Crystal Weapon is fine and does not need a rework

Maulkin

Elwendryll wrote: »

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.

Dude, what? I didn't really think I'd have to have to explain this, but here we are..... Crystal Weapon is a skill and 2H is a weapon. You can have Crystal Weapon on your bar with a 2H BattleAxe/Greatsword equipped, there's nothing stopping you. The only skill you're replacing is Wrecking Blow and only when/where Wrecking Blow were equipped. You can still slot Brawler for the adds, Executioner for the boss, Crit Surge when you need more heals and get the benefit from the 2H passives all the time. You need to step back a sec and re-evaluate your arguments cause they simply don't compute.

The only real question is: Is Crystal Weapon a better choice of a spammable in raids than Wrecking Blow or Rapid Strikes? The answer, is a clear yes. The theoretical 1k~2k dps loss at the top end of dps (less if you're a <90k parser) is absolutely nothing in a raid context and is heavily outweighed by the benefits of the skill as listed. No cast time, more heals, better sustain, constant proc of Minor Prophecy and armor shred outside of the major/minor system.

It's an absolute no-brainer.

Ivan04

When I first read it, I also had the idea of combining it with crushing weapon. Wonder if it could work nicely with Malacath + new Torugs. BTW, have you guys noticed how they buffed penetration in pve? Now no one needs to have any pen whatsoever with new Duneripper, Torug's and Alkosh.

Maulkin

Ivan04 wrote: »

When I first read it, I also had the idea of combining it with crushing weapon. Wonder if it could work nicely with Malacath + new Torugs. BTW, have you guys noticed how they buffed penetration on pve? Now no one needs to have any pen whatsoever with new Duneripper, Torug's and Alkosh.

I think if they don't change anything stamsorc snipers will be the best gankers in the game, outclassing stamblades. Casting Crystal Weapon before you press Snipe->LA->Shards is buffing your burst damage by yet another spammable, with 4 attacks landing at the same time and with a stun. Which is better than the damage bonus from stealth NB gets. Crushing Weapon doesn't work as pre-buff in this combo because it's only 2secs duration

As for the armor pen, it's an intentional buff for stam dps who were excluded from raid compositions since Harrowstorm. You can now have Nirn front bar weapon(s) instead of Sharpened and reallocate your 61 CPs out of piercing into more damage. So stam dps should be considerably increased.

Elwendryll

Maulkin wrote: »

Dude, what? I didn't really think I'd have to have to explain this, but here we are..... Crystal Weapon is a skill and 2H is a weapon. You can have Crystal Weapon on your bar with a 2H BattleAxe/Greatsword equipped, there's nothing stopping you.

I was listing some of the things that made me prefer 2H over DW in trial, since the first part of your message was about the damage being pretty close. Sorry about that, my format was just bad.

Also. In practice, as I only play stamsorc in trials (people can run what they want in my group) sustain is clearly not an issue on stamsorc already, same with survivability. So, yes, that ability gives more sustain and more survivability. But it's not something the class is lacking, to me it's not even a trade, you get less damage for something you don't need.

I did try using Crystal weapons instead of Wrecking Blow, I also tried using it only to keep the debuff up. I'll go test it again this evening. But the dps loss was closer to 5k.

To me, the 2 potential benefits are the armor debuff and prophecy. The issue is that I have magsorcs in my entourage, most people I play with don't change their main every update. It sure is a nice benefit otherwise. And about the armor debuff... Depends on the group I guess. But looking at all the buffs to penetration across the board (as if they were planning to remove CPs), I'm not convinced that this debuff will not be wasted in overpen.

So yes. The skill has nice utilities. But slotting it isn't a no-brainer. I had to think for a while to consider if the benefits are worth the damage loss. It turned out that for me it isn't the case. You maybe have a different experience, every trial group is different I guess, I've been running 2h/bow stamsorc in this group for a year now, and from my perspective, I really don't see why I would slot that. That's all

Machete

I thought most PvEers don't care about stam in a trial scenario because it lacks the survivability that Dampening/Hardened Ward gives regardless of its higher DPS output normally. Unless I missed a lot in my year long hiatus.

Elwendryll

Machete wrote: »

I thought most PvEers don't care about stam in a trial scenario because it lacks the survivability that Dampening/Hardened Ward gives regardless of its higher DPS output normally. Unless I missed a lot in my year long hiatus.

Most, you're right. I kept playing stamsorc, but in a mostly mag composition (mixed comps is in no way optimal). With the buff to brawler, having a shield is easy now. I frequently get 16-20k shields in packs of adds, and about 6k with a single target.

Anyway, just blocking when needed and proper positioning/kiting is enough not to need a shield most of the time.

Celestro

Elwendryll wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

Dude, what? I didn't really think I'd have to have to explain this, but here we are..... Crystal Weapon is a skill and 2H is a weapon. You can have Crystal Weapon on your bar with a 2H BattleAxe/Greatsword equipped, there's nothing stopping you.

I was listing some of the things that made me prefer 2H over DW in trial, since the first part of your message was about the damage being pretty close. Sorry about that, my format was just bad.

Also. In practice, as I only play stamsorc in trials (people can run what they want in my group) sustain is clearly not an issue on stamsorc already, same with survivability. So, yes, that ability gives more sustain and more survivability. But it's not something the class is lacking, to me it's not even a trade, you get less damage for something you don't need.

I did try using Crystal weapons instead of Wrecking Blow, I also tried using it only to keep the debuff up. I'll go test it again this evening. But the dps loss was closer to 5k.

To me, the 2 potential benefits are the armor debuff and prophecy. The issue is that I have magsorcs in my entourage, most people I play with don't change their main every update. It sure is a nice benefit otherwise. And about the armor debuff... Depends on the group I guess. But looking at all the buffs to penetration across the board (as if they were planning to remove CPs), I'm not convinced that this debuff will not be wasted in overpen.

So yes. The skill has nice utilities. But slotting it isn't a no-brainer. I had to think for a while to consider if the benefits are worth the damage loss. It turned out that for me it isn't the case. You maybe have a different experience, every trial group is different I guess, I've been running 2h/bow stamsorc in this group for a year now, and from my perspective, I really don't see why I would slot that. That's all

This was my thought process. In PvP, the healing and sustain are helpful but not really in a trial situation between healers and synergies. Minor Prophecy is situatuonal with the group composition being majority magspecs and if a magsorc isn't already present. The back and forth with whether magsorcs are still relevant seem to suggest they still are, so there's mostly that as far as them being missing trials. The biggest benefit is the armor debuff but ultimately, as has been mentioned with penetration being brought up all around, its not substantial enough to make a major difference being only 1000. This does help with being able to allocate more CP in other choices besides Piercing sure. I can't imagine its absolutely significant except for those scoring pushing and running for achievements. But to say it's a clear choice in all trials for everybody over at least Wrecking Blow seems a bit of a stretch honestly.

Elwendryll

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

@Celestro gets it.

Edit: I noticed I'm using Thief Mundus stone on both. I was doing some testing before xD It's supposed to be Shadow.

Brun1234

Did you reallocate your CP to offset the additional armor shred in your Crystal parse?

If so it sounds like the ability needs (at most) a small damage bump. It's already competitive with Rapid Strikes and is quite close to Wrecking Blow (about 2-2.5k DPS behind accounting for LA buff from WB).

Celestro

Yep. Glad to finally see some Wrecking Blow vs Crystal Weapon parses.

Anyway right, everyone else's DPS will probably increase but you'll lose some yourself, so the net gain I can't see being substantial enough to -always- use Crystal Weapon in its current iteration over Wrecking Blow.

Elwendryll

Brun1234 wrote: »

Did you reallocate your CP to offset the additional armor shred in your Crystal parse?

If so it sounds like the ability needs (at most) a small damage bump. It's already competitive with Rapid Strikes and is quite close to Wrecking Blow (about 2-2.5k DPS behind accounting for LA buff from WB).

No, I did not. I didn't forget but I didn't have much time for the math. I literally quit my apartment as soon as I posted the link xD

Both should already be at over penetration if I remember correctly (the cap should be around 5800?)

Celestro

I believe around 5800 is if the Crusher debuff is Torug's and Infused, about 6400 for Infused and without Infused about 6900. I'm actually not sure which is applied on the 21m dummy, but even in the worse case, you would be by 400. It does say Overpenetration is 0% though.

Still agree a bit of a damage boost is doable. As its been suggested, reworking the Blood Magic passive to deal damage equal to the heal would probably suffice. Maybe even equal to half the heal.

Elwendryll

Anyway, the way things are looking now, we'll reach max pen cap even without this debuff, so it would be same CP in both cases.

I'd like at least a 10s duration on the debuff.
It wouldn't be fair to increase the damage for all the extra effects it has, but I wouldn't mind.

Stx

Dps difference aside. Can you guys provide feedback on if crystal weapon weaves smoothly?

I have heard a lot of people claiming it works, and a lot of people claiming it is like crushing weapon and feels bad to weave.

Elwendryll

Stx wrote: »

Dps difference aside. Can you guys provide feedback on if crystal weapon weaves smoothly?

I have heard a lot of people claiming it works, and a lot of people claiming it is like crushing weapon and feels bad to weave.

Well, with 2H at least, I had a lot of issues on animations when my lag was getting a bit worse. Like for some reasons it would start the animation of an heavy attack out of nowhere, and still be playing an animation when I'm already an action later.

Hopefully, I had bound armaments to track if it correctly registered my LAs. It felt pretty good to weave, but for some parses, I couldn't rely on visual cues, and I was only relying on the GCD bar addon, checking on my BA stacks etc...

So yeah, to summarize, it's pretty smooth and easy to weave, but, with lag, it absolutely breaks the animations and it looks very weird with 2H, I didn't test other weapons with it.

colossalvoids

Stx wrote: »

Dps difference aside. Can you guys provide feedback on if crystal weapon weaves smoothly?

I have heard a lot of people claiming it works, and a lot of people claiming it is like crushing weapon and feels bad to weave.

As said above it depends on latency you're having. As for me personally playing on pc eu I'll never gonna use it in raid over rapids or wrecking if it stays the same, maybe occasionally for the debuff. It's nice for pvp to combine with other spammable but that's about it.

Stx

For me, I tested it with a two hander, then immediately switched to a nightblade and tested weaving with surprise attack just to give myself the best feel for it I could.

I feel like crystal weapon doesnt weave properly and feels the same as crushing weapon. I dont have a high ms.

MashmalloMan

Celestro wrote: »

I believe around 5800 is if the Crusher debuff is Torug's and Infused, about 6400 for Infused and without Infused about 6900. I'm actually not sure which is applied on the 21m dummy, but even in the worse case, you would be by 400. It does say Overpenetration is 0% though.

Still agree a bit of a damage boost is doable. As its been suggested, reworking the Blood Magic passive to deal damage equal to the heal would probably suffice. Maybe even equal to half the heal.

When I tested it, the debuff didn't seem to show up on the over pen part of combat metrics, I don't think it's counting the 1k pen properly yet.

Your blood magic idea would be very nice, 10% of your hp as a heal + damage tick, matching highest resources for shock or physical damage would add some much needed class identity that both mag/stam Sorc's lost when they removed Implossion and 3rd bar Overload, staples of how I use to build my sorcs differently by opting for as many damage ticks as possible (flurry, dots, overload, etc) to maximize my execute dps. It would literally add like 1-2k pve dps since you probably have about 20k hp in a trial (so 2k tooltip) which is just enough to pass the DW passives and Crushing Weapon Passive.

Amplitude is okay, but it's not exactly engaging for theory crafting and makes using Bloodthirsty Jewelry/Execute skills counter intuitive.

Still wondering how Templars managed to last so long with the Burning Light passive. I think they're comments at the time for the change to Implossion was about taking away some of the RNG factor behind those kills, but I mean.. if you're at -15% health, your probably dead anyway. Still wish they just nerfed it into a similar Burning Light esque factor, but your idea for Blood Magic matches what I wanted all along.

I really hope they don't just buff the Physical/Shock damage passive to 10% and call it a day, but honestly, all elemental focussed classes should have that in the first place. 5% on sorc is weak AF and 6% for aoe fire on DK is too. 15% DoT for Necro and 10% magic/ice for Warden is awesome.

katorga

Since posts are already complaining about the potential to stack with Crushing, it will probably be nerfed and become a dead skill before the PTS is complete.

Stx wrote: »

For me, I tested it with a two hander, then immediately switched to a nightblade and tested weaving with surprise attack just to give myself the best feel for it I could.

I feel like crystal weapon doesnt weave properly and feels the same as crushing weapon. I dont have a high ms.

SA is one of the best weaving animations is the game. Crushing Weapon is one the worst. I hope they think about that when they finalize the animation. Hint. Pls just copy the SA animation if you are going to copy.

What is up with "1000" pen? Why not 1324 for an even 2%.

MashmalloMan

Brun1234 wrote: »

Did you reallocate your CP to offset the additional armor shred in your Crystal parse?

If so it sounds like the ability needs (at most) a small damage bump. It's already competitive with Rapid Strikes and is quite close to Wrecking Blow (about 2-2.5k DPS behind accounting for LA buff from WB).

Rapid Strikes hits 5 times, while Crystal Weapon hits once. Something that is not factored into dummy parses is the "damage done" debuff provided by DK's and potentially, future sets. The other factor is with less damage ticks, you have less proc chances for monster sets like Selene's.

So although the damage on paper may be very similar, in actual function, it's probably weaker.

You do get better sustain, armor shred, healing and group utility, so like others said, thats will be the reason to use it, but it's kinda a shame it doesn't really go above and beyond a weapon spammable... Just like Stam DK's, we've been given a spammable serving the purpose of a raid spot instead of something thats actually fun or stronger to use.

Sorc sustain is already juicy enough, I don't understand why ZOS went for MORE passive sustain, I guess they seem to think thats our identity now. To put it bluntly, we have 6/12 passives related to sustain/cost with 2 skills, mag and stam getting -50% cost when used correctly. This doesn't even scratch the surface because we also have Dark Deal/Exchange, Endless Fury, Overload.

1. +20% stam/hp regen
2. +10% mag regen
3. -6% regular skill cost
4. -15% ult cost
5. +300 stam/mag when daedric skill ends (very nice actually, I like the more active sustain)
6. -15% regular skill cost after blocking

So after all that, we also get -10% cost for 3s when using our spammable. This is straight overkill.

All these passives are redundant and boring. Compare how much regen you get from +20% stam regen on Sorc to +200 stam regen on Necro. 200 from Necro is buffable to 320+ in medium while 20% from Sorc on a base regen of 800 is only 160. If you're going any higher than that in a pve trial, your probably over sustaining so 800 as a rough calculation is pretty accurate.

For personal reference, I had 0 issues sustaining a longer, sub optimal DPS Trial Dummy parse of around 68k using Stormfist, Relequen, Aegis Caller, Orc and bi-stat food which is only an investment of +258 stam regen. My stamina bar hit about 75% by the end of the parse using Crystal Weapon. That is nuts for only 1 synergy every 20s and my sorry butt being rusty after not playing competitive pve for over a year, I guarantee my potions and synergy was not used on cooldown.

Sustain is not what Stam Sorcs need.

Maulkin

Elwendryll wrote: »

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

This is basically coming in line with what we've been saying, that on average the total dps difference will be in the 1k-2k range. Your light attacks and spammable damage aggregated is ~2.5k dps lower with Crystal Weapon, about as expected. However you should claw some of it back either from the rest of the skills thanks to the 2% higher weapon damage you get from slotting Crystal Weapon (Expert Mage passive) or in trial cases when Alkosh uptime is below 100% and the armor shred comes in handy. In your parses the disparity grows looking at the rest of the parse, probably just due to the randomness of crit and human errors in parses.

What you and celestro seem to be saying is that your own progression groups are already predominantly magicka and contain magsorcs so the two major benefits (Minor Prophecy and armor shred) are either already there or irrelevant in your context, so you'd rather take the 1k-2k extra damage. To which I would counter argue that if better damage is what you care about, you should look to optimise you progression group composition and you'll see more than measly 2k increases. I find it a bit bizarre to care about such an insignificant dps loss in face of all the benefits provided, when considerably bigger dps gains can be made elsewhere (like bringing another Necro instead of a 2nd Sorc for example).

Anyway, just going back to your comments early on that prompted my intervention.

Elwendryll wrote: »

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

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

I think what we can come to an agreement is that in solo and 4-man PvE content where Alkosh will be likely completely lacking and both sustain and self-heals are useful, Crystal Weapon is worth slotting for the multitudes of reasons listed. And while it might not provide the highest singe-target parse in a trial scenario, its passive benefit will likely open doors for stamsorcs in progression raids where magsrocs are either currently not present or are being phased out. That's leaving only a small subset cases where it's not useful, when you're been brought along purely as a parser in a raid and your only concern is picking what does the most dps.

MashmalloMan

katorga wrote: »

Since posts are already complaining about the potential to stack with Crushing, it will probably be nerfed and become a dead skill before the PTS is complete.

Stx wrote: »

For me, I tested it with a two hander, then immediately switched to a nightblade and tested weaving with surprise attack just to give myself the best feel for it I could.

I feel like crystal weapon doesnt weave properly and feels the same as crushing weapon. I dont have a high ms.

SA is one of the best weaving animations is the game. Crushing Weapon is one the worst. I hope they think about that when they finalize the animation. Hint. Pls just copy the SA animation if you are going to copy.

Agreed, Bound Armaments should be fulfilling the delayed burst skill slot, not the spammable just because it can be delayed (by not light/heavy attack weaving for 2 gcds) with Crushing Weapon and an Ultimate. That is such a huge niche scenario and extremely clunky to use. Trying to land light/heavy attacks in melee range in pvp is a nightmare, you're going to waste tons of damage potential trying to line something like this up. It's just going to buff bow gankers.

In regards to the skill becoming useless upon release, all I have to say is look at the chain of events regarding U24-U27 for DK's Poop fist. I mean, what even is it anymore? Ranged/Melee, Cast time, Instant, it's all over the place. It's mainly useful for pve dungeons/trials, which seems to be what's happenning here, it could be a lot better, and I'm afraid it's about to get a lot worse.

katorga wrote: »

What is up with "1000" pen? Why not 1324 for an even 2%.

1324 isn't 2% in pve OR pvp, they're calculated slightly differently so it's sort of impossible for ZOS to match one or the other unless they change the math of the game, but technically, it's already 2% for pve, your request seems to be based off pvp.

pve = 500 mitigation = 1%
pvp = 660 mitigation = 1%

So in pve, 1000 is already equal to 2% mitigation penetrated. In pvp, it's equal to 1.51%. Your number is 2.65% in pve and 2.006% in pvp. Why not suggest 1320? :P

Plus.. 1000 is a nice, neat, whole number, I'd prefer ZOS to do this with more sets, but I doubt it will happen any time soon since we have 200+ sets this patch changing numbers from things like 375 to 379 because of their spreadsheet standards. Just happy it's not something stupid like 998 armor shred lol.

Celestro

Maulkin wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

This is basically coming in line with what we've been saying, that on average the total dps difference will be in the 1k-2k range. Your light attacks and spammable damage aggregated is ~2.5k dps lower with Crystal Weapon, about as expected. However you should claw some of it back either from the rest of the skills thanks to the 2% higher weapon damage you get from slotting Crystal Weapon (Expert Mage passive) or in trial cases when Alkosh uptime is below 100% and the armor shred comes in handy. In your parses the disparity grows looking at the rest of the parse, probably just due to the randomness of crit and human errors in parses.

What you and celestro seem to be saying is that your own progression groups are already predominantly magicka and contain magsorcs so the two major benefits (Minor Prophecy and armor shred) are either already there or irrelevant in your context, so you'd rather take the 1k-2k extra damage. To which I would counter argue that if better damage is what you care about, you should look to optimise you progression group composition and you'll see more than measly 2k increases. I find it a bit bizarre to care about such an insignificant dps loss in face of all the benefits provided, when considerably bigger dps gains can be made elsewhere (like bringing another Necro instead of a 2nd Sorc for example).

Anyway, just going back to your comments early on that prompted my intervention.

Elwendryll wrote: »

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

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

I think what we can come to an agreement is that in solo and 4-man PvE content where Alkosh will be likely completely lacking and both sustain and self-heals are useful, Crystal Weapon is worth slotting for the multitudes of reasons listed. And while it might not provide the highest singe-target parse in a trial scenario, its passive benefit will likely open doors for stamsorcs in progression raids where magsrocs are either currently not present or are being phased out. That's leaving only a small subset cases where it's not useful, when you're been brought along purely as a parser in a raid and your only concern is picking what does the most dps.

Oh yeah, of course for 4 man and solo content Crystal Weapon is definitely preferable over anything else without a doubt. And I don't deny that using it in trials optimized to a fine tee would result in more DPS. With all of the possible penetration options, CP is going to inherently be directed elsewhere that will result in small gains overall. And these small gains are obtained by the group as a whole, improving group DPS. I'm aware. But contributing only 1000 armor reduction is equivalent to about 10 CP in Piercing I believe? Maybe more in some cases to account for debuffs that don't have 100% uptime but still. I'm not seeing that as much of a big gain as you propose. Even ignoring that CP has been frozen to 810, whereas that 10 would've been all the more insignificant, after relocating most of the CP that would've otherwise been in like Piercing or Spell Erosion, the diminishing returns become even greater when you're redirecting that last 10 CP or however much.

I dunno. The skill just doesn't feel that worth it is the most I can say about it. Ultimately, I'm still highly likely to use Crystal Weapons in a lot of trials based off certain circumstances in the group composition, but will it always be useful in all circumstances? I just don't see it.

MashmalloMan

Celestro wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

This is basically coming in line with what we've been saying, that on average the total dps difference will be in the 1k-2k range. Your light attacks and spammable damage aggregated is ~2.5k dps lower with Crystal Weapon, about as expected. However you should claw some of it back either from the rest of the skills thanks to the 2% higher weapon damage you get from slotting Crystal Weapon (Expert Mage passive) or in trial cases when Alkosh uptime is below 100% and the armor shred comes in handy. In your parses the disparity grows looking at the rest of the parse, probably just due to the randomness of crit and human errors in parses.

What you and celestro seem to be saying is that your own progression groups are already predominantly magicka and contain magsorcs so the two major benefits (Minor Prophecy and armor shred) are either already there or irrelevant in your context, so you'd rather take the 1k-2k extra damage. To which I would counter argue that if better damage is what you care about, you should look to optimise you progression group composition and you'll see more than measly 2k increases. I find it a bit bizarre to care about such an insignificant dps loss in face of all the benefits provided, when considerably bigger dps gains can be made elsewhere (like bringing another Necro instead of a 2nd Sorc for example).

Anyway, just going back to your comments early on that prompted my intervention.

Elwendryll wrote: »

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

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

I think what we can come to an agreement is that in solo and 4-man PvE content where Alkosh will be likely completely lacking and both sustain and self-heals are useful, Crystal Weapon is worth slotting for the multitudes of reasons listed. And while it might not provide the highest singe-target parse in a trial scenario, its passive benefit will likely open doors for stamsorcs in progression raids where magsrocs are either currently not present or are being phased out. That's leaving only a small subset cases where it's not useful, when you're been brought along purely as a parser in a raid and your only concern is picking what does the most dps.

I dunno. The skill just doesn't feel that worth it is the most I can say about it. Ultimately, I'm still highly likely to use Crystal Weapons in a lot of trials based off certain circumstances in the group composition, but will it always be useful in all circumstances? I just don't see it.

Yeah.. but isn't what you just explained, exactly how ZOS designs every aspect of this game. They want us to have options, they don't want 1 size fits all. Yes, to most people a class based spammable is 100% necessary, it's the most basic building block for classes and it's what made Stam DK, Stam Sorc and Mag Sorc feel a little underwhelming for a long time in terms of class identity, but we should not expect something like a class spammable to 100% replace every other option.

In this scenario, ZOS chose the skill to fulfill utility over dps, thats very much clear to me. It seems to be the same reason they designed Poop Fist the way they did, it's almost identical in fact.

• Small, yet meaningful debuff with low duration designed to have higher uptimes when used as a spammable for DPS builds over tanks/healers. Check.
• Synergy with buffing the rest of the toolkit instead of higher, straight dps from the skill by itself like Rapid Strikes/Wrecking Blow. Check.
  • Damage Done Debuff improving all your other damage ticks (DK's a "dot" class).
  • -10% cost for 3s and +2% weapon/spell damage (Sorcs have high passive sustain, allowing them to pump more weapon/spell damage).
• Spammable, so provides easy 100% uptime of the classes specific minor group buff. Aka, Minor Brutality vs Minor Prophecy. Check.

This is all intentional, at least from my point of view. The fact that it parses so close to Wrecking Blow/ Rapid Strikes, yet slightly lower is enough that you'd want to drop it entirely for more straight dps if your sustain/debuff/buff conditions were met by someone else in your party. The skills were designed to compliment the class design as well as pve group scenarios.

I mean, if you look at weapon skill lines, sometimes over half their passives only apply to the skills used within them, so it stands to reason that they should be designed to be stronger by themselves.

DW skills get extra damage to CC'ed enemies and extra damage in execute range. Bow skills get up to +12% dmg from range and +25% from light attack weaving. Destruction Staves get 10% penetration and resource return. 2H passives are kinda outdated and have nothing that buffs them directly, the skills themselves are powerful and the skill line is much cheaper on sustain than DW. Thats also why 2H is such a strong weapon line to use imo, even when you barely slot any of the skills, the passives are active all the time.

All that being said, it's all a little unfortunate, even if they seemingly met the goals they probably set out to complete, I'd prefer the skill to function like an instant spammable rather than Crushing Weapon, especially since it's so reliant on the condition of lag, targetting and line of sight, which is at an all time low right now.

Maulkin

Celestro wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

This is basically coming in line with what we've been saying, that on average the total dps difference will be in the 1k-2k range. Your light attacks and spammable damage aggregated is ~2.5k dps lower with Crystal Weapon, about as expected. However you should claw some of it back either from the rest of the skills thanks to the 2% higher weapon damage you get from slotting Crystal Weapon (Expert Mage passive) or in trial cases when Alkosh uptime is below 100% and the armor shred comes in handy. In your parses the disparity grows looking at the rest of the parse, probably just due to the randomness of crit and human errors in parses.

What you and celestro seem to be saying is that your own progression groups are already predominantly magicka and contain magsorcs so the two major benefits (Minor Prophecy and armor shred) are either already there or irrelevant in your context, so you'd rather take the 1k-2k extra damage. To which I would counter argue that if better damage is what you care about, you should look to optimise you progression group composition and you'll see more than measly 2k increases. I find it a bit bizarre to care about such an insignificant dps loss in face of all the benefits provided, when considerably bigger dps gains can be made elsewhere (like bringing another Necro instead of a 2nd Sorc for example).

Anyway, just going back to your comments early on that prompted my intervention.

Elwendryll wrote: »

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

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

I think what we can come to an agreement is that in solo and 4-man PvE content where Alkosh will be likely completely lacking and both sustain and self-heals are useful, Crystal Weapon is worth slotting for the multitudes of reasons listed. And while it might not provide the highest singe-target parse in a trial scenario, its passive benefit will likely open doors for stamsorcs in progression raids where magsrocs are either currently not present or are being phased out. That's leaving only a small subset cases where it's not useful, when you're been brought along purely as a parser in a raid and your only concern is picking what does the most dps.

Oh yeah, of course for 4 man and solo content Crystal Weapon is definitely preferable over anything else without a doubt. And I don't deny that using it in trials optimized to a fine tee would result in more DPS. With all of the possible penetration options, CP is going to inherently be directed elsewhere that will result in small gains overall. And these small gains are obtained by the group as a whole, improving group DPS. I'm aware. But contributing only 1000 armor reduction is equivalent to about 10 CP in Piercing I believe? Maybe more in some cases to account for debuffs that don't have 100% uptime but still. I'm not seeing that as much of a big gain as you propose. Even ignoring that CP has been frozen to 810, whereas that 10 would've been all the more insignificant, after relocating most of the CP that would've otherwise been in like Piercing or Spell Erosion, the diminishing returns become even greater when you're redirecting that last 10 CP or however much.

I dunno. The skill just doesn't feel that worth it is the most I can say about it. Ultimately, I'm still highly likely to use Crystal Weapons in a lot of trials based off certain circumstances in the group composition, but will it always be useful in all circumstances? I just don't see it.

On the bolded, I guess it depends on how things pan out in the following weeks. If Alkosh remains so incredibly buffed that you can get +7k armor shreds, then stam DDs will have at most 10 points into Piercing and that's 1000 pen indeed. And if your tank is running Tremorscale as well, then your stam DDs will have 0, just like the mag DDs. So the benefit from CW is at best 10 cps saved and if tremorscale then 0 CPs saved, just the damage benefit of the armor shred during the Alkosh/Tremor downtimes while overpen'ing the rest of the times.

On current Live however (or if Alkosh gets re-tuned and the armor shred returns to ~3k, which is still quite possible) from your 61 points into Piercing for 4476 pen, you can go down to 41 points for 3442 pen and save 20 cps. Those can add an extra 1% into master-at-arms, precise strikes, thaumaturge and mighty. Which is basically 1% buff across the board. It's not insignificant.

Maulkin

MashmalloMan wrote: »

All that being said, it's all a little unfortunate, even if they seemingly met the goals they probably set out to complete, I'd prefer the skill to function like an instant spammable rather than Crushing Weapon, especially since it's so reliant on the condition of lag, targetting and line of sight, which is at an all time low right now.

I'm conflicted on this, because there's benefits and drawbacks to crushing weapon-style behaviour. The drawback is that it's clunky on melee weapons, for sure. The advantages are that a) it can be burst combo'ed in PvP with Snipe/Overload and b) that is a very good ranged spammable the way it weaves with bow.

An example for b) is if you're doing vCR and need to kill orbs or creepers, you can have CW on your bow backbar (where you currently slot Bound Armaments just for the passive damage) and you can help range them down without leaving z'maja's tail where the heals are. I personally used Crushing Weapon this way for my vMA flawless runs, as a way to kill ranged mobs and get some more incoming heals particularly on stage 5 (Ice rink) because you can't melee the mobs sitting on the water.

MincVinyl

Stx wrote: »

Dps difference aside. Can you guys provide feedback on if crystal weapon weaves smoothly?

I have heard a lot of people claiming it works, and a lot of people claiming it is like crushing weapon and feels bad to weave.

It works fine for me on pts, however it feels like if you press too quickly the next light attack wont go through....which leads you to double charge the ability. Now this is also without server lag on live, so likely with 150ms it could just not work.

Test crushing in combat during primetime and it will most likely feel the same. Only difference is crys will be able to heavy weave.

katorga

MashmalloMan wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Since posts are already complaining about the potential to stack with Crushing, it will probably be nerfed and become a dead skill before the PTS is complete.

Stx wrote: »

For me, I tested it with a two hander, then immediately switched to a nightblade and tested weaving with surprise attack just to give myself the best feel for it I could.

I feel like crystal weapon doesnt weave properly and feels the same as crushing weapon. I dont have a high ms.

SA is one of the best weaving animations is the game. Crushing Weapon is one the worst. I hope they think about that when they finalize the animation. Hint. Pls just copy the SA animation if you are going to copy.

Agreed, Bound Armaments should be fulfilling the delayed burst skill slot, not the spammable just because it can be delayed (by not light/heavy attack weaving for 2 gcds) with Crushing Weapon and an Ultimate. That is such a huge niche scenario and extremely clunky to use. Trying to land light/heavy attacks in melee range in pvp is a nightmare, you're going to waste tons of damage potential trying to line something like this up. It's just going to buff bow gankers.

In regards to the skill becoming useless upon release, all I have to say is look at the chain of events regarding U24-U27 for DK's Poop fist. I mean, what even is it anymore? Ranged/Melee, Cast time, Instant, it's all over the place. It's mainly useful for pve dungeons/trials, which seems to be what's happenning here, it could be a lot better, and I'm afraid it's about to get a lot worse.

katorga wrote: »

What is up with "1000" pen? Why not 1324 for an even 2%.

1324 isn't 2% in pve OR pvp, they're calculated slightly differently so it's sort of impossible for ZOS to match one or the other unless they change the math of the game, but technically, it's already 2% for pve, your request seems to be based off pvp.

Well shoot, you learn something new every day! I had no clue it was 500 per 1% in pve. Thought it was the same everywhere. Thx!

Celestro

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Celestro wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

(http://imgur.com/a/YzKZWYJ )
My dps comparison. Nerf to rele and Lokke shows on the dummy... And my PTS performance is quite bad, this is the exact same build I do 89.3k on live with. Most importantly, compare the light attack damage and the spammable damage. Everything else is pretty close, just some parse variation.

This is basically coming in line with what we've been saying, that on average the total dps difference will be in the 1k-2k range. Your light attacks and spammable damage aggregated is ~2.5k dps lower with Crystal Weapon, about as expected. However you should claw some of it back either from the rest of the skills thanks to the 2% higher weapon damage you get from slotting Crystal Weapon (Expert Mage passive) or in trial cases when Alkosh uptime is below 100% and the armor shred comes in handy. In your parses the disparity grows looking at the rest of the parse, probably just due to the randomness of crit and human errors in parses.

What you and celestro seem to be saying is that your own progression groups are already predominantly magicka and contain magsorcs so the two major benefits (Minor Prophecy and armor shred) are either already there or irrelevant in your context, so you'd rather take the 1k-2k extra damage. To which I would counter argue that if better damage is what you care about, you should look to optimise you progression group composition and you'll see more than measly 2k increases. I find it a bit bizarre to care about such an insignificant dps loss in face of all the benefits provided, when considerably bigger dps gains can be made elsewhere (like bringing another Necro instead of a 2nd Sorc for example).

Anyway, just going back to your comments early on that prompted my intervention.

Elwendryll wrote: »

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

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

I think what we can come to an agreement is that in solo and 4-man PvE content where Alkosh will be likely completely lacking and both sustain and self-heals are useful, Crystal Weapon is worth slotting for the multitudes of reasons listed. And while it might not provide the highest singe-target parse in a trial scenario, its passive benefit will likely open doors for stamsorcs in progression raids where magsrocs are either currently not present or are being phased out. That's leaving only a small subset cases where it's not useful, when you're been brought along purely as a parser in a raid and your only concern is picking what does the most dps.

I dunno. The skill just doesn't feel that worth it is the most I can say about it. Ultimately, I'm still highly likely to use Crystal Weapons in a lot of trials based off certain circumstances in the group composition, but will it always be useful in all circumstances? I just don't see it.

Yeah.. but isn't what you just explained, exactly how ZOS designs every aspect of this game. They want us to have options, they don't want 1 size fits all. Yes, to most people a class based spammable is 100% necessary, it's the most basic building block for classes and it's what made Stam DK, Stam Sorc and Mag Sorc feel a little underwhelming for a long time in terms of class identity, but we should not expect something like a class spammable to 100% replace every other option.

In this scenario, ZOS chose the skill to fulfill utility over dps, thats very much clear to me. It seems to be the same reason they designed Poop Fist the way they did, it's almost identical in fact.

• Small, yet meaningful debuff with low duration designed to have higher uptimes when used as a spammable for DPS builds over tanks/healers. Check.
• Synergy with buffing the rest of the toolkit instead of higher, straight dps from the skill by itself like Rapid Strikes/Wrecking Blow. Check.
  • Damage Done Debuff improving all your other damage ticks (DK's a "dot" class).
  • -10% cost for 3s and +2% weapon/spell damage (Sorcs have high passive sustain, allowing them to pump more weapon/spell damage).
• Spammable, so provides easy 100% uptime of the classes specific minor group buff. Aka, Minor Brutality vs Minor Prophecy. Check.

This is all intentional, at least from my point of view. The fact that it parses so close to Wrecking Blow/ Rapid Strikes, yet slightly lower is enough that you'd want to drop it entirely for more straight dps if your sustain/debuff/buff conditions were met by someone else in your party. The skills were designed to compliment the class design as well as pve group scenarios.

I mean, if you look at weapon skill lines, sometimes over half their passives only apply to the skills used within them, so it stands to reason that they should be designed to be stronger by themselves.

DW skills get extra damage to CC'ed enemies and extra damage in execute range. Bow skills get up to +12% dmg from range and +25% from light attack weaving. Destruction Staves get 10% penetration and resource return. 2H passives are kinda outdated and have nothing that buffs them directly, the skills themselves are powerful and the skill line is much cheaper on sustain than DW. Thats also why 2H is such a strong weapon line to use imo, even when you barely slot any of the skills, the passives are active all the time.

All that being said, it's all a little unfortunate, even if they seemingly met the goals they probably set out to complete, I'd prefer the skill to function like an instant spammable rather than Crushing Weapon, especially since it's so reliant on the condition of lag, targetting and line of sight, which is at an all time low right now.

Oh no, I mean my whole explanation was counter to what Maulkin was saying in that Crystal Sword was good enough to use over Rapid Strikes and Wrecking Blow in every situation. I'm happy about options, including this change more than I'm not.

Granted there is what you said in that this is effectively like StamDK's Stonefist, which is understandable due to StamDK's not providing a whole of group utility similar to Stamsorc, including the passives that rely on being activated to provide the Minor group buffs. I can acknowledge that its "needed" but still don't care for it 100%, including from the perspective of it being essentially a clone of an existing (clunky) skill that could've been remade to do some of these exact things. Like if Crystal Sword had even added the additional damage directly to Light and Heavy attacks, I'd opt to use it regardless of potential dps loss and such due to greater synergy with stamsorc kit to offset the overall design to serve as utility (laughs in ranged Stonefist). And besides that, theres preference for at least certain aspects of the weapon skills, like the multiple strikes or Empower that would have greater interaction with future abilities probably similar to what you said in a previous post.

I digress though as that goes into a neither here nor there direction. But yeah, was just explaining Crystal Sword isnt say like Stamplar Jabs that will practically always be great to use in any situation (regardless of it not providing utility). I don't necessarily even want more damage but thats the first thing to look towards when only so much utility can be packed into a skill.

Nemesis7884

will ravager see a comeback with this skill?