in melee it's trash.
Or did I miss the crushing weapon stamsorc meta the last years?

It should simply copy frags instead of crushing. We want a sorc and not a Psijicer ^^

Something like a bound bow animation
0.6 or 0.8 casttime, 35% proc chance on stamina based skills to make it instant, doing more dmg and decrease physical armor by 1000 or so, instead of cost reduction.
It's not unique but atleast exclusive to stamsorc not like crushing weapon 2.

And the work is lol, rip off nightblade bow animation, take frag code, scale it with stam/weap dmg, make it purple/crystal. Done

Or make it like morkuldin, a flying bound weapon, rip off necromancer summon for it. 35% chance to activate a special attack that deals more dmg blah blah. Done

Rly their are so many better options to do it.

No offense, but I begin to belive zos is Hating his player base cause we criticize them for their work or why they don't listen and give us things nobody ever asked for.

(c stone giant, vampire( atleast ww is well done) , bound armor, now frags)

But if your combo can take away 15k of someone's hp then it's definitely worth it. That is also not the only combo you can use with CW. And cast time is bad for the game let's not make things have a cast time

Brun1234

1) I don't expect it to remain comboable with Crushing. They will either reduce the timing on Crystal to match Crushing or they will make them mutually exclusive.

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

I think most people that are complaining about Crystal Weapon are concerned either with it being a clone of an existing ability (instead of something new and interesting) or with it being less competitive damage-wise than weapon skills. On paper I initially thought it wouldn't beat out Rapid Strikes either (due to the better DW passives), but apparently it works out to be about the same in practice.

MincVinyl

I am fine with the choice, tbh i have been betting that their stamsorc identity would either be a crystal weapon morph of frags....surprise look what they did. Either it was going to be a long cast with a hard hit like the unmorphed version, or a copy of crushing because zos will think it synergizes with bound armaments.

Most people will not like the fact that bound armaments is a meh copy of spectral bow, and crystal weapon is a copy of crushing. I dont care so long as everything works, im sure I can deal with the clunkiness of these in the long run.

---

I do have issues with how the ability will perform in PvP however. Much like with crushing the beginning of your burst rotation will be rather weak. Your first gcd will only have a light attack. The following gcd still wont have the armor debuff. The third gcd will finally have everything. So on your 3rd gcd you will start hurting your opponent ideally equivalent to a normal spammable. This is all assuming that you dont miss, they dont get purged, and so on.

Where this causes more issues is when you look at alot of damage buffs, like weapon damage enchants, or double dot poisons. Likely you have 5-6 gcds in this rotation to use these buffs that a normal spammable can use. 3 of those gets wasted essentially starting your ramp up period. So on a normal build say they buff and debuff an enemy over 3gcds and then go into spam/stun/ult you will now have an extra 2-3 gcds before your ult rotation. Comparing solely direct damage setups, you will likely have almost half the pressure of something like a dizzy build. This means the damage burst must be worth the wait, but as it stands i cant say if it will be worth losing a stun and quicker initiation found in dizzy.

Likely players using Crystal Weapon will rely on burst combos with ult and not even bother trying to burn someone down with normal damage rotations. Typically on a dizzy build you would be able to burn an opponent down before an ult rotation, and crys much like crushing falls flat on doing this.....especially outnumbered.

exiledtyrant

Brun1234 wrote: »

1) I don't expect it to remain comboable with Crushing. They will either reduce the timing on Crystal to match Crushing or they will make them mutually exclusive.

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

I think most people that are complaining about Crystal Weapon are concerned either with it being a clone of an existing ability (instead of something new and interesting) or with it being less competitive damage-wise than weapon skills. On paper I initially thought it wouldn't beat out Rapid Strikes either (due to the better DW passives), but apparently it works out to be about the same in practice.

I would like to add I did some simple 1 bar rotations using rapid strikes vs crystal weapon on a 1.8mil world boss for over 30 minutes and got around the same results per kill. Crystal weapon was either on par or only slightly under rapid strikes while being much cheaper. It only seems to need a little push damage wise (maybe through the empower buff?) if the desire was for it to perform better than weapon skills. It being extremely cheap also opens up more gearing for weapon damage / stam as well so it may scale to where it needs to be when sets are optimized around it.

I'm still worried about the stacking potential this has for PvP. I don't think the giving even more power to gankers or ZvZ range is a good thing, especially with all these proc set buffs.

Elwendryll

Brun1234 wrote: »

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

It's maybe comparable to rapid strikes, but it's weaker than Wrecking Blow or Focused Aim, and by quite a lot. And I don't say it should be doing more, Wrecking Blow and Focused Aim have cast times and are more expensive. But still, if I try using it, as the only spammable or along wrecking blow just to keep the debuff up, it lowers my dps, and the higher the debuff uptime, the lower my dps. If your group has a semi serious composition, it's not going to be very useful.

StaticWave

exiledtyrant wrote: »

Brun1234 wrote: »

1) I don't expect it to remain comboable with Crushing. They will either reduce the timing on Crystal to match Crushing or they will make them mutually exclusive.

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

I think most people that are complaining about Crystal Weapon are concerned either with it being a clone of an existing ability (instead of something new and interesting) or with it being less competitive damage-wise than weapon skills. On paper I initially thought it wouldn't beat out Rapid Strikes either (due to the better DW passives), but apparently it works out to be about the same in practice.

I would like to add I did some simple 1 bar rotations using rapid strikes vs crystal weapon on a 1.8mil world boss for over 30 minutes and got around the same results per kill. Crystal weapon was either on par or only slightly under rapid strikes while being much cheaper. It only seems to need a little push damage wise (maybe through the empower buff?) if the desire was for it to perform better than weapon skills. It being extremely cheap also opens up more gearing for weapon damage / stam as well so it may scale to where it needs to be when sets are optimized around it.

I'm still worried about the stacking potential this has for PvP. I don't think the giving even more power to gankers or ZvZ range is a good thing, especially with all these proc set buffs.

Stamsorc damage is very laughable in PvP. I think it's fair to say that stamsorc should have a patch where it's an actual threat.

Maulkin

StaticWave wrote: »

Stamsorc damage is very laughable in PvP. I think it's fair to say that stamsorc should have a patch where it's an actual threat.

I had a great laugh thanks

Maulkin

Elwendryll wrote: »

Brun1234 wrote: »

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

It's maybe comparable to rapid strikes, but it's weaker than Wrecking Blow or Focused Aim, and by quite a lot. And I don't say it should be doing more, Wrecking Blow and Focused Aim have cast times and are more expensive. But still, if I try using it, as the only spammable or along wrecking blow just to keep the debuff up, it lowers my dps, and the higher the debuff uptime, the lower my dps. If your group has a semi serious composition, it's not going to be very useful.

You say that, but don't back it up with any logical arguments. If a team has a serious composition (never mind semi serious), you will absolutely have Crystal Weapon equipped or you won't be in the raid.

Brun1234

Elwendryll wrote: »

Brun1234 wrote: »

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

It's maybe comparable to rapid strikes, but it's weaker than Wrecking Blow or Focused Aim, and by quite a lot. And I don't say it should be doing more, Wrecking Blow and Focused Aim have cast times and are more expensive. But still, if I try using it, as the only spammable or along wrecking blow just to keep the debuff up, it lowers my dps, and the higher the debuff uptime, the lower my dps. If your group has a semi serious composition, it's not going to be very useful.

This would imply that on live, 2H Stamsorc provides more raw DPS than DW Stamsorc builds due to the strength of WB and 2H passives (if Crystal and Rapid are comparable, and WB > Crystal, that implies WB > Rapid). That's plausible, I guess(?) - I don't have a lot of experience with 2H outside of solo builds. There are certainly plenty of 90K+ DW builds which seems to be in the range of competitive top-end DPS.

EDIT: Remember, I wasn't really considering the Armor Shred at all in my thoughts. People have correctly pointed out that penetration will be more generally available in 6.1, which means the Armor Shred won't necessarily be part of your calculus in slotting the ability. I expect DW builds will slot Crystal for the sustain benefits even if the Armor Shred isn't necessary due to group comps. 2H builds may continue to use WB (Wrecking's empower is a lot more attractive under most circumstances than anything Crystal provides) - but unless DW builds suddenly become non-viable, I think you'll still see Crystal used by those builds in group play, regardless of comp.

Celestro

Brun1234 wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

Brun1234 wrote: »

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

It's maybe comparable to rapid strikes, but it's weaker than Wrecking Blow or Focused Aim, and by quite a lot. And I don't say it should be doing more, Wrecking Blow and Focused Aim have cast times and are more expensive. But still, if I try using it, as the only spammable or along wrecking blow just to keep the debuff up, it lowers my dps, and the higher the debuff uptime, the lower my dps. If your group has a semi serious composition, it's not going to be very useful.

This would imply that on live, 2H Stamsorc provides more raw DPS than DW Stamsorc builds due to the strength of WB and 2H passives (if Crystal and Rapid are comparable, and WB > Crystal, that implies WB > Rapid). That's plausible, I guess(?) - I don't have a lot of experience with 2H outside of solo builds. There are certainly plenty of 90K+ DW builds which seems to be in the range of competitive top-end DPS.

EDIT: Remember, I wasn't really considering the Armor Shred at all in my thoughts. People have correctly pointed out that penetration will be more generally available in 6.1, which means the Armor Shred won't necessarily be part of your calculus in slotting the ability. I expect DW builds will slot Crystal for the sustain benefits even if the Armor Shred isn't necessary due to group comps. 2H builds may continue to use WB (Wrecking's empower is a lot more attractive under most circumstances than anything Crystal provides) - but unless DW builds suddenly become non-viable, I think you'll still see Crystal used by those builds in group play, regardless of comp.

I believe its been stated 2H is stronger than DW on stamsorc but I can't say with 100% certainty. Wrecking Blow does deal more damage than even Rapid Strikes with its morph effect. With Empower, it makes sense it pulls ahead and thats not even including the cleave potential. Then there's Executioner (even Reverse Slice) vs Whirlwind. I certainly do more damage with 2H than DW though, despite my dislike of 2H and Wrecking Blow. Granted, that is without using the Blackrose Prison DW set but at the least, if using that set, its nice to know Crystal Weapon is comparable to Rapid Strikes so it could be replaced.

exiledtyrant

Elwendryll wrote: »

Brun1234 wrote: »

2) Someone on the ESO Reddit Discord did some testing of Crystal vs. Rapid Strikes on the trial dummy and it was comparable DPS (about 1.2k difference in favor of Rapid, but the crystal parse missed a few LAs which accounts for some of that difference ). The actual DPS dealt by the two abilities in their respective parses was almost identical - 11698 for Rapid, 11811 for Crystal. Sustain is noticeably better with Crystal as expected, plus the self-heals. The armor shred is less of a factor than it would be on the live game, but I think that all else being equal (and data suggests that damage-wise, it is, at least compared to Rapid) the sustain and self-heal benefits of Crystal make a compelling case to use it over a weapon skill. The tester also reported that something had been done to the animation to make it feel less "clunky" than Crushing, though that may be a personal opinion.

It's maybe comparable to rapid strikes, but it's weaker than Wrecking Blow or Focused Aim, and by quite a lot. And I don't say it should be doing more, Wrecking Blow and Focused Aim have cast times and are more expensive. But still, if I try using it, as the only spammable or along wrecking blow just to keep the debuff up, it lowers my dps, and the higher the debuff uptime, the lower my dps. If your group has a semi serious composition, it's not going to be very useful.

I don't have wrecking blow unlocked to test but I ran some more world boss parses up to about 1million each for around 15 mins. I couldn't see a real difference in dps using the 1 bar rotation outside of the same small gap i saw with rapid strikes. What kind of DPS disparity were you seeing between the cast time abilities?

Maulkin

exiledtyrant wrote: »

I don't have wrecking blow unlocked to test but I ran some more world boss parses up to about 1million each for around 15 mins. I couldn't see a real difference in dps using the 1 bar rotation outside of the same small gap i saw with rapid strikes. What kind of DPS disparity were you seeing between the cast time abilities?

The difference between DW and 2H is about 1k in a dummy parse, in favour of 2H. Nothing to get excited about. Evidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVayFGEDezI&t=587s

In a trial scenario with Major Vuln uptime, Z'en and Martial Knowledge... that could increase to maybe 1.5k-2k at most. Overall there's about 1% dps difference which is too small to be a factor when picking skills for a raid. The better sustain, constant self-heals from Blood Magic, the armor shred (helpful for alkosh downtimes) and the proc'ing of the Exploitation passive that grants Minor Prophecy to the raid... they clearly push Crystal Weapon ahead as the skill of choice for trial runs.

Elwendryll

Ok. For people asking.
On live I can pull 89k on trial dummy, with 2H. This is lower than what is possible, but I'm playing khajiit, the BiS being orc. I've also been running in a progression group for a year, I cleared every trial HM except vKA, we're currently progressing on the execute. We're only 2 stam DDs in a magicka group, and that's when I'm not tanking xD

2H is better for stamsorc.
Crystal weapons has a tooltip value worth ~84% of Wrecking Blow. And Wrecking Blow adds a charge of empower to your next light attack.

I can't get you screenshots of parses before this evening, because I'm at work, but I will do. I can tell you I remember the max value hit was somewhere between 5-10k lower than Wrecking Blow, and my light attack dps was also lower, because I have something like a 40% empower uptime with Wrecking Blow.

Elwendryll

Maulkin wrote: »

The better sustain, constant self-heals from Blood Magic, the armor shred (helpful for alkosh downtimes) and the proc'ing of the Exploitation passive that grants Minor Prophecy to the raid... they clearly push Crystal Weapon ahead as the skill of choice for trial runs.

2H gives a 30% stamina regen bonus on kill. 2H has access to brawler with master weapon, providing very high trash dps with good survivability, since it gives a scaling shield (even without target). The self heal is nice, I guess, but it's 1.6k to 2k every time you use the spammable, when you have access to crit surge that will passively heal you for 4-6k every second on any crit damage. The solo target execute damage is just higher.

That's probably just for my progression group, but not already having a magsorc is pretty rare. It's also possible to proc minor prophecy with dark deal, while people tend to complain about it a lot, it's easier to use than before thanks to the reduced cast time, and some fights have downtimes (boss jumping/teleporting, or any mechanic that will have you wait), at least that's how I give minor prophecy to the group when I'm tanking and we somehow don't have any sorc that day.

MincVinyl

If wrecking blow used the same aim checks as dizzy, I would probs consider using it in PvP. For some reason it still has a 180deg directional check, which means targets that go through/next to you will not be hit.