Make frost staves useful again

Lephrel

Daemonai wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Daemonai wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

Should they turn ice staff into a pure damage weapon it would always compete with the inferno and in the meta, one of the two would always be obsolate.

We aren't asking for frost to be BIS.
We are asking for frost damage passives in the same way that both fire and lightning have damage passives, considering, shown in the rest of the TES franchise, ice DESTRUCTION magic is for damaging, in the same way that fire DESTRUCTION and lightning DESTRUCTION magic styles are for damaging.

Other than respective elemental resistance shields, the destruction magic school doesn't really contain defensive tools.

Min-maxers will always gravitate towards the BiS, so if Frost Staff isn't BiS it is functionally useless like it was before they changed it into a tank weapon.

At least as a Magicka tank weapon, Frost Staff has a unique, irreplaceable niche.

No one who wants ice staff to be a damage weapon is talking about making in BIS for minmaxers. We're talking about making it a damage weapon. The title is referring to making it a damage weapon again

There is zero incentive to make Frost Staff a DPS staff if it is going to be innately inferior to the other options just so a few people can roleplay as Mr. Freeze. That would be a regression - right back to square one.

Wanting to play as an ice mage is not just some role playing fetish. The different elements used to allow for very unique playstyles (especially in pvp), even though they were roughly on par in terms of damage. For instance frost was all about snaring and rooting your opponents, you could set opponents off balance with lightning, fire could knock back opponents etc.

There's also many stam players asking for an alternative to dizzying swing spam in pvp. Everyone would probably like some more build diversity. Being forced to use the same exact setup to deal damage for years, just get's incredibly boring for many people.

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

Should they turn ice staff into a pure damage weapon it would always compete with the inferno and in the meta, one of the two would always be obsolate.

We aren't asking for frost to be BIS.
We are asking for frost damage passives in the same way that both fire and lightning have damage passives, considering, shown in the rest of the TES franchise, ice DESTRUCTION magic is for damaging, in the same way that fire DESTRUCTION and lightning DESTRUCTION magic styles are for damaging.

Other than respective elemental resistance shields, the destruction magic school doesn't really contain defensive tools.

Frost does plenty damage in Cyrodiil.

Well, it doesn't do any more damage in Cyrodiil, than it does in PvE or any other content. I really don't understand what you meant by this.
But the only situation where ice is viable is when you use it as a backbar weapon, e.g. vateshran staff. Apart from maybe a magden or some weird crit build (using brittle), there is no situation where you use a frost staff to actually do damage.

Smexykins

With all the small buffs to hybrid builds these last patches, it feels like Ice Staff DPS is falling down to the depths with 1H/S DPS. Even then, I see tons of solo builds with 1H/S and next to none with Ice Staff. I certainly could use a little more damage, but I play it mostly for the utility. Sadly, DPS don't need utility in this game; just beeg number and beeg deeps.

I don't mind tanking with it either, but maybe just a little touch to the Destro passives could really bump us up (like removing the damn taunt, thank you so much for that...) and compete a little better with Flame/Lightning. Even giving us a small passive to crit or something would put us on the board with the AOE and single target damage buffs the others get. Make us the real crit hitters since it's being nerfed anyway. Gives the niche a wider audience like that, I'd say.

Lephrel

Smexykins wrote: »

With all the small buffs to hybrid builds these last patches, it feels like Ice Staff DPS is falling down to the depths with 1H/S DPS. Even then, I see tons of solo builds with 1H/S and next to none with Ice Staff. I certainly could use a little more damage, but I play it mostly for the utility. Sadly, DPS don't need utility in this game; just beeg number and beeg deeps.

I don't mind tanking with it either, but maybe just a little touch to the Destro passives could really bump us up (like removing the damn taunt, thank you so much for that...) and compete a little better with Flame/Lightning. Even giving us a small passive to crit or something would put us on the board with the AOE and single target damage buffs the others get. Make us the real crit hitters since it's being nerfed anyway. Gives the niche a wider audience like that, I'd say.

Yeah. The taunt is absolutely useless, just a worse version of inner fire, should be removed asap.
Also, at least one morph of wall of elements should retain it's lower cost and snare. That change was mind-bogglingly thoughtless. Why would you add an aoe damage shield to a ground based dot? Just seems like they're changing stuff for the sake of change - unsurprisingly the results are catastrophic.

Smexykins

Lephrel wrote: »

Smexykins wrote: »

With all the small buffs to hybrid builds these last patches, it feels like Ice Staff DPS is falling down to the depths with 1H/S DPS. Even then, I see tons of solo builds with 1H/S and next to none with Ice Staff. I certainly could use a little more damage, but I play it mostly for the utility. Sadly, DPS don't need utility in this game; just beeg number and beeg deeps.

I don't mind tanking with it either, but maybe just a little touch to the Destro passives could really bump us up (like removing the damn taunt, thank you so much for that...) and compete a little better with Flame/Lightning. Even giving us a small passive to crit or something would put us on the board with the AOE and single target damage buffs the others get. Make us the real crit hitters since it's being nerfed anyway. Gives the niche a wider audience like that, I'd say.

Yeah. The taunt is absolutely useless, just a worse version of inner fire, should be removed asap.
Also, at least one morph of wall of elements should retain it's damage and snare. That change was mind-bogglingly thoughtless. Why would you add an aoe damage shield to a ground based dot? Just seems like they're changing stuff for the sake of change - unsurprisingly the results are catastrophic.

Actually, the damage is the same as it used to be. They just increased the magicka cost IIRC, which isn't a biggie. The shield is cool but again, more utility and less oomph.

Lephrel

@Smexykins Oh yes, I just checked the tt and you're right, I corrected my mistake. The skill still costs more though, effectively reducing dps and the shield is completely useless in most situations.

ESO_Nightingale

Lephrel wrote: »

Daemonai wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Daemonai wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

Should they turn ice staff into a pure damage weapon it would always compete with the inferno and in the meta, one of the two would always be obsolate.

We aren't asking for frost to be BIS.
We are asking for frost damage passives in the same way that both fire and lightning have damage passives, considering, shown in the rest of the TES franchise, ice DESTRUCTION magic is for damaging, in the same way that fire DESTRUCTION and lightning DESTRUCTION magic styles are for damaging.

Other than respective elemental resistance shields, the destruction magic school doesn't really contain defensive tools.

Min-maxers will always gravitate towards the BiS, so if Frost Staff isn't BiS it is functionally useless like it was before they changed it into a tank weapon.

At least as a Magicka tank weapon, Frost Staff has a unique, irreplaceable niche.

No one who wants ice staff to be a damage weapon is talking about making in BIS for minmaxers. We're talking about making it a damage weapon. The title is referring to making it a damage weapon again

There is zero incentive to make Frost Staff a DPS staff if it is going to be innately inferior to the other options just so a few people can roleplay as Mr. Freeze. That would be a regression - right back to square one.

Wanting to play as an ice mage is not just some role playing fetish. The different elements used to allow for very unique playstyles (especially in pvp), even though they were roughly on par in terms of damage. For instance frost was all about snaring and rooting your opponents, you could set opponents off balance with lightning, fire could knock back opponents etc.

There's also many stam players asking for an alternative to dizzying swing spam in pvp. Everyone would probably like some more build diversity. Being forced to use the same exact setup to deal damage for years, just get's incredibly boring for many people.

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

Should they turn ice staff into a pure damage weapon it would always compete with the inferno and in the meta, one of the two would always be obsolate.

We aren't asking for frost to be BIS.
We are asking for frost damage passives in the same way that both fire and lightning have damage passives, considering, shown in the rest of the TES franchise, ice DESTRUCTION magic is for damaging, in the same way that fire DESTRUCTION and lightning DESTRUCTION magic styles are for damaging.

Other than respective elemental resistance shields, the destruction magic school doesn't really contain defensive tools.

Frost does plenty damage in Cyrodiil.

Well, it doesn't do any more damage in Cyrodiil, than it does in PvE or any other content. I really don't understand what you meant by this.
But the only situation where ice is viable is when you use it as a backbar weapon, e.g. vateshran staff. Apart from maybe a magden or some weird crit build (using brittle), there is no situation where you use a frost staff to actually do damage.

even in pvp, we just don't have a good enough stun, because, AGAIN, the only good offensive stun outside of classes is on the fire staff only. warden only has arctic blast as a stun, which is fine defensively, but certainly not offensively. if we had AB4.0, a better burst heal on trellis and a net nerf to pvp health scaling healing, i believe that the class would be in a far better position offensively, as magicka warden would actually have a combo with a stun and wouldn't be seen as annoyingly overpowered in terms of defense.

Lephrel

@ESO_Nightingale Remember the days when deep fissure stunned and you could use frost reach with master ice staff as a spammable ability that rooted your opponents. Those were fun times.

ESO_Nightingale

Lephrel wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale Remember the days when deep fissure stunned and you could use frost reach with master ice staff as a spammable ability that rooted your opponents. Those were fun times.

Yeah i remember that. But in those days the class was more boring than it was now, though it did have the old burst combo. For a long time we've been asking for another damage skill that would help flesh out our playstyle other than just fissure and a bunch of copy pasted skills from weapons and other classes.

Lephrel

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale Remember the days when deep fissure stunned and you could use frost reach with master ice staff as a spammable ability that rooted your opponents. Those were fun times.

Yeah i remember that. But in those days the class was more boring than it was now, though it did have the old burst combo. For a long time we've been asking for another damage skill that would help flesh out our playstyle other than just fissure and a bunch of copy pasted skills from weapons and other classes.

Hmm idk, I liked combat better back then, and I don't feel like the classes have become more interesting. But to be fair there have been some good changes.

ESO_Nightingale

Lephrel wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale Remember the days when deep fissure stunned and you could use frost reach with master ice staff as a spammable ability that rooted your opponents. Those were fun times.

Yeah i remember that. But in those days the class was more boring than it was now, though it did have the old burst combo. For a long time we've been asking for another damage skill that would help flesh out our playstyle other than just fissure and a bunch of copy pasted skills from weapons and other classes.

Hmm idk, I liked combat better back then, and I don't feel like the classes have become more interesting. But to be fair there have been some good changes.

we still have many more changes to go until i think our class will feel like it's actually been designed.

emilyhyoyeon

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

consistency with the franchise. If you don't care about roleplay, then making ice staff a DPS weapon and a new magicka tanking weapon for tanking, I don't see where you have a problem here

1. this instalment in the Franchise is not a single player game so mechanically it functions different, we don't have spell scrolls, I can't fortify my enchantments until they are 99999% and one shot Parthurnax, it needs to have MMO rules and checks and balances.

2. "I don't see where you have the problem", you are asking people who have already farmed and improved many items to go out and farm an entirely new type of weapon solely because you want Ice staves to do Slightly more damage but not be best, can you see why that might come off as a bit annoying? especially now the sticker book exists adding another weapon for every set in the game to either farm or buy.

1. fortifying enchanments to a million percent and godmoding have nothing to do with consistency with the franchise, this ice staff stuff is in terms of ''lore'' consistency. Godmoding things like the enchants and one shotting Parthurnax having nothing to do with the actual TES world; oneshotting Parthurnax isn't canon like magic spells are. Godmoding stuff has to do with breaking game mechanics. Like what??? I think I see your point but those examples are so off topic that I don't even know.

ZOS can do whatever they want but I'm asking for ''lore'' consistency so yeah I'm going to push for them to make ice destruction magic destruction-based. Asking for ice destruction staff to be a destruction staff is NOT the same as asking for the ability to create 9999% enchaments or oneshot boss level NPCs.



2. In all my days of talking about ice staff in this game, I've only seen one person mention refarming stuff, and it hasn't been in this thread unless I missed it. I think this worry is fair and imo I think ZOS should, for every ice staff of each set someone has, to give every player credit for collecting the respective alteration staff (or whatever the replacement weapon is) in the stickerbook. Not sure how they would solve the gold tempers, transmutes, etc aspects though.

Again, I agree this is a potential issue but when all I hear people say to me as a rebuttal for ice destruction magic is that essentially ''roleplay reasons are pointless,'' and not things like ''this brings up issues with refarming stuff'' for example, then yeah I'm going to wonder what their frustration is.

emilyhyoyeon

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

I want ice staff to be intended for damage and tanking/support second if ZOS won't make a new magicka support staff.

ESO is Rock Paper Scissors, You can't have "Damage" And "Tanking" + a bit of support too.
It's why you don't see raid DPS running SnB you have to pick one or it becomes overpowered, ZOS saw that flame and lightning fill the 2 niches and a third is (and was for years) a redundant decon item of disappointment, So they gave it a role, Middle of the road for damage but robust for a battle mage ( but not as good as SnB because you miss 1 enchant), Not overpowered, but extremely relevant.

I said damage first and tanking second because that's how ZOS is treating it at the moment, but in reverse. Having ''"Damage" And "Tanking" + a bit of support too'' is not my idea, it's ZOS's.

---

Since I've noticed a lot of people explaining why ice staff was chosen for tanking, I'm aware of why they chose ice staff for the tanking role PRACTICALLY, but when I ask ''why did ZOS make ice destruction staff a tank staff?'' I'm not actually asking why because I genuinely don't know; it's obvious why of the 3 they made ice for tank, and even more obvious why they didn't make a new weapon entirely. I'm ''asking'' that question for an effect of emphasizing my disastisfaction with forgoing consistency with previous TES fantasy world motives in favor of not wanting to develop something new.

emilyhyoyeon

thadjarvis wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

thadjarvis wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

I would say there's still a lot of potential for an alteration staff, if that were to be the magicka tank/utility weapon

What skills though? The alteration skills are in the game already. Things like detect life and telekinetic aren't but those have no combat use in the way ESO is designed. Maybe just for Heist or Dark Brotherhood stuff, but that's really it.

telekinesis -- magicka based add pull
feather -- make your allies weightless, giving you and them major/minor/something expedition and reducing their ability to be slowed by X%

2 already without thinking
at least one taunt I suppose (which doesn't exactly make sense for alteration but neither does it under frost clench)


If you think that, for ex, because there are already shields in the game that alteration staff can't have shields, idk what to tell you. Skills overlap everywhere already

That's fair. But it is a tough weapon to add from a business perspective imo as tanks are a tiny portion of ESO and magika tanking is a minority of that.

ZoS seems to choose skill lines and classes that can be used by all roles in all content. Alteration staff unfortunately is really narrow.

I was hesistant to keep talking about this because the real topic is ice staff and I don't want to start a derail but I do want to point out that detect life could very much also have combat use. It would probably be a more PVP oriented skill but I think that is completely fair because PVP is a valid part of the game.


skill: cast a detect life spell, revealing enemies in a radius of X (would be nice to see how many enemies are behind a keep wall, and could also work as a stealth reveal, but radius would have to be somewhat small for balance obviously)

morph 1: also works on undead enemies (which would work on player vampires) and increases damage done to them by X% (something small like 2% or less I guess), so this morph could have use in PVE in content with a lot of undead as a debuff

morph 2: also reveals the enemies to people in your group (or reveals to all allies nearby grouped or not) (or something else entirely)

Anyway yeah there's a lot of potential for alteration/mysticism spells

Lephrel

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

I want ice staff to be intended for damage and tanking/support second if ZOS won't make a new magicka support staff.

ESO is Rock Paper Scissors, You can't have "Damage" And "Tanking" + a bit of support too.
It's why you don't see raid DPS running SnB you have to pick one or it becomes overpowered, ZOS saw that flame and lightning fill the 2 niches and a third is (and was for years) a redundant decon item of disappointment, So they gave it a role, Middle of the road for damage but robust for a battle mage ( but not as good as SnB because you miss 1 enchant), Not overpowered, but extremely relevant.

I said damage first and tanking second because that's how ZOS is treating it at the moment, but in reverse. Having ''"Damage" And "Tanking" + a bit of support too'' is not my idea, it's ZOS's.

---

Since I've noticed a lot of people explaining why ice staff was chosen for tanking, I'm aware of why they chose ice staff for the tanking role PRACTICALLY, but when I ask ''why did ZOS make ice destruction staff a tank staff?'' I'm not actually asking why because I genuinely don't know; it's obvious why of the 3 they made ice for tank, and even more obvious why they didn't make a new weapon entirely. I'm ''asking'' that question for an effect of emphasizing my disastisfaction with forgoing consistency with previous TES fantasy world motives in favor of not wanting to develop something new.

Yeah, to me it's a mystery why they turned frost staves into a semi tanking weapon, especially given the fact that the passives and skills are still almost completely damage focused. It's not like they took a damage first tanking second approach, or even a tanking first and damage second approach...both tanking and damage are absolutely abysmal right now.
Since I don't particularly care for frost staff tanking, I'd rather have them bring back ice dps instead of turning frost into an actual tanking skill line. But tbh any change is an improvement at this point.