Frost Staff changes in Update 28 (unofficial suggestion)

ESO_Nightingale

Hey guys, I'm here to address the Frost Discord's opinions on the current suggested changes to the frost staff and to reaffirm what should happen to make the weapon truly useful for DPS and tanks. Currently the discord is feeling extremely negative about the changes and feel as if they need to address them, so that's what i'm here to do.

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The current changes that have been posted during this update are:

For Frost Staff changes, we looked at the prior goals where Magicka users could tank in PvE and PvP scenarios. We found that many of the tools provided by Frost Staff abilities either did not hold up to other tanking abilities, or directly conflicted with other Destruction Staff abilities and created some pain points in dungeons. This, in turn, led us down the path to give the Frost Staff greater viability for doing things other than tanking. The end result was a focus on two changes: Give Frost Staff users more flexibility to fill the role of a tank, and also give Frost Staff users the opportunity to better fill the roles of support or DPS.

A good example of this is the following upcoming adjustments to Wall of Frost/Flame/Shock:
Lowering the damage done by Wall of Frost compared to Wall of Flame and Shock
Removing Snare from Wall of Frost
Casting Wall of Frost will create a Damage shield on you and up to 5 other nearby group members that absorbs projectiles
Unstable Wall of Frost will apply a weaker version of the Damage Shield when the ability ends

In terms of reducing some pain points that Frost Staff users and their groups, we’ll be removing the Auto-Taunt from Tri-focus. The taunt from Frost Staff will instead reside in Frost Clench, and will taunt the enemy for 15 seconds. We believe these changes, along with several others in the Destruction skill line, will help bring some parity between the three damage options for staff users and give greater flexibility to that weapon choice.

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While it's great that the frost staff is being looked at after all of these years, how it's being touched, as far as we can see at this point in time is quite flawed @ZOS_BrianWheeler . while we don't know every single change that is coming out to the frost staff, there are some things that we can still touch on that have been shown in the post.

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lets go over current issues:

1:Frost staff has a taunt on tri focus and newer players steal taunts

2: Frost staff isn't used much at all in endgame pve for tanking

3: Frost staff isn't used at all for dps when it is 1 of only 3 options for magicka damage dealing weapons

4: Frost staff's design is for damage in it's skills and for tanking in it's passives

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what has been supposedly addressed by this post:

point 1 has absolutely been addressed, but the other points, especially point 3 is far less certain.

Frost staff tri focus taunt has been shifted to Frost Clench

Pros to this:

• You now have to actively morph this skill for a taunt, meaning no new players will be taunting enemies anymore
• Taunt related sets now proc off of this skill.

Cons to this:

• this skill still won't be used at all in pve. the undaunted taunt is still better than it as it has more range and gives group utility.
• elemental susceptibility could have used the taunt and some other changes to make it better for tanking.
• still pins frost to the tanking archetype when the majority of people still want it to be for DPS, still restricts tanking options.

Frost Wall deals less damage, has no snare, now provides an aoe projectile specific damage shield to nearby allies

Pros to this:

• Slightly more group utility when using wall of frost
• Less annoying to fight in PvP

Cons to this:

• The skill becomes fully useless for DPS
• extremely specific damage shield

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While we don't know what specific changes are coming other than this, here are some ideas to help make the staff better for tanking and dps. With tooltips to help you better visualise the changes. please keep in mind that specific values that are listed can be tweaked for better balance.

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Passives

Tri Focus:

What changed?:
(this change is assumed to be coming already.) As the taunt is now gone, the damage shield value has been heavily increased to make it more useful for tanks who are low on resources.

Why?:
To make the passive helpful for tanks and to remove griefing capabilities. DPS still wouldn't want to use this passive, but at least now they cannot steal taunt from the tank.

Ancient Knowledge:

What changed?:
Added critical damage instead of increased block power.

Why?:
this passive now actually increases the DPS of the user, specifically with critical damage, this can effect both aoe and single target damage abilities, but only the critical damage forms. this should mean that it doesn't replace the fire staff, but rather, becomes an option to compete with it.

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Wall of Elements:

What changed?:
Removed the snare from frost wall.

Why?:
To make sure people chose a morph.

Elemental Blockade:

What changed?:
reduced frost wall damage and added the snare and the new damage shield

Why:
This change means that tanks will absolutely want to use this morph, it should be more power for tanks now, while the other morph can be more powerful for dps who want to use the frost staff.

Unstable Wall of Elements:

What changed?:
increased the base damage of unstable wall of frost a little to put it more in line with lightning and flame walls, as they have ways to increase their base damage by a good amount via the burning and concussed status effects. while frost wall immobilises and has a little bit more base damage instead of a snare.

Why?:
There can be some other ways to increase it's damage that make it fit more in line with it's flavour, for example, increasing damage done to enemies effected by hard and soft cc, meaning it has special synergy with winter's revenge. but increasing the base damage is likely the easiest solution to make it fit better with the other walls.

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Elemental Susceptibility:


What changed?:
Removed extra range and damage refresh for major fracture and the ancient knowledge passive.

Why?:
While this does create an extra skill for tanks to slot, it now allows them to use any staff they want, not just frost, though frost would still work well with it, it gives the destruction staff tanks access to major fracture on the same skill that gives major breach. This would separate the utility of weakness to elements between tanks and healers, healers will likely take elemental drain, where as less experienced tanks can take elemental susceptibility to have the ability to apply the debuffs to enemies they're tanking. This skill will likely never be used by the best PvE tanks.

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Elemental Ring:


What changed?:
this ability no longer has to be aimed on the ground, instead it surrounds you in an elemental cloak which deals your staff's damage type to nearby enemies after you deal your initial tick of damage.

Why: This morph on this skill was super niche and I personally haven't seen it used outside of people who are new to the game, even pulsar has a unique niche in pvp, with this change, it allows more people to use the skill. specifically in a melee DoT oriented playstyle. This also helps with visual power identity if that is something that you care about. it also works well in tandem with the blackrose prison staff.

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Elemental Rage:


What changed?:
removed the 3 second immobilise on enemies for icy rage and replaced it with cost reduction to help the ultimate be more in line with other elemental rages. it will have more uptime as a result being more similar to Thunderous Rage in long encounters.

Why?:
very similar to elemental ring, this specific frost variant is never used ever, when people use a frost staff. it's unique effect doesn't stack well with frost wall and is underpowered compared to the other rages, reducing it's cost makes it more viable.

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Thanks for reading the post. The goal is to make the staff better for both DPS and tanks, in general and not to just make them solely useful for just one type of spec. the ideas suggested here don't have solid values and could be subject to change, it's more about expressing the ideas.

Corellon Thromorin

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

ESO_Nightingale

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

while i personally agree that it shouldn't be for tanking, i'm willing to compromise to have it be good for both tanking and dps.

JazzyNova

Frost staves should definitely be an alternative option for magdps to use instead of being confined to inferno staves for the most part. I feel that with the changes that are being proposed as they are now, only less people are going to use frost staves & healers definitely wouldn't use them over lightning staves as minor vuln/off balance are just too valuable to not apply on the bosses & mobs.

If the changes do go through as they are implying, frost staves will only become an even weaker weapon & element in general, especially if they nerf the blockade/unstable wall of frost. I definitely agree with the idea that ice staves should focus on spell crit/crit dmg above all else, esp if there to be used as a dps option primarily for wardens. Removing the taunt from the heavy attack is a good start, but for it to an alternative to inferno staves, making skills weaker is the total opposite & creates a path into making them even more irrelevant/decon weapons.

luen79rwb17_ESO

Make the godamn frost staff DPS FFS! Almost 6 1/2 years into this game and still unable to understand that?

ESO_Nightingale

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Make the godamn frost staff DPS FFS! Almost 6 1/2 years into this game and still unable to understand that?

I understand how you feel. i've been arguing for this for 3 years.

stefj68

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

absoltely best comments!!!!

Starlight_Whisper

Pulsar is a nice skill... just needs looking at as it's got problems

ESO_Nightingale

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

Pulsar is a nice skill... just needs looking at as it's got problems

i didn't touch pulsar as i know it's used sometimes on pvp supports, though elemental ring isn't used at all.

ESO_Nightingale

stefj68 wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

absoltely best comments!!!!

while i also agree, zos has never made a new weapon before and i'm not sure how they'd do it. i'd hope they make a new weapon soon but again, no idea if, or even how they would do it.

Moonsorrow

I LIKE the Taunt on Frost Clench and have personally wished it for years so that is good news.

But PLEASE do make it as functional as Pierce Armor (to have same kind of bar space situation than with SnB without having to put extra resistance debuffs in separately) so put the same Major Breach and Major Fracture on that skill too so Frost Staff is then nearly as viable as a main bar tanking weapon as SnB, SnB still has some better passives (like taking less projectile damage) and extra Glyph and so on. Also do consider Frost Staff also getting the moving a bit faster while Blocking passive as what SnB has.

Make the Frost Clench range shorter to match the SnB taunt functionality and to not make some nasty things possible at PVP, so it would not then get nerfed due to that if does some pre-emptive thinking and modification on it.

Would be nice to have Frost Staff being a fully viable "front bar" tanking weapon choice with SnB and not just a back bar option most often to juggle blocking with stam or mag. Currently been SnB/Lightning staff most often or SnB/Bow. So would be nice and FUN to be able to go even Frost/Lightning and be fully functional and competitive at all tanking tasks event at the most challenging Vet content, thank you!

Copy pasted my message from the other thread to here if this becomes the topic that is more focused on the Frost Staff changes, the main thread will probably end up too salty about the upcoming crit changes so Frost Staff changes get no attention most likely. I understand the upcoming Crit nerfs being worrisome though.. so yeah. Big game changers incoming again.When do we just get to play and have fun lol?

Brederode

This, in turn, led us down the path to give the Frost Staff greater viability for doing things other than tanking. The end result was a focus on two changes: Give Frost Staff users more flexibility to fill the role of a tank, and also give Frost Staff users the opportunity to better fill the roles of support or DPS.

A good example of this is the following upcoming adjustments to Wall of Frost/Flame/Shock:

• Lowering the damage done by Wall of Frost compared to Wall of Flame and Shock
• Removing Snare from Wall of Frost
• Casting Wall of Frost will create a Damage shield on you and up to 5 other nearby group members that absorbs projectiles
• Unstable Wall of Frost will apply a weaker version of the Damage Shield when the ability ends

I said this in their post but I will say it here again: their reasoning on this is completely backwards currently. They want Frost Staff to become more viable for both DPS and Tanks yet they reduce the damage of Wall of Frost and remove the snare.

In my opinion, adding Minor Vulnerability (+8% damage taken) to Wall of Frost to replace the snare alone would have been a much better choice if they wanted it to become something thats both useful for the Tanks and DPS. Most tanks already use Shock Staff over Frost Staff purely for the off-balance it provides, which in turn allows DPS to do more damage.

I also still think they should remove "While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina" from the Tri Focus passive and replace that with something else. As a tank myself, the last thing I want is my magicka to be drained and unable to recover as its used for many support abilities (heals, shields, buffs..)

Cinbri

Too early to talk about it. Need to read patchnotes first. So far frost woe change doesnt sound impressive.

ESO_Nightingale

Cinbri wrote: »

Too early to talk about it. Need to read patchnotes first. So far frost woe change doesnt sound impressive.

yeah it's not really good, as far as i'm concerned it's worse for both dps and tank with it's current iteration. but also, the earlier it gets brought up, the more opportunity there is for it to change for the better.

ESO_Nightingale

Moonsorrow wrote: »

I LIKE the Taunt on Frost Clench and have personally wished it for years so that is good news.

But PLEASE do make it as functional as Pierce Armor (to have same kind of bar space situation than with SnB without having to put extra resistance debuffs in separately) so put the same Major Breach and Major Fracture on that skill too so Frost Staff is then nearly as viable as a main bar tanking weapon as SnB, SnB still has some better passives (like taking less projectile damage) and extra Glyph and so on. Also do consider Frost Staff also getting the moving a bit faster while Blocking passive as what SnB has.

Make the Frost Clench range shorter to match the SnB taunt functionality and to not make some nasty things possible at PVP, so it would not then get nerfed due to that if does some pre-emptive thinking and modification on it.

Would be nice to have Frost Staff being a fully viable "front bar" tanking weapon choice with SnB and not just a back bar option most often to juggle blocking with stam or mag. Currently been SnB/Lightning staff most often or SnB/Bow. So would be nice and FUN to be able to go even Frost/Lightning and be fully functional and competitive at all tanking tasks event at the most challenging Vet content, thank you!

Copy pasted my message from the other thread to here if this becomes the topic that is more focused on the Frost Staff changes, the main thread will probably end up too salty about the upcoming crit changes so Frost Staff changes get no attention most likely. I understand the upcoming Crit nerfs being worrisome though.. so yeah. Big game changers incoming again.When do we just get to play and have fun lol?

adding major breach and fracture to it sort of devalues weakness to elements as that skill already has major breach on it, along with a morph that no-one in their right mind ever uses.

Cronopoly

(PVE) Frost Mage having a snare or hard CC with the weapon made sense. Of course it's out... sigh

MashmalloMan

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Moonsorrow wrote: »

I LIKE the Taunt on Frost Clench and have personally wished it for years so that is good news.

But PLEASE do make it as functional as Pierce Armor (to have same kind of bar space situation than with SnB without having to put extra resistance debuffs in separately) so put the same Major Breach and Major Fracture on that skill too so Frost Staff is then nearly as viable as a main bar tanking weapon as SnB, SnB still has some better passives (like taking less projectile damage) and extra Glyph and so on. Also do consider Frost Staff also getting the moving a bit faster while Blocking passive as what SnB has.

Make the Frost Clench range shorter to match the SnB taunt functionality and to not make some nasty things possible at PVP, so it would not then get nerfed due to that if does some pre-emptive thinking and modification on it.

Would be nice to have Frost Staff being a fully viable "front bar" tanking weapon choice with SnB and not just a back bar option most often to juggle blocking with stam or mag. Currently been SnB/Lightning staff most often or SnB/Bow. So would be nice and FUN to be able to go even Frost/Lightning and be fully functional and competitive at all tanking tasks event at the most challenging Vet content, thank you!

Copy pasted my message from the other thread to here if this becomes the topic that is more focused on the Frost Staff changes, the main thread will probably end up too salty about the upcoming crit changes so Frost Staff changes get no attention most likely. I understand the upcoming Crit nerfs being worrisome though.. so yeah. Big game changers incoming again.When do we just get to play and have fun lol?

adding major breach and fracture to it sort of devalues weakness to elements as that skill already has major breach on it, along with a morph that no-one in their right mind ever uses.

Fracture and Breach are suppose to be combined like Resolve and Ward were in update 24, somehow it's been a full year without them addressing what they promised to revisit.. To top it off, they're skipping right over it (most likely) and combining crit into 1 value, which means Savagery and Prophecy will probably be combined as a result.

While they didn't specify Savagery and Prophecy combining, it would be odd for sets to provide 1 singular stat called "crit" like the way resistance bonuses changed to "armor", without addressing the major/minor buffs in a patch that is specifically addressing that system as a whole.

What will happen to Sorcs Minor Prophecy and Nightblades Minor Savagery? I've argued previously that the class minor buffs should be universal to better support the current state of play as you like, maybe they'll offer Sorcs the new combined crit buff and Nightblades can have a new crit damage buff instead.

Point is, I wouldn't think too hard about the differences of morphs solely based on something having Fracture vs Breach when they plan to combine them anyway. Skills like Pierce Armor will need to be reworked because Ransack would provide both.

Who knows, this kinda seems like the patch to revisit that Fracture/Breach idea, while they work on crit and the major/minor system. Perhaps they just didn't mention it directly as a focus. I don't think they previously gave a heads up about Resolve/Ward either.

ESO_Nightingale

i don't really have much of an opinion on them combining the buffs, but still, the skill exists in it's current form where 1 morph is useless and the other is used all the time. With the taunt i think it being given to frost clench is a fundamentally bad idea because the enemy is taunted but can't move towards the tank because they're immobilised, it's bad design, meanwhile elemental susceptibility has been sitting there doing absolutely nothing for ages. but i'm willing to let it go because at least now new players won't accidentally steal taunt.

emilyhyoyeon

No matter what kinds of changes they give to frost destro staff for the support roles, frost staves must have a damage passive where the other two elements do. I think that's the most important step to making them competitive (not necessarily BIS) with fire and lightning.

With this,

Trifocus
I suggest, instead of the damage shield: Similar to lightning, frost fully charged heavies could have a ''bounce between enemies'' effect, similar to the magnecro spammable and reflective of the lightning AOE burst. Could also keep the shield to keep the support, but unnecessary imo.

Ancient Knowledge
I like the 8% crit damage. I'm not sure how it would translated to minmaxed endgame groups, as in, I'm not sure if that would make frost staff BIS for all mag classes. I don't think it really matters though, could always just lower the value.
An alternative could be 4% single target and 4% AOE increase.

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Wall of Elements
Blockade: I like it
Unstable: Not sure if I'm reading it correctly. More damage to chilled enemies, or more damage overall? Either is fine to me but chilled is more thematically tight.

Ele Susceptibility
As someone who does some endgame tanking, yeah I would not use this over breach; but it functions well as a SnB alternative. Putting the increased block here is great; it's reflective of defensive posture of SnB which is great.

Impulse
I didn't even think about overhauling the ele ring morph. I love your suggestion.

Ele Storm
Reduced cost is interesting, I didn't think of that. Another possibility could be increases crit damage to enemies inside the storm by like 3% or something (not sure if 3% would be too overpowered or underpowered).




Thanks for making this post btw. I'm glad they're looking at the frost destruction staff and I'm holding up hope. The good thing about these suggested changes is that the support-based ones are simple enough to remove when they finally get around to making a more TES-lore-consistent magicka tanking staff.

ESO_Nightingale

Cronopoly wrote: »

(PVE) Frost Mage having a snare or hard CC with the weapon made sense. Of course it's out... sigh

Yeah i don't really know why they're doing these changes. I mean, it seems like they really don't want to listen to us and would rather come up with ideas that we know won't work. at the end of the day, it's us using the staff. They should listen to the people who play the game with it. It seems like they're cautious to take ideas that are thought out from multiple angles, meanwhile implementing something that not only doesn't make sense on paper, but also in practice. I really want to know if they actually play the game a lot or not because while that seems harsh, updates I see just leave everyone baffled. They really need to listen to pain points and people who back up their forum rants with actual logic. That goes for multiple topics, I've seen some fantastic posts from other people and I've seen a lot of garbage. speaking for myself, I've been doing this frost specific stuff for 3 years and I've really got it down to what we legitimately need, and, what I think is cool that would work. People want a frost dps weapon and this stuff that zos is suggesting goes against what we as the players want. The majority still want it for dps. We did polls on 2 seperate occasions and both times, we got most people saying they'd rather see it as dps. But still, that doesn't mean we should just delete it's tanking capabilities. We need to make both actually work. and i've talked about multiple things that zos could at least take into consideration when coming up with ideas.

ESO_Nightingale

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

No matter what kinds of changes they give to frost destro staff for the support roles, frost staves must have a damage passive where the other two elements do. I think that's the most important step to making them competitive (not necessarily BIS) with fire and lightning.

With this,

Trifocus
I suggest, instead of the damage shield: Similar to lightning, frost fully charged heavies could have a ''bounce between enemies'' effect, similar to the magnecro spammable and reflective of the lightning AOE burst. Could also keep the shield to keep the support, but unnecessary imo.

Ancient Knowledge
I like the 8% crit damage. I'm not sure how it would translated to minmaxed endgame groups, as in, I'm not sure if that would make frost staff BIS for all mag classes. I don't think it really matters though, could always just lower the value.
An alternative could be 4% single target and 4% AOE increase.

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Wall of Elements
Blockade: I like it
Unstable: Not sure if I'm reading it correctly. More damage to chilled enemies, or more damage overall? Either is fine to me but chilled is more thematically tight.

Ele Susceptibility
As someone who does some endgame tanking, yeah I would not use this over breach; but it functions well as a SnB alternative. Putting the increased block here is great; it's reflective of defensive posture of SnB which is great.

Impulse
I didn't even think about overhauling the ele ring morph. I love your suggestion.

Ele Storm
Reduced cost is interesting, I didn't think of that. Another possibility could be increases crit chance to enemies inside the storm by like 3% or something (not sure if 3% would be too overpowered or underpowered).





Thanks for making this post btw. I'm glad they're looking at the frost destruction staff and I'm holding up hope. The good thing about these suggested changes is that the support-based ones are simple enough to remove when they finally get around to making a more TES-lore-consistent magicka tanking staff.

Thanks for looking into the suggestions, with unstable it's just more base damage per tick with no extra requirements as it should be pretty easy to do. i did leave an extra "more thematic" suggestion in there with more dps to enemies effected by cc, such as snares, immobilisations and stuns. but that's pretty specific and not always the most consistent thing on certain classes.

Sedrethi

I am pretty okay with a lot of these changes, and they are pretty in line with the post I made in the combat update thread. Glad to see others are as passionate on an update to the Frost Staff. While I believe the tanking aspect was never a fit since when they introduced it, I do agree that it's so ingrained with it now that it shouldn't be removed entirely but passed off onto morphs over the passives as suggested in this thread.

ESO_Nightingale

Sedrethi wrote: »

I am pretty okay with a lot of these changes, and they are pretty in line with the post I made in the combat update thread. Glad to see others are as passionate on an update to the Frost Staff. While I agree the tanking aspect was never a fit since when they introduced it, I do think that it's so ingrained with it now that it shouldn't be removed entirely but passed off onto morphs over the passives as suggested in this thread.

I actually think i upvoted your post. But yeah. I'm certainly one of, if not the most vocal people about this stuff. It's nice to see more people talking about it. You'd probably like the people on the eso frost discord.

emilyhyoyeon

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

No matter what kinds of changes they give to frost destro staff for the support roles, frost staves must have a damage passive where the other two elements do. I think that's the most important step to making them competitive (not necessarily BIS) with fire and lightning.

With this,

Trifocus
I suggest, instead of the damage shield: Similar to lightning, frost fully charged heavies could have a ''bounce between enemies'' effect, similar to the magnecro spammable and reflective of the lightning AOE burst. Could also keep the shield to keep the support, but unnecessary imo.

Ancient Knowledge
I like the 8% crit damage. I'm not sure how it would translated to minmaxed endgame groups, as in, I'm not sure if that would make frost staff BIS for all mag classes. I don't think it really matters though, could always just lower the value.
An alternative could be 4% single target and 4% AOE increase.

---

Wall of Elements
Blockade: I like it
Unstable: Not sure if I'm reading it correctly. More damage to chilled enemies, or more damage overall? Either is fine to me but chilled is more thematically tight.

Ele Susceptibility
As someone who does some endgame tanking, yeah I would not use this over breach; but it functions well as a SnB alternative. Putting the increased block here is great; it's reflective of defensive posture of SnB which is great.

Impulse
I didn't even think about overhauling the ele ring morph. I love your suggestion.

Ele Storm
Reduced cost is interesting, I didn't think of that. Another possibility could be increases crit chance to enemies inside the storm by like 3% or something (not sure if 3% would be too overpowered or underpowered).





Thanks for making this post btw. I'm glad they're looking at the frost destruction staff and I'm holding up hope. The good thing about these suggested changes is that the support-based ones are simple enough to remove when they finally get around to making a more TES-lore-consistent magicka tanking staff.

Thanks for looking into the suggestions, with unstable it's just more base damage per tick with no extra requirements as it should be pretty easy to do. i did leave an extra "more thematic" suggestion in there with more dps to enemies effected by cc, such as snares, immobilisations and stuns. but that's pretty specific and not always the most consistent thing on certain classes.

oh yeah I see what you mean now

Unrelated but I do want to point out, with the frost elemental storm, I meant an increase in crit damage to enemies inside, not crit chance. I edited this in my original post

Sedrethi

@ESO_Nightingale
I know I upvoted your post in there. I actually have been to your discord and it has definitely helped given me ideas on how to make Frost builds work a little more efficiently (even with some thematic compromises). Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into testing a lot of it.

ESO_Nightingale

Sedrethi wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale
I know I upvoted your post in there. I actually have been to your discord and it has definitely helped given me ideas on how to make Frost builds work a little more efficiently (even with some thematic compromises). Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into testing a lot of it.

No problem man!

ESO_Nightingale

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

No matter what kinds of changes they give to frost destro staff for the support roles, frost staves must have a damage passive where the other two elements do. I think that's the most important step to making them competitive (not necessarily BIS) with fire and lightning.

With this,

Trifocus
I suggest, instead of the damage shield: Similar to lightning, frost fully charged heavies could have a ''bounce between enemies'' effect, similar to the magnecro spammable and reflective of the lightning AOE burst. Could also keep the shield to keep the support, but unnecessary imo.

Ancient Knowledge
I like the 8% crit damage. I'm not sure how it would translated to minmaxed endgame groups, as in, I'm not sure if that would make frost staff BIS for all mag classes. I don't think it really matters though, could always just lower the value.
An alternative could be 4% single target and 4% AOE increase.

---

Wall of Elements
Blockade: I like it
Unstable: Not sure if I'm reading it correctly. More damage to chilled enemies, or more damage overall? Either is fine to me but chilled is more thematically tight.

Ele Susceptibility
As someone who does some endgame tanking, yeah I would not use this over breach; but it functions well as a SnB alternative. Putting the increased block here is great; it's reflective of defensive posture of SnB which is great.

Impulse
I didn't even think about overhauling the ele ring morph. I love your suggestion.

Ele Storm
Reduced cost is interesting, I didn't think of that. Another possibility could be increases crit chance to enemies inside the storm by like 3% or something (not sure if 3% would be too overpowered or underpowered).





Thanks for making this post btw. I'm glad they're looking at the frost destruction staff and I'm holding up hope. The good thing about these suggested changes is that the support-based ones are simple enough to remove when they finally get around to making a more TES-lore-consistent magicka tanking staff.

Thanks for looking into the suggestions, with unstable it's just more base damage per tick with no extra requirements as it should be pretty easy to do. i did leave an extra "more thematic" suggestion in there with more dps to enemies effected by cc, such as snares, immobilisations and stuns. but that's pretty specific and not always the most consistent thing on certain classes.

oh yeah I see what you mean now

Unrelated but I do want to point out, with the frost elemental storm, I meant an increase in crit damage to enemies inside, not crit chance. I edited this in my original post

I see, for me that goes a little against the theme of the unique effects. For me it looked like they were about increasing the damage dealt by the skill, and with thunderous rage, it was an increase of uptime. I began thinking about how to increase uptime on icy rage and came to the simple yet effective solution of cost reduction.

Xebov

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

Thats not as easy as it sounds. You need to think about new skilline that needs leveling or incorporation into the destruction staff line. You also have to think about what happens to existing frost staffs and researched frost staff traits?

Currently Tank players have Frost Staffs. They also have the traits researched that enable them to craft various sets and Transmute them. You also have a handful of DDs that do the exact same.
You now have 2 choices:
1.) You create the new weapon for Tanks. This would mean Tanks would have to refarm their staffs (i have 10+) and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.
2.) You could create a new weapon but transfer all Frost Staffs and Traits to the new weapon. This would mean that DDs would have to refarm their staffs and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.

No matter how you turn it, one side will get the shorter end of the stick. Only question is which part of the community you want to *** off. Thats also the reason why you will most likely not see this happen.

ESO_Nightingale

Xebov wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

Thats not as easy as it sounds. You need to think about new skilline that needs leveling or incorporation into the destruction staff line. You also have to think about what happens to existing frost staffs and researched frost staff traits?

Currently Tank players have Frost Staffs. They also have the traits researched that enable them to craft various sets and Transmute them. You also have a handful of DDs that do the exact same.
You now have 2 choices:
1.) You create the new weapon for Tanks. This would mean Tanks would have to refarm their staffs (i have 10+) and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.
2.) You could create a new weapon but transfer all Frost Staffs and Traits to the new weapon. This would mean that DDs would have to refarm their staffs and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.

No matter how you turn it, one side will get the shorter end of the stick. Only question is which part of the community you want to *** off. Thats also the reason why you will most likely not see this happen.

Yeah it's a lot of extra work for something you can fix similar to how I've suggested. I'd still prefer a new tanking weapon but you've just listed reasons why it's annoying to create a new one.

Corellon Thromorin

Xebov wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

Thats not as easy as it sounds. You need to think about new skilline that needs leveling or incorporation into the destruction staff line. You also have to think about what happens to existing frost staffs and researched frost staff traits?

Currently Tank players have Frost Staffs. They also have the traits researched that enable them to craft various sets and Transmute them. You also have a handful of DDs that do the exact same.
You now have 2 choices:
1.) You create the new weapon for Tanks. This would mean Tanks would have to refarm their staffs (i have 10+) and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.
2.) You could create a new weapon but transfer all Frost Staffs and Traits to the new weapon. This would mean that DDs would have to refarm their staffs and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.

No matter how you turn it, one side will get the shorter end of the stick. Only question is which part of the community you want to *** off. Thats also the reason why you will most likely not see this happen.

3) ZOS Duplicates Frost staff's research progress to the new staff type and creates a temporary NPC that transmutes frost staves to whatever new stave they created.

Xebov

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Why should magicka DD even have to deal with gimmicky tank mechanics in one of their only 3 weapons. Just scrap anything tank related, please ZOS. And give us specific tanking staff, made for tanking, that isn't subpar.

Thats not as easy as it sounds. You need to think about new skilline that needs leveling or incorporation into the destruction staff line. You also have to think about what happens to existing frost staffs and researched frost staff traits?

Currently Tank players have Frost Staffs. They also have the traits researched that enable them to craft various sets and Transmute them. You also have a handful of DDs that do the exact same.
You now have 2 choices:
1.) You create the new weapon for Tanks. This would mean Tanks would have to refarm their staffs (i have 10+) and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.
2.) You could create a new weapon but transfer all Frost Staffs and Traits to the new weapon. This would mean that DDs would have to refarm their staffs and research the traits to be able to craft/transmute. Essentially destroying their current gear setups.

No matter how you turn it, one side will get the shorter end of the stick. Only question is which part of the community you want to *** off. Thats also the reason why you will most likely not see this happen.

Yeah it's a lot of extra work for something you can fix similar to how I've suggested. I'd still prefer a new tanking weapon but you've just listed reasons why it's annoying to create a new one.

With that in mind its also very likely that the Frost staff will remain as a Tank weapon, which creates a problem. Some stuff that is usefull for Tanks is nearly useless for DDs and vice versa, which makes it problematic turning it into a weapon that both can use.